Monday, September 23; Vegan Mofo Day 23

Raw Tacos with Cashew Cheese

Rating: 4.75

So. Our first real foray into the world of raw food went pretty well. OK. Second attempt. The first one was a raw tomato soup when we first went vegan and it basically came out like runny salsa. I was not a fan. These tacos however, were awesome. Our friend Christine from Food for Life gave us our first taste of nut taco filling over the summer. She’d brought over a snack for us of collards wrapped around walnut filling. They were amazing, even though I am not a fan of the collard. I thought I might go with lacinato kale leaves instead, but Seth thought it would be too bitter and suggested lettuce instead. I couldn’t find the recipe Christine sent us, so I Googled and found this one. I had absolutely no idea how much to make since we’d never had them and didn’t know how many we’d each want to eat, how much filling the recipe would really make or how much to put in each taco. I went ahead and made the full batch. It made a lot. We used about half of it, but that’s ok because it was so good and will make fantastic lunches. Seth felt like it was a little bit salty, but I didn’t. I also swapped out the suggested cayenne for chipotle powder because I thought that would add a little bit of interest. I really liked it. 

I wanted to have cashew cheese on these and our friends over at Luminous Vegans posted this amazing looking recipe. Another friend, Veganadian at Traveling Pink Lips tried out the recipe and raved about it and had me drooling and looking for a meal to make it for. Although, it’s also great with a snack or spread on bread, so I didn’t really need a meal for an excuse. I decided to make a half batch because I have a bad habit of making sauces & whatnot and then not using them all and I didn’t want that to happen with this. I had a little trouble with the Vitamix by doing a half batch because the nuts didn’t really fill up the container enough so when I turned it on high, they all just scattered to the sides. Grr. I scraped it down several times and once it got going, it was fine. I added a little bit extra milk to mine to keep it flowing and actually ended up running the blender on a lower speed, which worked really well. Let me tell you, when I tasted it I almost squealed. It is so good. Now I really wish I’d made the full batch. I will eat this stuff on everything, up to and including just a spoon. I put a little bit into a plastic bag, cut off the corner and piped it onto the tacos, because it’s pretty thick (it really is more like a spread). 

Seth made some pico de gallo and guac and also just cubed some avocado. We filled romaine leaves with the nut mixture, topped them with pico, avocado, cheese and another sprinkle of chipotle powder just for good measure. We also had some cucumber chips, bell pepper slices and grape tomatoes on the side. We dipped those in the guac and more of the cheese. Oh, and the answer of how much we ate – I had 2 tacos and was completely satisfied (I may or may not have been munching on tomatoes and cashew cheese before dinner). Seth had 4 I think. I’m really glad we went outside of our food comfort zone. This was a really good dinner and I think it will be great for summer months when we really don’t want to get the apartment all hot. Also for camping since I could make it all ahead of time…