My first attempt at cooking in the raw

"Cooking in the raw" sounds like something they do at a nudist camp. (It kinda cracks me up that "nudist camp" will now be a searchable phrase on my blog, but I assure you I was fully clothed.)

I made a raw blueberry-strawberry cream pie this weekend. I have no photos, but I can tell you that it was delicious and even quite attractive. The "cream" part was made from ground soaked cashews blended with ground dates, honey, vanilla, lemon juice and zest and some coconut oil. I may be leaving something out there; I don't have the recipe with me. I'll have to post exactly what I did, but I took the recipe from Renee Loux's excellent book on raw cooking (oxymoron?) Living Cuisine: The Art and Spirit of Raw Foods.

The raw food diet isn't something I'm interested in adopting exclusively, but I find it interesting (not least because you can make pies and other desserts that are delicious and actually good for you. I had a piece as a morning snack today, and I don't feel the slightest bit guilty - all that good protein and fresh fruit and antioxidants.)

We also (finally) bought a dehydrator. I'd planned on an Excalibur, but they're just more money than I wanted to spend on something that (let's face it) might be a temporary obsession. So I bought this $60 version instead. We used it a lot this weekend, and I'm really quite pleased. I'll be making Renee's pecan sandies this week using the dehydrator.

(Yes, yes, I know. After 4 months of radio silence I'm suddenly back and talking about nudist camps. How often will I be here? Well, we'll see. The plan is to be pretty consistent, but that's always been the plan.)