Chocolate Drizzled Energy Bars, So good!
What’s up my friends!? Hope you’re doing awesome! As you may know, Amanda and I are expecting a lil’ mini-me (mini-us I should say) Ramona, (coming this May!). We’re psyched up and a bit nervous, particularly me. I’ve been watching YouTube videos of births to get prepared… haven’t seen stuff that scary since “Freddy Vs. Jason”. So hopefully if all goes according to plan, I’ll be upright throughout Ramona’s arrival! As we prepare for her appearance, we are also preparing for an upcoming move to a new place here in Portland. A lot goin’ on! So if you’ve been wondering where the fudge I was, I’m around… just busy as heck. I have a treat for you today… Raw energy bars with a chocolate drizzle-dizzle!
Chocolate Drizzled Energy Bars
These tasty travel companions have a peanutty bar base and a chocolate topping, if that wasn’t enough, they are loaded with protein, fiber and omega 3 fatty acids! Great for toting to work, bringing on road trips or sneaking into the movies (don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about).
For the bars ~
2 Cups of almonds
2 Cups of flaked or shredded coconut
1+1/2 Cups of hemp seeds
1/2 a cup of almond butter
1/4 cup of raw honey (can substitute with agave, maple syrup or pitted dates whatever rocks your sweet tooth’s socks)
1 Tablespoon of Spirulina Crunchies (totally optional, but tasty and full of green goodness!)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract or 1/4 tsp vanilla bean powder
1/4 Teaspoon of sea salt
Grind the coconut, almonds, hemp seeds, spirulina crunchies, sea salt and vanilla into a flour in your food processor. Toss in the almond butter and sweetener and give it a good grinding. Take this mixture and spread about 1/4″ thick on a cookie sheet, press firmly and, using your hand as a guide, square off the edges as you press the mix into a square or rectangular shape. Now wrap with plastic wrap and pop in the freezer while you rock out the chocolate drizzle!
The Drizzle ~
1/2 Cup of cacao butter (broken into small chunks)
1/4 cup of coconut sugar or xylitol crystals (this will give you a more solid finished chocolate, you could sub raw honey or agave)
2-3 tablespoons of cacao powder
1/4 teaspoon of non-gmo soy lecithin (this is a natural emulsifier that helps bring the chocolates ingredients together harmoniously)
pinch of sea salt
Melt all the ingredients down in a double boiler on low heat until everything is dissolved and mix thoroughly until well combined, I sometimes pour the melted mix in my VitaMix and give it a quick blend to achieve an even more homogenized drizzle.
Grab your tray from the freezer and cut into the bar size of your choice. Spread the bars apart and drizzle them with a generous coating of your chocolate saaaaaaawce. The chocolate sauce should harden quickly on the cold bars. Once it has, cover them and pop them in the fridge to store. One cool way to store them is to individually wrap them with parchment or wax paper and use a small piece of tape to secure it… Presto, you got yourself a homemade chocolate drizzled energy bar, wrapped and ready to go!
Watch amazing healthy-living documentaries, for free!
Hey peeps! I want to share the low-down on an awesome site I was turned on to by my buddy Glen Colello of Catch a Healthy Habit Cafe. It’s called Top Documentary Films. At Top Documentary Films you can watch amazing documentaries for free!! This amazing resource uses video content that has been shared through other media sharing websites such as Vimeo, YouTube and MegaVideo to bring you an incredible assortment of brilliant documentaries and also provides a place to discuss the documentaries you’re enjoying!! Browsing through their Health category I’ve found ‘Food Matters’, Micheal Moore’s ‘Sicko’, ‘Super Size Me’, ‘McLibel’, and many more! One that caught my eye recently is ‘Simply Raw : Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days’. This film is amazing! Incredibly inspirational and very entertaining to watch! Be sure to check it out and the many other awesome titles this resource has available! So cool to see this great information being spread to an even wider audience!
Much love and happy movie-goin’! ~ Rory :0)
Coconut Mocha Shake!
Hello my peeps! I was hittin’ up a local grocery store with a built-in Starbucks and saw they got a new Coconut Mocha frappuccino and thought, “Anything you can do, I can do better.”. Haha! Seriously though, next time you tackle your own healthy-fied version of a tasty (but crappy) food or drink, go for it with that enthusiasm and confidence! I headed home, whipped this up and have done so several times since!
Coconut Mocha Shake ~
1 Cup of ice
1/2 of a frozen banana, in pieces (optional, but makes a great emulsifier, bringing everything together smoothly!)
1/2 Cup of water
2 Tablespoons coconut butter (check out this post for the low down on making your own homemade coconut butter!)
1 Tablespoon of raw honey, date syrup or your sweetener of choice
3/4 Tablespoon of cacao powder
Small pinch of sea salt
Blend everything, but the ice and banana, until thoroughly combined. Toss in the frozen goodies and blend again until smooth. Pour in your fave glass and sprinkle with shredded coconut for bonus points!
Happy Blending and recipe concocting my friends ~ Rory :0)
Get your Protein on!
What’s up my friends? One of the most ubiquitous questions I receive about the raw diet is “Where do you get your protein?”. I know a lot of vegans and vegetarians get tired of that question, but it is a major concern for people who are switching over to a plant based diet. So let’s take a look at the top ranking plant based protein sources and how you can work them into your daily menu!
Greens! You’ve probably heard the analogy of rhinos, horses and bulls being big muscle-bound beasts and getting all their protein from plants, well those plants are the green ones. Having very few calories compared to grams of protein puts greens at the top of the list! Kale, romaine lettuce, collards and spinach to name a few pack a punch of protein with lil’ other calories. How much protein?
According to Nutrition Data, one cup of chopped raw kale contains 2 grams of protein and a mere 33 calories. In “Becoming Raw” by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Malina, one cup of kale juice is listed as having 7 grams of protein! So by picking your food prep technique, you can get the most protein out of your eats! Bangin’ stuff! I love kale juiced with grapefruit, full of cleansing chlorophyll, alkalyzing minerals and protein, it makes an awesome post workout drink!
One cup of raw Spinach contains 7 cals and 1 gram of protein, Romaine lettuce sports 8 calories and 1 gram of protein and Collards contain 11 cals and 1 g of protein. Doesn’t sound like much protein compared to volume. But, when you consider how much of these greens easily work their way into your raw menu in the form of green smoothies, juices, salads and marinated massaged side dishes, you’d be surprised! When Amanda and I bang out an eight cup Vita Mix Carafe of green smoothie we’ll use 7 or more cups of loose packed greens! Salad always finds its way into either lunch or dinner and the occasional green juice is a quick and easy way to supplement this.
Seeds. These lil’ champion sources of proteins, pack a lot of protein and essential fatty acids! Sunflower, hemp, chia, pumpkin and sesame seeds are good sources that are tasty and easy additions to your diet! Let’s check their amounts (per cup again). Sunflower seeds have 816 calories and 33 grams of protein, Hemp has about 59 grams of protein and 928 cals, Chia 784 cals and 25 g’s of protein, Pumpkin Seeds are packin’ 747 cals and 34 grams of protein and Sesame Seeds are rockin’ with 888 cals and 30 grams of protein. NIce! Seeds can be used many ways in your daily raw menu. I like to add them to my nut mylk blends, to add more protein and enhance the amino acid profile, as a creamy base for salad dressings, as snacks, as a creamy parfait base, for dips and as seasoned and dehydrated snacks! Sooo many uses for these protein packed lil’ guys!
Nuts. Most people associate nuts as a high protein source, but they’re actually a richer source of good raw fats than they are of protein. This isn’t a bad thing, but for those that are looking to limit the fats they consume, you may wanna go easy on them and opt for seeds when possible. During my raw transformation I chowed on tons of almonds, walnuts, Brazil nuts and cashews in various culinary creations and still lost a bunch of weight, but this doesn’t work for everyone. Some like my wife Amanda, feel bloated after consuming too many. This can be a result of the fats not meshing with your individual metabolism or irritation from their fiber, either way I hear this a lot from my friends in the raw community. So if you have similar issues, try going the seed, coconut and avocado route! Check out the most common nuts’es protein scores, per cup. Almonds tout 850 calories and 29 grams of protein, Brazils boast 965 cals and 21 g’s of protein, English walnuts 785 cals and 18 g’s of protein and Cashews have 736 calories and 24 grams of protein. Nuts are awesome in the form of nut butters to dip fruit in or spread on celery stalks, soaked and dehydrated for trail mixes, raw energy bars, pate’s and as snacks all on their own!
