Soaked buckwheat groats

Sprouted buckwheat cereal is a raw foodie standard.  It is soooooo easy.  And it is soooooo economical.  It’s usually called “buckwheaties” or raw granola (RAW-nola) by those in the know.  Usually they’re around $9.00-$10.00 per pound.  Outrageous! Raw hulled buckwheat costs a buck or so for a few pounds.  I’d estimate you can make it yourself for under $5.  And you can have whatever flavor you imagine.

There isn’t really a hard & fast recipe for this because it lends itself to improvisation & variation.  It’s fun to think of new ways to make it.

Step 1 – Soak & sprout hulled buckwheat groats

• Put your buckwheat in 2-3x the amount of water.  This stuff expands a LOT.  Make sure all of the sprouts are under the water.   I usually use 1 cup of groats and 4 cups of H2O.
• Soak 20-60 minutes. Don’t over soak! If you do, they will not sprout.  The water will become very thick, cloudy, and starchy.  This is normal. You’ll know they’re ready when they get to be 2-3 times their original size. You won’t have much extra water in your bowl.
• Put groats in a colander and rinse them thoroughly.  You’ll need to do it 2 or 3 times until the water runs clear.  This is very important.  If you don’t rinse well, your spouts will have a bit of a bitter taste.   Drain the groats thoroughly when done.
• Spread the groats out evenly in your colander
• Set them out away from direct sunlight and let them sprout for 4-8 hours.  Room temperature should be around 70 degrees.  Amount of time you set them out will vary. If it’s hotter, leave them out for less time.  If it’s colder, leave them out for more.
• Rinse and drain again.  Sprout them again for 4-8 hours.  Repeat 2-3 more times.
• You will see tiny tails emerging from the groats.   For buckwheaties, a wee hint of a tail is sufficient.
• You are done with step 1!!!  You will have roughly 3-4 times the volume of what you started with.  For 1 cup raw groats, I get a yield of 3-4 cups sprouted groats.

Step 2 - Flavor your cereal

This is the part where you can get creative.  Put in your flavorings and a sweetener.  Mix thoroughly.  Some combinations I like with my 3-4 cups sprouted groats are:

• Chocolate!! Mix the groats with  1/4 to 1/2 cup of semi- raw chocolate syrup. Sometimes I sprinkle in shredded coconut and make a “Mounds” flavored cereal. You could probably use a nut butter to make a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup type of flavor.  I’ve been meaning to try that!   To make raw chocolate syrup:
  • Blend 1 cup maple syrup and 6 tablespoons raw cacao powder in a high speed blender.  Good on raw ice cream, as a fruit dip, etc.   If you want to make it all raw, use agave, runny honey, or, my personal favorite, soaked dates made into a watery paste/syrup works very well)
• Apple cinnamon – mix groats with 1/4-1/2 cup of raw applesauce and sprinkle with cinnamon.  Add some sweetener if you desire.  Sometimes add diced apple for some more texture.  You can also add raisins, dried berries, cranberries.
• Nuttin’ honey – 1/4 – 1/2 cup almond or other nut butter, 1/4 cup honey.
• Granola – add nuts, fruit, whatever you’d use in granola, plus a sweetener to bind it all together.  I recommend date paste.
• Leave them plain! They’re quite good simply left alone without flavorings.  If you do this, definitely go the Grape-Nuts route.  If I do this, I intend to use them as a textural element in other recipes such as cookies and pie crusts.

Step 3 – Dehydrate!!!

Your batter should be fairly sticky but still spreadable.

• Spread the batter onto dehydrator trays using teflex sheets.
• Decide if you want to make your buckwheaties structured or as a free-running Grape-Nuts type of cereal.   To make it structured, score a grid patter on the batter to make bite-sized squares.   If you want Grape-Nutty cereal, simple spread it out on they tray.
• Flip the sheet of buckwheat over and dry the other side until the whole things is dried out.
• For buckwheat squares, use your spatula to neatly break apart the bite-sized squares.  For Grape-Nutties, use your hands to crumble it all apart into tiny nuggets which will readily pour out of your storage container.  Or leave it kind of chunky like granola.

Step 4 – Store

Put the cereal in an airtight container.  It will keep a few months in a cool dark spot.  It will keep virtually forever if you put it in the fridge or freezer.  If it starts going stale it may get a bit soft/sticky.  You can revive it by throwing it back in the dehydrator to dry it out some more.

