Sunday, April 28, 2013

Visitor in the garden....

A cute little turtle from the lake was crawling through our garden this morning.    We went searching online to figure out exactly what type of turtle it is and we think it is a Florida Redbelly Cooter.
What do you think?


Sunday, April 21, 2013

Pea Shelling Saturday


Look at all the beautiful snow peas we harvested from the garden yesterday!  Looks like we will be making lots of tofu muttar in the next few weeks.  These are really good raw, on top of a salad too!




Friday, April 19, 2013

Blueberry Buckwheat Mini Parfaits with Vanilla Creme

As mentioned in a previous post, we are cooking out of "Crazy Sexy Kitchen" this month, and I am loving it so far.  These lovely little treats were inspired by the "Mango-Raspberry Parfait with Vanilla Creme" on page 103.

Because I am a freak about overconsuming even "good fats", I decided that we would make the recipe into mini parfaits since the Vanilla Creme is made entirely from raw cashews and coconut milk.  Yummy yes, but OMG, it's like 90% fat!  

You only need to remember to soak your groats and cashews the night before and then you can bake the "groat crunchies" in an oven at low temperature in the morning. Not using a dehydrator makes this so much faster, and because of that you can eat them first thing in the morning for breakfast or for an after lunch treat. 

Serves 4
6oz container blueberries
1 cup cashews soaked in water overnight
2 raw medjool dates soaked in water overnight (or 2 tbsp of Agave Nectar)
1 tsp Vanilla Extract or Vanilla Bean paste
1/2 13 oz can Thai coconut milk
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup raw buckwheat groats soaked in 3 cups water overnight
1/8 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon


1. Prepare the Vanilla Creme
Blend all creme ingredients in a blender- cashews, coconut milk, date, vanilla, water. Scrape the sides of the blender with a rubber spatula while blending to ensure that the creme is silky smooth.  Place in refrigerator while preparing buckwheat crunchies.

2. Prepare Buckwheat Crunchies
Rinse soaked buckwheat well and toss with cinnamon and sea salt.  Spread out thin over a tray.  I used a flat strainer tray so the buckwheat would cook on both sides.  This was something I bought in India and I have no idea if you can find anything like it here.  I used a convection toaster oven that allows me to set the cooking temp to as low as 75 degrees!  Since I wanted to get this done somewhat quickly I chose to cook at 150 degrees for 1 hour.  You could probably raise the heat to 250 to save time, maybe it will finish in 30 minutes at that temp.  Either way, make sure you stir the buckwheat around at least once to make sure it cooks evenly.


3. Assemble Parfaits
When the buckwheat is done you can now take out your vanilla creme and start pouring it into your glasses.  I used small wide mouth mason jars.  Toss your crunchies and blueberries on top and you are good to go!