Veggies, root vegetables, herbs and fruits also contain a good amount of protein and can easily be worked into your daily diet. I chose the top three categories above, based on their amount of protein per calorie. If you wanna know even more about the amount of proteins are in the foods you eat, then hit up NutrtionData. There you can check out the nutritional values of all your favorite eats! Also stay tuned to rawdawgrory.com, because I’m going to be delving more into the topic of protein! In upcoming posts you’ll learn about complete sources of protein, the best raw vegan protein products and how to make a bangin’ protein shake that goes beyond just protein!
Rock on my friends ~ Rory :0)
Keepin’ Clean Naturally!
Hey peeps! We’re all about cleaning up our diet and cleansing ourselves, but what about our abodes? Many of the cleaning products you can pick up at the store, are full of the things that you’re probably working to get out of your system! Now there are a LOT of awesome natural cleaning products and they are becoming ever more available in many retail outlets, which is awesome, because I remember (as a teen, yeah I been into this stuff for a while!) having to seek out health food stores or ordering online to pick up eco and health friendly cleaners. But, not having easy access to store-bought natural cleaners, lead me to creating my own and this was not only fun and allowed for some creativity, but also saved me a butt-ton of money!
The two main cleaning dynamos I work with are baking soda and vinegar. Baking soda tackles the dirty work with its mildly abrasive action and fat dissolving ability and then vinegar comes in and does the job of a solvent and boasts some anti-mold, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties! Use baking soda to tackle any household jobs you’d need a powdered scrubber for. From Grungy pots and pans, grimy sink basins, water stained showers and toilets and ovens… baking soda will get medieval on ‘em! For jobs that require a streak free solvent, like cleaning down counter tops, glass shower doors, stove tops, cabinet fronts, appliance doors etc., vinegar has you covered. Check out my post on detoxifying your home for even more in-depth info! But, for now check out this video from the Geeked-Fu challenge below for a demo of homemade natural cleaner’s power!
Happy Cleansing! ~ Rory :0)
How I Ditched Soda
Hey there beloved reader of my raw goodness! When I first got into raw foods the most appealing potential benefit wasn’t weight loss, it wasn’t just the abstract idea of health, nah the biggest motivator for me was having more energy! We all wish we could add a few more hours to each day, but barring access to a TARDIS, we’re gonna have to find another way to get the most out of the 24 we got. For me that used to be running on lil’ sleep and a butt ton of caffeine. Then I discovered raw foods and how I felt after I ate them, feeling satisfied, but not groggy. This alone was worth the price of admission!
Before gettin’ raw, I had been drinking soda, the occasional coffee, black tea and rarely, the dreaded energy drinks. It’s a problem many out there face. We eat a lame diet and feel beat. We can’t go to work beat, so we power up with caffeinated beverages and now more than ever, energy drinks and pills. Than we come home from work and feel a crash comin’, so we grab another caffeinated drink when we get home. But like blasting N2O through a car engine, we’re doing ourselves some long-term damage(and I don’t mean the stuff that hit’s you only in those last years) and then we usually crash BIG time.
When I began to consume more raw eats, I immediately noticed a difference! It wasn’t quite enough in the very beginning to make me drop caffeine cold turkey, but I didn’t crave it nearly as much! I still had a bit of a struggle in the morning, so rather than struggling with grogginess while transitioning, I decided to cut myself some slack. How? I used chilled coffee as the base of my morning cacao shake. I ended up with a drink that blew the franchise coffee blends right out the window and it allowed to easily turn down soda when I was at work. Gradually I noticed myself adding less and less of the chilled coffee to my morning shake blend and within a month or so I didn’t need to add any! So all those caffeinated, high fructose corn syrup concoctions were easily replaced by my blended chocolaty goodness! Pretty sweet deal, so I thought I’d share that lil’ chocolaty coffee beast that helped me do it!
Breakfast Blast ~
This makes about a quart. I like to tote my smoothies in quart mason jars to store in my chilled lunch bag when I head out, so it works perfectly!
~ 1 cup of brewed and chilled coffee (we didn’t own a coffee maker(and still don’t) so I used one of those lil’ plastic funnel deals that ya pop a filter in and it sits on your mug, only I mounted it atop a quart mason jar and brewed through until it was filled. Note, I highly recommend using un-bleached coffee filters, no need for white coffee filters (or the chemicals involved in producing them) when we’re going to turn them brown again immediately! Haha! I’d allow this to chill on the counter for over an hour, before sealing and popping in the fridge. That step is important! Ya don’t wanna have to clean the remnants of an imploded jar and a quart of coffee out of your fridge in the morning. This jar would last me four days, at a cup per day.)
~ 1 cup of almond (or your fave nut) mylk
~ 2 frozen bananas * I loved the combo of frozen bananas with coffee and still love it with Dandy Blend, but Amanda likes to replace the bananas with ice when she makes it. Give both a shot and lemme know who has better taste! haha :0) *
~ 1+1/2 tablespoons of cacao powder
~ 1 tablespoon of raw honey
~ 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla bean powder (or 1/2 teaspoon of extract)
~ pinch of sea salt
Occasionally I’d toss in some hemp seeds for protein and omega 3′s and/or a teaspoon of maca or other powdered super goodies, but those are totally optional. You can add to this breakfast blend any raw protein you’re working with as well, creating a multi-purpose shake! Blows those Instant Breakfast packets, powders and shakes away!
Blend until smooth and frosty and prepare for blast off! Great to tote to work and you can cruise on by those franchise coffee joints. Added bonus, by dodging those joints, you’ll avoid the temptations in their glass cases at the counter!
Enjoy!
Finishing up a bangin’ smoothie feast!
Hey Peeps! This past week I’ve been rocking out a smoothie feast with Amanda. I am a smoothie fiend so a “fast” like this is right up my alley! Why a smoothie feast? Well besides being delicious, full of amazing nutrients (from the amazing ingredients you choose to use!) and filling, smoothies are super easy to digest! So while you’re enjoying a tasty blended meal, your body get’s to take a break from breaking down food! This allows it more energy to do all sorts of stuff, like fine tuning itself and leaves you with more energy to do the stuff you’re into! I’ve been exercising more this week, rockin’ out some writing work and feeling even more geeked up than usual (scary thought, I know!). Rocking smoothies for a fast can be very cleansing as well! All the lovely fiber in your blends keeps you feeling satisfied, buffers the absorption of the sugars(fruit sugars, raw honey etc) in your blends and it does an awesome job of house cleaning! Each of the fibers in your blended concoctions(from the fruits, greens, nuts and seeds) act as lil’ magnetically charged brooms. They travel through you snatching up toxins as they go and dragging them out the backdoor, for lack of a gentler way of putting it. This is perfect as your body will be using some of it’s energy surplus to cleanse and, by rocking fiber’iffic smoothies, you’ll have given it a surplus of cleaning supplies to finish the job with!
We’ve been indulging in breakfast blends of berries, bananas, almond mylk, coconut butter and hemp seeds. These are awesome for those looking for a creamy morning shake and the good fats in the almond mylk and coconut oil increase the availability of the phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals in the fruits! Also the coconut oils works synergistically with the omega 3 fatty acids in the hemp seeds to make them more usable for our body as well! For lunch we either crank out another fruit blend or a savory raw soup deal! One of our faves was a creamy red pepper tomato soup with an almond mylk base! So good! Dinner’s have been over a quart of green smoothie each, consisting of mixed greens and various fresh and frozen fruits with an h2o base. Dessert (Oh yes. Dessert!) has either been a cacao smoothie with an almond mylk base, frozen bananas, hemp seeds, coconut butter and raw honey or a chocolate frozen banana ice cream! This is amazing and super simple using the same ingredients to flavor straight up frozen banana chunks, creates a soft serve experience that’s tasty and healthy! Check out my Banana Ice Cream video (below) for the basics!
If you’re thinking of rockin’ a fast/feast for the first time I’d highly recommend looking into going the smoothie route first. My strategy to approaching raw living was to take the steady and comfortable route and it worked very well for me. I went the route I did to allow myself learning time, time to develop new habits, create recipes I loved, ease into the detoxification process and most of all to keep it fun! It’s easy to enjoy taking on the raw lifestyle when you do it at your pace! For some, going “all-or-nothing” works best, but for myself I knew how I like to roll and I wanted to avoid rapid detoxification issues (and high-speed sprints to the restroom!). So if my approach to raw sounds like your kind of route, then smoothie feasting may be your first choice when considering a feast! Easy, satisfying, nutritious, fiber’iffic and gentle in the detoxing department, smoothies are a pretty sweet way to go!
