Seriously Wicked Superfood Fudge

Photo Credit: Melissa Skelly Angersbach

If you're like me, you like your chocolate every day.  I say it's a magnesium shortage, but I'm not complaining.  And this fudge is a serious delivery system for chocolate, let me tell you.  I won't tell you it's low in fat or it will make you skinny.  But if you're going to have chocolate, it's probably the healthiest chocolate you can possibly have on this good green Earth.  No exaggeration here. 

The base is pretty simple, but you can add whatever fill ins you'd like:  cashews and grated orange rind, goji and walnuts (as seen here), mulberry pumpkin seeds, etc.  Go crazy and love every minute of it.  Keeps about a week or so in the fridge, a month in the freezer (if you can wait that long)... 

Base: 

1 cup cacao butter, melted

½ cup raw cacao powder and ½ carob powder, mixed

3 Tablespoons Hazelnut  or vanilla extract

½ Teaspoon salt

3 Tablespoons yacon syrup

½ cup raw dark agave

2 Tablespoons Maca powder

1 Tablespoon Lucuma powder

1 Tablespoon Mesquite powder

1 Teaspoon Maqui powder

Fill ins:

1/3 cup walnuts and 1/3 cup goji berries mixed (reserve for last)

Mix all the base ingredients together in a strong blender until thick and blended.  I'd opt for putting hte powder on the bottom so it doesn't spray everwhere as you're blending.  In a bowl, pour out the base and add your mix ins.  Place a parchment paper in an 8x8 square pan and pour in the batter, spreading it to the corners and making a smooth top. Refrigerate until hard, about 4-5 hours or freeze for 20 minutes.  Lift with the parchment paper and cut into individual squares (1 inch or so since it's so rich). Enjoy! 

Raw Coconut Tindora Curry

My good friend Fatima took me on a tour of an indian market yesterday and I fell in love instantly with the smells, colors, and absolutely beautiful produce...vegetables I've never laid eyes on, and when I came home, tastes I've never tasted.  Raw okra?  Tindora?  Get ready.

Before I begin, I wanted to bring up the point that I use okra in this recipe.  Yes, many people have some qualms about eating okra in general, but raw okra is something intensely different...it almost has indian spices inherently in it, since I taste a bit of mild turmeric in it.  Mild in flavor but very earthy, dense in green but not at all bitter, and I love those little seeds inside of it. It's pretty dense and hearty, but light on the palate.  


Now, if you want to omit the okra, you can definitely do so.  Some people don't enjoy the "egg white" consistency it sometimes leaves, but I don't mind it much.  Especially since you can serve this over rice, it all gets mixed up and we're not using that much anyway. But you'd still succeed at the recipe if you leave it out. 

Tindora are these little cucumber looking fellas....they actually taste a bit of a cross between cukes and zucchini, but they're water-rich, refreshing, and on the mild side.  I know they're often cooked in indian cuisine but I didn't realize how delicious they are raw.  They're the type of thing that you can eat out of a bag watching a movie on the couch.  I'm not kidding. 


I also loved these glorious long locks called long beans.  Much thinner and limper than their traditional counterparts, but I think the flavor is more concentrated.  Eat them as you would any green bean.  Although not intrinsically Indian (found in asian cuisine also), I opted to include them here. 

4-5 long beans, diced

3 okra, sliced

4-5 tindora sliced

1 medium tomato, sliced

cilantro, per your taste, chopped or whole

Coconut Curry Sauce:

1 cup home-made coconut milk (or the freshest you can find)

1/2 teaspoon each garam masala, curry powder, cumin, fennel seeds

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 - 1 teaspoon salt, per your taste

1 clove garlic

1/2 inch ginger, minced

Coconut Curry Sauce

Salad before sauce

Combine sauce ingredients in a blender until well blended.  Adjust seasonings for taste.  Combine chopped veggies together and pour some of the sauce (you'll have leftovers) over the them.  Enjoy as is, or serve over some quinoa, millet, rice (to soak up the sauce), etc. 

Sweet Mint Kohlrabi Smoothie

Ah, kohlrabi, my new favorite veggie.  Here are two versions....green and purple, although the insides are the same white, water-rich and delicious...

The taste is a little bit between a radish and a broccoli stem, and once you peel the tough outer skin, the bulb mass can be sliced, diced, and used raw in salads, shredded in slaws, and in a variety of ways.  I'll be posting a kohlrabi salad next, so stay tuned.  

     The greens are also wonderful to use, so please don't toss them!  They're low in calories, high in fiber, loaded with vitamins especially vitamin C, and since it's a part of the brassica family, this veggie (bulb, leaves, and all) is especially good for cancer prevention.  
     Today, I decided to take the plunge and use them in a smoothie, and it's absolutely delicious.  Honestly, we should be seeing this veggie in every food store, and it's barely to be found...something I hope will change in the future. 
     This smoothie has the taste of summer written all over it, and it's super cooling.  This is a great way to use those kohlrabi greens I mentioned in the last post, as well as the ever growing sweet mint that ravages our gardens (to be honest, I love mint everywhere, so I think I may be the only one who doesn't mind mint taking over....which means more shakes for me!)

1/3 of the blender kohlrabi leaves

sweet mint/spearmint leaves and stems filled up to the 1/2 blender line

1 large banana

1 soft pear

frozen strawberries almost to the top of the blender

Combing all the ingredients together in the order listed, and add water to fill 1/2 the container.  Blend away and enjoy.