Experimenting in the kitchen with friends!
Hey Everyone! Amanda, Isabel, Shadow and I spent last weekend In Medford, Oregon hangin’ with our new friend Josephine and her family. Josephine has been rockin’ the raw scene here in Medford for years now! With an ever growing group of individuals she has put together regular potlucks, recipe classes, and lectures with awesome info and amazing turnouts! Bringing the community together and sharing the raw love… awesome work is all I can say… very awesome work!
Speaking of work.. Josephine asked if I could make the cheesecake that I had made at Catch a Healthy Habit Cafe the day that Shazzie dropped by! You know me and goofin’ off in the kitchen… I’m in! So I got started right away!
Josephine and her husband Wayne have been rockin’ the rawness for a while now and grow loads of their own organic eats! Wayne took me for a tour of their intensively planted garden beds and we harvested swiss chard, collards, squash leaves and some lambs quarters and stinging nettles (to get that edible weed goodness going!). After gathering this awesome assortment of greenage we headed inside where Wayne blended up a tasty and powerful green smoothie! “That’s your superfood!” Wayne said as we enjoyed it. I couldn’t agree more!
Greens galore!
Strawberries growing in bags on the garden's fence.. no space left unused! I love it!
The weekend with them was awesome! Saturday I went hiking with Wayne and his friend Larry through some of Oregon’s gold mining historical sites! That evening we all sat at the table sharing stories and shooting the breeze about going raw, as Larry is gettin’ into it. He sampled the cheesecake and thought it could use a lil’ salt. So I tried a sprinkle of sea salt on my slice and it was a nice addition. Then Larry tried the cake with a drizzle of Indonesian Style Soy Sauce. I put a lil’ on a bite…it was interesting and tasty! Josephine tried it as well and we pondered a raw version of this sauce and cheesecake combo.
Sunday morning we got to playing in the kitchen! I whipped us a cacao/maca/mesquite/lucuma smoothie to to get us going. Josephine had looked through my book and wanted to try my Turkish Style Cauliflower Patties (recipe in Gettin’ Raw) with Creamy Cilantro Lime Dipping Sauce, so we whipped up a batch together!
Cranking out some Turkish Style Cauliflower Patties!
Fresh and warm outta the dehydrator!
We were thinking of what to do for dessert and remembered last night’s experiment. Jose suggested we make a version of the Indonesian Soy Sauce with a lil’ cacao thrown in… for good measure! So we put together this awesome dessert topper ”Cacao Fig Vingarette Syrup”. The taste was freakin’ incredible! I’m always up for experimenting with wacky combos and this one took the cake… the cheesecake to be exact!
Cacao Fig Vinagerette Syrup... sooooo good!
Cacao Fig Vinegarette Syrup ~ An unlikely yet ridiculously tasty combo. I even used it as a salad dressing. It was so good we had to share the recipe!
Ingredients ~
4 Tablespoons melted coconut oil
3 Tablespoons cacao powder
3 Tablespoons agave (could substitute honey)
2 Tablespoons of Fig Vinegar (if this is hard to find I would try blending a couple of dried figs with a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar as a substitute. It can be blended right into the mix in your blender!)
Splash of balsamic vinegar for a lil’ tang!
1/3 teaspoon of sea salt
Wisk thoroughly together in a bowl or blend in your blender! Serve slightly warm as it will harden when cold. This effect makes for an awesome topping for a chilled dessert such as that cheesecake…
Give this syrup a shot and lemme know what you think! Speaking of chocolate we’re going to be back at Josephine’s September 8th as she’s giving me use of her home and kitchen to hold my Raw Chocolate Workshop!
She has previously hosted Elaina Love and Carmella, so I’m psyched to be rocking it out at her place! As we head off to visit more friends in Oregon we look forward to hanging with Josephine and Wayne again, an awesome dynamic duo!
Mint Cacao Ice Cream…oh yeah baby!
Heya Peeps!! I’m always playing around with ways to get more minerals into my raw treats and after an experiment with Lydia’s Green Power (one of the awesome goodies donated to our trek by Natural Zing!) I created a Mint Cacao Ice Cream that is out of this world! I know some might be thinking “Green powder…in ice cream?” , but take it from a foodie, it’s delicious!
Minty Chocolaty Ice Cream... with Green Goodness!
You can make this in a high power blender such as a vita mix or with a standard issue blender and an ice cream maker. I’ll give you the procedures for both!
Here’s the ingredients ~
1/2 cup of water
1/4 cup of raw almond butter
1/4 cup of coconut oil (or coconut butter!)
1/4 cup of honey, date syrup or agave (whatever floats your boat!)
3 Tablespoons of Lydia’s Green Power (or any mild tasting green powder of your choice, wheatgrass or barely grass blends, you can even do spirulina or chlorella containing mixes, but you may want to up the mintiness a lil’ to cover it up!)
2-3 Tablespoons of cacao nibs or powder
4-9 mint leaves (depending on size or 1-2 drops of food grade essential oil of peppermint)
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla bean powder (or 1/2 teaspoon extract)
Pinch of sea salt
Place all these ingredients in a vita mix (or other high power blender with ice cream making capabilites) and blend until smooth and creamy. Now add about 3 cups of ice and, according to the blenders recomendations, blend again into a thick frozen goodness!
For a standard blender add all the ingredients plus 3 cups of ice water and blend until thoroughly smooth and creamy. Pour this chilly mix into your ice cream maker and prepare according to the manufacturer’s direction.
If you don’t have an ice cream maker, this blend would make awesome creamy popsicles!!
Have a minty fresh day! ~ Rory :0)
Being Chill is actually a priority!
Hey there my friend! Let’s talk about stress (let’s talk about stress baby, let’s talk about…whoa Salt N Pepa flashback there…ok I’m back) Oh yeah, stress… That annoying, cringe inducing, shoulder tightening, and stomach wrenching response to all those annoying things we face in our day to day lives.. yeah that stuff! Well up until my 20′s I thought it was perfectly normal and rational to live with that stuff. To be stressed out over upsetting thoughts, financial situations and world events seemed like the rational response and although I was a pretty happy go lucky guy, I did let that annoying state of mind dominate me from time to time and I figured those who didn’t appear stressed when confronted by tough situations were kinda like those maniacs in the apocalyptic movies that are giggling uncontrollably as the world falls apart around them! So what changed between now and then?
