Soaking Nuts Before Eating

If you're new to raw food recipes, you're probably new to eating lots of nuts in your diet.  Not all raw foodists eat lots of nuts, but a lot of the recipes that taste like cooked food use nuts (like cheesecake, yummmm!)

You don't HAVE to eat nuts in order to get enough protein. Watch Tonya Kay's protein video for more on dispelling this myth.

However, when you do eat a lot of nuts, it's important to soak your nuts before you eat them.

Why?

All nuts (and seeds) have an enzyme inhibitor that keeps them from sprouting into the the tree, bush or plant that they carry inside of them.  Once they are planted in the ground and given some water, the enzyme inhibitor is destroyed and the nut/seed can begin to sprout.

So, when you eat a lot of nuts and/or seeds, you can end up with a lot of that enzyme inhibitor in your digestive tract and that just slows everything down, not just the nuts you're eating.

But I like my nuts crunchy!!!

OK, so here's the recipe we use to make nicely salted, crunchy nuts for snacking on.  You'll need a dehydrator to do this in nice big batches and at a low, even heat.  If you want to try it in your oven, just set it on warm and watch the nuts ... too hot for too long will destroy the good enzymes in there.

Activated Nuts

	Your Favorite Nuts (almonds, walnuts, pistachio meats, filberts)
	Pure Water
2-5 Tbsp	Sun Fire Salt

Soak your favorite nuts in pure water for several hours. The harder the nut, the longer it should soak. For example, soak almonds and filberts overnight - about 8-10 hours. Soak walnuts and pistachio meats for 3-4 hours.

Rinse the soaked nuts in pure water several times until the rinse water is clean. If you stop here, be sure to refrigerate the nuts or they will get moldy.

If you prefer salty or crunchy nuts, take these next steps...

Salting Option A:
Soak the nuts in salted water (~5Tbsp of Sun Fire Salt for 1 Quart of Water) for another hour.

Salting Option B:
Sprinkle Sun Fire Salt over the rinsed nuts. (that's what I do)

Place the nuts on meshed dehydrator trays and dehydrate at no more than 105 degrees Faehrenheit (to maintain all the good enzymes) for about 24 hours or until they are crunchy.

For a great dehydrator I highly suggest the Good4u 10 tray dehydrator

p.s. dehydrating salted pistachio meats for 3-4 hours leaves them tasting like hot buttered bread (that's good for you). Yummy!

For a good source of raw, organic nuts, check out Sun Organic Farm. Enjoy!