Make Your Own Mini Green-za's!

NOTE: THIS RECIPE REQUIRES A DEHYDRATOR.

This is just plain old FUN! I like inspiring people to try healthier, raw options, and I know for me that was an issue of convenience for a long time. For a lot of you, an issue is that you have older kids who are not vegan/raw and convincing them to switch to a diet like this might be hard. So you might need some yummy, fun to eat finger-foods for the family. I've got one for you right here! A wonderful, truly green pizza. Now, this takes a while, so you're gonna have to put in some prep work beforehand...

Crust:
480 Ml (2 Cups) Milled Flax Seed
360 Ml (1 1/2 Cups) Ground Almonds
240 Ml +  1 Tsp Water
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 Tbsp Mixed Herbs (Or just equal parts Thyme and Oregano will do)
1 Tbsp Basil
1 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast
1/2 Tbsp Rosemary
1/4 Tbsp Local, Organic Honey
A Couple Pinches of Salt

Stir all ingredients in a bowl or, better yet, use your hands! Roll out into golf balls, smack in your hands to flatten to a little less than a quarter-inch thick and pop onto the dehydrator trays-dehydrate on 40 degrees C for about 7 hours. This is a lovely GF Italian herb bread and you can use it for anything, sandwiches too, whatever you like.

Green Cheeze (This is for you Ali-an easy Cheezy for my nut-allergic friend!):

240 Ml (1 Cup) Pumpkin Seeds
2 Tbsp Pine Nuts
2 Tbsp Sunflower Oil
1 Tbsp Rejuvelac (I make quinoa rejuvelac because it is gluten free)
1 Clove Garlic
1/4 to 1/2 tsp Fleur De Sel (or sea salt)
Pinch of white or black pepper
Pinch of ground mustardseed (optional)

Soak the Pumpkin Seeds for about 4 hours or so. Drain and put in a food processor or a blender (but the food processor will work much better) and mix with all the other ingredients, stopping and stirring continuously until you have it well blended.

Once your crusts and cheeze are ready, put the cheeze in a bowl and the crusts on a plate. Slice up some organic cherry tomatoes onto another plate and you're ready to serve your make-your-own mini pizzas! These are AWESOME with My Rawkin' Raw Ranch Dip. Pizza + Ranch, and it's all healthy and raw?! I must be joking, right? Nope. Give it a try for yourself. Out of this world, and tons of fun! I finished it off with some raw carob brownies, but those are for another time...

Paul's Mushroom Salad

OK, I am...not a mushroom person. However, it was a big effort on my former cheese luvvin' husband's part to go vegan, let alone RAW (you rock, Paul, seriously). So, to thank him for the tremendously good thing he is doing for: the environment, animals, plants, his body and health, in being a positive role model for our son, ridding himself of his negative relationship with food and boosting my ego (by loving my uncooking!) and happiness...well, to thank him, I take the rare requests he makes and do my best to uncook what I can with them. So, my husband loves mushrooms. LOVES. Here is a hearty, earthy salad we've invented together:

2 Large Chestnut Mushrooms, chopped
1 Large Tomato, diced
About 2/3 of a Leek, diced
About a Tablespoon's worth of diced Red Onion
Small handful of Pine Nuts
Black Pepper

Toss ingredients in a bowl. Paul used a Mexican honey-mustard for a dressing, but you could use whatever you like.

The cancer cure: BURGERS?!

OK, these might not magically cure cancer, but the ingredients contained in these brrgers will come a long way in helping to prevent cancer and will also help you fight cancer if you are unfortunate enough to already be doing so. Plus, they are pretty darn tasty, so what have you got to lose?

3 Organic Carrots (see my note on organic fruit & veg)
100g Sesame Seeds
A small handful's worth of Broccoli-heads only
4 Sun Dried Tomatoes
2 Tbsp Olive Oil (the herbed OO from the Sun-Dried Tomato jar-optional, but it is so much yummier than regular olive oil)-NOTE: I think my burgers may have came out more pliable with less liquid, so feel free to only add 1 tbsp, nonetheless I love the taste!!)
1 Fresh Tomato
About 1 tsp Leek
1 small handful of Pine Nuts
2 Garlic cloves
A few sprigs each of fresh Parsley & Basil
1 Tbsp Fleur De Sel (grey salt)
1 tbsp Black pepper
1/3 tsp Mustard seed
1/2 tsp Cayenne powder
1 Tbsp Basic Cashew Cheeze, optional

Pulse, stir, repeat until you get a gritty but well blended burger mix. I served ours using Cornish Greens leaves in place of buns, but you may use some flatbread or linseed/rye bread (wheat free, score) if you feel so inclined. These go nicely with American mustard or hummous.

