Fruit Sweetened Almond Mylk Ice Cream - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 3

Into the third day of Vegan MoFo. For the past two days, I've been suspended in a state of perpetual hunger. Oh how the grumbling in my tummy competed with the rumbling in the skies! Yeah, the weather we've had here for the past two evenings has been matching the exact parallel I wanted to draw for you to describe my tummy sounds. :oP

For the first two days I made the terrible mistake of visiting fellow MoFo bloggers' spaces first thing in the morning, before breakfast. Today I've become smarter. My blog hopping has begun right after a heavy, filling brunch. And I've additionally equipped myself with cherry tomatoes and bourbon biscuits to pop into my mouth at the very first signs of any cravings.

So phooo, you evil Buffalo Tempeh Wraps and Sourdough Gingerbread, you don't have any power over me! Ain't no Vegan Mac and Cheese or Apple and Blackberry Pie gonna give me the munchies. Humph!

*Pops a tomato into mouth* *munch* *munch* *munch*

Today I have my *first* raw dessert recipe for the month. Yes, of course there will be more desserts! Whose blog do you think you're visiting? :D

This is an ice cream made with a base of thick almond mylk and soaked dry fruits. Raw ice creams tend to be lighter and therefore a tiny bit on the icy side rather than smooth and creamy like their cooked counterparts. But they are super delicious, not to mention easy to make and bursting with all the nutrients of the nuts and fruits. So you can have the whole batch of ice cream in one sitting with absolutely no guilt. :)

To make thick almond mylk, follow the steps in this Almond Mylk tutorial. Except, start with 1 C of dry almonds and after they've been soaked and rinsed, blend them with only 3 cups of clean, filtered water (usually the almond to water ratio is 1:6 to make regular almond mylk).

Fruit Sweetened Almond Mylk Ice Cream

4 C Thick Almond Mylk
25-30 Seedless Dates
1/4 C Raisins
Pinch of Salt

* Soak the dates and raisins in clean, filtered water overnight.
* Blend the soaked dates and raisins with their soaking water.
* Pour in the thick almond mylk, add a pinch of salt and blend well.
* Cover and chill in the fridge for a day.

* If you have an ice cream maker, follow the instructions provided in the manual and freeze the chilled almond mixture in it.
* Then pour into an airtight jar and freeze for two more hours before serving.

* If you don't have an ice cream maker, then freeze the chilled almond mixture in an airtight jar for an hour.
* Transfer to a blender and blend well.
* Freeze for another hour.
* Blend once again.
* Follow this freeze-blend-freeze procedure four to five times.
* After the final blend, freeze for two hours and serve.

* You can drizzle agave nectar or jaggery syrup (not raw but soooo yummy) over the ice cream if you like.
* Enjoy! :)

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By the way, Happy First Annual International Day of Kale! If I had access to Kale, I'd have definitely created a recipe with it for today but since I don't (yet), here's a photo of the first baby kale plant that's sprouted in my kitchen garden right now. Isn't she a cutie pie? :) I can't wait to have fresh, organic kale leaves to harvest soon!

Have a wonderful day! :) I'm off to visit more Vegan MoFo blogs now.

Healthy Green Smoothie - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 2

Here we are on day two of the Vegan Month of Food. Yesterday I shared a HowDo about making Raw Almond Mylk because it's delicious, healthy and an ingredient that is often used in the preparation of raw food dishes.

I'm going to be featuring raw vegan recipes here throughout September. If you'd like to be notified about my blog posts, subscribe to my blog by submitting your email address in the "Follow by Email" box in the right hand column, just under the Vegan MoFo icon.

I'd also love to connect with you on my Veganosaurus Facebook Page, Instagram and Twitter.

I'd like to thank everyone who has been watching my HowDo videos and encouraging me to make more of them. They're definitely going to be incorporated into many of my Vegan MoFo posts this month to make the recipes more interesting, fun and easy to follow.

In some cases I'll have a HowDo video as well as a text version of the recipe. But for easy, simple recipes where it's more about the method and not the recipe itself, I feel typing out the recipe isn't necessary. In those cases I'll just embed the HowDo clip here and save myself some time and effort. ;)

Today I have a basic Healthy Green Smoothie recipe to share. Pretty much everyone makes smoothies these days, so a smoothie recipe is nothing novel. But a month of raw food recipes just doesn't seem complete without at least one or two smoothies in there. :)

The recipe below features my favourite components that go into most of my smoothies. Of course, you can switch around the ingredients and tweak the quantities to your liking because it's a very, very adaptable recipe. If you can get your hands on Cooking Camphor aka Pachha Karpura, I highly recommend you adding a tiny pinch of it into all your smoothies. Takes things to a whole new level of yum!

Once again, the recipe is in the form of a step-by-step HowDo micro guide. Enjoy! :)

Raw Almond Mylk - Vegan MoFo 2013 Day 1

Happy MoFo to you
Happy MoFo to yooooou
Happy MoFo, happy MoFo
HaPPy MooooFoooo toooooo yoooooooooou

Welcome to the Vegan Month of Food 2013 everyone! If you didn't already guess, the Happy MoFo song is sung to the tune of the Happy Birthday song. :D

Throughout the month of September, I'll be sharing recipes for Raw Vegan Foods here on my blog. It's been a good challenge for me, pushing myself to create completely raw recipes. I have put together a bunch of dishes over the past couple of weeks and I'm really happy and excited to be sharing them with you over the coming days. I still need to create many more recipes so that I can do at least twenty and possibly thirty blog posts this month.

