We Woz Ere! But where?

October 10, 2014

Remember this game? You have to see if you recognise anything in these pictures and work out where we were before clicking on the link at the end. Give it a go!

Gorgeous veg*n cafe – clean, bright, comfortable, friendly …

... with delicious selection of veg*n food to choose from. Sorry I didn't hold my breath when taking this photo - don't look at it too long, it'll make you feel dizzy!

… with a delicious selection of veg*n food to choose from. Sorry I didn’t hold my breath when taking this photo – don’t look at it too long, it’ll make you feel dizzy!

This one’s a bit easier on the eyes – and not just because it’s in focus!

Here’s a clearer look at the menu from the outside. We indulged in scrambled tofu with salad and baked potato, followed by a scrumptious slice of vegan, gluten-free chocolate cake. Mmm mmmmmm!

Have you got it yet?

We loved this place – you should definitely visit if you are in the area. We’ll certainly be returning next time we’re visiting family in that neck of the woods. Do you know where this is?

And the answer is …. here!

There should be one in every town 🙂

Fancy a choc-ice?

June 27, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I used to love these

Many years ago I used to love these – choc-ices and Wall’s Feasts – but I hadn’t given them a thought for ages until my friend passed on a brilliant idea she got from The Raw Chocolate Company. I realise now that this is not a new idea, but it’s a good one so here it is:

Get a couple of ripe bananas,

some cashews, or whatever nuts you fancy,

and some raw chocolate.

Plus you’ll need some lolly sticks or chop sticks or similar.

Soak the nuts overnight or at least for a few hours, then rinse them and spread them out to dry on a clean tea towel for an hour or so. When they’re a bit dryer you can put them through a food processor so that they’re finely chopped.

Melt the chocolate.

Carefully peel the bananas and chop them in half. Then lay them on a sheet of eco-friendly parchment paper and stick your lolly stick in them like so.

Carefully peel the bananas and chop them in half. Then lay them on a sheet of eco-friendly parchment paper and stick lolly sticks into them like so.

By the way, if you don’t have any chocolate or nuts you can just freeze the bananas at this stage and you’ll have a delicious ‘ice-cream’ lolly as it is.

However, if do you want the choc-ice, continue as follows:

Put the melted chocolate and the chopped nuts on separate plates;

First roll a banana in the melted chocolate,

then roll a banana in the melted chocolate,

and then in the nuts.

And pretty soon you should have a plate of nutty choc-ices to be. Put them in the freezer for a couple of hours or more.

Et voila! Simply scrumptious nutty banana choc-ices! Perfectly healthy – have as many as you like – and absolutely delicious!

You may be vegan, you may be raw, but you’ll never miss out on choc-ices again!

😉

Raw Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

June 9, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Indulge yourself

Believe it or not – this is a health food! Here’s how:

You’ll need 1 cup of organic raw Brazil nuts, soaked overnight, drained and rinsed:

200g or so of pitted organic fresh dates:

3 tablespoons of organic raw cacao nibs:

1 tablespoon of organic raw carob powder (or cacao):

2 teaspoons of organic vanilla extract:

And 50g of organic fair trade raw chocolate:

1. Bung the dates into the food processor and chop/mix into a gooey, pastey consistency. Transfer to mixing bowl.

2. Now put the nuts into the food processor and finely chop into tiny bits. Add to the dates in the bowl.

3. Add cacao nibs, carob powder and vanilla to the bowl and mix thoroughly with a fork.

4. Plonk the whole mixture back into the food processor and process again so that your thick, sticky, soft, heavy mixture is thoroughly and smoothly combined. (My food processor – which is just an attachment of my hand blender – is very small so I did my mixture in two halves).

5. Now pile up your cookie mixture onto a smooth worktop and spoon out enough to make one cookie, press it flat on top with a knife and cut out your cookie. Slide a knife under the cookie and put it on a plate. Cut out all your cookies like this. I made 10 thick cookies out of this mixture, with a bit left over for tasting.

6. Then cover them in melted chocolate:

7. Then chill:

8. Indulge in your health food

Don’t forget, the Brazil nuts in these are packed with selenium, an essential trace mineral which is a powerful antioxidant that combats the damage that free radicals cause in the body, and it can improve cardiovascular health and fight cancer as well. It also plays a role in thyroid health, assisting with the metabolism of iodine and the production of critical thyroid hormones.

Just google it or see here for more info 🙂

So go on – get this health food down you!

Chocolate Intermission

May 27, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

We found some more! Delicious and healthy organic raw vegan chocolate by Raw Living

I chose the Hi Crunch with scrummy goji berries and hemp seeds in, and Miranda chose the White Magic fudge bar. We were both happy with our selections.

And the thing that made me especially happy to find these guys is that there was NO PLASTIC WRAPPING! NONE!!! Just like they used to be in the olden days, these treats were harmlessly wrapped in foil and paper. Well done Raw Living, we are very impressed.

So why not check out Raw Living website and see what you fancy 🙂

Don’t miss out!

April 15, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

I’ve said it before

And I’ll say it again

You don’t miss out

When you’re raw vegan!

Recipes adapted from Basic Formula for Nut Burgers and Basic Formula for Candy, page 147 of 12 Steps to Raw Foods by Victoria Boutenko

Saturday April 12th

April 12, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

It’s National Licorice Day!

Here’s something for ya! Click the pic for the recipe.

Raw Carrot Cake

April 7, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

In celebration of …. life!

