minty love

My main draw to incorporate more raw food in our diets is nutrition and health, but an extra side bonus is that it really can be fast and easy.  Usually when I go for something fast and easy it's food that I have some guilt about (that it's nutritionally deficient), there was none involved eating this quick and easy leftover lunch. 



Lots of greens washing and prepping got done yesterday as well as a fresh batch of raw almond butter.  I filled the FP with a random amount of almonds and got out the only available glass jar.  After processing, the butter amount was exactly the volume of the jar, I just love it when things like that happen =)  I also dig when I happen to grab the needed number of hangers when I'm doing the ironing, it's the little things that make me happy ;)  Tell me you don't relish that too, haha! 

The 'universe aligned almond butter jar'



ok, on so some less goofy chatter...
and dessert first.  Diana of soapandchocolate did a guest post on Choosing Raw this week and showed us how to make her Andes inspired Raw Mint-Chocolate Cream Bars.  As soon as I saw them I knew I had to have them make them.  I love mint, like LOVE it!  If you read her post she talks about using what you have and being creative and being ooen for change when making raw desserts, I listened.  I was not willing to use the rest of my spinach for green tinting ( I was already longing for my next green smoothie), but I did have an avocado I was willing to part with, so I made that swap ( I'm thinking that I made ours extra fat filled...it's all the good kind though, and we're not dessert crazy here so I felt fine doing that)  I also do not have xantham gum for thickening, I do however have chia gel, so I made that swap as well and used about 2 heaping tsp.  Here's my crust.



the minty green layer.  It really is a bit more green than the photo appears, my avocado did it's job =)



and the minty chocolate layer, I also added some raw cacao nibs to this layer. 



dessert time =)





This was my first time making a raw dessert that included layers, I was pretty happy with the results.  We both loved it and gave it 2 thumbs up, dude ;)'  I'm extra cheesebally today.

before dessert, dinner involved a big green salad



and these Nut Butter Crusted Parnip Fries from Oh She Glows. 



Hop on over to her site and read how she raves about how stinkin good these are, because they really are!  I agree I would not have guessed that pasnips and nut butter would taste so yummy like this.  I did change the ratio of nut butters a bit so ours ended up being 1 T peanut butter and about 1.5 T almond butter.  I used two decent sized parsnips and 4 medium carrots ( I thought they'd be tasty too and they were!) and was left with extra coating so I'd go with more veggies next time. 

ready for their nut bath



this is what bars should serve for frys, seriously.




Ok, I'm off to the chiro (whoop whoop) and going to see Gene Baur later today as well.  Hope you have a lovely Friday and as always thanks for reading xoxo