Recipes

I promised, so I'm delivering...  lunch, dinner and dessert.
The idea I had here was to make 2 meals at once - the cucumber/carrot rolls take a little bit of fussing, but then all the leftovers are put together and salted and left in a bowl in the fridge.  Here's the first bit.

You need lettuce, mushroom, avocado, carrot, parsnip, cucumber, red capsicum, lemon juice pesto or nut cheeses/dips and some garnish.

Salad Plate: 

throw some shredded lettuce on a plate, cut an avocado in half and sprinkle it all with salt, pepper and lemon juice.  I put some chilli preserved lemons in the avocado cos I had it in the fridge, but use anything for a taste or textural contrast (nuts, herbs, olives, pickles)

the mushroom caps are stuffed with a cashew capsicum pesto  -  I made a big batch of it and froze a few small ones, it's handy.

Cucumber/carrot rolls:

With vege peeler, cut some long ribbons of cucumber and carrot and lay them on top of each other, with a bit of colour sticking out.

Put a dob of pesto at one end of the ribbon, and lay across some other sliced vegetables - red capsicum and parsnip here, roll it up, and put another dob of pesto on the end to hold it together.  If you sit it on its pesto dobbed bottom for a while it doesn't actually need skewers.

Peel into long ribbons or cut finely the remaining parsnip, carrot, cucumber and red capsicum, add some shredded red cabbage and put in a bowl.  Sprinkle the lot with 1/2 a teaspoon of sea salt and mix it through.  then ignore it until you want dinner or lunch the next day. Then add coriander leaves and make a dressing

 The flavours and textures were so different -the strange looking dressing is a blend of papaya, coconut, miso, lemon juice, a little honey, olive oil and water (actually a left over snack i had frozen).  An alternative delicious dressing is:  Blend half a mango with lemon/lime juice, 1/2 cm ginger and a clove of garlic, sprinkle with nuts and chilli if you like it.  That dressing would look more tantalising on its own than this one did.

Here below is another unattractive looking thing - explains why you don't see "sprouted barley crackers" anywhere, but it makes a great crumbled topping on avocados or thrown into salads in place of croutons - it's almost bready, a bit of sweety meaty and gives substance and texture.

 See? 

OK since we're doing the ugly talk here, you know how you've got to be really careful photographing brown  things? Well...

these are cacao-avocado moussehearts.  

I blitzed up the cocoa crackers from a previous post, added a spoon of coconut oil and turned them into a base for these which looks too ugly to photograph,  here's the recipe:

Raw Cacao Mousse

1 avocado

2 Tablespoons (no more!) of raw cacao powder

1/2 vanilla pod (or 1t extract)

1/2 cup presoaked pitted dates or raisins

variation - for chocmint - add 1/2 T of agave syrup in which you have steeped a bunch of chopped mint leaves.

serve in a bowl with nuts, berries or bananas, mint leaves or just go for it as is.

PS  if you're making bars out of brownish grainyish looking stuff - ie goji energy bars with nuts and dates and things that look undigested, be sure to SQUARE OFF THE ENDS as they look ever so much more appealing like that.  Nobody wants a squashed sausage.