Please keep in mind we are not nutritionist or doctors. We recommend checking in with your doctor before making any changes to your diet and exercise routine. Most of our information is based upon our own experiences and research, although we do hope you keep an open mind.
Lori and I made this zucchini cucumber lasagna and fell in love We have made a few other vegetable based lasagna’s herebefore and enjoyed them all. But this one has been favorite so far
Star players
We used our mandoline to thinly slice our zucchini and cucumbers. I used one zucchini and one cucumber. Grabbed a handful of fresh cilantro and basil.
Sunflower Cheez Spread we did not really measure exactly what we did. We really just threw ingredients into Vita-mix and blended till we were happy with the results But here is what we think we put in it with some measurements.
Pure2Raw Recipe: Sunflower Cheez Spread
about 1 – 1 1/2cups sunflower seeds (soaked overnight and rinsed)
Michelle and I have been planning this socca Sunday meal for a few days now! I am so excited to finally share it with you all We slept in this morning, so it was more of a brunch!
Last time I was in Charlotte I stopped by a health food store to grab some of Justin’s almond butter that we have seen manybloggerslove. Luckily, for me the store offered samples of it! We were both eager to give this almond butter a try and we thought it would taste great with our socca.
Michelle and I were discussing our plans of our next socca Sunday… yes we plan these out, and thought figs would taste great with the almond butter socca idea we were already planning. We were going with a upgraded version of the classic PB & J!
Justin’s Maple Almond Butter (I bought these samples with my own money)
and fresh figs (love fig season)
And of course socca!!
Today’s socca I did:
1 cup garbanzo bean flour
1 1/4 cups water
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp coconut oil (for the pan)
In a large bowl I put the garbanzo bean flour, water, salt, cinnamon and whisked together.
I put the 3 tbsp coconut oil in my 10 inch pan into a pre-heated oven of 400 degrees. Let the oil get hot for 4 minutes. Next I poured the cinnamon socca batter into the pan and baked for 40 minutes.
I topped the socca with the almond butter and fresh figs..no need for jelly when you have sweet fresh figs to use instead ; )
Yummy almond butter
Fresh the toppings with figs
Final Dish
Time to slice up
A little piece of heaven
Each bite was pure sweet bliss!
Michelle and I really enjoyed the combination of the almond butter and the sweet figs with the garbanzo bean socca! YUMMMMMM A little savory….with a little sweetness!
Today I have a recipe that is delicious and fun to make!
Everyone likes a good meatless burger that is healthy for them right? One that contains few ingredients, easy to prepare and taste great. Well I think I have that recipe to share today.
Michelle and I enjoyed these meatless burger earlier this week and loved it! I know there are many versions of lentil or bean burgers out there but this is one version of our burger. We used to make all types of gluten free ‘bean’ burgers all the time, we love them! And this beautiful lady had a wonderful recipe as well.
Lately we have been craving lentils so in honor of our craving we made some lentil burgers
Oh boy did these meatless burgers hit the spot for us. They were full of flavor and yet so simple! If you are looking for a simple burger that is different yet satisfying you have to give these a try! Best of all we made these burgers with no flour – so this recipe is great for those who can’t have gluten/wheat like us!
Pure2Raw Recipe: Lentil Cilantro Burger
2 cups cooked lentils (cook according to package – we used sprouted lentils)
1/2 cup fresh cilantro
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 inch fresh ginger, peeled
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 1/2 tsp allspice
coconut oil for pan
2 tbsp chia seeds
10 tbsp water
Mustard topping – we did not write down what we did – we just threw ingredients into the vitamix and blended. You may use any mustard sauce you like. Our mustard sauce was a mix of zucchini, cashew, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, sea salt and spices.
To make burgers:
After lentils are cooked, drain them if there is any extra water. Scoop out 1 cup of the cooked lentils and place in food processor along with fresh cilantro, garlic, ginger, coriander seeds, and allspice. Pulse till combined.