Happy Blendin’ my friends ~ Rory :0)
Kefir Ginsinger Beer!
Hey Party People in the place to be! I’ve been gettin’ my brew on lately and thanks to some inspiration via the holy grail of internet enlightenment (aka youtube!). Inspiration that guided me to create Kefir Ginsinger Beer (sweet name provided by my homey Nellie!). This tasty concoction combines the probiotic goodness of kefir with the circulation enhancing and detoxification assisting properties of ginger and finally the blood oxygenating (and therefore energy boosting) quality of ginseng!
Ginseng is an adaptogenic herb, which means it helps our bodies to restore their natural balance and deal with stress, it’s also known to increase mental functioning and reduce fatigue! So we’re pretty much talking super soda here. I used to be a full-on soda addict so sharing this recipe (and the low down on water kefir brewing in my last post) is very cool for me to provide other peeps lookin’ to replace that stuff with a really amazing alternative! Let’s hook it up!
To brew your own Kefir Ginsinger Beer you’re going to need ~
~ Some water kefir that has been brewing for approx 48 hours.
~ Glass bottles with a seal-able lids. I love GT’s kombucha bottles for this purpose!
~ Organic turbinado (aka raw sugar, organic un-bleached sugar)
~ A big ‘ol hunk of ginger.
~ Some ginseng tea. You can use ginseng root pieces, ginseng tea bags, or ginseng tea powder. I had the powdered instant ginseng tea version on hand so that’s what I used. When playing around with ginseng be sure to read up on it, especially if you have high blood pressure.
~ Some of your water kefir grains. They reproduce so snagging some of the extras for this brew is okay!
~ A strainer or nut mylk bag.
The following recipe is for a 12 cup batch of water kefir. I get eight finished bottles of Kefir Ginsinger Beer from this amount. If using more or less kefir, then adjust the amounts accordingly. You needn’t be exact and if you have extra, you can always drink it!
Put aside about a cup of the kefir and bottle up the rest, leaving about 3 inches of emptiness in each bottle. Brew your ginseng tea with about 1+1/2 cups of water to make a nice concentrated concoction and allow it to cool. Peel your nugget of ginger, I find the edge of a spoon works great. Now cut it into blendable chunks!
Pop the cup of kefir, 1+1/2 cups of ginseng tea (or 1+1/2 cups of water with 3 packets of ginseng tea, thats what I’m doing now), the ginger knob, about 2 teaspoons of kefir grains, and 2 tablespoons of turbinado into your blender. Blend!!
Now strain this glorious stuff to remove all the fibrous bits and use it to fill the bottles to within an inch of the top, to leave room for the co2 to build up.
Place the bottles aside to brew for about 3-7 days to carbonate! You can easily test the levels by occasionally removing a bottle and un-capping it, if it’s not fizzy enough just re-seal and set back for continued fizzification. When it’s finished pop the bottles in the fridge to halt the fermentation and chill. Serve cold and enjoy some gingery soda with a ginseng boost!
Rock on my friends ~ Rory :0)
The Fizzy Bubbly Goodness!
Hey people! Recently my buddy Lucy hooked me up with some water kefir grains. What are those? Well, water kefir is essentially, the culinary equivalent of Sea Monkeys(oh yes!)…
Kefir grains awaiting a fresh sugar water bath.
Water kefir (aka Tibicos) is a symbiotic culture of various yeasts and bacteria. The community of beneficial creatures produce a polysaccharide matrix to live in. This matrix is referred to as a kefir grain. You can score kefir grains from friends that brew it or various online sources. Why may ya wanna score some kefir? Well these beneficial organisms produce an amazing probiotic rich beverage that boasts a butt-ton of health benefits! Let’s knock through a few of them ~
Improved digestion. Water kefir is loaded with friendly bacteria and yeast. These lil’ guys add to our digestive systems army of good microorganisms. The more the merrier as they do much of our digestive work (in fact we couldn’t properly digest our food without them). This added crew can help us get more nutrition out of our food and may help maintain a proper metabolism. Win, win, and win some more!
Reduce harmful organisms in our body. When we add more and more good organisms to our system, there is less and less room for the not so good ones! Kefir’s cultures may outcompete harmful bacteria and yeast when it comes to colonizing our digestive system. This could be a serious bonus for those dealing with candida issues.
Mood improvement. Tibicos also produce an assortment of b vitamins and amino acids, reportedly including Tryptophan. Tryptophan is essential amino acid that our body uses to create serotonin, our bodies’ primary nuerotransmitter. The more serotonin, the better our overall mood and ability to deal with stress. The b vitamins are also crucial in proper brain functioning and stavign off depression! Very good stuff!
The list of health benefits goes on and on! Do some web crawling and you’ll find LOT’S of varying info on the healing, health giving and curative powers of water kefir (aka Tibicos ) So go check it out and delve deeper! Now I’m gonna let ya know how I’ve been rockin’ the kefir…
I’m no newbie to home brewing probiotic beverages(been brewing kombucha for years now), but I was unprepared for how… freakin’ easy water kefir is! There are many recipes and methods out there, but I’ll give you the recipe and timing that’s been working for me. And it’s been working very well!
First you’re going to need ~
*A large mason jar or other large glass canister. I’ve been using a gallon size jar that I picked up at Target.
*A square of breathable fabric large enough to cover the jars opening. It could be a handkerchief or cloth napkin, I’m using a cotton wash cloth.
*A large rubber band to secure this fabric to your jar. This cover will prevent wayward bacteria and dust from settling in your kefir brewing jar as well as keep at bay any insects and fruit flies that may find your brew enticing!
*Organic turbinado sugar. Turbinado sugar is the dehydrated juice of the sugar cane plant. In essence it is minimally processed and unbleached sugar, which means it retains many of its naturally occurring nutrients and minerals. This is good for the kefir and you! If you can’t find turbinado, you should easily be able to locate organic sugar in most grocery stores.
*A mesh strainer for sifting your kefir grains in between batches.
*Several well washed bottles with air-tight lids, for the second fermentation. I like to re-use my empty GT’s Kombucha bottles for this. :0)
*water kefir grains. You can pick these up from various sources online, from friends that brew it, or by looking up peeps online that may be willing to share or barter them!
Now like I said, brewing kefir is easy here’s the recipe I’ve been using ~
6 cups of spring or filtered water. If all you have is tap water, you should boil it to reduce the chlorine, then allow it to cool to room temp before using.
6 Tablespoons of turbinado
3-4 tablespoons of keffir grains
Simply dissolve the sugar into the water. I use my vita mix to stir it up (since I use it strain my keifer into and as a giant measuring cup for the water. Multi-tasking like a mama-jama!) Now pour the sugar-water into your jar with the kefir grains and cover with the cloth. Set the jar in a dark cabinet in a warm location if possible. If not it’s cool, kefir has proven to be pretty forgiving of cool conditions. Didn’t I tell you this stuff’s easy? Ridiculously so!
Now sit back and allow the Tibicos to work their magic for 24-48 hours. You’ll begin to notice bubbles rising up from the mass of grains. You will also notice the smell of the sugar water changing to a semi sourish, kinda yeasty smell. It’s aliiiiiive! The 24 hour gap is there because the fermentation will be faster in warm temps and slower in cooler temps.
Lemme hit you up with one of the biggest tips I can give someone who’s just starting to brew either kefir or kombucha. Your first two batches may suck. It may taste/smell a little off from what you’re expecting. This happened to me with both my kombucha and kefir, but the third batch was the charm! I believe, and have read, that this is more a matter of your culture adapting to its new growing situation (water, sugar type, temps etc.) than your skills as a brewer. So don’t sweat it! Just hang in there and be prepared to possibly ditch your first two batches while your culture gets comfy in it’s new home.
Now where was I? Oh yeah, when you notice these changes your kefir is ready to undergo the second fermentation. The second fermentation is where the fun comes in! I mean what’s better than an amazingly healthy probiotic beverage? An effervescent, ridiculously tasty healthy probiotic rich soda! Oh yes! Let’s get fizzy with it.
