Chocolate-Peanut Butter Torte (aka. Reeses!)

What better way to start off Vegan Mofo than with a dessert recipe? Something sweet and delicious to start off October and to give you something to snack on as you make your way through the month.

I dislike how all of the dessert recipes show up at the end of the month when you have little time to prepare yourself. All of the attention for Halloween and candy comes when its a bit too late and when things are almost over and done with. So with the taste of a Reeses peanut butter cup, but the creamy and chocolaty melt-in-your mouth feel of a chocolate torte, this halloween candy will satisfy Ladies and gentleman, boys and ghouls...... raw peanut butter torte!

Raw Chocolate - Peanut Butter Torte

Torte Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. Cacao Powder

3/4 c. Pecan Flour

6 tbsp. Coconut oil

6 tbsp. Honey

-Mix all of your dry ingredients together all of your dry ingredients in your food processor. If you don't have pecan flour, just process them in a coffee grinder a few times until they form a flour-like texture.

-Add in the liquid ingredients and mix until it dorms a very wet dough, almost the texture of peanut butter.

-Mold the dough into muffin tins, poking a hole into the top where the cream will go.

-Freeze the muffin pans while you make the cream.

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cream Ingredients:

1/4 c. Cacao Powder

6 tbsp. Almond or Peanut Butter

1/4 c. Coconut Oil (melted)

1/4 c. honey

-Mix all of the ingredients in your food processor or a blender until it forms a liquidy cream. Add a few tablespoons of water or extra coconut oil if needed.

-Take your tortes out of the freezer and spoon the cream into the holes you made.

-Freeze for at least 30 minutes or until everything firms up.

-Eat and enjoy!

I had both of my little brothers try them, and they claim it to be excellently similar to Reeses peanut butter cups only chocolatier! My parents liked them as well, my dad saying they were good but not quite the same. Maybe a bit more peanut butter will do the trick but the texture was spot on!

They melt quickly though so be warned! They taste best straight from the freezer. I'll work on getting them a bit longer-lasting just so I can bring them to school and brag around Halloween time about my vegan epicness!

Whats your favorite Halloween candy or treat?

-Andrew D. Morrison-

Radishes, avocados, and other salady things...

Yeah. I'm a raw-foodist so I WILL have an occassional salad post on here. The enemy of the standard american diet (ironically enough abbreviated to SAD), eating a simple salad every day may just be what you need in order to acheive a better overall health.

Don't let is bore you. Dont force yourself to choke down a plate of green stuff for a weak until you get sick and decide just to give up on it. Put some flavor into it. Put some taste on it. Do it right and make it taste good. I dont have that obsession with salads that some raw=foodies do and i've been doing this for almost a bit over a year. When done right though, it can taste good.

Radish-Avocado Salad

Serves 1-2

Ingredients:

-2c. Mixed Baby Greens

-4 small Red Radishes (sliced)

-1 avocado (pitted, skinned, and cubed)

-2 tbsp. Olive-oil (cold-pressed)

-1 tbsp. lemon or lime juice (freshly squeezed)

-2 tbsp. ground flax seed

-2 tbsp. pumpkin seeds (raw, shelled)

Method:

-Mix together the baby greens, radishes, and avocado together.

-Mix in the olive oil and lemon or lime juice.

-Sprinkle the flax seed and pumpkin seeds.

-Enjoy.

So many different flavors mixed together to form one magnificent salad. This is one of my favorite recipes due to my love for avocado, radishes, and pumpkin seeds but don't let this stop you from making up your own combination.

Radishes tend to have high silicon and sulfur contents which helps to dissolve excess mucus in the digestive track which can be caused by eating heavy loads of carbs (pastas, breads, etc). They help to cleanse out your system and also are one of the highest vegetable sources of vitamin c.

With all of this said, they do have an incredibly strong flavor to them, so I almost always add a bit of avocado with my radishes to cut down some of it without sacrificing the benefits. An added bonus is when a healthy fat is added to a potent food, they tend to help one another digest.

