LEARNING DEHYDRATING BASICS

On April 25th I held a raw food dehydrating session in Nanaimo.

I had 6 fabulous people attend and I had a great afternoon with them. Here is the group:

I spent a few days preparing for this - especially when it comes to dehydrating food - it is a lot of preparation and then a lot of time to dehydrate the various dishes that I prepared.

I have a few pictures below of some of the things we enjoyed on this day.

Here is a picture of some raw granola that I made. It was sooo good!! I loved granola (cooked) when I used to eat cooked. Food. I made my own back then also but it was a lot different!!

I love crunchy food and I used to LOVE my granola. I have included the recipe for you to try:

RAW GRANOLA
Ingredients:
Ground soaked almonds, Raisins, Sesame Seeds, Sunflower Seeds, Pumpkin seeds, Walnuts, cashews, pecans (cut into pieces – all optional), Coconut, Soaked buckwheat (optional), Honey or agave, 4-5 Dates (soaked), Water, Cinnamon, Vanilla, Nutmeg

(amount of each that you use depends on how much you want to make. Delete some ingredients or add others - whatever you like. It really doesn't matter.

Directions:
Soak almonds in a bowl for about 8-10 hours
In another bowl combine all ingredients except dates and spices
Add filtered water just enough to cover the ingredients

You can soak these ingredients overnight or soak them for about 1 hour.
Put the soaked mixture in a strainer and drain the excess water.
Place the soaked almonds in a food processor and process – keep them chunky
Add the chopped almonds to the big bowl containing the other ingredients – add the spices

Put dates in food processor with some water and honey – process until creamy
Add the date paste to the bowl of ingredients and combine. Use your hands or spoon and mix well. The amount of dates you use depends on how much granola you are making. If the date paste does not cover all the mixture - make more date paste and add it.

Transfer that mixture on to dehydrator sheet(s) and dehydrate to desired crunchiness.

Below are some other delicious things that I made for the group to try:

-

KALE CHIPS - is there anything better!

& BRAZIL ENERGY BARS - full of goodness!

RAW ALMOND BISCOTTI

LEMON HEMP SESAME CHIA TRIANGLES

These are just some of the things that we had at the session. I also showed them how to improvise a cracker and bread recipe with ingredients you may have left over and in the fridge. That part of love - I hardly ever follow a recipe. I look at a recipe and see what ingredients are used, I may use those and add more or use the recipe, delete some ingredients and ad some others I know would taste better.

It is all about personal taste. With practice and trial and error you learn what combinations work best and what you like best. I do the same with the energy bars, granola and biscotti. Dehydrated cookies are the same.

Have fun! Be creative!

Start with a base - for crackers it can be ground flax or buckwheat. For cookies and energy bars it is usually ground nuts. Seeds, spices, dried fruit and herbs are what you add and play with.

You need an ingredients that binds them together. For crackers and bread it is the soaked flax meal or soaked chia seeds or whole flax seeds. For energy bars or cookies it is the dates or dried fruit or even honey or agave.

Taste as you add ingredients. One thing that is great about raw food is that you can taste it as you make it and get a pretty good idea what it will taste like when done.

Make a smaller batch if you have not made something before. Or divide batter up and put in different bowls and then in each bowl add something different for a different taste and see which one you like.

You can add soaked sun-dried tomatoes, tomatoes and italian seasonings to a cracker or bread batter.

You can add curry, cumin, corriander, salt, cilantro to another.

Etc, Etc. There are just so many things you can do. Be inventive!! and BE FEARLESS!

LIVE HEALTHY & HAPPY!

OPEN YOURSELF UP AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS

It is wonderful when you open yourself up and see what unfolds.

So often I am closed and stressed and busy in my everyday life. I become very focused on ‘Me” what do I have to do, what am I worried about? What is next for me?

Things that keep me in myself – and not in a good way – disconnected with the world.

Even though I am a yoga teacher and raw food chef – both that are supposed to bring you closer to the universal consciousness and the connection between everything and everyone, I see myself controlled by my ego for much of the time.



Because I have my own business and am trying work at a “job” and do my own business on the side, I tend to always have something to do and think about. It gets pretty overwhelming. Many people have been where I am so that gives me comfort.

I now have 2 days off a week (from my regular job) to go to coffee shops, work on my business and just be. I am becoming clearer on what I really want in life and what is important.

I have been on raw food for almost a year now and I have to say that it has been the last month of so that I am feeling – an extra something – CLARITY! I have been waiting for this!!!

Funny, I thought it would have to come at a time when I was alone, in a retreat, relaxed, with nothing on my mind or nothing else to do. Here is comes at an extremely busy time of my life. But hey – I welcome it.

