I’m Laura-Jane from therawtarian.com and today, I’m addressing another one of my most frequently asked questions. I’ll get a ton of email and I have a tiny Word document that has a few things that I cut and paste like oh, you want to know about this? Blank. And then I cut and paste it and that I have a few things, and this is one of them.

It’s like do I need to soak my nuts and seeds is a most frequently asked question. And the question is, the answer rather, is it depends.

In my raw food recipes, if I explicitly state in the simple instructions, if I say you must soak your seeds for 2 hours—and I’m banging on my fist like this when I do it—it means yes. You do need to soak. If I do not mention it, then you do not need to soak. Occasionally, it would be optional. Here’s an example.

I have a raw cheesecake recipe available on therawtarian.com. It’s one of my most popular recipes. And in that recipe, I specifically state for the cheesecake filing, I will say if your blender Is very crappy like a $25 blender from Target and it doesn’t blend things very well, you may want to soak your nuts for half an hour to soften them. So that would be an occasional thing I might state as well.

But let’s take a step back and talk about the big picture of soaking your nuts. Some raw food gurus will say that you must always soak your nuts. And what you should do is come home, soak your nuts a few times, rinse them off, dehydrate all of your nuts, and then store them. And let’s just say I don’t agree with that.

A)I think it’s overly complicated.

B)I’m a bit confused why you’re soaking them to get rid of the enzyme inhibitors, and I’ll talk about that in a second. But if you’re going to soak them to make them more digestible and moist, then why are we dehydrating them to take all the water out as well? 

So it’s a lot of steps for very little payoff. But one good reason that I do agree with about soaking your nuts in advance, and I’ll talk about it with these beautiful walnuts that I have here today.

I have 1 cup that’s been soaking probably for just half an hour, and let’s pretend I was gonna make my raw walnut pate which is a very tasty one kind of like a savory spread to paste on cucumber rounds. Things like that. So I might tell you to soak your nuts in that recipe. 

And one of the reasons that we soak them is because nuts and seeds are made to grow. They are amazing. They have a protective coating called an enzyme inhibitor that basically means that when they’re sitting just like this, that they aren’t trying to grow. They actually need water to start to sprout. And even if you’ve ever sprouted alfalfa seeds, you will know that in order to get them to sprout, you need to soak them and let them dry out a little bit and soak them and let them dry out. And that is because there’s a coating on the nuts or seeds called the enzyme inhibitor that means until that coating is washed away, they’re not going to grow.

I know I’m rambling, but I will get to a point. So what I’ve done here is soak these seeds, nuts rather, for about half an hour, and that’s probably about long enough to remove that protective coating. So what I would normally do if I was making that walnut pate for example and I don’t know why I filled this bowl so full, I’m just going to dump the water out. And you could use a strainer if you need to, but I don’t know. I’m just going to dump them out. And I should have shown you the water, but the water was a little bit murky. It was a little bit tan in color because it’s removing that enzyme inhibitor and it actually comes out in the water.

But then what you want to do again is just get them wet again and rinse again. And you know I might do it. It’s easy quickly. Just a couple of times. And then we could say that these nuts  have been soaked and probably the majority of that enzyme inhibitor coating has been removed, which is great because we don’t—it’s better for you if the enzyme inhibitor has been removed.

But what it’s also done which is nice about soaking your nuts is that it does make them easier to digest. So if you have a sensitive stomach and you do find nuts give you a bit of an upset stomach, then soaking can be a good idea.

So that’s how you soak. But again, how do you when to soak and when not to soak?

Generally, I don’t soak. So these are dry walnuts. And an example here, I’ve just got a salad and I just threw some walnuts on it and I didn’t bother soaking them. I certainly could have because you could use these in the salad as well, but it depends on your level of commitment. Your practicality.

For example, I could tell you, you must only eat organic produce. 100%. That’s all you should eat. Okay, that would be nice. That would be better. Sure, we should all eat 100% organic produce, but is that practical? Can you find organic produce in your area? Can you afford it for all of the fresh fruits and vegetables that you eat? I can’t. So I think it’s important to pick and choose your battles.

So when it comes to my recipes at therawtarian.com, I know that was a long answer. Really, just if I don’t state that you need to do it, don’t worry about it and don’t soak. If I tell you that you must soak, I’m always very clear about it and I’ll explain why.

