Blue Grape and Buckwheat Groats

I found this picture on our camera. It's taken at Fallingwater, but as you can't tell FW trees from other random trees, I decided it was safe to share the pic with you. Beautiful, huh? We had a great time there.

Okay, okay. Back to the food. I borrowed my first raw cookbook from the library, Raw Food/Real World. I was kind of disappointed, because a lot of the recipes called for the use of a dehydrator, which I don't have. But everything looked really yummy and I was determined to try something, even if just a drink. Which is exactly what I made this morning.

This is the Blue Grape.

This great colored, summer-yummy drink is actually made out of grapefruit, not grapes. It also has some agave nectar and blue-green algae in it to give it the pretty hue. J and I were both a little apprehensive about the blue-green algae powder, because it smelled really ... well, algae-like. We both like seaweed and sea vegetables, but I wasn't convinced algae and grapefruit belonged together. Luckily, you couldn't taste anything but grapefruit and sweetness. Plus, you get the added benefit of the algae, which, according to Raw Food/Real World, is a great source of protein and B12.

I confess, it was a little weird to drink something other than water. Since embarking on this journey away from meat and processed foods, I've made a conscious effort to drink nothing but water and the very occasional diet soda. In the past I used to drink a LOT of soda. I'd even drink it for breakfast. And when I wasn't drinking soda, I was drinking "juice" -- you know, the kind with very little fruit juice in it, but a lot of high fructose corn syrup. So at this point, even healthful juices like this one seems kind of naughty. Tasty, but naughty.

I've been enjoying oatmeal (the quick cooking variety) for breakfast lately, which definitely is an improvement over the boxed cereal I was eating for months on end. But I wanted to try some groats, the hulled (unprocessed) version of a grain. In this case, of buckwheat. I found the recipe for Crunchy Buckwheat Cereal here.

Here are the groats, pre-oven.

And here they are, nicely toasted and tossed with maple syrup and natural peanut butter.

I tried a few spoonfuls after it came out of the oven. It has a nutty taste, with just a slight sweetness. I will have some of this tomorrow morning with sliced strawberries!