Wow, the festival was amazing. So many wonderful people all in the same place. It was hard work for me at times but from the response I think it was worth it! Hopefully some people will send me some photos soon…

We’ve just started Sea Spaghetti at Funky Raw which I am so pleased about.  It’s my favourite type of sea weed and I used to eat it all the time when I lived in Spain but I’ve never found it over here so I imported my own.  So this is what I made for dinner last night:

• 2 tomatoes
• 1 carrot
• a few pieces of broccoli
• about 10g of Sea Spaghetti soaked for 30 mins
• a load of wild greens
• 1 spring onion
• a couple of mushrooms
• a small piece of ginger
• a small piece of fresh chili
• water

I chopped the veg then put everything (including the soak water from the seaweed) into my blender and blended. As usual, I stired in a tablespoon of flax oil before I ate.  Delicious, and amazingly enough for me, a meal without an avocado!

Ok, here’s what I ate yesterday, all times are very approximate:

9am – a mango and about 250 grams of Lychees
11am – a banana and then chocolate pudding
afternoon – another banana or two, a large handful of figs
6pm – a Whoosh bar
7:30pm – green soup (recipe below)
11pm – sesame, banana and currant desert (recipe below)

So, eating at 11pm is not really to be recommended but sometimes that’s just how my day works out.

To make my soup, I blended the following with some water:

• 2 sticks of celery
• lots of wild greens (100g or more)
• small bowl of laver seaweed, with soak water
• 1 small avocado
• a few basil leaves
• a bit of chili and ginger
• ground coriander seeds and cardamon pod

I grated some parmesan cheese on top and stirred in some flax oil.

Maybe not the most exciting soup I’ve ever made, but I liked it!

To make the sesame desert, I first soaked some currants for about 6 hours. I then put the following into the grinder.

• 4 tablespoons of sesame seeds
• 2 tablespoons of flax seeds
• 1 tablespoon of raw cacao nibs

I ground all that up then put it in a bowl with a banana and the soak water from the currants and mashed it all up. I then stirred in the currants. Delicious.

Went to the raw buffet at Spirited Palace last night, was great, so many people doing raw now. I was getting asked quite a bit what I eat so I’ll try and do some full food diaries. Today I ate: (all times very approximate)

• 10:30am – 2 bananas
• 12:30pm – 2 mangos
• 2pm – 1 banana and then chocolate pudding (not exactly as in this recipe)
• 6pm – a handful of figs
• 8pm – salad (recipe below)
• 9:30pm – chocolate desert (recipe below)

Sweetcorn and Tomato Sauce

• corn cut from one cob
• 2 tomatoes
• 4 basil leaves
• small piece of red onion
• small piece of fresh chili
• small piece of fresh ginger
• coriander seeds and flax seeds, ground

Blend! I served this over a large plate of wild greens (between 100 and 150 grams of greens), some hemp greens, a bit of broccoli and some tiny yellow courgettes I got from the farmers market this morning. I then grated some parmesan cheese on top and a drisle of flax oil.

Chocolate Desert

This was an experiment, I was just playing around to see what I could make so all quantities are very approximate:

I first put the following in the grinder bit of my blender:

• 5 tablespoons of sesame seeds
• 2 tablespoons of raw cacao nibs
• 8 hazelnuts

I ground this up quite finely then added 4 or 5 dates and processed a bit more. I pit this in a dish and then added a couple of teaspoons of raw chocolate powder and 50ml of coconut butter and mashed it up with a fork.

It was delicious.

I’ve had raw green soup every day since I got my blender until today when I became suddenly inspired and wanted to make an exciting dinner for myself. Before I knew what was happening, I was in the shop buying pine nuts. I’ve got several pots of basil on my window sill which is great. Two different types as well, one is “Monsterous Basil” which really does have massive leaves but is not quite as strong tasting and then I have the more usual basil which is extremly delicious.

Pesto

The great thing about pesto is that it is supposed to be raw, so no compromises have to be made. Even the cheese generally used, parmesan, is usually raw. So, this is what I used:

• Fresh basil, probably about 25 grams
• Pine nuts, about 40g
• 1/4 of a smallish red onion
• Parmesan, about 30g
• flax oil, 50ml

I used the “mill” attachment on my blender, but if you’ve got a food processor that would probably be the best tool for the job. I started out with just the pine nuts and ground them up a bit, then added the basil, a bit at a time, then the onion and grated cheese. When it was looking quite smooth, I stired in the flax oil.

Salsa

I then decided to make a tomato salsa:

• 4 tomatoes
• 2 sticks of celery
• 1/4 red onion
• a couple of slices of fresh ginger
• some fresh chili (also from my windowsil garden!)

