There were even a few fruits that I didn’t recognize. And with my “pocito español,” I couldn’t understand what they were trying to tell me they were!

I put the pit in a glass, then poured the club soda on it. I put it in the fridge with a plate on top (since the bottle was a room temperature).

A few minutes later, I was drinking Mango Pop! It was better than I recall actual soda tasting, and your teeth don’t hate you for it, either.

You can reuse the same mango pit for several glasses. I intend to experiment with different fruit scraps to create different flavours.

Here is what I had for lunch today – A salad with spinach, sprouts, strawberries, and an improvised salad dressing.

Salad dressing:

- Strawberries

- Balsamic Vinegar, Olive Oil

- Carrot

- Garlic

- Italian Spices

Okay, I guess with a couple of those ingredients, it’s more like 99% raw. Sue me

To make raw soup, the friction from the high-powered blender heats up the mixture so it can be eaten warm, without cooking it and murdering all the enzymes and nutrition in the process.

The blender did it’s job, but unfortunately, I wasn’t nearly as reliable. It’s hard to find good help these days…

First of all, you’ll notice the goop spattered across the wall. That’s from opening the lid too quickly.

But the biggest problem was that the final product didn’t taste great. I’m lying – it was gag-worthy. No amount of dried parsley can save this disaster.

In case you want the recipe: I added random vegetables from the fridge, garlic, spices, and water. I also added too much jalapeno, so while I thought I was adding a clever zing, I ended up further reducing the edibility of the already questionable soup.

But my penny-pinching instincts tells me to eat it anyway. And I even have leftovers for tomorrow – yay.

As a reward for injecting mass amounts of this theoretically healthy concoction, I washed it down with some fresh applesauce made from a couple red delicious apples, raw cashews, and cinnamon. Yum. It was almost worth it. Almost.

So the lesson I learned today was…  learn to make better soup, or stop trying.

I heard somewhere that dehydrating eggplant is a good idea. I had it at Live, a raw restaurant in Toronto, and it was presented as a raw “bacon” strip on top of a raw burger. I decided to try cutting it as circles, rather than strips. I marinated the slices for about an hour in olive oil, sea salt, garlic and some spices.

Then I put it in the dehydrator. It came out with a texture that reminded me of pizza crust. Hmmmm…

I topped it with a diced tomato and some onion (above).

Then I made a spicy jalapeno sauce with a bunch of other vegis and random spices, and drizzled it over the pizzas, and the asparagus. (below)

Apologies for the poor quality of the photos. Apparently I still don’t have the camera flash figured out.

This was so delicious. I think this is one of the best things I have eaten for the last couple months, and it was a fun mess to eat.

So there you go – raw mini pizzas. Time for me to get a cookbook deal!

ps. Look again at the photo on the right. An old trick I learned while working at a restaurant, is that if you want to make something look more appetizing, especially when the plate is a mess, springle parsely flakes on it, and it will look 10x better.

I went to Rawlicious with some beautiful people last night (well, mostly , and had the meatloaf. So I was inspired to make my own.

I looked at some recipes on the internet. They all varied in ingredients enough, that I decided to just improvise my own recipe, rather than following one. You see, cooking from recipe is work; bullshitting is fun!

I put in a bunch of unsalted, unroasted nuts: sunflower seeds, brazil nuts, cashews, and almonds.

I added sundried tomatos, a fresh tomato, half a small onion, a handful of sprouts, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, seaweed (for saltiness), 2 cloves of garlic, 3 stalks of celery… and probably a few other things I’m forgetting.

I didn’t do anything, except throw all this stuff into the Vitamix. I set it at about the 30% power setting. I used the black pushy rod that came with the blender to stir the mixture around as I blended. If I had set it on too high of a setting, it would have pulverized the whole thing into a soup. This way, there were chunks of stuff all throughout the mixture, making it more fun to eat.

I used my hands to spread the thick mixture out onto the dehydrator sheet. Then I used a knife to shape the mud pile, into something that resembled a square loaf. Then I cut it into 5 smaller portions. I stuck it in the dehydrator, waited impatiently for a couple hours, put it on a bed of spinach and sprouts… and now my stomach is filled to the brim.

I had no idea if this was going to turn out. I knew no matter what happened, I’d eat it. But I was pleasantly surprised when this meal ended up tasting amazing.

No matter what you prepare, dehydrate, cook, or even deep-fry (gag), the moral of the story is to be play with your food and not be too concerned about following a recipe.

Check this bad boy out. I can’t remember everything I put in it, but there are almonds, apricots, cashews, asparagus, tomato, green onion, garlic, sprouts, and all of this is thrown on top of a bed of pasta… zucchini pasta, of course! And some kind of dressing, with avocado, and spices, oil, vinegar, and probably other things I threw in the Vitamix.

Preparation time was no more than 10 minutes.
Now this is livin’!

With the Vitamix, I blended together a bit of raw cacao nibs, a few frozen bananas and the almond milk. Then I put that in the freezer. It sort of froze like a skating rink – with the top being hard, and the bottom being softer. So I reblended it later to make the texture consistant.

To add extra sweetness and make it more interesting, I added chopped banana slices, after sprinkling dried almond crumbles from earlier.

This was a success, and was reasonably easy to make. I will get very quick at it, because there are steps I can combine to make the process more efficient.

Freakin’ Delicious.

Last night I put flax crackers and nut/fruit cookies into the dehydrator that I blended. They turned out great! (Cookies are on the left and crackers are on the right).

The only negative is that since I am basically a compulsive eater, I ate all the crackers and cookies today. I made an avocado dip for the crackers.

I think tomorrow I should consume less fat, since today, it probably added up to about 50% of my calorie intake!

I was also looking at Blendtec, who is web-famous for blending iPhones and crowbars in their series, “Will it Blend”. But most raw foodists recommended Vitamix. Besides, making iPhone dust is not an important feature I seek anyways.

Since September, I have been abusing my roommate’s poor budget blender. And I am not the least bit sad to be sticking the busted-ass thing into the deepest, darkest corner of our kitchen cabinet.

I was surprised at how large the Vitamix actually is. I feel like I should be opening a restaurant or something, because it feels very industrial. I was inspired to clean and organize our kitchen, so I thought I’d take a picture now, because this is the best it will ever look.

I made a milkshake, and then a cold soup thing with avocado and vegetables. Later, I made some crackers and fruit bars / cookies that are currently in the dehydrator. This is the first time I’ve attempted to make any crackers or fruit bars, so we’ll see how they turn out in the morning.