Dehydrated Papaya Squares Recipe

Woot, I’ve made it past the halfway point for this week! Something to celebrate, right? I feel like I’m dragging this week partly due to being gypped last weekend stuck inside with yucky weather. I’m bad when stuck inside, I always feel a drive to be productive and make the most of the time tackling house projects and not relaxing. And I’m just craving warm weather, sunshine and a change of scenery here hoping this weekend will be nice for some sort of outdoor activity. I woke up this morning with my insides on the fritz. Not totally sure why, maybe a couple of days of maca powder in my smoothies is catching up to me or too many raw veggies for dinner last night, maybe stress and the weather. Either way, I was not a happy camper and decided to take it a bit easy today and give my digestive system a rest.

Breakfast was my usual green monster smoothie with hemp protein powder, sprouts, mixed greens, carrot and two small oranges. I added more water to make it less gloppy and easier to drink.

I sipped a Kombucha at my desk right before lunch and it really did sooth my stomach taming the, uh, anger. I could see it being helpful during a juice detox – not that I’m planning to try one anytime soon!

For lunch I did a simple salad of spinach, red bell pepper, sprouts and Annie’s Organic Shitake dressing with a piece of hemp seed bread and cashew cheese and grapes. Filling, but not bloating or too intensive to digest.

That didn’t hold me and I ended up snacking on the small apple and orange I packed for emergency snacks in the afternoon.

I tried to keep dinner simple as well and as much as I love raw broccoli, it can be tough when you’re digestive system is not feeling 100% and I was craving something warm, so I created a steamed broccoli and carrot dish with a creamy hemp seed/zucchini sauce.

It actually came out very good, creamy and smooth thanks to pureeing the zucchini hemp seed sauce extra long in the Vita-Mix. Hubby was not as huge a fan as me though. :-P

On my last shopping trip to Trader Joe’s, I impulsed bought this.

A papaya. I like dried papaya, but the store bought stuff is typically waxy and too chewy, lacking in flavor. So I decided to experiment with this one to create dried papaya squares.

They were good, soft and moist, but still held together nicely and weren’t overly sweet – but still sweeter than store bought dried papaya. Being pureed with flax seeds makes them much easier to eat, not overly chewy at all. It’s a simple healthy snack that does not require too much time to dehydrate.