The Good, the Bad, and the Raw

Another first Tuesday of the month, another raw food cleanse gone by. Today's uncooked eats were all courtesy of my favorite book, Ani's Raw Food Kitchen. The morning started with this bowl of Luscious Lemon Pudding with Fresh Strawberries:

I'd wanted to make Ani's Fruit Parfait — raw nut-based pudding, fruit, and dehydrated buckwheat oat groats — since I borrowed my parents' dehydrator. But for some crazy reason, my Whole Foods doesn't carry raw buckwheat (at least not that I could find). Instead, I settled for this parfait sans buckwheat. Tasty, light, lemon-y, delicious.

Lunch wasn't quite as successful. I'm not sure what drove me to make the Japanese Miso-Shitake Soup since I'm kinda squeamish about exotic mushrooms (especially eaten raw!):

The mushrooms were too squishy and the soup broth contained WAY too much olive oil for my tastes (even after I cut the recommended amount in half). The whole bowl was just slimy. I ate about half before I couldn't take it anymore. Luckily, I had this Garden Salad with Sesame Sunflower Croutons as well:

Before hitting the gym after work, I scarfed down a Fuji apple and an Apple Pie Larabar.

But the highlight of the day was this awesome dinner — Sun Burger on Sesame Sunflower Bread with Sun-dried Tomato Ketchup and Hot Mustard Sauce:

Since I had the dehydrator for awhile, I made the recipe that's been calling my name since I bought Ani's book. The "bread" is actually more of a flax sunflower seed cracker. Ani suggests dehydrating for less time to make it more pliable and bread-like, but she also said the more cracker-like "breads" keep for months in the fridge. So I made a big batch and dehydrated for extra time.

Here's what the Sun Burger looks like on its own:

Lots of veggies, flax, and sunflower seeds. Yum! And these aren't dehydrated for as long as the bread so they have a softer texture. The "ketchup" and "mustard" really made this meal something special. I served the burger with a huge ass garden salad:

Four hours after dinner, I'm still satisfied. That's an amazing feat on raw day! Other than the icky soup, today's eats were some of my favorites over the year I've been doing this monthly cleanse.