FREESTYLE RAW CHOCOLATE BROWNIE

This is a no food processor recipe. I have been experimenting with raw foods since a while and always wanted to try some raw chocolate brownies.

I was meeting up with some people this week and thought that this would be a good reason to finally try making some raw, vegan sweets that also taste nice.

Drool!

Now, my process of cooking often works like this. I get an idea of what I want to make, check the internet to get a vague idea what goes into the recipe, then I get the ingredients and throw them together how it feels right.

I also don’t have a food processor and if you are really into the raw foods you probably need one, but I just have to improvise.
This cake isn’t 100% raw, coz I bought ground almonds and hazelnuts, which are already roasted. If you want truly raw nuts you’ll probably have to do some research and order them over the net, coz I don’t think most regular organic shops sell them. And if they do sell them, they are most likely not ground yet. So yeah, the food processor problem..

Anyways, I got the ingredients and then just eyeballed it.

This is roughly what I used(and btw, this recipe is for about 4 people),

ground almonds 2 cup(about 200gr)
ground hazelnuts 1 cup(about 100gr)
cocoa powder 2 tbsp

1/2 cup banana (no chips, I think they are disgusting, get the chewy kind)
1/2 cup dates
If you have no banana use more dates instead or use raisins or whatever you like, this is just for taste and sweetness.

coconut oil 8 tbsp
thickened apple juice sweetener 6 tbsp (I don’t like agave juice, I think it’s too processed, also apples=more local)
lukewarm water 1/2 cup

Mix the almonds, hazelnut and cocoa powder.

Chop the banana and dates really finely, dump into the mix.

Warm up the coconut oil gently, don’t overheat it to keep the most of its healthy properties, mix it with the lukewarm water and the sweetener, dump into the mix and stir til everything is mixed nicely.
Taste mixture and make sure you like it.

I used a cute, little square dish(that I found in the street sometime) to put the mixture in. It’s about 15cmx15cm.

Put into fridge over night.

Cut into small slices.

Enjoy.

Great texture. And it cuts really well!

Backstory:
The reason I wanted to make something with coconut oil is, that there was a person with dementia at the gathering, so I thought I would make something with extra virgin coconut oil.
Some people swear by the use of coconut oil to treat and prevent Alzheimer and dementia. I know eating it once probably won’t help much, but it can’t hurt, right?!

It’s funny when you meet with people that are a bit conservative and ..somehow set in their ways(most families?) and you tell them “I made some vegan cake and this is the first time I tried it, so I hope you like it!”. I was a bit nervous to be honest.
And after they had a slice you tell them, “By the way, I also didn’t cook it and there is no flour in it!”
And what do they do?! They say they like it and take another slice!!
You know, that’s the feeling of satisfaction.

That was cool. So the cake was a success and I know another healthy, vegan treat I can make for myself when I have cravings for something sweet.

Which raw, vegan treats have you tried making?

Not Everything That Is Organic Is Good For You -Produce

I mentioned before that, at the moment, we’re going to the wholefoods shop and the farmer’s market once a week. Compared to other cities in Europe and North America, Melbourne is seriously lacking in organic shops. I’m not quite sure why, if it’s lack of demand or something? We only just started to go to the farmer’s market’s a couple of weeks ago, I find it a bit confusing to keep up with their schedule as they are every weekend at a different location.

I don’t like to buy anything from the regular supermarket anymore, but we still go there every two days to get some fresh fruit. I don’t really like produce from the regular supermarket or green grocers, stuff looks and tastes like plastic, is packaged in plastic, sprayed with all sorts of chemicals and is so modified, you almost don’t recognize it anymore. For example, I used to LOVE tomatoes, but after eating them for a couple of years from the supermarket, I just find them plain gross and hate eating them. Except for cherry tomatoes, which still have a bit of taste left.

Obviously produce from the farmer’s market is better, so I’m trying to go there now regularly, I also find it far more inspiring to cook with the vegetables they have available there, then the plastic crap from the supermarket.

Anyways, I just wanted to show you why I don’t buy my vegetables at some of the organic shops in Melbourne. I took a couple of pictures of the produce I see there every week and I think it just speaks for itself.