Well after seeing examples of people who contemplated the sorrows of the world, but didn’t let it bog them down was an eye opener for me and soon I found myself wondering “What’s the use of being stressed?” I mean, if I did all that was in my power about a situation, than why should I waste my valauable time worrying about it?? Well after rinsing and repeating this notion through my inner scalp, it finally began to sink in! What does stress do for us anyway?
Well like I said in the begining, stress causes actual physical tension, how about that? A thought, a state of mind twisting us up in knots on the physical plane. Well it actually goes beyond this… Chronically dwelling in a state of stress is annatural. In nature stress was an indicator that the poop has hit the fan and we need to run for it! But, in our modern society that concern is usually not abounding,. but rather a bunch of background concerns, like financial issues, political and world events, job concerns and family issues. Well some of these things can be totally out of our hand, but we feel like holding onto that stressed state of mind is natural. In nature that might’ve been the right response, but when we can’t run away from our threats, we gotta learn that it’s ok and actually a priority to let the stress go and focus on being chill!
When we allow ourselves to be engulfed by chronic stress, our body reacts to it as though there is a constant physical threat, our stomach tightens, our digestion is thrown off, our metabolism slows, cells go into defense mode, our ph balance leans towards acidic (which causes a host of issues), our nervous system becomes taxed, and our muscles become chronically tense and rigid. In other words, stress can be detrimental to our health sometimes waaay more so than the things we were stressing about in the first place!
Stress also has a another nasty side effect. It leaves you feeling distracted and your judgement clouded. When we’re stressed, the key to our slavation can be right under our nose, but we wouldn’t see it unless we relaxed and allowed our focus to look beyond the negative! Let’s take a look at professional athletes for a moment… nice segway eh? I’m not a sports buff myself, but you can learn a lot from people who’re pushing themselves to the limit in their game of choice! For instance, have you ever noticed that the best players looked calm when they scored those last minute goals? Or that they pulled off things with an almost cocky self confidence? Well that appearant arrogance comes from training yourself to be totally relaxed, even under stressful conditions. This is so important because if they weren’t relaxed, they wouldn’t have been able to see that opening, take that shot and score those points…it would’ve been lost in a haze of stress and self doubt! Well we can use this same principle in our daily lives!
By training ourselves to be relaxed in the face of stress we gain so much! We can see oppurtunities and soltuions that may have otherwise eluded us, and we have our wits about us. And if stress can cause bad things physically than imagine what good physical effects being relaxed can have! Our body can release it’s tension, maintain a healthy appetite and metabolism, our heart rate can get back to normal…we can breath again! And our cells in a relaxed comfortable state recieve signals from our brain that say “everything is groovy” (yeah, groovy!) and in this state of being they can continue their amazing work of maintaining our health and creating the best version of ourself! The biggest benefit to realizing that being chill is priority numero uno, is that we can see the many wonderful things in our lives again! All those lil’ things that were obscured and overlooked are all of a sudden back! This includes of course people! How often do we notice, that we have loved ones who may have been missing us while we were spacing out over stress? So be chill… it’s good for you, your internal community and your family, friends and loved ones!
Have a chillin’ day! ~ Rory :0)
Kung-Fu’ing those cravings!
Hey My friends! Are you confronting junk food temptations on your raw path? I’ve been there and it can be a pain in the butt, but there are some ways we can deal with all the tasty, but crappy goodies that surround us!
Wether it’s the baked goodies in the break room at work, the maze of fast food joints we have to drive through, or the sodas and candy at the check out counters of nearly any retail store you hit up (including, twistedly, plus sized clothing outlets!) there are less than ideal eats everywhere we go! At home we’re bombarded by advertisements for pizza and burger joints on tv and many local joints so kindly leave their fliers and magnets in your mailbox. Well here are some strategies that I used to comfortably side step all the junky munchies that abound!
First thing I would do when confronted by a less than ideal option would be to think about why my raw food options rock so much, rather than focusing on why the unhealthy eats suck! This kept the things that I wanted to eat in my mind, leaving lil’ room to think about what I didn’t want to eat! When we waste our time thinking of the negative side of unhealthy eats, it just gives them more air-time on our internal radio and invites our inner rebel to pipe up and defend our former food choices and encourage us to eat them for the sake of being “bad”! So let’s avoid that mental game by thinking of what we want to eat!
Next on the home front I pimped out my kitchen making it a constant reminder of the awesomeness of rawsomeness! Bowls of fresh fruit, a fridge stocked with beautiful greens, my favorite raw and healthy living books decorated a shelf below the food processor and ya remember those pizza place magnets? Well we cut them up and glued them to the back of photos of our favorite raw creations, slapped those on the refrigerator and now we got our own subliminal advertising!
Strawberry Pie with Banana Ice Cream! One of the photos we used for our fridge magnets!
When leaving the house I would be sure to pack some of my favorite raw treats, some fresh fruit and often a chocolate or green smoothie with me. And I always brought more than I thought I would need! This worked out really great because when I would be confronted by something junky, I could fill up on the good stuff and have no room left for cravings! This trick works great for grocery shopping, mall walking and at the movie theatres… I didn’t tell you that! But, seriously, for the price of a medium popcorn and soda you could treat yourself to dinner at a raw restaurant! While I was out I would also scout out places that had healthy options, so that if I forgot to bring my stash, I could pick up something else!
For my work lunches I always put a lot of attention into making them awesome and tasty. because it’s easiest to be raw at home, I would save my awesomest treats for when I would be faced with less than ideal options! Rather than saying things like “Thanks for the cake offer, but I have carrot sticks.” I could say “Thanks for the cake, but I already have some chocolate filled cinnamon rolls!” You should’ve seen the faces when coworkers tried them and realized this is what raw treats can be! I also liked to put a lot of love and positive intentions into my packed lunches because it made me that much more enthused about eating it the next day!
The Chewy Chocolaty Goodness Bars from my Sweet Support E-Book, are a worthy opponent to beat out candy bar cravings!
