Spreadin’ the Raw Love with Dave the Raw Trucker!

Hey everyone!  Recently we took a trip out to Seattle and had an awesome time.  We check out some awesome places such as the Seattle Aquarium (which is abso-freakin’-lutely amazing!) and Pike’s Place Market where I met some cool people, picked up some local honey and was overwhelmed by all the awesome produce vendors!

 Amanda, Isabel and I also visited the Vital T-Leaf, which is an amazing Asian tea house/shop where you can pull up a chair and enjoy free samples of the extensive selection of bulk teas they sell. Not only do you enjoy some great tea, but you also get quite an education on the proper brewing of tea. What was really neat was that they didn’t excessively heat the water nor allow the teas and herbs to steep for long. The resulting teas were light and tasty without a trace of bitterness. We picked up quite a few to have our own tea parties back home since Isabel enjoyed it so much! I also picked up a bag of dried whole stevia leaves, which I’ve been playing around with adding a lil’ to my Elixirs and chocolate smoothies in an experiment to cut back on using sugar rich foods. For those who haven’t messed with stevia, it’s an herb which has a sweet taste yet is totally non-glycemic, which makes it a useful natural “sweetener” for those with blood sugar issues. I like using 50% stevia to 50% honey or agave (by sweetness, not by weight) and I find it pleasant like that

Along with all of this fun stuff we also got to connect with our friends Aimee and Chris. We connected with Aimee online through raw fu and by checking out her awesome blog back when Amanda and I first got started with raw foods. We had the pleasure of meeting up with her and Chris at Raw Spirit Fest East and it was very cool to get to hang out with them again in Seattle! Chris and Aimee showed us around town and then we hit up Chaco Canyon for some raw eats and fun conversation. Turns out that not only had I run into Aimee and Chris back when I first got into playing around with vegan recipes at a NOFA conference yeeeaars ago, but we all have the same wedding anniversary, in fact we were married on the exact same day! Weird and fun synchronicities!  That evening, as they dropped us off back our hotel , Aimee mentioned that there was going to be a raw food meet-up at Thrive and that Dave the Raw Trucker would be there! I could not pass that up!

I’ve been following Dave’s story and I’m totally inspired and impressed by all the wonderful things he’s done and the transformation he’s experienced. Dave lost over 230lbs, ditched diabetes and feels wonderful after switching over to a low-glycemic raw foods diet and doing a lot of juicing! This would be totally impressive on it’s own, but you have to factor in that my man Dave does this while driving truck! He totes his juicers, a cooler and plenty of extension cord and does his raw thing on the road! For all those who wondered if raw is doable while traveling, here be your answer!

We arrived at Thrive just as he was settling everyone in and gearing up for the meet-up. Right off the bat, meeting him you could feel the love and energy that he carries! Dave and I got to talking and hit it off right away.  You know when you run into someone and you can just tell they’re on the same wavelength as you and you get all geeked up talking with them? Well than you know what I’m talkin’ about.  Dave was excited to hear what I do with raw-chefin’ and very geeked up to hear about the raw challenge my Mom had undertaken with my guidance.  It was awesome hanging and chatting with Dave, Aimee, Jeff (the Naughty Vegan….I get a kick out of all the fun raw nicknames out there…Dave the Raw Trucker, Jeff and the Naughty Vegan and Rawdawg Rory. Haha!)

While talking and showing Dave the last video we did with Mom he thought it’d be fun if we did a vid together and it ended up being a doozy! We ended up filming for over an hour and the raw love was flowing throughout it all! We were gonna do an interview style vid, but I was like nah let’s just let Dave flow with it because he was on a roll! There’s a lot of awesome topics he touched on so rather than just throwing a lump of vids on at once were gonna be putting up segments of the awesomeness that occurred regularly and hope to catch up with Dave again in the future!

The latest portion we’ve posted touches on one thing very near and dear to me…and that is Spreading the Raw Love! Dave talks about how once he had experienced all these wonderful changes he was driven to share with others how he was able to do this so that they can also experience the awesome benefits of raw-living! This struck such a chord with me because that’s exactly how I got started doing what I do! As I was experiencing so many awesome improvements to my life, I wanted to share not only the fun of it all, but simple and totally do-able raw recipes with others so that they can get their groove on!  

I’ve received so many touching emails from people looking to get their family members and loved ones into eating raw that I thought it’d be fitting with the topic to share in the intro to this video some of my best advice on spreading the raw love and a lil’ update on what my mom’s been up to! So without further ado…enjoy!