Gross Tomatoes

This isn’t an exception, every time we go there it looks like this.

Yummy Nectarines

Obviously some of these products are reduced, but I think they shouldn’t be sold at all.

I assume those are grapes?

I ‘m wondering if I should send some of these pics to the health authorities. I mean that shit is rotten and super mouldy, you know what mould does to your body?

When you have a piece of mouldy fruit or food in general, you are supposed to throw it, coz the mould spores will be all the way through it, even if you can’t see them. Have you ever tried some food, that tasted mouldy but had no visible mould on it? Well that means it’s mouldy, but you can’t see it yet.

Also, the mould spores go all over the other produce and might even contaminate packaged products in the store. IT’S A HEALTH HAZARD!!

It’s fucking disgusting!

Anyone want some nice fruit for dinner?

This is supposed to be a “health food shop” with “ethical trading practices”, in my opinion it is neither. Selling rotten food to people for profit is disgraceful!

And I didn’t even get a picture of the rotten black bananas they were offering for free at the counter. They were already seeping rotten fruit juice!!

Sometimes they have little signs on the rotten fruit, it’s like they are taking the piss, that say something sarcastic like “Great for juicing” or “Perfect for cooking”, I think a bunch of rotten tomatoes is anything but great for cooking. It’s great for throwing in the bin!

Coz I didn’t get my veggies from the Farmer’s Market this weekend and I don’t wanna buy them anywhere else, I decided to just eat fresh fruit for the week. It’s better anyways, because it’s raw.

Today I made myself a melon salad with rock, honeydew and water melon. And it was sooo good! I don’t wanna show you a picture of my nice salad after that horrible disgusting fruit slime straight away, so here is a picture of some tree socks.

So colourful and fluffy!

We saw them in the city yesterday. Pretty cool right, seems to be the craze in and around Melbourne as I have seen quite a couple of them lately.

And here is my fruit salad. It was very juicy and absolutely delicious.

JUICY!!

Where do you get your fruit and veggies from? What do you think of certain wholefood shop trading practices? Have you had any similar experiences?

De-cluttering – The Projects

I want the house to be really minimalist by the end of the month.
Another weekend to go.  I also got a day off on Thursday, which is a public holiday, to sort things out.

Last weekend we did a lot of crap in and around the house. Lots of items still have to be listed on Ebay and go to the charity shops.
It’s quite a process. I think the strategy to take your time works quite well, but i wanna speed it up a bit and see more results to keep my motivation up.

The spending diary in our kitchen

(I wrote about our spending diary in this post)

Projects that still need work done, are

Digital clutter One of my biggest problem areas. Seriously i haven’t figured that shit out yet. But i can already see that, when all other areas of your life get clutter free, it kind of figures itself out or so i hope anyways..

It’s like, you got everything nice and sorted, why would you put up with a cluttered desktop with 300 tabs open..?! Which is a purely hypothetical scenario of curz..

When i’ve figured it out i’ll let you know. To get you started you might wanna have a look at this post about getting rid off your digital clutter that i quite like.

Silverbeet i'm having for dinner tonight. So pretty!

The Pantry Food is a funny one. You know, those foods that you buy and then use twice a year? That clutter up your pantry? Yeah, those ones i try to get rid off. If they are stuff i don’t want to eat anymore or taste gross they go.  Also i try to buy more staples, things we eat every week and try to use up the stuff we don’t eat a lot. Sometimes i like to experiment, but i don’t like it when the experiments are starting to collect in my pantry, taking up space. So yeah, that’s an ongoing project.

Reading material Wtf, that shit is just like those 300 tabs i told you about(not that i would do something like that). Don’t drag any more books and shit into the house til you finished reading EVERYTHING! Because then, if you want new stuff, you either have to read the stuff you got quickly or you just decide a book, pamphlet or whatever you got isn’t worth your time and get rid off it.

I’m not even gonna start talking about my sewing studio yet. It’s pretty tidy, but it could be, i mean of curz, it will be, so much better when i’m finished with it.

It’s never finished of curz, it’s an ongoing process.