Step 5 – Enjoy!

Buckwheaties have so much versatility.  Eat it as is for a snack.  It packs well.   Use it as a breakfast cereal with your favorite nut or seed milk.   Let it soak with other ingredients for a muesli.  Sprinkle it on raw ice cream.  Add it to raw coconut yogurt.  Throw it into a raw cookie recipe.  Use it in a pie crust (grind to a flour or put it together like a graham cracker crust).

I usually have 2 or 3 varieties of buckwheaties on hand as a pantry staple.  I make a batch every 4-5 weeks as part of my monthly food prep.  Having them on-hand allows me to make “fix it fast” recipes.

I use the macaroon recipe from “Raw Food, Real World” by Matthew Kenney & Sarma Melngailis.  I love their books.  When it comes to food porn, they rule.  All of their recipes are tres gourmet and the photography only increases the drool-worthy quality of their recipes.   Everything I’ve made from their books tastes awesome.   It’s not everyday fare because their recipes take time and effort.  Not surprising.  They did open Pure Food and Wine in NYC which Sarma Melngailis still owns and runs — along with One Lucky Duck, a take-out and on-line raw foods store.

These macaroons remind me of my favorite flavor of Timbits and take me back to my childhood in Canada.   They are mouthful of happiness.

Wet Almond Pulp

Almond flour is a basic staple and an easy item to incorporate into one’s raw routine. It’s a great way to use up pulp from making almond milk.  I keep a gallon zip lock bag in my freezer and throw my leftovers into it every time I whip up a batch of milk.  When I’ve accumulated  about 4-6 cups, I defrost the pulp, spread it on teflex covered dehydrator trays, and pop it in the “D” until it’s bone dry.   From there, I throw it into my BlendTec and grind it to a very fine consistency.    I store it in the freezer when it’s done.

Finished Almond Flour

It keeps for months.  They dehydrating helps keep the nuts from going rancid.  It’s especially gorgeous when you’ve removed the skins from the almonds.   The flour is versatile: use it for cookies, cakes, breads, crackers. It’s simple and takes virtually no time to make – spend 30 extra seconds throwing it in the freezer when you make nut milk.

Making other recipes is quicker if you’ve got the flour on hand.

Weekend prep

• Sprouting  (I’m going with lentil)
• Dehydrate kale chips for snacks
• Dehydrate some gingered almonds
• Make pates
• Make salad dressing
• Wash greens
• Cut up sturdier vegetables (carrots, bell pepper, etc.)
• Marinate some veggies (mushrooms, bell pepper, zucchini, etc.)

Breakfasts

• Miso soup
• Veggie scramble
• Green juice or smoothie

Lunches

• Asian marinated veggie wrap
• Spinach and seaweed salad with oranges and sesame dressing
• Three seaweed salad
• Vietnamese style cabbage salad

Dinners

• Sushi
• Pad Thai
• Stir un-fry on parsnip rice
• Spring rolls

Snacks

• fruit
• kale chips
• veggies with asian pate dip

My wife’n'kid were having bean’n'cheese burritos.  The smell when I came in the house after work was inspiring!  So I got creative.  I made a batch of Cherie Soria’s Fresh Corn Tortillas back in July.  Since I had a dozen, I froze a bunch of them.  Five months later they’re still good.  I warmed them up in the dehydrator while I got busy making the Stuffing Fantasy I was supposed to make on Saturday (I do want my Thanksgiving eats this week at some point).   I also had some portobello mushrooms and some cherry tomatoes so I warmed massaged those in a little olive oil and salt and put those into the dehydrator to soften up. Finally, I threw some of the salsa the wife’n'kid were having into the dehydrator too.  It’s chilly!  I like my raw food warmed up!

Forty-five minutes later, after I’d finished the stuffing, I had a beautiful set of ingredients with which to make tostadas.

Fresh corn tortilla with portobello mushroom cherry tomato ragout

Fresh Corn Tortillas

• 4 cups chopped yellow bell peppers
• 3 cups fresh corn kernels
• 1 cup peeled chopped zucchini
• 1.5 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• .5 teaspoon salt
• 1 ripe avocado, coarsely cut into chunks
• 3 tablespoons psyllium powder or ground flax seeds

1. Combine the bell peppers, corn, zucchini, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, and salt in a blender and process until smooth.  Add the avocado and process until well combined.  With the blender running, add psyllium powder and process for a few seconds longer until well blended.