I've always heard my family say after eating something unhealthy, "i'll just have a salad, and that will fix it". Every cell in your body is built based off of what you feed and nourish yourself with so eating junk food may have a toll on this but though a salad won't prevent all of the damage done, it can and will help to ease it a bit by both making your body a bit more alkaline and by putting some nutrients in your system to give you a little something better for your cells to feast off of.

Just remember for your salad that the more leafy and green, the better. Greens are both rich minerals and help to balance your bodies pH by increasing alkalinity.

A truer statement has never been made than "You are what you eat"

What foods are in your ultimate salad?

-Andrew D. Morrison-

Raw Macadamia-Hemp Cake (with chocolate-fig icing)

Making a raw cake actually taste somewhat good was a bit of a challenge, as most of the ones i've found and tried all pretty much tasted the same. They tasted like walnuts, dates, and chocolate. I mean, theres nothing wrong with that, but its too simple for me. No matter what the recipe was, it tasted like that and it just gets old after a while.

That needs to change around here.

Using the subtly sweet and crunchy macadamia nut and the soft texture of hemp seeds, I created a raw cake that is a bit different from the rest. Ladies and gentleman I give you:

Raw Macadamia-Hemp Cake

(w/ Chocolate-Fig Icing)

Serves 2

Cake Ingredients:

1 c. Macadamia Nuts(raw)

1/4 c. Hemp Seeds (raw, shelled)

2 dried Figs

1/8 c. Raw Honey

2 tbsp. Coconut Oil (raw)

1/4 tsp. Himalayan Pink Sea Salt

Method:

-Set your figs in a jar or glass of water for about 5 minutes, or until soft.

-Blend your macadamia nuts and hemp seeds in a food processor until coarse.

-Add the remaining cake ingredients and continue to process until you get a dough-like consistancy.

-Mold your dough into the shape of a cake, and set aside as you make the icing.

Icing ingredients:

3 dried Figs

3 tbsp. Coconut oil (raw)'

1/8 c. raw Honey

1/4 c. raw Cacao Powder

Method:

-set your figs in a jar or glass of water to soak for about 5 minutes, or until soft.

-Put all of your ingredients into a food processor and blend until you get a thick, paste like consistency.

-Add your icing to the cake any way you'd like and enjoy!

This actually turned out exactly as I had hoped. Rich, sweet, crunchy, and delicious. The fig frosting didnt look as beautiful as I wanted due to the figs, but they added a bit of fudginess that made it taste so much better. Definatley better than a walnut cake.

Whats in it?

Hemp seeds are one of the most mineral-rich foods on the planet. In light of not boring you with millions of words, iron, sulfur, and calcium are just a few well-known ones. They also contain the highest protein source on the planet per weight (33.6% of the seed), with the exception of algae. Not only that, but the protein form itself is globular which doesnt cause protein digestion problems. Hemp seeds also are the only seed known to contain the perfect ratio of essential fatty acids (one part omega-3 to three pares Omega-6).

Macadamia nuts have been well established as an unusually rich source of healthy, beautifying oils. They are the highest source of monounsaturated fats (80%), even more so than olive oil. They also the richest source of the beautifying oleic acid(omega-9).

Figs are one of the only dried fruits I ever buy. They are one of the most mineral and alkaline of all fruits and act as both for congestion and digestion.

Both nutrient-dense and better tasting? I would take this over a walnut-based cake anyday.

Whats your favorite nut?

-Andrew David Morrison-

Coconut Chia Superfood Cereal

As far as recipes go, pictures make them look really hard to make. Fancy food pics kind of throw me off all the time, even if the recipe was as easy as throwing some stuff together i probably have in my cabinet or fridge, and making it look pretty. I dont even bother to read. I just say "eh...too hard" and move on. But don't be like me and miss out on what just might be an amazing recipe. You could be missing out on some really tastey food and maybe even learn something new! And if not, then eh. You tried..

