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Gone Raw - Gone Wrong? BLOOPER TIME!

Everyone needs a good laugh. How about we share some raw bloopers? I’m talking everything from kitchen equiptment, recipes, ingredients, etc. bloopers (come one now, we all win some and lose some lol). We can learn from these things and giggle at them after.

Things I’ve learned:

The killer triple A’s: NEVER put asparagus, avocado skins or artichokes down the garbage disposal. I can’t tell you how many clogs I’ve encountered, ack!

Never put ICE in a food processor. Oh boy, one day I was making a Blood Transfusion with coconut water and wheatgrass. I was being LAZY and didn’t want to reach up to the cabinet to get my blender so I decided to just toss that transfusion and some ice into my processor that was already out on the counter… Bad call, it BLEW OUT EVERYWHERE. Okay so the color was pretty in my kitchen but I lost about HALF my drink and had a HUGE mess to clean up.

Cracking coconuts is violent but a lot of fun. If I don’t swing batta swing that knife as hard as I possibly can then it turns into a chunky white top mess and pieces of the skin and shell end up in the glass I pour the water into : ( Not appetizing.

As for recipes:

Last week, blush while I admit, I was SO pumped up to try to create a raw bagel without dehydration. It turned out HORRIBLE in texture (the batter was yummy) and was one of those things that NEEDED to be dehydrated or aleast set in the fridge for some time… It was just NOT the same and very disappointing.

This one isn’t even silly, it’s just downright gross to me: One night, around midnight, I was trying to get to sleep and wanted a little sleep enhancing boost so I started to snack on some lovely dried figs. I opened one in half and realized there were DEAD BUGS inside. I flipped out. I have always read it’s best to soak/check store bought dried fruit… now I know why. (someone please tell me they have seen this happen too – I got mine in the bulk cold section from a high quality organic co-op…)

In a raw food place:

One day I was hella craving a raw burger and chocolate shake so I went to my favorite place, Cafe Gratitude, with my human sexuality hw and a hearty appetite. I ordered my raw burger and shake, mesmorized by the fact that I was honoring my hunger and body and so excited to eat! The burger came, I prayed and took a big bite. BUMMER!!! Little did I know it had JALEPENOS in it which I can NOT tolerate!!! I started to do a banny-chicken, fire flying out my eyes and nose!!! It was seriously an embarressing show… My throat felt like hell :0 It was a HORRIBLE experience. They were very kind to me throughout it though. We exhausted the fire with some purified water and a nice guy actually brought me their ichef ingredient list so we could chose something calming. I can’t remember what I had but the shake was yummy and I knew never to order that burger again.

Share your stories, siIliness and experiences!

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Comments

  • heathermarsbombheathermarsbomb Raw Newbie

    hahaha! great stories, thanks for sharing.

    Ive fudged up on a few recipes but nothing too hilarious.

  • WinonaWinona Raw Newbie

    Sprouting buckwheat for four days. The whole house smelled like mouldy cheese for days!

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    I know I got some but only a few ones that stick out in my head right now. Like the time I killed two blenders in one week! ha ha! (cheap ones – trying to mix nuts of course).

    I hate to say this because those with lots of raw culinary failures may be dismayed but honestly I seem to have a talent for experimenting with raw foods and having them come out pretty great. Esp when it comes to rawifying things. I do research my experiments before i do them so maybe that is why. :) I have of course made stuff that I just didn’t like but not that hasn’t turned out edible.:)

    Oh, I do also remember one time at the beginning that I honestly did not know what a “clove” of garlic was and I thought a “bulb” of garlic was the one “clove” – well you can imagine how garlicy my dish turned out. My bf wouldn’t even eat it! I honestly did not grow up on garlicy food so that was why I really didn’t know. I definatley know better now!

    Yeah, when I open my coconuts – it is not a pretty picture. I usually get a nice coconut water shower (hey, its good for my complexion!) and butcher the hell outta the thing when I open it to get the meat out. :) I think it is sorta fun actually. I take out my frustrations on it. :)

    If I think of any others, I will definatley post them. :)

    RawDance – I can make you raw bagels! I just made raw gourmet bagels and cream cheese for a raw brunch we threw a few weeks ago. Yeah, you definatley need a dehydrator! If you want something breakfasty sort like that with no dehydrator, the cinnamon rolls recipe on here is supposed to be real good. I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet though.

