Raw crackers, tapenade and sundried tomato cheeze

Okay, so these don't look all that appetising but I blame my phone! My battery charger has packed up so can't use my camera til I get some new batteries. And these crackers are also very messy looking and free-form because I just snapped the big sheets of dehydrated cracker into random bits to make the crackers! But they taste so good, and are very addictive.


So first things first, the crackers. I based these on Kate Magic's recipe for Crackables, which you can find on her website, with a few additions. Basically, soak 250g of flaxseeds in a litre of water for 12 hours until you get a gloopy mixture. To this add the juice of 2 lemons, a couple of spoons of green powder, and a chopped red onion. Then I also added 1/2 red and 1/2 green pepper, chopped, 1 red chilli, a few grinds of black pepper and a pinch of salt. You can vary this recipe and add what you like really, fresh herbs are especially good. Mix this all up well, spread over 3 dehydrator trays with teflex sheets on, and dehydrate at 105 degrees for 12 hours. Then flip them over and dehydrate for another 6 hours or until crispy. Then break them up into bits like me- or try and make nicer proper square cracker shapes if you can!


Tapenade
This is scrumptious! I got this recipe from a girl called Natasha at a raw food meetup, and she got it from Cafe Gratitude (San Francisco), it's official name is 'I Am Opulent' Olive Tapenade and is my new addiction. It's totally delicious. Although, she put a bunch of fresh coriander in hers, and I didn't have any so missed that out. All you do is blend together a jar of raw olives- I used these Raw Health organic kalamata olives which are divine- with a red chilli, a clove of garlic and enough of the olive oil from the jar to create a smooth mixture- but not too smooth, I like it with a few little olive chunks in. Simple but beautiful, really fresh and succulent tasting, with a spicy chilli kick. It's also really good spread on romaine lettuce leaves with mashed avocado and rolled up.
The sundried tomato cheeze is my old favourite from Ani Phyo's recipe in Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes and is made with brazil nuts, lemon juice, garlic, water, sea salt and sundried tomatoes. Another really easy one but very flavoursome and moreish.

No more master cleanse... FOOOOOOOOOOD!

So, I completed 16 days on the master cleanse! I lost 10 lbs, not as much as previous times, due to the time of the month, but I lost 2 inches from my waist, an inch from my hips, an inch from each thigh and an inch and a half from my boobs (bit gutted about that last one!). Feel a lot trimmer and my jeans are now too big!
I had been planning on doing 20 days, but I got up on the morning of day 17 and could not face one more lemon/ cayenne/ maple drink. So I made fresh orange juice and damn it was GOOD! I haven't put any weight back on since I came off the cleanse (5 or 6 days now I think), in fact I've lost another pound and I am eating tons! All raw of course. I feel amazing, so much better than I was before the cleanse and am so glad I did it. And it feels so great to be eating raw again. I've had loads of delicious stuff.

The first couple of days I stuck to juice then eased my way back into raw. Last night I had a friend round for dinner and made courgette pasta with my spiraliser and fresh raw vegan pesto.

Courgette pasta and pesto

I put loads of fresh basil, a clove of garlic, olive oil and pine nuts in the food processor, blitzed it all up and mixed it in with the courgette. It was lovely! I also made loads of salads to go with it, as well as flax crackers, macademia cheese, and chocolate mousse for dessert.

I kind of made up the recipe for the flax crackers, based on the ingredients from a packet of crackers I bought from Inspiral the other day. I soaked 250 g of flax seeds in a litre of water for 12 hours. Then I processed up a 225g punnet of baby plum tomatoes, a red pepper, 1/2 cup of sundried tomatoes, a clove of garlic, a scotch bonnet chilli, loads of fresh parsley and 1/4 teaspoon of himalayan crystal salt. I put the gloopy seed mixture in, whizzed it all up then spread it over 4 dehydrator sheets and dehydrated it for about 12 hours. Then I flipped it over and did it for another 6 or so hours. And they turned out pretty good!


