40 Days of Raw: Day 3

Day 3 meant sleeping until 4 pm to catch my sleep up to my energy level. When I woke up, I ran to the grocery store to pick up supplies (pre-packaged kimchi, korean chile pepper, raw granola bar type stuff) and set to work.

Yesterday's lunch was more cauliflower and a little kale salad. Snack turned out to be grapefruit. Dinner was pre-packaged kimchi and unsweetened almond milk with raspberries.

The project for yesterday? Pickling!

I started by making home kimchi. I used the recipe (or guidelines) found at Bella Online, combined with my pickling guru recipe from Tommy J's Kitchen to make my half sour pickles and radishes. Yes, I'm attempting to pickle radishes.

I copped on the kimchi a little...used a fresh habanero in addition to the korean chili powder, so ended up with more of a mud, then blended some garlic and ginger into it. In hindsight, I would've probably used 3-4 cloves of garlic instead of the one. The kimchi, overall, looks a little bit light. I let it sit out overnight to cold process ferment before putting it in the fridge. I'll probably sneak a taste on Sunday night. The cuke pickles will be ready on Monday.

Oh and the raw granola bar things? Tasty and surprisingly satisfying, but they are a little steep at $4 a pop. Basically, they taste like a saltier, healthier version of those nature valley granola bars, with superfoods in them (goji berries, blueberries, cranberries and chocolate are the flavors). They're also a little salty, which helps me to treat them like a real meal and not some lame candy bar.

Since it's also a slow afternoon, I'll tell you about my last Falafel Party (pictured at left). I'll admit, our first (pictured at right) was slightly more successful, falafel-wise, but our israeli salad and hummus were spot on this time around. We used the recipe from VWAV to a T in may, and this time were a little more liberal and winged it (which resulted in some tough first falafels that essentially crumbled in the pan). The one thing that's weird about the VWAV recipe for falafels is the amount of baking powder-- it makes them puff up and created a weird air pocket in the middle that you don't get at your fav middle eastern pita joint. Either way, I'll continue making falafel because it's awesome. But not until April 4.

As far as the israeli salad goes, this time I used fresh lemon juice, sea salt, english seedless (or what my parents call "israeli") cukes, grape tomatoes, fresh cracked pepper and a TON of parsley. It didn't keep well, but there wasn't much to keep! A great way to dress a salad like this is to cut the veggies over the container you intend to keep it in/serve it in. Then put the top on, shake it up and enjoy :)

My pointers for making hummus are more vague-- mainly because hummus is so subjective. I prefer a lighter, lemony hummus to the garlic-tastic that pleases dork. The best I've done (and it has taken weeks of mediocre chickpea dips) are as follows:

Roasted Garlic -- appx (all measurements are!) 8 cloves (roasted) to 2 cups chickpeas, 1 tsp tahini, 1/2 lemon's juice, pinch of cumin, 1/2 tsp salt and a few grinds of the old pepper mill. Olive oil until it flows freely-ish.

Red pepper (not roasted!) -- 2 c chickpeas, 2 cloves garlic, 1 tsp tahini, pinch cumin, 1/2 lemon's juice, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 red pepper (fresh!), ~1/3 c olive oil, then water until free flowing.

That's all I've got for now, dear bloggers. At some point soon, I'm going to attempt soaking legumes. Til then!