Uncertain Future

Good Morning,

As promised I will post a couple (maybe three) more recipes today before I'm done. Trust me, they will be good!

However, I am having a minor panic attack this morning. It's probably clear by now that I'm quitting my well-paying, cushy and easy job to go back to school full time to become a nurse. One of my co-workers sent out an email to the whole team (all three hundred plus people) telling them that I'm leaving and why I'm leaving. Of course, no one reads the email so they all come up to me and start asking where I am going. How many times do I have to repeat the same information over and over? I feel like I should send out a mass email myself...not that it would help. Of course, she did this with the best intentions but it definitely was not something that I was looking forward to in my last week of work. So why am I freaking out? Because although I have a part-time job lined up already, I just don't know if that will be enough to cover all of my expenses. I've gotten used to living a life of relative comfort and apparently, I'm not quite ready to give that up. Too late now though. But the worst part is that I have had some people from my office approach me and start scaring me. They mean well and I'm sure they simply want me to be prepared but I'm scared enough as it is, do you really have to tell me how hard it is to get into the University of Washington Nursing School? I already know it's competitive, I'm not an idiot but that doesn't mean I want to be reminded of that fact constantly. I've considered that bit and I've decided to go for it anyway and I was happy with my choice, why do these people have to remind me of the possibly life-destroying aspect of all this?

Speaking of intimidating, I did the Cardio Recovery work out of the Insanity program. Can all of the work outs be like that? I worked up a sweat but my heart rate wasn't at a "holy shit just kill me now!" level today. It was very pleasant and hopefully it will let my muscles rest a bit. Right now, they are KILLING me. It will be nice to have this recovery day to look forward to every week. I've just been so stressed lately that I'm sure I've been eating awfully this past week and it's depressing me. I will try and do better next week, though I'm sure that will be nearly impossible as well given that it is my last week at work and who knows what these people will drive me to.

Okay, enough of the ranting, here are the recipes!

Hoisini Sauce by Russell James on RFC:

Ingredients:

1/4 cup tahini

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon yacon syrup or agave

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

3 teaspoons tamari

1/2 a garlic clove

1/2 a small de-seeded chili

1/2cm cube of fresh ginger

Directions:

Blend everything together in a blender.

Some notes: I never have fresh ginger in the house (probably because I'm not the biggest fan) so I used some ginger powder instead. I also did not have any chillies so I completely omitted them from the recipe and it turned out fine. I used a whole clove of garlic and replaced tamari with nama shoyu. This turned out really creamy and delicious. Russell suggests serving this with dehydrated broccoli and parsnip rice (which does sound delicious) but I have no dehydrator and no parsnips so I used my favorite; kelp noodles and some fresh, raw broccoli. You can go to the link and check out how he serves it.

Chocolate Covered Coconut Bites by Erin on Gone Raw:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup dates

water

2-3 tbsp. tahini, or other nut butter

1-2 c coconut flakes

favorite chocolate sauce recipe

Directions:

In a blender or food processor, combine dates and water to make a thick paste. Add tahini and blend until smooth. Transfer to a large bowl and add coconut until you reach desired consistency. Make into desired shape and lay on a cookie sheet in the freezer while you prepare your chocolate sauce. Once chocolate is ready, you can either roll each piece in the chocolate, dip half in it or drizzle the sauce over the tops. Put back in freezer to allow chocolate to set and enjoy!

Some notes: I made two attempts at this recipe. The first time my date paste was too thick and I added about 1 1/2 cups of coconut so the balls turned out way to dry. I recommend using about a half a cup of water (or more) to 1/2 cup dates, it will look thin but trust me, you want it that way. Then I used only 1 cup of coconut and it turned out to be the perfect consistency. It was a little soft but it set in the freezer. I also used 4 tbsp. of cacao, coconut oil and agave to make the chocolate sauce and I found it was enough to cover all of the balls entirely.

You can leave them in the freezer until you serve them but I recommend letting them defrost a little bit because that's when you can really taste them. These were REALLY good! Even the dry ones but the second batch was amazing when it melted a little. YUM! I even had SAD folk at work devouring these, they loved them as well and couldn't believe they were Raw.

I still have the Szechuan dressing and the simple curry to talk about but since this post has ended up being so long already, I'll save the rest of the recipes for a later date. TTFN!