Ready for bottling!
To get your fizz on, strain your kefir (to save the grains for the next batch) and pour into your seal-able bottles, leaving about an inch or of the bottle empty, to allow for air expansion. And pop the sealed bottles back in the same area you brew in and allow them to work their magic for 24-72 hours. This gap again is all about temp. I usually pop one open after 24 hours to see if it has the amount of fizz I’m looking for. I just pour a lil’ off into a cup and taste, if it’s not quite there I’ll reseal it and set it back. When you hit the carbonation level you want it’s time to move the bottles into your fridge, where the fermentation is halted and your kefir maintains its awesome taste.
Whoa, rewind a bit. You can just bottle it up, get your fizz in there and fridge it, or you can “dooo what I dooo” (in Joel Hodgson’s voice ala MST 3K.) and flavor it first! The possibilities are many, to say the least. Fresh or frozen fruit, spices, concentrated tea and or fruit juice can be added to the bottled kefir and allow it to infuse as it fizzes! I’ve done fresh ginger juice to create a potent kefir ginger-ale. Awesomeness. Frozen fruit comes in pretty handy as well. I pop some frozen fruit into the vita-mix, pour in some of the pre-fermented kefir and blend until smooth. When flavoring the kefir, I like to start out with bottles filled to under 2 inches of the top, that way I have plenty of room to add my flavors and still leave room for the carbonation.
I’ve seen peeps on youtube creating a super-duper ginger ale using a blend of ginseng tea, a hefty dose of ginger and peppermint leaves, to this they add kefir and bottle it up to ferment. Sounds bangin’! Haven’t tried that myself yet, but when I do I’ll let ya know how it goes! You can also try doing a vanilla soda, by adding either vanilla bean pod skins, seeds, powder or pure extract! You can cream it when done by pouring it into a glass with a lil’ nut, seed or coconut mylk! Like I said there MANY ways to go with this stuff and lot’s of fun ways to make your own pimped out fizzy bubbly goodness!
How does kefir stack up to kombucha? Well if you like instant gratification, kefir is ready in only 2-5 days, whereas kombucha takes 14-19 days (from start to bottled bubbly). Kefir doesn’t require boiled and cooled tea, but it does have a higher turn out rate, so it can add up to more total work then ‘bucha. Personally I love ‘em equally, so I’m brewing them both!
Kefir Ginger Ale. So good!
Happy brewing adventures my friends and big thanks again to Lucy for sharing the kefir madness! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Experimenting in the kitchen with friends!
Hey Everyone! Amanda, Isabel, Shadow and I spent last weekend In Medford, Oregon hangin’ with our new friend Josephine and her family. Josephine has been rockin’ the raw scene here in Medford for years now! With an ever growing group of individuals she has put together regular potlucks, recipe classes, and lectures with awesome info and amazing turnouts! Bringing the community together and sharing the raw love… awesome work is all I can say… very awesome work!
Speaking of work.. Josephine asked if I could make the cheesecake that I had made at Catch a Healthy Habit Cafe the day that Shazzie dropped by! You know me and goofin’ off in the kitchen… I’m in! So I got started right away!
Josephine and her husband Wayne have been rockin’ the rawness for a while now and grow loads of their own organic eats! Wayne took me for a tour of their intensively planted garden beds and we harvested swiss chard, collards, squash leaves and some lambs quarters and stinging nettles (to get that edible weed goodness going!). After gathering this awesome assortment of greenage we headed inside where Wayne blended up a tasty and powerful green smoothie! “That’s your superfood!” Wayne said as we enjoyed it. I couldn’t agree more!
Greens galore!
Strawberries growing in bags on the garden's fence.. no space left unused! I love it!
The weekend with them was awesome! Saturday I went hiking with Wayne and his friend Larry through some of Oregon’s gold mining historical sites! That evening we all sat at the table sharing stories and shooting the breeze about going raw, as Larry is gettin’ into it. He sampled the cheesecake and thought it could use a lil’ salt. So I tried a sprinkle of sea salt on my slice and it was a nice addition. Then Larry tried the cake with a drizzle of Indonesian Style Soy Sauce. I put a lil’ on a bite…it was interesting and tasty! Josephine tried it as well and we pondered a raw version of this sauce and cheesecake combo.
Sunday morning we got to playing in the kitchen! I whipped us a cacao/maca/mesquite/lucuma smoothie to to get us going. Josephine had looked through my book and wanted to try my Turkish Style Cauliflower Patties (recipe in Gettin’ Raw) with Creamy Cilantro Lime Dipping Sauce, so we whipped up a batch together!
Cranking out some Turkish Style Cauliflower Patties!
Fresh and warm outta the dehydrator!
We were thinking of what to do for dessert and remembered last night’s experiment. Jose suggested we make a version of the Indonesian Soy Sauce with a lil’ cacao thrown in… for good measure! So we put together this awesome dessert topper ”Cacao Fig Vingarette Syrup”. The taste was freakin’ incredible! I’m always up for experimenting with wacky combos and this one took the cake… the cheesecake to be exact!
Cacao Fig Vinagerette Syrup... sooooo good!
Cacao Fig Vinegarette Syrup ~ An unlikely yet ridiculously tasty combo. I even used it as a salad dressing. It was so good we had to share the recipe!
Ingredients ~
4 Tablespoons melted coconut oil
3 Tablespoons cacao powder
3 Tablespoons agave (could substitute honey)
2 Tablespoons of Fig Vinegar (if this is hard to find I would try blending a couple of dried figs with a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar as a substitute. It can be blended right into the mix in your blender!)
Splash of balsamic vinegar for a lil’ tang!
1/3 teaspoon of sea salt
Wisk thoroughly together in a bowl or blend in your blender! Serve slightly warm as it will harden when cold. This effect makes for an awesome topping for a chilled dessert such as that cheesecake…
Give this syrup a shot and lemme know what you think! Speaking of chocolate we’re going to be back at Josephine’s September 8th as she’s giving me use of her home and kitchen to hold my Raw Chocolate Workshop!
She has previously hosted Elaina Love and Carmella, so I’m psyched to be rocking it out at her place! As we head off to visit more friends in Oregon we look forward to hanging with Josephine and Wayne again, an awesome dynamic duo!
Mint Cacao Ice Cream…oh yeah baby!
Heya Peeps!! I’m always playing around with ways to get more minerals into my raw treats and after an experiment with Lydia’s Green Power (one of the awesome goodies donated to our trek by Natural Zing!) I created a Mint Cacao Ice Cream that is out of this world! I know some might be thinking “Green powder…in ice cream?” , but take it from a foodie, it’s delicious!
Minty Chocolaty Ice Cream... with Green Goodness!
You can make this in a high power blender such as a vita mix or with a standard issue blender and an ice cream maker. I’ll give you the procedures for both!
Here’s the ingredients ~
1/2 cup of water
1/4 cup of raw almond butter
1/4 cup of coconut oil (or coconut butter!)
1/4 cup of honey, date syrup or agave (whatever floats your boat!)
3 Tablespoons of Lydia’s Green Power (or any mild tasting green powder of your choice, wheatgrass or barely grass blends, you can even do spirulina or chlorella containing mixes, but you may want to up the mintiness a lil’ to cover it up!)
2-3 Tablespoons of cacao nibs or powder
4-9 mint leaves (depending on size or 1-2 drops of food grade essential oil of peppermint)
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla bean powder (or 1/2 teaspoon extract)
Pinch of sea salt
Place all these ingredients in a vita mix (or other high power blender with ice cream making capabilites) and blend until smooth and creamy. Now add about 3 cups of ice and, according to the blenders recomendations, blend again into a thick frozen goodness!
For a standard blender add all the ingredients plus 3 cups of ice water and blend until thoroughly smooth and creamy. Pour this chilly mix into your ice cream maker and prepare according to the manufacturer’s direction.
If you don’t have an ice cream maker, this blend would make awesome creamy popsicles!!
Have a minty fresh day! ~ Rory :0)
Kung-Fu’ing those cravings!
Hey My friends! Are you confronting junk food temptations on your raw path? I’ve been there and it can be a pain in the butt, but there are some ways we can deal with all the tasty, but crappy goodies that surround us!
