Hello, and welcome to Episode 2 of The Raw Food Podcast! I’m your host Laura Jane The Rawtarian, and today we’re going to be talking about how and where to shop raw without spending a fortune. Stay tuned and I’ll be back with you shortly.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of The Raw Food Podcast. Thanks you so much for joining me. I’ve received some amazing feedback from you all about the fact that I’m doing a podcast, and some of you are big fans of podcasts in general, so thank you so much for your encouragement and support to encourage me to record these podcasts. In this episode of The Raw Food Podcast, I’m going to be talking about how and where to shop without spending a fortune. The reason that I am focusing on this topic is because recently on my Facebook page, which is facebook.com/therawtarian, I asked just a quick question about the types of topics that you guys were all looking to find out more about, and this was posted by Rebecca on the Facebook page, and she posted how and where to shop without spending a fortune as something that she would like to hear about. And I thought that was a great topic. So I’m going to focus on that in this episode.

There’s 5 keys points that I think I’m going to talk about in this episode in terms of keeping your raw food budget in reasonable shape. So I’ll just give you a quick intro to the 5 (actually there’s 4, but maybe I can come up with the 5th at the end!).

So the first one, I’ve just call this “your buddies”, and what these are your main raw food staples that you kind of need to have, and that are bulky in the sense that you can actually get full off of them and they’re not too expensive. A couple of examples of my “buddies” in my area would be apples, oranges and bananas. Those 3 things I always have in my house, they’re relatively inexpensive, and they’re really substantial, and I can use them in a lot of ways.

Similarly, in terms of nuts and seeds, a similar “buddy” is going to be sunflower seeds in my area. I live in Canada, but I think it’s common in North America for sunflower seeds to be quite inexpensive. But I’ll talk about that a little bit more later. So that was the first one. The second tip is to simply eat in season, and I’ll talk about of course again. The third tip is to identify the very expensive items that you really do want to have in your diet and find a better source; a cheaper source for those items. The fourth item is to consider whether you really do need to buy: one, really raw, like truly really raw items, of course those are going to drive up the cost a lot because they’re harder to find and also when you talk about budgeting, people will pay a premium for things, and when people will pay a premium for specialty things, companies will charge more for those because they know people really want them and will pay, so considering whether you really want raw, or also whether you really want or need organic. Those are 2 decisions that you can make, and you don’t have to make those 2 decisions all across the board, but you can kind of take each individual purchase and look at it on its own sake and figure out whether or not you want to pay more for those features. That’s a quick overview of what I want to talk about.

1. Your Buddies

I’ll start with that 1st concept of your buddy foods which are just your main staples. And I think it’s very important for you to have these staple foods for a couple of reasons. You need stuff that you can feel like you can just eat and it’s not going to break the bank. So bananas are an extremely amazing product for this reason, because they’re very filling, they have a lot of calories, they’re very good for you, and they’re usually quite inexpensive as well. I haven’t done the math lately, but I think it’s something like 30 cents a banana or something like that which is really great. So, bananas I always have on hand for that reason because, I don’t know about you, but when I’m eating some expensive foods like kelp noodles or cashews, things like that, I sort of feel a little bit of reticence to eat those foods, or almost a little bit of guilt, because I know, “Oh my gosh. This meal is costing me a lot of money. I’d better enjoy it.” and I just have sort of like financially it feels weird when I’m eating really expensive foods, because I’m a normal person and I’m on a budget, so it’s good to have foods when you don’t have to feel that way. But I think we all do need to be conscious, so I’m not going to say that we shouldn’t feel guilty for eating expensive meals, because we can’t. It’s just not realistic to just eat expensive meals every day of the week. So, bananas are great, oranges as well, and apples. So those 3 I always have, and if I run out of them, I have to get more.

What I also find in common with those 3 items, apples, oranges and bananas, they’re all super easy to pack with you. All 3 of those could be thrown into your bag, or your car, and you don’t have to wrap them up or do anything. Apples and bananas are so easy to eat. You can eat them when you’re driving, when you’re sitting at your desk at work, and they don’t require any effort at all. Oranges are a little bit more complicated, because you have to peel them, but those are 3 great staples. And in your area, I know I have people who communicate to me from all over the world, like from Australia, South Africa, and all kinds of places, you may have your staple foods that are… like, I would just say fruit; you’ve got to find some fruit that is cheap, accessible, that you like to eat, and that’s bulky and realistic. Pomegranates are great, but you’ll probably not going to have the time to sit around and peel a pomegranate every time you need a snack. So for me, those are apples, oranges and bananas. It may be different depending on your tastes or what’s affordable in your area.

