Rise and Glow

Whenever I go on vacation, which seems to be a lot lately (hooray for West Jet seat sales), I must be prepared to feed myself and make sure I do not wither away. I usually seem to over-compensate for this fear of having to hear my stomach say "hey, jerk face, I'm not just here to connect your upper body to your lower body" and spend the entire week uncooking before the trip.

I have taken to creating my own raw buckwheat cereal a few days before vacation so I have something to eat as soon as I get up in the foreign land.

At first I thought the buckwheat gave a funny gritty or almost chalky texture, but now I am used to it and I dig it.

Here is the most recent variation of travel cereal:

Apple Chai Cereal

Soak 2 cups buckwheat overnight in water. Drain and rinse.
(not kasha, for kasha is toasted)

Chai Spice:
1 tbsp anise seed
6 cardamon pods
6 cloves (see caution below)
1 cinnamon stick, broken up
2 inch nub fresh ginger, sliced thin and dehydrated
1/4 tsp black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
4 star anise

Blend all in dry vita mix container until it is a fine powder, you will have lots left over for other chai recipes. If you have a better chai recipe please share!
*CAUTION - grinding cloves in your vita mix will scratch the crap out of it, it will also scratch your coffee grinder, just buy pre-ground*

Apple Chai Cream
2 gala apples, cored and chopped, skin on
2/3 cup dried coconut flakes soaked in 2/3 cup water for half hour or more
1/2 cup cashew pieces soaked in less than half cup water for 1-2 hours
1-2 tsp chai spice from above

Put cashews and coconut and all but 1/3 cup of the water in the vita. Blend till smooth. Add chai spice and chopped apples.
Blend till smooth. (add more of the soaking water if you need to, I didn't really measure this out so well, bear with me)

Other Ingredients
Handful walnuts
Handful Hazelnuts
2 tbsp ground chia seeds
Vanilla bean insides, powder or extract to taste

Place all but approx 1/4 of the buckwheat in food processor with apple cream, vanilla and ground chia seeds. Process until fully flowing and as smooth as you can get it. Add handful of walnuts and handful of hazelnuts. Lightly pulse batter w/ nuts so they are still chunky. Alternatively, you can just chop the nuts with a knife and stir them into the batter by hand. Transfer batter to a bowl and mix in the rest of the whole buckwheat.

Spread out on teflex sheets and add thinly sliced apples to the top. It is kind of a pain to spread the batter because the nuts stick up and create slits in the batter, but that is ok, do your best to spread the batter evenly about 1/4 inch thick.

Dehydrate overnight until dry. Break apart. Enjoy with home made nut milk (or store bought stuff if you are on vacation - when will they come out with the travel vita mix?)


Nut Milk
1 cup almonds (preferably soaked), hazelnuts, brazil nuts or any nut, or combination of these nuts
4 cups water

Blend in vita mix or blender until smooth. Strain through nut milk bag.

Optional - Put milk back into blender and add any or all of the following:
1 tsp soy lecithin
1 tbsp coconut oil
pinch sea salt
vanilla of some sort
pinch stevia or 2 drops liquid stevia

Ok, now you can rise and... glow. Peace out!