My Adventures in Raw Foods

Though I don't plan on giving up meat or the cooking of my food anytime soon, I think a lot of raw food diet recipes are neat so I decided to try a couple yesterday on my day off. From what I've experience thus far, a lot of raw food recipes require a lot of prep in that you might have to soak some kind of nuts for hours beforehand, or dehydrate something for hours. Anyways, I decided to try Raw Lasagna and a Macaroon recipe I saw on the same lady's website that I based my raw lasagna recipe on.

"What is raw lasagna?", you may be asking ... the "noodles" are very thinly sliced strips of zucchini. I first made a "crust" out of some ground flax seed and original Fiber One cereal mixed with water, some olive oil, oregano, and garlic. (You were supposed to use sunflower seed instead of Fiber One, but I cheated and used Fiber One, which I'm sure isn't considered raw, buuut I did it anyways because I didn't have any natural sunflower seeds.)
I made tomato sauce by blending about 4 cups chopped tomatoes, oregano, fresh basil, lemon juice, and olive oil. And then I made "cheese" by soaking some cashews for about four hours, then putting them in a food processor with garlic, water, and lemon juice. I layered it by first spreading zucchini onto the crust, followed by some "cheese", thinly sliced mushrooms, some of the tomato sauce, then repeated and added finely chopped onions to the top, some freshly dehydrated tomatoes, a few finely chopped sun dried tomatoes, and topped all of that with coarsely chopped spinach leaves and then sprinkled some oregano and garlic powder on top, and here was the final product ... I was fairly pleased with the outcome, it tasted very good though it probably wouldn't have worked for an actual full meal for us, as Erik could probably eat the whole dish himself, haha. It tasted better today, too, after having sat in the fridge for awhile. It did feel like it took forever to make, but I think that may be because at the same time I was making yogurt, almond milk, dehydrating tomatoes... ...cranberries and making macaroons. (I had fun, if you can't tell!) Here are the strawberry/cacao macaroons I made by blending strawberries, cacao nibs, shredded unsweetened coconut, some pitted dates, vanilla, and water. Then I put them into balls and dehydrated them for about 4 hours to allow them to harden.

After all that, Erik got home from work early (that made me happy, though it was before I had the chance to clean the house good, which was also on my "to do" list), and for dinner that night we had natural chicken tenderloins sauteed with onions, zuchinni squash, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, eaten with seasoned brussel sprouts and brown rice. Anyways, I think this is more than enough blog for now, but that's how I stayed busy on my day off, and now I'm looking forward to spending the weekend with my husband! Hope anyone reading this has a great weekend : )