Raw Cookie Recipe

This is one of my all time favorite raw cookie recipes. Many people don't like raw chocolate but for me it seems to work as long as I do it in moderation.

So here goes the raw cookie recipe, chocolate chip style:

1. 2 cups cashews
2. 2 cups almond flour
3. 1/2 cup agave nectar
4. 4 table spoons coconut oil (melted if possible)
5. 1 teaspoon vanilla to taste
6. pinch of sea salt
7. 1/2 cup cacao nibs

I like to split this raw cookie recipe in half and do it in two stages because it's easier on my food processor. In any event, put all the ingredients and blend. Then form into flat cookies and dehydrate on 105 degrees for about 12-18 hours.

Enjoy.

Chia Seed Pudding Recipe

This was a fun chia seed recipe that I put together that is sweet but not too sweet. It tastes amazing.

1. 1/2 cup chia seeds soaked in 3 cups water overnight.
2. 2 packets stevia powder
3. 1/4 cup agave nectar
4. Huge tablespoon raw cacao powder or raw carob powder if you prefer *

* You can always replace the chocolate flavor with fresh fruits if that suits you better.

You can read this article for the benefits of chia seeds.

Raw Soup

This raw soup recipe is rather quick and easy. It's also perfect for the winter months. I kind of made this up on my own but also got ideas from books like Ani's Raw Food Kitchen and raw food real world. Essentially I made it up and man is it good. So here she goes:

1. Heat 2 cups water on the stove to 160 degrees.

Add to the blender these ingredients.

2. 1/4 cup spinach
3. 1/4 cub cilantro
4. 2 celery stalks
5. 1 clove garlic
6. 1 tomato
7. 1/4 cup olive oil
8. 1/4 cup basil
9. big chunk of fresh onion

Poor water in and blend until smooth.

After it's done, add cut up avocado chunks, carrot chunks and use a spiral slicer to make noodles.

Enjoy. :)

Chocolate Covered Bananas

The other day I made some chocolate covered bananas just to have on hand as a snack. Usually I'm not the biggest fan of bananas. Most of them are high in sugar, very starchy and low in minerals. Even though it's a raw food, its profile matches the exact types of foods we should be moving away from, namely high sugar and low minerals. But be that as it may, they do contain potassium and really do a great job masking the flavor of greens in green smoothies.

In any event I went ahead and made these and they really are quite tasty. The recipe is simple:

For the chocolate sauce
Agave
Coconut oil
Cacao powder
Cacao butter (optional)
Dried coconut flakes (optional)

Simply cut the bananas in half and put some Popsicle sticks in them. Then mix together the above ingredients into a bowl until you get the right consistency and sweetness. Then use a knife and spread the bananas with your chocolate sauce. Put them into the freezer and you have your snack. Kids will love these and they're filling too. So even though they are hybridized they are still a fun tasty treat that you can snack on when you have sweet cravings.

Let me know how yours turn out!

Raw Granola

I thought I would share this recipe for some raw granola. I just got back from Australia where some friends of mine gave me this recipe. She told me that it was great and she was addicted to it and it was the best ever. I figured it was good but it took me a while to make it. After I made it I was blown away. Then I understood what she was talking about. Not only did it taste incredible but it was super fast to throw together in a food processor. I mean how can you beat that? Some quick tasty snacks that are good for you. It doesn't get any better. So let's cut out all the talk. Here is the recipe from her but I modified it a bit and used different nuts. So here are the goods:

RAW GRANOLA
Handful of almonds (I used cashews).
Handful of walnuts (I used macadamia nuts).
1/2 handful of raisins.
Juice from half a lemon.
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon or more.
Couple spoonfuls of raw honey.
Couple spoonfuls of raw oats.
Blend it all up in a food processor (coarsely).
Add water or almond milk and get your feed on.

I used almond milk I made mixed with coconut milk. My personal favorite. Also just as an aside You may want to eat this with a salad of some sort because nuts are acidic in the body and having some alkaline greens to balance this out would help alot. It's wise to always balance your acid/alkaline intake with each meal. For more information on the acid/alkaline balance checkout these books for starters. I really enjoyed both of them.

Secrets of an Alkaline Body: The New Science of Colloidal Biology

The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health

If you want you can add dates, coconut flakes, agave and even dehydrate them into cookies. If you make them, let me know what you think!

