I made a delicious sauce to go on my greens today, but I didn’t weigh or measure everything, I was just adding stuff and playing around, but I think I can remember everything that went in:

• 35g peanuts
• 20g coconut
• 1 tsp corriander seeds

I ground these up in my seed grinder first and then put in the blender with the following

• 5 cherry tomatoes
• 1 avocado
• a couple of handfulls of wild garlic leaves
• some wild chives
• date soak water
• lemon juice (a bit less than half a lemon)
• fresh chili
• tumeric
• garam masala
• cumin powder
• water

Blend until smooth and creamy, adding water as necessary.

I attempted to make a sweet chili sauce and what I ended up with was the best raw curry I’ve ever made!

This is what I put in the blender:

• 3 dates, soaked for about 4 hours, plus the soak water
• 3 sundried tomato halves, soakes for about 4 hours
• 1/2 red pepper
• 1/2 carrot
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 tsp corriander seeds
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin
• about 1/2 tsp of chili powder (I’m a bit unsure of the exact amount as I added it in a bit at a time)
• 1 avocado
• 1/4 tsp agave nectar
• a couple of handfulls of wild greens including some chives, wild garlic, sorrel and dandelion
• 3 tablespoons of soak water from sea spaghetti (just the soak water, I ate the sea spaghetti yesterday) – I guess if you don’t have this then some seaweed flakes or a small amount of salt would create a similar flavour

I think that was everything! I blended it all up and poured it over a large dish of wild greens, and it reminded me so much of eating [cooked] curry!

It’s the old favourite in one of it’s infinate variations – banana and sesame:

I ground up maybe 80g of sesame seeds with 1 tablespoon of cacao nibs and a bit of vanilla pod. I mashed this up with a banana and and a teaspoon of mesquite and a teaspoon of hemp leaf green superfood.

The basics of the recipe are the ground sesame seeds (or tahini) and the banana. Any number of other things can be added, I often use spirulina but I fancied a changed today. If I want something really sweet I’ll mix in a bit of agave or carob powder.

I just made Golden Cream Pie, one of Holly’s recipes. It was great, although not quite as good as when Holly makes it!

(Also, I didn’t have dried cherries, so I used fresh ones, which made the base not very base like!)

I made myself a dehydrator:

Ok, not quite. I worked out how to dry stuff using my radiator! I’ve been using this method to melt my cacao butter for a while now, then started drying some orange peel for making the orange oil which then led me to try and dehydrate a cookie…

So I was experimenting with a recipe for a cake base and I thought “mmm, this would make a good choc chip cookie, so I added some currants and, there it is:

Ingredients:

• 60g almonds, soaked
• 6 dates, soaked
• 2 prunes, soaked
• 50g cacao nibs
• 1 tsp lucuma
• 1 tsp mesquite
• 1 tsp cacao powder
• 10g currants

I put everything except the currants into the food processor and processed until the texture was ‘cake like’ (took quite a while, kept having to stop and stir it up a bit). I then added the currants and processed briefly. I ate most of it as it was and dried one cookie for an hour or two, but I think if you have a dehydrator it might make good cookies. You might want to add more cacao powder, 1tsp doesn’t make them very chocolaty.

I love mulberries! When I was living in Spain, I lived about 5 minutes walk to a mulberry tree so when it was the season, I would go every day and pick and eat!

Taking a cue from the Vanoffe bar, which is a raw white chocolate bar, I decided to try my hand at dark chocolate with mulberries.

First, I ground up some very dry mulberries (if your mulberries are still a bit chewey, they may need dehydrating before you do this) with some vanilla pod. Then I melted about 40g of cacao butter and added:

• 4 tablespoons of the ground mulberries
• 3 tablespoons raw chocolate powder
• 1 tablespoon lucuma powder
• 1 teaspoon mesquite powder
• 1 teaspoon dark agave nectar

I left it in the fridge for a while until hard and it was very good. I think this recipe might work well with my mint oil when it is ready.