Lastly, but not leastly, if you find yourself eating something you’d rather not have don’t waste a minute beating yourself up! If you beat yourself up often, you’re going to invite that inner-rebel to pop up again and defend you by bashing your new healthy lifestyle! Rather than beating yourself up, take that time to boost yourself up instead! Some of my favorite raw recipes came from slipping, eating some junky snack, and pondering “How can I make a rawified version of this?”. There’s no need to be hard on yourself, just whip yourself up a green smoothie when ya get home and let the negativity slide!
Keep rockin’ in your healthy living adventures! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Enzymes aren’t the “end all be all”, but that’s cool!
Hey everyone! As you may often discover when getting’ into the world of healthy living, some things aren’t always what they seem to be. When I first got into researching the benefits of a raw diet I kept coming upon the importance of enzymes and how cooking damages and deactivates them, it’s in many of my favorite raw books! I thought it made total sense and have even written a post in the past based on what I’d read up on, but the more I delve into enzymes lately… the more I think they may have been a lil’ overhyped. Let’s check out what’s what … and be not afraid it doesn’t mean raw rocks any less!
The work of Dr. Edward Howell was awesome for his time, but modern science is showing that the active enzymes in raw foods may not play as crucial role in digestion as we thought they did! Enzymes may do some predigesting of our foods when we cut, chop or blend our fresh fruits and veggies and release them, but they don’t appear to have a noticeable impact on digestion.
Anatomy pics are kinda gross, but visuals are fun!
There are others theorizing that enzymes are being transported from our digestive tract and being absorbed into our blood stream, while this may be true in some cases, there isn’t sufficient evidence out there to show that this is helping to assist the work our own metabolic enzymes. Now this doesn’t mean that someday they won’t find out that they actually do, but when talking with other’s about the benefits of a raw diet, we don’t wanna go on theory alone! Check out “Becoming Raw” by Brenda Davis RD, Vesanto Melina MS, RD and Rynn Berry for more info. It’s a great book with loads of scientifically referenced material about raw vegan diets and why they rock! Check out my friend, Bitt’s review of this awesome book!
Thought ya might need a cute animal "palate cleanser" after that previous picture!
Does this mean that eating raw foods is any less awesome? Heck no! I’ve experienced the benefits of raw foods and continue to, it just means that one of the reasons we thought unheated eats rock may be unfounded, which means there is more going on with raw munchies than we thought! Figuring out just what is the most magical thing about our fresh eats is a fascinating adventure on it’s own!
Also there are two plant based enzymes that do something pretty amazing for us (in their raw active state) and they are myrosinase (found in Cruciferous veggies such as broccoli, arugula, cabbage, bok choy, turnips, kale and watercress ) and alliinase (found in Allium veggies such as onions, garlic, chives and leeks). When veggies in these families are chopped, blended, processed, or chewed the enzymes are released and they immediately begin to break down the plant’s phytochemicals into very beneficial bioactive metabolites that have some amazing health benefits for us… such as being antiviral, antiarthritic, antiparasitic, and can also assist our liver in it’s work of detoxifying our blood! But, if we were to neutralize these active enzymes with cooking, this break down process wouldn’t occur and we’d be missing out! So there’s a good case for keeping enzymes in their active unheated state!
Get your myrosinase and alliinase on!
One of the biggest things we may be hearing more and more about is the power of phytochemicals (plant based chemicals that plants use to defend themselves from stress, pests, pathogens and environmental issues) which are usually more available in unheated foods that have been blended, juiced or ran through a food processor than they are in cooked foods! There’s a lot more to the awesomeness of raw eats and I’ll be getting into some of the specifics in even more detail in upcoming posts, so stay tuned!
On an anecdotal note papaya and pineapple based digestive enzyme supplements, have worked wonders for me when I went vegetarian (especially with the increase of beans in my daily menu!)! They’ve also helped me during my raw transitioning, like when I over did it on sulfurous veggies after reading “Eating for Beauty” by David Wolfe. I went on and onion, radish and MSM spree for a week and wound up with gas pains that left me feeling like I was having a heart attack! After eating a whole roll of papaya enzyme discs I felt almost instant relief. So there is definitely something to them!
Keep rockin’ my friends and lemme know what you think about enzymes in raw eats! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Kudos to all our awesome hosts!
Hey Peeps!! I’ve been MIA here online for a few days as we’ve had the opportunity to stay with a couple of friends here in Springfield, OR! Kim and Roy (who we got to meet at Tim Van Orden’s event) hosted us before, during and after my ”Gettin’ Raw the Fun Way” workshop (which was held at their place …they freakin’ rock!!). The workshop was a blast and some friends from Raw Food Rehab showed up as well!
Roy and I being goofballs as usual!
We all had a great time as we talked, goofed off and whipped up some tasty raw goodies together over those several days. Cashew based cheesecake and Cacao Mint based raw ice cream(with fresh mint from their garden!) were some of the faves! Shadow and I went running with Kim and Roy, Isabel made a new friend with a neighbor’s granddaughter, and Amanda got some much needed rest to recover from a bought with asthmatic bronchitis. Thankfully she’s feeling a bit better and will be hitting up the doc’s soon to get a new inhaler. Despite feeling under the weather Amanda had a great time talking, at a whisper, with Kim and friends until the wee hours! This was yet another one of the beautiful intermissions on our journey!
Creamy, Icy, Minty Goodness...Oh Yes!
We are blessed to have awesome peeps lending their time and opening up their homes to us and we love making these connections. I feel like our family is growing all the time! We hope to reconnect with everyone we’ve stayed with again and are often bummed to leave our new friends… so if you see us lookin’ a lil’ bit sad as we head off, it’s not dreading going back to the van life, it’s from wondering when we’ll catch you again. It fades gradually as we realize that we are making such awesome friends all across the country and hopefully, after we settle down after the trek, we’ll get a chance to have them over someday!
Isabel chillin' with some new feline friends
Much love everyone, and to all who’ve hosted us, we look forward to catching up with you again! ~ Rory :0)
We Like It Raw Rocks!
Hey my friends! If you dig raw and healthy foods, fun active lifestyles and havin’ a good time you gotta check out We Like It Raw. Organized by Dhrumil Purohit and Philip McCluskey, We Like It Raw is a community hub and blog that highlights peeps in our extended online community of health and life loving peeps and is also a blog featuring recipes, articles, inspiration and some awesome information!
