Raw Meaty Bones and Raw Nuts

Wow, this is the second post today but I have more to say!
About the recipe I posted, Raw nuts are not an easy thing to find nowadays. In the stores you will see many bins of nuts claiming to be raw. In fact most of them are not. They are either pasteurized, or fumigated with cancer causing chemicals, which is the law for almonds in California. As for most all of them, they have been heated to aid in cracking, making them dead un-sproutable food. It is deceptive but the governments definition of "raw" is that they are not "roasted". Convenient for the sellers isn't it? Well you may say, " I will buy them in the shell and crack my own." That is an idea but it does not mean that they have not been heated to control all those "pests". The only way you can truly get around it is to know the farmer and buy them directly after knowing their history. There is a few raw web sites where they are privy to this info but their prices are just out of my reach (not that I would not pay it if I had it). So I do the best I can with my local source and if you don't have a local source you may have to mail order them at that cost. This is why I give the option of using more pumpkin seeds in this recipe (you can usually get raw pumpkin and other seeds at your local health food store, and you also could, instead of the almonds, use a different nut. They are all pretty good. Oh, and I will add to this that there is no such thing as a "raw cashew" that I know of. Cashews are a soft gelatinous nut (seed?) growing on the outside of an apple like thing. The cashew itself has a coating on it that is poisonous and they have to be boiled to remove this then poisonous membrane and make the nut firm. They use the actual fruit part to make an alcohol product for locals. I have seen on a raw site them advertised as really "raw" and shelled by hand but I am a little skeptical of this and if it is true and they are super expensive. I feel sorry for those workers and would not buy for that reason alone. So even though they taste good maybe we should just, "Get over them!"
Penny got her first raw whole fish today. Yes, that may seem weird but here is why. She was having pain every time she ate commercial dog food. I did some research and started her on a raw diet two months ago. She has been eating antelope and elk and some ground beef, (my husband is a hunter so I have saved the "trim" scraps). I found this web site http://www.rawmeatybones.com/ that was good info on how to feed your dog and the importance of bones for the teeth and body. I was really concerned at first but I have came to the conclusion that my dog is in more danger from bloat from commercial feeding and poor health from cooked food, than she would be from raw meaty bones. So my hubby went fishing yesterday so I gave her a half of a smaller trout. It was really funny. I took her outside and she sort of just mouthed it a little and left it alone. I then took her inside and I put down a towel on the sofa and she ate it where she usually eats. As she was working on it, tail first for some reason, she growled at my big dog over it so I know that she was enjoying her meal. So, so far so good.
I hope I have not ruined your day over the raw nut thing but we have to be aware of what we are buying and putting into our bodies. This is also true for the pasteurized food in the store. That means "cooked" folks, sorry. If you want to know, "why raw" and "what's so bad about cooked food", just respond to this post.
Shalom
Rosemary