Now, in the terms of my “buddies” for nuts and seeds, sunflower seeds for me (I haven’t done the math) are so much cheaper than most of the other seeds in my area, like pumpkin seeds are very expensive, so I always have, like, a gigantic plastic container of sunflower seeds. I’m not good with ratios but it’s practically like a 4 litre milk jug, you know like that big, it’s like that many sunflower seeds! I just keep those on hand. They are great to add as filler, so you do want to be careful when substituting certain nuts and seeds for other things, because it can change the taste and texture. Sometimes if I have a recipe that might call for say, 1 cup of almonds, I could say make half a cup of almonds, half a cup of sunflower seeds, and it kind of bulks it up, but it’s a lot cheaper. I do also keep almonds on hand as well, as a “buddy.” In my area, I find that they’re not that expensive, but the price of almonds does fluctuate quite a bit. If you can substitute sunflower seeds, that’s excellent. Also another extraordinarily expensive nut is the pine nut. I don’t ever buy pine nuts. I love them. They’re so delicious, but they’re so expensive, so I’ll substitute cashews for pine nuts. Basically, I think you need to identify some of these key sources like some cheap fruits, and some cheap nuts and seeds that you can keep around all the time and not feel guilty about consuming. That’s the 1st item, so that was me talking about my “buddies”.

2. Eat in season

The 2nd item is eating in season. Can’t stress this enough. I actually live in sort of a farming community on Prince Edward Island in Canada. It’s a small rural place, and there’s a lot farming happening around near where I am, so I feel a little bit more connected than I used to feel when I lived right in a big city. So, I feel like I’m a little bit more on pulse in terms of when things are coming in season and there’s a lot of farmers’ markets, and things like that around here. When you’re somewhere that’s cold, like me in Canada, it’s snowing outside my window right now, those tropical fruits that we all love, cherries, blueberries, well they’re not tropical but you know… pineapples, all those beautiful fresh fruit travels miles and miles, and it’s really at a premium in the winter time wherever you are; it’s like the most distant away from you in terms of time and accessibility.  Obviously, if you see a tiny container of strawberries, and it’s really expensive, you’re not going to buy it.
 
What you want to be mindful of, is in a summertime or whenever things are cheaper, you want to gorge yourself on those. Like I know, when corn, for example, is in season, I buy tons of corn, and I just eat a lot of it. I don’t really like dehydrate it and do anything with it, except for when it’s in season, and when it is cheap, I eat a lot of it so that I get a good fix. Similarly, there are things that I just get excited about when they’re in season. Even summer, I love watermelon, in the summer, there’s gigantic pumpkin-sized watermelons, and they’re really cheap, just get a lot of them. Enjoy it, because realize that it’s probably going to be too expensive to gorge yourself on watermelon at other times of the year, so I think there’s two sides to it. Number 1, you can’t have fresh cherries all year round and not break your budget, so the concept is you’re going to have to avoid the very expensive stuff in order to stay on budget, that’s one side of it. But the other side of it is when things are lower priced, you want to really tap into that and enjoy it so that you do feel that you do get to enjoy those exciting things.

This topic is talking about budget, but sometimes (or at least I do) I’m like “Okay, I know these cherries are ridiculously expensive, but I really want them and I’m really going to enjoy them, so I’m going to get some.” Another good tip, too, is I do this all the time. I see cherries for sale for, I don’t even know, a ridiculous price… $8 a pound or something, but I think I really want some, but I’m not going to buy the whole bag. I’m just going to get one of those bulk bags, the plastic bags that you can put apples and oranges in them and stuff, and take some of the cherries  from the pre-packaged cherry sack that would have cost literally $16 had I taken the whole bag to the till, and I just take a small handful enough that might be like a desert for after one meal or something, just so I can have that pleasure, but I don’t have to spend like $18 just on cherries. So you can still treat yourself but you do have to be mindful of it, and it’s not so much like, “I’m completely tracking everything that’s in season,” but season dictates price. It’s good to have a general sense of what things normally cost. And of course, related to eating in season, if you can find local sources for things, they’re usually quite a lot more inexpensive, but it’s more of a hassle. I totally support eating locally, and eating from local growers, but it can be hard to arrange, in terms of connecting with the sellers, and by all means, it’s great. And you can get some good deals depending where you live, and how well connected you are. That’s was the 2nd section, eating in season, a great budget conscious idea.