Add in remaining cooked lentils and pulse a few times. We left our burgers a little on the ‘chunky’ side!
In a small bowl add in your 2 tbsp chia seeds with 6 tbsp water. Let sit for about 10 minutes.
In a large bowl pour in your pulsed burger mixture and add in the chia gel. We ended up adding 4 more tbsp of water. And stir together.
We used a cookie scooper to make our burgers.
Place shaped burgers onto a warm skillet and sautée on each side for a few minutes or till golden brown.
Enjoy
Lentil Cilantro Burgers before being pan sautéed in coconut oil on skillet
Lentil burgers all done!
May eat plain or with a little ‘mustard’ on top!
Now that is one delicious lentil burger
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! Michelle and I are getting things ready for our farmers markets tomorrow.
Have you made a lentil burger before? Any meatless burger before? Black bean, garbanzo bean. etc…
Today we have a short video of Lori making a green smoothie. We have at least one green smoothie everyday with some sort of green and fruit. We love all types of dark leafy greens in our green smoothies. We aim to get a different one almost everyday we believe in variety because each dark leafy green provides different nutritional value
We challenge you to step outside your comfort zone and use different greens! Promise after you make some for awhile your taste buds will learn to love them like we do!It took us a few times to make really good green smoothies with kale, collards, swiss chard, bok choy, etc. but kept up with it and now we crave them!
Today’s green smoothie: Grape and Fig Kale Green Smoothie (made with local grapes and figs)
Pure2Raw Recipe: Grape Fig Kale Smoothie
Ingredients:
2 cups water (you may use any liquid of your choice like any nut milks)
A few stalks of green kale ( I did about 4-5 kale leaves)
1 juice of lemon
1 packet stevia
1 pint of green grapes
1 pint of frozen figs
Additions I added: these are optional but they provide great flavor to smoothie
2 tbsp hemp seeds
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cardamom
1 tsp vanilla bean powder
Pour 2 cups of water in blender along with kale. Blend till combined.
Next add remaining ingredients and blend till WELL blended and smooth. I usually blend for a good 1-2 minutes
Enjoy!
Remember when making green smoothies add any flavorings you like to help make the smoothie taste great. Example, if you do not like cinnamon than do not add it, instead use another spice like nutmeg. I usually do water in my smoothies but feel free to use any liquid of your choice. But remember you do not always have to add fruit like we did the other day, using protein powders can help with providing great texture and flavor. Play around and have fun!!
Now go make a creamy green smoothie for your morning to give you all the fuel and nutrition to get through your day Green smoothies are great for quick, easy to digest, nutritious meal!
This week Lori and I have been running around like crazy… have some big projects we are working on for our company! Hopefully we can share more with you soon!
Till next time, we have a great recipe to share with you all tomorrow for Recipe Friday! Can’t believe it is Friday already!
Here are some new recipes we have been enjoying lately, and all these recipes are done in our Vita-mix. It really helps create the prefect pudding texture!!!
With majority of these new recipes some we did just lemon juice and some we did lemon zest and juice.We also add one spoonful of sunflower lecithin to each pudding. Play around with what you like! The additions shown below are based off one serving with one avocado.
And sometimes we have made it with cacao nibs on top, which is our normal Saturday morning breakfast!!!
Ok so we seriously love our avocado especially in a pudding form!!!
5 reasons why we love avocados so much:
packed with super nutrients
great source of Vitamin B’s (expect 12)
full of Vitamin’s A, C, and E
healthy fat – mostly Omega-9 fatty acids
keeps you full and satisfied
Healthy fats are needed in one’s diet because they transport fat-soluble vitamins. Plant fats also contain no cholesterol!! Did you know that 60% of the human brain is made of fat!?!
Please do not be afraid of healthy fats especially avocados. We have one almost every single day.We have not noticed any weight gain from them either, so you do not have worry about that in our opinion.
