Instead of barbequing, we had a nice raw dinner on the front patio. Pesto with zucchini pasta and garlic toasts.
Click on the link above for the garlic toast recipe. The picture above is a pretty sad picture with just one toast ... we'd nearly finished them off before I thought to take the picture. These toasts are made in the dehydrator and are a bit like bruschetta. Here's a picture of the left overs that I put in the refridgerator. They'd been in the dehydrator a bit longer (perhaps too long) so the edges were curled up. The "toast" is made out of jicama:
For desert we had cherry vanilla ice cream. I used the vanilla ice cream recipe in this Raw Food Talk post and added fresh cherries. Unfortunately, it didn't freeze very solid in the ice cream maker. I think this might have been because my dehydrator was running and it was heating my kitchen a bit. Here's how it looked the first night - delicious, but really more like a thick shake or very loose soft serve:
I put the left-overs in the freezer and it looked a lot more like ice cream when we had it for desert to finish off the pesto-pasta meal. Next time, I am thinking I might just try to make the ice cream the night before I plan to eat it and just freeze it so it is more solid.
All that said, the ice cream was delicious!!! The recipe uses the seeds of two vanilla beans. I got organic ones at Whole Foods and they were nearly $14. So this ice cream had a lot to live up to - since it cost so much money to make!! I'm happy to say, it lived up to every penny I spent on it. AND, I also promptly ordered some more vanilla beans online. I ordered from http://www.beanilla.com/ and spent just about twice what I spent at Whole Foods and instead of just two beans, I'll be getting a full half pound of vanilla beans! Once my vanilla beans arrive I'll definitely be making this recipe again.
I also dehydrated some figs and made some watermelon candy. Here's a photo of the watermelon candy:
The watermelon candy is just about the easiest thing in the world to make and it reminds me a bit of Laffy Taffy and those watermelon Jolly Ranchers from my childhood - but a whole lot healthier! I am thinking it'd be fun to get some cute cookie cutters and cut the watermelon into fun shapes to dehydrate, but even square, they taste delicious.
I also made the Kaia kale crackers again. This time I was tracking the ingredients so I could post the quantities for you, but I don't think I've quite got it right yet so I may need a few more attempts before I post the recipe. That said, they did turn out pretty tasty. This time I made not just the barbeque flavor, but I also made some cheesy ones:
And, if all that wasn't enough, after dinner we walked to the edge of town to watch the Macy's fireworks display. It was probably a 3 mile walk round trip, so a great opportunity to work off some of that ice cream!
