Wednesday 31 October 2012

Happy Halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN
 
Check out the FABULOUS Russell James at: Russell James The Raw Chef and get your free recipe's.



Halloween Cookies

For the cookie biscuit
1 cup walnuts*
1 cup pecans*
1 cup brazil nuts
1 cup raw oats
15 dried soft apricots, soaked 2hrs+ and diced
3/4 cup lucuma
1/2 cup raisins
Pinch salt
2 tsp mixed spice**
2 tsp orange juice

*I like to soak the nuts for 4 hours, then dehydrate them, before using in the recipe, to make them lighter and easier to digest.

**Mixed spice varies, depending on country and brand. If you have pumpkin spice, use that. Or you can use the following recipe to make your own mixed spice:
1 tbsp cinnamon, ground
1 tsp coriander, ground
1 tsp nutmeg, ground
1/2 tsp ginger, ground
1/4 tsp allspice, ground
1/4 tsp cloves, ground

Grind the nuts in a food processor until a flour forms.
Blend the oats into a flour in a high-speed blender.
With the ground nuts in the processor, add the oat flour and start to process again, adding a few apricots at a time until the mixture binds together. If it’s not binding you can add some of the apricot soak water too.

Roll out the mixture on a flat surface to the desired thickness. If mixture sticks, mill some more oats to dust the rolling pin and rolling surface with.
Using a cookie cutter, cut the cookies from the rolled out dough.
You will need to re-form and re-roll the left-over dough to get the most from it.
Dehydrate cookies on a mesh sheet for 10 to 12 hours at 115 degrees F.

Green Icing
1/2 cup chopped cacao butter, melted
1 cup cashews
1/2 cup spinach juice
2 tablespoons xylitol
Pinch salt

Orange Icing
1/2 cup chopped cacao butter, melted
1 cup cashews
1/2 cup carrot juice
2 tablespoons xylitol
Pinch salt

Blend all ingredients except the cacao butter in a Vita-Mix or other high-speed blender until smooth.
Add the cacao butter and blend again just long enough to mix it in.
Transfer mixture to a piping bag and leave in the fridge long enough for it to set a little. Decorate cookies.
Place cookies in the fridge to let the icing set.


PUMPKIN PIE CHEESECAKE
 

 

Makes one 7” cheesecake

Crust
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup pecans
1/4 cup oat flour
2 tbsp coconut sugar
1/2 tsp lemon juice
3 tbsp coconut oil

Grind all ingredients in a food processor.
Press into the cheesecake mould or moulds.

Filling
1 3/4 cups cultured cashews
1 cup diced pumpkin flesh
3/4 cup carrot juice
1/4 cup honey or coconut nectar
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp lecithin
Pinch salt
1 vanilla pod scrapings
1/2 cup melted coconut butter
1 tsp mixed spice*

*If you can’t get mixed spice, use pumpkin spice or refer to mixed spice recipe here.

Blend all ingredients in a high-speed blender until smooth.
Pour over base.
Set in fridge and allow to set for 4+ hours, preferably overnight.
Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

*UPDATE*

I had to come back to post pictures of our Halloween Grandbabies. We have 4 Grandchildren but the youngest, Jaydon was asleep in his buggy. Here are picture's of 3 of our Grandbabies.

 3 of our Grandchildren.
 
 Our eldest grandaughter, Ebony.

 Our middle Grandaughter, Ellie.

Our eldest Grandson, Michael

Sunday 28 October 2012

My New Kitchen

We have actually started laying the flooring in the kitchen..WooHoo! Also the under cupboard lights are now installed, well, except one which is at the other side of the kitchen, so we will get to that light as we get over that side of the floor.

My Mam and step Dad visited this morning to try to help with the cutting of the tiles, my step Dad brought his Exact Saw but we had already bought an electric tile cutter yesterday so all is well as far as tile cutting is concerned. My hubby LOVES his new tile cutter!!

I managed to get into my kitchen...ONLY JUST to make an evening meal and set the dishwasher away but that was it, the kitchen is so much out of use but the work should be considerably further on in the week, can't wait!!
We decided to do the kitchen before doing our bedroom next because I want the kitchen finished before our next big grocery shop...made sense to me.

I know that I still need to take some pics and upload them, I haven't forgot.

Well, that is me for today but I will be back tomorrow.

Saturday 27 October 2012

Busy Blog...

At the moment, not a lot of raw foodism going on, trying though but I can't get into my kitchen....BooHoo.
We took my Mam and step Dad to JTF Wholesalers today, we needed to buy a tile adhesive spreader. We didn't get a lot of kitchen flooring done today, a day wasted but when we got home we decided to start only to waste a tile trying to cut it with a push tile cutter...grrr so my hubby went to B&Q to purchase an electric tile cutter, it is the only thing that is going to cut floor tiles. Tomorrow we are getting up and getting on to try and get some flooring done.....I need to be able to use my kitchen, I can't even get to my fridge/freezer.
James' bedroom is done, he is THRILLED to bits with it!! Except I do still need to buy him a new light shade. We were going to do our bedroom before the kitchen but we have decided to get the kitchen over and done with. After the kitchen is finished we are then going to get our bedroom done and then paint Adams bedroom and the stairs and landing, then  it is onto the front gates then insulating the loft.
My house is such a mess with all the work going on....I don't like mess! It will be great when everything is done, it's worth the mess to improve things!