Wether it’s the baked goodies in the break room at work, the maze of fast food joints we have to drive through, or the sodas and candy at the check out counters of nearly any retail store you hit up (including, twistedly, plus sized clothing outlets!) there are less than ideal eats everywhere we go! At home we’re bombarded by advertisements for pizza and burger joints on tv and many local joints so kindly leave their fliers and magnets in your mailbox. Well here are some strategies that I used to comfortably side step all the junky munchies that abound!
First thing I would do when confronted by a less than ideal option would be to think about why my raw food options rock so much, rather than focusing on why the unhealthy eats suck! This kept the things that I wanted to eat in my mind, leaving lil’ room to think about what I didn’t want to eat! When we waste our time thinking of the negative side of unhealthy eats, it just gives them more air-time on our internal radio and invites our inner rebel to pipe up and defend our former food choices and encourage us to eat them for the sake of being “bad”! So let’s avoid that mental game by thinking of what we want to eat!
Next on the home front I pimped out my kitchen making it a constant reminder of the awesomeness of rawsomeness! Bowls of fresh fruit, a fridge stocked with beautiful greens, my favorite raw and healthy living books decorated a shelf below the food processor and ya remember those pizza place magnets? Well we cut them up and glued them to the back of photos of our favorite raw creations, slapped those on the refrigerator and now we got our own subliminal advertising!
Strawberry Pie with Banana Ice Cream! One of the photos we used for our fridge magnets!
When leaving the house I would be sure to pack some of my favorite raw treats, some fresh fruit and often a chocolate or green smoothie with me. And I always brought more than I thought I would need! This worked out really great because when I would be confronted by something junky, I could fill up on the good stuff and have no room left for cravings! This trick works great for grocery shopping, mall walking and at the movie theatres… I didn’t tell you that! But, seriously, for the price of a medium popcorn and soda you could treat yourself to dinner at a raw restaurant! While I was out I would also scout out places that had healthy options, so that if I forgot to bring my stash, I could pick up something else!
For my work lunches I always put a lot of attention into making them awesome and tasty. because it’s easiest to be raw at home, I would save my awesomest treats for when I would be faced with less than ideal options! Rather than saying things like “Thanks for the cake offer, but I have carrot sticks.” I could say “Thanks for the cake, but I already have some chocolate filled cinnamon rolls!” You should’ve seen the faces when coworkers tried them and realized this is what raw treats can be! I also liked to put a lot of love and positive intentions into my packed lunches because it made me that much more enthused about eating it the next day!
The Chewy Chocolaty Goodness Bars from my Sweet Support E-Book, are a worthy opponent to beat out candy bar cravings!
Lastly, but not leastly, if you find yourself eating something you’d rather not have don’t waste a minute beating yourself up! If you beat yourself up often, you’re going to invite that inner-rebel to pop up again and defend you by bashing your new healthy lifestyle! Rather than beating yourself up, take that time to boost yourself up instead! Some of my favorite raw recipes came from slipping, eating some junky snack, and pondering “How can I make a rawified version of this?”. There’s no need to be hard on yourself, just whip yourself up a green smoothie when ya get home and let the negativity slide!
Keep rockin’ in your healthy living adventures! Much love ~ Rory :0)
We Like It Raw Rocks!
Hey my friends! If you dig raw and healthy foods, fun active lifestyles and havin’ a good time you gotta check out We Like It Raw. Organized by Dhrumil Purohit and Philip McCluskey, We Like It Raw is a community hub and blog that highlights peeps in our extended online community of health and life loving peeps and is also a blog featuring recipes, articles, inspiration and some awesome information!
Dhrumil Purohit is an amazing guy! He’s constantly working guiding people through the wholistic healthy living world and bringing people together in the community. He put together WLIR back in 2005 as a place to achieve these community building goals!
Goofing off with Phil and friends at Raw Spirit Festival East
Philip McCluskey is pretty darn incredible himself! He’s a healthy living motivator and raw food expert. Back in 06′ Philip was 400lbs and decided to take to raw foods, well he lost 215lbs and has become a shining example of what is possible when we take our lives in our own hands and enjoy the bounty of awesome raw eats that are available! Philip can be found online sharing the raw love all over the place and on his site Loving Raw! Be sure to check out his story and tell him Rory says Hi!
These two cool mamajamas and other contributors have created a great place to check out some peeps from all over the world who share common goals and interests, drool over some tasty recipes, and learn something new…so go check it out! While you’re there be sure to check out some of the fun articles I put together for the WLIR crew! Like ~
Gettin’ Ripped on P90X and Raw Foods (lot’s of info on how I got pumped up with raw eats and Tony Horton’s fun workout tutorial!)
Banana Ice Cream Split (fun, easy and tasty raw dessert recipe!)
Banana Ice Cream Split...Oh Yes!
My ‘My Way’ article which gives you a lil’ in depth look at some of my past adventures on our Live My Life NOW Trek ..including my bungee jumping experience!
Keep exploring and reaching out to the awesome community that surrounds us! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Chillin’ with Tim Van Orden!
Hey Peeps! This trek has been chock full of awesome synchronistic events and this was certainly one of them. Through the help of some friends we ended up making it just in time for an amazing presentation by Tim Van Orden!!
Me & Tim!
Tim Van Orden is an amazing guy, he got into raw foods about 5+1/2 years ago and with his Running Raw Project, he has made himself a human guinea pig for the performance enhancing effects of a raw foods diet, but his story goes waaaaay beyond that! Tim was battling with severe depression when he started out and found some serious relief through his new lifestyle which focuses on well being, not just diet, not just movement or excercise, but philosophy. A philosophy that I can totally relate to and that is choosing the moment you’re living in …and embracing it!! Accepting it as a gift and using it for all it’s worth!
His incredible talk touched on so many things, but one subject stuck out immediately to me. Tim talked about something that can easily get left out when people get their minds set on taking on a raw lifestyle: the importance of community and socialization. If we don’t take the time to connect with and relate to others and let the dogma of a raw diet (that many of us may stumble into from time to time) seperate us from friends, we may miss out on something that impacts our health greatly and that is embracing our fellow human beings!! It can be done, we can be raw and have friends, we can reach out to people and we can relate to people even in their lifestyle aproach isn’t our own.
Amanda and Kim Willard of Rawkin' Lane County!
One sure fire way to make it work is to lose the focus on food in our conversations! I’ve been there in the begining, so psyched about my raw lifestyle and it’s benefits that I bored a few friends to near death talking about it! We just have to focus on the reasons we love our friends and family and shoot the raw breeze with fellow fanatics! We all may notice that we chat about different things with different friends as we share some common interests with different peeps…so it’s easy to use that rule of thumb when it comes to our diet and lifestyle choices! I hear from a lot of people who feel alienated by their new interest in raw foods and I wanted to share it here because I believe that we can bridge these gaps, have our friends and eat our raw cake too!
After Tim’s talk we were about to head off when Kim Willard of Rawking Lane County offered for us to crash at her and her friend Roy’s place…where they were also hosting Tim for the the night! We headed off with them and had the most surreal night ever, talking, goofing off (especially Tim, he’s quite a character!), rebounding and whipping together raw pizzas at 2am!! We all prepared different portions that would make up the finished pizza’s so each lil’ raw pie was infused with a lil’ bit of love from everyone! Awesome idea Kim!! We chatted til waaay late before heading to bed and I gotta tell you surreal and wonderful are the only words I can find to describe it! It’s a night that I won’t forget and to be sure I wrote it down..right here!
Raw Pesto Pizza with marinated veggies and topped with lot's of love!
Keep rockin’ my friends, maintain those relationships, make new ones and trust me there are plenty of peeps out there that love talking about raw foods and the raw lifestyle so we don’t gotta torture our friends who may be wanting to chat about other stuff! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Don’t Forget to Add the Love!
All of us getting into healthier eating have probably heard the phrase “You are what you eat.” about a million times by now and it is an important thing to consider, but beyond all the nutrients, phytochemicals, minerals and macronutrients there is something that we should never leave out of our eats… love!
Think about it. Why are you going through the extra work of preparing your own food? Why are you looking for healthier options? Whether it’s for you or your family it all comes back to love! We make our health a priority because we care about ourselves anough to make sure we’re eating the good stuff and we do the same for our family… we can say it’s because a health guru said we should, but the real underlying reason is because we care! We want to enjoy life, feel good and realize our true potential! So we should contemplate that while we rock out our tasty healthy goodies!