3. Identify your most expensive items

The 3rd concept is to identify what are your most expensive items that are really breaking your bank. Of course, if they are things that you think “Well, I don’t really need that anyway,” then you could eliminate them. But something that I have done, as you may have noticed from my delicious simple recipes like the raw cheesecake, and alfredo sauce, and things like that, I really love using cashews to replicate that creamy, cheesy, comforting creaminess. So, cashews are something that I use a lot of, and where I live, they are so expensive. One month, actually in October 2011, I tracked every dollar I spent, not only on food, but on every single thing I spent, and that was very eye-opening experience, one of things I learnt was that I was going to a bulk food store in my area and buying small bulk (filling up a bulk bag) of cashews, and I was doing that maybe once every 2 weeks, and it was very expensive. I realized there had to be a better way, so I kind of just calculated looking at my bill, “Well gosh! I’ve been buying these cashews every couple of weeks for 2.5 years. How much are these… Is this a good price???!!” I had never even thought about it, not because I’m rich, but because I just didn’t think about it. I thought I just need these cashews in order to make me happy and make me stay raw, so I’m not even going to care about the price. But I realized that they were so expensive, and that I needed to find out if I could get them cheaper, and so I don’t buy a lot of food online; I’m not against it, but I just haven’t really figure out  where to do it, and taking the time to look into it. I realized that I needed a better source for cashews, and so what I did was calculate the price that I was already paying in my local community, and I compared that to some online stores. The store that I did end up buying from was called nutsonline.com, and I had a good buying experience with them.

So, I think I basically was able to buy, including the cost of shipping - which was expensive - but at the end of the day , it was pretty much half the price of what I was paying locally. Now I did spend about, I think, $200 or something like that on cashews and I bought a lot, because first of all, I didn’t want to go through the hassle of ordering all the time, but I think it was a better deal for shipping, and you certainly got a reduced rate for buying more. Financially, if you can sort of invest in without having your money tied up in cashews, then that’s a really good way to do it. But I don’t buy everything. The other thing that I bought during that order was actually dried dill spaces. I don’t know why but they’re ridiculously expensive in those tiny jars. I was making dill pickle kale chips all the time and was throwing so much dried dill on there. These little tiny jars of dill were probably like $6. Anyway, when I got my nuts online order, I also ordered 1 pound of dill which didn’t sound like that much to me. It was like $8 which was very cheap I thought, compared to my local price. And there’s a huge container of dill that I got for $8; it was so worth it! [...]

Anyway, you have to be careful, though, you don’t necessarily want to buy all of your nuts and seeds, and stuff online, because a lot of businesses will have some products that are expensive, some products that are cheap. And they kind of assume you won’t do the math on every one, so really all I am buying online is cashews and some spaces, and specialty items that I can’t get locally. But again, what you want to do is figure out what is costing you the most, then see if you can find an alternative. Another thing is, if you don’t mind calling places like what I did, I just called the bulk store that I was buying from and I just said, “Hi, I always buy these cashews from you. Can you tell me over how much they are per pound?” and they had no problem. She ‘d just said,  “Okay, please hold on.” And she looked it up. So it takes a little bit of research, and it will totally depend on where you are located, of course. Anyway, so that was number 3, and the general concept there is figure out what’s costing you a lot of money and see if you can find it cheaper.

4. Raw and organic - choices

Number 4, this could be controversial, but I am a fan of being real and talking about real issues. There are two issues. Consider whether you really want to buy: “raw” products, and similarly, do you want to buy organic produce. These are really big questions, and of course, ideally we would all eat only organic foods and only pure, certified raw foods that would sprout when soaked in water, and all those kinds of things. But I don’t know about you, but financially, that is not realistic. If I actually looked at my bill, even while I am basically cost-conscious, now that I’m eating raw, my grocery bill has literally doubled definitely.  I do eat really well, and I don’t really skimp. I get whatever I want, but I don’t always buy organic, and I don’t always buy raw, especially nuts. Basically, if you are wanting to buy truly raw sproutable nuts and seeds, that is going to be very expensive. You can certainly do that, and all the more power to you if you can afford to make that a priority in your life. That’s great. But for me, that’s not realistic, and I think at the end of the day, it’s not realistic for a lot of people.