If you are an avocado lover like we are, what is your favorite recipe or meal using avocado?
If you are not an avocado lover, seeing these puddings would you consider trying an avocado???
We have also done a lot of chocolate versions of this pudding which we will share at another time.
Michelle and I are running around like mad women crazy today I am doing a gluten free expo in Charlotte this Saturday, while Michelle is going to stay here and do one of our Saturday markets. And the expo is expecting over 450 people! So let’s just say we are planning on getting no sleep these next few days.
Our workout today was 20 minutes of walking plus 15 minutes of high intensity calisthenics followed by 10 minutes of yoga! Felt great!
Our breakfast was a delicious smoothie.
Local baby chard, frozen local peaches, granny smith apples, lemon juice, hemp seeds, and sunflower lecithin.
Creamy and delicious just the way I like them
On a side note: we added some new dry mixes to our online store (pizza and pretzels) both are easy to make and freeze well.
Earlier this week Michelle’s best friend was here for a business trip and he loves our pizza!! Therefore Michelle made our Twin Cakes Bakery gluten free vegan yeast free pizza crust.
May I present you with our yummy allergy friendly pizza that is full of flavor! And taste just like the real thing
We topped our pizza with a basic gluten free tomato sauce and DAIYA cheese!! We love this cheese!!
PURE HEAVEN! Wow this was a real treat for Michelle and I. We typically do not eat pizza that often but it sure is nice to enjoy every once in awhile. Nothing beats good pizza and good company
Michelle eyeing enjoying her slice of pizza!
As I mentioned we are getting things ready for the expo this weekend and farmers markets, as well as keeping up with online orders!
Vanilla kreme bites before going into the dehydrator.
One dehydrator full of snack bites, flatbreads and crust of our cranberry layered coconut bar.
Made four rounds of our fudgy chocolaty brownie bites… and a round for us to enjoy These are sooo good straight from the dehydrator because they are a little warm and taste just like ‘baked’ brownies
Now if you follow us on twitter you would have seen our tweet about us making a mistake with creating a chocolate dessert but realized we might have created a whole new recipe for unbaked Hershey kisses
Now the look of these cute little guys still needs some work but the flavor and texture are to die for
Ok back to business.. enough chocolate and pizza talk
Time to finish packing and getting ready for my gluten free event in Charlotte.
What is your favorite type of pizza? Deep dish or thin crust? Lots of tomato sauce or little sauce? Lots of toppings or plain?
Thanks for everyone’s support on us sharing our past issue with an eating disorder. We are always blown away from all the support and friendships we have made through blogging!!
We wanted to share something fun we created the other day. We were munching on some local figs along side drinking our homemade kombucha, we thought these go well together.
We present you….
Pure2raw recipe: Fig Kombucha
Ingredients:
2 cups kombucha
about 4-5 figs
Blend in blender!
We do not normally like our kombucha’s sweet, but we actually really enjoyed this, it was a nice change!
Loved the froth on top!
Simple, perfect little sweet treat!!
Okay, well back to work for us…hope you all have a great evening.
Socca flavor for today was inspired by this mint pistachio pesto. Ever since Lori shared this amazing pesto combination we just had to try it out You all know we love our mint,pistachios, and basil has appeared many times on our blog from sauces, salads, smoothies to dressings! Love it!
This evening Michelle and I wanted our socca to be more of a thin custard like texture so instead of our usual 1 1/2 cups water we did 2 cups!
Pure2raw Pesto Socca Recipe:
1 cup garbanzo bean flour (we use Bob Red Mill’s)
2 cups water
1 tsp sea salt
2 1/2 tbsp coconut oil (you can use olive oil)
Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees (you can do yours at 425 we just like 400 for some reason)
Place garbanzo bean flour into a large bowl and add in your salt.
Pour your water into the bowl and whisk together. Make sure to get all clumps out of batter.