  • Winona! omg, I have had my share of nasty sprouting… Sunflower are my FAVORITE but I’ve never been successful with them : ( I think it’s been temp issues. I am now in a better place where I can use the cool garage for my trays because even under the sink in my hot apartment still disrupts my sprouts. Yuck to nasty household smells… boiling orange peels and cinnamon sticks can really perfume a house : )

    Queen: How much do you charge for your raw bagels? like a small batch? I own a dehydrator, got one many years ago but I have issues using it. It’s a mental thing. I need to slowly work my way into using it. The only “bread” item I’ve made that actually turned out good without drying was a raw crumb donut but with that I had to fork it, couldn’t lift it. It was very yummy though. I had my first lox bagel at Cafe Gratitude last week and have been HOOKED since. Ps. sorry but that garlic accident, OMG, that must of been something else! Glad you have had good luck else wise! it’s a charm!

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    Winona – Your post just reminded me of the time my bf did a raw cheez demo and he made like 13 different raw cheezes in MY kitchen and boy did the whole place stink! I could even smell it in the hall – good thing my neighbors didn’t complain.

    The cheezes turned out great but he ruined my expensive hemp dishtowels and I couldn’t not for the life of me get the bad cheeze smell out and had to throw them out!

    But yeah, I have had some fermenting experiments that have gone a little over board in the stink department. :)

  • angie207angie207 Raw Master

    I thought I was amazing at creating recipes & winging it. So when we were going to a family party at my bro’s house for the whole afternoon & evening, I made a HUGE batch of fresh salsa to share with everyone & a “casserole” for myself, which I had made on a pretty regular basis. Well, in my hurry to go, to have enough food, and to impress everyone, I put waaaaaay too many extra tomatoes in the salsa till it just tasted like blended tomatoes, and my casserole was not good, either. We added a bunch of stuff to the salsa & it still wasn’t very great, and even after I added everything I could think of at my bro’s house to my casserole (including lots of the salsa), it was AWFUL and I had to dump it out. Thankfully, my bro. had a pineapple he let me have for my dinner. :)

  • angie207angie207 Raw Master

    littlebirdie from this site has one on her blog that had me laughing my head off! Go to www.birdiejaworski.com and scroll down to “The Great Avocado Mishap” – hilarious!

  • A friend gave me “raw” pinenuts one time after hearing how much I loved making raw pesto. I soaked them, and went to rinse them the next day…and my gut instinct told me not to eat them. But my “not waste” side told me maybe they needed to be soaked longer. So i rinsed them then soaked them another day. They didn’t sprout or anything. I’ve never used pinenuts ever before, so I wasn’t sure if they were supposed to sprout.

    Basically, I got freaked out and didn’t even want to touch them. I left them on the counter in the soaking water…each day it got cloudier and cloudier and my kitchen smelled like butt.

    Ick!

  • rawfance, i didn’t know gratitude had raw bagels & lox! that sounds awesome. i’ve been trying to get my husband to go with me for ages, he’s not down.

    i’ve had plenty of unforuntate recipe mishaps, although the worst was when our blender jar was cracking, and i, foolishly, decided to use it anyway. i had an AMAZING smoothie all concocted in there, filled to the brim, and i decided to throw in a few more ice cubes. well, the blender jar broke! smoothie EVERYWHERE! in the power strip, behind thedishwasher, on the ceiling, all over the floor, counters…

    TERRIBLE TERRIBLE MESS!

  • chicorychicory Raw Newbie

    well….. some advice for everyone… don’t try to open a coconut on an incline! picture a coconut rolling down a steep driveway into the street! good thing no cars were driving past at the moment.

  • TheRawDance- I’ve always checked my figs for small wasps, I wonder if the bugs inside your figs were fig wasps??? (if you don’t know about these, it’s actually pretty interisting, here’s a short video… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZCYoEdavDk)

  • I did this as a vegan who ate some cooked….ate a whole bag of prunes (raw ones). Does that count? I didn’t have pain but was bloated the next day!

  • Superfood… the juice… oh God… let’s not talk about what happened in the car and store, explosive. I feel you.

    Mande: what city are you in? I go to the Cafe Gratitude at Harrison. I LOVE IT THERE. If your close I would be down to go sometime! The raw bagel is a dainty little treat and on their breakfast menu!

