Posts filed under ‘Raw’
More Green Smoothie = More Happy
When you are making your green smoothie in the morning…make double the amount! It’s so much easier to make it all in one batch, and then you have a ready-made, delicious & satisfying snack for later in the day. I love keeping empty bottles like this one just for this purpose. Bella has an empty “mini” Naked juice bottle that is her special smoothie bottle. She loves knowing that it’s in the fridge full of green smoothie just waiting for her whenever she wants (it usually doesn’t last very long!) and I am more than happy to give it to her.For those of you that work full time and have access to a fridge…this is a great way to bring raw to the office, or even just a quick and healthy snack for the afternoon.
Also, don’t be afraid to have 2 smoothies in one day … it’s a great way to stop cravings in their tracks! Greens are where it’s at!
How To Make a Green Smoothie
For those of you who are still wondering exactly how to make one of these crazy green smoothies…check out Robyn’s (of Green Smoothie Girl fame) video. It’s great…and it has a lot of little tidbits of knowledge too. My favorite quote:
“If you do nothing else that’s healthy all day long…do this!”
Preach it sister! Even if you are eating Snickers and Mountain Dew…you can still benefit from a green smoothie…get on board!
Raw Link Love
Here are a few more delightful links for you to check out…happy surfing!
Green Smoothie Girl speaks about feeding babies and toddlers
David Wolfe speaks briefly about protein
Ani Phyo goes to the Farmer’s Market : I love Ani! Can’t wait to get to California markets…
Raw Spirit Fest 2007 (video by Philip at Loving Raw…for all you festival-loving raw foodies out there)
“How Do You Have a Social Life with Raw Food?” (a cute little song)
Funny Smoothie Video with Tim VanOrden
Thoughts on being “independently healthy” by Tim VanOrden
Raw Families
When it comes to feeding our kids, we all want the very best…but sometimes don’t even know where to begin! Transitioning your children to a raw diet (or even just more raw foods) seems daunting, but you would be surprised at how adaptable they are. It’s important to offer them many options (with different textures), make it colorful and fun, and don’t give up! They will have favorites just like you do…become a “student” of your child and find out exactly what foods their body craves. Start adding things slowly and involve them in the process.
I would highly encourage you to examine what kinds of foods you are putting in your child’s body…cut out the filler foods and go straight for the good stuff! Eliminate flour crackers, non-sprouted breads, chips, milk, and cheese and I guarantee you will see a marked improvement in their skin, their behavior (yay!), and their digestion.
I had the pleasure of meeting a family at our Live Lightly demo this week who has been raw for 1 year. They have 3 boys… all extremely bright kids and healthy kids who shared my love of dates! It was so fun to see how excited they got when I pulled them from the fridge. Weeee! It’s so refreshing to see a family teaching their children how to eat pure, whole foods from such a young age!
Some linky love:
Families in the Raw
An excellent list of resources from all over the web!
Raising Raw Kids Forum
A subforum of Give It To Me Raw
Raw Recipes for Kids
All recipes marked “kids” at Gone Raw
Meals for Raw Babies and Toddlers
A few snack/meal ideas for those of you with hopes to turn your family raw!
Happy Foody Raw Challenge + Raw Life Coaching
Attention all you green smoothie fans! It’s time to crank it up a notch. You had to have known this was coming! 🙂 Raw foods are rocking my world and I want you to have a chance to experience it yourself in a supportive and fun environment. I am launching the official “Happy Foody Raw Challenge”. If you have been intrigued by all this talk about “going raw”… now is your chance to try it out for yourself.
This challenge will be ONE WEEK long. To make it even easier for you to succeed, you will be the one to choose the 7 consecutive days that will work the best for you between now and March 25. You might consider taking one week to ADD more raw food to your diet before you start taking away the cooked foods…doing a slower transition time. Here are the guidelines:
Commit to eating raw foods for at least 7 consecutive days.
Continue to drink at least one green smoothie every day.
Easy! You can do ANYTHING for one week. And I know you will feel amazing. You’re going to have more energy. You’re going to finally kick those bad habits. You’re going to be HAPPY. Oh but Sara! What if I can’t make it a week!? If you do make the choice to have cooked foods within that 7 days, don’t beat yourself up. Shoot for perfection so you can truly experience the benefits, but be gracious to yourself on your journey! This isn’t a challenge where you need to feel “bad” or like you’re “kicked out” if you mess up. However, I do want everyone to give it their very best effort. Let’s have FUN and enjoy these amazing foods!
Exciting news! Are you serious about making a change? I am going to be offering “Raw Life Coaching” for all those interested and will have a “Raw Challenge Special” for those of you who want to try it out for just 7 days. I have also launched my private raw food journal, Raw Delight, which includes my food journals, more extensive thoughts on eating raw, and details about making the transition as a family. You will have access to that blog with the purchase of a personal coaching session. You don’t have to go 100% raw…I can also coach you in creative ways to add more raw food to your current diet. Click here for more information and pricing!
As if all that wasn’t exciting enough…there is one more big thing! Sarma Melngailis, President of One Lucky Duck and Partner/Executive Chef at Pure Food and Wine, the nation’s premier raw food restaurant in NYC has donated the prize for this challenge! She will be sending a signed copy of her cookbook Raw Food Real World to the winner, along with a tote bag and some delicious raw snacks from her exclusive raw foods store, One Lucky Duck. One Lucky Duck is now sponsoring the Live Lightly Tour and let me tell you…you do NOT want to miss out on this! The raw chocolate macaroons are worth it! Sarma’s cookbook is hands down my favorite cookbook. Gorgeous photography and recipes you will go nuts over. The introduction which details her conversion to raw is a great read. You will LOVE it. You have no idea how excited I am to be able to pass on this kind of raw love to you guys!! 🙂 To be eligable, commit yourself to this challenge and enroll yourself in our Yahoo! group below….I will announce the winner on March 25. Thank you Sarma for this awesome gift.
