If you love Parmesan cheese, here's a raw vegan substitute: Rawmesan



Ingredients:

1 cup raw Walnuts - ground up
2/3 cup raw Sunflower Seeds - ground up
1/2 cup Nutritional Yeast*
1 -2 teaspoons Sea Salt (to your taste)
2 teaspoons dill weed...for some reason this makes it taste more cheesy!
A dash of garlic powder to make more "Italian".

Ideally, the nuts and seeds should "sprouted" i.e be soaked in fresh water for 6 hours then dried in a dehydrator. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can just use raw nuts/seeds and it will still be delicious and easier to digest than actual cow's cheese.

To grind the nuts and seeds, you can use a coffee grinder and grind in small batches. I leave mine slightly chunky as opposed to super-fine.

Stir it all up in a big bowl with a fork - breaking up clumps of ground nuts/seeds until the color of the nutritional yeast makes it a tint of yellow and the salt is evenly distributed.

Great as a topping on all types of salads, raw "pasta" dishes, and popcorn!!

You can actually buy this product from a great company called Gopals out of Texas. I found it in Lake Tahoe in a Health Food store my friend Stefanie took me to (Thanks, Stef!). A small 4 oz container was $6. Now I make a huge batch that will last for a couple of months for about the same price..or less!


* Nutritional Yeast is not a raw product.

However, yeast is considered by many to be the most valuable supplement available. It is a complete protein and contains more protein than meat. Yeast is an excellent source of B-vitamins including B12 and it contains the glucose tolerance factor that helps in the regulation of blood sugar. It is a single-celled fungus present in the air around us and on fruits and grains - it converts various types of sugar to alcohol. The earliest recorded use was in 1550 BC in Egypt. But it is only during the last few decades that the outstanding health benefits of nutritional yeast have been researched.

Nutritional yeast is grown on mineral enriched molasses and used as a food supplement. At the end of the growth period, the culture is pasteurized to kill the yeast. You never want to use a live yeast (i.e. baking yeast) as a food supplement because the live yeast continues to grow in the intestine and actually uses up the vitamin B in the body instead of replenishing the supply. (Brewer's yeast is nutritionally the same but as a by-product of the beer-brewing industry it has a characteristic bitter hops flavor.)

It's Good For You!
Nutritional yeast contains 18 amino acids (forming the complete protein) and 15 minerals. Being rich in the B-complex vitamins, it is vital in many ways and particularly good for stress reduction. The B-complex vitamins help make nutritional yeast such a valuable supplement, especially to the vegetarian. One element of yeast is the trace mineral chromium, also known as the Glucose Tolerance Factor (GTF). This is necessary to regulate blood sugar and is important for diabetics and people with a tendency toward low blood sugar.

Photo by PrakayaTv