Made a delicious salad last night so I thought I’d share:

• 1 avocado, chopped
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 1/2 yellow pepper, grated
• 1/2 carrot, grated
• parmesan cheese, grated
• wild greens including wild garlic, chopped

• 30g sea spaghetti, soaked for 20 mins
• 2 tablespoons of flax oil
• 3 tablespoons sesame seeds

So, I mixed the first group of ingredients together. Then I ground the sesame seeds in the seed mill on my blender and mixed with the sea spaghetti, flax oil and some of the soak water from the sea spaghetti and then stirred this into the salad.

I was really in the mood for sesame seeds last night and had more in my desert. I attempted a halva recipe, I ground up 6 tablespoons of sesame seeds and mixed in a couple of tablespoons of dark raw agave nectar. It tasted ok, but it wasn’t halva! I’ve just started using agave and it’s amazing, sweet and syrupy, like nothing I’ve had raw before! I like to just spread it on bananas, I’ll have to be careful how quickly I’m getting through it.

If you have raw tahini, that would probably work better than the ground sesame in both recipes, I just don’t have any.

Today my chocolate pudding was particularly good, very creamy, so I thought I’d share what went in it:

• about 100g hemp seeds, soaked overnight
• dried fruit soaked overnight: small handful of goji berries and currents, 1 fig, 1 apricot, 1 prune
• 2 tablespoons of cacao nibs
• 3 tablespoons sesame seeds
• 1 tsp pollen grains
• 1 tsp coconut oil
  
• 1 tsp cacao powder
• 1/2 tsp maca powder
• 5 walnut halves
• 2 bananas

I’m not going to type out the method again, just look at one of my previous chocolate pudding posts, the only thing I did differently was that I ground up the cacao nibs, sesame seeds and walnuts on their own first (in my Vitamix Blender) before adding everything else.

Mmm, I just made the most delicious ‘milkshake’ ever. The ingredients were:

• approx 125g of coconut ‘meat’ (about half a brown coconut)
• 3 dates, soaked
• 1 tablespoon raw cacao powder
• 1 tsp lucuma powder

First I chopped the coconut meat up and put it into the blender with the soak water from the dates and more water to cover the coconut. I blended this up and then squeezed through a sprout bag to get a nice ‘milk’.

I then put this ‘milk’ back into the blender with the dates and cacao powder and whizzed it up. The lucuma was an unplanned addition, it wasn’t quite sweet enough so I added the lucuma which was perfect. Another option would be to add one more date, and something I’m going to try soon, no dates and more lucuma.

I made this last night with 4 tablespoons of cacao nibs instead of cacao powder. I put the nibs in the blender before the ‘milk’ and ground them up first, which resulted in an intensely delicious chocolate flavour, but it was very ‘bitty’ as the ground nibs were not fine enough to dissolve into the ‘milk’.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been experimenting with making raw chocolates, today I actually measured the ingredients so I could tell you what I did and can improve for next time.

Ingredients for the chocolate:

• 50g cacao butter
• 3 tablespoons cacao powder
• 2 tablespoons lucuma powder

Flavourings:

• currants
• hazelnuts
• cacao nibs
• pollen grains

Method:

First I melted the cacao butter. I grated it to make it easier to melt, placed in in a dish and then placed this dish in a larger bowl of nearly boiling water. I had to change the hot water several times as it cooled. (Another way of doing this is with a double boiler on a stove, but I don’t have one of those yet.)  When the cacao butter had completely liquefied I added the cacao powder and lucuma, a tablespoon at a time, stirring it in until dissolved.

I then poured the liquid chocolate into moulds and then added the flavourings.  I’m guessing that there is an optimal time to wait before adding stuff, otherwise it all sinks to the bottom.  I ground the hazelnuts up first and did a hazelnut and current flavour.  Once the chocs were made, I put them in the fridge to set before eating.
Next time I will try using more cacao powder, and probably more lucuma also.  The chocolates with currents were great because the currents were an additional sweetener, the others could have been a little sweeter.

I also tried making a chocolate coated Brazil nut, but will have to work on a method of getting an even coat!