Chocolate Drizzled Energy Bars, So good!
What’s up my friends!? Hope you’re doing awesome! As you may know, Amanda and I are expecting a lil’ mini-me (mini-us I should say) Ramona, (coming this May!). We’re psyched up and a bit nervous, particularly me. I’ve been watching YouTube videos of births to get prepared… haven’t seen stuff that scary since “Freddy Vs. Jason”. So hopefully if all goes according to plan, I’ll be upright throughout Ramona’s arrival! As we prepare for her appearance, we are also preparing for an upcoming move to a new place here in Portland. A lot goin’ on! So if you’ve been wondering where the fudge I was, I’m around… just busy as heck. I have a treat for you today… Raw energy bars with a chocolate drizzle-dizzle!
Chocolate Drizzled Energy Bars
These tasty travel companions have a peanutty bar base and a chocolate topping, if that wasn’t enough, they are loaded with protein, fiber and omega 3 fatty acids! Great for toting to work, bringing on road trips or sneaking into the movies (don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about).
For the bars ~
2 Cups of almonds
2 Cups of flaked or shredded coconut
1+1/2 Cups of hemp seeds
1/2 a cup of almond butter
1/4 cup of raw honey (can substitute with agave, maple syrup or pitted dates whatever rocks your sweet tooth’s socks)
1 Tablespoon of Spirulina Crunchies (totally optional, but tasty and full of green goodness!)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract or 1/4 tsp vanilla bean powder
1/4 Teaspoon of sea salt
Grind the coconut, almonds, hemp seeds, spirulina crunchies, sea salt and vanilla into a flour in your food processor. Toss in the almond butter and sweetener and give it a good grinding. Take this mixture and spread about 1/4″ thick on a cookie sheet, press firmly and, using your hand as a guide, square off the edges as you press the mix into a square or rectangular shape. Now wrap with plastic wrap and pop in the freezer while you rock out the chocolate drizzle!
The Drizzle ~
1/2 Cup of cacao butter (broken into small chunks)
1/4 cup of coconut sugar or xylitol crystals (this will give you a more solid finished chocolate, you could sub raw honey or agave)
2-3 tablespoons of cacao powder
1/4 teaspoon of non-gmo soy lecithin (this is a natural emulsifier that helps bring the chocolates ingredients together harmoniously)
pinch of sea salt
Melt all the ingredients down in a double boiler on low heat until everything is dissolved and mix thoroughly until well combined, I sometimes pour the melted mix in my VitaMix and give it a quick blend to achieve an even more homogenized drizzle.
Grab your tray from the freezer and cut into the bar size of your choice. Spread the bars apart and drizzle them with a generous coating of your chocolate saaaaaaawce. The chocolate sauce should harden quickly on the cold bars. Once it has, cover them and pop them in the fridge to store. One cool way to store them is to individually wrap them with parchment or wax paper and use a small piece of tape to secure it… Presto, you got yourself a homemade chocolate drizzled energy bar, wrapped and ready to go!
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)
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)
Kefir Ginsinger Beer!
Hey Party People in the place to be! I’ve been gettin’ my brew on lately and thanks to some inspiration via the holy grail of internet enlightenment (aka youtube!). Inspiration that guided me to create Kefir Ginsinger Beer (sweet name provided by my homey Nellie!). This tasty concoction combines the probiotic goodness of kefir with the circulation enhancing and detoxification assisting properties of ginger and finally the blood oxygenating (and therefore energy boosting) quality of ginseng!
Ginseng is an adaptogenic herb, which means it helps our bodies to restore their natural balance and deal with stress, it’s also known to increase mental functioning and reduce fatigue! So we’re pretty much talking super soda here. I used to be a full-on soda addict so sharing this recipe (and the low down on water kefir brewing in my last post) is very cool for me to provide other peeps lookin’ to replace that stuff with a really amazing alternative! Let’s hook it up!
To brew your own Kefir Ginsinger Beer you’re going to need ~
~ Some water kefir that has been brewing for approx 48 hours.
~ Glass bottles with a seal-able lids. I love GT’s kombucha bottles for this purpose!