Dhrumil Purohit is an amazing guy! He’s constantly working guiding people through the wholistic healthy living world and bringing people together in the community. He put together WLIR back in 2005 as a place to achieve these community building goals!
Goofing off with Phil and friends at Raw Spirit Festival East
Philip McCluskey is pretty darn incredible himself! He’s a healthy living motivator and raw food expert. Back in 06′ Philip was 400lbs and decided to take to raw foods, well he lost 215lbs and has become a shining example of what is possible when we take our lives in our own hands and enjoy the bounty of awesome raw eats that are available! Philip can be found online sharing the raw love all over the place and on his site Loving Raw! Be sure to check out his story and tell him Rory says Hi!
These two cool mamajamas and other contributors have created a great place to check out some peeps from all over the world who share common goals and interests, drool over some tasty recipes, and learn something new…so go check it out! While you’re there be sure to check out some of the fun articles I put together for the WLIR crew! Like ~
Gettin’ Ripped on P90X and Raw Foods (lot’s of info on how I got pumped up with raw eats and Tony Horton’s fun workout tutorial!)
Banana Ice Cream Split (fun, easy and tasty raw dessert recipe!)
Banana Ice Cream Split...Oh Yes!
My ‘My Way’ article which gives you a lil’ in depth look at some of my past adventures on our Live My Life NOW Trek ..including my bungee jumping experience!
Keep exploring and reaching out to the awesome community that surrounds us! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Chillin’ with Tim Van Orden!
Hey Peeps! This trek has been chock full of awesome synchronistic events and this was certainly one of them. Through the help of some friends we ended up making it just in time for an amazing presentation by Tim Van Orden!!
Me & Tim!
Tim Van Orden is an amazing guy, he got into raw foods about 5+1/2 years ago and with his Running Raw Project, he has made himself a human guinea pig for the performance enhancing effects of a raw foods diet, but his story goes waaaaay beyond that! Tim was battling with severe depression when he started out and found some serious relief through his new lifestyle which focuses on well being, not just diet, not just movement or excercise, but philosophy. A philosophy that I can totally relate to and that is choosing the moment you’re living in …and embracing it!! Accepting it as a gift and using it for all it’s worth!
His incredible talk touched on so many things, but one subject stuck out immediately to me. Tim talked about something that can easily get left out when people get their minds set on taking on a raw lifestyle: the importance of community and socialization. If we don’t take the time to connect with and relate to others and let the dogma of a raw diet (that many of us may stumble into from time to time) seperate us from friends, we may miss out on something that impacts our health greatly and that is embracing our fellow human beings!! It can be done, we can be raw and have friends, we can reach out to people and we can relate to people even in their lifestyle aproach isn’t our own.
Amanda and Kim Willard of Rawkin' Lane County!
One sure fire way to make it work is to lose the focus on food in our conversations! I’ve been there in the begining, so psyched about my raw lifestyle and it’s benefits that I bored a few friends to near death talking about it! We just have to focus on the reasons we love our friends and family and shoot the raw breeze with fellow fanatics! We all may notice that we chat about different things with different friends as we share some common interests with different peeps…so it’s easy to use that rule of thumb when it comes to our diet and lifestyle choices! I hear from a lot of people who feel alienated by their new interest in raw foods and I wanted to share it here because I believe that we can bridge these gaps, have our friends and eat our raw cake too!
After Tim’s talk we were about to head off when Kim Willard of Rawking Lane County offered for us to crash at her and her friend Roy’s place…where they were also hosting Tim for the the night! We headed off with them and had the most surreal night ever, talking, goofing off (especially Tim, he’s quite a character!), rebounding and whipping together raw pizzas at 2am!! We all prepared different portions that would make up the finished pizza’s so each lil’ raw pie was infused with a lil’ bit of love from everyone! Awesome idea Kim!! We chatted til waaay late before heading to bed and I gotta tell you surreal and wonderful are the only words I can find to describe it! It’s a night that I won’t forget and to be sure I wrote it down..right here!
Raw Pesto Pizza with marinated veggies and topped with lot's of love!
Keep rockin’ my friends, maintain those relationships, make new ones and trust me there are plenty of peeps out there that love talking about raw foods and the raw lifestyle so we don’t gotta torture our friends who may be wanting to chat about other stuff! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Don’t Forget to Add the Love!
All of us getting into healthier eating have probably heard the phrase “You are what you eat.” about a million times by now and it is an important thing to consider, but beyond all the nutrients, phytochemicals, minerals and macronutrients there is something that we should never leave out of our eats… love!
Think about it. Why are you going through the extra work of preparing your own food? Why are you looking for healthier options? Whether it’s for you or your family it all comes back to love! We make our health a priority because we care about ourselves anough to make sure we’re eating the good stuff and we do the same for our family… we can say it’s because a health guru said we should, but the real underlying reason is because we care! We want to enjoy life, feel good and realize our true potential! So we should contemplate that while we rock out our tasty healthy goodies!
When we focus on the loving reasons we prepare our eats we infuse that energy right into our food and I’m not just talking in some intangible new agey kinda way… I’m talking literally! I mean just check into emotions effects on water crystal formation! And we’ve all heard how plants respond to loving intentions! There’s some awesome info out there and it makes sense on so many levels to put that emotion and gratitude into the meals we create for ourselves and our family.
We all know that a sweater woven by us for someone who cares for us always feels warmer, produce grown by farmers who are passionate about their work always tastes best, and Mom and Grandma’s food always makes us feel good because it was made with love! We can create that same effect by pausing, taking a deep breath and remembering all the loving reasons we’re concocting our own foods. When we do that we enjoy the whole process so much more and we end up with a creation that contains that special ingredient!
Here’s a Vid I did for the Geeked Fu Challenge about adding that special ingredient!
Less Time Prepping and More Time Enjoying!
Hello everyone, I’m back with some time saving tips for your healthy lifestyle havin’ self!
In my earlier post about Playin’ in the kitchen we covered ways to make your kitchen time more fun, now let’s check out some ways we can save time in the kitchen and have more time to enjoy our culinary creations… and our lives! It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the amazing raw gourmet recipes that are out there that we may find ourselves spending a wee bit more in the kitchen than we had expected! This is a common problem for not only raw foodies, but anyone looking to make their own awesome healthy treats from scratch. So how do we streamline our kitchen time a bit while rockin’ out some healthy yummy goodness?
