I openly admit that I’m no whiz in the kitchen. Granted, I’ve gotten better over the years, but cooking is just something I’ve never really been into. And yet, I love food. So something had to give.
read more ↓Over the past little while I’ve been making more of an effort to engage in some kind of food preparation that extends past walking down the street to pick up something from the deli counter at Pavillions. And as I’m getting practice in blending flavors and whatnot, I find making raw foods an easy way to do that. Yes, I’m talking about the celebrity diet of choice from a couple years back. A lot of recipes in that non-cook book work really well for my delicate constitution, plus they’re filling and flavorful. And they have the perfect dessert options for someone like me who can’t ingest sugar for fear of looking like they were attacked by a flesh-eating virus.
So in honor of Colleen’s last night in LA, I made creamy spinach soup and decided to take my first try at making pudding. My usual dessert of choice from the raw “cook” book is called “Mash It,” which is essentially berries, carob powder, dates and nuts all mashed into a satisfying goo that looks like baby poop, but tastes a lot better than it looks. The pudding was something I’d never tried before, so I decided to give it a shot.
Assembly is simple. Grab your blender, put in two medium avocados, a half cup of carob powder, and either one cup of maple syrup (grade B is best – it’s more pure) or one and a half cups of dates. That’s it. I decided to get a little creative and do a half cup of syrup and a half cup of dates, because I found these incredible dates that taste like caramel at the farmer’s market last week.
Naturally, when you put all those things in a blender, they don’t blend that seamlessly, so I tossed in a little water. I forgot how much you have to scrape the sides of the blender when you’re making pudding. After a while I got lazy and just creatively timed my spoon scraping with the position of the blender blade.
And then, disaster.
The blade grabbed my spoon and flung it, sending pudding everywhere. It would be nice if that “everywhere” were the wall, the counter, the blender, but no. It was my hair, my face, my white t-shirt. Did I turn the blender off? Of course not – that would run the risk of my pudding not being as good as it could possibly be. So I continued to mix as I delicately scraped pudding off my glasses and squeezed it out of my hair (into the sink – not back into the blender. I have standards and morals. Sometimes.)
I realized I wasn’t doing to well with de-puddingfying myself, so I turned off the blender and went into the living room, where I have a big mirror hanging over my fireplace. Colleen looked up from her book to see what I was doing. I could see her bemused expression as I wiped pudding off my forehead and earlobe.
“What… are you doing?” she asked.
“Wiping pudding off my person,” I said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to douse one’s self in chocolate pudding… made from avocado. But that’s beside the point.
She shook her head. “I’m not even going to ask.”
Of course, she went into the kitchen to see my glasses, which looked like they’d been crafted exclusively out of pudding.
I’d say this is the reason why I shouldn’t be let anywhere near a kitchen, but the pudding was damn good. And not a single long, blonde hair was to be found in it, either.
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