When Raw Food Goes Bad, Good, and Fantastic!

Strawberry Crepes

When a raw food recipe goes good, it's fantastic. As was the case with these strawberry crepes from Alissa Cohen's Living on Live Food. She said they were her favorite of all her creations, and I know why. Me, Rom, and Raymond fought over these things. They moved up to our favorites list right away. They are soft, succulent, with the right blend of sweet and tart. I am sharing the original recipe, but when I make it next time, I will double everything.

Crepes

Shells
5-6 RIPE bananas

Filling
1 cup macadamia nuts
1 cup cashews
1 large lemon, juicer
4 teaspoons honey
2 teaspoons Braggs Liquid Aminos
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons water (I used more to get it smooth)

Strawberry Sauce
1 1/2 cup strawberries
1-2 tablespoons honey

Shells:
Blend bananas in FP until smooth. Spread about 1/8 thick onto a teflex sheet on top of a mesh dehydrator screen. Dehydrate for about 14 hours. Check sooner to make sure they are not crispy. They should be pliable, but not crisp. I kept mine in for 10 hours. Remove from dehydrator and slice into strips, about 4 inches by 2 inches.

Filling:
Put all the filling ingredients in FP and blend until smooth.

Strawberry Sauce:
Blend strawberries and honey until smooth in FP.

Assembly:
Pour some of the strawberry sauce on the bottom of a platter. Place scoops of filling onto banana shells and roll up. Place the seal face down on the plate. Pour remaining strawberry sauce over the shells. Let them sit for 45 minutes to 2 hours to allow the shells to soften.

My shells were thin, so it took about 30 minutes for them to soften. Really, really good and worth the time to make.

Strawberry Pie

This strawberry pie is also from Alissa's book. It tasted great, but, as you can see, it didn't stay together. With raw food, you can tell how the final product will turn out before you are finished. When the filling was in the food processor, I was thinking that it would have trouble staying together. I should have followed my instincts and put it in the freezer. But I know for next time.

Strawberry Pie

Crust:
2 cups almonds
1 1/2 cups dates, pitted and soaked for about 3 hours
1 cup diced strawberries

Filling:
3 1/2 cups strawberries
3 VERY ripe bananas

For Crust:
Blend almonds in FP until fine. Add the dates and blend until smooth. Put the mix into a bowl and add the strawberries. Use your hands to mix the berries into the almond-date mixture. Mold into pie plate.

Filling:
Dice 1/2 cup of the strawberries. In an FP, blend 3 cups of strawberries with the bananas until smooth. Place in a bowl and stir in diced strawberries. Pour into crust.

I would freeze this for at least an hour. Keep an eye on it and let me know how it turns out. My husband and Raymond ate it all up even though it was runny. So I know it'll be good if it holds together :-).

And this is what happens when raw food goes bad. Ugh. This was frustrating. I won't say what book I got it from because I choose to put only the good recipes on blast, but this was AWFUL! I knew I was in trouble when the sweet potatoes were still grainy after being in the food processor at the seven minute mark. The book said "seven minutes" and they'll be smooth. Forty-five minutes later, they still weren't smooth. And it didn't taste good.

Raw pies are easy to make. They look intimidating, but they are not. The crust can always be 2 cups of almonds and 2 cups of dates mixed in an FP. The fillings are usually simple too. But if the batter tastes like crap....then your pie is going to taste like crap too.

I tried to save my crust (because I was not throwing away an almond-date crust...ya'll know how much almonds cost?) I had pressed water out of the sweet potato mix because I knew it would be runny. But that meant I didn't have much left. I thought to put half on the pie crust and put an apple pie filling on the other half.

It tasted like crap (and that's my clean, technical term). It was like drinking hard liquor straight up and telling yourself that it really tastes good. It didn't.


So I scraped the sweet potato mix off and threw it away. Damn, that was frustrating. I could have spent all that time with my kids. But they thought their frustrated mommy was hilarious. I'll laugh about it in the future :-). Can you see how I gently scraped the sweet potato off?

I made an apple pie instead! And saved my crust! This has become a standby. When my husband asks me to make a raw anything for him, I know it's good. I'm making him another one for his birthday tomorrow. If you'd like to make it, the original recipe is here:

http://therawmochaangel.blogspot.com/2009/01/feast-of-apples.html

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And I have randomly chosen another winner of the wheatgrass juicer. The name pulled out of the hat was...

DEBBI MARSH of My Raw Life!

Congratulations, Debbie. Email me at mochaangels@aol.com with your contact information.

Love,

Althea

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When Raw Food Goes Bad, Good, and Fantastic!