Zucchini Pasta Marinara

What' you'll need:
Food Processor (or blender)
Julienne Peeler(or knife)
Saladacco Spiral Slicer

This recent dish has been my favorite raw food meal lately. The great thing about this particular meal is that it's very quick. I know a lot of times when making our green smoothies, raw chocolate smoothies and other items; they can take a lot of time. This recipe does not require a dehydrator but it does require a Saladacco Spiral Slicer. Don't worry they are about $25 bucks and well worth it.

So many times, especially as we are transitioning to a raw food diet, we try to make our raw food dishes "appear like" and have the same texture as cooked food. Lately I've been shying away from that idea. Raw food is not cooked food. We're probably never going to have that warm soft bread again. We should stop trying to mimic that taste and texture. Now I'm not saying it's wrong or bad, it's just that we need to be happy about and get excited about what we are eating. It's different for sure, but it's not worse. You don't see any traditional cooked food chefs trying to get their food to resemble raw food do you? We're like the little brother copying what the big brother is wearing. We need to do our own thing and be happy with what we are eating and preparing.

So with all that being said. I wasn't planning on the taste or consistency be like traditional spaghetti at all. I was resigned to the fact that at least it looked like spaghetti or pasta and it smelled great. But when I actually ate it, it was the closest raw food meal I've had that actually comes close to the original. The raw desert which is the raw mint chocolate chip ice cream I've made before comes pretty close to real ice cream too.

I like to warm mine up in the dehydrator before eating it. Another tip you could do is run the noodles under hot water and put the marinara sauce into a bowl on the stove just to warm it up a tiny bit. Make sure you monitor this as you don't really want to be "cooking" your sauce and undoing all the work of keeping the enzymes in tact. Just heat it up a little bit for a few minutes. You also might want to take out a portion or bowl full of pasta in the morning and let it get back to room temperature before you heat it up and eat it.

For the Marinara Sauce: (Process in the food processor)
1 bell pepper
A handful of sun dried tomatoes (soaked 2 hours)
4 or 5 or tomatoes
1 clove garlic
Basil (chopped)
Oregano (chopped)
A dash of Salt
A dash of olive oil
Cayenne Pepper
Black Pepper
1/2 cup soaked almonds (I add these because I like the marinara sauce to be "meaty")

For the pasta noodles:
You'll need about 4 or 5 big straight zucchinis.
Peel off the sides with a Julienne Peeler.
Cut in half evenly.
Use your Saladacco Spiral Slicer and you're good to go!

Raw Chocolate Macaroons

I recently picked up a few raw food "cook" books from Amazon and I HIGHLY suggest you check out these books! It's very helpful in my opinion to master a few recipes so you can have some sort of base of foods you can work with and make rather easily. For example some standard foods I know I like to eat everyday are salads, almond milk , green smoothies (fruit and chocolate), raw chocolate fudge and green juices. Then as snacks I like to eat pieces of fruit, (be careful not to over do it), veggies like pieces of cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, celery nuts, seeds and superfoods like chocolate or cacao nibs, goji berries etc.




But on top of that I like to make things that I can learn in certain raw foods books. I like to have these snacks handy so when I get hungry they are there for me. These chocolate macaroons are one of them. I also like to make mint chocolate chip ice-cream with raw chocolate sauce. I also like to make breads, crackers and pates so I can make sandwiches or raw burgers with an avocado almond butter spread with sprouts. It's invaluable to have a few reference books around. My favorite three books are Raw: The Uncook Book: New Vegetarian Food for Life and Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes

By the way these chocolate macaroons are amazing and take about 10 minutes to make! All you have to do is follow exactly the Recipes in Raw Food/Real World which is my favorite out of the 3 raw food cook books that I have.

Green Smoothies

I would say the number one skill I have learned over the years is the art of perfecting the Green Smoothie. The idea in our diets is to gradually over time increase the amount of chlorophyll or greens we consume on a daily basis. It's actually pretty darn easy and a lot of fun to add more leafy greens into your daily diet.

My strategy has been 3 fold. Each day I try to:

Have a green smoothie

Have a green juice everyday

Have fresh raw salad everyday

So I'm essentially blending, juicing and eating greens. From time to time I'll have wheatgrass and green powders as well. Now the art of perfecting it will vary obviously for each person but for me I have dialed it in for myself.