So far, all the recipes I've concocted are 100% raw and I'm very proud of that. Down the line, there's a chance I might cheat a bit here and there and use one or two non-raw ingredients. But I will ensure that even those recipes are at least 80% raw.

I'm going to focus on using primarily local ingredients in my recipes so that people in India can attempt raw, vegan foods with what is easily accessible to them. I will occasionally indulge in speciality raw food products that might not be available in India. When I do, I'll share links so you can order them online and import them if you wish to do so.

Now that the intro is over, let's go to my first recipe offering for Vegan Mofo 2013! :)

I thought I'd cover the basics first. Since I'll be using Almond Mylk, in a couple of recipes later, I figured I'd start off by sharing a simple, step-by-step micro tutorial on making Raw Almond Mylk.

Enjoy! :)



See you back here tomorrow. I'm off to blog hop now and check out all the amazing recipes that everyone else has posted on Day 1 of Vegan MoFo 2013. :)

Balsamic Thyme Baby Potatoes and Preparing for Vegan MoFo 2013

It's looming and I'm going crazy! Yes, it's that time of the year again. The time to freak out and go nuts because yet again I've committed to blogging about vegan food every day (or at least every weekday) of the month for a whole month.

Vegan MoFo 2013 is in September this year, folks. And guess what, *someone* decided that the stress of daily blogging just wouldn't be enough. Yep! I had to go and add a challenge into the mix. I'm doing a RAW VEGAN FOOD theme this year.

My hubby is partly to blame for this because *he* was the one who was like, "oooooh why don't you do a smoothie for every day of Vegan Mofo?" And since the raw food idea was already in my head, all I needed was his oh so helpful suggestion to make me believe creating 20-30 raw food recipes in a short span of time would be a super bright idea. So I replied, "yeah, totally! Smoothies are a great idea and instead of just smoothies, I'll do all kinds of raw foods." And before I knew it, wheeee I was signing up for Vegan MoFo and typing out my theme as Raw Vegan Food.

So now you know why my blog's been recipe-less for a couple of weeks now. I've been so busy thinking up recipes for next month that I just haven't been able to share my non MoFo recipes with you here.

Today I thought, before the excitement and the mad rush and the sheer awesomeness of Vegan MoFo begins and takes over my blog, I'd better drop in here and give you all an update. And while I'm at it, here's a nice baked baby potatoes recipe I made recently.

Balsamic Thyme Baby Potatoes

1/2 kg Baby Potatoes

Marinade ingredients:
2 T Balsamic Vinegar
3 T Nutritional Yeast
1/4 tsp Jaggery Syrup
1 tsp Tabasco Sauce
1 tsp Coconut Oil
Thyme
Salt

Optional for drizzling:
Tabasco Chipotle Sauce (which I very lovingly refer to as "glug glug")

* Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a rolling boil.
* Wash and scrub the potatoes well.
* Pierce them all over with a fork.
* Drop them into the boiling water and cook for about 10 minutes.
* Drain and keep aside.

* Meanwhile, whisk all the marinade ingredients together.
* Toss the baby potatoes in the marinade, cover and allow to soak in the flavours for 6-8 hours.

* Line a baking tray with aluminium foil or wax paper.
* Pick the potatoes out of the marinade and arrange them on the baking tray (save the remaining marinade liquid).
* Pre-heat oven to 200°C / 400°F.
* Bake the potatoes for 30 minutes.
* Increase the heat to 250°C / 450°F and bake for another 15 minutes.

* Serve the potatoes hot, drizzled with some of the marinade liquid and Tabasco Chipotle Sauce.
* Enjoy! :)

Announcing the winners of the Krya Vegan Challenge and Giveaway

Last month, I hosted a giveaway for Krya's products here. Two people entered and they are going to receive these awesome Krya goodies - Krya Natural Detergent and Krya Natural Dishwash. The rest of you people who were too lazy to enter, you can go ahead and feel very jealous now. :D

Congrats Gina Vijaykumar and Logasaraswathy Kathiresan! :)

Thank you so much for entering, Logasaraswathy and Gina. Please send your mailing address with a link to this blog post to Preethi at goodies@krya.in and she will send you your prize packs. Enjoy! :)

Here are the entries:

Gina, who is not vegan, shared her completely vegan meal and her thoughts on vegan food:

"This was our simple Sunday lunch of mixed veg fried rice with lobia curry. Vegan meals are much lighter on the system - you do not feel bloated or sluggish. We enjoyed our meal sans animal products. We are vegan a couple of days a week. Today is one of those days :)"



Logasaraswathy, who is a vegan, entered the challenge with two recipes she tried from my blog:

1. Vegan Very Vanilla Cake



2. Vegan 'Rasmalai'



This is what she had to say:

"The 'Rasmalai' is not 'raw' in my recipe, as I had added sugar. I will surely try it with agave nectar soon!

Why I feel, I should win this prize?
Because (just two reasons!)
1. Apart from being Vegan, I'm trying my best to be Eco-friendly, by buying and using organic products; and also trying to minimize my wants. I'm a regular customer of Krya.
2. I'm a regular visitor of both the Blogs - Veganosaurus & Krya!"