Raw Chocolate-Covered-Cherry Shake

If you love chocolate covered cherries, you are going to love this recipe. When you sneak in the kale, it takes it to another level of health and wellness!

Recipe:

2 bananas

2 cups of fresh kale

1 Tbl coconut oil

4 pitted dates

1/2 cup raw cherries, frozen

1 heaping Tbls raw cacao powder

Ice and 1/2 cup of water

Blend all ingredients together and enjoy! You can't even taste the kale where the other ingredients are so powerful!

Raw Strawberry Jam with Chia Seeds!

We Be Jammin'!

I made this last night before bed and it was so easy. I'm always on the lookout for raw jams that do not use any refined sugar. This is a healthy, raw jam that your family will love!

Ingredients:
2 cups fresh strawberries
2 Tbl chia seeds
2 Tbl real maple syrup

I blended the strawberries in my food processor and poured them into a bowl. I added the chia seeds and syrup. I mixed them all together and poured the jam into a jar. When I woke up this morning I gave it one more mix and it was jam consistency, without the pectin! It tastes so fresh and delicious and screams of summer! I can't wait for you to try it!

Health Benefits of Chia Seeds:

"Combat Diabetes
Chia is being studied as a potential natural treatment for type-2 diabetes because of its ability to slow down digestion. The gelatinous coating chia seeds develops when exposed to liquids-can also prevent blood sugar spikes.

Get More Fiber
Just a 28-gram or one-ounce serving of chia has 11 grams of dietary fiber — about a third of the recommended daily intake for adults. Adding some chia to your diet is an easy way to make sure you're getting a good amount of fiber, which is important for digestive health.

Stock Up On Omega-3
Chia seeds are packed with omega-3 fatty acids, with nearly five grams in a one-ounce serving. These fats are important for brain health. "There's better conversion of omega 3s into the plasma or into the food than with flax seed," said researcher Wayne Coates.

Stronger Teeth And Bones
A serving of chia seeds has 18 per cent of the recommended daily intake for calcium, which puts your well on your way to maintaining bone and oral health, and preventing osteoporosis.

Don't Forget Manganese
Manganese isn't a well-known nutrient, but it's important for our health: it's good for your bones and helps your body use other essential nutrients like biotin and thiamin. One serving of chia seeds, or 28 grams, has 30 per cent of your recommended intake of this mineral.

Plenty Of Phosphorus
With 27 per cent of your daily value for phosphorus, chia seeds also helps you maintain healthy bones and teeth. Phosphorus is also used by the body to synthesize protein for cell and tissue growth and repair.

Pack In The Protein
Chia seeds also make a great source of protein for vegetarians and don't have any cholesterol. One 28-gram serving of these super seeds has 4.4 grams of protein, nearly 10 per cent of the daily value.

Fight Belly Fat
Chia's stabilizing effect on blood sugar also fights insulin resistance which can be tied to an increase in belly fat, according to Live Strong. This type of resistance can also be harmful for your overall health.

Get Full. Faster
Tryptophan, an amino acid found in turkey, is also found in chia seeds. While tryptophan is responsible for that strong urge to nap after a big Thanksgiving dinner for example, it also helps regulate appetite, sleep and improve mood.

Improve Heart Health
According to the Cleveland Clinic, chia seeds have been shown to improve blood pressure in diabetics, and may also increase healthy cholesterol while lowering total, LDL, and triglyceride cholesterol. All good news for your ticker!" Thank you, Huffington Post for this list!

What do you add Chia seeds to?
I'd love to hear!!

Raw Portebello Pizza's

When I first began my raw food journey, I made a lot of complicated recipes. I like to think of them as transition foods. They all tasted similar to food that I was used to when I ate the standard American diet. I have learned tools and tips that make eating raw easy for the beginner. You don't have to eat 100% raw to reap the benefits, either. Finding your own balance and incorporating a raw meal a day into your life will give you incredible health benefits and introduce you to a whole world of preparing food. For the "foodie," it will be extremely fun!

 The dehydrator is like a "crock pot" for raw food. These Raw Spinach, Tomato and Mushroom Pizzas will "cook" in my dehydrator while my family and I went out of town for a photo shoot. When we came home they had a soft, cooked consistency, but were still raw and healthy! All of the living enzymes were still intact and they were tastier than you can imagine! The house smelled insanely good when we walked through that door as well! It smelled like pizza cooking!

I made this recipe up on the fly with what I had on hand.