Put the 2 1/2 tbsp of coconut oil into your 12 inch pan and place in heated oven.
Let the oil heat up for 3 minutes.
Take oiled pan out of oven and pour socca batter in pan.
Place back into the oven and to bake for 45 minutes.
While your socca is baking away grab the essentials for the mint pistachio pesto.
We followed Lori’s recipe except we did more basil than mint because I got a bunch of fresh basil from a farmer at the market the other day so had plenty on hand to use up Also we used yacon syrup over honey (nothing against honey we have never been huge fans of it).
Now for the whole dish together
Love the color of this pesto and it smells soooooooo good!
For a little more green color action we topped our pesto socca with some spinach
DEVOUR!
WOW this basil mint pesto with the socca tasted amazing! Lori thank you so much for sharing your pesto recipe. It is a keeper! We loved it!! Nothing beats mint, basil, pistachios, and socca together
Thanks to everyone for the wonderful comments about us being in the news and about our open sky store. We LOVED hearing from OUR readers So thanks for all those comments, it really helped brighten our day even more !!!!!!
3 cups soaked dried whole almonds, grind into flour
¼ cup whole pistachios, grind into flour
1 cup roughly chopped figs, about 8 (we used calimyrna figs)
one zest of an orange (optional)
¼ cup coconut oil
good pinch sea salt
Directions:
Place the almonds and pistachios into food processor first and pulse together
Next grab your chopped figs
Place figs into food processor along with the remaining ingredients.
Pulse together till everything starts coming together and looking like a light batter but holding together.
Press batter into 9 in circle spring form pan
Save ½ cup of cake layer for topping and add in:
¼ cup maple sugar
¼ cup pistachios
You will use this as the final topping
This is the maple sugar we used. This is our first time using this sugar before in our recipes. We have also wanted to give it a try and we thought this recipe would be a perfect time We really like the texture and taste of this sugar.
Now for the middle layer: Creme Layer
We just used our favorite raw cheesecake recipe. You can use any un-baked cheesecake recipe you like or you could even use ice cream instead to make it more of a frozen treat
Once you decide or make what to use for the creme layer pour it on top of the bottom cake layer in pan.
Next top the creme layer with your remaining maple sugar pistachio topping!
Cover the whole dessert!
Place your almond pistachio fig creme cake into the freezer to set for a few hours.
Time to devour enjoy
Love all the layers and different textures in this cake. So pretty!!
This cake is full of vitamins, minerals and FLAVOR
My slice!
LOVED IT! I really liked how the figs and pistachios all went together so nicely! Boy, I am craving this cake again…. maybe I need to make it again here soon
Now go get some pistachios and figs and make this cake! Remember you could even try it as an ice cream cake and use ice cream as the middle layer! This recipe is easy to make and there is no need to turn on your oven during these hot summer days to make it! Bonus!
Other news:
Check out our Twin Cakes Bakery25% Sale on ALL SNACK BITES! The snack bites are great for traveling, mid-afternoon snacks, a sweet treat after dinner, or anytime you feel like a little something special Our snack bites are different than most snacks on the market because we use dates and stevia as our sweeteners and use no nuts. We love eating our snack bites straight from the fridge or freezer to make a nice rich cold treat! Though you can bring them out to room temperature before hand.
Looking forward to socca sunday! Time for us to get back in the kitchen and start baking for our farmers markets tomorrow! We made some special flavors for this weeks markets like our un-baked mesquite banana bar (our favorite) and gluten free vegan banana almond muffins, cinnamon raisin peach muffins and lemon pistachio scones
Passionate about fitness, nutrition, health, un-baking, high-intensity workouts, yoga, wine, traveling, certified chefs and making delicious food! We hope to inspire others to appreciate food as nourishment to the body.
Our blog shows our journey of finding balance between food, fitness, and life!
We have made a few other vegetable based lasagna’s here before and enjoyed them all. But this one has been favorite so far 
Star players
Layer one
