Fun food fast

As promised, this is the first of a few posts about how I've used the contents of my care package to make fun fast food.

I started out by sampling Lydia's Organics Tropical Mango Bar and the new Cacao Crunch Bar. I really could've used these by themselves on Friday, as I spent the day going from one doctor's appointment to the next. However, I think I was able to enjoy them much more yesterday.

Unable to decide which to try first, I cut open both packages, dumped them out onto a cutting board and sliced them into squares, each yielding two even squares with a smaller rectangular shaped excess piece. The leftover rectangles were perfect for taste-testing on their own, so that's what I did.

The Cacao Crunch Bar was definitely my fave (no surprise, due to my love of all things chocolate). Its perfect mix of puffy sprouted buckwheat and quinoa, crunchy sprouted sunflower and sesame seeds, glued together and flavored by agave nectar, cacao powder, cinnamon and original Himalayan crystal salt, reminded me of the chocolate Rice Krispies Treats I ate as a child, but better. It had a more complex texture, wasn't overly sweet and had a spicy note in the background that makes one wonder, "hey, what is that?" (I believe it was the cinnamon, which is great for enhancing chocolate).

Now, how does one make this treat even more special? Well, I decided to turn it into a n'ice cream sandwich (they are all the rage this time of year; my friend Jenny and I have been indulging in this childhood snack all summer).

I made mine very simply, both to make things easier on myself, as well as to show you how to take your convenience raw foods up a notch while traveling or short on time. I filled it with a lucuma banana n'ice cream, whipped up in my mini food processor out of frozen banana, lucuma powder, vanilla and sea salt.

If you don't have a food processor with you on vacation, you can use a blender or just mash the mixture together with a fork. And, if you don't have access to a freezer either, then enjoy some sliced banana inside your cacao sandwich. It doesn't get any easier than that.

As for the Tropical Mango Bar, I had hoped to fill it with a pineapple, mango and coconut sorbet, but opted to use up the rest of the lucuma banana n'ice cream with the addition of some frozen mango and pineapple. The flavor was much more subtle, which complemented the bar beautifully.

The bar's ingredient list is short and sweet (bananas, coconut, mango and pineapple), which lend me to the assumption that its flavor would be just as sweet. However, to my surprise, the taste was not as strong as I had suspected; it was actually more like a granola bar should be (not like the sugar-laden heavily processed ones in the stores).

Speaking of granola bars, the texture reminded me of the Nature Valley ones I used to tote along with me. Great for eating on their own, I was concerned at how they would work for the outside of a n'ice cream sandwich. Luckily, once out of the freezer, I was still able to sink my teeth into my tropical treat. Delicious.

Again, if you don't have a lot of appliances on-the-go, you can always eat this bar like a cracker, topping it fresh fruit or even some sliced avocado (I love avoacdo with mango). As always, enjoy :-)

Reminder: Today is the last day to vote for the VegNews 2008 Veggie Awards. I was thinking about it last night as I ate Kristen Suzanne's winning raw food recipe: Raw Teriyaki Noodles. Yum! I can see (make that taste) how it won.