Throwback Tuesdays - Uncooking with Pecans!

Hey everyone! I hope all of my fellow Northeastern friends are doing ok in this shitstorm snowstorm. I left work at 3:00 today and my 7 minute commute took me a half hour. It was like a giant slip and slide outside, it was pretty scary actually. Even worse when my windshield froze over directly in front of my face. Very awesome.

Now I'm cozy at home and here to post another Throwback recipe! The post I chose today is actually a 3-in-1 recipe for my raw pecan pie truffles, dip and cereal puffs. I'm actually going to just copy and paste the entire post over here because you'll get Isobelle's recipe for raw cocoa puffs as a bonus! We must keep that recipe active as well since it's so yummy!

OK, here it is!

After the great response I got from the Raw Cocoa Puffs that I made using Isobelle’s recipe, I decided to contact her to see if she would mind if I just posted the recipe here for you. She said yes of course because she is a total sweetheart and also that she misses everyone  She also suggested that I try playing with the flavors to create new puffed cereal flavor combos and I IMMEDIATELY thought of one flavor – maple pecan AKA pecan pie!! More on that later.

First, here is Isobelle’s amazing Raw Cocoa Puff Recipe:

Raw Cocoa Puffs (Isobelle’s Recipe in her words):

(Serves 2)

 1/2 cup almonds, ground

4 dried plums (or dates, but I recently discovered I’m allergic)

3 tbsp. cacao/cocoa

1 tbsp. pure maple syrup

1 tbsp. softened coconut oil

1/8 tsp. sea salt

 Grind the almonds, sea salt and cacao in a blender or food processor until a fine meal forms. Add in the dried plums/dates, maple syrup and coconut oil – blend again until everything begins to stick together.

The ingredients should form a ball of dough in your food processor.

 (This part takes a long time – but it’s so worth it!)

Take a small piece of the dough and roll it into a ball in your palms. Now, repeat 30, 40, 50 times maybe. It depends on how big or small you make your cocoa puffs. This is a great exercise for practicing patience.

 Dehyrating Method:

Place the balls on your dehydrator tray and dehydrate for 3.5-4 hours. If they aren’t crunchy enough for you by the end of that time, increase to 5 hours.

Sounds amazing right?! Well I decided to take Isobelle’s advice to try and come up with new flavors and combined two of my favorite flavors: maple and pecan. The result tasted EXACTLY like pecan pie!! The dates and maple syrup combine and create an amazing caramel like taste. So delicious!

I’m going to give you the recipe for the “dough” and three ways to use it. Because I love you all that much  I call it mostly raw because from what I understand maple syrup isn’t totally raw? I’m totally over that and fine with it 

(Mostly) Raw Pecan Pie “Dough”

1 1/2 cups chopped raw pecans

4 pitted medjool dates

Scant 1/4 cup maple syrup

1 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch salt

Grind pecans, cinnamon and sea salt in your food processor until it forms a very fine meal. You can leave it a little chunky if you prefer though. Add dates and maple syrup and process until it forms a ball of dough. Your dough will be sticky but should be fully combined.

So here is where we get creative. This recipe is really simple and really versatile and I’m going to show you a trio of preparations. Up first is the puff cereal form inspired by Isobelle!

Pecan Pie Puffs

All you do for the Pecan Pie Puffs is follow the directions in Isobelle’s recipe for rolling out little puffs. It will be tedious work but the resulting cereal will be totally worth it! I dehydrate mine at 104 degrees and it has taken way longer than 5 hours probably because the dough is so sticky. Mine has been going for almost 7 hours already and I’m going to leave it overnight to dry and crisp up. Hopefully it’s not over dried! I tried one half dehydrated puff and it was amazing!

Pecan Pie Dip/Spread

The second “preparation” is to leave the dough as is! This stuff is an amazing dip for apples, graham crackers, ginger snaps, bananas, pretzels… you get the point. Yum!

Pecan Pie Truffles!!

Yeah I did it. FINALLY. I can’t even tell you how long I’ve wanted to make Pecan Pie Truffles and it finally came together without me even realizing it! I took some of the dough and refrigerated it for about an hour and a half so it would stiffen up a bit. I simply rolled it into a ball and then rolled the truffle in chopped pecans. This makes it look pretty and also helps you hold the truffle without getting very sticky. I store these in the fridge to keep them firm but they are equally yummy at room temp (and it mimics the gooeyness of pecan pie!).

Isn’t it pretty?! You can get away with making these truffles small too because they are sweet and decadent. But guess what! No guilt!! It doesn’t get any better than that!