~ Organic turbinado (aka raw sugar, organic un-bleached sugar)
~ A big ‘ol hunk of ginger.
~ Some ginseng tea. You can use ginseng root pieces, ginseng tea bags, or ginseng tea powder. I had the powdered instant ginseng tea version on hand so that’s what I used. When playing around with ginseng be sure to read up on it, especially if you have high blood pressure.
~ Some of your water kefir grains. They reproduce so snagging some of the extras for this brew is okay!
~ A strainer or nut mylk bag.
The following recipe is for a 12 cup batch of water kefir. I get eight finished bottles of Kefir Ginsinger Beer from this amount. If using more or less kefir, then adjust the amounts accordingly. You needn’t be exact and if you have extra, you can always drink it!
Put aside about a cup of the kefir and bottle up the rest, leaving about 3 inches of emptiness in each bottle. Brew your ginseng tea with about 1+1/2 cups of water to make a nice concentrated concoction and allow it to cool. Peel your nugget of ginger, I find the edge of a spoon works great. Now cut it into blendable chunks!
Pop the cup of kefir, 1+1/2 cups of ginseng tea (or 1+1/2 cups of water with 3 packets of ginseng tea, thats what I’m doing now), the ginger knob, about 2 teaspoons of kefir grains, and 2 tablespoons of turbinado into your blender. Blend!!
Now strain this glorious stuff to remove all the fibrous bits and use it to fill the bottles to within an inch of the top, to leave room for the co2 to build up.
Place the bottles aside to brew for about 3-7 days to carbonate! You can easily test the levels by occasionally removing a bottle and un-capping it, if it’s not fizzy enough just re-seal and set back for continued fizzification. When it’s finished pop the bottles in the fridge to halt the fermentation and chill. Serve cold and enjoy some gingery soda with a ginseng boost!
Rock on my friends ~ Rory :0)
The Fizzy Bubbly Goodness!
Hey people! Recently my buddy Lucy hooked me up with some water kefir grains. What are those? Well, water kefir is essentially, the culinary equivalent of Sea Monkeys(oh yes!)…
Kefir grains awaiting a fresh sugar water bath.
Water kefir (aka Tibicos) is a symbiotic culture of various yeasts and bacteria. The community of beneficial creatures produce a polysaccharide matrix to live in. This matrix is referred to as a kefir grain. You can score kefir grains from friends that brew it or various online sources. Why may ya wanna score some kefir? Well these beneficial organisms produce an amazing probiotic rich beverage that boasts a butt-ton of health benefits! Let’s knock through a few of them ~
Improved digestion. Water kefir is loaded with friendly bacteria and yeast. These lil’ guys add to our digestive systems army of good microorganisms. The more the merrier as they do much of our digestive work (in fact we couldn’t properly digest our food without them). This added crew can help us get more nutrition out of our food and may help maintain a proper metabolism. Win, win, and win some more!
Reduce harmful organisms in our body. When we add more and more good organisms to our system, there is less and less room for the not so good ones! Kefir’s cultures may outcompete harmful bacteria and yeast when it comes to colonizing our digestive system. This could be a serious bonus for those dealing with candida issues.
Mood improvement. Tibicos also produce an assortment of b vitamins and amino acids, reportedly including Tryptophan. Tryptophan is essential amino acid that our body uses to create serotonin, our bodies’ primary nuerotransmitter. The more serotonin, the better our overall mood and ability to deal with stress. The b vitamins are also crucial in proper brain functioning and stavign off depression! Very good stuff!
The list of health benefits goes on and on! Do some web crawling and you’ll find LOT’S of varying info on the healing, health giving and curative powers of water kefir (aka Tibicos ) So go check it out and delve deeper! Now I’m gonna let ya know how I’ve been rockin’ the kefir…
I’m no newbie to home brewing probiotic beverages(been brewing kombucha for years now), but I was unprepared for how… freakin’ easy water kefir is! There are many recipes and methods out there, but I’ll give you the recipe and timing that’s been working for me. And it’s been working very well!
First you’re going to need ~
*A large mason jar or other large glass canister. I’ve been using a gallon size jar that I picked up at Target.
