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 tablespoons 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.

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 coriander 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, stirring 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 tomorrow.

On a completely unrelated note, my new favourite music which I’m listening to constantly is Maniko, the first track is my favourite, 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 spoonfuls 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 stirring 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.

I’ve been eating a lot of sesame seeds recently, my body must be in need of some nutrients found in them. So I tried making sesame chocolate and it worked really well (well I liked it and there’s none left now!) This chocolate is quite sweet, if you don’t like it too sweet then maybe use a little less of the sweetners (carob, lucuma or agave).
Ingredients:

• 45g cacao butter
• 3 tablespoons cacao powder
• 2 tablespoons carob powder
• 1 tablespoon lucuma powder
• 1 tablespoon dark agave nectar
• 4 tablespoons ground sesame seeds

First I melted the cacao butter (see my previous raw chocolate making post for details) and slowly stired in the ingredients. I added the ground sesame last, not sure if this makes a difference but if added earlier it might make it harder for the other ingredients to mix in well. And that’s about it. I put it into the moulds (more on those soon) and into the fridge to set. It wasn’t as smooth as some of the previous chocolate I’ve made due to the sesame still being quite coarse. It would be interesting to try with tahini, not sure if it work or not.

(I’ll be making raw chocolate as part of my workshop in London on Jan 27th…)

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.