Flax crackers, mashed avocado,
macademia cheese & alfafa sprouts

The macademia cheese was amazing! I got the recipe from Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow, and I really recommend this. You wouldn't believe a mix of macademia nuts, peppers, lemon, a pinch of salt and nutritional yeast would taste so amazing. This is dehydrated too, and comes out with a great texture. I just had some more of it now for my dinner, on flax crackers with mashed avocado and alfafa sprouts and it was gorgeous.

Chocolate mousse

The chocolate mousse is an old favourite from Raw Food Made Easy For 1 or 2 People. It's so quick and easy and tastes delicious. It's made with avocados but you would never know, it just tastes really rich and creamy and chocolatey but is totally dairy free! As well as the avocado I put in some medjool dates, raw honey, vanilla extract and raw cacao. The photo is never going to do it justice as it just looks like a dollop of brown stuff but it is soooooo good. I had the leftovers for lunch today which is why it's in a tupperware!



Today's packed lunch

So with all the leftovers from last night, I had the best ever packed lunch today! The yellow/orange stuff round the outside of the salad (picture on the left) is carrot and ginger dressing from Natalia Rose's The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-Step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Loss. The salad has red cabbage, mixed bean sprouts, yellow peppers, pea shoots, spinach, grated carrot and marinated mushrooms.
I am so delighted to be eating real fresh raw food again! I've been having green juices for breakfasts too- this morning it was apples, cucumber, celery and ginger. Beautiful!

I'll try and keep this blog more up-to-date now, as I am totally re-set and back into the raw for good. I promise you I feel really amazing and will continue to keep it up!

Busy busy busy

Hello! Well it's been a few days since I've updated due to a few reasons- been knackered and busy and feeling a bit rubbish and... not been 100% raw. Well I haven't been dreadful- I've been having my green smoothies for breakfast, and salads, flax crackers, burgers, marinated veg etc for lunch and dinner BUT on Monday when I finished work I was really hungry and craving crisps so I bought a packet and scoffed them while I was waiting for the train home. Then last night I did the same and then I started fantasising about Bountys and in the evening I popped down to shop and got one... However, in my haste I locked myself out! I only bought my wallet with me so I then had to go to an internet cafe, look up my phone contacts on the O2 website, find the number of someone who has a set of my keys, phone her from a payphone, and eventually got back in, phew! Serves me right. Oh and also last night I drank a bottle of wine. It was raw and vegan (Shiraz Rose from Co-op) but drinking a whole bottle when home alone is something I am not supposed to be doing! Finally, today I had another packet of crisps. But that is it now, no more crappy snacking, its not even as tasty as I thought it would be, not sure why I'm doing it. But it's out of my system now and I'm back on track from tomorrow. I'm filming tomorrow and Friday so I'm going to have to make sure I bring a good supply of food with me, as the production company are laying on sandwiches etc and I'm NOT going to succumb!

Mung bean sprouts!

My first crop of mung bean sprouts were ready today, and they're great, really fresh tasting. I did them in a nut milk bag and it was really easy, much less hassle them sprouting in a jar. I didn't make enough though as they'll all be gone in one salad (I like them a lot so have a lot of them in a salad!) so need to do a whole load more.

Flax crackers

My flax crackers turned out great, though not as spicy as before. The recipe called for 3 to 4 fresh chillies and a tablespoon of chilli powder which I thought sounded excessive, but I forgot I only made half the recipe before! So I only put in 2 fresh chillies as well as the powder, so they are quite tasty but not massively spicy like they were before. They are good though and will last a couple of weeks in an airtight container (if I don't eat them all before then!) so they will keep me going for a bit. 

MSM and Camu Camu from
http://www.rawliving.eu/

I got my new supplements delivered yesterday- well I say 'delivered', I actually had to go and fetch them from a postal place in Brixton as they just left a card through my door on Saturday. I was actually in, and if they had bothered to ring the bell they would have discovered this but instead they just left a card so I had to go fetch them. But never mind, I got them in the end! I put them in my smoothie this morning and it was pretty gross. I think it was the MSM, it tasted really bitter! Might have to take that separately or find a way of disguising the taste more. The camu camu is so pretty! It's a pale pink soft powder from a fruit, and contains a really high concentration of vitamin C. I've also been taking a vitamin D supplement as it's really hard to get any of this on a raw vegan diet, especially living in a gloomy climate like this where we don't get nearly enough sun. Ugh, one day I will live somewhere that is sunny every day! How great would it be to wake up to sunshine every morning? I would be so much happier!