When we focus on the loving reasons we prepare our eats we infuse that energy right into our food and I’m not just talking in some intangible new agey kinda way… I’m talking literally! I mean just check into emotions effects on water crystal formation! And we’ve all heard how plants respond to loving intentions! There’s some awesome info out there and it makes sense on so many levels to put that emotion and gratitude into the meals we create for ourselves and our family.
We all know that a sweater woven by us for someone who cares for us always feels warmer, produce grown by farmers who are passionate about their work always tastes best, and Mom and Grandma’s food always makes us feel good because it was made with love! We can create that same effect by pausing, taking a deep breath and remembering all the loving reasons we’re concocting our own foods. When we do that we enjoy the whole process so much more and we end up with a creation that contains that special ingredient!
Here’s a Vid I did for the Geeked Fu Challenge about adding that special ingredient!
Less Time Prepping and More Time Enjoying!
Hello everyone, I’m back with some time saving tips for your healthy lifestyle havin’ self!
In my earlier post about Playin’ in the kitchen we covered ways to make your kitchen time more fun, now let’s check out some ways we can save time in the kitchen and have more time to enjoy our culinary creations… and our lives! It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the amazing raw gourmet recipes that are out there that we may find ourselves spending a wee bit more in the kitchen than we had expected! This is a common problem for not only raw foodies, but anyone looking to make their own awesome healthy treats from scratch. So how do we streamline our kitchen time a bit while rockin’ out some healthy yummy goodness?
First get organized! This always sounds trickier than it is, basically organizing is figuring out a theme for things like “smoothie ingredients” or “eating utensils” and just make sure things are hanging out where they fit in best so that you know where everything is at! I can tell you from growing up with a rather disorganized kitchen that even simple recipes seem to take forever when you don’t know where some of your tools and ingredients have gotten off to. So get it together and you’ll be flying through food prep!
Pick up some foods you love to eat as is or with little modification. Yeah there’s a culinary term ya don’t hear too often! What we can shoot for is our favorite fruits and veggies that we love to just wash and eat, such as grapes, bananas, oranges, apples, pears, plums, tomatoes and avocadoes. Along with veggies such as broccoli and cauliflower which just need a lil’ washing and breaking up. This is a great way to deal with hunger as soon as you walk in the door rather then trying to make dinner while you’re starving! You can chop up a couple tomatoes, dice and avo and mix them up with some salt, pepper and cumin and you got a quick meal going! Speaking of quick meals…
Find as many simple yet satisfying recipes as you can and make them the backbone of your day to day menus! When you have a culinary arsenal full of quick and tasty dishes you can whip stuff anytime! Start making up your own as well! I overcame my biggest hurdles when gettin’ raw by creating meals that worked with what I could find locally and didn’t take ten years to concoct! Using mainly easy recipes also gives you some serious flexibility with your kitchen time, which everyone needs no matter how much they love goofing off in there… I mean come on… I’m not the only raw foodie nerd out there that absolutely loves being in the kitchen…am I?
When you make dehydrated and or freezable recipes, go ahead and double the batch when appropriate. This way you stock up on things that have a longer prep time such as kale chips, veggie crackers, raw flat breads and granola as well as freezable goodies such as raw ice creams, cinnamon rolls and raw frozen pies and cakes. Now you’ll have some ready to go stuff when you’re craving something sweet or crunchy…two of the biggest food cravings out there!
Always make mass quantities of dehydrated goodies!
Rock out the gourmet meals on days that you don’t have much else to do! Think about it… those hardcore fancy dinners our parents would make we’re usually on weekends or other free days! So let’s do the same and create those complicated treats when we have plenty of free time to hang out in the kitchen, goof off, listen to some tunes and really enjoy the whole process! When we do this we’re gonna put a lot more positivity into the finished product and be relaxed and ready to truly enjoy our finished masterpiece when it’s done!
Keep rockin’ out yummy rawsomeness and spend the amount of time you want to spend in the kitchen! ~ Rory :0)
Let’s Get Playin’ In the Kitchen!
Remember when you were a kid and playing in the kitchen was a blast? Many of us had fake plastic foods and toy ovens. Sometimes Mom or Dad would have us help out when making a special treat and around the holidays? Time spent in the kitchen was fun and full of wonder… let’s keep that goin’!
If like me, you’ve decided to take charge of what you’re eating (whether we’re talking raw foods, whole foods or healthier cooked options) you may find yourself spending more time in the kitchen as you’re working with the raw ingredients to create dishes that are not only healthy, but freakin’ delicious! Now I’m a hardcore foodie and love goofing off in the kitchen, but I know that most people aren’t as fond of the kitchen as I am so let’s take a look at some ways we can make our time in the kitchen more enjoyable!
First thing we can do is to pimp out our lil’ culinary creation stations! Best way to start is to do some de-cluttering. I like to empty out the kitchen drawers, cabinets and closet so I can see what I got to work with! You may find you have ten of the same wooden spatula or enough pots and pans to cover five stove tops. In this case gather up your essentials and favorites and donate the rest to your local goodwill! My rule of thumb is if I haven’t used the item in the last five months…its fair game for giving away! Now we got some breathing room and we know where everything is so putting together our favorite recipes is going to be a lot easier and more fun!
Let’s bring in some things that really make the kitchen our own. Artwork and photos of things that inspire us, scenes of nature, colorful abstracts or breathtaking pictures of people doing things we’re working towards are great reminders of why we are so passionate about being healthy! I also like to have a centerpiece of beautiful produce that doesn’t require refrigeration and have fresh flowers around whenever possible! Set yourself up with a warm friendly atmosphere and you’ll find your kitchen a more inviting place to not only whip up tasty eats, but to chill in and enjoy them!
Owl City.. one of my fave bands to groove to in and out of the kitchen!
Another thing that can’t be overestimated is the power of music! Listening to music carries me through even the most tedious of kitchen tasks… like dishes! Whatever you love rock it out! I feel a boom box is an essential piece of kitchen equipment, but if your neighbors disapprove, an mp3 player loaded with your favorite stuff can be a great alternative! Speaking of mp3’s there are so many amazing educational podcasts and audio learning programs available out there that you can be learning more about healthy living, raw foods, meditation or even a new language all while goofing off making food! And in the name of really goofing off don’t forget comedy albums. George Carlin, Eddie Izzard and Tommy Tiernan are some of my favorite comedians. Nothing makes any job go faster than some good laughs!
Let’s all get rockin’ in our kitchens and take away that stigma of the kitchen being a place of work and start transforming them into our own lil’ creative culinary art studios and alchemical nutrition laboratories where we concoct delicious, artful and ridiculously healthy eats for ourselves and our loved ones!
Keep playin’ in your kitchen my friends! ~ Rory :0)
No-Mess Massaged Kale Salad
Helloooooo there! Do you love kale? Well even if you don’t this salad may just change your mind…it sure impressed Isabel, who is not a fan of salad, let alone kale!
When we began our trek I did a shout out to my friends at Raw Fu who are participating in my Geeked Fu Challenge. I asked them “How do you travel raw” (I swear I wasn’t eliciting stories of indecent exposure on the motorway!) and they had some awesome tips and tricks for rockin’ raw eats while on the go! Angie’s kale salad recipe sounded really good and easy so we gave it a shot while hanging out at Mount Hood in Oregon.
No-Mess Massaged Kale Salad ~ Super easy, tasty and mess free…perfect raw road food! Let’s get started!
Large zip close bag (gallon size)
1-2 Heads of kale
1 Large avocado
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
1/2 teaspoon of onion granules (or powder)
1/2 teaspoon of cumin
Pinch of cayenne (or more if you like it hot, hot hot!)
Tear kale leaves from the stems and rip into bite size pieces tossing them in the bag as you go. Cut the avo in half, pop out the pit, and squish out of the skin directly into the bag. Juice the lemon into the bag, using your hand or other straining device to catch the seeds. Sprinkle in salt and spices. Now Squish!! Once the salad appears evenly coated and massaged to your liking it’s ready!
The salad was so tasty that Isabel rated it up there with my vitamix made ice creams! So if likening a salad to a dessert is any indicator of awesomeness…this salad is BOMB! Enjoy my friends and eat more kale!! :0)
Foods that make gettin’ raw easy-peasy!
Hey everyone! Back again with another round of transitioning tips!
Whether you’re going for high raw, all raw or just adding more raw eats to your menu, there are some specific raw foods that can help support your digestive system as it relearns how to assimilate all the awesome fiberrific eats you are giving it!