This is my modest version of Fully Raw Kristina’s Birthday Carrot Cake

I didn’t have all the ingredients on her list, nor the equipment (Vitamix and food processor) so I made do with what I had and made my own version. Making raw recipes is a great idea for children to be able to do on their own or with little supervision because there’s no hot oven to worry about and, in the case of using these manual tools, there’s no sharp blades either.

Hand-crank BL30 manual juicer with different screens and hand-crank whisk.

For the base:

2 cups of carrot juice pulp

1 and a half cups of sultanas

Half a cup of medjool dates

Half a tablespoon of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

For the icing:

1 and a half cups of raw cashews (soaked for 3 hours -or overnight- in the fridge)

Half a cup of filtered water

Half a cup of medjool dates

1 tablespoon of fresh pineapple juice

1 teaspoon of vanilla

Now, if you have a blender and a food processor, you can follow Kristina’s instructions, but if, like me, you’re making do without, here’s how I suggest you continue 😉 :

First put the carrots through the juicer and collect the pulp. Put 2 cups full of pulp into a mixing bowl.

Then take the juicer apart, rinse it and put it back together, replacing the holey screen with the smooth one. Put the sultanas, followed by the dates (after you’ve cut out the pits) through the juicer. These come out as a stiff, sticky rope of fruity goodness.

Add the mushed sultanas and dates to the carrot pulp and mix well. Your food processor is your arm and a large fork. Really get stuck in and combine that stuff! It’s not easy – I had to sit down! – but think how much you will have earned that cake when you’ve finished! 🙂

Then add the cinnamon and vanilla and mix well. When you’ve got a moist mixture with all the ingredients and flavours well-combined you’re ready to mould it into a cake shape.

Cut a circle of parchment paper to fit the removable bottom of your cake tin. Then cut a rectangular piece to line the sides of the tin. Spoon your mixture into the lined tin and press it down so that it fills the bottom evenly. Place the tin in the freezer for an hour to help the cake set in this shape. While it’s setting, wash up your juicer and bowl and everything so that you can use it all again to make the icing.

Put a little fresh pineapple or lemon if you’ve got it, through the juicer (using the holey screen) and put aside 1 tablespoon of juice. Then change to the smooth screen and put your soaked cashews through the juicer (after draining and rinsing with fresh filtered water). Put the mushed cashews into your mixing bowl.

Put your pitted dates through and add the resultant sticky rope to the cashews. Mix well -and again this is going to require some effort – with a fork. Add half a cup of filtered water, plus 1 tablespoon of the juice you made and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence. Mix it all well with your fork. You will notice it’s not as smooth as Kristina’s but as long as you’ve got all the flavours well combined it will taste just as delicious. To make it as smooth as possible I also gave it a good whisk with my hand-crank whisk.

Put this mixture into the fridge and wait until your cake has been in the freezer for a full hour.

Now, this is the exciting bit where you see all your hard work come together:

Take your tin out of the freezer and carefully push the base of your tin up to remove the cake. Slide the paper off the base of the tin and onto a plate. Your cake should now be standing proudly, unsupported, on your plate.

Take your soft nutty icing out of the fridge and cover your cake. Add decorative nuts or fruits if you like.

And that’s it! 😀

Slice it carefully, and then remove each slice with a pie-slice (triangular thing) if you’ve got it, and share it with lucky family and friends. Keep what’s left, if any, in the fridge.

This is delicious and incredibly sweet – though my family says “absolutely not too sweet!”

And I can now confirm that it tastes even better on day 2, and sooooo good on day 3. After that it was all gone 😉

Dirt-Filled Pot

April 3, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

What is that?

A dirt-filled pot!

It’s not just that.

I’m sure it’s not.

***

Look closer,

See what you can see,

It’s tiny lettuce,

There are more than three!

Sc-raw-umptious!

April 1, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

A cake is a cake

That you could make

And it’s unhealthy

Make no mistake

Unless it’s a cake

That you don’t bake

Made from fruits and nuts still raw!

My first attempt at making raw cake and it’s deeelicious if I do say so myself 😉

*************

Having just finished reading 12 Steps to Raw Foods by Victoria Boutenko, I couldn’t wait to have a go at making raw cake. At the back of the book are some really useful recipes which are designed to be adapted to suit your own tastes so, using the Generic Cake Recipe, I had a go.

For the chocolate base I combined 1 cup of ground walnuts, 1 tablespoon of flax oil, 1 tablespoon of agave nectar, and half a cup of cocoa (that should have been raw carob powder but I don’t have any of that yet).

This made a stiff, damp mixture which I formed into a cake shape on the plate.

Then for the topping I combined half a cup of fruit (banana in this case), half a cup of ground cashews, and half a cup of fresh coconut. I put all these through my manual juicer (using the smooth screen) so that they were all ground and mushed, and then I mixed them together with a fork.

Then I spooned the topping onto the base and put it in the fridge to chill. So easy.

Now I’m off to have another piece! 🙂

How about a strawberry one?

For the strawberry version I just omitted the cocoa from the base and added a teaspoon of vanilla essence.

Then for the topping I combined half a cup of mushed strawberries, half a cup of ground cashews, (both of these were put through the manual juicer as above) and 1 tablespoon of agave nectar.

And voila:

Green Smoothie Magic

March 28, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

This looks fun!

I am a big fan of the Boutenko family, having 3 of their books already, (and currently enjoying 12 Steps to Raw Foods) so when I discovered that Victoria has also made a few books for children, I just had to share.

In Green Smoothie Magic, beautifully illustrated by Katya Korobkina, Victoria tells a delightful story about a six year old boy who learns about the magic of greens.