Thank you so much Isobelle for allowing me to share your amazing recipe and for inspiring me to get back into the kitchen and create a recipe! You are awesome 

So there you have it. A (mostly) raw, healthier version of a pecan pie. It is so silly that I’m so proud of a recipe that has 5 ingredients but I just love how it came out.

******

Ok my friends, so that was my Throwback recipe for today! I hope you try it because it is really really delicious! Everyone that is being screwed over by the snow and cold please stay warm, dry and safe.  We already have several inches on the ground and the worst is supposed to happen overnight. Stay safe my friends!

CSD Cleanse Update & Another Throwback Recipe

Hey everyone! Hope you are all doing well! This will probably be a quick post on my end because I'm exhausted but I just wanted to pop in and show you a few meals I've been eating on this cleanse as well as share an old recipe that I've been enjoying this week too. But I figured I'd start with a quick grocery haul :)

Shredded coconut, raw almonds (VaVaBars anyone?!), fresh dolmas (!!!!!!) and some mushroom broth.

2 HUGE, beautiful bunches of swiss chard on sale 2/$5, a huge container of spring mix, bananas, cauliflower, broccoli, ginormous carrots and gourmet blend of mushrooms.

And some meals:

When I have time to juice I start off my day with some green juice. My favorite one is Kris Carr's Morning Glorious juice which has romaine, kale, celery, cucumber, apple, lemon and broccoli stems. I'm not a huge fan of veggie heavy juices as I have more of a sweet tooth but I really like this one.

Lots of big salads with beautiful, fresh veggies. The one above has greens, carrots, tomatoes and cucumber.

I found my adorable bento box and made some great lunches with veggie sticks (I'm telling you those carrots were HUGE), cucumber, dolmas and some hummus.

I made some zucchini pasta with steamed broccoli and Nana's Marinara but forgot to get a pic. I'll try and get one the next time I eat it because it was delicious!

Finally, on days that I don't have time to deal with juicing I go the quicker route and make a smoothie. For some reason I have an easier time drinking veg heavy green juices than smoothies so I make some concessions and make fruit smoothies and use Vega powder to bump up the nutrition and get 2 servings of greens as well as omegas and probiotics.

My favorite smoothie is my Good Morning, Sunshine Smoothie! This one came out extra thick and it was soooooo good! It was like soft serve for breakfast. I am loving my Ninja high speed blender, it is making my life so much easier.

I took this pic to show you the swirls of green from the Vega powder. I just thought it was fun :) 

So like I mentioned in my last post, I'm trying to bring all of my old recipes over here and this is a great opportunity to bring this smoothie recipe over! Here it is!

Ingredients:

1 small frozen banana

5 fresh strawberries

1/2 cup frozen pineapple

3/4 cup favorite plant milk or water

1 serving vanilla protein powder*

Directions:

Blend all ingredients and enjoy!

*I always use Vega One protein powder because it has my greens, probiotics and omegas included. No need to add spinach unless I want an extra green boost!

So there's my update! I hope you all have a great night and a great start to your weekend tomorrow. I have one more day of work until freedom and I can't wait. It'll be nice to be able to relax and not worry about getting up and running around.

Throwback Thursday - Cauliflower Madness!

Hey everyone! Hope you are all doing well. I'm loving being back on the Crazy Sexy Diet cleanse again. I feel good and happy and most importantly.... I feel INSPIRED! Inspired to get back in the kitchen and cook and create recipes and I haven't felt inspired in a long time. It's a great feeling and I'm really happy that I decided to make this switch.

I am planning on updating you on my meals and such tomorrow but for today I decided to post the first installment of my "throwback" series. I have a bunch of recipes posted on my other blog that will go away when the domain name runs out and I don't like that so I decided that I'll bring them over here. I'm going to do it slowly so I don't bombard you all with a bunch of recipes over a few days. So for the next few weeks or months (however long it takes) I'm going to have Throwback Tuesday and Throwback Thursday posts where I bring over a recipe from the old blog. That way they'll still be around when I lose that domain.

I decided to start with two of my most popular recipes... my Cheesy Cauliflower Mash/Patties and Pasta with Cauliflower Cream Sauce.

I decided to take a stab and veganizing this recipe for Cheesy Cauliflower Pancakes.

Don’t they look delicious?! Let me tell you, the flavor packed into these little patties is incredible. I strayed from the original recipe just a bit but it came out amazing. They can be served as a mash as well and would probably be easier that way. Yum!

