Raw Bento

NOPE…

Raw vegan chocolate is pretty damn awesome.

The brand I like best so far is Gnosis because it is rich without being too cloying and one small piece really goes a long way for me.

I was never crazy about milk chocolate because I honestly don’t like the taste of milk. I used to eat it but I think I wanted the sugar more. Oh and the chocolate taste, of course…

I think the cacao butter in raw chocolate makes up for the creaminess of milk chocolate. But some people may think differently, especially those who abhor dark chocolate.

I am savouring the last of my mint choc block very slowly. It helps that the non-raw boyfriend is not here to scarf it down – lol!

This is an old fave that I revisited recently. With the cold and taking on a more intense work out regime, I just wanted something very sweet heavy, which is unusual for me these days.

I thought of a raw muesli treat after my usual berry-hemp-spinach post-exercise smoothie.

I chopped up hazelnuts, cashews, walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds and mixed them up in a box. I soaked a cup of this mix overnight so the next day I could eat it after my morning workout.

In the beginning of my raw journey, I didn’t know I had to soak my nuts and after a few attempts at raw muesli, my jaws ached from the chewing and I felt thirsty and had lackluster energy.

But a raw muesli with soaked nuts and seeds was a very pleasant experience.

I added cubed dried papaya slices, dried blueberries, a chopped date, one banana, coconut flakes and walnut milk to the muesli.

It was very satisfying and delicious.

This is one of those take your cake and eat it type of drink. It’s so enjoyable and yet it’s so good for you.

Inspired by The Sunny Raw Kitchen’s Super Choconana Shake, here is my take on it…

In a blender:
1 cup walnut/pumpkin seed milk
2 bananas
1 tbs raw cacao powder
1 tbs cocoa powder
1 tsp maca powder
Dash of nutmeg
1 vanilla bean
2 soaked dates

You can see that there is a non-raw item: cocoa powder. I think a healthier choice is carob powder and I’ve been meaning to get what is touted the best Italian carob powder from The Raw Food World.

Why do I add in this non-raw item? Well, I like my chocolate shakes really chocolately but I can’t take too much raw cacao because it has caffeine and I would be rendered sleepless if I consume too much or too late in the day.

But it tastes awesome anyway. Try it!

P.S.: Raw pumpkin seeds are a great way to get plant-based iron. I’ve been trying to include them more often into my diet even though I’m not so fond of the taste but I love the flavour when it’s a milk. Yum…

At long last — a bento post!

I didn’t feel like making raw bentos, or any bentos at all, because the weather was just so frigid. The thought of eating cold food outside the comfort of my toasty apartment was just not appealing. One of the ways that I keep raw in winter, especially after coming in from the cold, I swig a glass of hot water to warm up and then raw food becomes something I wouldn’t mind eating.

It’s like running a marathon, eating raw in winter, and I’ve to say I fell by the wayside more than I’d wanted to. More on that later because it’s bento time…

I ate a punnet of blueberries with a dollop of almond butter. Don’t ask me why but the two go together ridiculously well. It’s a raw classic, like dates and almond butter.

Here’s a close up of the olive tapenade I made paired with Lydia’s Luna Nori Crackers.

In a food processor:
3 tbs black olives
Handful of coriander
1 small tomato
¼ white onion
Pinch of salt

It turned out a little gooey because of the tomato, so lesson learned: just fold in chopped tomatoes into the mix. I’ve seen recipes using avocado which I will try in future but I didn’t this time because avocado doesn’t keep well beyond 24 hours in the fridge.

So, I sat in a park under the sun and ate this bento at a leisurely pace. It felt good to be back into the groove of raw.

I was stuck in a raw soup rut — I kept whipping up my favourite cucumber curry dill soup and couldn’t be bothered to make different ones. But soon I found that I got tired of the same taste and consumed fewer greens because of this.

For me, two large green smoothies (be it in the form of a sweet fruit based one or a savoury one) and one green juice a day gives me a very energetic boost. Anything less than that, I tend to just feel “normal”.

So I went back to trying carrot-based raw soups and I was so glad for new exciting flavours.

Inspired by the Carrot Lime Tang Raw Food Soup on RHS, I made a scrummy citrusy soup fit for champions.

In a blender:
Whizz one large carrot with one cup of water; strain & pour it back
½ red bell pepper
¼ cup coriander
Juice of half a lemon
1 big sprig of fresh parsley
Sea salt & black pepper to taste
A handful of spinach
½ avocado

Okay I know a carrot soup is supposed to be orange but somehow the red bell pepper caused it look brown so I threw in more greens to make it look more appetizing.