First get organized! This always sounds trickier than it is, basically organizing is figuring out a theme for things like “smoothie ingredients” or “eating utensils” and just make sure things are hanging out where they fit in best so that you know where everything is at! I can tell you from growing up with a rather disorganized kitchen that even simple recipes seem to take forever when you don’t know where some of your tools and ingredients have gotten off to. So get it together and you’ll be flying through food prep!
Pick up some foods you love to eat as is or with little modification. Yeah there’s a culinary term ya don’t hear too often! What we can shoot for is our favorite fruits and veggies that we love to just wash and eat, such as grapes, bananas, oranges, apples, pears, plums, tomatoes and avocadoes. Along with veggies such as broccoli and cauliflower which just need a lil’ washing and breaking up. This is a great way to deal with hunger as soon as you walk in the door rather then trying to make dinner while you’re starving! You can chop up a couple tomatoes, dice and avo and mix them up with some salt, pepper and cumin and you got a quick meal going! Speaking of quick meals…
Find as many simple yet satisfying recipes as you can and make them the backbone of your day to day menus! When you have a culinary arsenal full of quick and tasty dishes you can whip stuff anytime! Start making up your own as well! I overcame my biggest hurdles when gettin’ raw by creating meals that worked with what I could find locally and didn’t take ten years to concoct! Using mainly easy recipes also gives you some serious flexibility with your kitchen time, which everyone needs no matter how much they love goofing off in there… I mean come on… I’m not the only raw foodie nerd out there that absolutely loves being in the kitchen…am I?
When you make dehydrated and or freezable recipes, go ahead and double the batch when appropriate. This way you stock up on things that have a longer prep time such as kale chips, veggie crackers, raw flat breads and granola as well as freezable goodies such as raw ice creams, cinnamon rolls and raw frozen pies and cakes. Now you’ll have some ready to go stuff when you’re craving something sweet or crunchy…two of the biggest food cravings out there!
Always make mass quantities of dehydrated goodies!
Rock out the gourmet meals on days that you don’t have much else to do! Think about it… those hardcore fancy dinners our parents would make we’re usually on weekends or other free days! So let’s do the same and create those complicated treats when we have plenty of free time to hang out in the kitchen, goof off, listen to some tunes and really enjoy the whole process! When we do this we’re gonna put a lot more positivity into the finished product and be relaxed and ready to truly enjoy our finished masterpiece when it’s done!
Keep rockin’ out yummy rawsomeness and spend the amount of time you want to spend in the kitchen! ~ Rory :0)
Cheffin’ it up for friends on the trek!
Hangin' with our friend Misty from Raw Food Rehab! :0)
Hey Everyone! The Live My Life Now Trek is going awesomely! I’ve gotta say the awesomest thing about the trek so far is all the wonderful people we’ve been meeting along the way! We’ve met up with people from our vast online community from Raw-Fu to Raw Food Rehab and many Peeps who’ve found me through youtube! It’s been so amazing hanging out, getting to know them and their families and learning more about the areas they live in. There are so many things about a place you visit that you’d never know unless you talked to someone who lives there! We’ve been geocacheing with Misty and her family, we hit up the Saturday Market in Portland with Mallory and her family and I actually assembled the recipes and Amanda took the photos for Sweet Support in Mallory’s kitchen! We’ve played board games, hit up parks and went health food store hunting with so many fun people since the trek has begun!
The Infamously Delicious Horchata Cake (recipe in Sweet Support!)
One of the things that I really love to do when were staying with someone is to whip them up some awesome raw goodness! It’s such a joy for me to be able to do something nice for the amazing people that let us crash with them and take a break from the van! Many of our hosts will pick up some awesome ingredients and I whip us all up something good! So far on the trek I’ve rocked out raw ice creams, cinnamon rolls, cakes, cheezecake, cookies, pies, and savory dishes such as salad with hemp ranch dressing and full blown raw tacos with the works! I love concocting stuff in the kitchen and especially enjoy sharing my creations with friends and loved ones, so it is such a win, win, win situation!!
Random pretty flower from a trail in Oregon
If you host us along our adventures please don’t be shy to ask me to create some raw goodness, it’s a fun way for me to give back and I get to play in the kitchen! Much love everyone and keep an eye on our route to see when we might be near you.. and your kitchen! Dun dun dun! :0)
Let’s Get Playin’ In the Kitchen!
Remember when you were a kid and playing in the kitchen was a blast? Many of us had fake plastic foods and toy ovens. Sometimes Mom or Dad would have us help out when making a special treat and around the holidays? Time spent in the kitchen was fun and full of wonder… let’s keep that goin’!
If like me, you’ve decided to take charge of what you’re eating (whether we’re talking raw foods, whole foods or healthier cooked options) you may find yourself spending more time in the kitchen as you’re working with the raw ingredients to create dishes that are not only healthy, but freakin’ delicious! Now I’m a hardcore foodie and love goofing off in the kitchen, but I know that most people aren’t as fond of the kitchen as I am so let’s take a look at some ways we can make our time in the kitchen more enjoyable!
First thing we can do is to pimp out our lil’ culinary creation stations! Best way to start is to do some de-cluttering. I like to empty out the kitchen drawers, cabinets and closet so I can see what I got to work with! You may find you have ten of the same wooden spatula or enough pots and pans to cover five stove tops. In this case gather up your essentials and favorites and donate the rest to your local goodwill! My rule of thumb is if I haven’t used the item in the last five months…its fair game for giving away! Now we got some breathing room and we know where everything is so putting together our favorite recipes is going to be a lot easier and more fun!
Let’s bring in some things that really make the kitchen our own. Artwork and photos of things that inspire us, scenes of nature, colorful abstracts or breathtaking pictures of people doing things we’re working towards are great reminders of why we are so passionate about being healthy! I also like to have a centerpiece of beautiful produce that doesn’t require refrigeration and have fresh flowers around whenever possible! Set yourself up with a warm friendly atmosphere and you’ll find your kitchen a more inviting place to not only whip up tasty eats, but to chill in and enjoy them!
Owl City.. one of my fave bands to groove to in and out of the kitchen!