Cheesy Cauliflower Patties

Ingredients:

2 cups cauliflower, chopped into large florets

1/2 cup cheddar Daiya shreds (I used Mozzarella because it was all I could find and it tasted great too)

1 1/2 tbsp ground flax seeds (you can sub bread crumbs if you like)

salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste

1 tsp olive oil

Directions:

1. Cook cauliflower in boiling water until tender. This should take 10-15 minutes.

2. Drain the cauliflower then mash while still warm. Stir in the rest of your ingredients. Taste and adjust seasonings.

3. Spray a large pan with cooking spray and heat over medium high heat. Form the mixture into patties and add to pan. Cook until brown then flip and cook other side. Enjoy!

*Note – My patties did fall apart a little bit since there isn’t too much of a binder in there. They are very delicate so handle with care. I recommend making small patties that will flip easily with a spatula. If they fall apart they will be just as delicious! Or, you can just skip the whole patty process and just serve the mash as is. I’d recommend heating the mixture over a medium heat just to make sure the cheese has melted. Yum!

This recipe came to be because I still had some cauliflower mash left and decided to get crazy with it and turn it into a “cream” sauce for pasta! I used to love fettucini alfredo and thought this would be a fun, healthy version of it!

Check out this gorgeous bowl of creamy pasta! I used gluten free angel hair pasta but you can use whatever you like. I’m just an angel hair girl 

Pasta With Cauliflower “Cream” Sauce

Ingredients:

1 serving pasta of choice (with some cooking water reserved)

1/2 cup cheesy cauliflower mash (see above)

1/2 cup steamed spinach (and other veggies of choice)

salt, pepper, garlic to taste

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

Directions:

1. Cook pasta according to package. Drain and reserve some of the cooking liquid.

2. Heat cheesy cauliflower mash in a small saucepan. Thin sauce with pasta cooking liquid to desired consistency. I like mine thick and creamy. Add nutritional yeast and mix well.

3. Add veggies to sauce and add pasta last. Season with salt, pepper and garlic to taste.

This pasta is rich and creamy and decadent with absolutely none of the guilt! Definitely give this a try, I think you’ll like it!

So here is the first installment of my Throwback series! I hope you guys don't mind seeing these repeat recipes but I just wanted to get them here before they are gone... maybe it's my OCD haha. I'll be back tomorrow to show you some meals I've been eating on my cleanse. 

I hope you've all been having a great week! I'll see you tomorrow!!

Jumping Ship

Sooooo..... I guess you could tell by my general cranky disposition that this 100% raw cleanse isn't working out for me. I don't know why I thought this time would be different... I'm sure you can recall that I've tried fully raw cleanses before and I never last long on them. I just get tired and cranky and dammit it's cold!! I'm sure it works for some people but truthfully I live in a place that experiences seasons (including very cold winters) and I work a full time job... and it's really expensive. So while I wanted to crap out on day one I told myself to stick it out for a week. And now it's time to jump ship.

But I just can't bring myself to give it up altogether. So instead of just crapping out and gorging myself with gluten and processed crap I've decided to just jump ship to a different cleanse. One that I've done before and I loved. So I'm going back to Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Diet 21 Day Cleanse. And I'm going to do all 21 days because I do feel guilty about jumping ship.

For those of you who don't know (although I think you all do) this cleanse is a MOSTLY raw cleanse (80% raw) that focuses on alkalizing foods, greens, green juices, green smoothies, more greens, and small amounts of nourishing cooked (read: warm) foods. It just works better for me time wise, price wise, and happiness wise. And it ALWAYS makes me feel better.

In order to prepare I spent some time in the kitchen today preparing a couple of recipe out of Crazy Sexy Kitchen. 

Ever since I bought Crazy Sexy Kitchen I knew I wanted to make Nana's Marinara sauce. Just the name sounds comforting and delicious. It is a very simple recipe too. Now this is coming from a girl that rarely ever eats sauce and until recently when I did eat sauce it was minimal amounts. Over the past few years red sauce has been growing on me but I'm very picky about it. I only like savory sauces. And let me tell you this is the BEST sauce I've ever eaten! It is savory and delicious and I didn't even add salt. I plan on using it to top raw zucchini pasta (yes this is cooked but I'm going to eat as many raw components as possible) and lightly steamed veggies. Have you ever tried taking a big bowl of steamed veggies and topping it with savory, chunky tomato sauce?! It's the BEST!

Now this is obviously not tomato season so I used this brand of canned organic crushed tomatoes. This one has basil in it but I still added fresh basil for that fresh pop of flavor. I highly recommend this brand!

The second dish I made was inspired by Bianca,  who is also doing the CSD cleanse! She made the Warm Kale and Quinoa Salad from Crazy Sexy Kitchen and I thought it looked amazing so I made it too! I halved it though because I only had one cup of dry quinoa left. I used Alter Eco Pearl Quinoa for this recipe and I recommend it as well. This is such a great brand doing wonderful and admirable things all around the world :)

This warm salad has quinoa, kale, raisins, sliced almonds, lemon (mine is going to be very lemony because I forgot to halve that part of the recipe... oops!!), a little olive oil and some salt and pepper. Yum!

