Day 54: 'Peanut' Sauce

I'm having a very lovely morning. I checked my email this morning, which is unusual, as I don't typically have time, and found out that my first class was canceled. So instead of running out the door, I'm curled up on the couch in the living room with a giant green smoothie. I'll still have to head out in about an hour (and it's my late day), but it's a nice reprieve.

Two nights ago, I made the "peanut" sauce from The Raw Food Detox Diet. It was absolutely delicious. We tossed it with shredded carrots and then rolled spoonfuls up in spinach, mini burrito style.

In the back of my mind, though, was a slight nagging guilt. The sauce was heavy on expensive ingredients, namely almond butter and maple syrup. In fact, I'd halved the recipe from the start, as the full batch calls for a full cup on almond butter. That would have been our whole jar, and on our limited incomes, we need to save where we can. As it was, the half cup made a huge dent.

We were also concerned about the high caloric content of the almond butter, since both Madeline and I are trying to get into shape. Now I know that a hundred different raw sources will refute me in a hundred different ways. Every raw book I've read tells me that extra weight will magically melt off on a raw diet, no matter how many nuts and avocados you eat. I can see how that may be true if you're coming from the typical standard American diet and cutting out fast food, meat and dairy all at once and have a significant amount of weight to lose. But Mad and I were already vegans (albeit not the healthiest), and we're only looking to drop about 10 pounds apiece. When we went raw, not much happened for the first month. It was only once I started paying attention to the good old fashioned calories-in-vs-calories-out and curbing the nuts that I begun to notice changes to my body.

So long story short, I wanted to make a healthier recipe. Last night I experimented with using zucchini as the base, and if I say so myself, it was pretty damn good. It's a bit thinner, but all of the flavor is there. Instead of heavy nuts, it's chock full of water-rich zucchini. I'm pretty proud of this recipe.

Guilt-free 'Peanut' Sauce
1.5 c peeled and chopped zucchini
3 T raw almond butter
1.5 T fresh minced ginger
Juice from 1 lemon
2 T agave
1 T maple syrup
3 T Nama Shoyu
3 cloves garlic
1 dried red chili pepper, including seeds

Throw all of the ingredients into a food processor fitted with an S blade. Save the chili pepper for last and crumble it on top. Process until a smooth, creamy consistency.


We ate it as a veggie dip last night with cucumbers, bell peppers and celery, but it would work equally as well tossed with noodles or as a salad dressing. As for how it adds up, by my calculations (using the CRON-O-Meter), a half cup serving of the original recipe is about 494 calories and 40 grams of fat. My version is 128 calories and 7.5 grams of fat. I'm bringing leftovers today for lunch!

-Eloise