Instead of looking for new recipes for inspiration, I actually look backwards sometimes to re-create what I loved in the past.

Last year, I stumbled upon Jonsi & Alex’s website, a pair of raw foodies in Iceland (if they can do it in such a cold climate, so could we!) and I tried almost all their recipes. And the recipe for today was inspired by their little raw handbook online.

Perhaps being away from my trusty computer and recipe books because of the two long trips I took late last year, I have just been drawing on raw food ideas that are in my short memory bank.

But a search through my old photos turned this one up:

[...]

What is mono-eating? It’s just noshing on one fruit or nut or vegetable at a time. From this blog, a pedestrian visitor may think I spend a lot of time planning and making food, especially when they see this, this, and this.

To a certain extent, yes I do that, but I think it’s the same amount of time I spent on preparing cooked food in the past.

What I really like about the raw diet is you can devour two oranges or three bananas as a meal and you would actually feel satisfied and fresh. There are some days when I don’t follow the structure of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I just eat whenever I feel like it, and whatever I feel like without the need of my blender or food processor.

All-time fave savoury mono-meal: a ripe, creamy avocado sprinkled with sea salt. Now that’s good “fast food”.

I get cravings for creamy mushroom flavours once in a awhile and this mushroomy recipe from The Renegade Health Show is the bomb. I didn’t have all the ingredients so here is my version:

In a high-speed blender:
¼ cup sunflower seeds, soaked
½ stalk celery
6 pieces of shiitake mushrooms
1 tbs olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp chopped white onion
1 tbs tamari
Salt and pepper to taste
A splash of water

This made 2 cups worth of mushroom sauce which I couldn’t finish. I probably had ¾ cup over zucchini noodles and the other quarter I stuffed into marinated white mushrooms, that were so yum because it was sooooo mushroomy. I sprinkled more black pepper before serving and it just tasted like a deconstructed cream of mushroom soup, which was a dish I used to adore.

It hits me time and time again that the way I eat is very unusual and I am at a stage where I would like to keep it more to myself. I have raw food at home but I am hesitant to bring it out for other people to eat.

Sometimes the food looks great when you prepare it, but once it sits around for a while, it starts to oxidize or melt.

So to give you an idea of how I socialize with this raw lifestyle of mine, I’ve taken some pictures of the food I brought to a friend’s house party last weekend.

This raw onion dip was a hit at my place the last time my friends came over so I was happy to make it again.

Although this is a cooked pasta dish, the sauce is a raw pesto one with pine nuts, basil, garlic, salt, black pepper and lemon. One friend couldn’t get over that there wasn’t any cheese in it. Garlic and salt are the answer…

I also made onigiris — a mix of vegan ones and a meat one. As you know, I live with the non-raw fiance so am used to making raw/vegan and meat dishes side by side. I figured not everyone would be into ume (preserved plum), or konbu (kelp), or wakame (Japanese seaweed), so I stuffed some rice balls with teriyaki chicken.

Why would I post such a random non-raw food shot? Well, I think it’s important to compromise when you are with friends who don’t eat or understand raw food. I could very well have marched out my flax crackers and an array of dips and salads, but it is winter after all, and I think cooked food was more appropriate for this event.

I think it’s also more comfortable for me not to be militant about raw food — for my own sake and for others’. When I force myself into fixed boundaries, I tend to rebel and crave junk food, and I also came to realize that not everyone is concerned about food and health, let alone vegetarianism and much less, veganism.

When it gets cold or I’m feeling a bit down, I like having some raw nut/seed milk with raw chocolate cookies.

This is a hazelnut milk with a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg that oozes comfort.

I love the taste of dried cherries with chocolate but I really wanted the cookies to have a fudgey simple chocolate flavour.

In a food processor (makes 12 small cookies):
1/2 cup soaked walnuts
1/2 cup soaked sunflower seeds
3 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
12 dates
1 tsp vanilla essence
Dried cherries as topping

I moulded the paste into small flat cookie shapes and stuck a dried cherry in the centre.

Tip: freeze your raw cookies to make them hard like the real thing. But if you prefer them softer, stick them in the fridge. In summer I prefer them much colder and when frozen, the batter becomes like fudge with a hard cookie shell, but in winter, I like pillowy textures so I prefer them as a melt-in-your-mouth type of cookie.