My mood has already lifted just at the thought of starting the CSD cleanse. I didn't even take pics of the raw cleanse because I couldn't deal with smoothies or juices because it was too damn cold and fruit is fruit. And I was a crankypants haha. I do definitely plan on popping in every couple of days to show you some meals I've been enjoying on this cleanse. 

I hope you've all had a good week and have stayed warm and safe during this ridiculous cold snap. And now it's like 40-50 here. So insane!!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I hope your Monday goes quickly!

21 Day Challenge Grocery Haul

Hey everyone! Hope you are all doing well. The 21 day challenge started yesterday and so far so good. I had a chance to go grocery shopping today and I figured I'd show you the haul. This haul is courtesy of Trader Joe's. I had some gift cards and this is an expensive lifestyle so it definitely helped out to have this first haul almost completely taken care of :) I am aware that this is probably not even a week's worth of groceries but I have to take space into account and it should get me through a few days. I also don't like overbuying and throwing things out. That drives me nuts :)

Here's the haul:

First up are staple fruits: 2 bags of oranges, lots of apples and pears.

One bunch of bananas (I buy them one bunch at a time), two containers of grapes (one to be frozen for smoothies, yum!), one container of dates (I don't eat a lot of these because they are so super sweet on top of sweet fruit), some frozen blueberries and as a treat some pomegranate seeds. I have a few more bags of fruit in my freezer as well.

Four bags of greens: Baby romaine, arugula, baby spring mix and kale (for smoothies).

More veggies: Zucchini, 2 containers of grape tomatoes, 3 giant cucumbers, celery and basil.

The crazy thing is that this is a TON of produce and it probably won't get me through a week. I guess I'll have to see how far this gets me. I'll be back later this week to show you some food I've been eating. The plan is a giant smoothie for breakfast (with added greens since my salads won't be as giant as recommended), a fruit meal for lunch, some more fruit before dinner (probably bananas) and a big big salad for dinner. I think having that kind of structure will help me take a lot of the guesswork out of what I should eat and it will make planning a lot easier.

Hope you all have a great Monday and to all of my friends dealing with the horrific cold weather please stay warm and safe!!

Digging Out

Hey everyone! Hope that all of my friends in Hercules' path remained safe and warm. I woke up this morning to hear the whipping winds and see the swirling snow still coming down. It has calmed down and is now sunny... which is what I've come to expect after big storms. I think it's Mother Nature's way of giving us the finger or smirking at us. I'm still at my brother's house and we easily got a foot of snow with the drifts and everything.

When I woke up it was still coming down like crazy and very grey.

The weird thing was that it barely stuck to the cars at all! They were all pretty much clean. One less thing for me to clean up.

It was very overwhelming to me to have to dig everything out myself but luckily my brother has nice neighbors that came to my rescue (after I put in a good hour by myself so I got my workout in for the day, ha). It is currently about 1:30 pm and the plow still has not come so the street is still a mess. My 1998 clunker won't make it down the block in that so I'm taking a snow day and I'll probably have to dig out again after the plow comes. Luckily I moved my car into the driveway behind my sister in law's so I'll only have a little to dig out in front of the driveway.

I have to say that even though I hate snow in general that it looks really beautiful today. It is really powdery because of the bitter cold temperatures and it glistens like glitter in the sun. So pretty!

It wouldn't be a post from my brother's house without pics of the fur children. I only have Tyler and Eddie today but they are adorable...

Tyler was so cute!! He built himself a little fort in all of the pillows and blankets. It was drafty in the bedroom so he kept himself warm in his adorable little fort.

Here he is all snuggled up in his fort. I've been loving all of the snuggle time! He's such a cuddlebug.

Eddie has been extra affectionate this visit. Of course my allergy to him is driving me nuts but I just can't kick that face off the bed. He's so cute and worth the sneezing and itchy eyes and coughs ;) He sleeps on the pillow next to me at night and has taken to laying on me while we watch TV. Tyler is always right by my side too.

So that's been it for the last couple of days. My 21 day 80-10-10 Challenge starts on January 5 and I'm excited/nervous. I'm planning on going grocery shopping Sunday or Monday (I have enough produce to get me through Sunday if necessary) and will show you my haul. This first week will probably be a Trader Joe's haul since I have gift cards. Yay! It'll be a huge help.

That's all from my neck of the woods. How did all of you do with the storm? I know the accumulations weren't extraordinary in most places but the wind and cold temps made it brutal. Hope you are all well and warm! XO and Happy New Year!