HOW do these fight cancer, you ask? Well...you may read more in detail here and here. This is also a great blend of foods for recalcification of the body, to reverse tooth and bone decay. I had 4 visible cavities before I began recalcifying, now I cannot notice any tooth decay!

Butternut Soup and...Nutterbutt Ice Cream!

Creamy Winter Squash Soup:

About 240 ml/1 cup Butternut Squash, peeled and chopped
1 Small carrot
1/2 to one whole small leek leaf, depending how you want it to taste
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1 tbsp ground Black Pepper
2 tbsp Sunflower oil
2 tbsp Basic Cashew Cheeze
1 Tbsp Pine Nuts
1 Clove Garlic
1 tsp Fleur de Sel (which you can read about here, it is so good and loaded with minerals-I highly reccomend ditching your white salt and opting for this instead!)
240 ml/1 cup warm Water
Dash of Allspice, optional.

...You know the drill...toss it in the blender and mix on high speed until creamy and smooth. Serves 2.

Carob Nut Ice Cream

The bottom (round plump part) half of a Winter/Butternut Squash, peeled, seeded and chopped (I left about half of the mulch/pulp inside, but not the seeds.)
1 large handful of dried, pitted/stoned Dates
2 handfuls of nuts (I used 1 ea of Walnuts and a "Mixed Nuts" blend that contained Almonds, Peanuts and Walnuts)
3 Tbsp Maple Syrup
3 1/2 tsp Raw Carob Powder
1/3 tsp Allspice (I know, I use this stuff in everything...but it's so damn good!)
1 Tbsp Rice, Almond, Coconut or Breastmilk (for this particular batch I used Provamel's Rice Milk, which is one of the nicer milks I think)

It is important to note that this is not one of my easier recipes, so, I apologise in advance (but HEY, give me some credit, most of my things are pretty cheap and easy). This might not be the case however if you have a really good food processor, but if you are like me and are working with a cheap blender, be prepared to put in a bit of elbow grease.

Now. Chop up that squash into small pieces because otherwise you will do what I did and be stuck blending the darn thing a bit longer than you will like to. I put in very large pieces and was blending for ages. Toss the squash in with the liquid ingredients and pulse, stir, pulse, stir until you've got it into a chunky mush. Now add the dates and nuts and continue doing that pulse and stir thing until you have a consistency you are happy with, it should be like runny home-made ice cream with small chunks (I like chunks in my ice cream, don't you?) now add the powdered ingredients, pulse and stir a couple more times, and you can put this into a couple of plastic tubs and freeze it. I used two large hummous pots and managed to fill them to the brink, so in other words this will easily serve 4, or could just as easily serve only 2 if you keep it on hand in your freezer for those occasions, you know, when a friend needs you to come over pronto with a tub of ice cream...keep this on hand for just such occasions. What a favour you'll be doing them, bringing something so delicious AND giving their body to a raw treat... :) This has a very carob-y, nutty, ice-cream esque taste and consistancy and is just. YUM.

Mambo Italiano!

This meal is a beauty (and very heart-healthy with all the tomatoey goodness :)) it is not entirely raw, but mostly so and is jam packed with Italian inspired flavours.

For a starter, we have:

Stuffed Tomatoes with Pine Nut Pesto

2 large Aromatic Tomatoes
1 large Greens leaf (I don't know what kind of "greens" these are...at the store it just says "Cornish Greens" :/ The leaves are however HUGE, very long and dark green and they come in a big bulb somewhat like cabbage does, I hope that helps some...they are similar to spinach so spinach could easily be substituted if you cannot find something like this! )
Pine Nut Pesto, which I will detail below.

Gently cut off only the very tops of the tomatoes. Cut them in half and scoop out the innards. Chop and dice your greens and divide them into quarters. If you desire, you may gently cook the tomatoes open-face down on a skillet-but be careful not to cook them too much because A. the nutrient content will be drastically altered with cooking which is why we eat raw to begin with and B. they will fall apart when you try to "stuff" them. Now, simply stuff the greens inside and garnish with as much pine-nut pesto as you like. Serves 1-4, depending on how much you want to eat ;)

Pine Nut Pesto

3 Handfuls of Pine Nuts
2-3 tablespoons Olive Oil (I used the nice flavoured oo from the sun dried tomato jar, but EVOO will substitute fine.)
1 clove Raw Garlic
A few sprigs of fresh Basil
A few grinds of black pepper

Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor. Pulse, stir, and repeat a few times, noting that it will be chunky.

Pasta

Whole-wheat spaghetti
Sauce of your choice (I used Napolina's Tomato & Basil, I know...lazy!)
Pine Nut Pesto

Cook, top with sauce and pesto, enjoy!