RAW BALLS OF DE-LIGHT

My heart hurt, truly, when Kathy mentioned that she eats salad every day because it's easy, and when Rebecca said she is eating carrot sticks plain. Oh pain! Oh woe! Food is great fun and delicious delight! :) We have so much to do to reengage the children and make them giggle.

RAW BALLS OF De-LIGHT is born...cooking raw, I love it! :)
Approach this as the six year old! Enter into the game of it.

Get a BIG BIG bowl
Add 1 big handful of the raw nuts that jump up and down and say "pick me pick me"
Add 2 handfuls of the loudest ones

Cover with water and soak 4 hours or overnight. They love the water.
(I put in cashews, almonds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, whole flax seeds, peanuts)

Drain the nuts and seeds
Gather all the dried fruit you have around

Add 1 handful of the prettiest most yummy ones in the bowl
Add sprinkles of a few others until it looks just the right mix of COLOR~
(I put in apricots, plums, dates, cranberries, apples, and blueberries. Next time, mangos and papayas with a touch of pineapple)

Throw everything in the food processor and grind it up! Whir chop crunch...I like mine a bit chunky

Now for the artist's touch- begin to add some dry stuff-
an eye or two of Salamander (dry oatmeal)
a sprinkle of dry toad (flax seed meal)
a whisper of cobweb (hemp seed meal)
or whatever you have (I used a bit of all of these)

Whip it after each addition until you get it just the right FEEL. It should hold together when you make a ball out of it so reach in and play with it. Is it too wet, does it form a ball without your fingers gunked to it? Make it like the texture of playdough. You know? Wet but it will hold it's shape when you form it into something. You can make bars if you'd rather-or little tweety birds!

Stick the bowl in the freezer for an hour if you have time. Don't need to so, if you don't, don't fret.

Have a bowl of coconut flakes ready and now take blobs of stuff and form balls and then roll them in the coconut completely covering them. Squish the coconut onto the balls so you have these yummy snow balls. They should be the size of...um...a ping pong ball? Yeah! That's about right! About 3 bites.

Stack them in a Tupperware container!

You have RAW BALLS OF DE-LIGHT...viola! Now you have a yummy raw snack to take on the road, to the office, in the car, at class, that is sooo good for you and soooo delicious that it feels like it is bad. Hah! You can snack on these anytime, all day if you want, and they are awesome! My rules-fun food! :) I'll add that one.

Every time I write De-light I hear it in my head with that little guy's voice from "Fantasy island" saying "De plane de plane..." go figure! I have dwarves running around in my head. Shades of Wizard of Oz!

And just in case you are saying "but I don't have a big food processor..." I only have my little black and decker 2 cup. I just filled it and whirred and filled it again and whirred. It took like maybe 20 minutes total even with rolling it into balls, and then I took my big ol' wooden spoon and stirred in the dry stuff and left the oatmeal whole. It worked just fine. Ask Lauren and Linda-we've been eating them in class!

Enjoy!