I have met some great people in the last 2 weeks. Just being open and noticing and making eye contact and not being afraid to strike up a conversation. It is great!!

I have put out to the universe the type of people I want to meet and what I need help with.

I have met some of those people so far and it is so cool when this happens.

I know we are always manifesting – good and bad. That is how our universe works. Look around you – you have manifested everything in your life, whether you want to believe that or not and whether or not you want to accept the responsibility.

I have had my first colonics session today and wow!! This has added to the clarity I have to say. Getting cleaned out! I have two more sessions to go.

I have also done recent juice fasts (just short ones). I have been trying to heal my body more and I feel the layers are being peeled away; the layers that needed healing.

What I hope to attract now is someone who can help me with fixing up this blog and setting up a nice looking web site. I have also wanted to connect with like minded people so that a community can be formed of people wanting to work together support each other, do some joint ventures and sessions together. I feel that is really important.

Connections and more connections. I believe we attract the right people into our lives at the right time and when we are ready. Everyone is a gift and has something to teach us about ourselves.

I was given some excellent advice from a woman - she simply said “Do more of what you love.”

So simple yet so true. I was always waiting until I could do it, waiting until I had time, waiting until I had a web site, waiting, waiting …….. and not doing.

After she told me this, I took action and simply began doing what I love. It was the best thing I could do! When I get frustrated and discouraged I think about her simple, yet powerful words.

“Do more of what you love.”

It grounds me and brings me back to my purpose, my mission, etc.

It is very exciting to see things unfold and to accept them, let them happen and stay in the flow. I also notice that when I am feeling good – keeping positive then life flows and people come to me and things happen.

When I am down and being negative, frustrated, angry and sad, then I feel stuck and things around me are stuck. It is all about energy so I move the energy – get out of the rut and into thinking about what I want, doing more of what I love and believing that I can have the life I really dream about having.

LIVE HAPPY & HEALTHY

RAW FOOD & DIGESTIVE PROBLEMS

Many people transition into a raw diet because of a health reason. That was it for me.

Over the years I have been eating cleaner and cleaner. Not necessarily because I knew it was the right thing to do but because of how "bad" food was making me feel.

My sensitivities to preservatives and white flours, fried foods, etc made me feel so horrible that I had no choice but to stay away from them. If I wanted to feel good - I had to eat clean.

The only thing is, the cleaner I eat, the less of the "bad" foods I can tolerate. Which is good for health reasons but it does get hard when travelling or gone for the whole day and trying to find foods to eat that will agree with me.

Even though I am almost all raw now, I still have problems with my digestion. What I am finding is that food combining is a HUGE thing for me and I have to follow the rules or else....

This for me is a great challenge because I am a snacker. Even though I snack on good foods, I had never paid attention on how I was combining the foods, what I was eating when and how I was mixing the various foods together. That caused me so much grief.

Below is a salad that I am going to eat for a few days now - it is simple and a few ingredients

The salad contains: Cucumbers, lettuce, parsley and quinoa.

You can use sprouted quinoa or cooked quinoa. I soak quinoa overnight or all day, then I boil some water, add the qunioa and then cover and let sit. It will cook very fast. I have used sprouted quinoa and like that also.

The dressing I use is:
Olive oil, lemon juice, cumin and cinnamon. That is it!

Great, simple, tasty and easy. Also - a few ingredients so it is easy on digestion. I chop the parsley very fine and make sure I chew it well.

Parsley is high alkaline, a rich sourc eof Vit K, C, A, folate and iron. Good source of antioxidants.

Cucumbers are also highly alkaline. They are good for your hair, skin and nails. They contain potassium, silica, Vit A, C manganese, trptophan, magnesium and chlorophyll. Cucumber juice is a great cleansing juice.

I add cucumbers into my green smoothie also.

Food combining is very important if someone is transitioning into raw foods and have digestive problems. Different foods digest at different rates. When we eat various foods together, the digestion of foods that nromally pass rapidly through the digestive track can be delayed by more slowly digested food. This results in gas, bloating, heartburn and other digestive problems.

Fruit digests fast whereas nuts and seeds digest slow. Sugar and sweets diegest faster so dessert is actually better before a meal or hours after once food has been digested.

It seems easy but if your digestion is really slow then you are faced with wondering how many hours after a meal can you eat a piece of fruit or a dessert. Since everyone is different you have to get to know your body and that can take a little while.

My digestion is extremely slow so I eat all my fruit in the morning and then I eat the veggies - salads, etc then I get to heavier food. So if I feel like an apple in the afternoon - I cannot have one. Or I pay for it with a lot of discomfort. I hope this eventually gets better the longer I eat healthy and let my body heal.

