Mexican Monday

After attending Ree's preparation class featuring raw vegan Mexicali cuisine,  ordering Russell James' "Mexican Style Raw Food Recipes," and making a couple of raw Mexican meals, I feel pretty comfortable preparing a Mexican style raw vegan meal.

Raw salsa or or pico de gallo is easy to make, macadamia "cheddar" is a breeze in the food processor, and guacamole is already raw.  We use walnuts and sundried tomatoes for the "meat" layer in a layered dip.  Almonds are used for the "bean dip."  The tortilla chip recipe is coming along.  There is a batch in the dehydrator that appears to be pretty good.  Organic, non GMO corn can be a bit hard to find sometimes, but we did find a reliable frozen source at Costco.  Of course fresh is preferable but frozen is a fairly reasonable alternative.  We make a cinnamon and vanilla oat shake with the flavors of horchata without the cooked rice.

I found a great recipe for raw tomatillo sauce here:  http://healthyblenderrecipes.com/recipes/fresh_raw_mexican_tomatillo_sauce/

I may make a full raw meal most Mondays, but for the rest of the weekdays we are too busy for much more than quick salads and smoothies.   Sometimes on the weekends we indulge a bit.  Sometimes we indulge  a bit too much.  Raw vegan chocolate is still chocolate, and Himalayan pink salt is still salt.  A yummy vegan queso with baked tortilla chips is still cooked and the chips contain too much fat.  Over the weekend I gained back a bit of the weight lost over the last month.  It's okay though because those indulgences are becoming more infrequent.  I noticed that after eating some good quality dark chocolate, what I was really craving was a good salad.

On a positive note, someone who hasn't seen me in more than a month said that my skin looks much better than the last time she saw me.  Most of the time, the only thing I use on my face is a shea butter cream that I make myself.  Maybe raw food is a beauty secret too.  Yay!