And again, you could sometimes get the really raw sproutable seeds that have never been heated, but basically you don’t have to have really raw sproutable foods. The reason why some nuts, for example, would not be raw is most nuts are coming in a hard shell, as you can imagine. In order to get that shell off, they’re very frequently heated using steam and different types of heat, that’s why a lot of them are not raw. You will see the word “raw” on a lot of things nowadays. That word is not really regulated as far as I know unless that’s changed lately, which I doubt. I know there was a group of people advocating for raw certification, but I don’t think anything has happened with that lately. Often, you’ll see the word “raw” on a package, but really that just means it’s unroasted, because a lot of nuts will be roasted. So if it says “raw”, it probably isn’t raw. I would say it’s only actually raw if you’re getting it from someone that you know you can trust online. I haven’t actually bought anything from “The Raw Food World”, but I’m sure that Angela Stokes-Monarch and Matt Monarch, people who are actively promoting things for the raw food diet, I would trust their labeling. But yes, it’s going to be much more expensive if you get truly raw items from trusted sources.

Now on the subject of organic foods, there is a list, and I should put a link to it in the “show notes”. Actually, it’s a common list out there. I forget what it’s called, something like “The Dirty Dozen”. It’s the foods that you really do want to get organic. That’s because these foods are either very absorbent, they will really suck up all the chemicals and stuff that are sprayed on them. Or frequently, it’s the type of produce where you actually eat the exterior of it. For example, a strawberry. You can’t peel a strawberry, you’re just eating the whole berry. So, if there’s chemical on it, there’s no peel or anything to protect it. You can contrast that to bananas, where I usually buy organic bananas as well, but at least with the banana, if it has been sprayed, you could remove the peel off it; that’s sort of 1 layer of protection.

I’m certainly not going to say that an organic banana and non-organic banana are the same, but if I had to choose which one of them to eat, organically, I’d definitely choose the strawberry. It is interesting; I haven’t looked at it lately and I didn’t look at it before recording this. I would like to brush up on it, but I think some common things on there would be green peppers, apples, berries like cherries, strawberries that kind of thing; I’ll put a link in the show notes. And greens. I really do like to get organic greens when I can, and I usually do buy organic greens most of the time. Talking about that number 1 concept of my “buddy foods”, the apples, oranges and bananas, just being open and transparent with you, I don’t always get organic oranges. When I’m using orange, lemon or lime rind, I usually will only zest an organic fruits, but I don’t always buy organic oranges. It also depends on where you live. In my area, and in my town, it is hard to find organic apples; they’re not in-store just because of where I live in. It probably would depend if you live in a bigger area, but it is something to consider. And of course, organic is a lot more expensive than inorganic foods. That is a general overview of some of my thoughts on how to get your raw food bill under control.

Conclusion

Overall though, I think depending on how you were eating previously, raw food is expensive. When you’re dealing with fresh fruits and vegetables, unfortunately, they are more expensive for so many reasons, but partially because of their shelf-life. When you can have a bag of cookies that can sit on the shelf, in a pre-packaged package and they can sit there for, I don’t even know how long, years until it sells! Compare that to some cherries that aren’t going to last for long at all, there’s a lot higher cost for those products. That’s a reality, and I think that it’s kind of a mindset shift, as well. For me, I’ve definitely noticed my budget has gone up. But first of all, it is totally worth it for me to feel so much better in mind and body, to look better, to have more energy so I can accomplish more and do more and feel better. So for me, it is an investment that I am willing to spend. I think it’s very important to look at your budget and think “What is in my monthly budget that is not important or that doesn’t need to be there.” For me, for example, I will spend money on my health, I will spend money on my quality of life in a lot of ways, but I’m not going to spend money on a nice car. My car is worth barely anything, and it doesn’t look great, but it works fine and it’s great on fuel. And it gets me from point A to point B. Everybody has different priorities. But I do believe that it’s very important to value yourself, and the fuel that you put into your body, it’s extremely important. It has so many side effects, not just health but also, just your well-being and your energy, and we all know how great we feel when we have some green juice or just a big bowl of cherries; that just revitalizes you and energizes you, and you will pay more for these healthy foods, but for me it’s something that I’m willing to pay for, and I think that it’s important to realize that.