If you know me at all, you probably know that I hate supermarkets, but sometimes, like totday, I end up in one. I hadn’t been to get my wild greens and it was getting dark. If I want to buy organic greens, I have a choice, a two hour round trip on the underground to an independant health shop or a five minute walk to the supermarket. A 2 hour trip seems too much for 100g of greens, so the supermarket it was.

I picked up a bag of watercress, spinach and rocket salad and then somehow got drawn to the chocolate isle. I must have spent at least 10 minutes (maybe more) looking at all the posh chocolates, but amazingly I managed to leave without buying any of them and inspired!

Back home, out comes the cacao butter and another raw chocolate experiment begins. I grate 50 grams and start to melt it, and then stir in a teaspoon of dried mint leaves (stuff I bought for making mint tea). I thought it might work the same way as making tea, leave to infuse for 10 to 20 minutes as the cacao butter slowly melts.

Once the butter had melted, I added 4 tablespoons of cacao powder, 4 tabelspoons of carob and 2 tablespoons of lucuma (I think, I might have lost count on some of those measurements). I tasted it, good chocolate but not very minty so in goes another teaspoon of mint, still not minty enough so in goes another. In the fridge to set:

and then the real taste test: good chocolate, but the mint thing didn’t work. I now understand why people use mint extract or mint oil, I shied away from that because I’ve looked at other things like orange oil and they always seem to have other unwanted ingredients. I will have to search for some really natural flavourings.

Ps We’ve got chocolate moulds in the shop now.

I made a delicious tomato sauce which I had with a simple salad of wild greens, some chopped musrooms, avocado and some unpasteurised cheese with wild garlic.

Here’s the recipe for the sauce:

• 2 fresh tomatoes
• 4 sun dried tomato halves, soaked for 3 hours
• 1 date, soaked for 3 hours
• 1 smallish red pepper
• 6 wild garlic leaves
• a small piece of fresh chili
• about a teaspoon of corriander seeds
• about a teaspoon of ground cumin

Put it all in the blender and blend!

I’ve not been so creative in the kitchen for a long while. I got home tonight from Five Rhythm dancing and needed a snack, but as I need to be up reasonably early tommorow, I didn’t want to make chocolate. So I made something with cacao butter but no cacao powder.

• 30g cacao butter
• 2 tablespoons raw carob powder
• 1 tablespoon dark agave nectar
• 1 tablespoon ashwagandha powder
• about 5 tablespoons ground sesame seeds
• a little bit of vanilla pod, which I grated, but if I had thought earlier, I would have ground it with the sesame seeds

I think you know the method by now! Melt the cacao butter and add the rest of the ingredients, stiring all the time. Ashwagandha is a calming, relaxing herb – I want to go to sleep soon, my sleep/wake cycle is often a bit random, last night I stayed up till 5am and then took some ayahuasca and I didn’t get up until late, but I want to return to ‘normal’ for tommorow.

On a completly unrelated note, my new favorite music which I’m listening to constantly is Maniko, you can listen to two minute clips from that link, the first track is my favorite, but they are all beautiful.

I just made some raw milk chocolate! It was ok, but I think the recipe needs a little bit more work. Also, I put it into the metal moulds but it didn’t set quite as firmly as the dark chocolate and therefore wouldn’t come out without a spoon! In future, I need to use the paper cases that peal off, it would have worked fine in those. (See my first raw chocolate post for a pic of the paper cases and how to melt the cacao butter if you’ve not done it before.)

Ingredients:

• 35g cacao butter
• 3 tablespoons cacao powder
• 1 tablespoon raw carob powder
• 1 tablespoon lucuma powder
• 1 tablespoon dark agave nectar
• about 50ml raw (unpasteurised) milk (I used organic goats milk)

Melt the cacao butter and stir in all the ingredients. I just added a couple of spoonfulls of powder at a time and stir it all in to make sure there are no lumps. Initially, the milk didn’t seem like it would mix, but a bit of stiring was all it needed. I put it into the moulds and put in the fridge to set.

Well, actually, I only put half into the moulds, I kept half back for more experimenting. To continue my sesame theme, I added 3 or 4 tablespoons of ground sesame seeds and another tablespoon of carob and mixed it all together. It became very thick, might be good for a topping for a cake. This tasted good, I think better than the first one.