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)
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)
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)
Epic Raw Meal Time!
What up players and haters? Rawdawg Rory back up in this piece again. I’m a hardcore food geek, so even though I rock the raw thing, I still like to check out all the awesome food shows out there. I don’t discriminate, I love ‘em all. Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations”, Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizzare Eats”, Adam Richman’s “Man Vs Food” and Gordon Ramsey’s “Kitchen Nightmares”… I’m in! Then in my online rambling I stumbled on Epic Meal Time. For those who haven’t seen Epic Meal Time, you’re in for something. These dudes have basically done for cooking shows, what the Jackass crew has done for sports television. The show itself can be a bit offensive (especially for the vegan community), but none the less funny! Creating gigantore meals of foods questionable enough to make Paula Dean herself cringe with terror, the Epic Meal Time crew push the boundaries of just how much greasy, fatty, junkish food one can eat and live to talk about. The narration’s are ridiculous and watching the dude’s chow down on the finished masterpieces will either leave you nauseous or hungry, depending on your sensibilities. After enjoying a marathon of their videos, I thought I’d rock out my own version with a raw twist.
They say nobody doesn’t like Sarah Lee, but I know something else nobody doesn’t like more, a big a$$ banana ice cream cake, loaded with raw chocolate goodies! Get ready for Epic Raw Meal Time…
Peace out my friends! Hope you’ve enjoyed! :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)
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!
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)
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!
Our Awesome Inner-Potential!
Hey you awesome person you! Yeah I’m talking to you! Just thought I’d remind you that you rock! Sometimes we let that lil’ annoying internal critic (Haha If only it had the voice of Jay Sherman (Jon Lovitz’s cartoon alter-ego in “The Critic”) it’d be easier to blow off!) and those nagging doubts get the best of us. This especially happens when we start to push past the boundaries of our comfort zones as we change our diets, our lifestyles, or decide to live in a van for almost 2 years…ok that’s me talking. :0) Those internal voices start to pipe up and spook us back into the old familiar ways… that’s when we need to pause, breathe and inform them kindly, but firmly that we aren’t interested in what they’re selling!
All the health gurus, celebrities, professional athletes and other people we are often amazed by are people…like us! Heck some of them even started out in worse situations then we are in right now! As I write this and you read it, there are people with disabilities doing things we couldn’t possibly imagine doing, there are elderly people doing complex yogic moves and ordinary peeps pushing the boundaries of what is considered “humanly possible”! We have such amazing potential lurking within us it just needs us to realize it, get excited, have a lil’ faith and take those first steps in the direction we want to go!
While your inner annoyers are mulling over your stance (and trust me it may take them sometime to accept it so you may have to remind them from time to time!) you can also let them know that you’re also not going to be wasting any time beating yourself up when you stumble because you’d rather spend that time picking yourself back up! You got the potential, you have access to the most amazing information ever, and you can connect with thousands of like-minded people 24 hours a day online so go for it baby!! :0)
Keep rockin’ your awesome potential, because You can do iiiiiiiiittttttt!!! :0)
Check out the video I did on realizing your potential for the Geeked Fu Challenge ~
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)
Mallory’s Story, awesome inspiration and advice!
Hello everyone! Amanda, Isabel, Shadow and I had the awesome privilege to hang with a friend of ours from our extended online family, Mallory!
Meeting Mallory we felt as if we’d know each other for years. She is funny, smart and has a great way of looking at things! We had such an awesome time getting to know her, her family and pets. Even Shadow had some fun(ny) interactions with one of their cats, Hannibal. Their first meeting Hannibal was not
expecting to see a big black dog in his house upon returining from his daily stroll and made himself a new exit through (yes through!) the screen door! After finally realizing Shadow is prohibited from eating cats he went on the offense to make sure Shadow was truly in her place, by sneaking up and batting at her. It was too funny although Shadow looked a lil’ frustrated, ya can’t blame Hannibal for living out every cat’s fantasy!
