Ricki’s Rockin’ Raw Bars & Meet “The Zester”

A few weeks back Ricki posted a most excellent raw bar she created. The “Fig and Cherry Bars have become my favourite raw bar and I’ve made these puppies 4 times already! (This is indeed a lot because neither the Guppy or Mr. Fish will eat them. I don’t know why. They are the best raw bar I’ve ever had, let alone made!).

When I first read the recipe, I wanted to make them post haste, the only problem was I didn’t have any dried cherries. I looked around my kitchen (this took me about 5 seconds because I have a lilliputian French apartment kitchen!). Dried cherries I had not, alas, but an unassuming sealed bag of dried prunes caught my eye. Pourquoi pas? Dried prunes are very sweet, quite high in calcium (which was what these bars were all about!), and rather moist (a bonus in the raw bar department, really).

I’m thrilled to report that the dried prunes rocked the raw bars without a doubt – they were moist and sweet enough that I could opt out on the optional agave syrup, so yeah for that. After doing a little scooby-dooing around my petite ville I found that if I really wanted dried cherries I also had to be ready to shell out nearly 15E for about a handful. To this I said, non. If you’ve got dried cherries priced for the proletariat in your hood, however, I suggest you follow Ricki’s recipe. I’m sure they’d be all tarty-delicious. I also added 2 tablespoons of carob powder to one of the batches and it was a very good move.

This little gadget is one of the best kitchen investments I’ve ever made. Maybe I’m the last human on this planet to have ignored the existence of these puppies, I don’t know. I do know that removing the zest from citrus has always driven me nuts, and to be honest I would sometimes skip it because I found it to be such a pain (I know *hanging head*). Then I found “The Zester”. I love this thing. It has made zesting about 90% less annoying. It is so handy and it was worth every cent of the 7E I spent!

And because this post is all about Ricki (and that’s ok, because she’s pretty rockin’), here’s a sloppy picture of my Radish and Grapefruit Salad. Radishes are so good for you- very good for muscle tissue recuperation (I wish I could link to the two articles I’ve read about this but I cannot find them for the life of me! One was from a Sports Therapy Journal and the other was written by Amby Burfoot for Runner’s World). Despite their good-for-you-ness, I have a tough time working them into my meals, but the tartness of the grapefruit marries perfectly with the bitterness of the radishes. I added a generous teaspoon of tahini to the dressing and it was perfect!