*A square of breathable fabric large enough to cover the jars opening. It could be a handkerchief or cloth napkin, I’m using a cotton wash cloth.
*A large rubber band to secure this fabric to your jar. This cover will prevent wayward bacteria and dust from settling in your kefir brewing jar as well as keep at bay any insects and fruit flies that may find your brew enticing!
*Organic turbinado sugar. Turbinado sugar is the dehydrated juice of the sugar cane plant. In essence it is minimally processed and unbleached sugar, which means it retains many of its naturally occurring nutrients and minerals. This is good for the kefir and you! If you can’t find turbinado, you should easily be able to locate organic sugar in most grocery stores.
*A mesh strainer for sifting your kefir grains in between batches.
*Several well washed bottles with air-tight lids, for the second fermentation. I like to re-use my empty GT’s Kombucha bottles for this. :0)
*water kefir grains. You can pick these up from various sources online, from friends that brew it, or by looking up peeps online that may be willing to share or barter them!
Now like I said, brewing kefir is easy here’s the recipe I’ve been using ~
6 cups of spring or filtered water. If all you have is tap water, you should boil it to reduce the chlorine, then allow it to cool to room temp before using.
6 Tablespoons of turbinado
3-4 tablespoons of keffir grains
Simply dissolve the sugar into the water. I use my vita mix to stir it up (since I use it strain my keifer into and as a giant measuring cup for the water. Multi-tasking like a mama-jama!) Now pour the sugar-water into your jar with the kefir grains and cover with the cloth. Set the jar in a dark cabinet in a warm location if possible. If not it’s cool, kefir has proven to be pretty forgiving of cool conditions. Didn’t I tell you this stuff’s easy? Ridiculously so!
Now sit back and allow the Tibicos to work their magic for 24-48 hours. You’ll begin to notice bubbles rising up from the mass of grains. You will also notice the smell of the sugar water changing to a semi sourish, kinda yeasty smell. It’s aliiiiiive! The 24 hour gap is there because the fermentation will be faster in warm temps and slower in cooler temps.
Lemme hit you up with one of the biggest tips I can give someone who’s just starting to brew either kefir or kombucha. Your first two batches may suck. It may taste/smell a little off from what you’re expecting. This happened to me with both my kombucha and kefir, but the third batch was the charm! I believe, and have read, that this is more a matter of your culture adapting to its new growing situation (water, sugar type, temps etc.) than your skills as a brewer. So don’t sweat it! Just hang in there and be prepared to possibly ditch your first two batches while your culture gets comfy in it’s new home.
Now where was I? Oh yeah, when you notice these changes your kefir is ready to undergo the second fermentation. The second fermentation is where the fun comes in! I mean what’s better than an amazingly healthy probiotic beverage? An effervescent, ridiculously tasty healthy probiotic rich soda! Oh yes! Let’s get fizzy with it.
Ready for bottling!
To get your fizz on, strain your kefir (to save the grains for the next batch) and pour into your seal-able bottles, leaving about an inch or of the bottle empty, to allow for air expansion. And pop the sealed bottles back in the same area you brew in and allow them to work their magic for 24-72 hours. This gap again is all about temp. I usually pop one open after 24 hours to see if it has the amount of fizz I’m looking for. I just pour a lil’ off into a cup and taste, if it’s not quite there I’ll reseal it and set it back. When you hit the carbonation level you want it’s time to move the bottles into your fridge, where the fermentation is halted and your kefir maintains its awesome taste.
Whoa, rewind a bit. You can just bottle it up, get your fizz in there and fridge it, or you can “dooo what I dooo” (in Joel Hodgson’s voice ala MST 3K.) and flavor it first! The possibilities are many, to say the least. Fresh or frozen fruit, spices, concentrated tea and or fruit juice can be added to the bottled kefir and allow it to infuse as it fizzes! I’ve done fresh ginger juice to create a potent kefir ginger-ale. Awesomeness. Frozen fruit comes in pretty handy as well. I pop some frozen fruit into the vita-mix, pour in some of the pre-fermented kefir and blend until smooth. When flavoring the kefir, I like to start out with bottles filled to under 2 inches of the top, that way I have plenty of room to add my flavors and still leave room for the carbonation.