Aside from being an all around awesome person to hang with, Mallory also has an amazing story to share, She has learned much about healthy living and after getting into raw foods she has lost 90 pounds so far, experienced many improvements in her overall well being and has gained the empowerment that comes from taking your health into your own hands, she also has some amazing advice to share! So go on and check out our video and you’ll also get to see Hannibal’s 15 minutes of fame!
My Big Jump!
Since we started the Live my Life NOW Trek, Amanda has been receiving emails and messages from people that’ve been inspired to do all sorts of things that they’d been putting off….now it’s my turn!
I’d been pondering things that I always wanted to do, and besides traveling abroad and building a strawbale house, one of the things on my pre-bucket list was to Bungee jump. Well we happened to stop at a hotel recently and notice that one of the best Bungee coordinators in the country is right here in Washington…coincidence or synchronicity…you be the judge! Either way I had to take this oppurtunity!
We headed over to Amboy, WA and walked up a beautiful trail to the bridge. When we got there several people were gearing up and prepping for their jumps. The view from the bridge was fantastic, and while watching a couple of people ahead of us take their turns I was getting amped up! Luckily Shadow was able to be there as a one of the spectators, because you should’ve seen her ”wtf head twists” as she watched the people go flying under the bridge and bouncing up and down before being reeled in! The other jumpers thought it was hysterical as we pondered what she was thinking of this craziness.
Shadow pondering human behavior and wondering if she should've worn her harness instead of the collar!
When it came time to go I got my harness checked, rechecked, and climbed over the railing onto the platform. Lookin’ down to the river below was breathtaking. I won’t give you some bravado macho crap…it was freakin’ scary…in a fun way of course, although you can clearly hear Isabel say “It sounds like a horror movie!” as I descended towards the river below at around 70 miles an hour. Better than any rollercoaster I’d ever experienced, and the repeat bounces after each jump were both jarring and amazing! As I was hanging around waiting for them to drop me the retrieval line the view was freakin’ awesome! If bungee’ing (probably not a real word, but I like the way it sounds!) is one of those things you’d been wanting to do, then ya should go ahead, look up a reputable group like these peeps in Amboy and get your jump on…cause it kicks a$$!
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)
The Trek has begun! :0)
Hey my friends! We’re in Seattle and the Live My Life NOW Trek has begun! The awesome peeps at Chaco Canyon Cafe hosted an awesome send off party for us and we got to hang out with many of our West Coast friends~ Aimee, Heidi, Dianne, Xine, Priss Pristofferson, and met some cool new peeps as well! Shadow even had a ball at the event, startling the occasional guest with the surprise cold dog nose on the elbow trick. After refueling on some rawesome eats (including a kick ass choco-maca hemp milk based shake) we felt quite refreshed from our speedy drive across the country!
We hung out with Aimee at her place for a couple nights, whipping up tasty raw eats and getting geared up for Amanda’s first day of walking. Xine stopped by with an awesome contribution to the Trek, a clamshell style roof storage unit (which has made life in the van a LOT less crowded!) we’re working out the bugs of doing this without our original travel trailer and it’s gettin’ better all the time!
While hangin’ with Aimee I whipped up my all time fave green soup combo, swiss chard and cilantro. This is my fave use for swiss chard as it’s natural saltiness works great in soups!
Many well wishes all~ Rory :0)
Rockin’ Geeked Fu!
Hey everyone! If you’ve been diggin’ my youtube videos and have an interest in enjoying more tasty raw foods and their awesome benefits, then I suggest you check out what I’ve been up to at Raw Fu….don’t know about Raw Fu?? Well Raw Fu is an awesome online community led by the wonderful Bunny Berry! The site is a great place to connect with others who are getting (or haven been) into eating more raw and living foods! Bunny guides the members of the site through challenges that range from 30 on up to 100 days. These challenges are aimed at various aspects of raw living and are designed so that anyone can get involved and benefit wether they want to go high raw or just get some more salads or green smoothies into their weekly diet. The atmosphere of the group is very welcoming and supportive and I’ve had an awesome time being a member of the community and being a part of Raw Fu’s Vlog Posse….but, now Bunny has asked me to take it to another level and lead a challenge!
