Breathwork, raw-get togethers and chocolate tahini banana bon-bons!

     Hey everyone!  Been a lot of cool stuff goin’ on lately! These past two weekends I’ve been hanging with Jody and Joey Allen (of LovingLifeCafe.com) and their guest, Chris Carlton (of Purelyraw.com). We had a great time shooting the breeze and sharing recipe ideas. We also enjoyed an amazing dinner of raw tacos with a combination of Jody’s amazing mushroom based taco “meat”, fresh made salsa, and flax/corn tortillas with Chris’s delicious sunflower seed and avocado based version of re-fried beans and sunflower seed sour cream.  Awesome, awesome stuff! I brought over a cacao-coconut crusted tahini/date cream pie! *didn’t get a chance to snap a pic before it got annihilated* The recipe for that bad-boy is gonna be in the e-book I’m currently working on!

     This past Saturday we had a get-together again at Jody and Joey’s and got sample some of Jody’s friend Arelenes’ salt-and vinegar cured, marinated eggplant slices (pickled eggplant)….oh my freakin goodness!  They we’re amazing!  The process takes about a month or two to create but, after sampling them I felt it’d be well worth the wait! After snacking on them and passing around some of my chocolate tahini banana bon-bons, we watched ‘ Zeitgeist ‘.  A very interesting documentary examining our current monetary system and how it affects our lives and the structure of society. Doesn’t sound all that thrilling when I describe it but, it had some brutal accounts from “economic hit men” and a visionary idea of a society which can be based on a system other than our current money driven one. Idealist and Utopian but, still fun to imagine! After the movie Chris busted out the guitar and rounds of classic rock  and some his own original and beautiful songs! Great time!

     Aside from his amazing story of his raw transformation and incredible weight-loss, Chris is also trained  in Rebirthing. Which is an amazing system of breath excercises originally created by Leonard Orr.  Chris picked up on our fascination with it during our talking  and offered to come over and give Amanda and myself a personal session. I won’t get into the lengthy and fascinating history of Rebirthing but, I will say that the results are beyond what I expected. I had done meditation in the past and still do from time to time to center myself and relax, but this was a totally different experience altogether! If you’ve done meditation before, then imagine when you’ve reached a deep sense of relaxation and calm…now times that by about a thousand! Really great stuff! For more info on my experience check out the blurb I wrote for Amandas’ blog. 

     Chris is a great guy, and although he says thanks are not necessary as hes’ passionate about sharing the benefits of this practice. I have to give him thanks again and to Leonard Orr for creating such a cool exercise!!  

   Now for a recipe!

        Chocolate Tahini Banana Bon-Bons!*say that five times fast!*

Yummmmmy!

     You’re gonna need the Nutella inspired raw chocolate tahini dip from my video at Catch A Healthy Habit and you could use the homemade tahini recipe from my last post as the base for it!

     Now slice some sweet-ripe bananas into 1″ long slices, arrange them on either a baking sheet or plate and freeze them until firm.

     Take your frozen banana chunks and, using tongs or chopsticks, dunk them into the chocolate tahini dip and arrange them on a plate coated with either coconut flakes, ground nuts, or sesame seeds. Refreeze!

  Voila! You got a tasty ice-creamish treat! If you have issues with cacao you could easily substitute with carob or just do the tahini, honey, salt and vanilla for a vanilla bon-bon. Get creative with them and enjoy!