These were the bars I took hiking at Malibu State Creek Park. When I first started eating healthy I was a raw vegan for about two months, so even though I eat more paleo meals now, I try to include lots of raw whole foods, and raw snacks into my diet. The only sweetener I used for these are bananas and dates, so they are technically a whole food snack. Normally, I leave the seeds whole, but I decided to add them to the Vitamix to see how difficult it would be to grind up. It wasn’t that bad, but there was more clean up involved. In the future, I will attempt to grind the seeds in a spice grinder first. It might eliminate the need for the Vitamix. You get more nutrition from ground seeds, otherwise, they will potentially pass through your body whole, while you don’t get the nutrition you paid for.
- ½ cup of sunflower seeds
- 2 tbsp ground flax seeds
- 1 tbsp of chia seeds
- ½ tbsp of sesame seeds
- ½ tbsp of hemp seeds
- 1 banana
- 8 pitted medjool dates
- ½ cup of water
- Add seeds to bowl, and mix in water, then add to vitamix and blend.
- Add more water if needed, and add in remaining ingredients as you continue to blend.
- If having trouble blending, remove vitamix top and use punger while off, then attach vitamix top and retry plunging at low speed.
- Cut parchment sheet to fit dehydrator for easy clean up.
- Smooth mixture over parchment paper ½ inch thick.
- Sprinkle with sesame seeds (optional) for appearance.
- Dehydrate for 3-4 hours on 104 degrees, then score mixture with a knife to outline where bars should break.
- Dehydrate for 4-6 hours (or longer), gently separate bars and remove from parchment paper for quicker drying and dehydrate more if needed.
I admit I have not been on this blog in a long time however it was joy to find it again. It is such an important topic and ignored by so many even professionals! I thank you for helping to make people more aware of these issues. Just great stuff as per usual!
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Thank you for the lovely comment!