Vegan Pumpkin Pie

A deliciously healthy recipe...

Photo and recipe via Care2.

CRUST


2 1/4 cups pecans, soaked overnight and dehydrated for 24 hours

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1 tablespoon date paste

1 pinch sea salt

1. Place prepared pecans in food processor; pulse into small crumbs. Mix pecans and all remaining ingredients together well by hand.

2. Press into plastic (or parchment) lined 9-inch tart pan to desired thickness. Dehydrate 48 hours.

3. Chill crust in freezer for 15-30 minutes before filling. If not using all of hte crsut mixture, store extra in a container in the freezer.

FILLING

1/2 cup cashews, soaked

1/2 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup agave (read about agave)

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons carrot juice

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 vanilla bean, scraped

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg

1. Blend all ingredients in Vita-Mix (or a basic heavy duty blender) until very smooth.

2. Fill tart crust and chill in freezer overnight. Remove pie from tart pan, cut into 12 even slices and serve, or wrap each slice in parchment and store in refrigerator.

The Dehydrator. When I first started considering a raw diet, all this talk of a dehydrator made me very nervous. I imagined some very high-tech piece of kitchen lab equipment that was probably very expensive, certainly complicated, and maybe even dangerous! Lo and behold–it’s a simple box with drying trays and a small fan and heater. I got one and use it all the time for a million things, even though I’m not exclusively raw. Anyway, you can live without it. If you are in a cooler climate, Matthew Kenney recommends using an oven at the lowest setting with its door propped open, or if oyu are in a warmer environ, he suggests laying your food in the sun. Again, you can also skip the drying of the crust and make the pie filling as a pudding.

Adapted from the great raw cookbook Everyday Raw (Gibbs Smith, 2008) by Matthew Kenney

And about that picture. It is an actual picture of the recipe, from the cookbook, but the recipe doesn’t explain the grid decoration (or how someone could possibly have such a steady hand with a pastry bag!). It looks to me like they reserved some of the filling mix, maybe mixed it with a little extra coconut oil (or maybe not) and piped it on.

Pumpkin Carving Templates...

I came across these wonderful pumpkin designs via HGTV. Click here to download these amazing pumpkin-carving templates!

Introducing....

...Genuine stones headbands. I have gotten a lot of compliments on them so far. Find them on my etsy shop

Natural Hand Sanitizer...

Information and photo via Care2
In The New York Times article, Dr. Lawrence D. Rosen, a New Jersey pediatrician who dispenses natural health advice recommends his tried-and-true recipe for homemade hand sanitizer called thieves oil–his formula calls for cinnamon bark, lemon oil and eucalyptus. As legend has it, a group of 15th century European perfumers-turned-grave-robbers were able to defend themselves against the demons of bubonic plague (and other assorted bacterial maladies one might encounter while removing jewelry from corpses) by dousing themselves in a blend of essential oils, hence the name “thieves oil.”

Now there are any number of stories circulating about this legend, and just as many recipes, many of them with a vinegar base. But going on Dr. Rosen’s fail-safe recipe and the proven efficacy of cinnamon oil.

The fomula includes equal amounts of the following therapeutic grade essential oils:
cinnamon bark
lemon
eucalyptus
clove
rosemary
Mix them with jojoba or olive oil as a carrier, and use on hands as a sanitizer.
(Note: pure essential oils can be very potent, it’s important to test some on a small patch of skin to check for any adverse reactions.)