How much can you change in 6 weeks?
Just for fun and some inspiration, I’m bringing this older video back to life!
In 2010 we kidnapped my mom for 6 weeks, here are the results!
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!
Food Matters!
Hey Peeps! Another awesome documentary is available at NetFlix Instant Play, Food Matters! If you haven’t got a chance to check this film out yet, you gotta get on it!
Food Matter’s is one of my absolutely essential favorite documentaries. Words of wisdom throughout from Charlotte Gerson, David Wolfe, Dr. Andrew Saul and many others! My fave bits are with Dr. Andrew Saul sharing stories of patients experiencing miraculous benefits from simply correcting nutrient deficiencies! David Wolfe pimps the benefits of raw and super foods and Charlotte Gerson shares how organic food, proper nutrition and working the bodies own healing power can bring astounding results! This brilliant group share their perspectives on the deleterious effects of a poor diet, but moreover the astonishing power of nutrition. Often food is underrated as cause and effect of good or bad health, but in this film, food is given its due credit! Awesome accounts of healing stories and a look into the many multiple benefits of healthy eats, Food Matter’s will leave you both inspired and empowered! I highly recommend this film to anyone, no matter where you’re at in your health journey you’ll find something awesome here! Like the title says, Food Matters!
Have an amazing day! ~ Rory :0)
Coconut buttah!
Hello my friends in search of awesome edibles! I’ve got a quick lil’ post here for you on one of my fave raw edibles, coconut butter. Pronounce it how ya like, this stuff is awesome! Coconuts in general are loaded with antimicrobial and antifungal properties in their saturated fatty acids, they have a good amount of lauric acids that help to raise our HDL (good cholesterol levels) and when combined with other raw goodies they can increase the absorbability and usefulness of their fat soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids! The medium chain fatty acids in coconut are also believed to be beneficial to the thyroid and encourage proper metabolism. On top of all this healthy goodness, coconut tastes awesome! My coconutty weapon of choice is coconut buttah! Er. Coconut Butter. Coconut butter is the ground flesh of the coconut with the oil intact. This creamy goodness is an incredible add in for smoothies, as a thickener in raw frosting, and makes a tasty dip for fruit when warmed to dip’able consistency.
Coconut butter is such awesome stuff that I thought I’d give making it at home a shot! Now this is one recipe I’m sharing that you absolutely need a high powder blender for. There are also juicers out there that may be able to create this as well with their homogenizing function. All you need is some good quality dehydrated shredded coconut or coconut flakes (preferably organic and unsweetened for optimum healthy goodness). I simply ground about 6 cups of coconut flakes in my Vita Mix, using the tamper to keep everything in contact with the blades and ground it for about 2 minutes. Voila! Coconut butter!
Now different sources of shredded coconut may have less oil content, so if your blend looks like it needs a lil’ moisture, you can solve that by adding a lil’ coconut oil. If you don’t have a high power blender, there are many good sources of coconut butter out there. My current fave is Artisana’s, great stuff! Well worth the cost as a lil’ goes a long way in smoothies! A 16oz jar usually lasts a month in our house with multiple daily uses!
Happy experimenting! ~ Rory :0)
Givin’ some more!
Hey my friends! I’ve been having such an awesome time giving out copies of my raw dessert recipe e-book, Sweet Support, this week! The feedback has been incredible!! I’ve received so many emails from people who’ve picked up a copy! Emails telling me how the e-book give away coincided with them just recently deciding to give raw living a go, having been re-inspired to get back into it, and people happy to have it as they are looking for healthier dessert options and gluten free treats. It’s been very awesome for me to hear from you all!! Happy to have shared the e-book with you and so happy to have heard your stories!
This has been such a fun and touching experience for me, that I want to do even more. My e-book, Gettin’ Raw, has been gettin’ awesome reviews and kudos from many peeps in the raw community and with each copy that goes out I often get emails back telling me how the book has made gettin’ into raw living so much more do-able, affordable and accessible. I’ve been told many times that $14 is an amazing price for a book that is 180 pages long, loaded with full color photos and tons of information and tips on comfortably transitioning to a raw diet. But, after this awesome experience of sharing Sweet Support, I wanna make Gettin’ Raw even more accessible. So for the next three days it’s going to be on sale for $10.00!! This sale ends on Monday at 12 am.
After the three days are up, I’ll be putting it back to its original price because its sales and the donations I receive allow me to keep spreading the raw goodness via this site, my recipe videos and the time I spend sharing tips, strategies, recipes and information through various routes online! Thank you all so much for your support , wonderful words of praise and for sharing your stories! Much love my friends and tasty raw eats ~ Rory :0)
Free E-Book Give-Away!