Sometimes, you need to soak so that it’s going to be easier to blend or process up. So yeah, that was kind of a long winded answer from me about whether or not to soak, and I hope that’s been helpful for you. 

And again, really just choose something that’s going to work for you and for me in my life to make sure I could stay raw for probably almost 5 years, 4 years, 4 ½ years was that I didn’t put so much pressure on myself to be perfect. I decided well, you know, I’m not going to soak all my seeds and then dehydrate them for 12 hours before eating because I don’t have time for that. So pick your battles. And thank you so much for joining me. 

I’m The Rawtarian from therawtarian.com, where I share simple, satisfying raw food recipes, and I thank you for being here and I hope to hear from you soon.

Hi. I’m Laura-Jane The Rawtarian from therawtarian.com and this is just a quick video to answer one of your most frequently asked questions which is regarding food processors and blenders and do you really need them both. So what I’m going to give you is the overall scoop if you’re going raw and what you need. So, clearly, number 1, if you are trying to go raw today and in your kitchen you have absolutely nothing, well then you’re just going to have your cutting board and knife and you’re going to be good to go. But realistically, we want you to take the next step which would be to get a blender and/or a food processor. Now clearly, I would recommend you to get both of those things on day 1. They don’t have to be expensive. You’ll know that I’m a huge fan of a high speed blender called the Vitamix and definitely that’s going to be your long term solution is to get an amazing blender but just getting started, just use any blender that you can get. So basically, what I would suggest to start off with is to get one blender and one food processor on day 1. Either of those things don’t have to be too expensive. A food processor could be around $50 and a blender could be around even as low as $25. Now the quality is definitely going to vary especially in the blender.

But why do you need both of those things? Don’t they do the same thing? They both have blades. Well, what I like to use to explain it is this smoothie. See how the smoothie is very liquidy and it is very moist? Well, a blender is what you’re going to use to make things that are very liquidy for lack of a more technical term, whereas a food processor, you’re going to use that to make things that are drier or more dry. So that may be a pie crust. That might be a cracker batter. A variety of things like that. So that’s why I want you to get both of those things right away so you can make smoothies and soups and sauces and pudding in your blende. And in your food processor, you can make raw food recipes like, as I mentioned, pie crust, brownies, cracker batter. What else do I use in my food processor? A whole whack of things. I also make some chunkier spaghetti sauces or salsas and things like that in my food processor. So that is really what I would suggest you would start with.

Now one thing you may notice if you’re interested in raw food is that I did not necessarily suggest you get a dehydrator. So in some more complex dehydrator recipes, you will—sorry. In some more complex raw food recipes, you will notice that they’re calling for a dehydrator which essentially just dries out the food so that you can take up really wet—whoops, my lemon!—a really wet veggie burger patty and then pop it in the dehydrator, and it will get all the moisture removed from the patty so it’s going to be nice and dry and get that texture that you might really miss like cracker texture or pizza crust texture. Dehydrating and a dehydrator is an additional expenditure which you may not be up for. But number 2, I definitely suggest you hold off on dehydrating until you have tried tons of recipes in your food processor and your blender and really only add the dehydrator when you are just so sick of having hundreds of smoothies because you may have on every morning so hundreds can add up fast. So for example, with me, I got a blender first, for sure. A crappy little one. And I burnt that one out really quickly. The motor died because I was using it multiple times per day. Then soon after, I definitely got a food processor. But then I think for me, about 6 months later, I upgraded and got the Vitamix which was very expensive but totally worth it because it can pulverize an avocado seed into a drinkable drink. But then I didn’t get a dehydrator probably maybe until—I can’t remember exactly—it was probably in 2009. After the Vitamix, I believe. So maybe 8 months after I’ve been totally raw. And I think that transition is good because I got really used to using my food processor, using my blender, and then later I was able to add more excitement into my raw food recipes by using my dehydrator.

So that’s a general overview of some equipment and the order that you should get them in. but if you’re just watching this and you’re just staring out today, I want to encourage you to just use whatever you have in your kitchen. So frequently, I’ve got a ton of different recipes at my website at therawtarian.com and it’ll clearly tell you which piece of equipment to use and just use whatever you’ve got on hand today but makes plans to upgrade in the future.

So thank you so much for joining me. I look forward to seeing over at therawtarian.com and I’m really appreciative of having you here. So have a wonderful day.

