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!
Isabel’s Stellar birthday cake!
For Isabel’s ninth b-day we concocted an awesome raw-cake using a combination of two recipes from Sergei and Valya Boutenko’s Eating without Heating. On top of a walnut/date crust we made a double-decker beauty with an “un-chocolate mousse” under-story and a “white un-chocolate mousse” upper-level and a layer of banana slices atop the crust and between the two layers *mmmMMmm*. We tweaked the recipe a bit, using cacao powder instead of carob sooo it wasn’t “un-chocolate” after-all.
The wonderful Technicolor topping is actually coconut flakes dyed with various shades of food-coloring! I know, I know it’s not raw but, it’s a kid’s B-day cake so we decided to go for the pimped-out over the purist option!
Looking for natural food coloring? There are a few options out there. Here is one that I found to be a good deal. Otherwise, do a Google search and there are plenty to choose from!
Slices of Carambola (a.k.a. starfruit) give the cake its’ stellar flare! We served it with a side of raw-vanilla ice-cream and everyone enjoyed the heck out of it!
Detoxifying your home
Detoxifying ~ it’s not just for bodies!
Looong before I discovered the awesome health benefits of the raw-foods lifestyle, yeah way back when I was a teenager and munched my share of junk-food, I had a passion for living an earth friendly lifestyle. I learned a lot about the many issues surrounding the use of synthetic chemical household products from the pollution involved in their production, the effects they have on our indoor environments (i.e. our homes!) and the after effects when they were washed down the drain (adding more volatile compounds to our wastewater). I was excited whenever I found a safer version of a cleaning product my family used (yeah I’ve always been a bit dorky!) and often the best ones were also ones that I could make myself using non-toxic (often formerly edible) household products such as baking soda and vinegar! Like I once heard in a movie, “With enough baking soda and vinegar one could blow up just about anything” wait…they were talking about soap…oh well back to the dynamos of eco-friendly cleaning. BS and V. You can use either of these on their own or in combination to clean darn near anything!! There have been whole books written on the many uses of both of these products.
You can replace your:
Carpet freshener, stain remover, tub and tile scrub, toilet cleaner, all purpose spray cleaners, window sprays, fabric softeners, laundry boosters, sink drain deodorizers, oven and range top cleaners and shower spray using either baking soda or vinegar alone or in combination!! Imagine what a huge reduction in pollution that would amount to!
How they work.
Let’s start with baking soda, a.k.a. sodium bicarbonate. Baking soda has a natural tendency towards neutralizing acids and balancing ph. What this means is that odors which are generally acid based are neutralized! Also most dirt and grease around the house is composed of fatty acids which can be neutralized by baking soda and will then dissolve away in water! Baking soda has a soft crystalline molecular structure which makes it an awesomely effective yet gentle abrasive substance for scrubbing!
On the other side of the ph scale we have vinegar. Vinegar is formed when alcohol is allowed to ferment into acetic acid. Being an acid, vinegar boasts the power of a solvent and also has been found to have disinfectant, antifungal and anti-mold properties! In many studies it’s been found to kill 99% of bacteria, 82% of mold and 80% of germs (viruses) when used straight up with its original 5% vinegar solution!
Here are some formulas to get you started!
A spray bottle full of a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water can be used to clean windows and other glass surfaces, wipe down counter tops, cutting boards, stove tops, and get rid of food residues on your fridge and freezers’ interior. Spritz it on your dishes in the sink as a pre-wash to loosen up the tough stuff, clean your toilet seat and lid and spray down your shower after each use to prevent mold and mildew growth and reduce hard water build up and soap scum. Spray on clothes and carpet stains and blot out with a rag or paper towel (this works better the sooner you get to it, just like other cleaners).
Use about ½ cup of vinegar in a bucket of water to mop your floors. It’ll dissolve all sorts of spilled dried on foods, grime, and reduces germs and molds in the process!!
Pour a cup of vinegar in your toilet and let it sit for about half hour then scrub as normal without the need of any synthetic cleaners!
Adding a ¼ cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle of your laundry will act as a natural fabric softener. I’ve also found it boosts the cleaning power of my detergent when I add it to the wash cycle!
Pour some vinegar down a smelly drain and let it set for an hour (if possible) to dissolve food gunk deposits and kill bacteria and molds in the p-trap.
