Raw carrot and apple muffins - Muffin crudisti mela e carota

English
Yeah, muffins! Raw, dairy free, gluten free, soy free, yeast free and with no added sugars whatsoever. And delicious, how awesome is that?!
I have to admit this is a little harder to achieve than other raw recipes but still very simple and easy. You're going to need a dehydrator though.

Ingredients for the dough:
300g of carrots
200g of buckwheat, ground
2 medium sized apples (I used royal galas)
5 medjoul dates, pitted

Ingredients for the frosting:
1 banana, ripe
1 medjoul date, pitted
ground cinnamon to taste

Blend all the dough ingredients until you have a smooth dough, then spread it on a kitchen foil for dehydration. Leave in the dehydrator for approximately 2 to 3 hours at 40°C and make sure that it's not too dry for working it and making it stick together. When ready shape it to make it look like a real muffin or cupcake (you can do better than me, I know eheh) and make the frosting as follows:
blend the banana and the date with ground cinnamon until it looks smooth and creamy then add it on top of the muffins. Put back in the dehydrator for at least 2 hours until the surface of the frosting and of the muffins is dry. You'll have approximately 4 muffins. Serve them as it pleases you.

Italiano
Muffins, siiii! Raw, senza latte, senza glutine, senza soia, senza lievito e senza zuccheri aggiunti di alcun tipo. E deliziosi, non è fantastico?!
Devo dire che questa è una ricetta leggermente più macchinosa di altre ricette raw ma comunque molto semplice. Sarà necessario un essiccatore però.
Ingredienti per l'impasto:
300g di carote
200g di grano saraceno macinato
2 mele di taglia media (ho utilizzato le royal gala)
5 datteri medjoul snocciolati

Ingredienti per la glassa:
1 banana matura
1 dattero medjoul
cannella in polvere q.b.

Frullate tutti gli ingredienti dell'impasto fino a ottenere un impasto omogeneo, poi stendete su un foglio di carta da forno. Mettete a essiccare per 2 o 3 ore a 40°C assicurandovi che non sia troppo secco per poterlo amalgamare di nuovo. Una volta pronto impastatelo dandogli la forma di muffins o cupcake (potete fare meglio di me, lo so eheh) e preparate la glassa come segue:
frullate la banana e il dattero con la cannella fino ad avere una crema uniforme, poi versatela sopra ai muffin. Mettete i muffin a essiccare per altre 2 ore o fino a che sia la glassa che i muffin non risultino asciutti all'esterno. Il risultato saranno circa 4 muffin da servire a proprio gusto.

Ajoblanco Raw with apple cubes and raisins - Ajoblanco Raw con cubetti di mela e uva passa

English
Ok, I've just got back from my vacation in Malaga (Spain) and I wish I was still there so I've decided to prepare a very good recipe I've discovered there: Ajoblanco. The original recipe is not raw because it has bread in it so I've made a little change and added some eggplant to replace it.
Here are the ingredients:
100g of almonds
2 cloves of garlic
500ml of fresh water
150g of eggplant, peeled
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp apple vinegar
Half an apple (or less) diced
A handful of raisins
Salt to taste (optional)
Start mixing the almonds and the garlic together with a spoonful of oil. Add the eggplant and the water. Add the remaining oil and the vinegar. Finally add the salt if you feel the need to and put in the fridge for a few minutes. Add the apple cubes and the raisins when serving. Notes: Two cloves of garlic might be a bit to much for someone unless you're fighting vampires so maybe one would be better but it depends on your taste.

Italiano
Ok, sono appena tornato dalle vacanze a Malaga e vorrei essere ancora lì quindi ho deciso di preparare una ricetta buonissima che ho scoperto lì: Ajoblanco. La ricetta originale prevede il pane, quindi per renderla raw ho fatto una piccola modifica e ho aggiunto un po' di melanzana per sostituirlo.
Ecco gli ingredienti:
100g di mandorle
2 spicchi d'aglio
500ml di acqua fresca
150g di melanzana pelata
3 cucchiai di olio EVO
1 cucchiao di aceto di mele
Mezza mela (o meno) a cubetti
Una manciata di uvetta
Sale Q.B. (opzionale)
Incominciate a frullare insieme le mandorle e l'aglio con un cucchiaio d'olio. Aggiungete la melanzana e l'acqua. Aggiungete l'olio rimasto e l'aceto. Se necessario aggiungete il sale e mettete il preparato in frigorifero per qualche minuto. Aggiungete i cubetti di mela e l'uvetta prima di servire. Note: due spicchi d'aglio potrebbero essere troppi per alcuni a meno che non sia in atto una caccia ai vampiri quindi forse è meglio utilizzarne uno solo, ma dipende sempre dal proprio palato.

Raw pink sauce with herbs - Salsa rosa crudista alle erbe

English
This is the recipe for a light pink sauce. You can smother your veggie or fruit spaghetti with it or you can use it as a salad dressing or just for dipping.