Another thing that can’t be overestimated is the power of music! Listening to music carries me through even the most tedious of kitchen tasks… like dishes! Whatever you love rock it out! I feel a boom box is an essential piece of kitchen equipment, but if your neighbors disapprove, an mp3 player loaded with your favorite stuff can be a great alternative! Speaking of mp3’s there are so many amazing educational podcasts and audio learning programs available out there that you can be learning more about healthy living, raw foods, meditation or even a new language all while goofing off making food! And in the name of really goofing off don’t forget comedy albums. George Carlin, Eddie Izzard and Tommy Tiernan are some of my favorite comedians. Nothing makes any job go faster than some good laughs!
Let’s all get rockin’ in our kitchens and take away that stigma of the kitchen being a place of work and start transforming them into our own lil’ creative culinary art studios and alchemical nutrition laboratories where we concoct delicious, artful and ridiculously healthy eats for ourselves and our loved ones!
Keep playin’ in your kitchen my friends! ~ Rory :0)
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 ~
New E-Book!! ‘Sweet Support’ Is Ready!
Hello friends! Today I’m unleashing a new ebook! Sweet Support! This nifty little e-book has four simple yet delicious raw recipes that focus on using whole foods as the sweeteners! I’ve always been into using fruit and vegetable based sweeteners (along with raw honey because of it’s amazing health giving properties!) to add, not only that sweet goodness, but more healthy goodness to my raw creations… not to mention they’re usually a lot less expensive than some of the concentrated sweeteners that are out there!
Sweet Support is 25 pages full of step-by-step photos, tricks, tips and recipe ideas, as well as a bit on using whole food based sweeteners in various raw recipes including desserts, drinks and dinners. My favorite thing about this ebook is that all the proceeds go to supporting Amanda’s Live My Life NOW Trek, which is inspiring so many to stop waiting and do what you’ve always wanted to do! Click here to get your copy!
Check it out and thanks for following our journey! Peace~ Rory :0)
No-Mess Massaged Kale Salad
Helloooooo there! Do you love kale? Well even if you don’t this salad may just change your mind…it sure impressed Isabel, who is not a fan of salad, let alone kale!
When we began our trek I did a shout out to my friends at Raw Fu who are participating in my Geeked Fu Challenge. I asked them “How do you travel raw” (I swear I wasn’t eliciting stories of indecent exposure on the motorway!) and they had some awesome tips and tricks for rockin’ raw eats while on the go! Angie’s kale salad recipe sounded really good and easy so we gave it a shot while hanging out at Mount Hood in Oregon.
No-Mess Massaged Kale Salad ~ Super easy, tasty and mess free…perfect raw road food! Let’s get started!
Large zip close bag (gallon size)
1-2 Heads of kale
1 Large avocado
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
1/2 teaspoon of onion granules (or powder)
1/2 teaspoon of cumin
Pinch of cayenne (or more if you like it hot, hot hot!)
Tear kale leaves from the stems and rip into bite size pieces tossing them in the bag as you go. Cut the avo in half, pop out the pit, and squish out of the skin directly into the bag. Juice the lemon into the bag, using your hand or other straining device to catch the seeds. Sprinkle in salt and spices. Now Squish!! Once the salad appears evenly coated and massaged to your liking it’s ready!
The salad was so tasty that Isabel rated it up there with my vitamix made ice creams! So if likening a salad to a dessert is any indicator of awesomeness…this salad is BOMB! Enjoy my friends and eat more kale!! :0)
Heading to California and beyond!
Hey my friends!! If you’ve been followng our Trek across the United States so far then I have some news for you….
The Live My Life Now Trek is heading in a new direction! Rather than going through the upper middle portion of the country. we’re going to be heading south! Ths new course will take us through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Lousiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia before finally ending in Hampton Pennsylvania!
This is a rough estimate of our new route. A more specific route will be announced in a few days.
Our new route came about after a lot of thinking. One of our biggest motivations was that the adventure is so amazing that we want to keep it going (the new route will take approx. a year and four months!) and Isabel will get to see even more amazing parts of our country that she’s only read about! The new route will also allow us more chances to meet up with people to spread Amanda’s inspirational story and put together meet-ups, talks and raw recipe demos!! Another plus of this new route is that we will avoid extremes of weather (very helpful considering our interesting living situation!).
We are in the works of locating areas and meet up groups along the new route to share our adventures and some raw recipe demos and talks! If you are along our new route and would like to walk with Amanda, host a meet up, or talk with us or have us crash at your place and whip up some raw goodies, then hit us up! Looking forward to more oppurtunities to spread the inspiration of Amanda’s journey and some raw and healthy living info!
Wishing you the best and hope t0 see you long the way! :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!
Foods that make gettin’ raw easy-peasy!
Hey everyone! Back again with another round of transitioning tips!
Whether you’re going for high raw, all raw or just adding more raw eats to your menu, there are some specific raw foods that can help support your digestive system as it relearns how to assimilate all the awesome fiberrific eats you are giving it!
1- Oranges…well not just oranges, but all citrus fruit. I’m focusing on oranges because they played a vital role in my transition that I didn’t even realize. As I began to do more and more green smoothies I found myself with a new found love of salads. And as I got my salad munching on I started craving oranges. After I would chow down on my salad I’d find myself eating several oranges, somtimes up to six a day! Now I like citrus as much as the next raw foodie, but this infatuation with oranges was a new thing for me. Slowly and unaounced though, oranges fell off my craving’s radar and I’d eat them sporadically. I didn’t think much of it until a couple months later I picked up a copy of The Sunfood Diet Success System and David Wolfe was reccomending an orange after your salad to supplement your digestive acids. My body was subconsciously guiding me to do just that! You can do the same thing and use orange, lime, lemon or grapefruit juice on your salad or in your salad dressing blend to boost your digestive power and add more vitamin c, antioxidants and phytonutrients to your already awesome salad!
2- Celery Juice! Celery juice is some amazing stuff! It’s loaded with chlorophyl, alkalyzing minerals and sodium. Not the kind of sodium we want to avoid, we’re talking the good stuff! The sodium found in celery can be used by our body in the formation of digestive acids. Many people having digestive acids may just be lacking in these beneficial salts!