This is an awesome oppurtunity for me to share my aproach to raw living and some of the philosophy that guided me through my raw transformation and that is…to focus on the funness of it all! Many of the influences and inspiration that lead me to wanna eat raw were all about how neat it is to actually enjoy eating healthy, what sort of things could I accomplish with the changes that could come from this change in diet?…what changes could happen? How can I make awesome dishes without cooking them? These thoughts amongst many others (which I will share through upcoming videos on the Fu!), are my own personal inspirations and aspirations that made transitioning to eating raw such a comfortable and fun adventure!
Taking this into consideration…the theme of my challenge is gettin’ geeked up…geeked up about raw foods, their benefits, about changes that may be possible, about benefits that many are having, and other fun things you can play around with that may improve your life and health…and heck..just gettin’ geeked up about LIFE! So since I get to name my challenge I’m calling it Geeked Fu! And how long is this challenge going to be going on for? Well I could’vwe said hey I’ll just knock out a quick 30day challenge (what with us all going on the road and what not) , but I couldn’t pass up the chance to rock it out with Geeked Fu for anything less than 100 days….so if you’re there…you’re stuck with me! The whole experience with Gettin’ Raw for me has been fun and exciting and I wanna spread that vibe to all my friends and all the new members of Raw Fu! If you’re not a member yet then get there and get Geeked Up!!
Here are some of the first weeks vids to catch you up …….
Live My Life NOW Trek!
Hey everyone! This summer is going to freakin’ rock! Starting May 15th Amanda, Isabel and I will be travelin’ across the United Sates……and Amanda’s gonna be walking!!
Amanda has always wanted to be active and travel across the US, but she felt that she had to lose weight to prepare for such a mission…this led to her being discouraged and feeling like “What’s the point?” …until she realized that she doesn’t wanna wait anymore and is gonna live her life NOW! She’s not only going to prove something to herself…she’s hoping to show you that you can do it as well! Get up and live your life NOW!
Along the way we’re gonna be hitting up various venues (details to come!) sharing the story and ya know I’m gonna be doing some raw food demos and some talks!
We will be departing from Seattle, WA and ending the trek in Hampton, PA. The journey will take us through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; and we wanna meet you along the way! If you’d like to walk with Amanda for part of her mission as we pass through your town and to find out where we’re gonna be doing demos and talks check out www.livemylifenowtrek.com.
Also, just released today, we will be having a send off party at Chaco Canyon Organic Cafe in Seattle, WA on May 13th from 7pm-9pm. It’s free at the door, but we will be accepting donations for the trip. For more info on what you can donate go here.
Have a freakin’ awesome day~ 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.
Thai Inspired Wraps w/ “Peanut” Sauce feat. Mom :0)
Hello again my friends. Do you ever stumble upon a recipe that just get’s ya hooked and not only tastes freakin’ good , but is fairly simple to whip up? Well I’ve got just such a recipe that I’ve been enjoying on a nightly basis for the last two weeks. I’ve been craving something a lil’ spicy that incorporates root veggies to warm up these cold Connecticut evenings. After blending some almond butter into one of my smoothies…it hit me… Thai style wraps with “peanut” sauce….Oh yes!
The sauce is deceptively simple…..I mean that it just seems too simple to taste as good as it does! As is the way with the many Thai dishes that I recall from cooked food concocting years. I simply plopped some Raw Almond butter in the blender with a lil’ water, a squeeze of lemon juice, some honey (you could use agave and it works just as well….I’m just a honey freak due to its’ high enzyme content), a lil’ sea salt and a generous pinch of cayenne pepper! The proportions I usually use are as follows~
1/2 cup of water
2-4 tbsp’s of raw almond butter (more or less depending on how thick ya like it!)
