I love cheesecake, and it is actually very easy to make raw cheesecake, assuming you can get some good raw cheese to start with. We got some soft plain curd cheese, it needs to be fairly plain to make into cheesecake.

I didn’t measure the ingredients, but I think this is a recipe where it is hard to go wrong.

Base
brazil nuts
apricots
a few cacao beans (optional)
1 tsp vanilla powder
grated lemon rind

Topping
cheese
lucuma
honey
grated lemon rind

For the base, you want an approximately equal amount of nuts and dried fruit, you can use various combinations of fruits and nuts. I soaked the apricots for a couple of hours so they would process easier, but you don’t want them too wet otherwise the base will be soggy. Put all the ingredients in a food processor until it forms a sticky ball. If you need more liquid you can either add a little lemon juice or water. As you may know, I don’t generally eat dehydrated food as I find it hard to digest, so this base was soft and sticky, but you could probably dehydrate this is you want a more traditional cheesecake.

For the topping, just mix all the ingredients together. The more lucuma you add, the thicker the mixture will become. And of course, the more honey, the sweeter. (The cheese I used was very soft so I only needed to mix it with a spoon, with a firmer cheese you may need to blend.)

I’m sure there are many variations you can make instead of lemon.

Related articles:

• Making Cheese
• How to make a raw Cherry Cake
• Real Raw Milk Chocolate

For this to work, you need very small courgettes. The ones in the photo are probably a bit too big, it works better with smaller ones.

The process is really simple:

1) Take a kilner jar, (or a screw top jar) and wash well with hot water. The larger the jar, the better, the jar pictured is 1.7 litres.

2) Fill jar with whole courgettes.

3) If desired you can add some flavouring, I’ve used various combinations of grated ginger, grated turmeric, crushed coriander seeds and crushed cumin seeds. It does also work well without any flavouring, just experiment and see what you like.

4) Mix the brine – for each litre of your jar, use 1 teaspoon of salt, so for example for this 1.7 litre jar, use approx 1.7 teaspoons of salt. Mix with water and add to the courgettes so they are completely covered. If necessary, use something to push them under the water if they are floating to the top – a boiled and scrubbed stone works well.

And that’s it. Check every day that the courgettes are still completely submerged, and remove any scum that may form on top. Taste after 3 days. After 6 days or so (or once they are to your liking) you might want to put them in the fridge to stop them fermenting any more.

In hot weather the fermentation happens quicker, in cold weather slower. The more salt you add, the slower the fermentation, so in really hot weather adding more salt can slow the fermentation down and in cold weather less salt will speed up the fermentation.

If you can’t find small enough courgettes, you can also use larger ones and slice them. Make the slices quite thick slices, around 1cm each.

Let me know your favourite fermented recipes in the comments…

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• 250g pumpkin
• small piece of ginger
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon chlorella powder
• 1 tablespoon kelp powder
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder

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• Kelp Avocado Pate
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I sliced the carrots and cut the broccoli up, you can see the approximate sizes in the photo. I then sliced some leek,  I think I used about 1/4 of a leek. I used a couple of handfuls of coriander seeds and cumin seeds to flavour it, some whole and some crushed.

I put everything in a kilner jar and added water with salt dissolved in it, I think for this 1 litre jar I used 500 ml water with 1 and a half tablespoons of salt, but if I did it again I would use less. I then put a clean (well scrubbed) stone on top of the veg to hold it under the saltwater solution. After about 2 weeks fermenting they had an amazing flavour, but you can try them during the whole process to see how they develop.

You need to check them daily and if any mould forms on the surface it needs to be removed.

Related articles:

• Recipe: Quick and Easy Fermented Courgettes
• Avocado, Tomato and Pumpkin Seed Dressing
• Avocado and Carrot

For breakfast, I eat a hemp milk pudding. In the past I’ve talked about this a lot (as chocolate pudding), although at the moment it usually doesn’t contain chocolate.