What I’m trying to get across is that it is going to be more expensive and I don’t want to sugar-coat that, so it is a reality. It’s a case of looking like, well, if I’m going to do this raw food thing, and I’m not going to compromise on it and I am going to spend more on my budget, I want to keep my raw food budget reasonable and do some of these tips that will help to keep it in a reasonable area. But maybe there’s other areas in my budget that don’t need to be expensive, like certain monthly costs that a lot of us pay but we don’t necessarily think about, we can look at other ways to save money or also to earn more money. That’s a different idea as well.
So, as Rebecca wrote on the Facebook page,” how and where to shop without spending a fortune”, I think for all of us, it requires a certain mindfulness of just being aware of prices overall, like, “apples are normally around $2 a pound”, and so if you see it suddenly “Oh my gosh. These are suddenly $3.50 a pound.” You might want to get fewer or that kind of thing. It’s just good to be aware of the general baseline of prices.

I think as well, frequency of shopping is something that can perhaps help or hinder you depending on your personality type. As a household, we generally grocery shop once a week and that, basically we try to get everything we need for that week. I find that for me, it’s important to have that one week cycle, because if I try to go longer, my greens, my lettuce or spinach start to give a little slimy near the end. For me, eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables that one week cycle works really well. It’s really good so I really think you want to avoid food waste, like you know just rotten things that going in to the garbage; you definitely want to avoid that. We generally go grocery shopping once a week, and then sometimes I will also stop in on the grocery store to pick up just a few things. Quite often, if I have had a lot of green smoothies or something, I might run out of greens and I might pick that up at the grocery store in between, so if I go grocery shopping on Saturday, I might have to pick up some greens, and maybe a few more apples and things maybe on a Wednesday or something like that.

I think setting up a schedule for yourself, but also realizing that if this is something really important to you, and sometimes you do need a little pick-me-up too if you think you’re really craving something fun and exciting, well go ahead and splurge on something maybe a little bit more expensive, some specialty, tropical fruits or something like that. But it’s good to keep those things as “extras” that can kind of help you curb a craving. You don’t have to have them every time, but you’re certainly can.
I hope that some of those budget conscious tips were helpful for you, and I’ve had a lot of fun recording this podcast actually. It’s taken me a couple of weeks to, probably more than that, just to do this second episode but I’m really excited about it. And again, I really do appreciate your feedback about this podcast, and I hope to be talking to you again soon. Thank you so much for all your support and I hope to see you at therawtarian.com.

You have been listening to the Raw Food Podcast, with your host the Rawtarian. Be sure to visit me at www.therawtarian.com where you can browse over 100 of my absolute favorite simple satisfying raw vegan recipes that you’ll find pretty quick to make and with just a few ingredients and that taste spectacular. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for my newsletter, and once you’ve signed up for that, you’ll get a PDF copy of 11 of my most favorite, most satisfying, most delicious recipes, including raw vegan Alfredo sauce, raw brownies, and whole host of other delicious recipes you can make at home that are raw vegan and tastes amazing. Thank you so much for joining me, and I hope to hear from you very soon, and until next time, enjoy your raw adventure.

Hello, and welcome to the Raw Food Podcast. I’m your host, the Rawtarian, and on today’s podcast, I am going to be teaching you how to make raw food brownies using a food processor. Stay tuned, and we’ll be back with you shortly.

Thank you so much for joining me. It’s good to have you here on the Raw Food Podcast. This is episode 1, and I’m very excited to be launching this new concept with you so that I can give you little bit more information in a different format for those of you who enjoy commuting. Or maybe who don’t enjoy commuting, but perhaps do fun sort of commuting, or jogging, or doing all those kinds of things, even cleaning up your house!  I know I do love to listen to podcasts when I’m cleaning my bathroom!

I’m a little bit excited to be here with you today! What I wanted to do is just start with a bang by giving you one of my most popular, most commented on, most forwarded, most loved recipes which is a very simple raw vegan brownie recipe, which is very easy to make and it uses a food processor. And because it is a completely raw uncooked recipe, it’s super quick to make because you don’t have to wait for it in the oven, so it can be a really great recipe to make. I know that in our household, sometimes we even race to try to make it during the time span of a commercial break. It’s not quite that fast, but it’s almost that quick; it’s very very quick.