Hey Peeps! Thought I’d do a lil’ something fun for this week, I am giving away free copies of my dessert e-book Sweet Support! This 25 page e-book is loaded with color step-by-step photos, showing you how to create four awesome raw dessert recipes! These recipes focus on using whole foods as sweeteners, so it’s perfect for those looking for alternatives to agave nectar or other refined sweeteners! The book not only contains these 4 dessert recipes, but also tips on using fruits as sweeteners in a variety of other raw dishes! A great way to simplify your raw food prep and get more nutrients in each of your culinary creations! And I want to give you this lil’ book to get you goin’ with some awesome healthy treats! To get your free copy of Sweet Support simply send me an email at rawdawgrory@yahoo.com with the title Free E-Book Give-Away and I will send it out to the email address you provide!
There are no strings attached, I don’t have a mailing list that I’m gonna put you on, and I won’t sell your email to anyone! In the email we send you, Sweet Support will be attached as a pdf file. You can download it to your computer, check out the beautiful pics and print the recipes out if you like! Like I said, no strings attached, this is just a fun way for me to share the work I do and let you get a taste of my creations! Hurry, this offer ends Saturday, July 9th at midnight!
That email address is again is rawdawgrory@yahoo.com! Peace, love and tasty raw treats ~ Rory :0)
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)
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)
Mom’s progress!
Hey my friends! As you may know my Mom has had some pretty serious health issues lately. She’s suffered from severe water retention, been diagnosed with two cases of Congestive Heart Failure and is now on oxygen 24/7. Now I’m back in Connecticut and assisting her by preparing a combination of raw foods, green smoothies and healthy cooked dishes to get her health back on track!
The cooked meals are vegan, gluten free, salt free and using coconut oil (instead of less stable fats) to avoid trans fat issues. I want her to go at improving her health at her own pace, so by giving her great examples of healthy cooked eats, I hope she’ll be able to utilize them along with raw foods to make her own strategy that will work best for her!
Thanks to our friend Mark’s generous donation of a blender and Magic Bullet, we’re rocking out the green smoothies as they are so beneficial for alkalyzing, remineralizing and oxygenating… getting that chlorophyll goodness flowing! And if that wasn’t cool enough, Penni Shelton of Raw Food Rehab has given us info on requesting a Vita Mix Blender to be donated for her health journey and her Doctor was very happy to fill out his portion of the paperwork! Tommorow we’re sending it off so keep your fingers crossed for her!
I’ve only been back in CT for a week rocking out edible goodness for Mom acting as her personal raw chef and she’s experiencing the benefits already! Im so happy to share that she is 11 pounds down, her leg/foot/ankle swelling drastically reduced, her mobility has increased and her Doctor is having her reduce her medications!! Wooohoooo! Behold the power of healthy eats!
Thank you to everyone for keeping up with her and all the love, prayers and support! More to come of course! 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)
Being Chill is actually a priority!
Hey there my friend! Let’s talk about stress (let’s talk about stress baby, let’s talk about…whoa Salt N Pepa flashback there…ok I’m back) Oh yeah, stress… That annoying, cringe inducing, shoulder tightening, and stomach wrenching response to all those annoying things we face in our day to day lives.. yeah that stuff! Well up until my 20′s I thought it was perfectly normal and rational to live with that stuff. To be stressed out over upsetting thoughts, financial situations and world events seemed like the rational response and although I was a pretty happy go lucky guy, I did let that annoying state of mind dominate me from time to time and I figured those who didn’t appear stressed when confronted by tough situations were kinda like those maniacs in the apocalyptic movies that are giggling uncontrollably as the world falls apart around them! So what changed between now and then?
Well after seeing examples of people who contemplated the sorrows of the world, but didn’t let it bog them down was an eye opener for me and soon I found myself wondering “What’s the use of being stressed?” I mean, if I did all that was in my power about a situation, than why should I waste my valauable time worrying about it?? Well after rinsing and repeating this notion through my inner scalp, it finally began to sink in! What does stress do for us anyway?
Well like I said in the begining, stress causes actual physical tension, how about that? A thought, a state of mind twisting us up in knots on the physical plane. Well it actually goes beyond this… Chronically dwelling in a state of stress is annatural. In nature stress was an indicator that the poop has hit the fan and we need to run for it! But, in our modern society that concern is usually not abounding,. but rather a bunch of background concerns, like financial issues, political and world events, job concerns and family issues. Well some of these things can be totally out of our hand, but we feel like holding onto that stressed state of mind is natural. In nature that might’ve been the right response, but when we can’t run away from our threats, we gotta learn that it’s ok and actually a priority to let the stress go and focus on being chill!