Oh! We had snow last night...we were cozy in the house. The clocks go back tonight

I will be back tomorrow even if it is to report how the work is coming along.

Sunday 21 October 2012

Oh My!

Well the back garden fence post is finally done so I don't need to worry about the wind blowing it down now, such a relief! It was one of those jobs that we kept putting off...always something better to buy or do...or so we thought until we just decided to get on with things.
James' bedroom is skimmed and is now being painted....WOW!  It is starting to look GREAT! Fresh and bright!
We have now also got the kitchen floor tiles which are a GORGEOUS light colour, brand new, in the boxes off my Mam, my Mam and step Dad couldn't be bothered with the hassle of laying them in their kitchen so gave them to us, THANKYOU BOTH!!....WooHoo! This house is going to be SOO bright and fresh looking when it is completely done. We have been re-vamping and re-newing things in our home since 2007 which started with our back garden which involved hiring 4 skips which we filled with soil that was at the top of our garden so now our garden is flat and since then we have been re-vamping loads on and off.

I am going to struggle with meal preparing when we are fitting the kitchen floor tiles because we are taking the base units out to tile from wall to wall and then when that is done we will put the base units back in and then install the under cupboard lights and tile the walls under the cupboards so I wont be able to use my kitchen much at all whilst that work is being done.....ummm After James' bedroom is done we are then going to get straight on with our bedroom and then the kitchen, at least I have a few weeks before my kitchen is out of service.
After this work is done then all my home is skimmed or tiled so in future it wont involve so much mess and work, all it will involve is a lick of paint...phew! Oh! Except I am going to have to have the stair and landing carpet replaced but I might leave that until sometime next year, need to save some more money up I think.

Back later.

Sunday 14 October 2012

We Are SOOO.....

Busy! We have been buying things to get James' and our bedrooms re-vamped i.e. skimming plaster, new carpets etc. We have also bought rather heavy and thick wooden posts to strengthen our fence in the back garden and to make new posts for our front garden gate, my husband is going to alter our front iron gates to make them larger to keep the local kids out of our property...WoooHooo
I also bought the tiles for the kitchen for under our kitchen wall cupboards, and new under cupboard lights. I have bought a chair for my living room that will match my settee and footstool because when we got our settee and footstool we didn't buy the chair, we just used our old chair with a matching throw over it, I hate throws so I decided to take the plunge and buy the matching chair, it wont be delivered for a little while yet but I'm sure it will be worth it because it will make the living room look fab!
We went out today to a wholesalers and bought a new pre-lit Christmas tree, it was a great price, 7ft pre-lit Christmas tree for £119.99 pretty good price and the tree is so realistic and full, not like my old tree which is now 20+ years old and has become more sparse over the years, a new tree was definitely on our Christmas list.
I also bought a few other bits and pieces over these last few days, a new floor steamer, my other steamer broke, a soup maker for the family, a dust buster hand held vacuum for those little places and also to vacuum all the little bits that are difficult to get to i.e. in my dehydrator, my dehydrator gets quite bitty and can be awkward to get all the little bits from the corners...problem solved now.
we have also done quite a bit of Christmas shopping. So, as you can tell we have had a good ole spending spree.
I received my order from Raw Living last week, I love receiving orders from Raw Living!

I will take pics of everything over the next few days and post them on here, so watch out for those!

We are busy doing James' bedroom which we are hoping to have finished by next weekend, I hope so because the house is a mess and everything out of James' bedroom is piled anywhere and everywhere but I am going to have to sort things out because we have booked our annual gas boiler service and the guy is coming on Tuesday, so I am going to have to make some room for him to get near the boiler; the boiler is in a big cupboard in our bedroom, that was the only place that it could be put when we had it installed which is rather inconvenient for us and the gas engineer has to go into our bedroom to service it...not happy about that but needs must.

My Mam and step Dad wanted us to go around for lunch today but my husband just wants to get on with the work around here. My Mam has given us a load of floor tiles so we are going to get those layed at some point...more work but always good to improve things. We have laminate flooring on our kitchen floor but the floor tiles will be much nicer I feel! They are a beige colour and are GORGEOUS!! And they will match my wall tiles.

My raw is a tad erratic with everything going on at the moment but I am sticking and doing as well as I can, actually I haven't been eating as much lately, probably because we have been in and out of the house a lot lately trying to get the house nice and ready for Christmas, I think the work will be done in time.

I done a big grocery shop at Costco last week so I am once again stocked up on the fruit and veg! LOVE IT!

Well, that is it for today so I am going to get on with the evening meal and start to think about winding down the day and watching TV in bed.

Back tomorrow.

Tuesday 2 October 2012

Rawctober

I am calling the month of October, Rawctober...it's fun!

I am doing Mrsleafygreens 21 day challenge starting today, 2 October 2012

I am going to start my day off with a banana and strawberry smoothie.