Ingredients:

4 Portebello mushroom caps
1 cup soaked cashews, drained (I soak mine overnight)
Various veggies for topping. I used spinach, tomatoes, peppers and onions
1 Tbl. balsamic vinegar
2 Tbls. olive oil
juice of one lemon
sea salt

Create a olive oil and balsamic vinegar "dressing" and toss the chopped, raw veggies in the mixture. Coat mushrooms in this as was well.

Blend cashews with the juice of one lemon and a dash of salt. (You may need to add a touch of water to get it to blend well). It should look like and have the consistency of sour cream. Pour this filling into the mushroom caps.

Arrange veggies on top of filling. Add various spices on top of veggies. Oregano is a must for that pizza taste! Add salt and pepper. Place in the dehydrator at 104 degrees for 6 hours. Enjoy coming home to a warm, delicious, healthy meal!!

Rawk On & Enjoy Life!

For the Love of Berries!

I love creating desserts with fresh berries! They are a little reminder of summer during the cold winter months.
Berries are bright, beautiful and oh, so delicious! 

Here I created a very simple, but elegant dessert. It is made from fresh rasperries, raw almond slices, raw cacao nibs and some raw, shredded coconut. 

Here is blueberry, chia pudding topped with cashew kream!
Simply add chia seeds to a bowl and pour vanilla almond milk over them. Let them sit for about 10 minutes. The seeds soak up most the almond milk and become gelatinous and pudding-like. Mix in fresh, raw blueberries. Enjoy!

Rawkin' Zucchini Chips

These Zucchini Chips are light, crispy and DELICIOUS! 

They are so easy to make and your family will LOVE you for making them! Be sure to make a TON, because they won't last long.

Slice 4 or 5 zucchini thinly on a mandolin slicer.

Toss them in olive oil and place them on dehydrator sheets.

Salt them evenly and dehydrate for 8-10 hours.

ENJOY!

OMG! Raw Chocolate Chip Cookies!

I just made these tonight for the first time and they are better than the real thing and they are GOOD for you! They are also very easy to make. I ate half of the dough before getting them in the dehydrator. I need to double this recipe next time around. 

I am thinking that this would be so delish in a raw vanilla ice kream! 

Ingredients:

2 cup raw rolled oats

1 cup raw cashews

2 tbsps coconut oil

6 tbsps raw honey 

1 tsp organic vanilla

1/2 tsp pink Himylayan salt 

1 cup raw cacao nibs

Directions:

Using your food processor, grind up the raw oats and cashews into a fine powder. Move to a bowl and add in the coconut oil, raw honey, vanilla, salt and raw cacao nibs. Form into balls and flatten on dehydrator sheets and heat until warm. 

So yummy with cold almond milk! Enjoy!

Devin just exclaimed from the kitchen, "These are SO good!!"

Banana Love!

This week my sweet tooth was in overdrive! 

I created these Banana "Cupcakes" after being inspired by something similar in Family Fun Magazine. I kicked these up a health notch by using raw peanut butter, raw cacao nibs, organic, raw coconut and organic strawberries. They are as easy to make as they look, and so delicious! These are a new favorite of my kids.

This Raw Black & White Banana Pudding is SO sweet and gooey! I created a warm, raw cacao pudding and layered it with a raw vanilla cream. Add bananas, pecans and raw, shredded coconut and you have Heaven!

Rawkin' Raw Nutella!

My kids LOVE Nutella. They discovered it in Australia when we were there in 2010. Since then, the Nutella craze has hit the US. The commercials for it claim that it is a healthy snack to give your family. After my own research, I have learned that their claim isn't true at all. 

So much work still needs to be done to educate people about health. Not only is Nutella "cooked," but it is highly processed and also the advertisers are great at leading the consumer to believe that it is good for you! Here is a clip from Wiki about part of the processing:

"Nutella is made from sugar, modified palm oil, hazelnuts, cocoa, skimmed milk powder, whey powder, lecithin, and vanillin. Initially the process of making chocolate spread begins with the abstraction of cocoa powder from the cocoa bean. These cocoa beans are harvested from cocoa trees and are left to dry for about ten days.[7] This natural ingredient is then shipped off to the processing plant. In the case of Nutella, the processing plant is situated in Italy by the Ferrero Company.

Typically cocoa beans contain approximately 50% of cocoa butter therefore they must be roasted to reduce the cocoa bean into a liquid form.[7] This step is not sufficient enough to be turned into a paste because it solidifies at room temperature, and would not be spreadable on food items such as toast. After this initial process, the liquid paste is sent to presses, which are used to squeeze the butter out of the cocoa bean. The final products are round discs of chocolate: pure compressed cocoa. 

