VeganMoFo: Raw and Cooked

When I opened my cupboards yesterday, I looked up and saw all these brown pouches full of fancy raw superfoods I’d bought awhile ago.  And despite my claim in #24 here, I thought I’d give raw chocolate a go.  I’ve added nibs to smoothies, but apparently all the wrong kinds of smoothies, because I always thought they just added a rather bitter flavor.  I wanted something quick and easy, and a little internet searching brought me to this recipe for Raw Cacao Maca Ice Cream.  Maca root has also not been a favorite flavor of of mine – an extremely earthy malty taste that I could never seem to mask with fruit.  But raw cacao and maca together = supermagic!  This ice cream was amazing, and made me start to think I understood that crazy chocolate love people have.  It gave me a crazy boost of energy (yikes! caffeine!) so it’s nice for a healthier pick-me-up.

I’ve been doing well with most of my mini-goals today: just finished my 8th cup of water, had a quart of DELICIOUS strawberry-mango-spinach green smoothie at work, and dressed real cute, even though I was going to work anyway and wearing cute clothes there is a waste of time.  I’m hoping to be in bed by 11pm tonight, as last night I was closer to my usual midnight hour, and after work tomorrow I’ll be headed to the Y.  While I haven’t written down a meal plan, I decided last night that I was going to tackle a couple of recipes for Terry, which I’ve been really slacking on for awhile.

Lucky for me, I picked a real winner (they’ve all been good, but some I’ve really loved)!  It was Quinoa Roasted Pumpkin Risotto, which has lots of onions, garlic, a roasted poblano pepper (a sub I made), and aji amarillo paste, a condiment which I just picked up at the supermercado down the street today (along with other delightful treats).  When I found the aji amarillo, I was excited to see this bottle of aji rocoto simply because of the amazing packaging and the font spelling out “Inca’s Food” in particular:

Yes, I bought something just based on appearance, which is often my method of choosing wine/alcohol and the way we ended up with a jar of mango pickle that seriously says “Sweet Mango Tit Bits” on the label (yes, I am immature like that sometimes).  Anyway, back to the “quinotto.”

This was both rich and savory while some fresh lime juice and cilantro freshened it up a bit.  A medium-wee bowlful filled me up and made me happy with all its perfect protein goodness and homebaked pumpkin seeds!  I roasted my own pumpkin for this and ended up with quite a bit leftover, so you know what that means… Round two for maple glazed pumpkin cornbread!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 2:42 am. It is filed under Dessert, Veganmofo and tagged with Raw, Test Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.