I am Home, and making friends with sea life

As I briefly mentioned last night, my first use of Irish Moss has proven an absolute success! To inaugurate my Irish Moss experience and to use up apples I bought on specials at the health food store, I settled on I am Grateful's I am Home Apple Pie. (For more nutritional info on Irish Moss, check out an earlier post here.)

I have to admit I was kind of scared of Irish Moss at first. How I was supposed to turn a translucent tree branch-looking plant into a yummy part of my pie? I had no idea! I started by very religiously following the instructions laid out by the recipe. I soaked the Irish Moss in water for about 24 hours, and it looked... exactly the same as when I put it in there. Hrm. But it sure does look funny:

All I needed was an aquarium and some tropical fish...

The recipe was a little more labor intensive than most of the other raw apple pies I've made, but it was definitely worth it because it brilliantly simulated the ooey-gooeyness of cooked apple pie. To make the pie inside taste "cooked", the recipe required dehydrating and then resoaking the apples in apple juice, and blending the apple juice with the irish moss and some other ingredients, before mixing everything back all together again.

By the time I had to mix it in, the soaked irish moss smelled pretty vile (to me at least). It didn't smell at all like seaweed, but almost like that smell when plastic toys have been wrapped in more plastic for too long. However, thanks to the Vitamix, my soaked Irish Moss totally disappeared during blending, creating a thick cinnamon-laced syrup. That blend was then mixed back in with the apples to recreate that thick texture you only get once apples have begun to become mushy and release their juices in the oven. That apple mixture finally went into an almond crust and was topped off with a lovely date-walnut crumble. Of course, no apple pie is complete unless it's an apple pie à la mode, which is what happened to it when it became dessert:

Another food note of the day, I finally marinated my giant wine cap mushroom with ACV, olive oil, Bragg's, raw honey, and herbs, and made that part of a yummy nut cheese, beet, lettuce, and mushroom sammie for Andrew's dinner:

Over the past week, I like to think I've become something of a raw sandwich-making pro! That, and an Irish Moss extraordinaire. Two victories in one day, who can ask for more!

Workout of the Day:

(I'm bringing this section back per some readers' requests, but also for my own record keeping!)

stability ball ab routine (4 cycles of 4 target exercises x12 + 1 full core exercise x20)

20 minutes of HIIT on elliptical + 2 minute cooldown

10 minutes of stretching