So, first, I think what I’m going to do here is just to give you a quick rundown of the general ingredients that you need, as well as the general equipment that you’d need so if you have a massive nut allergy, well, you’ll know right now that this is not the recipe for you.

In a nutshell, we are looking at 6 different ingredients to make your raw vegan brownies. We’re looking at some nuts; I usually use pecans. We’re using dates, cocoa powder, unsweetened shredded coconut. Optionally, you can include some honey or agave nectar for an extra kick of sweetness, which might be something you want to consider if you are feeding this to very picky children. And the last ingredient is sea-salt. So those are the 6 ingredients that I’m going to be using. And the only piece of equipment that you need for this is going to be a food processor, and I can explain a little bit about that shortly. And then, lastly you’re going to need some kind of pan, a brownie pan. I usually use a glass 8 by 8 inches something like that. A square glass dish or a pie plate, you can use that; any kind of dish that you’re going to be able to push your brownie mixture down into so that it will hold its shape.

I might as well get started here with the actual ingredients, and what I like to do when I’m making a recipe is, I like to get everything out and put it on the kitchen table or kitchen counter right away, so that I know that I have all my ingredients, because there’s nothing more frustrating  than when you’re sort of halfway through your recipe and you suddenly realize that you’re out of something and my flow will be interrupted.  I’m kind of in the zone to make something, and I like to know right away that I have everything. We’re looking here for 1 cup of pecans. If you don’t have pecans, you could substitute walnuts in this recipe, but pecans give it the nicest, richest sort of best nutty flavor. But if you use walnuts, it will still come out really well because the consistency of using a pecan and a walnut is quite similar; they both sort of oily in a good way. You need those natural nut oils to help get this recipe to stay together. So I would recommend pecans, but if you have to use walnuts because that’s all you have, or because you find, like in my community, pecans are at least double the price of walnuts, you could try walnuts as well. So, 1 cup of nuts.

Secondarily, you’re going to need 1 cup of dates. As you may know, in the raw food community, the most popular and recommended dates are called medjool dates (I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. I think I am.) and they’re actually found in your grocery store in the produce section. They are a fresh fruit basically, so you’re going to want to find those fresh dates. They do tend to have pits, and they’re kind of like a plum or a peach; they have their pit. So if you are going to use medjool dates, you will want to slice them up length-wise and just pop out that pit that’s inside the dates. For some people, Medjool dates can be perhaps too expensive, or you can’t find them, or you’re just in a rush and you don’t want to have to be bothered with popping up the pits and all that lovely stuff, so some people could certainly use what I call “baking” dates. They are not located in the produce aisle; they are located with the flour and the sugar and the chocolate chips in the baking aisle in the grocery store, so they usually come in a sack of some sort, and they are way cheaper than medjool dates. However, for all of you raw foods out there who are concerned about whether things are raw, generally rather, these baking dates are not considered truly raw because generally they are heated up in order to remove the pits; to soften them and remove the pits, so just bear that in mind. I have made them with both, and definitely using the baking dates is far cheaper and much quicker as well, but if you’re really concerned about having a living food recipe, you’ll want to use the medjool dates.

The next ingredient, the third ingredient, is cocoa powder. In this recipe, I call for 5 tablespoons of cocoa powder.
 
The next ingredient is unsweetened shredded coconut, and I’m calling for 4 tablespoons of that in this recipe. As I mentioned earlier, if you really want to have this super sweet brownie flavor, you could add up to 2 tablespoons of honey or agave nectar. However, bear in mind that dates are already naturally sweet, so you could try omitting the honey, especially if you know that you don’t need things to be super sweet. It will still be nice and sweet without it, so that’s 2 tablespoons of honey or agave nectar. I will jump in as well, there will be show notes at theratwtarian.com in the podcast section, where you can get this recipe all written out. I don’t want you to be madly trying to write these ingredients down, while you’re driving or anything like that!

So then, the sixth and the final ingredient is sea-salt, and that’s just a quarter teaspoon of sea-salt, and if you are new to the raw food lifestyle, you may not yet have sea-salt. It’s actually quite inexpensive and it lasts for a long time. I’m just going to suggest that you throw away your normal table-salt, the oxidized table-salt that we all probably grew up with. Just get rid of that and replace it with sea-salt. It’s not overly expensive, and it lasta for a long time. The flavor is better. And the nutrition is better as well. So that was a quarter teaspoon of salt.

