Quick and Easy Garden Hummus

Some days I feel more creative than others. Yesterday’s creativity has bleed over into today and I have to admit that this Hummus is just as good today as it was last night. Yet this time, I’ve got pictures and the recipe to share!

Last night I wanted a heavier salad. I wanted something with substance that would last a few hours for I didn’t want to find myself snacking throughout the evening. Thus, I reached for one of my favorite things: sunflower seeds! I figured I’d just blend them up in a salad dressing and pour it over my salad.

Well, it turned out pasty and it sat like a pile of green **** in the center of the bowl. Lori looked at it and shook her head no without even giving it a try. I think the light green color turned her off. After a little convincing, she gave it a try and, even though she doesn’t like hummus (and that’s what she called it) she took a big spoonful as her salad dressing.

And it was great!

I made this again for lunch today and it tasted just as good. Yum. So, I’m writing it down so it will be around for next summer.

Recipe:

1 small (normal) zucchini pealed

  • The tops of 7 or 8 basil plants
  • 1 cup course chopped carrots
  • ½ cup sunflower seeds
  • 2 Tbs cold pressed olive oil
  • ½ Tb balsamic vinegar
  • Bit of salt (little bit on spoon)

As you can see, I’ve got oil, vinegar, salt and Basil as if it’s a salad dressing. But the rest gives it body that makes it more hummus like than salad dressing like. So, place it all in the blender.

I put the zucchini in first for the bulk of the water is going to come from there.

Now, blend. You’ll need your tamper for this is just like making hummus…  Well, it is hummus! Press the veggies down into the blades until it starts to turn. At that point, you’re going to let it blend for about 30 seconds on ‘10’ (if you have a Vita-mix). During this time I make sure the blender doesn’t suck air down to the blades stopping the spin. To do this, you hold the tamper right down to where the mixture turns over. The temper gently plugs the hole preventing air while letting the blender turn the ingredients.

As you can see, I got just a little over two cups from this ingredient list. And it’s wonderful!

The best part about this is that it’s really easy and fast. If you don’t mind the green color, you don’t even have to peal the zucchini. The sunflower seeds are also straight out of the bag – no soaking or sprouting! From start to finish it’s probably 10 minutes.

Also note that the ingredients were mostly from the garden – that is, the carrots, zucchini and basil. I love it when I get the opportunity to eat suck fresh living foods. I can basically pick the produce, wash, blend and enjoy in the matter of minutes. The vitality contained in the plants never gets lost. Eat living foods and you’ll find your own vitality will increase.

Good day!

Raw Cantaloupe Sorbet

What a great way to finish a scorching hot weekend – fresh raw ice cold sorbet! And, seeing that we’re rounding out the last really nice days of the summer, the melons are sweet and plentiful. Thus, tonight, I whipped up some fresh raw cantaloupe sorbet.

If you’re not a big cantaloupe fan, there’s nothing about this sorbet that will make it less … well, … cantaloupe tasting. But, if you are a fan, this will be a summer treat unlike any other sorbet. There’s nothing like light, fluffy, creamy, soft, cold sweet melon to top off the night with a smile.

Oh, before the pictures, I can’t believe how hard it is to find a raw cantaloupe sorbet recipe on the web. I guess people really don’t like this stuff – or – at least the raw folks haven’t really figured this one out yet. I’ll post it and hopefully the world of folks reading here can conspire to enhance this recipe so as to really make this melon flavor pop!

Recipe:

  • ½ ripe cantaloupe melon
  • 1 Mire’s lemon
  • ¼ cup pure raw agave syrup

As you can see, the ingredient list is really simple. Make sure that you don’t use a large melon, but simply a great ripe medium size one. Cut it in half, remove the seeds and proceed to slice the melon into small cubes for you’re going to place it in the freezer for 1 hour. If you space them out well, they will cool faster.

