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Friday, July 4, 2008

Daily Meal Ideas


Most people want to know what my DAILY MEALS are like so I'll give you a few ideas.

Breakfast - Green smoothies are the best. Try them! It's a fruit smoothie with a little added spinach, kale, parsley, celery or whatever you like thrown in for tons of nutrition. The fruit/green combinations are endless.


The very best book of recipes for smoothies is by Revvell Revati at this link: http://revvellations.com/shopping/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=3 you can even buy it as an ebook and download it right onto your computer immediately.

Also, check out the youtube video demonstration of green smoothies I have put on this blog.

For another easy breakfast I will cut up a few fruits for a simple fruit salad like banana, apple, papaya, pineapple. Or, sometimes I want something a little more traditional or special and I will have one of Ani Phyo's coconut pancakes with strawberries and raw honey drizzled over. If I have made one of the delicious raw pies, I’ll have a piece of blueberry or banana cream pie – yum!

Lunch - I might have half of the green smoothie I couldn't finish from breakfast (It makes a lot), or a greens and fruits salad. I like to put strawberries, apple slices, grapes or other fruit in my green salad so that I don't really need to use salad dressings. Plus I add raisins, pumpkin seeds, cucumbers, tomatoes, grated carrot, avocado, bell peppers, sprouts, mint leaves, green onion… just whatever I have on hand. There are lots of great raw salad dressing recipes, too. I have also discovered a great “tuna” salad recipe I call Sunflower Salad that I love to roll into a lettuce wrap or put on a salad.


Dinner - I like to try new recipes if I have time, but on nights where it has to be quick I will have green/fruit salad or veggie sandwich with tomatoes, cucumber, sprouts, spinach, red bell pepper and mustard sauce wrapped in big lettuce leaves or on dehydrated bread. I also love ants-on-a-log with celery and raisins using raw almond butter (sadly, peanuts aren't raw). Some of my other favorite recipes are: tacos or taco salad made with ground seasoned walnut meat topped with fresh salsa, zucchini pasta primavera, veggie nori rolls, Thai spring rolls w/ “peanut” sauce and fresh veggie chili.

Snacks – Trail mix made with raw nuts (almonds, cashews, macadamia, and pecans), pumpkin seeds, raisins, goji berries, dried banana slices and sunflower seeds. Fresh fruit or veggies of any kind. Something great to keep in your purse or desk drawer for a hunger emergency are Lara Bars, which are packaged raw energy bars (I buy at Down to Earth health food store). My favorite flavors are chocolate coconut chew, cinnamon roll, banana cookie, ginger snap and cherry pie.

Treats – My favorites so far are chocolate coconut macaroons (Raw Food Real World by Matthew Kenney & Sarma Melngallis), blueberry pie (Living on Live Food by Alissa Cohen), banana cream pie (an Ann Wigmore recipe in Living on Live Food by Alissa Cohen), rawlmond joy candies (web recipe), banana-papaya ice cream (web recipe), fresh mango cobbler (Ani's Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo), raw truffles (web recipe).

You'll have your own favorites in no time!

Answers To Nutrition Questions I Am Most Frequently Asked

One question I am always asked is, “Where do you get your protein?” First, it is interesting to know that human breast milk is 5% protein. This is the perfect food for babies who are growing more quickly than at any other time in their lives (they are doubling their weight in 180 days!). Since older children and adults are not growing at such a rate, we do not need any more protein than that. The United Nation’s World Health Organization recommends that men and women obtain 5% of their calories as protein. The USDA puts this figure at 6.5%. Our need for protein is easily met with fruits having 4 - 9%, nuts/seeds/sprouts 10 – 25% and vegetables 15 - 50% of their calories from protein.

How about calcium? Plenty of calcium is found and more easily absorbed into your body from plant foods. In fact, only 30% of the calcium in a cup of milk is actually absorbed by the body. Your body would get twice as much calcium from a cup of broccoli. The problem is that the body uses a lot of calcium in the process of excreting all the excess animal protein and will leach it out of your bones if necessary to get the job done. Plant protein doesn't create that kind of problem. Plus, there is more calcium in many fresh green vegetables, fruits and nuts than there is in milk. Almonds have 245 mg, figs 269 mg, broccoli 123 mg and milk has only 115 mg/100g.

Many people worry about getting sufficient iron. Gabriel Cousins, author of Conscious Eating has this to say about anemia (shortage of iron in the body): “Why do vegetarians have less anemia? The answer, I believe, lies in the leafy greens, which often have a higher concentration of iron than flesh foods. For example, according to the USDA Handbook No. 456, gram for gram, kale has fourteen times more iron than red meat. Spinach has approximately eleven times the iron as ground beef. Strawberries, cabbage, bell peppers, and even cucumbers have more iron per weight than ground beef or sirloin steak. Researchers have also found that Vitamin C, which is high in fruits and vegetables, significantly enhances the body’s ability to assimilate iron.”