So now, I’m hoping you got all your ingredients, or you will whenever you try to make this recipe. You’ve got all those ingredients and now it’s so simple, it’s just a matter of putting the recipe together, and that can happen very quickly.

In your food processor, I’m going to suggest you just add that 1 cup of pecans or nuts, and pulse that until you get a nice sort of “mealy” kind of texture where it’s all crumbly. You’re going to want the nuts to be reduced to quite small little tiny balls. 

So then, after you have processed your pecans, you’re going to add the 1 cup of dates - and this is something I should mention, about the dates - if you’re going to use the nice lovely fresh medjool dates, those are the perfect texture because they usually still have quite a bit of moisture in them, because they are fresh fruits, and they’re still quite moist. If you are going to be using baker’s dates I’m calling them, so it’s those dry dates that are in the baking aisle, those can be a little bit harder depending on which brand you get, and how long they’ve been sitting on the shelf and all that kind of thing.

If they are super duper rock-hard, you may want to wrap them in a moist paper towel or something like that to make them a little bit more moist. You do not have to do that and, frankly, I do use baker’s dates and they’re really hard, and I  don’t care; I just throw them into my food processor and I’m not really too worried about it. But it is something to consider, the moistness of your dates.

If this is the first time you are making this recipe, don’t even worry about it. Take the dates you have, throw them into your food processor. This is my “get-it-done” philosophy, but let’s not be too worried about it. But when you’re tweaking it next time, if you found that your brownies were a bit dry, maybe you want to play with that… Anyway, I should stop there about dates! So, you’ve added your 1 cup of dates to your food processor, and then you just process again. This can be sort of a violent procedure, because if you have really hard dates, they’re kind of flying around in there but the things will reduce and you don’t need these dates to become tiny. You want to process them until they are just little chunks of dates as opposed to one big date. So process them for quite a while, but you don’t need to make it sort of completely unrecognizable.

So you’ve done your pecans, now you’ve done your dates, and then you’re just going to add everything else into your food processor, so that’s the 5 tablespoons of cocoa powder,  4 tablespoons of unsweetened shredded coconut, and then your honey if you want to add that little dash of salt - the quarter teaspoon. You might also want to note that when you’re putting your cocoa powder in there, put that in there, and maybe manually with your hand or spoon or something, just kind of bury it. Because I find if I left the cocoa powder sit right on top when it spins at the very beginning, the cocoa powder will kind of come flying out at the sides, so it’s a bit of a mess. So just try to bury that cocoa powder a little bit, before you turn the food processor on.

So now you’re going to just process the rest of your ingredients, until basically it just looks like brownie batter. It’s quite amazing when you take it, and add that cocoa and start to process it up. I haven’t given you times, so if you’re not familiar with how long to process things for, the pecans maybe for 30 seconds, the dates maybe 30 seconds, and then this last addition of these remaining 4 ingredients - like when you add in the cocoa powder, the coconut, the honey and the sea-salt- maybe you have another go for about 30 seconds, or maybe a little longer. You just kind of want to wait until that cocoa powder is completely distributed so the whole thing just looks like a beautiful chocolaty dough.

Once that’s done, that’s pretty much it, my friends! All you need to do is, usually depending on your food processor, you’ll pop that blade out of your food processor and set it aside to be washed a little bit later. Then, you’ll just take your brownie pan, and dump the processed mixture into your brownie pan. And, that’s it! So you’re going to dump it into the pan, and then with clean hands (so you should wash your hands), you’re just going to press the brownie mixture down into the pan with your hands. You can do that quite firmly. It’s kind of interesting, you’ll notice that we didn’t add any oil into the mixture, but you’ll find - depending on your nuts especially - that the mixture is actually really quite oily which is kind of neat. It’s just the oils that are released from pecans. So you’re going to push that down really firmly, and it’s going to look like normal brownies. That’s the goal that you’re going for.

I have, I can’t remember how many, there’s like about 80 comments on my recipe post on my website at therawtarian.com. But somebody recently commented that their mixture was not really holding together very well, and I think that if that ever does happen, like you push it down into the pan and it seems still really crumbly…  First of all, I would say push it down as best as you can. Pop that in the fridge for an hour or two, and then see how it’s set up in the fridge. But if you’re making it, and you found that it didn’t really ever set up and it’s still always hard to cut, and you’re not very impressed with it, I think the problem is going to be predominantly a lack of moisture that was the problem, so that could be that your dates were super hard or your pecans were like really old and dried out. It didn’t have a lot of those natural oils, so this is kind of troubleshooting at this point. Normally that doesn’t happen, but I’ve had a couple of people mention that to me, but that doesn’t ever tend to happen to me. Usually, the consistency’s pretty perfect.