If you are transitioning to a more raw food diet and are noticing some real discomforts then you may need to pay attention to food combining. A way to start is by eating simple foods without a lot of ingredients.

More on this in future posts
LIVE HEALTHY & HAPPY!

FAST TASTY RAW SOUPS

RAW SOUPS are great for a fast meal. You can make them as simple and as complicated as you want. I was on a juice/smoothie fast the last few days and then today I was hungry so needed more.

I have a favourite tomato soup I usually make but I wanted to try something different.

I didn't have a recipe so this morning I made this up:

Creamy, Dreamy Green Soup

Small handful of spinach

2 carrots

2-3 celery stalks

1/2 cucumber

1/2 avocado

3 lettuce leaves

Himalyan Salt

Bit of dulse

1 tsp braggs

1 tsp lime juice

1 tsp lemon juice

1/2 tomato

oregano - couple shakes of the dry herb

basil - a couple shakes of the dry herb

1 - 1 1/2 C water

Yes, this was a green soup. I added some cinnamon and sliced grape tomatoes and sliced cucumber when I ate it. I liked it. It may not be for everyone but it is healthy, nutritious and easy on digestion.

Below are some soup recipes I found that you can try and I will be trying them this week.

Cream of Tomato

1/4 C onion

1 clove garlic

4 celery

2 carrots

1/2 C basil

4 tomatoes

1 C water

1/2 C cashews (soaked)

4 dates (soak first)

dash of cayene

1 - 1 1/2 tsp braggs

Throw all in blender and blend! You can eat like that or add some cut up veggies, greens and seeds or hemp seeds.

Broccoli Soup

3 C almond milk

2 C broccoli

1 avocado

Garlic to taste

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cumin

Pepper to taste

Add some water if you use soaked almonds instead of almond milk

Cut up ingredients and add to blender. If you do not have almond milk - use soaked almonds and they will blend but the soup would be a little crunchy or gritty - which I actually prefer. Add some Cut tomatoes, nutritional yeast, sunflower seeds, etc.

GIVE THESES A TRY - What I like to do is wash and cut up the veggies the night before and then it is fast to blend them in the morning. Pour them into mason jars or a big glass blow with a fitted cover and your set! Great with dehydrated crackers!

LIVE HAPPY & HEALTHY!

TRAILS IN NANAIMO & REFLECTION

BECOMING CLEAR ON A JUICE FAST

When I am feeling stressed, the best thing I can do is go out for a walk. Luckily I live by some beautiful trails, lakes, rivers, streams and ocean. That is why I LOVE living here!!

I did not bring my camera today but I did another time and here are just a couple of pictures of a place that is really close to my home called Westwood Lake.

Those are ferns above - there are tons of them! I come from Alberta so this was so new to me when I first moved here 9 years ago.

Being around water takes away negative emotion. It does! I end up feeling calm, relaxed, centered and it is a time when I can just be in the moment.

I have been on sort of a juice fast the last few days. Lets say, juices and a bit of fruit and some light veggies. Mostly juices. My digestive system was off and I was not feeling that well so.....I ended up having fruit puddings and juices and smoothies.

Below is what my regular green smothie looks like every day. It is usually:
MY FAVOURITE GREEN SMOOTHIE
Kale
Romaine Lettuce
1 Apple
Dash of cinnamon
1 Date (sometimes)
Squeezes of lemon and or lime
Water
Some mango chunks (not always)
The juice I made this morning consisted of:
VEGGIE JUICE
1/4 of a beet
1 1/2 carrots
2 stalks celery
1/4 cucumber
5 lettuce leaves
1/2 apple
3/4 - 1 C water

I put it in my Blentec Blender - which is so great and high speed - just love it! I blended it up and then put it through a straining bag. I usually just drink smoothies with some fruit, greens and maybe some cucumber so never use strainer. The strainer bag is actually also a sprouting bag but works well.

It was very refreshing and full of nutrients. This is what I have been drinking. I made a fresh batch this afternon.

I have done a fast before and it was unplanned like this one. I did not feel very good yesterday but today - just amazing!!! I am so clear, I have energy, the fog has totally lifted and my vision is incredible. During my beautiful walk it was like all my senses were hightened!

When I was young I did drugs - yes, that was the 70's and I can kind of compare this to when I took acid or mushrooms. Where your vision seems to expand and your senses are alive and you just feel so great!!! So glad it is without the chemicals this time.

It is a high feeling and I am going to continue on the juice fast as long as I feel is right. I do not stress myself out about how long I should or NEED to do this. It just happened and it feels right, right now.