When we allow ourselves to be engulfed by chronic stress, our body reacts to it as though there is a constant physical threat, our stomach tightens, our digestion is thrown off, our metabolism slows, cells go into defense mode, our ph balance leans towards acidic (which causes a host of issues), our nervous system becomes taxed, and our muscles become chronically tense and rigid. In other words, stress can be detrimental to our health sometimes waaay more so than the things we were stressing about in the first place!
Stress also has a another nasty side effect. It leaves you feeling distracted and your judgement clouded. When we’re stressed, the key to our slavation can be right under our nose, but we wouldn’t see it unless we relaxed and allowed our focus to look beyond the negative! Let’s take a look at professional athletes for a moment… nice segway eh? I’m not a sports buff myself, but you can learn a lot from people who’re pushing themselves to the limit in their game of choice! For instance, have you ever noticed that the best players looked calm when they scored those last minute goals? Or that they pulled off things with an almost cocky self confidence? Well that appearant arrogance comes from training yourself to be totally relaxed, even under stressful conditions. This is so important because if they weren’t relaxed, they wouldn’t have been able to see that opening, take that shot and score those points…it would’ve been lost in a haze of stress and self doubt! Well we can use this same principle in our daily lives!
By training ourselves to be relaxed in the face of stress we gain so much! We can see oppurtunities and soltuions that may have otherwise eluded us, and we have our wits about us. And if stress can cause bad things physically than imagine what good physical effects being relaxed can have! Our body can release it’s tension, maintain a healthy appetite and metabolism, our heart rate can get back to normal…we can breath again! And our cells in a relaxed comfortable state recieve signals from our brain that say “everything is groovy” (yeah, groovy!) and in this state of being they can continue their amazing work of maintaining our health and creating the best version of ourself! The biggest benefit to realizing that being chill is priority numero uno, is that we can see the many wonderful things in our lives again! All those lil’ things that were obscured and overlooked are all of a sudden back! This includes of course people! How often do we notice, that we have loved ones who may have been missing us while we were spacing out over stress? So be chill… it’s good for you, your internal community and your family, friends and loved ones!
Have a chillin’ 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)
Enzymes aren’t the “end all be all”, but that’s cool!
Hey everyone! As you may often discover when getting’ into the world of healthy living, some things aren’t always what they seem to be. When I first got into researching the benefits of a raw diet I kept coming upon the importance of enzymes and how cooking damages and deactivates them, it’s in many of my favorite raw books! I thought it made total sense and have even written a post in the past based on what I’d read up on, but the more I delve into enzymes lately… the more I think they may have been a lil’ overhyped. Let’s check out what’s what … and be not afraid it doesn’t mean raw rocks any less!
The work of Dr. Edward Howell was awesome for his time, but modern science is showing that the active enzymes in raw foods may not play as crucial role in digestion as we thought they did! Enzymes may do some predigesting of our foods when we cut, chop or blend our fresh fruits and veggies and release them, but they don’t appear to have a noticeable impact on digestion.
Anatomy pics are kinda gross, but visuals are fun!
There are others theorizing that enzymes are being transported from our digestive tract and being absorbed into our blood stream, while this may be true in some cases, there isn’t sufficient evidence out there to show that this is helping to assist the work our own metabolic enzymes. Now this doesn’t mean that someday they won’t find out that they actually do, but when talking with other’s about the benefits of a raw diet, we don’t wanna go on theory alone! Check out “Becoming Raw” by Brenda Davis RD, Vesanto Melina MS, RD and Rynn Berry for more info. It’s a great book with loads of scientifically referenced material about raw vegan diets and why they rock! Check out my friend, Bitt’s review of this awesome book!
Thought ya might need a cute animal "palate cleanser" after that previous picture!
Does this mean that eating raw foods is any less awesome? Heck no! I’ve experienced the benefits of raw foods and continue to, it just means that one of the reasons we thought unheated eats rock may be unfounded, which means there is more going on with raw munchies than we thought! Figuring out just what is the most magical thing about our fresh eats is a fascinating adventure on it’s own!
Also there are two plant based enzymes that do something pretty amazing for us (in their raw active state) and they are myrosinase (found in Cruciferous veggies such as broccoli, arugula, cabbage, bok choy, turnips, kale and watercress ) and alliinase (found in Allium veggies such as onions, garlic, chives and leeks). When veggies in these families are chopped, blended, processed, or chewed the enzymes are released and they immediately begin to break down the plant’s phytochemicals into very beneficial bioactive metabolites that have some amazing health benefits for us… such as being antiviral, antiarthritic, antiparasitic, and can also assist our liver in it’s work of detoxifying our blood! But, if we were to neutralize these active enzymes with cooking, this break down process wouldn’t occur and we’d be missing out! So there’s a good case for keeping enzymes in their active unheated state!