I’ve seen peeps on youtube creating a super-duper ginger ale using a blend of ginseng tea, a hefty dose of ginger and peppermint leaves, to this they add kefir and bottle it up to ferment. Sounds bangin’! Haven’t tried that myself yet, but when I do I’ll let ya know how it goes! You can also try doing a vanilla soda, by adding either vanilla bean pod skins, seeds, powder or pure extract! You can cream it when done by pouring it into a glass with a lil’ nut, seed or coconut mylk! Like I said there MANY ways to go with this stuff and lot’s of fun ways to make your own pimped out fizzy bubbly goodness!
How does kefir stack up to kombucha? Well if you like instant gratification, kefir is ready in only 2-5 days, whereas kombucha takes 14-19 days (from start to bottled bubbly). Kefir doesn’t require boiled and cooled tea, but it does have a higher turn out rate, so it can add up to more total work then ‘bucha. Personally I love ‘em equally, so I’m brewing them both!
Kefir Ginger Ale. So good!
Happy brewing adventures my friends and big thanks again to Lucy for sharing the kefir madness! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Chocolate Chia Shake!
Hello my friends! Taking a breather from home improvement projects to whip up a tasty shake! This shake is a tasty chocolate monstrosity that features the omega 3 laden, intestine cleansing and protein rich goodness that is chia. When these wonderful seeds aren’t adorning terracotta craniums they are bringing an amazing texture to many a raw dessert and a really awesome thickness to this chocolatey shake!
Chocolate Chia Shake
~2 cups almond mylk
~2 frozen bananas (broken into blend-able chunks)
~1/8th cup of chia seeds (optionally you can soak the chia seeds in the almond mylk for about a 1/2 hour to make them easy on standard blenders)
~1+1/2 Tablesepoons of cacao powder
~Raw Honey, soaked dates or proffered sweetener to taste
~1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract
~pinch of sea salt
Blend everything to smooth, smoothie consistency and prepare yourself for chocolatey goodness!
Been doing all sorts of home improvement projects this past week! Our bathrooms’ got a new sub-floor and linoleum covering, I customized our tv stand a bit, did some insulating and put a new fence and gate in our backyard, much to the chagrin of Shadow as it limits her bunny interactions. Also put together some furni from Ikea, Including a wardrobe cabinet in the kitchen that’s going to house our kombucha and water kefir brewery! Lovin’ the water kefir and lookin’ forward to gettin’ the ‘bucha going again! Our dehydrators are going to be neatly nestled in it as well, as soon as we get them mailed here!
Kefir Madness!
Hope you are all having a sweet weekend! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Livin’ it up in Portland!
Hey Peeps! I’m baaaaaaaack.. with my wonderful family and back to share what the heck I’ve been up to with you! Amanda, Isabel, Shadow and I have been reunited and are chillin’ at our new place in Portland, Oregon!
Amanda landed a cool position, managing a lot for RV and boat storage. Along with the job, we got a nice lil’ house! Our place has a nice sized yard for Big Shady (Shadows’ alias..), Isabel, and plenty room for gardening projects, which Amanda and I are really excited about! It’ll be the first time, in our lives together, that we had a place where we could get growin’ outdoors. We’re taking advantage of it right away with several lil’ tomato plants in ten gallon paint buckets!
We’re keeping our plants in pots and devising some creative planter ideas because our new place comes with an interesting infestation… rabbits. I’m not talking about those lil’ grey guys you see hopping frantically through the wild at the slightest human approach, I’m talking about pet store bunnies!! These things are massive, colorful and downright evilly cute. Recently, I convinced a couple of them that I’m not such a scary guy, with the assitance of a bag of carrots.
Our new joint is in an industrial part of town, but it’s got a country’ish feel and a massive woodstove. Always wanted a place with wood heat (if ya know me, ya know I been into sustainable living since way back in the day). Lovin’ that I can re-purpose cardboard and newspapers into heat! We upgraded the eco-friendliness of our new crib even more by opting to pay a few more cent’s per kilowatt hour to ensure that all our electrical needs are provided by renewable energy sources (such as wind and solar!). If this sounds sweet to you, contact your local energy provider and see if they provide such options.