Anyway, better go now as I have to get up stupid early and I really ought to have a look at my script as I am slightly concerned about the large possibility of looking like a total nob on film. We taped a bit of what we were doing in rehearsal yesterday and watched it back on the telly and I looked awful!!! It's so hard to find the right level between doing too much and doing too little. Still, there's no point in stressing, I'm just going to do my best see what happens! It's my first proper go at acting for screen and we had absolutely no training in it a drama school so if I'm shit, I'm shit!

Might not get chance to blog again til the weekend, but promise to make some exciting raw stuff this weekend to tell you about. I'm thinking desserts... maybe Ani Phyo's apple pie, also chocolate mousse, and some savoury stuff- gazpacho, more aubergine bacon (I've got a white aubergine from the organic man) and maybe sunny dill cheeze (Ani Phyo again). Also maybe a chilli- the organic man gave me a packet of chillis, include scotch bonnets! Great, never seen organic ones before so looking forward to making something hot and spicy. Well I'll let you know what I make soon. Night x

P.S. Forgot to say I met a friend for dinner at VitaOrganic tonight... except it's not VitaOrganic any more, it's called VitaO. And there's a sign up saying they are under new management and are phasing out the current menu and phasing in new stuff with Eastern spice flavours... I hope this doesn't mean they are phasing out the raw menu, but suspect it does. Disappointing if another raw place bites the dust :(
Had some lovely salads though and a great juice with beetroot, carrots, fennel and stuff... I hope they keep the juices at least...

Saturday is cake day!

Pretty pink juice

It was so nice to get a good night's sleep last night and woke up feeling much better today. I started the day with a juice instead of a smoothie this morning- beetroot, carrots, celery and apple. Hopefully I'll remember that I had beetroot juice when I get up tomorrow so I don't think I am dying when I go to the loo...

I went shopping in Brixton Wholefoods today, I love that place, and got some really good rose and lavender raw chocolate truffles. Needless to say I scoffed them before I'd got home so no photos of them to put up! Got some other bits and bobs too to make some staples for the week. I forgot to soak nuts overnight last night though so couldn't make my crackers today, so I'll soak them tonight instead. Going to make the spicy flax and herb crackers from the Raw Food, Real World book.

Bit of a rubbish dark picture but this is
Ani Phyo's sundried tomato cheeze- a kind of
pâté made with brazil nuts, lemon juice, garlic
and sundried tomatoes.

Tomorrow I'm rehearsing all day for a short film I'm going to be in, so I'm going have to force myself to make them and get them in the dehydrator when I get back before I go to bed! Thinking about what to bring for a packed lunch tomorrow. I've got some Provençale flax crackers which were a bit of a rip off when its so cheap to make your own, but for convenience's sake, they're good. I made some sun-dried tomato cheeze today too, from Ani Phyo's book, which is delicious, really moreish, so I'll bring some of that too and some salad. I've still got salsa and guacamole left too cos I made WAY to much!

I've just made a tasty raw cake! Ani Phyo's basic flourless cake with "nutella" hazelnut chocolate spread. It's gorgeous, but very rich and filling so you only need a little bit. Which is just as well as there are a lot of nuts in it so it's quite calorific, but worth it for the taste! And with raw foods you digest them a lot easier so don't tend to put weight on when eating raw anyway. You should always soak nuts before eating them or putting them in things because this breaks down and gets rid of the enzyme inhibitors in them, so they're much easier to digest. Brazil nuts and hazelnuts are the exception though as I've read that they don't need to be soaked, but I don't suppose it can do any harm. Different nuts and seeds have different soak times which I'm sure are online somewhere, I use the chart at the start of Raw Food Made Easy, lots of useful stuff in there and good basic recipes that you don't need a dehydrator for.

Well, I've had a very civilised day today, didn't go down to Brighton Pride for debauched times and instead been doing practical stuff around the house, and I'm staying in tonight! But I do have to get up early and get up to North London by half 10 and I'm meant to be familiar with my lines and cues, which I'm not, so better get on and have a look at them! See ya.