What are your ongoing projects? How did you tackle your de-cluttering projects in the past? Have you got any tips?

Salt

Salt. It’s important. But apparently it’s bad for you.

Well, first of all there are different types of salt, i split them into 3 groups, table salt, sea salt and Himalayan salt.

Table salt is bleached and stripped of it’s minerals, so you just have 2 compounds left, Sodium and Chloride, then some anti-caking agents are added, maybe they will even add iodine and flouride, there you have your nice table salt.. Pretty gross.
Don’t get me started on flouridating salt, water or toothpaste.. That’s a topic for a later post.

Sea salt is better, natural, should be unbleached and has more minerals in it, but is obviously contaminated from all the rubbish that we dump into our oceans.

And then there is Himalayan crystal salt. I love Himalayan salt! It’s the best! Seriously, it tastes awesome, doesn’t leave that  burning sensation in your mouth like table salt does, is milder, but still saltier. And it’s all so healthy with the minerals and trace elements it contains. You know, the shit your body needs!

This dude explains it quite well. Watch it!

Salt is supposed to be bad for you and i find it unfair that all kinds of salt are just thrown into the same box and all of them are getting a bad rep.  While large quantities of table salt are, crystal salt is good for you, because, among other things, it is supposed to balance your blood pressure and the water content in your body.

We used to use sea salt, because it took me a while to find Himalayan salt in Australia(i used to use it back in the day..). Now i use it all the time. When i’m eating somewhere where there is only table salt available i won’t use it. I hate food that isn’t salted enough, but i’ll rather pass on the table salt, it’s disgusting.

Some of my favourite condiments. Organic cayenne pepper, organic dulse flakes and organic Himalayan crystal salt. I love my pincher jars

Don’t put the Himalayan salt in a salt shaker, it won’t work and will just clog it up. Use a pincher instead, i use small wide jars(they used to be antipasto jars), they are perfect and look pretty awesome!

Salt is more important then you think.

Here is another interesting video.

Baking Bread

I’m going to bake my own bread at the weekend, see how this goes. The man has been dabbling in pizza breads, maybe i’ll do a post about something like that later.

Seems like to bake a bread you’ll need,

white flour
wholewheat flour
dry yeast
oil
sea salt
brown sugar
water

a mixing bowl
some measuring devices
and a surface to knead the bread on
ah yeah and a towel and an oven of course

I try to stay away from recipes that involve eggs and butter, i mean are we baking a cake here or what?! Also it needs to be vegan and i like the old school version of bread..

Some of the videos i found use fancy instruments like thermometers and measuring spoons, who’s got shit like that at home? Why not make it easy and measure with teaspoons or something?

Anyways, at the moment i like to get organic rice chia bread from the wholefoods shop, it has a nice crunchy, chewy texture when you toast the shit out of it and it’s gluten free too. I also like the rye chia bread.

The lady in this videos puts honey in the dough to feed the yeast, some people put sugar in it, i suppose you can swap that with your favourite brown or palm sugar or rice malt syrup or whatever? Not sure..

 

I like the old lady in the video, she seems cool! I like her approach.

Here is part 2

Once you get good at it and get the basics right you can put all kinds of stuff into your bread, like chia, polenta, grated carrots and nuts.. GO WILD!!!

I’m gonna try this at the weekend and will tell you how it goes.

Not sure how much cheaper it is, but i like the idea of the process, you know, getting connected with your food.

This video is pretty cool too, i like the videos i posted, coz they are really basic and they have a lot of info in them too.

 

Some people seem not to be able to digest gluten, not sure if it’s necessary for the rest of us to stay away from it? I will make some gluten free bread later.

I also bought some breads made from sprouted grains at the wholefood shop, they are stored in the fridge and i find them overly sweet. Not sure if it’s from the sprouting process or the kind of bread i got, but i tried two different ones and they were both basically the same. Too sweet for me!

I wanna make breads with soaked grains though, but i don’t have a grinder at the moment so i’ll leave that for later.

Do you need sugar and yeast to make bread?

What do you do if the yeast doesn’t rise, just chuck the dough out? Seems like a waste..

Have you made bread before? You got any tips?