1- Oranges…well not just oranges, but all citrus fruit. I’m focusing on oranges because they played a vital role in my transition that I didn’t even realize. As I began to do more and more green smoothies I found myself with a new found love of salads. And as I got my salad munching on I started craving oranges. After I would chow down on my salad I’d find myself eating several oranges, somtimes up to six a day! Now I like citrus as much as the next raw foodie, but this infatuation with oranges was a new thing for me. Slowly and unaounced though, oranges fell off my craving’s radar and I’d eat them sporadically. I didn’t think much of it until a couple months later I picked up a copy of The Sunfood Diet Success System and David Wolfe was reccomending an orange after your salad to supplement your digestive acids. My body was subconsciously guiding me to do just that! You can do the same thing and use orange, lime, lemon or grapefruit juice on your salad or in your salad dressing blend to boost your digestive power and add more vitamin c, antioxidants and phytonutrients to your already awesome salad!
2- Celery Juice! Celery juice is some amazing stuff! It’s loaded with chlorophyl, alkalyzing minerals and sodium. Not the kind of sodium we want to avoid, we’re talking the good stuff! The sodium found in celery can be used by our body in the formation of digestive acids. Many people having digestive acids may just be lacking in these beneficial salts!
3- Papaya and Pineapple. These two awesome fruits are getting paired togther here because they both contain some serious digestion boosting enzymatic power! Papaya’s enzyme content is so high that it is often used in natural cleaning products to “eat up” organically based stains! Papaya can be eaten fresh, juiced, or smoothied and also can be purchased as a chewable supplement. The chewable supplements are awesome to carry with you for those times you eat something that you need a lil’ help breaking down! Pineapple also contains a powerful digestive enzyme known as bromelain, the bulk of it is in the core of the pineapple, which can be juiced or blended into smoothies. Bromelain can also usually be found in papaya supplements. These two make an awesome team and while fresh is best, I also found the supplements helpful during my transition, and when I do some bad food combining! I recommend giving them a shot during your transition, and they’ll help you when you do eat something cooked, particualarly something that could cause gas. They’ve saved my modesty many a time back in my high bean vegetarian days!
Happy, healthy, and fun transitions to wherever you are steering your diet! :0)
Prep techniques that ease your raw transition!
Hey everyone! Back again with more strategies for making your raw transition easy, comfortable and fun!
If you’ve read my article about Enzymes and my page on Why Raw, then you know that one of the most awesome benefits about raw foods is that they ease the burden on our digestive system and our enzyme pool. By making life easier for our digestive system we increase the amount of energy our body has to do other things from healing to having fun!
This is awesome, but for a lot of us our body may need a lil’ help getting back in shape for breaking down fiberous eats after years of cooked food. Have you noticed that you or people you know have that experience when they jump on the healthy eating bandwagon and hit the salads hardcore that they can often feel bloated, gassy and just blah and you’ll usually hear them say things like “Health food just doesn’t agree with me.” ?….Well they’re partially right. Their bodies certainly want those healthy eats, but they may be suffering from a lack of Hydrochloric acids and healthy sodiums that our body uses to break down the tough fibers in some raw foods…especially greens!
This lil’ issue can often discourage many from following through with adding more fresh foods to their life, so I want to share what this is all about and some of the foods that can get your tummy pumped up for breaking down some raw goodness!
1~ Blending! One of my favorites! This easy raw food prep technique turns tough raw foods (such as greens) into tasty and outrageously healthy green smoothies, blended soups, and tasty dessert smoothies. Blending makes the texture of some foods more palatable and allows your body to access nutrients that may have taken quite a while to chew out of the. Blended food also gives your body chance to gradually increase it’s stores of digestive acids as it practices on these lightweight pre-broken down goodies! I found this particualarly true when I began drinking green smoothies on a regular basis. Prior to rockin’ the green smoothies, I maybe ate salad once a week as part of my raw transitional diet (and certainly didn’t crave it!) , but after about a month of drinking about 32oz of green smoothie a day, I found myself eating the greens out of the colander before I could even get them in the blender! I was originally bewildered by the claims of long term raw foodies that they adored greens, but I now find myself with the same “affliction”! I want to note here that my first batches of green smoothies had much more fruit then greens, but the number of greens quickly went up! The point is..start with what feels right to you! This way you’ll be more likely to want to follow through with your raw adventure!
Soaking nuts and seeds~ Many nuts and seeds (with the exception of hemp seeds) contain enzyme inhibitors to prevent premature sprouting in their natural habitat and potentially to prevent animals from fully digesting them (in hopes that they will later be deposited elsewhere ..complete with free fertilizer!). These enzyme inhibitors can also make them not so easy on our stomachs. Amanda and myself experienced a bad case of bloating after preparing a raw nut based pate recipe we seen online that used unsoaked nuts….from then on we started soaking our nuts! I have recomended soak times for nuts and seeds in my ebook “Gettin’ Raw with Rawdawg Rory” but, I’ll break down a bit of the basics here. Nuts with a lot of tannic acid and taste a bit bitter such as almonds, walnuts and pecans should be soaked for about 6-12 hours and then rinsed off before using and seeds such as pumpkin and sunflower can be soaked as lil’ as 2-6 hours. This will leave your raw nuts and seeds more biologically active, cleaner, easier to digest and tastier!
3~ Marinating…oh yes! I loooove marinated veggies! Using salty or acidic marinades we can create numerous tasty dishes, such as softened veggies for wraps, mock stir fries, and raw dishes that have that same wonderful texture as if they’ve been cooked! This not only makes them more tasty, but waaay more digestible! I like to shred carrots with a julienne peeler and toss them with a lil’ salt and garlic powder, allow them to soften, and toss this tasty shredded carrot filling in a romaine leaf wrap and dip ‘em in a mock peanut sauce! Shredding and massaging tough greens such as kale with lemon juice and a lil’ salt can transform it inton a delicious salad base! You’d be surprised at how many veggies that were tough to eat raw and un-prepped can easily become something that’ll have you lookin’ forward to your raw dinner!
4~ Lastly, but not leastly… juicing! I saved juicing for last as it’s pretty much a no-brainer. Juices are a super digestible and totally easy way to give your body a blast of nutrients, phytochemicals and minerals. Depending on your juicer and or juicing technique, the finished drinks will have lil’ or no fiber and your body has lil’ or no work digesting it. This is awesome, but I would highly reccomend that you are bringing in fiber in a blended form (especially green smoothies!) as these pre-broken down fibers are needed to carry out the toxins and wastes that your body is going to be releasing as it uses those awesome raw goodies to do some house cleaning!
So rememember if some raw foods don’t seem to agree with you, then consider these prep techniques to allow your body the training time it needs to work up to it’s full digestive strength! As a bonus these prep techniques also make the nutrients in your awesome raw eats more absorbable…so you get more out of your food! There’ll be more to come about particular raw foods that help the transitioning process be super smooth…so see ya then! :0)
Gettin’ Geeked Up by being thankful! :0)
Hello lovely people! SO many people are always commenting on my ree-gosh~dang-diculously upbeat personality….I’ve heard it all before from…”Man, did you just win the lottery?” …or “What the heck have you been smokin’?” Well for the serious inquiries here’s one of the things that has me smiling very often…
Being thankful….seems like a simple enough thing…and often reserved for “Turkey Day”, but just contemplating all the lil’ things in my life that I’m grateful for totally shifts my perception right to where I want it…on the good stuff! This lil’ trick has been with me since waaaay back in pre-raw days and it always brings a smile to my face. No matter where I was at in life I could always find things to be thankful for…and the more I focused on them…the more grateful I became and it’s an awesome feeling! Not only does contemplating things you’re thankful for make you feel good, but if you’re thinking about people you’re thankful for then who knows…maybe you’ll reach out, let them know and pay the thankfulness forward!
As raw foodies nowadays we have a butt-ton of things to be thankful for! There are so many awesome free resources available online to get you started on the journey, loads of recipe demos, awesome raw communities, meet-up groups and an ever growing community of raw and raw-curious individuals! Suppliers of raw food staples and raw treats are abounding and the ever increasing demand is bringing the prices down! All the peeps with a new-found love of organic produce are supporting the sustainable farmers that are working to keep the world a beatiful place! Raw resteraunts, cafes and pre-packaged raw foods are popping up everywhere! And the stories of raw transformations are becoming more and more common! So if you’re gettin’ raw or just adding more raw eats to your diet….you have a lot of awesome things to be thankful for!