A Little Info to Get You Started

Let me just tell you that I started by having raw breakfast and lunch, then eating a cooked vegan dinner for a couple of months and it was O.K. for a transition. I felt a little better, lost a little weight, got used to how it felt to be satisfied after a raw meal, but it was hard sticking to it! When I decided to get on board 100% it was so much easier to resist cooked food – I didn’t even want it. Cooked food smells good to me, but it is like smelling flowers, I enjoy taking nice big sniffs but I don’t want to eat them. And then the weight just started falling off. It was amazing to me!

I also exercise most days. You will want to, too and your body needs it! Aerobic exercise gets your energy up, your mood happy and keeps everything moving through your body, plus it keeps that weight coming off if you need it to. Add weights to firm, tone up and make your bones strong to avoid osteoporosis.

Some of the exciting benefits you will gain by eating raw and living foods are:

Increased physical energy
Rapid weight-loss
Phenomenal health
Greater mental acuity
Vibrant and glowing skin
Spiritual growth
Balanced emotional states
Youthfulness and longevity

No kidding! You will experience great physical and mental changes. It is an adjustment getting used to cold food and you need to change your attitude about how “full” you need to feel all the time or what a meal consists of. But feeling a clean and energetic body is a great payoff for the small sacrifices you will make.

So, now that you know my story I’m sure you are excited to get on with yours.

My Raw Food Beginnings

I have been vegan (I don’t eat animals or animal products like milk, eggs or cheese) since 2003.

My mother had triple heart bypass surgery in 2002 which was a scary wake-up call for all my family and really made us think long and hard about what we were eating. I read the book “The Word of Wisdom Food Plan, a Medical Review of the Mormon Doctrine” by Kenneth E. Johnson, M.D. that had lots of quotes and stories about early church leaders who felt it was better to eat mostly vegetables and fruits. I was immediately convinced that was the right thing for us to do and Chuck and I became vegetarians. Chuck is such a good sport!

I had vaguely heard for a long time about the powerful health and healing benefits of a raw diet.
I got started on Raw Foods by loading some health themed podcasts from itunes onto my ipod to listen while I was exercising. Some of them were talking about raw eating, like “Celebrating Your Potential with Raw Foods” and “Raw Vegan Radio”, and every time I heard them it just rang true to me. A raw food diet consists of fresh raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts. Nothing is heated or cooked above 115 degrees F to retain as many vitamins and enzymes as possible.

I am really scared of getting some kind of cancer. The devastating effects, painful sickening treatment, debilitating symptoms and especially the heartbreaking thought of leaving my children and husband. I always thought to myself, “If I am ever diagnosed with cancer the first thing I will do is go on a raw diet!” Then I started to think, “How stupid is that to wait until I am deep in the throes of cancer to try to get better? Why not feed my body pure nutrition now so that it can have the strength and power to fight any diseases that I might be developing already and take care of it before it gets out of hand?”

I also had a strong prompting while praying that I was being guided to all of this information (vegetarian, then vegan, then raw progressively) because even though I wasn’t feeling any immediate health problems Heavenly Father knew what was going on inside my body and what was developing already or what was to come and I’d better pay attention to the knowledge that he was blessing me to find. So – I jumped in with both feet, 100% committed, excited and grateful to my Heavenly Father! I try not to let anyone discourage me who might be pessimistic about raw and living foods, want to prove me wrong or tell me it’s just too inconvenient for me to always need special food. I do think it’s special and I’m worth it! Every single one of us is worth the special effort!

I needed more information so I went to the websites of the people who were being interviewed on those podcasts and started learning more, I got some raw books at the library and read all I could. I bought a few books that I thought had some good recipes and didn't require a lot of equipment I didn't have. I mostly use my food processor, just a Black & Decker from Walmart but it works great. I'd love to have a Vitamix blender, but I'm still saving for that. A regular blender will just leave a few bits unchopped and will wear out faster. I recently got a food dehydrator, it is nice but you can make plenty of meals without it. I have also got a few little gadget things that are fun like a Spiralizer that cuts veggies such as zucchini into spaghetti shaped noodles.

As I learned more I realized that almost every raw person does it a little differently. They each have different levels of commitment and standards of what is really raw. This was confusing but when you think about it that is the way life is. You just have to find out all the information you can, and then decide for yourself how strict you can be and what feels right to you. The closer you can follow 100% raw eating, the more health benefits you will gain. But everyone isn’t ready for that, so figure out where you are and START.