Ingredients:
8 to 10 cherry tomatoes (or similarly juicy and small)
3 big portabello mushrooms
2 teaspoons of tahini
1/2 scallion
About an inch of ginger (peeled)
1 tablespoon of dry yeast
5 or 6 basil leaves
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Oregano to taste
Optional: a teaspoon of umeboshi or a pinch of salt

Mix al of the ingredients in a blender until you have a soft and creamy sauce. You can add a few basil leaves on the top of it before serving.

Italiano
Ecco la ricetta di una salsa rosa leggera alle erbe. Si può usare per condire gli spaghetti di frutta o verdura oppure per l'insalata o semplicemente per pucciare.

Ingredienti:
8-10 pomodorini
3 champignon grandi
2 cucchiaini di salsa tahini
1/2 cipollotto
Circa un cm o due di zenzero pelato
1 cucchiaio di lievito alimentare secco
5 o 6 foglie di basilico
2 cucchiai di olio EVO
Origano a piacere
Opzionale: un cucchiaino di umeboshi o un pizzico di sale

Unite tutti gli ingredienti in un frullatore o robot da cucina fino a ottenere una salsa cremosa. È possibile aggiungere qualche foglia di basilico per presentare la salsa.

I'm back

It's been so long since the last time I wrote here and a lot of things happened. My health is always better and I seem to be getting onto what might be my path into food and drinking. I'm not a true fruitarian yet but I'm getting closer and closer to it. My belly is finally not sore anymore but still a bit fatty, still better though. What I'm learning here is that this is a long process and it takes a lot of patience (I'm really not the right person to talk about patience) but if you'll endure you'll be rewarded. Most people quit way before time and that's a real shame because they miss the opportunities that come with this choice. They only pay a very dear price and go home with nothing but complaints and excuses like "this is not my thing" or worse: "don't do it, it's all bulls**t". Again, my suggestion here is to give it a lot of time, maybe a couple of years, start slowly and gradually move to raw.
Back to my experience I'm almost done with my country house and I might be able to move in by the end of the month. It took me longer than I expected (again!!) but now I see the light at the end of the tunnel. As soon as I move in I will be more free and able to get back to what I like most like playing, singing and running. I'm also going to start a raw food recipe book on this or another blog, I still haven't figured that out. I only have a few recipes and I can't wait to share them all with the world. That's all for now. Have a nice (raw) day!

Raw is good, fruit is better

One year! It's been one year of raw food and it's been a hard year, I'm not gonna lie about it. When you leave your traditional diet behind and you change it so dramatically it's hard to stay strong and go on. And I had a lot of doubts in the process and a lot of times I have gon back to just vegan. But in the end I overcame all the problems and I feel better every day. My suggestion, if you want to try this too, is to go slowly and take your time to give up all the cooked/processed foods. Start taking off from your diet the most poisonous elements like sugars, coffee and salt and then move slowly towards vegan and raw foodist. I didn't do it and I felt very bad for the first 3 months, slightly better the 3 months after that and then it was all ok. All but one little problem: sore belly. I started worrying about it and tried everything to make it go away. The problem is that I stressed my body (and mind) a lot with fasting or semi-fasting and I fell into bulimic instincts to overcompensate. I ended up eating tons of dates and almonds (or any other dried fruits and nuts) but my belly started growing a fat layer and so I felt bad about it and tried to fix it with more fasting. This led me into a spiral and I was really worried about it. I went back to vegan for a couple of weeks but it didn't help, it only made things worse so I started looking for answers on the web and finally I found out that my sore belly is probably due to addiction to cereal and it will take some times to get rid of it so I'll try and be patient for a few months. My bulimic instincts, as I said before were overcompensations due to food deprivation. The solution proposed was eating as much fruit as I want. Yeah, seriously, just that simple! Now I've been doing this for a week and I feel so good, like never before! I'm fixing my problems in the guts and everything looks better. I even feel better mentally because I don't have to worry about food and hunger and overcompensations. It's all easier now. So I guess I'm going to be a fruitarian rather than just raw foodist. I find it an easier solution, more natural and it makes me feel better so why not? The only exception is with potatoes which I like to cook in a conservative way but I might as well get rid of them in a few months. The only problem is when I'm going out with friends to have a beer... I will probably choose wine (for the cereal issue). This is very hard for most people because our society looks badly at people who do "extreme" choices like this one but I guess the real extreme choice is to eat unnatural, cooked, refined food which is unhealthy and makes you tired and unmotivated. I know everyone is used to it now but this doesn't change the fact that our body is not made for that. We poison ourselves with drugs everyday and when they tell us to get rid of them we say that we like them and since everybody does the same there is no need to worry. As far as I'm concerned the idea of being addicted to something makes me feel sad because I want to be as free as possible, it's not just about health and energy, which of course are important to me. However I think that everyone should find their own path in this life and this includes food choice. But there must be a choice, you can't keep doing things just because you were tought so or because everyone else is doing the same. I guess we need to question things in order to find what's good for us. Otherwise we're just robots doing what they're told. I don't wanna be this, I wanna question everything, including myself, with all the consequences that come with it. Yes, because if you start questioning everything, in the beginning, you'll be weaker, doubtful and insecure, but in the long run you'll find out what is true about yourself and no one will be able to change your mind. No one but you, of course. So come on, give yourself a chance to choose!

