Part One: Veganism (and Cashew Milk Recipe)

This is version six cashew milk and I think I’m finally satisfied.  I’m on my second bag of raw cashews, second container of dates, and half way through my bag of chia seeds (I’ve been eating those separately as well).  This is so much fun! Recipe is at the bottom of this post.

I’m so fascinated by raw food.  Seriously.   Why did someone not slap me in the face and make me try it sooner?  I can see now that this project is going to take me a long time, longer than I even anticipated.  I’ve only just begun my research on veganism (is that a real word?) and raw food.  I had no idea that this whole other world of eating existed out there and I’m tempted to jump right in.  If I was rich, I’d buy myself an excalibur dehydrator and a vitamix blender and I’d experiment until all hours of the night.  But I’m not.  So I’m going to take it slow, make a couple new recipes a week and try to make some of these foods permanent additions to our household.

When I was first envisioning Project Be, I had thought I would spend a set period of time “being” each item on my list.  Now I’m starting to re-think my process.  Forcing myself into a way of life that I am unaccustomed to, expecting myself to follow a strict plan for a set amount of time, and trying to plan, organize, and learn everything that goes into each thing sounds much too stressful.  I don’t want to burn myself out on the very things that I am fascinated by.  This project, for me, is supposed to help me learn and grow and become more of the person I want to be.  Adding stress isn’t going to help that journey. So, I’m taking away my rules.  Instead of expecting myself to be perfect at each thing on my list, I’m going to challenge myself to learn as much as I can about each thing, and incorporate what ever I can into my daily life.

I’ve also learned that as soon as I start to research something, I can’t wait to try it.  I was planning to start this project in January, but now that I’ve started my research, I’m already jumping in.  I can’t help it.  I’m too excited.  So, it has begun.

Step one of Project Be is to tackle the Vegan diet – from raw food to proper food combining, making my own dairy free milk and cheese, and trying new fruits and veggies.  It is also a goal of mine to get more of these foods in my kids diets as well.  Since we are going dairy and egg free for Lucas for awhile, it seems to be good timing.  So here I go.  Wish me luck!

Raw Cashew Milk

(loosely based on a recipe by Kristin Suzanne.  I changed quantities and swapped a few ingredients.)

3/4 cup of raw cashews, soaked at least an hour and rinsed

3 cups water

5 dates

4 teaspoons chia seeds

2 teaspoons yacon powder

Blend on high until smooth.  It took my blender about 4 minutes.  I also learned that the longer you soak the nuts, and the softer the dates are to begin with, the quicker the blending process is.

I’m going to try making some ice cream out of this for Thanksgiving.  Maybe add some pumpkin puree?  YUM!