Raw day 5 - chickpea patties, fastest fruit cobbler

My stomach wasn't happy with me for the first few days on my new raw food diet. I didn't feel bad most of the time, just periodically. Luckily, that seems to have stopped. Yay! ... but something else weird is happening..

I didn't sleep much this weekend. I wasn't tired at all and woke up early on my own.. I just didn't feel like sleeping in, even though we usually do on the weekends! Weird. It's certainly not a bad thing.. just an observation.

Today was my fault, though.. today was not good.

Usually I exercise 4 days a week, some combination of dancing and pilates. I'm usually smiling and having fun. I love pushing myself and I always get a boost of feel-good hormones while I'm doing it. . . but today I actually quit after 35 minutes. Yikes. I hear that you're supposed to have more energy than you know what to do with. I hope that'll happen soon!.. and that I'll drink as much water as usual. I don't know why but I forgot! Usually I chug water all day.. I have no idea what happened today.

I actually feel great. My body feels good. My muscles feel good. I'm happy. . I just wonder why I lack the drive to exercise. Hopefully it's just because I forgot to hydrate...



Now on to my favorite part of the blog - the food!

Breakfast:

I'm really enjoying fresh fruit on my raw toast! It's crunchy and wonderful. I will DEFINITELY keep raw toast made at all times.

Dinner:

Experimental almond-crusted chickpea patties :)

For dinner tonight, we have some chickpea patties in the dehydrator that will hopefully taste reminiscent of falafel. We'll see!

Chickpea patty ingredients:
1.5 c sprouted chickpeas (see earlier post about sprouting)
1 clove minced garlic
1 t cayenne
1/2 t cumin
some parsley and cilantro
1/2 t sea salt
water, as needed (approx 1 cup)

Crust ingredients:
in a coffee grinder, put a handful of buckwheaties and about 6 almonds. Blend until fine or slightly chunky. Put this into a bowl and add a handful of sesame seeds. That's it! (NOTE: next time I'll leave the almonds slightly chunkier and add a small t of olive oil to the the mixture.)

To make the chickpea patties I put all of the ingredients into the food processor and blended, adding water as needed until it became smooth enough for me to form into patties. You don't want it runny.

Now just form patties on your teflex sheet that are about 1/2 inch high, using all the dough. Now sprinkle your crust ingredients over each patty.



Dehydrate 3 hours on one side. Then flip over and dry no more than 5 hours more. Keep testing them to see how dry you want them. I kept them moist on the inside and slightly crispy on the outside. Wow, these came out better than expected!



I poured some of our homemade salsa (that we threw together yesterday with random fridge ingredients) on top of the patty.. the flavors were perfect together! I made 2 batches of Ani Phyo's raw sesame bread - so I can just pull it out to make sandwiches anytime! Served with, you guessed it, kale chips fresh out of the dehydrator. YUM!

If you have the bread around.. you won't have any excuse. But you have to make it first. If you want to eat more raw meals - you must, must, must keep raw food ingredients around. You must!


Dessert:

I wanted something sweet and something fast.. so here's what I did:

Ingredients
1 c dates
1 c oats
2 t agave nectar, optional

Blend dates and oats in food processor until very small pieces. Your crumble should be slightly sticky. If it's not, add a spoonful or two of agave and mix again.



In the meantime you'll slice your favorite veggies into individual bowls. (That's the great thing about this cobbler, you can serve everyone their own favorite fruits!)



Pour crust on top of lots of fruit. YUM! Dig in. I promise you won't be able to put it down.