Organic Granny

This is a delicious little snackfood  that needs to be considered a "treat"  vs. an everyday staple of the raw diet.   As with many "raw" recipes, it will be necessary to dehydrate the Kale to obtain that near-the-traditional (cooked)-thing mouth appeal.  I bought myself an  Excalibur dehydrator  early on in my raw food experience but any brand will do, and if you absolutely must have the chips,  even an oven will work -- preheat your regular oven to 140 degrees Fahrenheit/60 degrees Celsius or the lowest setting, and spread out your chips on parchment paper on cookie sheets.   Put them into the oven with the door slightly propped open with a butter knife or chopstick.  Your chips (or other dehydrated foods) will take a long time to dry satisfactorily this way and it is not an environmentally friendly method, so use it sparingly, and you will likely want to invest in a dehydrator with a timer pretty soon into the process. Tools I use for the process: * Coffee Bean G

Lemon Balm,  melissa officianalis  ©Cynthia Zirkwitz 2019 Lemon Balm, or  melissa officinalis , is a perennial herb from the mint family.  It may have originated in Europe, the Middle East or Asia, but now it grows like a wild thing in my garden, and maybe yours?  But unlike other "invasive plants" (sometimes incorrectly labeled "weeds"), lemon balm has so many wonderful attributes-- lemon scent, lemon-y flavour, beautiful fresh vital green colour-- that you would never hack it out and dump it in the forest.  However, I do suggest that you grow it in a container or a bed that doesn't have access to other parts of your garden. But DO grow it. Order healthy Lemon Balm seeds from West Coast Seeds During the summer small white flowers show up, with bee-attracting nectar in them.  ( Melissa  is actually Greek for 'honey bee'.)  Melissa may well be the "honey leaf" referred to by Theophrastus, (c. 371-c.287BC) successor to Aristotle, and called "

   Lots of hugs and kisses! INGREDIENTS: Crust: 2 cups  shredded Coconut 1 1/2 cups  Medjool Dates  (or other pitted dates) 1/4 - 1/2 tsp  Celtic Sea Salt The Cheeseless Cheez Cake Filling: 3 cups  Cashews , soaked (you can substitute other soaked nuts such as pine or macadamia nuts) 1 cup  Cacao butter , melted 1 cup  Water 1/2 cup  Maple Syrup, Raw Honey or other sweetener of choice 1/2 cup  Cacao powder  OR  Carob powder 1 tsp  Vanilla 1 Tbsp  Chia Gel pinch of  Celtic Sea Salt Ganache Topping: 1/2 cup raw organic  Cacao powder 1/2 cup  Cacao Butter , melted 1/4 cup  Maple Syrup, Raw Honey or other sweetener of choice pinch of  Celtic Sea Salt Place your cacao butter in a bowl over hot water to start melting. In food processor, process coconut, dates and salt until it clumps uniformly.  "Grease" a springform pan with some of the  melted cacao butter. Remove the crust mix from the food processor and press it evenly in pan. Place in freezer to set while you make the rest of

This is as "healthy" as anything with chocolate is going to get (while still maintaining its high chocolate integrity)!   This chocolate chia-zz cake cake doesn't contain dairy, eggs, gluten, or processed sugars!  It has that rich dark chocolate flavour that sometimes gets masked in cheese cake by the dairy component, and sometimes in the raw vegan cheesecakes it gets side-tracked with whatever sweeteners are used (i.e., dates, agave, raw honey).  It is more like "high raw" in the way that I have made it because I had some left-over organic coconut milk in the fridge that called out to me just before I made my almond milk from scratch.  But you can be virtuously 100% raw with this recipe and it is still a smash hit! Get out  a 6" or 9"  springform pan  (DON'T grease it).   I used both a  Vitamix  and a  Food Processor , but I bet you can get away with just using the Vita-Mix for the whole thing-- I'm just kind of smitten with my nice Cuisinart

In my continued search for the perfect tasting & textured raw vegan “cheesecake” I put this one together last night.  I drew on a couple of recipes, using some of my own fave ingredients (chia seed gel) and substituting a date-nectarine-coconut pudding I’d made a couple of nights before for the date paste that was called for in another recipe’s pie crust. It is unlikely that you will have all the ingredients for this raw vegan creation on hand, but it is really worth making as a project for a potluck or dinner with your mother-in-law.   It is very “wow” and healthy. INGREDIENTS 5 C. raw organic/natural  almonds,  soaked for 5-8 hours, husked so they look like “blanched almonds” 2-4 T.  Chia seed gel  (put 2-4 T. Chia seed in a jar with a cup or more of filtered water, stir, and let gel for about 15 minutes before using.  Store extra in fridge with lid on.) 5 T.  date paste  or something like it made from soft, ripe medjool dates (pitted) Pinch of  Celtic Sea Salt 1 C. organic  Lemo

  I was chafing at the  at the bit to make this raw vegan pizza as we drove home from a Camp Meeting on a Sunday night several years ago.  At this time in my life I had been making up a variety of raw/living ‘recipes,'any based on my previous non-raw favorite recipes.   At Camp there had been salads and raw fruit and veggies with most meals, but that was pretty much it for “raw” and the salads were cafeteria salads… there probably wasn’t anything organic or the sort of fresh that I grew for the two of us out of our small garden plot. The following recipe is a fabulous Pizza recipe that can be found in Paul Nison’s book  Health According To The Scriptures . It is actually the size of a cooked pizza that my husband and I used to demolish in one sitting, no problem, but the one here is so hearty, so full of flavour and textural variety and fiber, that it truly does feed up to eight people who are committed to getting lots of nutrition from smaller quantities. RAVE FOR THE CRUST:  If y

The following “raw” flax crackers (they are dehydrated at 115 degrees F. over a lengthy period of time…. until you think they are crisp or chewy enough for you…18-24 hours)  have 6 cloves of organic garlic in them. You can vary that, as you can all the additions to the basic flax seeds. Yeah, I like garlic. I like garlic a lot.  I like its astringent pinnng and its heady fragrance. It’s also very good for you because of the natural antibiotic effects of its constituents. So, start by soaking in filtered water, for 12 hours: 4 Cups of organic  Flaxseed  in a Large Mixing Bowl 1 Cup of natural, raw  Almonds  in another bowl After you have done this, then drain the almonds and spin them up in the Vitamix along with the following: 2 large, juicy, ripe, organic  Tomatoes 3 stocks of organic  Celery 6 cloves of organic  Garlic 3 medium organic  Carrots 1 small organic  Zucchini 2 T.  dried Italian herbs OR handfuls of fresh herbs such as Rosemary, Basil, Oregano, Chives, Parsley , etc. (to t