Hi. I’m Laura-Jane The Rawtarian from therawtarian.com and today, we’re going to make super simple raw vegan recipe called raw white chocolate bars and it’s actually just made from very simple ingredients predominantly dried shredded white coconut, a little bit of pure vanilla extract, some sea salt, and some maple syrup or your favorite sweetener. So the general concept of what we’re going to do is process all of these things. We’re going to then—and that really is going to constitute white chocolate right there. It is made from coconut but definitely has that real nice white chocolate flavor. Then we’re going to put it into these silicone chocolate molds, but if you don’t have these, you can absolutely use a big pan or put it down into a big cookie sheet and make a big bar of chocolate too. So without any further ado, we are going to get started. And the first thing that we’re gonna do is put all of our coconut into the food processor. Now I have a lot of raw recipes at therawtarian.com and I don’t have videos for all of them, but this recipe I really wanted to make for you to share it with you so that you can see how it’s done because I had a lot of people asking me about this part right here. And I’m going to show you the whole thing because people were thinking this is so dry. Don’t we need to add liquid? But really the instruction is simply to process it and don’t add anything. It’s going to take quite a while but as you’ll see as we do it, you don’t need to add any liquid and it’s going to become a very—this is a weird word to use when thinking about chocolate—but almost like humus. So just be patient and we’ll do it together.

At this point, it’s just starting to stick together a little bit so we got to keep going for quite a while. So what you’re going to want to do is to let it run and we’ll keep going.

I just normally I wouldn’t be stopping it but I just want to keep saying hi, we’re still going!

So it still has a ways to go. It’s starting to stick together a little bit, but it takes a while so we just keep going and maybe we will speed this up for you.

Okay, this does definitely take a long time so it’s really getting there. I don’t know if you can see this. I’ll bring a piece out. It’s gotten quite moist and oily. We’re going to let it go a little bit longer but as I’ve got this open, I’m going to add—and I didn’t tell you in what I was mouthing to earlier—we had 3 cups of coconut. This is a ¼ cup of maple syrup. You can use agave nectar or anything else that you like as a sweetener. Honey. A variety of things. This is a 1/8 of a teaspoon of Celtic sea salt, and this is the 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract. So we’re definitely getting close and we’re going to finish it up right here.

Still not quite ready but very, very close. I just want to mix it up because sometimes when you’re food processing, the ingredients tend to stick to the sides.

I’m willing to say that this is very close to being done. Totally, it’s great. Is it steaming? I see steam. So we’re done with the food processor. Essentially we’re done now. All we’re going to be doing is putting those to the side. Not sure if you can see this up close. Maybe I’m going to transfer it to this bowl here. So just to show you, it almost looks like if you’ve ever made shortbread, you know, standard American diet shortbread, it kind of has this really buttery, kind of oily feeling. If I stick it together, see how it’s completely—like it’s released a lot of oils. As you can see, my hands are quite oily and it’s totally going to stick together. So this would be easier if we’re making it in just big cookie sheet, even as a big sheet, but it’s definitely more fun to use these molds, and you’re just going to push in your mixture into the molds. It’s a little time consuming with these molds. You don’t have to use such tiny ones, but I love to use these ones because they really create individual bite sized pieces that are really nice as snack s to keep in your freezer. And what else do I like about them? Oh well, just the fact that they have this really nice indentation which I’ll show you in the end that really makes it look like a nice chocolate treat. So what I’m going to do here is I’m going to fill up the molds by myself and then I’m going to be just popping them in the freezer exactly like this in this silicone mold for I would say a minimum of 2 hours and then you’re going to leave it in the freezer as long as you like so you can’t overfreeze them. Don’t worry if you’re making these and then going to bed or something. So what I’m going to do is fill the rest of the molds up and then I’m going to come back in 2 hours and show you what the final result was like.