Once lightly frozen, squeeze the juice of the lemon and add the agave syrup to your high powered blender (a cheap blender won’t have the muscle to liquefy this fruit when it’s frozen). Using the tamper, quickly grind the melon chunks into your sorbet. It’s going to be thick, so you’ll have to work hard and fast.

One trick is to quickly get it mixed up and turn the blender off. At this point, there will still be really small chunks, but you can taste it to see if it’s got the right amount of sweetener. If the fruit is really ripe, you’ll want to use less syrup. Once it tastes right, you’ll want to get back to blending; but this time on high so it can be really fluffed up. This shouldn’t take more than about 20 seconds. If you blend too long, you’ll melt it into juice – so be quick!

In the end, you’ll get a great soft-serve that will slowly melt in a room temperature bowl.

I have to admit that this recipe doesn’t knock your socks off, but if you like melon (like I do) you’ll get a great cold melon surprise that will satisfy any late night craving!

Enjoy…

Oh, and like I said above, if you give this one a try and find something to add that would complement the cantaloupe, please feel free to share! Next time I might add a couple strawberries or maybe a spoon full of powdered cacao. I’ll update this posting if (when) I do.

The Best Raw Zucchini Hummus

The thing that I love about this recipe is that you don’t have to go out and buy expensive tahini! Most every zucchini hummus recipe that I’ve seen requires just a few tablespoons, but the jar from which you get the couple tablespoons costs more than 10 bucks. Cost is a major deterrent when most everything else is on hand and ready to go.

This hummus is full flavored and creamy. The lemon shines through and, if you add a pinch (literally just a pinch) of cayenne pepper, the heat will carry the smoky paprika so as to make this one something that you can really eat a lot of.

It’s also not stiff like what you’d find using garbanzo beans and, if you don’t get carried away with the liquid, it will not be runny. There is a delicate balance that must be observed – that can be corrected with more sesame seeds! You want the end product to be able to stand up slightly.

So let’s take a look.

Recipe:

  • 1 cup+ sprouted sesame seeds
  • Juice of 1 (or 1 ½) lemons
  • 4 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon (or less) cumin
  • ½ teaspoon (or less) paprika (I like the smoked version)
  • 1 clove garlic (I don’t like to much garlic)
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • 2 garden fresh zucchini squash (peeled and diced)
  • Pinch cayenne pepper (optional)

You’ll want to start the day before by soaking the sesame seeds for about 8 hours, draining and letting the germination process happen. They should be ready at about 24 hours. (In other words, soak overnight, drain (and rinse) and then let them grow all day so that it can be prepared later in the evening).

Peel and slice the zucchini and chop the garlic.

It’s just faster in the blender when the zucchini has been chopped smaller.

Now, in your high powered blender, add at least a cup sprouted sesame seeds, chopped garlic, the oil and the lemon juice and blend. You might have to work this in a bit in order to get all the seeds broken down. The mixture should be like peanut butter after a few seconds.

Next, add the zucchini. You’ll probably need to plunger it in.

After blending for a little while, add the seasonings: Salt, cumin, paprika and maybe a little cayenne pepper for heat (go really light on the heat for there is nothing to temper it here). If it’s a little runny, add more sesame seeds. Then, continue blending until smooth.

There you have it. The best zucchini recipe on the web!

And, before you go thinking that I’ve created this from scratch, I’ve got to give credit to Carmella (of The Sunny Raw Kitchen). She posted the root version of this on the web back in 2007. The only real change that I made was to sprout the sesame seeds first.

This recipe makes about four cups hummus. I’d say that ¾ cup is a serving.

Cherry Truffles – A Chocolate Dream

Chocolate truffles are no longer just for Christmas! Here is it, the end of July and I’ve found a few extra hours to craft some hand rolled cherry truffles. If you haven’t ever given this a try – and you love making decadent deserts – this project is for you.

The filling has the consistency of gooey fudge and the outside has just a little crunch to it. The secret is the amaretto (or almond extract) that you add to the filling. It’s also worthwhile to serve these truffles are room temperature, but be prepared to get chocolate on your fingers. These are not M&Ms!

