Averie over at Love Veggies and Yoga is looking for photos from readers who have made her recipes. I tweeted that I had made these the other day and she asked if I had a blog and/or photos. Yes to both. I didn’t take a picture of what I had made until earlier today and her blog post is already up but it’s entitled Tribute Post 1 so I just may get to be famous yet, on another blog post.

A double batch minus what I’ve eaten

These are Averie’s 5 Minute Raw Vegan Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. They are very good but sweet and one is all you need (though I did eat three in the span of about half an hour this afternoon, getting up and going to the fridge three times). B stated, "I don’t like these a lot but I like them a little bit," but he ate one at breakfast, one in his lunch at school, and one after supper. I ended up adding a bit of agave to mine as they seemed a little dry; they could have been a little dry because my oats ended up more ground up that I had wanted. I made a double batch and used 10 medjool dates that I found in the back of my cupboard. I also added a small handful of chocolate chips, which removed their truly raw status (although the oats probably were officially raw either). I will make these again. We really like the Raw Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls too but they contain nuts so I can’t send them to school with B. Very quick and simple to make with only a few ingredients.

The sun!! It shone today on this side of the clouds! I took advantage of the cool-but-sunny weather to rake the leaves in my small backyard. This year I decided to put a layer of leaves into the four raised vegetable beds to mix with the soil in the spring so I ended up with four topped-up beds and one garbage bag of leaves.

I’m just about to turn on a movie that I picked up at the library the other day and pick up a sock that I’ve been working on intermittently for months. I can usually (or "lusually", as B would say) motor through a pair of socks in no time but I haven’t knit in ages and so these have been stuck in a plastic bag, languishing. 

So I’m off to knit and movie-watch while the dehydrator whirs on the counter, filling the house with pleasant smells and causing me to anticipate these,  raw Cinnamon Raisin Flax Crackers. And speaking of raw, I found an interesting new-to-me blog this afternoon. Bart of Raw Bart began a 30 days raw food trial this fall in his words "embarking on a journey to discover the raw food lifestyle." His tagline resonates with me personally as I’m entertaining thoughts on a constant basis about the raw food lifestyle: "Going raw. Maybe. Perhaps." I love it.

(Ah ha! I just went hunting through the archives and found a post from September 1, 2008 in which the sock in question (the first of a pair) is at about the same stage it’s currently at. It was quite a bit further along earlier today but I frogged it back to the ankle because though I’d been knitting on in denial, I wasn’t happy with the loose fit of the leg portion. So it ripped it back and took out four stitches and though it doesn’t seem like much reduction in width I think it’ll be perfect. I really need to take a picture in the daylight though; that picture from a year ago doesn’t show the colours accurately.)

That looks questionable, doesn’t it? No matter what it looks like it smells pretty good.

I decided to try my hand at raw/dehydrated crackers yesterday. Going off this recipe from Emily at Vegan Paris and this one from Raw Genesis, I put two cups of flax seeds (one cup golden and one cup brown) to soak in four cups of water. I had planned to soak them for a few hours but I ran out of time last night and they ended up soaking from about 3pm until 8:30′ish this morning. I put them in the fridge last night and they seemed okay this morning. Soaking the seeds turns them into a gelatinous goo. I threw in a small handful of raw sunflower seeds as well.

This morning I pulled out the Vita-Mix (pricey but I’m loving it!!) and puréed up a large carrot, two stalks of celery, a few slices of field cucumber, and about half a large red pepper. I mixed the veggies into the flax goo and spread them out on three trays lined with ParaFlexx™ and turned the dehydrator to 115F. Now it’s just a waiting game. I expect these crackers will go well with some homemade hummus. Between the faint smell of the crackers just starting to dry and the applesauce cooking down to apple butter in the crock pot (I canned 10 pints yesterday), this house is a pretty pleasant-smelling place.