Juice of half a lemon
1-2 tbsp’s of honey
1 tsp sea salt
1/4-1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper (more for some that like it hot)
The cool thing about using almond butter is that it blends right on down in even the wimpiest of blenders! If you’re using a high power mama-jama, like the vita-mix, you could go ahead and sub the almond butter for soaked almonds.
After a quick blend the sauce is ready to go. You can store it in the fridge for later use (I’d say with the lemon juice it should keep in the fridge for 2-3 days), but know that the cayenne will mature the longer it sets, so what might’ve been mild will become medium and what was medium will become nuclear! Food is so freakin’ fun….ya never know what it’s gonna do when left unattended…around here it usually get’s eaten….especially if it’s a raw dessert. My advice is to save the empty frozen veggie bags and hide those goodies in there….and hope that no one who raids the fridge is readin’ this post! :0)
Now on to the wrap ~ My all time fave raw wrappers are romaine lettuce leaves, they’re mild, crunchy and tend to compliment whatever ya got goin’ into them…even cooked foods for those who’re doing high-raw or transitioning. You could sub romaine leaves for taco shells as my Mom describes in the video. You could also use collard leaves which make a fun flexible wrapper that you could form into lil’ egg-roll style rolls.
The next part is fun, simple, and darn tasty. Take a carrot and using your julienne peeler shred that bad-boy into thin noodle like strands.
You wouldn’t believe how just changing a veggie’s texture can make it so much more palatable until you start playing around with different cutting methods. Personally I’m not a straight up carrot munching guy, but you shred them down or thin slice ‘em and I’m in! So if a veggie doesn’t appeal to you, try it in different forms…you might be surprised!
Take your tasty mass of carrot strands and sprinkle with a lil’ sea-salt, cumin and garlic powder, toss and they’re ready. You can let them marinate a lil’ bit and they’ll actually get softer, but I love this dish so much that they usually don’t have that option!
The “icing” on the wrap is some seasoned tomato chunks (you can sub ripe red bell pepper as well and it’s equally as tasty!) Just dice some tomato and sprinkle with garam masala, this spice mix can be found in most grocery stores or your local Indian Grocer, but if not, you can whip up your own at home with equal parts ground coriander, black pepper, cumin, cardamom and cinnamon.
Assemble your wraps however ya like, I personally like to go light on the fillings and do more of them, to get as much greenage as possible! Set these up on a plate with a lil’ bowl of the dip and you’re in business!
The sauce recipe was so good that when I concocted it I called Mom and shared it with her, and she’s been playing with it as a veggie dip and salad dressing. So many people have been asking for an update with mom, and thankfully the snow today wasn’t bad enough to put a stop to us doing just that! So we headed on over to chat with her and share this awesome recipe. Mom has been doing really well with her raw diet and has been making great choices for her cooked food options as well! She’s ditched artificial sweeteners, immensely reduced her gluten intake and has turned down numerous offers from her neighbours of homemade, but not so healthy goodies! I’m so happy to see her rockin’ such a healthy lifestyle and proud of her for sticking with it! :0)
Spreadin’ the Raw Love with Dave the Raw Trucker!
Hey everyone! Recently we took a trip out to Seattle and had an awesome time. We check out some awesome places such as the Seattle Aquarium (which is abso-freakin’-lutely amazing!) and Pike’s Place Market where I met some cool people, picked up some local honey and was overwhelmed by all the awesome produce vendors!
