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!

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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!

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)