The ingredients are as follows (for 2 people):

• 150g hemp seeds, soaked overnight
• handful of seeds soaked overnight, drained and rinsed – different seed each day, rotated through sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds
• 2 figs, 2 apricots and a handful of goji berries soaked overnight
• 2 bananas
• 2 teaspoons pollen
• 2 teaspoons mesquite meal
• 2 teaspoons carob powder
• either 1 teaspoon maca or 1 teaspoon suma powder
• 1/2 teaspoon camu camu powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla powder
• 1 tablespoon butter (grass fed dairy butter)
• 2 teaspoons coconut butter
• piece of aloe vera about 5cm long (with skin removed) if available

Occasionally I’ll add some raw cacao beans, around 10 beans for 2 people. It’s not the same every day, ingredients vary depending on what is available. Pears work well when they are in season, sometimes to replace a banana. I won’t type the full method, you can see it in the previous choc pudding post, but basically make hemp milk and then blend it with all the other ingredients.

I eat the pudding with some kefir made with raw milk, usually goats milk while we are travelling in Spain. Kefir is a wonderful fermented foods full of probiotic bacteria. If available I will also have  a little raw cream or creme fraiche.

Update: I’ve started taking 5ml fermented cod liver oil and 2.5ml high vitamin butter oil along with my breakfast, to cover the important vitamins A, D3 and K2.

Lunch is usually composed of two separate smaller meals, one maybe around 12-1pm and the other around 3-4pm

Usually the first one will be some fruit, whatever is in season, at the moment maybe oranges, custard apples (cherimoya) or apples. At other times of the year figs, kakis, pears, plums, etc. Usually I will only eat one type of fruit in a meal.

Later I’ll have two or three raw egg yolks, beaten up with some kefir, and something to flavour it, mesquite, lucuma and raw honey works well. This is a new and experimental part of my diet, it seems to be working for me at the moment but I’ll see how it makes me feel over the long term.

Just before dinner I will have a glass of kombucha, before a meal it can help with digestion and detoxification.

Dinner is a large salad – lots of wild greens, half an avocado, seasonal vegetables, fermented foods like sauerkraut and home made pickled veg (see my review of Wild fermentation for more on fermented foods), seaweed and raw cheese. Once or twice a week I’m experimenting with more animal food, raw fish (marinated in lemon juice), raw cured meat or liver pate (some of the only cooked food I’m currently including.) This is based on information from Weston Price.

After dinner I’ll sometimes have a snack of dried figs with grass fed butter. Butter must be from grass fed animals for it to include the important vitamins A, D and K, plus activator X. With cows butter, the colour should be yellow, if it is white it doesn’t have the required nutrition. Try getting butter from your local farmers market, but if you have no success with getting quality butter, Kerrygold butter from Ireland is grass fed and high quality. (And Anchor butter from New Zealand if you are in that part of the world.)

Water: throughout the day I drink water with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. I try to drink freshly collected spring water wherever possible. If not available, I will always filter tap water before drinking.

Some of you will be asking why? I think my previous diet contained too much fruit and this has caused problems with my teeth. I’ve been reading two books Diet and Nutritional Degeneration by Weston A. Price and Cure Tooth Decay by Ramiel Nagel which have helped me to change my diet. I’ve written more about Weston Price here: The key ingredients of healthy diets and I will write more about the Cure Tooth Decay book once I have finished reading it.

Related articles:

• White Chocolate Pudding
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• Hemp Pudding

Somehow, we bought some blue cheese this week – it didn’t look like it was blue in the packet, and it doesn’t even have much mould once you cut it open, but it does have that distinctive blue cheese flavour. So today I decided to make the cheese sauce – very simple just cut the cheese into pieces and blend with an approximately equal volume of kefir. (I didn’t measure, you might need a little more kefir if it doesn’t blend well, or less kefir to make a thicker sauce.)

Before making the cheese sauce, I chopped some broccoli and mixed it with some olive oil and a dash of lemon juice and left it to marinate. Then I make the sauce and mixed it in to the broccoli. Simple but delicious.