Amanda, Isabel and I also visited the Vital T-Leaf, which is an amazing Asian tea house/shop where you can pull up a chair and enjoy free samples of the extensive selection of bulk teas they sell. Not only do you enjoy some great tea, but you also get quite an education on the proper brewing of tea. What was really neat was that they didn’t excessively heat the water nor allow the teas and herbs to steep for long. The resulting teas were light and tasty without a trace of bitterness. We picked up quite a few to have our own tea parties back home since Isabel enjoyed it so much! I also picked up a bag of dried whole stevia leaves, which I’ve been playing around with adding a lil’ to my Elixirs and chocolate smoothies in an experiment to cut back on using sugar rich foods. For those who haven’t messed with stevia, it’s an herb which has a sweet taste yet is totally non-glycemic, which makes it a useful natural “sweetener” for those with blood sugar issues. I like using 50% stevia to 50% honey or agave (by sweetness, not by weight) and I find it pleasant like that
Along with all of this fun stuff we also got to connect with our friends Aimee and Chris. We connected with Aimee online through raw fu and by checking out her awesome blog back when Amanda and I first got started with raw foods. We had the pleasure of meeting up with her and Chris at Raw Spirit Fest East and it was very cool to get to hang out with them again in Seattle! Chris and Aimee showed us around town and then we hit up Chaco Canyon for some raw eats and fun conversation. Turns out that not only had I run into Aimee and Chris back when I first got into playing around with vegan recipes at a NOFA conference yeeeaars ago, but we all have the same wedding anniversary, in fact we were married on the exact same day! Weird and fun synchronicities! That evening, as they dropped us off back our hotel , Aimee mentioned that there was going to be a raw food meet-up at Thrive and that Dave the Raw Trucker would be there! I could not pass that up!
I’ve been following Dave’s story and I’m totally inspired and impressed by all the wonderful things he’s done and the transformation he’s experienced. Dave lost over 230lbs, ditched diabetes and feels wonderful after switching over to a low-glycemic raw foods diet and doing a lot of juicing! This would be totally impressive on it’s own, but you have to factor in that my man Dave does this while driving truck! He totes his juicers, a cooler and plenty of extension cord and does his raw thing on the road! For all those who wondered if raw is doable while traveling, here be your answer!
We arrived at Thrive just as he was settling everyone in and gearing up for the meet-up. Right off the bat, meeting him you could feel the love and energy that he carries! Dave and I got to talking and hit it off right away. You know when you run into someone and you can just tell they’re on the same wavelength as you and you get all geeked up talking with them? Well than you know what I’m talkin’ about. Dave was excited to hear what I do with raw-chefin’ and very geeked up to hear about the raw challenge my Mom had undertaken with my guidance. It was awesome hanging and chatting with Dave, Aimee, Jeff (the Naughty Vegan….I get a kick out of all the fun raw nicknames out there…Dave the Raw Trucker, Jeff and the Naughty Vegan and Rawdawg Rory. Haha!)
While talking and showing Dave the last video we did with Mom he thought it’d be fun if we did a vid together and it ended up being a doozy! We ended up filming for over an hour and the raw love was flowing throughout it all! We were gonna do an interview style vid, but I was like nah let’s just let Dave flow with it because he was on a roll! There’s a lot of awesome topics he touched on so rather than just throwing a lump of vids on at once were gonna be putting up segments of the awesomeness that occurred regularly and hope to catch up with Dave again in the future!
The latest portion we’ve posted touches on one thing very near and dear to me…and that is Spreading the Raw Love! Dave talks about how once he had experienced all these wonderful changes he was driven to share with others how he was able to do this so that they can also experience the awesome benefits of raw-living! This struck such a chord with me because that’s exactly how I got started doing what I do! As I was experiencing so many awesome improvements to my life, I wanted to share not only the fun of it all, but simple and totally do-able raw recipes with others so that they can get their groove on!
I’ve received so many touching emails from people looking to get their family members and loved ones into eating raw that I thought it’d be fitting with the topic to share in the intro to this video some of my best advice on spreading the raw love and a lil’ update on what my mom’s been up to! So without further ado…enjoy!