It’s the next day. I’m in the freezer. I’m getting the raw chocolates. I’m coming towards my spot. And I’m Laura-Jane, The Rawtarian here, and we’re back and our raw white chocolates have been in the freezer actually overnight because it is the next day. However, these do freeze very quickly so if it was 3 hours later, that would be fine for you. So the silicone has frozen. I forget how most easily—what do I need to tell you? Nothing. I think because this is a silicone, it is really easy to get out. So all I’m going to do is pop these little babies. I’ll just do a couple and show you maybe—can you see? See? Whoo! There they are! And that is really all I need to say about the raw white chocolate. So clearly, they are adorable. Don’t you love this mold? I love this mold because they look like little chocolates. They are little chocolates. However, what you should know is at room temperature, they will melt. So really, you need to keep them frozen. You cannot send this in your child’s lunchbox to be eaten 8 hours later because it would just melt. Your molds—there’s a variety of ways you could like molds or pans you can use. Silicone are the easiest to get out as you can see. So easy. But if you don’t have silicone molds, I would recommend just doing it in a big pan and like a cookie sheet, for example, a low cookie sheet and then you can just take out the big sheet of white chocolate and break it. If you do it nice and skinny like a chocolate bar, in terms of thickness, then it would be really easy to break and I believe currently anyway, the pictures in this recipe at therawtarian.com are just not of these little guys. It’s just of a big sheet that I did in a glass pan probably. But yeah, isn’t this fun? These are so cute and they really have a nice curb appeal although this now looks a little disturbing. But aren’t they so pretty? Then you could put them like this. And if you would notice, I’m The Rawtarian and it’s currently 2013 and I have definitely grown as a raw lady because I like to do these fancy things whereas before, I was completely against fancy things. But from what I’ve learned is that there’s actually not a big difference between making something look really average versus fancy like for example these molds that I’ve done. I don’t know if you can see these, and on this plate. This plate was like $8 at Winners. I don’t know if you have a Winners. So I’m kind of going on a tangent now but what I’d like to really focus on is that this was quite easy to do and I just had that like little mold that made it look fancy and then I made raw white chocolates. So thank you so much for joining me. I’m The Rawtarian from therawtarian.com and ciao.

I’m The Rawtarian from therawtarian.com and today I wanted to talk a little bit about changing your eating habits.

As you know, from hearing my story already, I went from being a complete junk food vegetarian who was addicted to Doritos and licorice nibs to training myself and retraining my taste buds to actually love and enjoy everything healthy under the sun. So it is possible. What I wanted to talk to you about today was to talk about how to change our habits.

Now frequently when we think okay, it’s January 1st. I must start eating healthily from now on. We gravitate to thinking okay, well, I must now eat Brussels sprouts and green beans and just grin and bear it. This is not the way to create sustainable change in your health. The better way to approach it is to think I normally eat Doritos and nibs and huge bags of All Dressed chips, but there are some healthy things that I do enjoy. Example, for you might be different, but a beautiful bowl of cherries or, you know, some cherry tomatoes plucked off the vine, blueberries, watermelon, almonds, cashews. Whatever it is. There’s some few things, no matter who you are, some healthy things that would be appealing to you. Strawberries. What have you. Or, for example, raw brownies like this which I made, and you can get the recipe at therawtarian.com. But essentially, the point is there is a healthy recipe or a healthy ingredient that is going to appeal to you, no matter who you are, no matter who your husband is.

I have a lot of people emailing me telling me they have a meat & potatoes husband. Maybe he’s not going to be excited about this, but maybe he would be excited about a slice of chocolate brownie that happens to be chock-full of dates and walnuts and things that are healthy! So what you need to do is start to add more of the things that you like that are healthy as a side effect. So example, this brownie. Just eat more of what you love. I don’t know what I was trying to say there but, essentially, I see a lot of people trying to force themselves into—how do I articulate this? Forcing themselves into saying no to the junkie things, but instead don’t focus on saying no. Focus on saying yes to the delicious things. Yes to fresh greens. Get grapes. Yes to brownies. Yes to whatever it is that’s appealing to you because if you start to say yes to all the tasty things which, for example, might taste a little bit more.

Maybe you’re not used to grocery shopping for a whole bunch of fresh cherries because they’re expensive, but if you can start to say yes to the healthy things that you already like. Because we can only eat so many things in a day, by default, the side effect of that is you might end up saying no to something else because you already had dessert in something that you love like a raw brownie. So that is really all I wanted to say about that. But just remember to focus on saying yes to the things that you already love and if you keep doing that and keep exploring and keep finding new things that you love, eventually, over time, you’ll start to find that oh yes, I love cherries, brownies, blah, blah, blah, and you’ll have a lot of these yes items which will start taking up more of your daily intake of food.