    Chakra: I am afraid to click the link. I am not sure if I will ever be able to look at them again. I love figs, fresh and dried… I guess I should keep an open mind and learn, education is key. I’ll suck it up and watch!

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    RawDance – I haven’t been to Cafe Gratitude for breakfast so I haven’t tried their raw bagel. I didn’t even realize they had one. I just looked at the menu again and I see it at the bottom there – I am Peace.

    How much for the bagels? I haven’t really calculated a price yet actually.I’ll figure it out for you. They are pretty cheap to make – just sprouted grains and sunflower seeds for the most part. It definately would not be $7 a bagel! (Whew! I have pretty much given up on going to Cafe Gratitude – the last few times I went I got bad service and half the amount of food I had gotten for the same dish I order a year ago. Plus the most watery smoothie I ever had – I had to complain about it. I can make most of that stuff myself so I figure why spend all that money anymore. )

    I make mine like a half mini bagel – otherwise if you make them too thick they take forever to dehydrate. They are based on Alissa Cohens bagels in her book. I have made rye caraway, millet onion, and quinoa cinammon raisin. I like the rye one the best but I know some people don’t eat rye.

    There is a really good mac cream cheese recipe on here. I have made it several times. Plus a “lox” recipe and a onion bagel one too.

  • queenfluff-I did the exact same thing with garlic! When I first got into raw foods, I made a lasagna and used five heads of garlic in it because I thought the head was the same thing as a single clove. Needless to say, it was inedible.

    About a month ago, I made raw almond milk with my boyfriend but we left the almonds to soak for about 3 or 4 days, not knowing any better. It was a terrible introduction to raw foods for my bf. He is hesitant to make almond milk again, and kind of wants to keep buying rice or soy milk. I just keep promising him it will turn out different when the almonds don’t ferment.

  • Queen – so sorry you had not so swell Gratitude experiences. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that! So they bagel for seven bucks is half a smaller sized bagel, cashew cream, tomato, nori as the lox, capers -which I did not want and red onion – yum – If I was selling it, I wouldn’t sell it over five bucks but Gratitude ups their prices a little. I know some people feel it’s far too expensive for the amount you get.

    I have been meaning to ask you about Raw Rising. What bread items do you make/cost? What kinds of cheeses do you make/cost? I see you 2 are the King and Queen or raw cheese. Do you sell your raw cokes/rootbeers/etc – cost?

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    Hey Queenfluff, I too have done the “whole head of garlic instead of one clove” disaster, I was and school at the time and had never used garlic before…

  • meganthevegan: i’m not sure you have to soak pine nuts. them and macadamia nuts are the only ones i don’t usually soak. they’re pretty fatty and creamy to begin with.

    anyone know?

  • JaimeReksJaimeReks Raw Newbie

    Ok! Here is mine, although I’m new and haven’t done too much, this was a really terrible set back for me.. and makes me love the idea of no gourmet raw…

    My boyfriend and I are vegan, and had been eating vegan sushi at this great restaurant for awhile, so I thought Hey! I’ll make some cooked vegan sushi and some RAW sushi, I think it was from this site. Anyway, so, the “rice” was raw parsnips, which sure, great, its like whiter carrots. It looked awesome, it tasted good, I had a bunch. A little while later I didn’t feel too good, a little later I felt worse, by midnight I had explosive vomit and felt as bad as I did with salmonella poisoning. I felt sick for days, about a week. It was HORRIBLE!! Alas, I can’t even listen to anyone talk about sushi, and even while writing this I’m avoiding the thought.

    Conclusion: I don’t eat sushi anymore. Ever.

    Btw, I’ve never been sensitive to any foods or cared, however, I can’t stand to see, smell, or be in a restaurant that sells sushi. Parsnips= deadly sushi poison???

  • CarmentinaCarmentina Raw Newbie

    The funniest raw-blooper isn’t mine – I think it was something Queenfluff wrote. An unexperienced woman went to a raw potluck with some raw Betty Crocker cake batter. That takes the cake!

  • rachel_akikorachel_akiko Raw Newbie

    lol, that’s so nasty about the dead bugs!! D: But spicy stuff is AWESOME! <3>

  • JaimeReks – that is awful my dear. I’m sorry to hear that happened but so glad you are okay!

