Shut Up and Listen: Raw Apple Pie

I am very American in the fact that I like my car. Today my car was the instrument through which I received another wakeup call.

Shut up and listen.

I can parallel park well when I can hear the tires moving. I was blasting my music and didn’t hear how close I was to the curb. Long story short, I have another bit of car repair for the second time in almost two months. This doesn’t mean I should never parallel park again; I need to pay attention. This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t listen to music and drive; immediately turning on the radio when in the car is a habit, I realise, that I don’t always need to pursue. I can pay attention to the road just as well without the noise.

Why is it days off from a workout regimen end up being such off days?

Last week I made Ani Phyo’s “All-American Apple Pie” with some modifications. It’s a 180 from my roasted apple pie. Since raw veganism is clearly a subversive plot against everything American, the playlist for this pie should be Rammstein’s “Amerika” and Marilyn Manson’s “We’re from America.”

If you didn’t hear the sarcasm there, turn off your music.

Raw Apple Pie

modified for Vitamix-only preparation from Phyo, Ani, “All-American Apple Pie,” in Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen (New York: Marlowe & Company, 2007), 211.

Crust:

2 cups dates, soaked overnight and drained

2 cups almonds

dash of sea salt

Filling:

1/2 cup dates, soaked overnight and drained

1/2 cup fresh pineapple chunks

a few tablespoons of water to make it go

3 medium apples, NOT PEELED (whyyy would you peel them unless they’re not organic?), sliced thin then sliced in half

1 cup raisins

2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

Have a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate (if you have one) ready. Ani recommends "flouring" it with almond meal, which I didn't find to be a positive or negative strategy in relation to plate stickiness.

 In a food processor or blender, pulverize the almonds to make almond meal. 

Place the almond meal and the salt in a large bowl. Blitz the 2 cups of dates until mostly obliterated. 

Add the date paste to the almond meal and mix well. Press the date-almond mixture into and up the sides of the pan.

Place the apples, raisins, and cinnamon in the same bowl as you used to mix the crust. Blitz the half-cup of dates and the pineapple until pureed. Pour the date-pineapple mixture over the apple mixture and stir to combine. Pile in the crust and press down slightly (it will mound over the top of the crust, no biggie). 

Chill in the fridge until ready to serve.

The problem with uncooking? The house does not have aromas. It’s another “raw” facet of the raw lifestyle. Living life unfiltered…

If I’m going to have music turned on and up in my “idle” time, then what am I blocking out? Goodness knows I could be more mindful in just about everything and I try to do things—such as eating, reading, studying, meditating—mindfully. Thus I am turning my experience of the world towards the raw side as the weather turns. Raw dessert, raw breakfast, making a conscious effort to “uncook”—one thing at a time, I try to stay in the fresh present from a culinary point of view, knowing the effects will radiate to the rest of my life. After all, you are what (and how) you eat. I’m reinventing myself. I’m trying bits and pieces of the raw vegan lifestyle.