As far as my Raw adventures go, I’m gettin’ back into working out and formulating raw protein shakes from Heck! A lot of my friends from back on the East Coast are into weight lifting and the protein shakes, so I’ve been sharing recipes for creating body-building beverages that go beyond muscle fuel in their benefits, while leaving out all the junk that goes into traditional muscley drinks (ok probably not a real adjective, but I like the sound of it).
I’ve had an amazing time in Connecticut helping my Mom get back into healthier eating! We didn’t go for a 100% (or even uber high) raw approach this time around, but rather a dive into more vegan and gluten free options that she can easily make and incorporate into her regular menu! I was psyched to see her creating her own recipes such as a vegan and gluten free versions of her fave Italian comfort foods. Her Eggplant Lasagna with tofu in place of the rigotta cheese was quite impressive! Mom’s also been gettin’ into smoothies big time, thanks to a generous contribution from Vitamix! I’m really grateful that I had the chance to help Mom get her health steering in the right direction and hope she carries on with it. Very proud of ya Mom!
Hope you’re all having an awesome time doing your raw or raw’ish thang! Much love and more to come ~ Rory :0)
Mango Lassi with Mom!
Hey Peeps! Today Mom’s rockin’ the vita mix and cranking out one of our all time favorite blended beverages, Mango Lassi! This Indian cuisine inspired beverage is creamy, tangy and goes great with curry.
To create this drink you’ll need ~
2 cups of almond mylk
1+1/2 cups of mango (fresh or frozen)
1 cup of ice
2 tablespoons of honey (or agave, or a couple of pitted dates!)
1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice
Blend everything until smooth and creamy and enjoy thoroughly!
I wanna thank Mom for coming up with the idea to do a plug for my Best of Raw 2010 nominations! Here’s the link to check out their site and vote for me and your other fave raw personalities! http://www.bestofraw.net/
Become an Ace of Raw Cakes!
Hello My friends! Been a while.. truth is I’ve been doing a lot introspective spelunking and wading through some mental muck that needed flushing. After taking some time to meditate and get some insights, I’m back! And I’m bringing you a recipe for the Carrot Cake I created for my recent workshop at Catch a Healthy Habit Cafe! Pardon the lame pun, but raw cake prep is literally a piece of cake. It’s just a matter of formula. Let’s get to the kitchen/lab/culinary creation station and concoct some tasty healthy goodness!
When you craft a raw cake there are essentially 2 parts, just like baking. When you make a traditional cake you seperate the ingredients into “dry” and “wet” categories. You beat your eggs, milk and oils seperately before mixing into your flour, baking powder, salt and spices. With raw cake prepping you have two components as well. Your “flours” and your “binders”. The flour consists of water dry ingredients your using (ground nuts and seeds, sprouted and dehydrated grains, salt and powdered spices and seasonings) and your binder (dried fruits, honey, agave or other syrups) is the moist and sticky ingredients your going to use to flavor, sweeten and hold the whole thing together! Now the trick is just finding the amount of binder that you need to hold the flour into something cake’ish. Easier than it sounds! Simply look for changes in the consistency as you’re processing the binder with the flour. When the mixture starts to ride up the edges of the mixer, stop the machine and take out a piece of the mix. Gently squeeze it between your fingers and attempt to gently form it into a lil’ square. The keyword being Gently, you wanna make sure that you don’t have to smash it into a solid lump for it to hold it’s form. By keeping it as light as possible while still holding shape, you end up with something that has more of that fluffy baked cake quality!
My fave cake pans are spring form pans. They make retrieving your finished beauty easy and allows for playing around with layers! I picked up a set of 3 recently for a mere $14 and some change, a very worthy investment in your raw dessert endavours. To get your cake out of the pan in one piece even easier here’s 3 steps that are sure to leave you with a pimped out finished product.
Always grease your pan. I prefer to use coconut oil, but if you have allergies, you can sub hemp or flax seed oil.. olive oil is a lil’ too pungent for desserts, unless you’re a major olive oil fan. You can also reserve some of your “flour” and sprinkle this in the pan as added anti-stick insurance.
