I haven't been feeling so hot this week so I haven't been MoFo'ing. That makes me sad. It's been great, though, that I've been able to read new and awesome vegan blogs... I'm going to update my links at some point so everyone can find each other (I've been adding you to my blogroll, but I'm not so good at it). I'm also entertaining the idea of moving to WordPress because I really like their features and interface... but do you really care my thoughts on blog sites? I didn't think so. On to the food!
At the farmer's market this past weekend, we got these amazing Barhi dates. They're the sweetest and softest of all dates (the ripest ones were nearly liquefied!)... in hindsight, I should have taken pictures for you, since they were still on the branches, and it was awesome. I'm a terrible blogger! But we got a LOT of them (the guy wanted to get rid of his inventory, so we got over a pound for $4!), and just snacking on them was tough because they're just so amazingly sweet.
I've loved those raw date candies with coconut and nuts sold at the natural foods stores for a long time, but never thought to make my own! So I whipped up a dozen of these Barhi date candies with my food processor:
I winged the recipe, but it's pretty straightforward: In a food processor, pulse a cup of walnuts (I used a mix of walnuts and roasted almonds) until breadcrumb-like. Pull the pits out of a cup of Barhi dates and add them to the food processor, mixing well. At this point, I refrigerated the mixture in a bowl overnight, but I am sure an hour or so would have been fine. The dates were so soft, that I needed to firm up the mix a bit, and I was too tired to finish them that night. (Gimp cooking FTW.)
The next day, I rolled walnut-sized balls in unsweetened coconut (I love coconut so i tried to pack as much coconut into them as possible!), and put them in my favorite atomic leftover container to keep in the fridge for a week or so.
Also, my new food discovery is walnut butter! I've been trying to eat more walnuts for the omega fatty acids and the iron content, and we discovered this Artisana raw organic walnut butter. According to the label, it's made locally in Berkeley! I've never gotten into nut butters very much, except for the occasional treat of cashew butter on apples, or almond butter at my parents' house when we visited over the summer. I think they're great, I just don't know how to eat them without ingesting tons and tons of bread and crackers.
I put it on a bagel, but I think it'd be good on apples, carrots, soy crisps, and celery. I think it'd also be good to use in place of peanut butter in recipes, but at $8 for a tiny jar, I don't want to use anything where it's awesomeness will be masked by other ingredients. Still, though, I recommend it. It tastes similar to peanut butter, with a hint of bitterness (much like walnuts themselves, I suppose!).
These great dried apple slices were found at our local farmer's market, too, and they're fantastic. Just a few slices are great, because they're so chewy my jaw gets tired and I don't need to demolish the whole bag, unlike bags of crispy apple slices I've bought in the past, which go down like nothing.
They have lots of seeds, though, so I have to pull them out. Even though it's not technically a serious hazard, apple seeds do contain cyanide.
We broke out the popcorn popper ($5 at Walgreens!) a few nights ago. I've been on a bit of a nutritional yeast kick lately, so I covered a small bowl of it with nutritional yeast, sea salt, black pepper, and paprika. A friend also suggests allspice! Which I'm certainly going to try next time. Parma is delicious on popcorn (and everything else you can imagine), by the way, but I was low on it so I didn't want to smother my popcorn with it. Also, Kuntrageous has an awesome-looking parma recipe I'm going to make very soon!
What are your favorite snacks?
4 comments:
Ooo, those date-coconut balls look pretty! (I love coconut too!)
Wow, apple seeds contain arsenic? I heard they contain cyanide too! Geez. Glad I'm not the only one paranoid about it. I'm going to get a VitaMix, and they say you can just throw the whole fruit in, but I don't know about those seeds!
That is so cool about the walnut butter! I've never even seen it anywhere before.
No, Lindsey, you're right, I just had a foggy moment. (embarrassing!)
Well, supposedly it's such a low level of it, our bodies can process it without toxicity. I wondered about folks who are sensitive to chemicals, tho... I'm not sure anyone should risk it. heh. I always core my apples even though I know people who just eat the core without thinking about it. (Weird!)
I'm excited about your vitamix!! That's awesome. I didn't realize they could do a whole apple! Wow.
Those raw date candies look delicious! Thank you for sharing the recipe, I may need to try those.
im all about spices on pcorn! paprika, cayenne, curry, turmeric....but i will have to try nutritional yeast next time....neat idea.
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