Super Salad & Cookies

I did something stupid this morning – forgot to put hemp protein powder in my smoothie. I was running a little late and preparing other foods for dinner before running out the door and just forgot. It didn’t dawn on me until mid-morning when I started feeling hungry at work, I also felt a bit light-headed with a mild headache from not having enough protein I guess. Stupid me, a mistake I’ll hopefully not repeat. I felt much better after an awesome lunch, it was a sign that I just happened to have a fresh Portobello mushroom in my fridge when I read Gena’s “steak” recipe last evening, I threw together the marinade and start marinading for lunch today and I served it in slices over a salad topped with Brazil nut “Parmesan” topping and balsamic vinegar as the dressing – a raw “steak” salad that looked better than a restaurant salad.

I’ve never been a huge fan of mushrooms because I was typically served nasty, slimy ones stinking up the house while they were over-cooked … yuck, just the smell made my kid-stomach turn. But I appreciate fresh, gourmet mushrooms much more now that aren’t mushy or slimy. I marinated this one overnight and it tasted great, like a sweeter balsamic pancake with a hint of crisp mushroom flavor – a totally enjoyable way to eat mushrooms!

I pulled off another complicated recipe with my dehydrator this weekend while trapped inside during our fowl weather – macaroon cookies, a variation of a recipe I got from the raw class I went to last week. When sampled in the class, the cookies were awesome, but a bit heavy and sweet, so I wanted to try a lighter version. It did require almond flour which I was determined to make from scratch. I soaked 2 cups of almonds over night, then dehydrated for 24 hours at 115 degrees.

Then I had to whip out the dry blade container for the Vita-Mix and let it chew up the swollen, dried almonds to make something like flour.

It required a couple of stop-n-stirs and a lot of the flour caked around the blade like almond butter requiring a good elbow workout to extract.

Oddly enough, I ended up with about 2 cups of almond flour which I used to concoct coconut macaroons.

• 2 cups almond flour
• 3 cups dried, shredded coconut
• 1/3 cup softened coconut oil
• 1/3 cup agave nectar

Blend mixture thoroughly in a bowl.

Place dough clumps on non-stick dehydrator sheet and dry for 12 – 24 hours until desired texture, I did 12 to keep them chewy.

The finished product was very tasty, not as sweet, uniform or heavy as the ones I tasted in the class that called for double the coconut oil and agave nectar. These are sweet, coconut-almond butter patties and were a hit.

But the almond flour was a time consuming pain for me, I think I’ll use almond pulp next time since I’m regularly making and freezing that with nut milks.