Run circle around the inside of the pan.. with a paring knife. Simply slide a small thin knife blade between the outer edge of the cake and the inside of the pan. This’ll guarantee you don’t lose any of your tasty goodness when you release the sides of the pan.
Finally chill it out before you plop it out. Giving your cake about a half hour in the fridge will allow the heat created by the friction of the food processors blades to fade. The ingredients can then firm back up and hold their form better.
Now that we got the basics down, let’s make some carrot cake!
Carrot Cake ~
This batch is for either 1 layer or a small cake! For an approx 2″ high by 8″ round cake, go ahead and repeat this recipe!
1+1/2 cups of almonds
1 cup of rough chopped carrot
1 cup of dates
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
pinch of sea salt
Pop the almonds, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in your food processor and grind until you’ve turned them into “flour”. Remove to a bowl. Pop your carrots into the processor and grind down finely. Now here’s a tweak option, you can use the carrots as is to make an extremely moist cake or you can pop them in cheese cloth or a jice bag and wring them out a bit.. I usually opt to leave ‘em juicy.
Mix the carrots and flour together in a mixing bowl and divide in half . Pop half the carrot/flour mix into the processor and grind with half of the dates, repeat with the leftover ingredients, this step may seem tedious, but it’s to make sure the dates are finley ground down and the finished cake well combined. Now gently press the mix into a greased 8″ spring form pan and allow to set in the fridge for 30 minutes while you make the frosting..
Orange Vanilla Creamy Frosting ~
This creamy delicious frosting will leave you wanting to split apart your blender to get it all.. barring that route you can add some almond milk and frozen fruit to the frostified blender and smoothie it up baby!
1+ 1/2 cups of cashews, soaked for an hour to soften (you can sub macadamia nuts if you like)
1/2 cup of dates, pitted
juice of 2 oranges
3/4 tsp of the fresh orange peel
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract (or a 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla bean seeds)
pinch of sea salt
Blend everything until smooth and creamy in your blender. I like to start out with everything but the dates and add them after the other ingredients are smooth. If using a standard blender, you can also soak the dates in the o.j. before blending to soften ‘em up.
Now that your frosting is done, pop that chilled cake outta it’s mold onto your serving plate and frost it up! Enjoy with tea or a cold glass of almond milk.
Happy cake crafting my friends and much love ~ Rory :0)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Raw Chocolate Fudge Sauce!
Hey everyone! For all those who couldn’t make it to my “Just Desserts” Class at Catch a Healthy Habit Cafe, here’s a lil’ taste of what was being whipped up!
Chocolate Fudge Sauce~
5 Dates (pitted …and checked for “frass”!)
1/4 cup of water
1/2 cup of agave nectar (or if you’re a freakin’ beegan like me, raw honey)
5 tablespoons of raw cacao powder (oh yes!!)
1″ piece of vanilla bean pod (or the seeds of a 1″ piece if you’re using a standard blender, or a 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract)
pinch of sea salt (to amplify the yummy goodness)
Blend everything until silky smooth. This cacao-concoction will keep in your fridge for 3-4 days and makes an awesome ice cream topping as well as a heck of a good dip for fresh strawberries or slices of ripe bananas!
The class was a blast and lookin’ forward to my next one “Viva la Mexicana!” hope to see ya there! :0)
Pumpkin carvin’ and pumpkin smoothie’ing
This Halloween we were inclined to forgo the trick-or-treating. The weather was bitter cold and Isabel isn’t that much of candy lover, so we put in a scary movie with big killer bugs (“Mimic“-kick-a$$ movie if ya like sci-fi horror flicks) and attacked some hapless pumkins!
Things were groovy until when carving the top off the big one we started to get a craving for raw-pumpkin pie…and we didn’t have a lot of the ingredients on hand. What to do? Smoothiefy that mofo!