3- Papaya and Pineapple. These two awesome fruits are getting paired togther here because they both contain some serious digestion boosting enzymatic power! Papaya’s enzyme content is so high that it is often used in natural cleaning products to “eat up” organically based stains! Papaya can be eaten fresh, juiced, or smoothied and also can be purchased as a chewable supplement. The chewable supplements are awesome to carry with you for those times you eat something that you need a lil’ help breaking down! Pineapple also contains a powerful digestive enzyme known as bromelain, the bulk of it is in the core of the pineapple, which can be juiced or blended into smoothies. Bromelain can also usually be found in papaya supplements. These two make an awesome team and while fresh is best, I also found the supplements helpful during my transition, and when I do some bad food combining! I recommend giving them a shot during your transition, and they’ll help you when you do eat something cooked, particualarly something that could cause gas. They’ve saved my modesty many a time back in my high bean vegetarian days!
Happy, healthy, and fun transitions to wherever you are steering your diet! :0)
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$$!
Prep techniques that ease your raw transition!
Hey everyone! Back again with more strategies for making your raw transition easy, comfortable and fun!
If you’ve read my article about Enzymes and my page on Why Raw, then you know that one of the most awesome benefits about raw foods is that they ease the burden on our digestive system and our enzyme pool. By making life easier for our digestive system we increase the amount of energy our body has to do other things from healing to having fun!
This is awesome, but for a lot of us our body may need a lil’ help getting back in shape for breaking down fiberous eats after years of cooked food. Have you noticed that you or people you know have that experience when they jump on the healthy eating bandwagon and hit the salads hardcore that they can often feel bloated, gassy and just blah and you’ll usually hear them say things like “Health food just doesn’t agree with me.” ?….Well they’re partially right. Their bodies certainly want those healthy eats, but they may be suffering from a lack of Hydrochloric acids and healthy sodiums that our body uses to break down the tough fibers in some raw foods…especially greens!
This lil’ issue can often discourage many from following through with adding more fresh foods to their life, so I want to share what this is all about and some of the foods that can get your tummy pumped up for breaking down some raw goodness!
1~ Blending! One of my favorites! This easy raw food prep technique turns tough raw foods (such as greens) into tasty and outrageously healthy green smoothies, blended soups, and tasty dessert smoothies. Blending makes the texture of some foods more palatable and allows your body to access nutrients that may have taken quite a while to chew out of the. Blended food also gives your body chance to gradually increase it’s stores of digestive acids as it practices on these lightweight pre-broken down goodies! I found this particualarly true when I began drinking green smoothies on a regular basis. Prior to rockin’ the green smoothies, I maybe ate salad once a week as part of my raw transitional diet (and certainly didn’t crave it!) , but after about a month of drinking about 32oz of green smoothie a day, I found myself eating the greens out of the colander before I could even get them in the blender! I was originally bewildered by the claims of long term raw foodies that they adored greens, but I now find myself with the same “affliction”! I want to note here that my first batches of green smoothies had much more fruit then greens, but the number of greens quickly went up! The point is..start with what feels right to you! This way you’ll be more likely to want to follow through with your raw adventure!
Soaking nuts and seeds~ Many nuts and seeds (with the exception of hemp seeds) contain enzyme inhibitors to prevent premature sprouting in their natural habitat and potentially to prevent animals from fully digesting them (in hopes that they will later be deposited elsewhere ..complete with free fertilizer!). These enzyme inhibitors can also make them not so easy on our stomachs. Amanda and myself experienced a bad case of bloating after preparing a raw nut based pate recipe we seen online that used unsoaked nuts….from then on we started soaking our nuts! I have recomended soak times for nuts and seeds in my ebook “Gettin’ Raw with Rawdawg Rory” but, I’ll break down a bit of the basics here. Nuts with a lot of tannic acid and taste a bit bitter such as almonds, walnuts and pecans should be soaked for about 6-12 hours and then rinsed off before using and seeds such as pumpkin and sunflower can be soaked as lil’ as 2-6 hours. This will leave your raw nuts and seeds more biologically active, cleaner, easier to digest and tastier!
3~ Marinating…oh yes! I loooove marinated veggies! Using salty or acidic marinades we can create numerous tasty dishes, such as softened veggies for wraps, mock stir fries, and raw dishes that have that same wonderful texture as if they’ve been cooked! This not only makes them more tasty, but waaay more digestible! I like to shred carrots with a julienne peeler and toss them with a lil’ salt and garlic powder, allow them to soften, and toss this tasty shredded carrot filling in a romaine leaf wrap and dip ‘em in a mock peanut sauce! Shredding and massaging tough greens such as kale with lemon juice and a lil’ salt can transform it inton a delicious salad base! You’d be surprised at how many veggies that were tough to eat raw and un-prepped can easily become something that’ll have you lookin’ forward to your raw dinner!
4~ Lastly, but not leastly… juicing! I saved juicing for last as it’s pretty much a no-brainer. Juices are a super digestible and totally easy way to give your body a blast of nutrients, phytochemicals and minerals. Depending on your juicer and or juicing technique, the finished drinks will have lil’ or no fiber and your body has lil’ or no work digesting it. This is awesome, but I would highly reccomend that you are bringing in fiber in a blended form (especially green smoothies!) as these pre-broken down fibers are needed to carry out the toxins and wastes that your body is going to be releasing as it uses those awesome raw goodies to do some house cleaning!
So rememember if some raw foods don’t seem to agree with you, then consider these prep techniques to allow your body the training time it needs to work up to it’s full digestive strength! As a bonus these prep techniques also make the nutrients in your awesome raw eats more absorbable…so you get more out of your food! There’ll be more to come about particular raw foods that help the transitioning process be super smooth…so see ya then! :0)
Gettin’ Geeked Up by being thankful! :0)
Hello lovely people! SO many people are always commenting on my ree-gosh~dang-diculously upbeat personality….I’ve heard it all before from…”Man, did you just win the lottery?” …or “What the heck have you been smokin’?” Well for the serious inquiries here’s one of the things that has me smiling very often…
Being thankful….seems like a simple enough thing…and often reserved for “Turkey Day”, but just contemplating all the lil’ things in my life that I’m grateful for totally shifts my perception right to where I want it…on the good stuff! This lil’ trick has been with me since waaaay back in pre-raw days and it always brings a smile to my face. No matter where I was at in life I could always find things to be thankful for…and the more I focused on them…the more grateful I became and it’s an awesome feeling! Not only does contemplating things you’re thankful for make you feel good, but if you’re thinking about people you’re thankful for then who knows…maybe you’ll reach out, let them know and pay the thankfulness forward!