2. Using 1/2 cup of the mixture for each tortilla, use a small metal spatula of flat rubber spatula to quickly form 4 flat disks on a dehydrator tray lined with a nonstick sheet.  Each disk should be about 7 inches in diameter, with a little space between each one.  Work quickly or the mixture will thicken and become difficult to spread.  Continue to work in this fashion until all of the mixture is used.

3. Dehydrate at 105 F for 4 hours, or until the tortillas can be easily remoed from the nonstick sheets.

4. Turn the tortillas over onto mesh dehydrator trays.  Place an additional mesh screen on top of each tray; this will make the tortillas flatter and easier to store. Dehydrate for 3-4 hours longer until the tortillas are dry but still flexible.

5. Stored in an airtight container, will keep for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator or up to 2 months in the freezer.

Portabello mushroom and cherry tomato ragout

• Portobello mushrooms, chopped
• Cherry tomatoes, chopped
• Olive oil, to taste
• Sea salt, to taste

Mix mushrooms and tomatoes with olive oil and salt, using your hands to massage oil into the vegetables.  Put veggies in the dehydrator until they become soft and reduce in size a bit.

Tostadas

• 2 fresh corn tortillas
• portobello mushroom and cherry tomato ragout
• shredded carrots
• pico de gallo salsa
• mixed greens

Spread salsa on the tortillas.  Layer the greens, mushroom ragout, salsa, and shredded carrots on top.  Serve with love!

I ate like royalty today, day 2 of my 30 day raw food challenge.  I had

Breakfast

• 1 shot of E3 Live
• Tropical fruit salad (no coconut today): pineapple, mandarin orange, and banana

Lunch

• marinated collard greens mixed with
• leftover monster salad from yesterday
• apple

Snack

• banana

Dinner

• my awesome tostadas
• some raw tortilla chips with salsa
• and some awesome vanilla fudge raw agave gelato from Organic Nectars with a little bit of “You-Must-be-Kidding Chocolate Sauce” from Natalia Rose’s Raw Food Detox Diet

Sometimes it’s really really really easy to be raw.   It’s all in the pre-prep baby.  I had several things available to me today which made my life easy’n'tasty.  I had tortillas, tortilla chips, store-bought salsa, store-bought gelato, and chocolate sauce.   I also had leftover collards from this weekend’s prep session.   I only spent 30 minutes doing food prep today.   It took me longer to do the dishes after the family ate!

I didn’t exercise, unfortunately.  All that eating and dish doing has left me a bit done in.  Only half-hour until bedtime.  I’m going to read a novel in bed cuddling with my doggies.

Arranged Vegetables Creating a Face

I’m going to go with “holiday leftovers” for week 1 of this raw challenge.  It’s what I’ll have on hand. I guess the theme is “American traditional comfort food.”  I wasn’t going to go raw for Thanksgiving, but I realized I needed to do prep for week 1 anyway.  Might as well take advantage of all the holiday recipes abounding on the raw food blogosphere. And yeah, they’re not leftovers per se, since I didn’t actually make this stuff for Thanksgiving.  But they would have been!

I’ve already got a few staples on hand :

• raw parmesan
• flax crackers
• tortilla chips
• gRAWnola
• chocolate macaroons
• chai spices

Plus I made some cranberry relish the day before Thanksgiving.   There is still a fair amount of prep work to be done. The trick is to think a bit about when I’d like to eat what while considering how best to space out the work.

Here’s the menu with a rough prep schedule.  One can assume I’ll be eating other things besides these menu items. Those would be staples and/or simple salads which don’t require a recipe.  One can also assume that I prep stuff the night before I eat it if the recipe requires more than 10 minutes of preparation.   I do perishable staples a couple of times per week.  That means things like nut milk and washing and cutting up fruit and vegetables.

I probably spent about an 90 minutes doing the thinking today.  That means looking at recipes, writing shopping lists, and thinking about scheduling.   I’ll report at the end of the week how much hands-on time I actually spent preparing stuff.  My ultimate goal is to spend less than 4 (non-consecutive) hours per week making food and less than 2 hours per week shopping for it.  Raw can not become routine if it takes too much time .