Fighting stress

There are many reasons for staying away from what we like, what we want to do and what we are trying to do. Stress is one of them and in my personal experience it has kept me away from a lot of love and passion. I had let stress get the best of me. But then something in me changed. The more I got stressed the more I kept running away from what I wanted to do because I felt too tired to do it, because I thought that those feelings of fatigue and stress were going to be temporary. Well, they were not. Because without the things I love I am an empty shell. I realized all of this and decided to change things. There are times in life when I feel too tired and depressed to go on and other times that I get sick of wasting my life and decide to be active and try to make a difference. This is one of those times. So basically, what are my passions? I love singing, I love travelling and I love sports activity. I love languages and new cultures so I thought that I should start over from what I love and in order to do so I had to get rid of the activities that were causing stress. I've been member of a band for 7 years. I put up the band in the first place and guided it until last year. Then I talked to one of my guitar players and we both realized that we had been led astray from what we really like in music. We began playing some genuine, natural and instinctive music and we had some great experiences with that, we played in front of 500 people a couple of times and we saw our band grow in a few years. We found a label, a producer and we thought we were going to play at a higher level but we were wrong. We let those people tell us what to do and how to do it. At first they came up with suggestions but in a few months we ended up playing some silly stuff in order to meet a target, to please them, to fulfill their expectation. As a result some of us, me included, didn't like our own music anymore, didn't like playing it, listening to it and rehearsing was a stressful job instead of a creative playtime. Because in the end music is fun and it's a form of art. I felt like I was working in a factory with no wage. So me and my friend decided to call it quit. We both felt better and in a few months we decided we were ready for a new band together. Now I don't know what the result will be but I know that this is what I want to do, so I'll get committed somehow. Then comes travelling. As I said before I love travelling. I thought I couldn't do it because I work in a store and because I couldn't afford to travel around the world because travelling is expensive. But my attitude in life is that if you really want to do something you'll find a way to do it, no matter the cost or the barriers that you may find on your way. And so I started thinking and decided to take some time away from my job to travel around Europe next summer. I'm stil working on the plan but the idea is to leave in late May and travel counter clock-wise. I expect to come back in mid October. As for the money I intend to save some every month and play my handpan (I'm still waiting to have it but it will be ready in a month so I have a few months to learn how to play it) while travelling. I will couchsurf, sleep in my car and go to hostels depending on my resources. I will put a more detailed plan in the next blogs as soon as I have one but I will probably change my plans while on the road. I know it's a bit crazy but I really need to see what's out there and as time goes by it will get harder and harder to do something like this because the older you get, the more you get linked to things like work and family and you can't just get away and get lost. But now I can because my store has just been started and we're still paying debts so my income is almost none and I will give it up for a few months. Plus I have no choice because this place and this job don't feel good to me. This job is now the biggest source of stress in my life but I can't quit to find another stressful job, it wouldn't be senseful. I have to build something that I like so maybe being a street artist could be a good alternative to what I do now.
I want to end this post with a controversial thought: what if the only purpose of life was death?
What if this is all just a test. We are born, we grow and we get addicted to life day after day because in this world there are beautiful things that make life worth living. Take travelling and music for me, the stunning view on top of a mountain, the ocean glittering at dawn and all the things that make you want to go on when you're in darkness. But what's on the other side? What do we get when we die? Is there anything else? What if there was a guy waiting for you right after you pass out. "Hey, you finally did it!"? Maybe it's really just a test, maybe you can choose to enjoy this life for a while but it's only just a game and when it's over you get to a better place where you don't need to stuggle anymore, where everything is free and abundant. Yeah, I know it's a bit childish to think of heaven like this but what if it was true?

My voice is coming back

After about four months of poor harmonics in my voice I can finally see a change. I realized that I was drinking too few and now I have reversed this behavior. I was used to drinking a lot of water before, from 2 to 3 liters every day but then I read  some opinions on this matter from people who said that so much water wasn't necessary when you eat 100% raw. Some others said that water is always important no matter what you eat. I had to understand so I tried to do all of my daily tasks with no water or a couple of glasses throughout the day, except when fasting because in that case you necessarily have to drink a lot of water. In my experience water is necessary and it doesn't matter if my food is raw but I guess anyone has to try for themselves in order to understand what solution fits better. I believe that every person has to find it's own way to deal with things, what's important is to question everything all the time, if you want to know the truth. Plus I am still in the middle of a long detoxing process which will take at least a couple of years so things like hydration and bio chemistry in general might change considerably during this process. Another problem I'm dealing with is compulsive eating. It feels like bulimia but it's not quite the same thing. It's just sometimes I can't stop eating and I feel frustrated about it. I never had this problem before and I still haven't figured out why I feel like this. It might be the detoxification I mentioned above or something else, I don't know. Unfortunately here I'm gonna have to control myself which is something I don't like because I like when things are natural and simple, at least when it comes to primary needs, but I can't allow myself to be bulimic, especially when on a path to find more health, both physical and mental. But yeah, my voice is back so I can sing instead of eating. Or I can play bansuri or didgeridoo or all of the above.