  • FeeFee Raw Master

    THe other day I wanted to blend some buckwheaties into flour but although I had washed up the blender jug I hadn’t done the lid. I decided it would be fine if I just held a bowl over the top. Nope – they flew up and out the spout and all over the worktop! I’m still finding them now. And whats worse is Ive read of someone else doing that with soup, but I thought smoething dry would be fine.

    Also, not related to cooking or uncooking, but don’t iron a skirt hem with the pins in when the pins have plastic heads….

  • BluedolfinBluedolfin Raw Newbie

    Fee~ Too funny! lol I guess you’re going to check those off the “Do only once” list. There are way to many on the list to do any of those twice. ;)

  • Never use the tamper to the Vitamix without the lid on. NEVER!! It isn’t pretty. The funeral was sad, but my new tamper arrived days later in the mail. Smoothies for everyone. : )

    Dead bugs in your figs, RawDance? C’mon! There ARE better ways to get your B-12… and the coconut thing…. when I open them, it always turns out to be a hacked up, frayed mess. My husband is the coco-whacker around here. He gets such a rush out of swinging the butcher knife. Very primal, me thinks….

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    Fee: An easy way round the ironing problem is not to iron, I never buy anything that needs ironing! luckily I don’t need to look smart for work! With regards to coconuts, I live in a block of flats and last night was trying to get into a brown coconut by bashing it on the balcony flag stones, made a massive blooming echo sound! I heard neighbours coming out to find out what was going on so I scurried back inside clutching my as-yet-unopened coconut – it is still in the fridge! :-(

  • steviostevio Raw Newbie

    my big three:

    making a smoothie with a whole bunch of mustard greens thinking it was kale (it was like drinking fire, and resulted in burping fire for hours).

    twisting the lid onto my krups blender before I had the blendtec, which caused the pitcher to separate from the base. Of course, I had already blended some of the ingredients, which were now coating the motor.

    overpacking the blendtec with greens, and then tamping them with the handle of a wooden spoon while the blender was still on. If a blendtec can blend a rake handle, it can certainly blend a spoon handle.

  • queenfluffqueenfluff Raw Newbie

    Carmentina – Oh yeah! I forgot about that Bety Crocker thing. I didn’t actually get to witness that – my bf told me that story of a raw potluck he went to once. I don’t know when that was at. But yeah, isn’t that unbelievable! How awkward it must have been for people to tell her that that wasn’t raw! It goes to show you how clueless some of the SAD people really are.

    RawDance – I don’t have costs figures out for all of my recipes yet but if you have anything specific that you want made – just let me know and I can give you a prices. Basically what we do is make things people request instead of having a menu list. Like if you are craving bagels for instance, I would make you a full batch and you would have enough to last you for a while (I don’t really charge per piece – because we only do this for a few people so I don’t have bagels made all the time -so they are made fresh to order – and dehydrated stuff take a few days to make).

    One example that I make a lot is Jalapeno Nacho Cheese – It is about a 16 oz jar of it for $10 (which is pretty good when you consider the price of nuts) and you can request your spice level. For the cheezes, yeah, well we are from the Midwest so cheeze is something of interest of course! I make the Pepperjack cheeze from Cafe Gratitude, the nacho cheese and a bunch of other misc. fermented cheezes (I am working on a feta cheese right now).

    For breads, I can make chips (potatoe, corn), crackers (flax or other kinds), bagels and I also make the Almond Toast. I can make you the Coke or RootBeer (the Root beer is sort of not a perfected product yet I my opinion but the Coke is pretty set) or other elixirs. My specialities are the Eggplant Bacon (see my recipes) and white ‘dairy’ type of sauces. You can email me kgarbac@yahoo.com if you have any questions/requests. I can send you a list of prices of the things we make alot of.

    I will get back to you later about bagel price – I have to figure it out.

  • springleafspringleaf Raw Newbie

    I had a friend who made coconut ice cream for a dinner party, unfortunately she did the same trick with a wooden spoon, there where about 14 of us eating it, but only me, her and my bf knew what she had done. We looked around the table afterwards and there was a little hemp of bits of wooden spoon next to most peoples bowls – they had thought it was coconut and not said anything!!

  • springleaf-I believe she was talking about ironing something she was working on sewing. In order to get the hem right,you MUST iron it before you sew it, after it is pinned in place. That’s the only time I ever iron anything either. And I’ve done the exact same thing in hemming a pair of pants!

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