So you’ve pushed your brownie mixture down into your pan, and then if you’re probably eager, like me, you can certainly cut a couple of slices off and eat those right away. They’re not going to be as firm as they would be after they have been in the fridge for an hour, so you might find it a little bit crumbly, those first couple of pieces that you snack on right away. But when you put it in the fridge it usually firms up quite a bit. So that’s all it takes.

I think I’ve probably taken about 10 or 15 minutes to explain it you, and that’s practically as long as it takes to make, so in the time you’ve listened to this, you probably could have been making brownies instead! The recipe for this is at The Rawtarian. I’ll put up the show notes there, and just click on podcasts and you’ll find it. This is episode 1, and that’s basically it!

 As I’ve mentioned, or maybe I didn’t mention, that I also have a fabulous brownie icing recipe, and I’ll post up the notes to it as well. Whereas the brownie mixture that I just spoke about was made in a food processor, the icing recipe, you need a good blender, so that would  be something you could consider if you have a good blender, and you want to add another delicious layer on top of the brownies, which would be like a chocolaty icing. There’s a recipe for that on my site, and the gist of that recipe is dates, water, cocoa powder and coconut oil, as well. And that coconut oil is extremely mandatory for that recipe, because what the coconut oil does is it hardens when you put it in the fridge, so the icing mixture is a little bit runnier when you take it out and pour it on top of the brownies. However, it will set up quite nicely. It doesn’t become hard, but it sets up perfectly on top of the brownies and we just love that recipe. And it’s so interesting because you don’t actually need any additional sweetener for that recipe! The icing recipe, like I said, it’s dates, water, cocoa powder, and coconut oil - and just those 4 ingredients, it tastes so fabulous. It’s like a chocolaty, fudgy, lick-it-with-your-finger when no one’s watching. Like remember when you were a kid, your parents would make chocolate icing if you were lucky enough to have a type of parent to do that, and you would lick the “beaters.” I just remember being a kid and having the chocolate icing off the spoon and being in heaven and this is the same. You don’t even need to add any extra sweetener to that icing recipe. It’s just super sweet on its own, and it’s awesome. You’re going to love it.

Anyway, that basically the gist of it. I hope you really enjoy the concept of listening to me talk a little bit more about my recipes. I’m hoping that this podcast can kind of enhance your experience, understanding, and ability to make raw food recipes. It doesn’t matter if you’re vegan or raw, or what you are. If you’re just interested in incorporating more live healthy whole food, delicious recipes that are actually quite simple to make and made with very basic ingredients, I think that these are really important skills that a lot of us did not learn when we were growing up. I know I certainly didn’t learn any of these skills, and it’s been more of learning experience for me as an adult. I really hope these podcasts can help you become a healthy cook at home and make things seem accessible and exciting too. I know that everybody gets more excited when they can taste something really delicious, that’s also healthy as well. It’s kind of this yin yang opposites attract kind of thing, but it’s really surprising and exciting. I’m really happy to be sharing it with all of you, and I love you all when you send me emails and notes and things, so this is just another way to get to know each other and communicate, and help each other succeed with healthy eating. Thank you so much. I’m going to sign off and I really appreciate you listening to me today. I hope this has been inspiring for you. If you do have a chance to make these recipes, let me know and I’d love to know what you think.

You have been listening to the Raw Food Podcast, with your host The Rawtarian. Be sure to visit me at www.therawtarian.com where you can browse over 100 of my absolute favorite simple, satisfying raw vegan recipes that you’ll find pretty quick to make and with just a few ingredients and that taste spectacular. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for my newsletter, and once you’ve signed up for that, you’ll get a PDF copy of 11 of my most favorite, most satisfying, most delicious recipes, including raw vegan alfredo sauce, raw brownies, and a whole host of other delicious recipes that you can make at home that are raw vegan and taste amazing. Thank you so much for joining me, and I hope to hear from you very soon. And until next time, enjoy your raw adventure!