Vegan and Soy Free Ranch Revised

  Before we found out about Jack's rice allergy, the very best way we'd found to make dairy free ranch dressing was to use soy free Vegenaise as a base. (Recipe here). Since we lost rice, we've found a few different yummy ways to make salad dressings and dips that are creamy and tasty, but they were never quite right.

  Well this recipe is still not 100% Hidden Valley, but it is so close I bet most non-vegan or allergy restricted partakers would not think it was dairy free. ((Since this is made with nuts, one of the top 8 allergens, it's probably wise to inform your guests about it's ingredients before they eat it though).

  I used my Blendtec blender for this. If you do not have as powerful a blender, you can still make this recipe but you may have to blend it for much longer, or ideally soak your cashews in water the night before.

Vegan and Soy Free Cashew Ranch

1 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup water
1 tsp olive oil
1/4 cup plain unsweetened almond milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2+ tsp sea salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp dried dill weed
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp dried basil

In a blender, add cashews and water and blend until smooth (Using the Blendtec I went to speed 2 and let it run it's whole cycle twice). This could be 5 or more minutes using a less powerful blender and unsoaked cashews.
In a separate small bowl, add almond milk and lemon juice and allow to sit for a few minutes until 'curdled'.
Once the cashews are smooth, add the almond milk/ lemon juice mixture, olive oil, and all seasonings to blender and blend until completely combined. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. We ended up using about 1 tsp salt altogether.

You can also add other seasonings to this such as chipotle powder or pepper corns. The cashew cream, olive oil, and almond milk/lemon juice mixture makes an excellent base for lots of dips and dressings, more than once we have a had a great tasting salad dressing that I can never recreate because I just threw things into the blender, so feel free to experiment!
It even makes a pretty good mayonnaise substitute (add salt). It should not be watery, if it is add more cashews to the mix and blend again. It will thicken even more in the fridge.
Store in an air tight container in the fridge for up to a week.

Go Raw Super Cookies

 Sorry, this is not a recipe. Yesterday while in Central Market, I was wandering down an isle and saw an area I'd never seen before: the raw food section. Now while I personally think that raw is best, (obviously raw foods contain more nutrients, fiber, and enzymes than cooked foods) we do not actively strive to eat a mostly raw diet or anything because frankly it seems super daunting and all I imagine is carrot sticks and salads. Well, and yummy green smoothies, but I digress.
 So as I'm just casually looking at the raw food area, I see something called "Super Cookies". There were roughly 10 different flavors (Super Chips, too!). What really caught my eye was that they posted the ingredient list in large print right on the front of the package. That's bold and screams to me "We're PROUD of this stuff." There's no hard to pronounce chemical preservatives, no funky fillers that make you scratch your head pondering their presence (like the time we found milk as an ingredient in plain pre-cooked chicken breast strips...wtf?). Just simple organic ingredients, and thankfully no rice, or oat in most flavors.
 But the real question is, how do they taste!? We tried the Masala Chai flavored cookies and first of all, these little things are only about the size of a quarter, and the serving size listed on the package is 18 pieces, yikes! So for my $6 there's really only 3 servings, but thankfully Jack is not interested in eating that much of anything all at once. They taste sweet but not cloyingly so, nowhere near it. They have a spicy, earthy flavor. They are crispy, but both boys seemed not to be put off by that in the least. I'd say that these were a big hit. And another MAJOR plus... they don't crumble, there are no crumbs coming off these babies!
 So for a quick healthy snack that packs a major nutritional punch and that fits in the diaper bag easily and isn't messy, these are well worth the semi-ridiculous price tag, in my opinion. I'm sold!!