As raw foodies nowadays we have a butt-ton of things to be thankful for! There are so many awesome free resources available online to get you started on the journey, loads of recipe demos, awesome raw communities, meet-up groups and an ever growing community of raw and raw-curious individuals! Suppliers of raw food staples and raw treats are abounding and the ever increasing demand is bringing the prices down! All the peeps with a new-found love of organic produce are supporting the sustainable farmers that are working to keep the world a beatiful place! Raw resteraunts, cafes and pre-packaged raw foods are popping up everywhere! And the stories of raw transformations are becoming more and more common! So if you’re gettin’ raw or just adding more raw eats to your diet….you have a lot of awesome things to be thankful for!
Have a grateful day! :0)
Chia seed…not just for terra cotta heads anymore!
Hello everyone! It’s another lovely day on our Trek and I’ve whipped up one of Amanda’s favorite post Trekking eats…Chia seed pudding! It’s amazing how simple and delicious this stuff is! Not only is it tasty, but chia has some pretty substantial health benefits!
*Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids! Chia contains both of these important brain building fatty acids in a wonderfully balanced proportion. Great vegan source for this good stuff!
*High amount of soluble fiber. Soluble fiber is soft and soothing on the digestive tract. It coats the intestinal walls and helps them to heal from inflammatory conditions. These wonderful lil’ fibers also absorb bile as they pass through the digestive tract dragging out toxins along with it, our body utilizes cholesterol to create new bile thereby lowering the amount of cholestrol elsewhere in the body. Useful for people struggling with high cholesterol!
*Buffering sugar absorption. Adding chia to sweet recipes such as smoothies and desserts can help prevent blood sugar spikes due to it’s high fiber content. This is great for people with sugar issues and also gives your smoothies energy content a more long-lasting effect!
*Chia seeds are also loaded with protein and are rapidly digestible. They’re easier to chew up then flax seed and don’t have that same rapid flush effect you sometimes get from consuming a bunch of flax!
* Chia’s gelatinous properties make it a wonderful thickening agent, giving body to your smoothies, firmness to your pies and a crispy binder to your dehydrated breads and crackers!
When used soaked as in this pudding recipe, the seeds will have begun to undergo some of their germination process, making them more enzymatically active…always a good thing! Ya can never get too many of these lil’ “sparks of life”in your diet. :0)
I love using it for making pudding because it’s super quick and easy and the finished product has a nice tapioca like texture….one of my fave pudding’s from back in the day! One tip that I’d like to add for creating your chia pudding base is to make it a lil’ more strongly flavored than you’d like in your finished product as the gelling process will dilute the flavor a bit.
Oooo I wanted to do the chia jingle at the begining of this vid, but didn’t wanna risk a lawsuit! *lol*
Have a tasty day my friends…much love! ~ Rory :0)
Raw Transitioning Tips!
Hello! I’ve been contemplating my beginings with raw foods and some of the awesome transitioning techniques and foods that made it an easy (and exploding-bowel-less) journey!
We’ve all heard detoxification horror stories….I won’t get into any of the graphic details…especially about the alien parasites that often burst from the buttocks of those attempting to clean up their diet. Haha! Just kidding on that last one….mostly. :0)
This was a concern of mine when I first heard about raw foods and it gave me a brief pause moment…as I didn’t like the idea of going through a brutal detoxification period where I’d be feeling lousy, dealing with headaches and making frequent bathroom runs. Especially not wanting to miss work or put off other responsibilities to deal with the consequences of hardcore cleansing. Luckily these thoughts only briefly paused me, but some people may be put off to the idea of raw living after hearing some tales of transitioning woes….that’s why I want to share some of the philosphy, strategy and foods that helped me ease comfortably into gettin’ raw!
Upon hearing of the effects of hardcore detoxing I thought….I think I’ll take the slow aproach and ease into raw eating. This worked out for me multifold!
1~ By starting off with a modest 50% goal I wasn’t pushing myself far out of my comfort zone and this allowed me to play around with raw foods and develop my own simple and tasty recipes, source local ingredients, and get into the groove of raw food prep, planning and whipping up stuff on the fly!
2~ I kept myself out of the cycle of the “all or nothing” effect where if you screw up…you have nothing to fall back on and no incentive to go forward. My aproach of easing into it and enjoying each positive step along the way has helped me towards many goals I’ve had in life and it lends itself particularly well to such things as a big dietary shift to eating an all raw diet!
3~ By easing into the raw foods lifestyle I allowed my body to gradually adjust to all the many changes that it would entail! And by changes I do mean good changes! Too many good changes all at once can be a bit jarring though …especially to the bowels for many people.. so I wanted to reduce that as much as possible…for social and convenience reasons as well as to be kind to my body.
It's an adventure...not a race!
I would say to someone aproaching the raw lifestyle that feels like they’re being pushed to go 100% off the bat that it isn’t a race…it’s an adventure! We are playing around with a whole “new” aproach to eating! Collectively as people we’ve been living off of mostly cooked or processed foods for who knows how long…and going over to eating foods in their more natural state is accessing nutrients, enzymes and properly structured food that is often lost in processing and the results can often be amazing! There is no need to rush it…especially if the rushing is causing stress and discomfort that can lead you to giving up the whole dream of the changes that you may experience!
So first of all if this aproach is doable for you….I encourage you to take your time! It worked very well for me and I had almost no detox side effects! A lil’ gas and an extra bathroom trip a day…and by trip I mean leisurely stroll…not knockin’ lil’ old ladies out of the way to get into the Women’s Room because the Men’s stall was taken! *LOL*
If you’ve gotten to know me by now…you’ll know I am waaaaaay to immature to pass up on all the potential bathroom humor! :0P
Much love everyone and more to come! I will be sharing more strategies in an upcoming post and many of these tips and more can also be found in my E-Book “Gettin’ Raw with Rawdawg Rory” :0)