Breakfasts

• Green juice (Monday)
• Orange and cranberry smoothie (Tuesday)
• Pumpkin bread with nut butter (Saturday)
• gRAWnola with nut milk  (already done, almond milk made twice each week)

Lunches

• Marinated collards with spicy yam chips (greens Sunday, chips Saturday)
• Waldorf salad (Monday)
• Green smoothies (Wednesday & Friday)
• Green bean almondine and flax crackers (Wednesday)

Dinners (all served with a big ass greens & sprouts salad)

• Stuffing fantasy with cranberry relish (stuffing Sunday, cranberries already done)
• Mushroom soup (Tuesday)
• Roasted portobello mushroom with mashed ‘taters (taters Thursday, mushrooms Friday)

Snacks

• Veggies and dip (wash and cut veg twice a week)
• Kale chips (Sunday)
• Macaroons (already done!)
• Fruit (cut up night before if juicing or making smoothies)
• Almond milk chai (Saturday, more almond milk on Wednesday)

It seems like a lot.  Too much really.  I need to simplify more.  I think I get carried away with wanting to try out recipes.

The biggest thing I’ve learned about menu planning is to incorporate left-overs into the planning.  It eliminates waste.  I don’t want to be throwing away expensive organic produce thank-you-very-much.  It also adds variety.  Huh? How do you get variety when you’re eating leftovers?  By using them differently.  Given that I’m the only person in my family eating this way I do end up with a lot of leftovers.  I need to switch it up so I’m not bored senseless.

The easiest way for me to deal with left-overs is to do theme cuisine.  Regional/ethnic themes work best since they have the same flavor profiles.  Italian food, for example, makes use of garlic, oregano, basil.  A marinade from one meal can transform into a dressing for another.

A sample week of dinners might go something like this:

1. Cesar Salad, zucchini angel hair pasta and marinara
2. Antipasto with bruschetta
3. Lasagna
4. Minestrone, greens with vinaigrette
5. Pesto-stuffed portobello mushrooms
6. Pizza
7. Fettuccine raw-fredo

And one could alternate some desserts like: gelato, biscotti, pine nut cookies.

The marinara sauce does quadruple duty in the pasta, bruschetta, lasagna, and pizza.  There is rawmasan in the cesar salad, bruschetta, pesto, and fettuccine. The antipasto becomes a layer in the lasagna, or it can be chopped finer and thrown into a minestrone.

You get the general idea.  Now, making 7 different meals is way more work than I can realistically handle.  I’m ok with repeating things so I try to do only 2-3 meals per week.   For an Italian week, I’d make a Cesar dressing, a vinaigrette, a marinara sauce, a pesto and hope like hell that I already had rawmasan and seed crusts on hand from a monthly prep session.

Guess I just started planned one of my weeks.

Pizza

pizza flax crackers
nut cheese
marinara sauce
diced red pepper
diced red onion
sliced black olives
minced basil
pine nut parmesan

When I make a batch of crackers I set aside one or two dehydrator trays to make larger crusts instead of bite-sized nibblers.  Spread nut cheese and marinara on a large flax cracker.  Put veggies toppings on top. Serve with love.

My version is a combination of Cherie Soria’s Pine nut parmesan and Renee Loux Underkoffler’s parmesan.

Pine nut parmesan

1.5 cups pine nuts
1/4 tsp probiotic powder (optional)
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon good quality salt

Blend all ingredients in food processor until smooth and creamy.  If using a probiotic powder you can leave the batter out (be sure it’s covered) to let it culture for a few hours.  Spread thinly onto teflex sheets and dehydrate until crispy. Break apart or crumble.  Stored in glass jars in the refrigerator parmesan will keep for 3 months.

Sprinkle on soups, salads, pasta, pizza — wherever you would use dairy parmesan.

This makes a huge amount of pate.   It lasts about a week in the fridge.  It’s a great make-ahead to have on hand for quick snacks and meals.  I use it on it’s own on top of salads, in lunch time sammiches, wraps, rolls etc.  It’s especially wonderful in raw sushi-maki.

Of course, I had to have some for my lunch today.

Allisa Cohen’s Mock Salmon Pate
Yield: 3 cups Servings: 12

2 cups walnuts
1 red pepper
1 scallion
4 cloves garlic
2 stalks celery
1 tsp salt (I use 1/2 tsp)

Mix it up in a food processor to combine until smooth (optional, I like mine a little chunky since I’m a texture fiend).

Serve with love.