I made a simple paté for dinner tonight:

• 1 medium avocado
• about 5 cherry tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon kelp powder
• 1 tablespoon flax oil
• squeeze of lemon juice

Now I know most of my recipes start “place in blender”, well this time it’s different, I just used a fork to mash all the ingredients together, after first chopping up the tomatoes. And that’s it, I had it with spinach, rocket and watercress, delicious and simple.

I’m going to try and post a bit more regularly again… so lets start with what I ate today:

Late Morning: Chocolate Pudding (you all know the recipe by now, but today I added a honey mango, was delicious)

Early afternoon: A small piece of raw cake left over from what Jolita and me made yesterday with coconut, banana, almonds, dates pine nuts, lucuma and a topping (or preferably base) made from cacao nibs, almonds, dates, carob powder and a little agave nectar.

Late afternoon: Some strawberries and a little later a couple of honey mangos (my current favourite in-season fruit!)

Dinner: I started out with a couple of sheets of nori in which I rolled some avocado, yellow pepper, tomato, sun dried tomato and a bit of basil. Then I made the following sauce by put all this in my Vita-Mix:

• 1 yellow pepper
• 1 small tomato
• 2 sun dried tomato halves
• hanful of pine nuts
• a few leaves of basil (would have put more in but that was all I had)
• a small piece of red onion
• a very small piece of fresh ginger
• 3/4 avocado

I blended it up and served it with watercress, spinach and rocket (arugula for you Americans), unfortunately from the shop as it was raining and I was too busy to go and pick anything, and a small piece of this delicious cheese with wild garlic.

As I’m currently addicted to pine nuts, I finished off by blending a handful of pine nuts with a couple of fresh dates, made a nice little desert.

As it’s only 10:30 now, there is a small chance that I’ll eat something else before I go to bed, but I feel quite full so that’s unlikely.

Was experimenting in the kitchen as usual and made a very moist cake. I didn’t weigh anything, but as it turned out so well, I will try and make it again sometime with proper measurements.

• sesame seeds, maybe 60g
• almonds, about 40g
• cacao nibs, 20g
• small piece of vanilla bean

First I ground the above ingredients in my nut/seed mill, then I put into the food processor with the following:

• 2 tablespoons carob powder
• 1 tsp mesquite meal
• 3 dates (the fresh chewy kind, any other kind probably soak them first)

I processed this for a while and then added about 40g of cacao butter, which I melted first (so it was liquid) and processed until the mixture formed a cake like consistency.

There was a bit of cacao butter left over so I decided to make some chocolate to go on top, I added cacao powder, carob powder, lucuma, mesquite and agave. (See this post if you’ve not made chocolate before and need more instructions.)

Put in the fridge for a while to set and then devour!

So, I’ve recently being getting into young coconuts, they’re available in some local shops now and I worked out how to get into them! Today I made my morning hemp milk with young coconut water instead of water and it was delicious. This is what went in:

• 100g hemp seeds, soaked overnight, drained and rinsed
• soak water from dried goji berries, currants, bilberries and a fig
• 1/2 an orange
• young coconut water

Blend and strain (through a muslin bag or sprout/hemp milk bag). Simple as that and delicious. I then used this hemp milk to make chocolate pudding, I know I’ve given this recipe before, but it changes all the time so here’s my current version:

• 2 bananas
• some of the coconut meat
• large handful of cacao beans
• 1/2 tsp maca powder
• 1/2 tsp mesquite meal
• 1 tsp raw chocolate powder
• 1 tsp bee pollen
• sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds, all soaked overnight, drained and rinsed
• the dried fruit from above
• small amounts (1/4 tsp or less) of the following: purple corn, he shou wu, camu camu and suma

Put everything into the blender along with the hemp milk and blend until smooth! There is no correct way to make chocolate pudding, just experiment and see what you like. I make it different every day!

Many people say to me that they don’t know how to open coconuts. Well, I found this video which includes a part about how to open a young coconut. Note that this coconut has been “shaved”, ie it’s green outer shell has been removed, if the coconut you buy still has it’s green shell, the shop might shave it for you if you ask (depends on what kind of shop it is).

This video is from Audry’s Filling Up on Life blog which is great, lots of raw food and gardening/permaculture info.

This was a first attempt at this kind of recipe and I was pleased with the results. The consistency was great, although I will definatly experiment a bit more with the spices:

• water from a young coconut (a bit more than half)
• flesh from young coconut (maybe a quater of the coconut)
• 1/2 red pepper
• 1 small avocado
• 1 stick of lemon grass
• fresh chili
• fresh ginger
• 1 tsp corriander seeds
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• dried basil (maybe 1 tsp, I didn’t measure it)

Everything except the avocado went into the blender and was blended up, then I added the avocado and blended a bit more. Depending on what your blender is like, you might want to grind the corriander seeds first (or use ground corriander which I would have done if I’d had any).

Another milkshake recipe, I just made this and it was delicious!

First, I gound up 4 tablespoons of cacao nibs, about half a teaspoon of bee pollen and a bit of vanilla pod and set aside.

Then I made milk by blending the meat from about 1/3 of a mature coconut, 4 tablespoons of sesame seeds and half a blood orange with some water and then straining in a hemp milk bag.

Then I put the milk, the ground ingredients from before, 3 fresh dates (use soaked dates if you don’t have fresh ones), the other half of the orange, 1 banana and a little of the pulp from the milk into the blender and gave it a whizz.

If I’d have had any aloe vera, I would have put that in too, I’ve been craving it a bit and need to get some more.

Hope you enjoy it as much as me!

Freshly inspired by the David Wolfe video to try using aloe vera again, I made a coco-choco-carob-aloe-vanilla milkshake.

Ingredients (as always, very approximate!):

Coconut milk

• about half a brown coconut
• water

Blend and strain to make the coconut milk.

• 3 tablespoons of cacao nibs
• 1/3 vanilla pod (could maybe have done with a bit more)
• 2 tablespoons carob powder
• 3 dates
• gel from one small aloe vera leaf

Put the cacao and vanilla in the blender on their own first to grind them to a powder then put everything else in with the milk and blend. It’s not very smooth as the cacao nibs don’t grind very finely but it is delicious… enjoy… love Rob

I bought a bag of peanuts yesterday and have been experimenting, here’s a nice cake recipe I came up with:

• 40g peanuts
• 4 tablespoons sesame seeds
• 2 tablespoons cacao nibs
• a small piece of vanilla pod
• 5 dates, soaked

I ground up everything except the dates in my seed mill. I then added the dates and ground some more (maybe do this bit in a food processor depending on what equipment you are using).

Roll into balls to serve.

Tonights salad sauce, similar but different:

• 2 tomatoes
• 4 sundried tomatoe halves, soaked
• a small amount of sea spaghetti, soaked, with soak water (I didn’t weigh it, but maybe only 5 grams)
• 1 date, soaked
• 1/2 yellow pepper
• 1/2 carrot
• 1 avocado
• 1 tsp corriander seeds
• a few pieces of fresh chili
• a sprinkling of herbs de Provence
• a small piece of fresh ginger

I blended it all together and it was delicious, I put a good amount of chili in it. I had it with a bowl full of baby spinach and some wild hedge garlic.