My family’s raw challenge update! :0)
Hello again! For those of you keeping up with family’s raw food challenge, I got some fun stuff to report! Everyone involved is doin’ great! Let’s start off with my Mom, if you’re just now reading this we have had her at the house for 10 days now eating 100% raw foods. During her three week transition period she was eating about 50% raw foods and had lost 15lbs, and her blood sugar levels were lookin’ pretty good. Now that she’s here her sugar levels are lookin’ even better, goin’ from a norm between 160 and sometimes as high as 210 to lows as low 112 and the highest in the low 140′s!! We are so psyched up about her progress! We’ll have to wait until after the challenge to see how her weight loss is progressing, as she has to go to the Doc’s to weigh in, but we can all see a difference in her face and overall! Her skin is even showing better color! She’s been enjoying all the raw eats with the exception of some of the interesting juices Amanda concocted in honor of International Juice Feasting Day. This makes me so happy because she is getting to experience first hand how tasty and satisfying raw eating can be, I think it’s a big eye-opener for her and I’m hoping it will encourage her to stick with a high raw diet long after the challenge has ended! Keep checkin’ out her progress and if you’re not already a subscriber to my channel on youtube then get your butt over there and hit it up, ’cause we’re gonna be posting weekly with new videos to update her and my other family members progress, and as usual gonna be throwing in the occasional recipe video! :0)
My mom isn’t the only one rawkin’ it out, my sister, Danielle, and bro-in-law, Aaron, and my lovely wife, Amanda are also now 10 days into the 100% raw eating, and have been having great results! Aaron, who’s decided to dive into the raw challenge head first by goin’ 100% raw from the get go has shed over 40lbs in 4 weeks!! Danielle, who doesn’t have much to shed, has dropped 15lbs over this past 10 days of eating 100% raw, and Amanda has shed 10lbs during the same time! Aaron has been presently surprised by how tasty and filling raw food can be, and has been enjoying all the eats I’ve been whipping up, particularly my marinated mushroom wraps with seed cheese, BBQ Portobello Burgers and Raw tacos with the works. It’s really awesome for me to be chefin’ it up for my family and sharing with them the strategies and info that has brought about such an awesome transformation for me! It’s great to be doing this for them with all the love and support they’ve given me!
These videos that I’m sharing here have been featured on Raw Fu and Raw Food Rehab and the response to them has been overwhelmingly awesome!! Sooo many people have written to tell how they’ve been touched by what we’re doing and have been sharing them with family members who they’d love to see make awesome improvements to their health. Amongst these cool responses have been many who say they’ve been re-inspired to tackle their own raw food challenges! I’m so happy to hear all the wonderful things that are comin’ about from my family’s raw adventure and they’re excited as well to hear all the great comments, words of support and encouragement, and tales of others inspired by their changes, so from all of them and myself to all the people cheering them on we wanna say thank you so very much and you all freakin’ ROCK!! Peace, love and rawness~ Rory and Family :0)
Gettin’ my family in on the raw goodness!
Hey everyone! I am sure by now you get a sense of how fun it is for me to be sharing the benefits of adding more raw and living foods to one’s diet, well then you can imagine how geeked up I am to tell you that my family is embarking on a raw food challenge!
My Mom, Sister, Bro-in-Law Aaron and my lovely wife Amanda are currently two weeks into a transitional raw food diet (80% raw and 20% cooked) and after another couple of weeks of that their going to be going 100% raw for six weeks!! To help them along I’m not only giving them guidance and showing them how to make awesome raw eats, but I’m also chefin’ it up for them! You name it and I’ve been un-cookin’ it!
It’s a lot of fun for me and the changes that my Bro Aaron is experiencing already are awesome! In his first week of transition (well he decided to skip the transition and go 100% right off the bat! I discussed potential harsh detox symptoms with him, but we determined that this method of going hardcore into challenges works best for him!) he lost overe 20lbs! This has slowed a bit in his second week, but his energy is waaaaay up!
All my family members doing this have various health issues they’re hoping to improve from pre-diabetic conditions, to high blood pressure to chronic fatigue and being over weight. I’m so psyched up to be sharing this way of eating that has done so much for me with my family! And of course they’re loving having a live-in raw chef! :0)
Check out this video of me and Mom talking about the challenge and showing her how to whip up some of the yummy onion dip I’ve been delivering to her during her transitional diet!
