Raw Food Cleanse: Day Nine

The cravings continue at work, when I see a picture of a plate of mussels for a book about Prince Edward Island cuisine. Later, working on a book about paninis brings back fond memories of a veggie panini I had last month at JJ Bean.

Breakfast: Green smoothie and granola crunch.

Lunch: Leftover salad and a ginger nori cracker.

Snaaaacks: An apple; banana papaya pudding; halvah; walnuts; fruit salad (featuring mango, papaya, apple and banana).


I was too lazy to make a real dinner so I drank some green smoothie and then made some herbed "cream cheese" from nuts, which I ate with a couple crackers. The recipe once again comes from The Complete Book of Raw Food.

Herbed Cream Cheese
1 1/3 cups Brazil, macadamia or pine nuts (don't soak)
1/4 cup olive oil
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly cracked peppercorns
2 Tbsp fresh dill, minced
1 Tbsp fresh sage, minced


Combine the nuts, lemon juice, salt, olive oil and 1/3 cup water in high-powered blender, mixing until smooth. (P.S. Using the blender you see in this photo was a bad idea ... an immersion blender worked much better.)

Transfer the mixture to a bowl and hand mix in the remaining ingredients. Cool in the fridge for half an hour before serving.


I didn't have enough of either, so I used a mix of macadamia and pine nuts. I also didn't have fresh herbs, so I used dried dill weed and sage instead (and only half the amount called for).

Result: pretty good. Fresh dill will be an improvement in the future. This is definitely filling. All I ate for dinner was two and a half crackers with cream cheese, and then I was stuffed.


Late night snack: raw blackberry granola (from Gorilla Food) with sesame milk. (I only ate half the amount of cereal pictured. Once again, raw food is SOOOO FILLING.)

LOOK AT THE GLASS OF MILK I MADE! I still can't believe this came out of sesame seeds, dates and water. This milk tastes maybe not quite as good as almond milk, but much better than soy milk. Next time you want to have a bowl of cereal and there's no milk left in the fridge, try it! Another The Complete Book of Raw Food recipe:

Quickest Tahini Milk
1/2 cup raw tahini
4 dates, pitted

Blend tahini and dates with 2 1/2 cups of water.

Again, because raw tahini is so expensive, I substituted 1/2 cup sesame seeds, ground to a paste in my coffee grinder. I also used less than 2 cups of water, because I wanted the milk to be creamy. And then I poured the mixture through a strainer to remove the sesame sludge and date bits. The leftover sludge, however, would go great mixed in with some raw oatmeal.

Note: DON'T use an immersion blender! When I added the dates, I wound up spraying a fine mist of sesame milk over the entire kitchen.