So I’m The Rawtarian from therawtarian.com where I share simple, satisfying, raw food recipes, and I thank you so much for being with me here today. I hope you have a lovely day, and thank you for joining me.

Hi. I’m Laura-Jane from therawtarian.com and today we’re going to be making one of my absolute favorite raw food recipes, raw brownies, and they’re super easy to make because all you need is a food processor and a big dish and your ingredients and you’re all set. So I know that you want to know what are those ingredients.

We have 1 cup of walnuts or pecans. They’re both similar in terms of texture so they are swappable. We have 1 cup of dates. We have 5 tablespoons of raw cacao powder or cocoa powder. 4 tablespoons of unsweetened shredded coconut. 2 tablespoons of your favorite sweetener. Today, I’m using some local honey. 2 tablespoons. And then the ¼ teaspoon of sea salt.

So how this is going to work is that we’re going to process the nuts first. So we got the 1 cup of walnuts, and we’re going to process them until they become quite fine, small, and crumbly. Something like you’d want to pinch and crumble on top of ice cream or something like that.

Almost there.

Pretty good. So now, we are going to add our 1 cup of dates. You can use Medjool dates or you can use—if you don’t have those or your budget does not allow for fresh dates, you can also use what I call baking dates which are not necessarily raw but they’re in the baking aisle and they’re a lot less expensive if you’re trying to really experiment with this on a budget. So we’re just gonna add those and then get it to combine very nicely.

A little more.

Perfection. I might just pause as well to show you. Food processor, although I love them, sometimes they are my nemesis. I hope you can see this. We have a nice crumbly texture. We’ve got little chunks of dates and walnuts. Delicious. Now frequently, I hear people tell me they don’t really like dates so they’re not gonna like this recipe. This recipe tastes like chocolate brownies. It does not taste like dates. The dates are there to give stickiness and sweetness, but it doesn’t taste like dates. They don’t taste like dates I should say. So we’re adding our 5 tablespoons of cacao powder. We are adding the 4 tablespoons of coconut. We are getting a spoon or cuillère in French because I did take French immersion in elementary school until it no longer meshed well with my personality. We have ¼ teaspoon of sea salt. Sea salt has a very different than table salt so I definitely recommend sea salt for this one. So we’ve added everything else. We’re processing again and once we stop, we will have brownie mixture.

Yes, I almost forgot. We don’t want to overprocess this because it could quickly turn into sort of a sludgy, fudgy chocolate mess. So what you will want to do—you saw how long I processed that for so. It really wasn’t very long. And now again, I want to show you this because basically our brownie batter is done. I want to show you the crumbly texture of this and what we want to have happen is we want to be able to stick it together so that it sticks together, but we also—gonna show you again—we want some airiness so that, see how it’s like there’s little balls and they’re not all stuck together. It’s not like a pancake batter or big fudge. You really want that air because you don’t want to overprocess it. So our batter is done, and I think these taste fabulous on their own, but I also have a fabulous—how many times can I say fabulous? Raw recipe for a really nice fudge kind of topping icing, if you will, but we won’t talk about that yet. So you can see what we’ve done is spread out this crumbly mixture and then this is important, we want to smush it down into your pan because in order for it to stick together and be easy to slice, we really need to put some pressure on it and just smush it. Technical terms here at therawtarian.com. So what we’re really doing is pushing it down into your pan. You could do truffles. You could roll it into a ball if you want it instead. You could put it and it doesn’t have to be this shape of the pan. Really, it’s such a versatile recipe that anything, not anything, but you know what I’m saying. Any container that you have is going to be fine. One of my main mottos in terms of raw food is just make it work and make it simple. So really what you want to do is push that down real firmly and, really, that’s it. I’m going to pop this in the refrigerator. You certainly could eat it now. It’s ready. The only issue, and I don’t have a knife out here so easily, but is that right at the exact moment, it’s not going to cut as cleanly as if it’s been in the fridge. So I’ve made it. I’m going to pop it in the fridge for at least an hour just to firm up a titch and then I’m also going to leave it in the fridge all the time and then just enjoy nibbling from it.

So I’m Laura-Jane from therawtarian.com, where I share lots of simple, satisfying raw food recipes. I’d love for you to join me here. My main motto is not too many ingredients, not too many steps, let’s just have it taste amazing, and be easy to create. So thank you so much for joining me and I hope to hear from you soon.