Friday, December 27, 2013

Zucchini Crackers

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year!
I know I have my New Year's Resolution, Rachel is still working on hers.
We will unveil our plans for 2014 next week! 
Well this week we are continuing with our experimenting in the Raw Food diet.
We read many recipes and blogs for raw crackers, there were many different ones, and it looked like everyone put whatever they liked in it.
So we were literally throwing things together for this, whatever sounded like it would be good together.

For our crackers you will need:
a food processor 
a dehydrator
3 zucchini
1 clove garlic
1 small onion
5 tablespoon flax seeds

We already started before we took the picture >_<

Add all your ingredients to your food processor. 


And process!


This is what you end up with, nice goopy green slime!


Line your dehydrator with parchment paper.
Not everyone is fortunate to have a dehydrator, your oven on the lowest setting should work I think.
I am lucky that my Dad used to make jerky every year so we have one.


And spoon the mixture on, one tablespoon at a time.


According to everything we read on Raw Food the food can't be heated over 115 degrees or else the breakdown of nutrients will begin. So we set the dehydrator to 115.


Leave it in the dehydrator overnight or for about 8-10 hours.


Peel the crackers off the parchment paper and put them in a airtight container.


Here they are, They tasted pretty good. Very garlicky just the way I like it!
They were crunchy like a cracker should be and went great with my guacamole!
Rachel thought they were bland, so we may add a bit of salt next time.
She of course liked it better with a dip of some sort. 


3 zucchini made quite a bit of crackers, filled a quart container over half way.


Thorin is not amused... We found him sleeping in a box of Mason jars and decided it was cute. 


Sunday, December 22, 2013

Gingerbread Men, Women, and Deer!

It's that time of year again! Everyone is running around shopping, baking, and cooking! 
We are included in that, with all the shopping done it's time to be with family and friends. 
With just 2 days before Christmas we are going to share a recipe for Gingerbread cookies.

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/3 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves or allspice
(We used allspice this time)
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup molasses
2 tbsp milk 


Do you see this Beauty? Rachel gave me an early Christmas gift, an 8 cup food processor!!!
It was much needed (as you could see from our last post) and I have been using it quite a bit ^_^

But anyways back to the post, Preheat oven to 350, add all your ingredients to a food processor and pulse on low until it is mixed.


You do not need a food processor, this can be done with a whisk.
 I am just using it because it's a new toy and I can!

Once you mix it, it should look like this.


Next add the wet ingredients pulse on low for about 10-15 seconds and then on high until well blended, again can be done with a whisk or spoon.

Use softened butter (Leave it out on the counter for a few hours! Don't be impatient like us and use the microwave XD)

after mixing:


You know it's done once it looks like POOP!


Now I know most people chill the dough then use a floured surface to roll it out.
I use a different method, 4 sheets of parchment paper the size of the cookie sheet you are using, split your dough in half, and roll the dough with rolling pin (or wine bottle! Whatever is handy >_<) 
between the 2 sheets. 


Make it thinner if you like crunchy cookies (Like Rachel) or thicker if you like them soft (Like Me)

Load the flattened dough onto your cookie sheet and stick it in the freezer for about 15- 20 mins

You know it's done when you can do this:

No cookie sheet under there!

Peel the top layer of parchment paper and start cutting


We used the reindeer, men, and women cookie cutters.


Lots of cookies!


Repeat the rolling process with the excess dough until it all gets used.


Place cookies on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet (you can reuse the ones from the freezer)

Then stick them in the oven!

Makes the house smell so good!

Let the cookies cool.


And then decorate them!
For the icing we used a cup of powdered sugar and 4 tsp of milk.
add a tsp less of milk if you want the icing thicker while you pipe it.
It makes a nice hard glossy decorating finish.
Icing does take a few hours to dry completely

Our strange cookies!
Top: Pop culture singer, lazy underwear man
Middle: Normal Gingerbread woman, Diabetic cookie man, Lost his leg in Nom
Bottom: our best Reindeer, and sad working man. 

And the moment you have all been waiting for!
Thorin's first Christmas tree!!!


He was very curious, but thankfully has not tried climbing it!
He has however tried to eat the lights that blink on it XD

Merry Christmas Everyone!
And if you don't celebrate this one then Happy Holidays!

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Not So Fully Raw Pumpkin Pie

Rachel and I have been doing a lot of reading into the Fully Raw Lifestyle. 
While we love our meat we want something to make our diets healthier and add more fruits and veggies.
We watched hundreds of YouTube videos and found Fully Raw Kristina.
Her videos are fun and uplifting and the recipes all look wonderful.
For Thanksgiving we decided to try her Fully Raw Pumpkin Pie Recipe, only ours wasn't fully raw because we used vanilla extract instead of a vanilla bean because I really couldn't find any :-/ 
But everything else is raw!

Ingredients:
One Pie pumpkin
2 lb of wet dates
1-1.5 pecans
1 ripe persimmon 
1 large tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger or a small piece of fresh ginger
scraping from a vanilla bean (or vanilla extract)


We started by cutting and pealing the pumpkin and set it aside.


For the crust it is just a pound of dates and a 1-1.5 cups of Pecans. 
I have an extremely small food processor so we had to do this a little at a time. 


Press the mixture into your pie pan.
Kristina somehow made one  pie out of all of this, I am assuming she had a deep dish pie pan.
I have regular ones so we made 2 pies.


Next you add your pumpkin, other lb of dates, Persimmon, ginger, and cinnamon.
In the original blog she has a Vitamix blender which is much better than my blender so we had to add some water to get it to blend. We also used the food processor to get the Pumpkin chopped up finer.
Only ended up using half the pumpkin because it was rather large. 
Taste as you make the filling as you go and add more or less to your taste.


Scooped it out into a bowl to mix it better. Then you just scoop the pumpkin mixture into your crust.


I used the extra pumpkin for smoothies ^_^


Freeze for about an hour and a half (makes it so much easier to cut)


Here it is! It was very tasty and sweet with zero added sugar!
I felt no guilt eating an entire pie in 3 days XD

Rachel said it was too pumpkiny for her taste, flavors were too strong, and was too sweet for her (that part amazes both of us)! She preferred the traditional pie to this one. 


But it get 2 thumbs up from me and I will be making it again!


This is our dog Twi, she likes to sit on the scale. 
I have to remind her that she is beautiful just the way she is >_<