The cocoa butter extracted from the cocoa bean is then transferred elsewhere so it can be used in other products. The second process involves the hazelnuts. Once the hazelnuts have arrived at the processing plant, a quality control is issued to inspect the nuts so they are suitable for processing. A guillotine is used to chop the nuts to inspect the interior.[8] After this process the hazelnuts are cleaned and roasted. A second quality control is issued by a computer-controlled blast of air, which removes the bad nuts from the batch.[8]

This process is undergone to ensure that each jar of Nutella is uniform in its look and taste. Approximately 50 hazelnuts can be found in each jar of Nutella, as claimed by the company.[9] The cocoa powder is then joined with the hazelnuts along with sugar, vanilla, skim milk and it is mixed in a large tank until it becomes a paste-like spread.[10] The modified palm oil is then added to help retain the solid phase of the Nutella at room temperature, which substitutes for the butter found in the cocoa bean.[11] 

In addition, whey powder is added to the mix because it acts as a binder for the paste. Whey powder is an additive commonly used in spreads to prevent the coagulation of the product because it stabilizes the fat emulsions.[12] Similarly to the whey powder, lecithin, which is a form of fatty substance found in animal and plant tissues is used to emulsify as it promotes homogenized mixing of the different ingredients allowing the paste to be spreadable. It also aids the lipophilic properties of the cocoa powder which, again, keeping the product from separating.[9] For the flavor aspect, vanillin is added to enhance the sweetness of the chocolate. Now that the paste is what is societally identified as Nutella, the product is then sent off to be packaged."

I decided to make my own healthy version of Nutella. The RAW version and it is DELICIOUS!! My kids love it! I think it would make a great frosting for a raw cheesecake too!

My version is raw hazelnuts that have been soaked overnight and drained. Raw blue agave for sweetener, raw cacao powder, organic vanilla, coconut oil and almond milk - all blended together with the Vitamix. Easy, delicious and so good for you!

Think of your favorite foods and do a search for the Raw versions of them! You can give your diet a raw, healthy makeover and not feel like you are missing out on anything.

Get Real, Go Raw!

Fresh Garden Flatbread

It is zucchini and carrot season and our garden is busting with them! I have pickled, frozen and preserved and now I am creating new and exciting recipes that are raw, high vibe and delish! This flatbread holds up great to lots of fresh veggies piled up high! I hope you enjoy it!

3 C sprouted wheat berries

1/2 C ground flax seeds

1/2 C hemp seeds

2 cups chopped zucchini or summer squash

2 large carrots, chopped

1/2 large onion chopped

1 Tbl pink Himalayan salt

Add ingredients to a food processor, (mine is a beloved Kitchen-Aid - thanks, Mom!!) You may need to do the wheat berries first then remove them to a bowl to do the rest, depending upon the size of your food processor. Once it is all incorporated, spread on two dehydrator sheets to your desired thickness and dehydrate for 4 hours. Flip and remove Teflex sheets and dehydrate for another 2 or 3 hours.

Enjoy!

Meeting Markus!

While in Texas running a conference, I had dinner with Markus Rothkranz. I have wanted to meet him for years and it was fabulous to finally connect. We enjoyed a raw Thai Cabbage Wrap, courtesy of the hotel. They provided us with a private dining room and and the chef came out to explain how the dish was prepared. We talked for a while and got to know one another. He let me try one of his cashew creations that I had learned about in one of his videos and then he offered me some dried durian fruit. He laughed at my initial reaction to tasting it, but it was suprisingly delicious! 

The talk that he gave at my event was powerful. It shifted so much within me, Joe and others who attended.

After the conference Markus sent me a note sharing that after meeting me, he decided to add information about Unschooling in his upcoming book. We inspired one another and coming together helped our individual communities and connections. I love the expansion and connections in my life right now. I am grateful for attracting the perfect individuals into my experience at the perfect time to to learn and grow from.

"Listen to that voice inside, it is the voice of truth. Whatever it says, do it. Maybe it's telling you to do something that's never been done before. The greatest achievements were made by those willing to step outside their comfort zone and risk everything. Face your fears. They are your steps to the next level. Conquer your fears and you will be more powerful than your could ever imagine. Wish your enemies well and get on with your own life. 
Do it. Do it now. And never ever give up. Ever." Markus