I don't think I need to go on about the benefits of green foods or why they are good. I'd only be preaching to the choir here. :)

I'm hoping this guide will serve as a starting point for you to get good at making them yourself. I picked up these ideas from talking to various raw food chefs over the years and doing my own work at trying to perfect them for myself. It's one of my favorite ways to get the best vegetable nutrition out there!

So I'll share my strategy I use and if it works for you then great. If not, now worries! There's no right or wrong here. Here are the basic ingredients for my green smoothies

1. The Base. What will you use for your liquid base? I use sometimes a nut milk like almond milk, water or herbal tea from the night before.
   
2. Superfoods of any and all types. I like to use sea vegetables like powdered Kelp and Dulse. I also like MSM, Maca, bee pollen, flax oil, Spirulina, camu camu berries. You get the idea. The idea is to use whatever you want here (or nothing if you don't have them!) and whatever you think tastes good.
   
3. Greens of any type. I like collard greens, spinach, dark green salad lettuce, parsley, sometimes small amounts of cabbage, kale etc. You get the idea.
   
4. Fruits. I try to keep it to a minimum. The less sugar the better. Stronger flavored fruits are good here. Bananas work best for masking flavor, although they are the least healthy for you. A small slice of lemon helps to hide the flavor of greens too. Oranges are particularly strong too (make sure all fruit has seeds in them). I usually use about two pieces of fruit.
   
5. The Healthy Fats. According to The Sunfood Diet Success Systemand the Sunfood Triangle outlined there, it's good to have some raw fats with sugars to slow their absorption into your bloodstream. Basically so you don't get a sugar high. :) I like to use about a half of an
   avocado. That seems to work for me. Plus the fats make it more filling and allow you to be able to go longer until your next meal.
   
6. Sugars. I like to use an extra "sugar" in case the greens are too strong. I throw a pack of stevia in there just to help for flavor.
   
7. Frozen Fruits. I usually throw in some good frozen berries in at the very end and this adds so much to the flavor and look. The idea here is to add in whatever berries you have on hand. I like to go to the market and buy bags of organic frozen blueberries, raspberries, cherries, and blackberries.

Putting it all together :
Now this sounds like a lot but it's really quite easy and doesn't take that much time. I usually drink it on the way to work. So if you factor in the time that it might take you to make french toast AND sit and eat it, it's probably about the same amount of time.

Imagine the difference in your body and health doing this for breakfast for 20 years as opposed to eating bacon and eggs? So here's how I make my greens and superfoods smoothie:

- Pour the base into your blender and put your greens and superfoods into it. Blend all of that up really good.

- Put your soft fruit into the blender and your avocado and blend again.

- Then put your frozen berries into the blender (watch your green smoothie turn purple!) and blend for the last time.


- Your done! Pour it into your favorite cup and your out the door.

Some quick tips:

1. Make sure not to drink it too fast. There is a lot of fiber in the green drink and you don't want to overwhelm your system. They will usually last a few days in the refrigerator too. The fiber in the smoothie helps to keep the nutrients nice and intact, unlike green juices, which must be drunk right away.
   
2. Start out with a small amount of greens and work your way up. I started out with 90% fruit, 10% greens! Now I'm at about 40% greens or more. Your taste buds change over time. Be patient but be relentless.
   
3. Remove the spines of the big leafed vegetables like collard greens, kale etc as they are very bitter.
   
4. Blend in stages.The reason I blend in 3 stages is so I don't have to leave the blender on for a long time as this will oxidize your green smoothie. I prefer to blend more often for less amounts of time to reduce oxidation and heat friction. :)

Here are a couple books I've enjoyed on the subject. I HIGHLY recommend them.

Some videos you might find helpful :














Some links you might find helpful:
http://www.greensmoothiegirl.com/
http://goneraw.com/recipes/58-Green-and-Gone-Smoothie
http://www.freshtopia.net/vlog/?p=156

Milk It Does A Body Good?

Here is my milk. Looks just like milk doesn't it? I love putting things into containers that mimick the ones we are used to. I'm sure the platic leaches into my body. And I don't think Masaru Emoto would be proud. His work showed that the molecules in water can actually change by speaking to water, praying over it or even writing messages on the side of your glass. Now that is amazing! But I think it looks cool and one day I'll have it in glass or something. :) Maybe I'll put them in bottles like in Leave it to Beaver. But the above photo is just almond milk mixed with coconut water. Soooo good!