Don’t those look great! I hope they last more than just a couple days.

Recipe: for the filling

  • 1 cup dried cherries
  • ½ cup Almond butter (paste)
  • 1/8th tsp Sea Salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla powder
  • 6 large Medjool dates
  • ½ cup cacao powder
  • 1 oz Amaretto (or 1 tsp almond extract)

This one takes a little bit of preparation – you need to reconstitute the cherries and dates. With the cherries place just a little less than 1 cup on a jar and barely cover with water. Let it stand a few hours. Once rehydrated, remove from water and reserve. With the dates, if you’re using amaretto, pit them and cover with the ounce of amaretto. If you’re using the almond extract, add a little water and let them rehydrate a bit.

We’re going to use a mixer with the S-blade to create this filling. To start with, add the cherries (without the water) and dates (with the water) and blend. You want to really break these down before going further.

Once the mixture looks like really good jam, you want to add the other ingredients. Make an effort to mix the powder in before turning on the machine or you’ll get cacao everywhere. Once done, it will look like this:

At this point, you’ll want to cool it before rolling it into balls. I placed it in the fridge overnight.

While it’s still cold, you want to shape small spoonfuls into little round balls. I rub coconut butter on my hands and keep a little around so that the filling doesn’t stick so bad. Notice that in the following picture there are some that turn out smooth and others that are a little spiky. Well, the filling tends to pick up the coconut butter (oil) so you’ll get a feel for how often to replenish the coating on your hands.

Recipe: For the cacao coating

  • ½ lb. Cacao butter
  • ¾ cup cacao powder
  • 4 Tbsps Agave syrup
  • 1 tsp vanilla powder

Place the cacao butter in the dehydrator until it melts (or shave it and float a bowl of it in a hot water bath). After it’s melted, add the cacao and vanilla and stir toughly. Lastly, add the agave (if you like it really sweet (which I don’t) you’ll want to add a little more agave.

I melt the cacao butter in a 2 cup measuring cup so it’s a little steeper on the sides (more depth) so that when I dip the filling balls I can stretch the cacao butter a little further.

Using cold filling balls, place one on a fork and dip it in the warm cacao and remove. The cacao butter (coating) should harden fairly quickly around the cold filling. This should only take a few seconds. To get the chocolate coating fairly thick, you’ll want to dip it about three times.

In the end you get something like this…

… which you get to enjoy for lunches for a week or so!  This recipe makes about 50 once inch (or smaller) truffles.

I hope you love these as much as I do.

Cherry Cheesecake Topping – wow!

Sometimes you just stumble across something that makes you say wow! This is it – A sweet cherry sauce with a burst of almond. And it’s so amazingly simple. Rainer Cherries, Agave syrup and Amaretto. Check this out.

Doesn’t that look good?

It was.

So, I’ve probably made The Raw Seed fermented nut cheesecake a half dozen times now and it seems to get better each time. I’ve made some modifications to Meredith’s recipe and so I’ve updated my original article with my new advice. I really highly recommend this tasty cake. Don’t try to do anything fancy with it the first couple times and you can’t fail.

But this last time I wanted to give it a little … Za-za-za-zing. I looked around the refrigerator and noticed that I had peaches, strawberries, blueberries and Rainer cherries. I’m always looking for another way to enjoy cherries, so this idea came to me. It’s this simple.

Recipe:

  • 1 cup fresh Rainer cherries
  • 1 oz Agave syrup
  • 1 oz Amaretto

De-steam and pit the cherries. Place them in a small blender. Using your favorite shot glass, measure out about 1 shot amaretto and an equal amount agave syrup. Blend until smooth (like the picture above). You’ll have little bits of cherry skin, but overall it will have a watery consistency.  Pour it over a small slice of cheesecake and you’ve got something to blog about!

Who would have thought that this would taste so amazing together?