Have a grateful day! :0)
Chia seed…not just for terra cotta heads anymore!
Hello everyone! It’s another lovely day on our Trek and I’ve whipped up one of Amanda’s favorite post Trekking eats…Chia seed pudding! It’s amazing how simple and delicious this stuff is! Not only is it tasty, but chia has some pretty substantial health benefits!
*Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids! Chia contains both of these important brain building fatty acids in a wonderfully balanced proportion. Great vegan source for this good stuff!
*High amount of soluble fiber. Soluble fiber is soft and soothing on the digestive tract. It coats the intestinal walls and helps them to heal from inflammatory conditions. These wonderful lil’ fibers also absorb bile as they pass through the digestive tract dragging out toxins along with it, our body utilizes cholesterol to create new bile thereby lowering the amount of cholestrol elsewhere in the body. Useful for people struggling with high cholesterol!
*Buffering sugar absorption. Adding chia to sweet recipes such as smoothies and desserts can help prevent blood sugar spikes due to it’s high fiber content. This is great for people with sugar issues and also gives your smoothies energy content a more long-lasting effect!
*Chia seeds are also loaded with protein and are rapidly digestible. They’re easier to chew up then flax seed and don’t have that same rapid flush effect you sometimes get from consuming a bunch of flax!
* Chia’s gelatinous properties make it a wonderful thickening agent, giving body to your smoothies, firmness to your pies and a crispy binder to your dehydrated breads and crackers!
When used soaked as in this pudding recipe, the seeds will have begun to undergo some of their germination process, making them more enzymatically active…always a good thing! Ya can never get too many of these lil’ “sparks of life”in your diet. :0)
I love using it for making pudding because it’s super quick and easy and the finished product has a nice tapioca like texture….one of my fave pudding’s from back in the day! One tip that I’d like to add for creating your chia pudding base is to make it a lil’ more strongly flavored than you’d like in your finished product as the gelling process will dilute the flavor a bit.
Oooo I wanted to do the chia jingle at the begining of this vid, but didn’t wanna risk a lawsuit! *lol*
Have a tasty day my friends…much love! ~ Rory :0)
Raw Transitioning Tips!
Hello! I’ve been contemplating my beginings with raw foods and some of the awesome transitioning techniques and foods that made it an easy (and exploding-bowel-less) journey!
We’ve all heard detoxification horror stories….I won’t get into any of the graphic details…especially about the alien parasites that often burst from the buttocks of those attempting to clean up their diet. Haha! Just kidding on that last one….mostly. :0)
This was a concern of mine when I first heard about raw foods and it gave me a brief pause moment…as I didn’t like the idea of going through a brutal detoxification period where I’d be feeling lousy, dealing with headaches and making frequent bathroom runs. Especially not wanting to miss work or put off other responsibilities to deal with the consequences of hardcore cleansing. Luckily these thoughts only briefly paused me, but some people may be put off to the idea of raw living after hearing some tales of transitioning woes….that’s why I want to share some of the philosphy, strategy and foods that helped me ease comfortably into gettin’ raw!
Upon hearing of the effects of hardcore detoxing I thought….I think I’ll take the slow aproach and ease into raw eating. This worked out for me multifold!
1~ By starting off with a modest 50% goal I wasn’t pushing myself far out of my comfort zone and this allowed me to play around with raw foods and develop my own simple and tasty recipes, source local ingredients, and get into the groove of raw food prep, planning and whipping up stuff on the fly!
2~ I kept myself out of the cycle of the “all or nothing” effect where if you screw up…you have nothing to fall back on and no incentive to go forward. My aproach of easing into it and enjoying each positive step along the way has helped me towards many goals I’ve had in life and it lends itself particularly well to such things as a big dietary shift to eating an all raw diet!
3~ By easing into the raw foods lifestyle I allowed my body to gradually adjust to all the many changes that it would entail! And by changes I do mean good changes! Too many good changes all at once can be a bit jarring though …especially to the bowels for many people.. so I wanted to reduce that as much as possible…for social and convenience reasons as well as to be kind to my body.
It's an adventure...not a race!
I would say to someone aproaching the raw lifestyle that feels like they’re being pushed to go 100% off the bat that it isn’t a race…it’s an adventure! We are playing around with a whole “new” aproach to eating! Collectively as people we’ve been living off of mostly cooked or processed foods for who knows how long…and going over to eating foods in their more natural state is accessing nutrients, enzymes and properly structured food that is often lost in processing and the results can often be amazing! There is no need to rush it…especially if the rushing is causing stress and discomfort that can lead you to giving up the whole dream of the changes that you may experience!
So first of all if this aproach is doable for you….I encourage you to take your time! It worked very well for me and I had almost no detox side effects! A lil’ gas and an extra bathroom trip a day…and by trip I mean leisurely stroll…not knockin’ lil’ old ladies out of the way to get into the Women’s Room because the Men’s stall was taken! *LOL*
If you’ve gotten to know me by now…you’ll know I am waaaaaay to immature to pass up on all the potential bathroom humor! :0P
Much love everyone and more to come! I will be sharing more strategies in an upcoming post and many of these tips and more can also be found in my E-Book “Gettin’ Raw with Rawdawg Rory” :0)
Kombucha! :0)
Kombucha is one of my fave beverages, and wait, before I go ranting about how much I like it…,I oughta stop and clue ya in on what exactly Kombucha is. Kombucha is a probiotic, living, fermented tea that is LOADED with enzymes, friendly critters to support your digestive system, organic acids and detoxifying elements. Sound awesome? Well it did to me as well when I read the myriad health benefits listed on the first bottle of kombucha I sampled back when I was living in PA.
Amanda and I picked up a bottle of this interesting concoction for the first time around the same time I got started with raw foods. The first sip was reminiscent of carbonated apple cider vinegar…ok….although not delicious, intriguingly the flavor grew on me, and about an hour after finishing it Amanda and I both noticed, not only a warm feeling in our stomachs, but also a burst of energy! I started doing some research on this fizzy living beverage and found that it was brewable/growable at home! Being a DIY kinda guy, and learning that it’s inexpensive to brew your own, I was IN!
Showing off the SCOBY at my first 'bucha workshop at Catch a Healthy Habit Cafe as Glen Colello films
About 2 years ago we picked up our SCOBY (which is short for Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast) and got brewing! I was so psyched up to add this to my raw and living food concocting experiments, and it really brought me back to those days of raising Sea Monkeys and other weird pets…only this one I would be eating. I did lots of research on this wonderful brew, and watched other home brewer’s adventures on YouTube. After creating some batches that were a wee bit south of that fizzy goodness we had experienced from the health food store, I pulled off a batch that was outstandingly good and cost a fraction of the pre-bottled stuff!! As if that wasn’t neat enough, I can now add my own fun flavorings to the kombucha when I bottle it up for the second fermentation, flavorings such as fresh squeezed ginger juice, blended wild blueberries, or vanilla bean pods! Oh yeah! Turning a ridiculously healthy beverage into a tasty one that could rival soda….now that’s the kinda stuff I’m into! :0)
Fast forward to my life now, doing raw food presentations and talks, I noticed people’s faces light up when I would mention my kombucha brewing endeavors during a raw food workshop. So I did a kombucha creating workshop at Catch a Healthy Habit Café shortly after moving here to CT, which was very warmly received. The videos of this first workshop (taken by Glen Colello of Catch) can be found at his YouTube channel (which I HIGHLY recommend ya check out if you’re interested in raw foods and healthy living! There have been many, many awesome speakers at the Café and Glen has filmed large portions of their talks! So there is a wealth of fun info there waiting to be watched!)
Flash forward to just last night at Catch, where I presented my second kombucha workshop and I shared much of the cool new info I’ve picked up about culturing, brewing and flavoring this bubbly, healthy drink! Again, Glen has shot some awesome footage of my workshop (which I had a blast doing!) and I can now give you a sneak-peek of what it would’ve been like to be there!
This first video gives you a good idea of the equipment you’d need to start brewing your own goodness at home…a lot less than you might assume!
Part 2, I get into some of the other fun uses for your SCOBY….from bath toy to band-aid, a zoogleal mat can perform many tasks! :0)
Part 3, Where (and where not) to brew your culture and putting some love in your brew!
Part 4 Finishing off your brew, other brewing vessel options and why you should or should not use your SCOBY as a hat.