The walk calmed me and gave me focus. I realized also that I do not "feel" hungry. I love chewing and eating, I really do. I love snacking and always have. I tend to bring way too much food to work and constantly carry it in my car so being on a juice fast is a nice break. Just need to make juices!! It frees you. It is 6:30 p.m. and I don't have to prepare dinner, I didn't have to prepare lunch, etc.

I hear about people who plan when they are going to go on a fast - whether juice or just water or even just strickly raw food. I have never been much of a planner so doing it spontaneously works for me.

NO STRESS IS BEST!!

If you are not prepared yet to do a juice or water fast try one complete day with just raw food, then when you get to the next day, try that day, on and on. Just live day by day and you will notice cravings and emotional things coming up but realize they are trying to clear themselves from you. They can seem to control you, they really do. But, it is your choice - does not mean it is easy.

Take steps - one day try just juice and or water for 1/2 a day. Then another time try a full day, etc.

DELICIOUS, NUTRITIOUS SALADS

RAW FOOD SALADS

Funny calling salads raw food - they are but weren't they always??

When someone hears I am a raw food chef that is what they think about. They think all I eat is salads and cut up raw veggies. It may be true that I do love salads and eat a lot of them, but I always have.

Salads are a main staple for me but raw food prep goes way beyond salads.

Today though I am going to talk about salads because the wide variety of salads you can make is amazing. You can put almost any whole food ingredient into a salad.

I started a 6 week coaching program for women wanting to transition to a healthier lifestyle. Whole living foods is the basis of the healthier lifestyle and with that comes salads!!

The group wanted me to keep it simple for the 1st week so the first week is going to consist of a lot of salads. Salads are familar to people - yet extremely healthy!

What makes a salad you buy at a restaurant or fast food place unhealthy is the high fat salad dressings full of preservatives and junk that they serve with the salad.

In this post I will share some healthy, nutritious salad dressings you can make fast and easy.

Cilantro - I LOVE CILANTRO!

This cilantro based salad dressing is so good, it is my favourite at the moment. It goes so well on a green salad - no matter what you throw on the salad. But, then again, I love cilantro.

The picture above is the cilantro dressing I made but it looks yellow in this picture. It is actually green. I just had a bit left.

Cilantro Salad Dressing
2 C Cilantro
1 C Apple Cider Vinegar
1/2 C Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 clove garlic
1 1/2 Tbsp honey
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Blend all ingredients - adding cilantro last. If you are using blender or hand mixer. If you are mixing by hand, mix oil and apple cider vinegar first. Then add other ingredients and mix, cut cilantro up fine and add.

Cilantro is good and very good for you. It has fiber, iron, magnesium. It is great for detoxing. It also contains an antibacterial compound dedecenal which is a potent antibiotic. Early physicians, including Hippocrates, used cilantro (also konwn as coriander) for medicinal properties.

I love adding cilantro to a cucumber and tomato salad and I also add it in my green salads. You can also add it in your smoothie.

Another nutritious salad I want to share with you is a Beet & Bok Choy Salad.

This is another one of my favourite salads.

Beets contain healthy nutrients such as: Folate, manganese, potassium, fiber, Vit C, magnesium, tryptophan, iron, copper and phosphorus.

Beets contain a pigment called betacyanin that gives beets their color. It is a powerful cancer-fighting agent. It is extremely effective against colon cancer.

Beets are also good for protection against heart disease and help to reduce inflammation.

Beets greens are rich in vitamins and minerals as well as carotenoids such as beta-carotene & lutein/zeaxanthin. Beet greens are great to add to smoothies and in salads.

Bok Choy is similar to cabbage in nutrient profile. It is rich in Vit C, phytochemicals, potassium and very high in calcium, folate, beta-carotene, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, lutein an dzeaxanthin.

Beet & Bok Choy Salad (these are the amounts I used)
1 Beet, peeled and shredded
3 Baby Bok Choy
Shred beet and cut up bok choy.

Dressing:
Apple Cider Vinegar, Extra Virgin Olive Oil and some dashes of cinnamon. The way I do this is I start with Olive Oil, then I add some apple cider vinegar and mix to taste. If it is too oily I add some more vinegar, if it has too much vinegar I add some more olive oil.

Pour dressing over beets and bok choy and mix well. This is really good after it sits for a while or even over night. Enjoy this healthy, nutrient packed salad!

Here is another salad dressing to try. It contains tahini with is high in calcium. I also love the taste of tahini. You can chose to use raw tahini or use an organic tahini from toasted sesame seeds (which of course is not raw).

Tahini Dressing

2 Tbsp tahini

1/2 lemon juiced

1/2 orange juiced

1/2 C parsley

1 tsp honey

Blend well (sorry for double spacing again) this format is driving me crazy. I am going to change the blog format because this is just not working for me. Soon this blog will look differently

LIVE HAPPY & HEALTHY!