Just To Be Near You
Posted by gwendolyn on November 15, 2004 at 10:49 PM
It's All Good (Even Nog Sans Rum)
Gwendolyn's Raw Holiday Nog
Just a teeny bit of prep work...
First you will be making almond milk. This is done by soaking almonds in nice clean filtered water of some sort (not tap). Double the water for the amount of raw almonds you are soaking. The almonds need to be soaked for at least eight hours can be a whole day, rinsing them a couple times during the day and putting clean water back over them.
When you are ready to make the milk drain the soak water off of the almonds and place almonds into a blender with about three cups of water for every one cup of almonds and blend very very well.
Then use a fine mesh sieve to strain the almond pulp from the milk into a pitcher or other storage container. It is wise to strain the milk a couple of times to ensure there is no pulp left in it. Retain the pulp for making cinnamon rolls, cookies, and a ton of other recipes. Almond milk is a good replacement anywhere where you traditionally use cow's milk and makes hellagood Raw Corn Chowder and Smoothies.
Now to make the Nog...
Place four to six chopped up frozen bananas into a blender with just enough almond milk to allow the bananas to be blended. You want to keep this mixture as thick as possible so that it has a creamy ice cream like consistency. It will "melt" fast once it is poured into serving glasses. Add a couple dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg or some pumpkin pie spice while blending and only blend until chunks are gone. Pour into serving glasses and sprinkle nutmeg on top and garnish with a cinnamon stick.
I am guessing that what makes this taste more like eggnog and less like a banana smoothie is the high ratio of really ripe frozen banana to almond milk and keeping the mixture very thick, that and the spices, of course.
What to do with the pulp...
Gwendolyn's We're Just Gonna Throw Some Stuff Together, M'kay? Cinnamon Rolls
Place around a cup of pitted dates into a blender and fill with clean water just to the same level as the dates. Blend into a thick paste adding cinnamon until the mixture has a nice apple butter color. Add this to approximately four cups of almond pulp and place into a food processor with the S blade, add a pinch or two of salt and process until smooth. These measurements are wild guesses and should be adjusted to taste. The idea is that your batter has a nice cinnamon roll color and enough sweetness and spice to taste more like a dessert and less like almond mush. When you feel you have achieved the right color/texture/taste spoon mix onto Teflex dehydrator sheets and spread into large square or rectangle keeping it thick enough so that when it is dehydrated enough to handle you will be able to roll it up with ease and not have huge holes in it but also not have it so thick it never gets to a consistency that you can work with. Make sense?
While you are watching and waiting for it to get to the perfect consistency to roll you want to make a cinnamon filling to spread over your dough before you begin rolling. You will do this by making another date/water/cinnamon puree in the blender only this time you want it to be very thick with a consistency like pudding. This is achieved easily by raising your date to water ratio. It actually comes out lovely enough to eat with a spoon or spread over toasted white bread (which I don't do being all raw and everything). I am just saying. You can add raisins if you like and also if you like nuts in your cinnamon rolls this is a good time to throw in some chopped walnuts or some other appropriate nuts.
At the appropriate time, spread this yummy goodness over your big square of dough and then carefully roll the whole concoction up then slice into desired thicknesses and finish dehydrating until warm and stuff.
While you are waiting for your cinnamon rolls to finish up you can make a glaze for the tops by making a fairly thin date/water paste in the blender adding in some vanilla, raw soaked cashews or pine nuts, and a little fresh orange juice. Blend this all up and drizzle over the tops of your cinnamon rolls.
I do understand that this isn't in traditional recipe format with everything perfectly predetermined for you but I think one of the best lessons I have learned since going Raw is not to be afraid to play around with stuff until you figure out what you like. Sadly, I have so much fun playing that when something is particularly Bitchin' I forget to write down what all I put in and how much of it after the fact. Oh well, it is more fun to do it this way anyway. I was told by a Raw Foods Chef that this is the sign of a good chef. When I took her class in September she did not measure anything and she did not tell us to measure anything. It is all done by taste and feel. As it should be. Food is a very intimate thing.
Posted by gwendolyn on November 09, 2004 at 11:02 AM
Just Wasting Time
That election thing. I don't want to think about it anymore. Anyway, if we could figure out a good way to move out of the country at this point we would. It would be so much easier if we were single, we could just go marry some Canadians.
So this whole Friday has been spent DirtyPoding and mushing up tomatoes by candle light while pondering my current insatiable need for the love and attention of my husband. That and wondering if a) there are possibly any recent interviews with Robert Smith that I have somehow missed and b) if Johnny Depp is somewhere on my television and I am missing it because I am one of those people who don't turn the television on at all during the day. Nice way to waste a whole day, no?
Posted by gwendolyn on November 05, 2004 at 03:06 PM