Everything went into the blender, fairly simple.

I served both the pesto and salsa with a big mixed green salad – malva, jack by the hedge, nasturtium, watercress, spinach and rocket. The pesto was great, the salsa was reasonable, but they really didn’t go together in the same meal, so I ended up eating the salsa more as soup and having the pesto with the greens which was very good.

Banana and Sesame Pudding

Yep, I still had room for pudding so I made what is quickly becoming a favorite – banana and sesame pudding. First I grind about 40g sesame seeds and 10g cacao nibs (in a seeds mill or coffee grinder). I then mash this mixture with a banana and a teaspoon of raw cacao powder. And that’s it. Very quick and simple to make and delicious.

Festival

So that’s it for food today. I’m currently very busy organising the Funky Raw festival. We’re going back to Keveral farm, August 8 to 13 for raw food, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, lots of music and dancing… basically lots of fun, come and join us.

Well, there is so much happening at the moment and I’m not getting chance to tell you all about it! Jess has just launched her new online shop and next to her link to this site it says “Find out what Rob had for his tea last night”, and I’ve not even been doing that recently, so I’m going to try harder.

Todays initially exciting news was that I finally bought myself a blender, but the excitement didn’t last long because it’s not a Vitamix, it’s a £25 Philips Cucina from Argos and frankly, it’s not very good I don’t really know what I was expecting for that money, and it did make me chocolate pudding so life’s not too bad.

I made a soup for dinner and this is what I put in it:

• 3 tomatoes
• 4 or 5 mushrooms
• 2 small avocados
• a load of wild greens (fat hen, chickweed, sow thistle, malva, jack by the hedge)
• hemp greens (hemp seeds grown for about a week, with a few small leaves)
• a couple of onion greens (from the garden, I’m sure spring onion would work if you don’t have this)
• a handfull of sproted fenugreek seeds
• 1 green cardamon pod
• a teaspoon of corriander seeds
• a teaspoon of cumin powder
• a bit of fresh chili (which came from a plant on my windowsill)
• and quite a bit of water to get it to blend properly

There was a lot more faffing about than with a Vitamix, I kept having to stop and stir, although I think it was the amount of water I used in the end which made it work. Just before serving I added a couple of tablespoons of flax oil and some grated organic unpasteurised chedder. I find this kind of soup with wild greens can be a bit hit and miss, but this was wonderful, I think there are a particularly good selection of wild greens available right now.

Mmm, just made a delicious chocolate drink. Soak some dried fruit in a glass of water overnight, eg 4 fig, 4 apricots, a handful of currants and a handful of goji berries.

Eat the fruit (or use it in a recipe like chocolate pudding). Add a teaspoon of cocoa powder (yes, that’s normal cooked cocoa powder cos I don’t have any raw chocolate powder at the moment) to the soak water and mix in thoroughly. Drink and enjoy!

I made the following dressing for tonights salad:

• 1 avocado
• 1/2 red pepper
• 4 wild garlic leaves
• 1 sun dreid tomato, soaked
• 1 tomato
• 2 tablespoons flax seeds
• 2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 2.5cm (1inch) piece of lemongrass

Put everything into a blender, including some of the soak water from the tomato and blend.

I thought I’d expand on the laver recipe from a few days ago. This is what I used:

• 1 avocado
• large handful of laver (soaked)
• 1 1/2 sun dried tomatoes (soaked)
• 6 wild garlic leaves
• 1 tablespoon flax seeds
• about 5 walnuts

As always, everything went into the Vitamix, including all the soak water from the laver.

I had this over a salad of grated carrot and sweet potato with loads of wild greens – pennywort, dandelion, wild garlic and dead nettles, mmm delicious.

On the 29th and 30th of April me and Holly are running the “Raw and Wild Weekend” at our house here in Devon. We’ll be showing you how to make all kinds of delicious raw foods, including lasagne, pizza, paté, soup, chocolate pudding and of course I’ll share with you some of my avocado dressings! We’ll also go picking wild greens, do some eye connection meditation and bhajans/chanting.

If you want to come you can email me directly on rob@funkyraw.com. There’s more info on the Funky Raw website and you can even book online.

Laver is a type of seaweed, popular in Wales, and I remember several years ago a Welsh housemate of mine making “laver bread” which is not bread at all, but is made by frying laver and other things which I can’t remember. Anyway, on to todays recipe, which is raw, absolutly no frying involved:

• 1 avocado
• a couple of large handful of laver, soaked for about 15 mins
• 1 1/2 sun dried tomatoes, soaked
• 3 wild garlic leaves

All the ingredients go into the Vitamix with some of the seaweed soak water and some of the tomato soak water. It was delicious. I often find the simple recipes are the best.