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• Fermented Broccoli and Carrot with Leek
• Tomato Sauce
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• Big bag of nettle tops – maybe about 100g
• 1/2 orange pepper
• 4 soaked sun dried tomatoes
• 20g royal kombu seaweed (I’m sure other seaweed would work)
• 1/4 tsp miso
• olive oil
• few squeezes lemon juice
• 1/2 medium avocado
• water

Put everything except the avocado into the blender. Add a little olive oil and maybe 1/2 a cup of water. Blend well, adding more olive oil or water if you need to make it blend better. Obviously you need to make sure that all the nettles are completely broken down, you don’t want to get stung in your mouth when you eat! Once it is smooth, add the avocado and give it a quick blend until smooth.

Enjoy! Let me know if you make it and how it goes, and if you have any variations.

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I often get asked these kind of questions, including if shop bought soya milk or almond milk is raw. The answer is unfortunately no. To make soya milk, the soya beans are first cooked, and other milks are usually pasteurised.

The good news is that it is relatively easy to make you own milk with most kinds of nuts or seeds. Hemp milk is particularly nutritious with good quantities of omega 3 fatty acids, but it doesn’t keep too long. Almonds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and mature coconuts all make good milks.

Instructions to make your own milks:

1. Soak your nuts or seeds, preferably for about 8 hours, but less will do if you don’t have time. Mature coconut doesn’t need soaking.
2. Drain the nuts or seeds and rinse in clean water.
3. Add to blender with enough water to cover plus about half as much again. (The more water you add, the thinner the milk will be. The less water, the thicker the milk, but if you make it too thick, your blender might have difficulty blending.) If you are using coconut, you can use the coconut water which adds a delicious sweetness to the milk.
4. Blend until relatively smooth.
5. Optional for most nuts and seeds, necessary for hemp seeds: strain the milk through either a nut milk bag, cheesecloth or sieve.

If you prefer sweeter milk, you can add some dates or other soaked dried fruit or a few tablespoons of lucuma or other raw sweetener.

Once you have your milk, you can either drink it as it is, or use it to make a milkshake or smoothie.

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• Raw Chocolate Ice-Cream Recipe
• Young coconut and hemp milk
• Mushrooms, Seaweed and Chocolate Milk…

To make the base:

• 100g buckwheaties
• 50g mulberries
• 2 fresh dates
• 1 tablespoon cacao nibs
• a little water

Put 70g of buckwheates, the mulberries and dates into a food processor and process until you have a crumbly mixture. Add a tablespoon or two of water and process again and the mixture should start sticking together. Add the rest of the buckwheaties and the cacao nibs and process briefly so that there will be some crunchy bits left. Press into a cake tin.

Fruit layer:

Take about 500g of fresh cherries, remove stones, chop into quarters and spread out on the base.

Topping:

• 2 mature (brown) coconuts
• 5 tablespoons lucuma powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla powder
• 1 teaspoon agave nectar
• about 10 cherries with stones removed
• a few squeezes of lemon juice

First make coconut cream from the coconuts: open, remove flesh and chop into pieces. Blend until fluffy. Squeeze through a nut milk bag to get the coconut cream.

Stir the lucuma,vanilla powder, agave and lemon juice in to the coconut cream.

Blend up the cherries and mix them in. Hopefully the mixture should be relatively thick now (but still liquid enough to pour), if not you might need to add some more lucuma.

Pour over the cherries on the base and place in the fridge to set.

Hope you like it!

Related articles:

• Real Raw Lemon Cheese Cake Recipe
• Raw Chocolate Pie
• Golden Cream Pie

Finely chop a piece of leek (about 20g) and tear up some fresh coriander leaves and marinade them in lemon juice and flax oil. (If you don’t have leek, I’m sure onion would work just as well.)

Slice some mushrooms and mix them in well.

In a seed grinder (or blender) grind a couple of handfuls of pine nuts. Then add a handful of coriander and a little water and grind until smooth. Mix this in with the mushrooms and it’s ready to eat.

Related articles:

• Food Log (including creamy pine nut sauce)
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• Mushrooms, Seaweed and Chocolate Milk…