I discovered the most amazing green smoothie combination by accident last night - persimmon and lettuce.

I snagged myself a bargain box of persimmons from my local organic fruit & veggie shop, so I’ve been adding them to all my smoothies recently.

Normally I find that lettuce comes out a bit “grassy” in my banana-heavy typical smoothie base.

But I just happened to start with lettuce and persimmons, and thought to myself “I’ll just see how these two go together before I add anything else”.

And I’m so glad I did.

The persimmon flavour blends perfectly with the green taste of the lettuce.

So much so, that I added even more lettuce than I normally would.

So my persimmon lettuce green smoothie turned out to have just three ingredients - persimmons, lettuce and water.

Simple and delicious. What a discovery! 

And then I discovered something else - blended persimmons would make a great pudding base.

How I do know this? Because within minutes my smoothie went solid and I had to spoon it out of the blender jug.

I love experimenting with food! (Especially when it turns out this well).

http://www.eatingvibrantly.com/persimmon-lettuce-green-smoothie-discovery/

I was attempting to make our raw veggie burgers more attractive to my kids, hoping that they’d be more likely to eat them if they were fun!

So I dug out our collection of cookie cutters and made some simple shapes, like this car, a snowman, a tree, a truck, and some basic shapes.

We just laid the cookie cutter on the dehydrator tray, pressed some raw veggie burger mix into it with a teaspoon and then dehydrated it for the usual 5-6 hours.

And the results?

• 3yo who does not currently eat them said “I’m not going to eat one”
• 9yo who currently eats them happily, ate them even more happily, with a mouthful-by-mouthful description of a truck being demolished

Sigh.

It was a partial success, because they looked awesome and were definitely more fun to eat, but no luck enticing the 3yo to eat them.

I shall keep experimenting…

So this is what was on my packet of hemp seeds this week.

It seems kind of daft to me that Australia and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that do not allow people to eat hemp seeds.

They have to be one of the best foods ever, especially in raw food recipes.

According to Hemp Foods Australia, hemp seeds contain:

• Protein – 33% and contain all 10 Essential Amino Acids
• Omega 3, 6 and 9 Essential Fatty Acids in proportions that are ideal for human consumption
• GLA – not found in many plant sources, except evening primrose oil

and they are vegan, raw, gluten free and 100% plant based.

If you think this situation is kind of daft, please head off and sign this petition.

http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/please-approve-hemp-food-products-for-human-consumption

Hopefully our food regulators will see sense very soon, so I can share lots of delicious hemp seed recipes with you.

In the meantime, I guess I’m going to be making a lot of body cream ;)

I never thought I’d actually enjoy drinking parsley in a green smoothie.

But fortunately I stumbled onto this amazing combination during my “green smoothie experimentation” phase.

Plums, pears, apples, banana, and of course, parsley.

It’s sweet, gentle, delicious and kind of reminds me of cinnamon.

Amazing stuff.

http://www.eatingvibrantly.com/parsley-pear-green-smoothie/

I had a go at making raw mushroom soup for dinner the other night.

I mostly followed This Rawsome Vegan Life’s recipe for creamy mushroom soup with avocado and miso, although I didn’t have any shitake mushrooms, so I just used all portobello (swiss brown) mushrooms.

It was kind of funny because the recipe says ‘1 portobello mushroom’ and I had NO idea how big of a mushroom that actually was. Kind of like, how long is a piece of string…

So I ended up arranging my small swiss brown mushies into a circle about the size of a large portobello and figured that would do. Talk about flying by the seat of my pants!

I didn’t have any walnut oil, so I chucked in a tablespoon of walnuts, and I halved the recipe because I was only feeding me.

And I didn’t use hot water. I just whizzed it in the Vitamix until it was warm.

The marinated mushrooms were actually more important than I realised, so I’m glad I remembered to do them at the last minute. (Not very well marinated though.) They helped to balance out the flavours, along with the coriander (cilantro).

So in the end, it didn’t resemble the original recipe that closely.

Fortunately, it worked.

It was warm and tasty and strangely filling for something so light and almost mousse-y.

Not sure if it’s a keeper yet. Only time will tell.

P.S. My pretend “portobello mushroom” weighed about 100g for a half recipe, in case you’re wondering just how long a piece of mushroom string really is.

I remember eating carob “chocolate” as a kid and being horribly disappointed with the taste, and deciding to dislike carob forever more.

But recently I’ve been dipping my toe back into the waters of carob, because I’m currently testing a theory that chocolate is messing with my mind. (It’s either that or the faeries that live in the shoebox under my bed.)

So when I was craving something sweet the other day, I made my raw chocolate almond pulp fudge with carob powder instead, and it kind of worked.

Kind of, in a “want to keep eating it” kind of way. Yay. Another chip in the “carob is yuck” mental block of mine.

And I reckon I could have even added a little more carob, because the fudge was almost a bit too sweet. I did only use 40g of carob (a heaped 1/3 cup) instead of the 65g (2/3 cup) of cacao in the original recipe, because I didn’t want to over do it. Guess I didn’t.

I love successful experiments :)

Raw taco salad #2, this time using the Naked Avocado’s walnut taco meat recipe, which combines walnuts and soaked sun-dried tomatoes.

The softened tomatoes give this mix a sticky consistency, which makes it even more like minced beef, but “meat” aside, it also tastes fantastic.

I only used a pinch of chili, because we’re not big fans of even slightly hot & spicy dishes, and it still tasted awesome.

I also made “avocado frog dip” with my 9yo, which is basically a kind of guacamole - avocado, tomato, macadamia sour cream & lemon juice.

And the assembly? Fresh roquette (arugula), walnut taco meat, avocado frog dip, chopped tomatoes, macadamia sour cream, and chopped spring (green) onions.

And I almost couldn’t eat it all, it was so filling.

Good stuff :)

A super simple, super delicious fruit salad for breakfast.

I had some VERY over-ripe persimmons that needed using, so I made a quick fruit salad with bananas, kiwifruit and grapes.

The soft persimmon flesh coated the salad with this creamy, sweet layer that just tied it all together beautifully.

Simple, sweet, and satisfying.

And then I realised that by over-dehydrating my raw bread, I’d basically made raw vegan toast.

And what better to have on toast than cheese and marmalade?

Raw vegan cashew cheese and raw orange marmalade no less.

Mmm-mmmmmm!

My stomach might just be a tad overfull right now :)

So if I’m going to eat sandwiches, it must be time to create a raw bread I enjoy so much I actually want to make it.

I’ve made raw onion bread, raw zucchini bread and hot cross buns (very bread-like), and they all had their pros & cons.

But I’m not making (or eating) any of them regularly, which basically means they don’t pass my “successful recipe” test.

This is my first attempt at combining the best features of my previous raw bread recipes - almond pulp meal, psyllium husk, flax meal, zucchini, salt and water.

It tastes pretty good, although I may have over-dehydrated it a bit, and the sandwiches I made with it for lunch were nice (especially with my new raw vegan cream cheese).

But there’s still some more work to do yet…