Get your myrosinase and alliinase on!
One of the biggest things we may be hearing more and more about is the power of phytochemicals (plant based chemicals that plants use to defend themselves from stress, pests, pathogens and environmental issues) which are usually more available in unheated foods that have been blended, juiced or ran through a food processor than they are in cooked foods! There’s a lot more to the awesomeness of raw eats and I’ll be getting into some of the specifics in even more detail in upcoming posts, so stay tuned!
On an anecdotal note papaya and pineapple based digestive enzyme supplements, have worked wonders for me when I went vegetarian (especially with the increase of beans in my daily menu!)! They’ve also helped me during my raw transitioning, like when I over did it on sulfurous veggies after reading “Eating for Beauty” by David Wolfe. I went on and onion, radish and MSM spree for a week and wound up with gas pains that left me feeling like I was having a heart attack! After eating a whole roll of papaya enzyme discs I felt almost instant relief. So there is definitely something to them!
Keep rockin’ my friends and lemme know what you think about enzymes in raw eats! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Kudos to all our awesome hosts!
Hey Peeps!! I’ve been MIA here online for a few days as we’ve had the opportunity to stay with a couple of friends here in Springfield, OR! Kim and Roy (who we got to meet at Tim Van Orden’s event) hosted us before, during and after my ”Gettin’ Raw the Fun Way” workshop (which was held at their place …they freakin’ rock!!). The workshop was a blast and some friends from Raw Food Rehab showed up as well!
Roy and I being goofballs as usual!
We all had a great time as we talked, goofed off and whipped up some tasty raw goodies together over those several days. Cashew based cheesecake and Cacao Mint based raw ice cream(with fresh mint from their garden!) were some of the faves! Shadow and I went running with Kim and Roy, Isabel made a new friend with a neighbor’s granddaughter, and Amanda got some much needed rest to recover from a bought with asthmatic bronchitis. Thankfully she’s feeling a bit better and will be hitting up the doc’s soon to get a new inhaler. Despite feeling under the weather Amanda had a great time talking, at a whisper, with Kim and friends until the wee hours! This was yet another one of the beautiful intermissions on our journey!
Creamy, Icy, Minty Goodness...Oh Yes!
We are blessed to have awesome peeps lending their time and opening up their homes to us and we love making these connections. I feel like our family is growing all the time! We hope to reconnect with everyone we’ve stayed with again and are often bummed to leave our new friends… so if you see us lookin’ a lil’ bit sad as we head off, it’s not dreading going back to the van life, it’s from wondering when we’ll catch you again. It fades gradually as we realize that we are making such awesome friends all across the country and hopefully, after we settle down after the trek, we’ll get a chance to have them over someday!
Isabel chillin' with some new feline friends
Much love everyone, and to all who’ve hosted us, we look forward to catching up with you again! ~ 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)
Cheffin’ it up for friends on the trek!
Hangin' with our friend Misty from Raw Food Rehab! :0)
Hey Everyone! The Live My Life Now Trek is going awesomely! I’ve gotta say the awesomest thing about the trek so far is all the wonderful people we’ve been meeting along the way! We’ve met up with people from our vast online community from Raw-Fu to Raw Food Rehab and many Peeps who’ve found me through youtube! It’s been so amazing hanging out, getting to know them and their families and learning more about the areas they live in. There are so many things about a place you visit that you’d never know unless you talked to someone who lives there! We’ve been geocacheing with Misty and her family, we hit up the Saturday Market in Portland with Mallory and her family and I actually assembled the recipes and Amanda took the photos for Sweet Support in Mallory’s kitchen! We’ve played board games, hit up parks and went health food store hunting with so many fun people since the trek has begun!
The Infamously Delicious Horchata Cake (recipe in Sweet Support!)
One of the things that I really love to do when were staying with someone is to whip them up some awesome raw goodness! It’s such a joy for me to be able to do something nice for the amazing people that let us crash with them and take a break from the van! Many of our hosts will pick up some awesome ingredients and I whip us all up something good! So far on the trek I’ve rocked out raw ice creams, cinnamon rolls, cakes, cheezecake, cookies, pies, and savory dishes such as salad with hemp ranch dressing and full blown raw tacos with the works! I love concocting stuff in the kitchen and especially enjoy sharing my creations with friends and loved ones, so it is such a win, win, win situation!!
Random pretty flower from a trail in Oregon
If you host us along our adventures please don’t be shy to ask me to create some raw goodness, it’s a fun way for me to give back and I get to play in the kitchen! Much love everyone and keep an eye on our route to see when we might be near you.. and your kitchen! Dun dun dun! :0)
