Everyone around me I think is coming down with a cold or the flu, I feel like I would like to go live on top of a mountain somewhere, you know where it’s clean the air is fresh and you can smell the pine in the air. The grass is always greener on the other side, I live where the sand on the beach is so white it looks like sugar, what more could a person want? A life free of sickness and disease that’s what. Going raw was my way of preventing a life of doctor’s appt’s one medication after another, if only I could convince those around me of this.
This week I did have a friend over for a raw lunch, Penny is working on going raw, as she puts it “it just makes so much sense” I had a recipe from The best of Raw Freedom Community,http://thesunnyrawkitchen.blogspot.com/2008/07/introducing-best-of-raw-freedom.html it’s a great e-book to have. The recipe is one that I have been wanting to try but when you are the only one in your family who eats this way, even cutting a recipe in half is still too much. Thanks to Penny I now have enjoyed this wonderful dish.
Two things I liked, the spinach was one. I always have so much spinach on hand for a daily salad that it was great to have this dark green another way. Last I wanted to try to because the recipe did not look like favor overload. One big thing about eating Raw is that you are not cooking out all the water of your fruits and Veggies, the water is where all that favor comes from. Now when the recipe is 98% fruits and veggies, this can add up to a lot of different favor coming though. I chose Spinach and Cream pasta casserole. Just what I wanted, a good tasting dish with mild taste, the Pine Nut Parmesan on top gave it an extra bit of a cheese favor.
With winter here I want my food warm to eat and this dish spends 1 hour in the dehydrate before serving. Both Penny and I loved the dish, good job Carmella. If you want this recipe and many more great ones go to her blog.
I’m off to the Co-Op to get “Ornithine an Amino Acid” and some Black Walnut tincture. I think I need to do a Gallbladder cleanse before the holidays get here. I’m not really looking forward to this; I’ll let you know if anything turns up.

I believe all the products I used this weekend came from Matt’s Raw food world. I have a link on the right, and till Oct 31st, they are running a great special on some raw items that I used. Use the like go to the top right hand side of the page and use the search box, type in hnymn, this will give you the discounted items with sale price and next when you go to check out if you type in the coupon box the word honeymoon, this will give you a 2nd discount. Great time to stock up on a few things you know you will be needing.

Onion Crackers

2 cups flax seeds, gold or brown
3 cups filtered water
4 green onions
1 clove garlic mashed
1 tsp sea salt

Soak your flax seeds in the filtered water for 4 hours or overnight. Chop all of the white part of the green onion and half of the green stem, add to the flex seed. Add your mashed garlic, sea salt and mix well by hand. Spread the mixture out between 3 or 4 texflex sheets. I like to make mine thin but not so thin that I have bear spots that I can see the texflex. Put in the dehydrator on 105 degrees for 8 hours and then flip onto mesh screen and put back into dehydrator for another 4-6 hours. Tear them apart and store in a dry container.

Greek vinaigrette dressing

1 cup Bariani olive oil
1/8 cup lemon juice
¼ tsp sea salt
1/8 tsp fresh ground black pepper
¼ tsp basil
¼ tsp onion powder
¼ tsp oregano
1 large clove garlic mashed

Put all the ingredients together in a closed jar and shake well. Keep in refrigerator; this should stay fresh 2 weeks.

Evermens co-op in Pensacola, Fl. Has a great deli dept and every time I’m there at lunch time I like to get a salad with Greek vinaigrette dressing. I’ve asked a few times what they used to make the dressing because it’s so good, but no one could come up with anything more then olive oil and greek seasonings. This is what I came up with after spending some time on what greek seasonings might be, and for the record it was just what I wanted it to turn out.
The next recipe was an onion cracker. When I was at Grazzo’s in August for my schooling they served us these onion crackers at lunch that were really good, nice crisp and not over powering in flavor. With so much to do in a 12 hour school day I forgot to ask how they made the crackers, oh well I think I did get the recipe close. They came out crisp which I think is important in a cracker and the flavor was not over done. Which is important if you are eating this with a flavored cheese or spread?

I had a very productive weekend. I was suppose to go camping with my son’s Wolf Cub Scout group, but as life would have it I stayed home with a bad back while Dad and son got to go bond in the wild together. I had to take it easy but I did manage to get some Raw food in. This week I watched a video from renegade heath show
part 1 How Handmade Chocolate is Made (Part 1) – The Renegade Health Show Episode #415 ,
part 2 How to Make Handmade Chocolates (Part 2) – The Renegade Health Show Episode #416
Kevin and Annmarie had Jeff Botticelli on who is a master chocolate maker. The only problem was I needed to make this chocolate it looked so good but they did not give a recipe on how they made it, you just had to follow what they did in the video. The chocolate candy I made was the first of three recipes I did this weekend. I also made some changes to what I thought was his recipe, but here it is. Oh and I have to say they turned out Sooooo good, I gave them to anyone who came over to try. The Raw honey was the perfect sweeter to use, it was a cross between a York peppermint patty and a mint melt away.

Mint Cacao Candy

4oz dry Cacao paste
4oz dry Cacao butter
¾ cup Really Raw Honey
½ cup melted coconut oil
1/3 cup Cacao powder

8 drops Young Living Peppermint essential oil (if you use a different oil brand the number of drops could be different)
Makes about 7-8 doz. depending on the size of your candy mold

I used a 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup and I melted my coconut oil first. Then added my dry Cacao paste and butter, along with the raw honey. I then put this in my Excalibur dehydrator for a few hours to melt everything. Once you have everything melted add the Cacao powder and mix real well. I then added 2 drops of Young Living peppermint essential oil to every ½ cup mix I had. I had 2 cups of mix so it worked out to 8 drops of peppermint oil. Now spend a good amount of time mixing your candy, you want the oil to mix well with the other ingredients. Then pour the mixture into a candy mold and put into the freezer to set.