the family and raw chocolate berry pie

We've had some family in town (two adults, five nutbars to be exact:) staying with us for the past week or so and let me just say that I have a new found respect for those women who have 4, 5, 6, or more kids! It has been frazy (fun + crazy) around here! I think the dish washer and the washing machine have been running pretty much non-stop for a week...how do you supermoms do it? Really! I want to know. I only have two nutbars and am already so mentally and physically exhausted at the end of the day, I can't even imagine adding more to the organized chaos.

Cooking has been the most challenging thing for me. I have no experience cooking for that many people so I have no idea if there will be leftovers or if some of the children will go to bed hungry. For instance last night, I made a huge pot of chicken noodle soup in one of those large dutch ovens (the largest pot I have) and as I got to about number 6 out of the 11 bowls of soup I was serving, I realized there may not be enough. Thankfully we also had salad and cornbread to help fill everyone up. I don't think anyone was still hungry that night...at least I hope not. Going through a whole loaf of bread for one lunch also amazes me...the bread was there. on the counter. in the bag. and then about two minutes later...it was just gone, completely gone!

I have been loving the new taste testers for some of my raw recipes. The five extra nutbars were not so much a fan of my griswold green monster, but they didn't have any trouble scarfing down raw chocolate berry pie:) I didn't even have time to take a photo.

I combined a few different recipes and through in a few things of my own...it was totally an experiment but turned out pretty tasty:

raw chocolate berry pie:

crust

I used the crust portion of this recipe from Gone Raw. It was super easy and tasted great. I love making raw crust for pies...it is so much easier then regular pie crust. Who wants to mess with cutting in the butter and rolling it out all sticky and everything. Not to mention the health benefits of using a raw crust. I guess I was just never any good at it so the raw way is wonderful for me.

chocolate berry filling

This part gets a little tricky because I did not use exact measurements on the parts that I made up, so just taste test it along the way and add in whatever you think it is lacking.

1 avocado

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup cocoa powder

2/3 cup dates or other sweetener

1 vanilla bean or 1 t vanilla

1/4 t sea salt

about 1 cup fresh or frozen berries (I used a mixture of frozen berries)

1-2 ripe bananas

Mix ingredients in food processor until it is a mousse like consistency. Give it a taste and add more fruit/dates/sweetener if necessary. Pour into pie crust and freeze. Take out of freezer a few minutes before serving and garnish with sliced strawberries.

Seriously, the entire pie (minus one itty bitty slice, which I added to my shake the next morning:) was inhaled in about 3 minutes. Your nutbars will love it!