Even though i've been doing this for a while, this IS the first recipe on the blog so I figured i'd make it easy, yet delicious. This is just as simple as soaking some stuff in water, mixing it together, and eating it. Not only that, but I made it a breakfast recipe to go in line with first recipe/first meal of the day.

Coconut Chia Superfood Cereal

Difficulty: 1

Serves: 1-2

Ingredients:

4 tbs. chia seeds

1/4 c. dried fruit (i used gogi berries and cranberries)

2 tbsp. coconut oil

2-4 tbsp. raw local honey

2 tbsp. raw cacao

1 tsp. bee pollen(optional)

4 fresh figs

Method:

-Put your dried fruit into a bowl with 1/2 c. water. Let them sit until soft (about an hour).

-Mix your chia seeds with 4tbsp. warm water and let it sit for about 5 minutes, or until the water is absorbed.

-Drain the water from your berries and mix them into the chia.

-Stir in your remaining ingredients.

-Enjoy!

It is a bit unusual if you are not used to eating healthier, but I really like it. Its sweet, yet not at all overly so and has a very subtle coconutey taste and smell to it. Just to be sure it was good enough for you guys, i had my mom try it. Her words were....well.... "slimy, yet satisfying". She said it does taste healthy, but its almost sweet enough to be a dessert. And I agree. So grab yourself a bowl or two, and nom this stuff up!

What do you eat for breakfast?

-Andrew Morrison-

....And so.....it begins...

Whats up guys?

Welcome to the very first post to my blog! Im betting half of you are probably not going to read many of my posts, and some may not even finish this one. Im not for you. Its cool. Lets get on with it.

A lil bit bout me...

Im a raw foodie and love to eat! But aside from just om nom nomming on every piece of organiclly grown lettuce that crosses my path, I especially love to study food and how it affects our bodies. Food in its most natural state is called "Living Food" for a reason. When food is cooked, the enzymes in it are destroyed and your body has to pretty much re-code it just to figure out where to put it! And commercially grown food is an even bigger problem because it has barely enough minerals to begin with due to the soil it was planted in(hence the need for fertilization). The more food straight from the earth, raw and unprocessed, and as organic, homegrown, or wildly cultivated as possible , the more of a possitive effect it can have on our bodies and the better we become. Not to mention, your tastebuds become more active and able to taste the vast components of flavors in food because they arn't being destroyed slowly by enzyme-deprived food. What does that mean? Food tastes better raw!

So that's pretty much why i'm raw....

I've been a vegan since i was fifteen and am a mere seventeen now. I've learned so much the past two years about how amazing natural foods are, and plan to share my experiences with you guys. ya know. If you choose to hang around for dessert. Im just starting out as a raw foodie so bare with me.

And just know... I DESPISE reading bland article after article about nutritional whatever that ends up getting me nowhere, and not learning what I had set out to in the first place. With that said, I will try to make my nutrition posts as painless and easy as possible.

Recipes are the funnest part of the whole experience so you'll see a LOT of those coming up. Yah know. Where you actually get to eat something raw besides a piece of celery. I'll also try to throw in pictures, even if they are a bit crappy. But this will NOT be like my last blog where I just threw whatever on there to try to get as many posts up as I could without even trying the recipes before posting most of them. Everything on this blog I will make, taste, and get a second opinion before posting it. So no more things not turning out right.

I used to only want to just post on blogs to maybe get some views. Now, i'm in it for the food. The pictures may not be worthy of FindingVegan.com and a few posts may be more boring than intended, but you know what? This is me. This is my blog. You don't think it's worthy of you, then find something else to read. The rest of us will just enjoy some raw cacao brownies, mint-berry ice cream, and some amazing wraps without you.

With all that said, i hope you all enjoy learning with me the amazing and beautiful possibilities of being a raw foodie. If you don't plan on reading any more, its cool. But thanks for at least getting through this first post.

And now, my question to you....

What is your favorite raw food? It could be a recipe. Links are welcome ;D

-Andrew Morrison-