There is a great website called. http://www.notmilk.com/ and it's all about how HORRIBLE dairy products are for you. I love it and feel so much better for giving up all dairy. However I must admit I have a similar story to my hero David Wolfe on this. It was the milk that triggered my need to change my diet. It took years of trying to change and reading Fit for Life. But when I was having problems with milk I KNEW I needed to change something in my diet! So big ups to MILK! :) Hey sometimes it takes the worst things to show us we need change!

Raw and Living Superfood Chocolate Shake...

This shake or smoothie is a staple of mine. I have one everyday! :) Sorry I didn't put any measurements down. I usually just do spoonfuls of each one. I'm horrible at measuring! I know bananas aren't the best for you but those along with the avocados really make it filling.

Sometimes I have it with a salad and that'll fill me up for hours. It's crazy. I also put in there any other superfoods I have on hand.

CHOCOLATE SHAKE
Cacao Powder
Cacao Butter
Hemp Seed Protein Powder
Frozen Banana 1
Agave Nectar
Almond Milk
Coconut Milk
Raw Honey
Mint Leaves
Coconut Meat
1/4 or up to an entire Avacado
Maca

Raw Chocolate Fudge!

Put all ingredients into a bowl and mash together. If you want you can also form it into the size of snickers bars and freeze it in the freezer. Then you can have raw chocolate bars. Pretty sweet. This is one of my favorite things to make, it's so good for you and tastes amazing!

DRY INGREDIENTS
1 TBS Cacao Butter
Pinch of Sea Salt
1 Big Spoonful Cacao Nibs
1 Big Spoonful Cacao Powder
1 Small Spoonful Hemp Seed Powder
1 Small Spoonful Carob Powder
10-20 Raw Natures First Law Peanuts or any raw nuts
1 Small Spoonful Ground Flax Seeds
Small Handful of Goji Berries
1 Big Spoonful Dried Coconut Flakes

WET INGREDIENTS:
Cashew Butter (Spoonful)
Almond Butter (Spoonful)
Coconut Butter/Oil (Spoonful)
1TBS Agave
Spoonful Honey

Raw Chocolate Chip Mint Ice-Cream...

This Raw Mint Chocolate Chip Ice-Cream is insane. I actually got the recipie from the book Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow and it comes out perfect. I only added some Spirulina to make it green, some raw cacao nibs for the chips and then some mint leaves and a few drops of peppermint oil to make it taste like mint. We have it all now...

RAW VANILLA ICE CREAM
2 cups soaked cashews
2 cups coconut meat
1 cup water
2 thirds cup agave nectar
1 cup coconut butter
1 Big Spoonful of honey
2 tablespoons vanilla extract or seeds of half a vanilla bean
Half tablespoon sea salt
Any other superfoods/seeds on hand.

Directions:
Blend in a vitamix until smoothe. Chill in freezer for about 45 minutes. Then process into an ice-cream maker according to instructions. :)

Raw Burgers With Mayo...

Hey everybody. Yesterday I made some living food burgers with mayonaise. The raw burgers were pretty easy to make and the mayo was made using Julianos Book, Raw: The Uncook Book It's all pretty easy really. These are super tasty and really filling. Here is the recipe for the living burgers:

Living Burgers:
1. Half Cup Almonds (soaked)
2. Half Cup Sunflower Seeds (soaked)
3. Pulp from -
4. 1 Carrot
5. 4 Ribs celery
6. 1 Green Apple
7. Small Hanful of chopped parsley
8. 1 big basil leaf chopped
9. Squirt of Flax Oil
10. Few Shakes of Dried Garlic
11. Few Shakes of Cumin Powder
12. Pinch of Sea Salt
13. Dulse With Cayene
14. Kelp with Garlic
=======
Optional:
15. 1 pack stevia
16. Oregeno
17. Thyme
18. Lemon Pepper
19. Italian Seasoning
20. Flax
21. Cilantro
22. Agave
23. Coconut Flakes
24. Cucumber
25. Zuchinni
26. Pumkin Seeds
27. Olive Oil
28. Salad Lettuce
=======
Directions:
1. Almonds/Seeds into food processor
2. Veggie Pulp into food processor
3. Put all into a bowl and mix
4. Put greens salad mix, parsley, basil into food processor and add to bowl
5. Roll them all into a burger patties and dehydrate for about 8 hours at 110 degrees or until soft (but not hard!)