For this autumnal beverage you’ll need the following…
1 C Almond (or other mild nut-milk)
1+1/2 C cubed chunks of fresh pumpkin
1/2 C soaked dates ( or 2 tbsps honey or agave… less if you don’t have much of a sweet tooth)
1/2-1 tsp. minced fresh ginger root
1″ Piece of vanilla bean ( or 1 tsp. extract )
3/4 tsp. powdered cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
about 1/2 tsp. nut meg ( fresh ground is the bestest )
pinch of salt
2 frozen bananas ( broken into chunks )
Blend everything until smooth and creamy and have your pie and drink it too!
*Some pumpkins were definitely harmed in the making of this smoothie*
Cereal
Check out this lovely bowl of cereal my wifey whipped up yesterday for her raw-breakfast! Love this stuff! Breakfast was my biggest challenge when giving up the cooked foods. Cheerio addiction was the last thing to go for me.*lol* It was a combo of lingering cooked carb cravings and the ease of dumping it outta the box and into the bowl and done. But with a lil’ advanced preparation in the form of soaking and dehydrating a weeks supply of pumpkin or sunflower seeds and/or buckwheat groats (a total prep. time of about 15 mins not counting the soak and dehydration times!) I was all set! I like to mix up the fruit content once in a while although banana is my reigning champion in the favorites dept. And I gotta have a bit of dried fruit in there! Raisins, currants or diced dates! My mylk of choice is almond, but sometimes I experiment with sesame, pecan, pumpkin seed or walnut, so many options with so many different tastes and health benefits to toy with! When I feel like re-living some of my junkier cereal indulgences I squeeze on a lil’ raw chocolate sauce. Ohhh Yes! Hope your breakfasts are as yummy as they are healthy! Peace :0)
Raw Orange Soda
Raw Soda??
You may have noticed that some soda companies have put forth efforts to “naturalize” their products by removing high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors. This is cool I guess …a lil’ half-butted step in the right direction. I won’t bother to go into a rant on sodas negative impact on our health, but rather take the idea of a healthy alternative a few steps further!
When I first began to go raw I was down to a couple of glasses of soda a week but, I had been meaning to cut it out all together for a while. One day when contemplating ways to replace this fizzy badness with some fizzy goodness I remembered a fave drink from back in the day when we had this lil’ Italian grocery store up the street…Orangina! This stuff was awesome! Basically an effervescent orange juice flavored beverage. It was really refreshing and not too sweet. Eureka! Splash of fresh squeezed OJ and Sparkling mineral water for the fizzy goodness! Mineral water is generally rich in calcium, magnesium, silica, potassium and may occasionally contain iron and zinc as well (depending on the springs location and geological constituents). Wow! Going from a beverage that typically leaches minerals from the body to one that adds them! That’s a big leap in the right direction! The effervescence is naturally occurring in some cases but is usually adding during the bottling process. The carbonation (whether naturally occurring or not) adds carbonic acid to the drink which can cause some leaching of calcium from the body but, I’d imagine that in the case of mineral water this is balanced out by the calcium content of the water, either way …it still beats the heck outta soda!
This recipe can be remixed many ways using different citrus juices. We’ve also experimented with concord grapes that we’ve blended and strained, adding a touch of agave to sweeten it up and ya got a pretty good grape soda goin’! Now all you need is a bowl of soaked and dehydrated pumpkin and sunflower seeds tossed with either a lil’ hemp or cold pressed olive oil and a dash of salt (and or other spices) and you got an awesome snack to enjoy while kicking back and watching a movie!
RAW “Peanut” Butter Cup Smoothie
Raw “Peanut” Butter Cup Smoothie – healthy and delicious
The origins of the peanut butter cup smoothie…no someone wasn’t standing next to me and spilled their cacao in my tahini and a brief argument didn’t turn into a best selling candy. This recipe came about when I was experimenting with tahini and banana smoothies, I noticed a peanutbuttery aftertaste…mmmmMMMMmm. One thing I missed when I went raw was the occasional peanut butter sandwich, so when I noticed this I was really geeked up! The next logical step was “let’s throw some cacao in there!”. With a lil’ tweaking and a pinch of salt this became one of our favorite smoothies. We must’ve been drinking one a night for a month on end. Hope this smoothie helps curb those peanut buttery cravings. Enjoy! :0)