A neat way to unclog drains ~ pour about a ¼ cup of baking soda into the drain and get the sinks plug ready. Next pour in a ½ cup of vinegar and plug ASAP! The chemical reaction will cause a fizzing and build of gas which may help push the clog down, kinda like a lil’ model volcano goin’ off in your plumbing! Sweet!
Baking Soda can be kept in a squeeze condiment container on your sink top where you’ll find it handy for scrubbing the grime and mildew off of your sinks interior and gently polishing the faucet and fixtures as well as your tile backsplash. It’ll also help scrub away oily residues from plates, pots, and pans etc., and de-funkify your plastic storage containers! Keep one of these squeeze containers handy in the bathroom as well for scrubbing tiles, sinks, fixtures, and the tub!
Fill a mason jar with baking soda and add in some powdered cinnamon, or dried mint leaves and/or essential oils. Shake it thoroughly and keep it stored in a cool dark place. This powder can be sprinkled on your carpets and allowed to set for an hour or more it will absorb and neutralize odors then just vacuum away! This powder can also be sprinkled in funky trashcans and the litter box!
And everyone knows about baking sodas ability to absorb fridge and freezer funk! Just leave a slightly open box in the fridge. Mind the placement though; I’ve had the displeasure of having to clean up a butt-ton of spilled powder a few times myself.
Now you have an arsenal of earth-friendly cleaners to get your place clean and still keep it “green”!
Many of these cleaners can be further pimped out with the addition of all natural essential oils such as lavender, patchouli, ylang-ylang, lemon, lime, orange, cinnamon, vanilla, sandalwood, thyme- the list of awesome scents available goes on and on! Many essential oils have aromatherapuetic qualities which is an added bonus! Be sure to check any precautions with the oils and use your best judgment when adding scents to the cleaners for their purposes, i.e. you might not want to put patchouli in the spray you use for the fridgerator unless you wanna get a whiff of the 70’s when you open the door, not to mention what your food would taste like! Ewww)
Smoothie Jar Bag
Smoothie Jar bags! My name is Rory and I like crafts…there, I said it. A lot of people like to goof on a guy that digs crafts (especially ones involving sewing) but I don’t care! This kinda stuff rocks! I’ve always been into drawing, making hemp-jewelry, painting on rocks and pots, and making lil sculptures out of random stuff. Art was definitely my favorite class back in the school days. When I discovered YouTube my instant fave was Threadbangers, Man I love that show! I started drawing on my t-shirts (and I am soon to start experimenting with appliqué) and dreaming up new ways to pimp out my clothes and give them a custom twist. At the same time I was delving into the raw-foods world (Smoothies galore!) and began to realize that there were no decent portable drink containers with a glass lining.
Why was glass so important? Well it has been found that plastic drink and food containers can leach chemicals into the foods they store (yeeeech to say the least). I didn’t need a scientific study to confirm that I could often taste a funky plastic aftertaste in my beverages after they’d been in my travel mug for over an hour. So I started using glass mason jars to tote around my beverages. This was great because they’re inexpensive, non-reactive, and are easy to clean. I’d simply pour in my smoothie, pop a bendy straw in there so I could just unscrew the lid and take a sip, screw the lid back on and I was on my way…sounds good right? Well sometimes it was a pain in the hinder. (laughing) The inner lid often fell out of the sealing ring and would plop on my clothes (yay…) and the straw was always a mess with smoothie so taking a sip meant my soul patch getting a nice primer coat of smoothie stucco. This madness had to stop!
Luckily this was easily fixed, by drilling a hole in the lid for a straw I could keep the lid on and still get a drink. Sweet! But, the store bought drink containers still had a leg up on my jar, they were insulated! Mason jars rock but, glass is very conductive and my smoothies would warm up pretty quick and leave a gallon of condensation on whatever it was sitting on. What to do? In comes those cheap $2 or less) freezer bags from the grocery store! Yeah! Now to cover the jar in this material and bag it up! In our early version my wife beautifully sewed together a bag out of the pattern I cut from an old band T, add a strap for easy carrying and voila! We had a smoothie jar bag!
Well some people were pretty impressed with these lil’ bad boys and suggested we sell them so we concocted a much more pimped out version with some awesome fabrics, wide comfy straps, and a better insulating material; a foil coated bubble-wrap insulation used in homes! It’s completely non-toxic and the bubble-wrap adds quite a degree of cushioning to the jar which should help reduce incidences of a breakage, which I’m told is a common problem amongst smoothie jar carrying super heroes! We’re soon going to be offering the jar bags complete with a couple of pre-drilled jar lid inserts!