A few more tools for your success:
Raw Challenge Yahoo! Support Group
Make the commitment and then join our group to get ideas and support!
Raw Challenge Blog Badge
Put this on your own blog to encourage others to join as well! Please “save image as” and copy this to your own computer and then link it back to this post.
Stay tuned for ongoing encouragement, recipes, and fun! Tell all your friends about it and let’s go raw!
Going Bananas!
This is my lovely friend Becky displaying our banana JACKPOT that we came across late one night this weekend. We found these 2 bags of super ripe bananas for $1.49 per bag (each bag was 8-9 lbs)…which comes to about 19 cents per lb. I was practically beside myself with glee. BECAUSE…I had been on a “banana hunt” all week long, going from grocery store to grocery store trying to find some ripe bananas!! Everywhere I went…green bananas. And more green bananas. I was beginning to lose hope. And then we stopped by this place on a whim and WHOOOOOO HOOO!
Due to our new raw lifestyle, we go through a lot of bananas. My table in the RV was FULL of bananas on Friday night…and they are almost gone now. Well, about 1/2 of them are sliced and frozen in our freezer for green smoothies, but we blew through them pretty fast! Someday, when we aren’t traveling anymore, I will be buying my bananas in bulk from our coop…but for now I have to “hunt” for them…all around the country! 🙂
There is just NOTHING like a perfectly ripe banana. Sweet, dense, creamy. They can stop the most intense of cravings! You always want to eat them at the ripest you can…the antioxidant levels are highest when they are almost to the point of “spoiling”. Un-ripe bananas are not great for your digestion, so I would say stay away from them if you can. Check out the amazing nutritional benefits of bananas here.
Go bananas!
“Green For Life” Book Giveaway!
Victoria Boutenko, author of “Green For Life” and other wonderful books, has offered to give a free copy of “Green For Life” to a lucky challenge participant. Wooo hooo! A big thank you to Victoria, the QUEEN of green smoothies, for her support in our challenge. 🙂
All you need to do to get your name in the drawing is to sign up as a member of our Yahoo! Green Smoothie group. Most of you are already members, so you won’t need to do anything…but if you are still lurking and haven’t made the commitment, please click over there right now and sign up. I will announce the winner on Friday, Feb. 29. Stay tuned!
Raw Travel
It’s been a little over 3 weeks on raw food for me…and I’m feeling splendid. We just flew back to South Carolina and I wanted to share a few tips regarding traveling while trying to maintain a raw focus. These tips could apply to a cross-country trek or just sometime when you might be away from your kitchen for awhile.
- Be prepared! I can’t stress this enough. If you aren’t prepared…you’ll fall victim to the “easy” foods you find along the way, and they are almost always bad foods.
- Try to avoid loading yourself up on nuts. It’s easy to do…nuts are so fun to crunch away on while you’re flying or driving, but they are heavy and hard to digest. Also try to avoid eating nuts and fruits in the same sitting. Go easy. With that said, I do think that traveling is a fun time to eat some of your splurge foods (like raw fudge balls).
- Bring fresh fruit. It comes in it’s very own wrapper! The wrapper is even edible sometimes! 🙂 What an amazing gift from God. I could easily stay happy on bananas, apples, and dates.
- Know your triggers. If you know that you love to snack while you drive…be prepared for that and bring your favorite raw treats that satisfy your need to crunch (flax crackers, carrots, etc).
- If you are driving, don’t forget a cooler! It broadens your options so much. You can make green smoothies ahead of time for your entire trip as long as they are kept cold (they are said to “keep” for 3 days!).
- Don’t be afraid to bring your blender or food processor with you if you are staying with family and friends (they they will think you are weird, but don’t they already?!). It’s a great teaching opportunity…teach them how to make a green smoothie and they will be healthy for life! 🙂
- The great thing about eating raw…is that there are grocery stores everywhere. SO…if you run out of food, just go get more. It may not be organic, but it will be raw.
Our stash during this trip included:
- 6 bananas
- 6 apples
- A bag of dates (medjool and barhi). Dates will make you happy when you’re stressing out because your flight is late.
- Raw trail mix that I made up (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, walnuts, raisins, dried fruit mix)
- Two Raw food bars (this one is my favorite)
- Goji berries (my new favorite snack)
- Dried black mission figs
- Raw fudge balls (I whipped up a batch of these before I left and chilled them overnight). They were a great high protein/high fat food for Bella…and a treat for me.
This got us through a day of flying…with no stops for meals due to quick layovers. Yum yum! It’s fun to travel, but it’s great to be back in my own kitchen 🙂
The Not Green Smoothie
I saw this idea somewhere on line, and I had to try it out. It seemed way too simple! I peeled 3 juicy oranges, added 3-4 ice cubes, threw them in the blender and blended (it said not to add water, but I didn’t think it would work so I added a little). It was delicious! I actually think it would have been perfect without the water…the juice from the oranges would be enough. Matt, Bella, and I shared this glass.I did a green version of this for Matt this morning…
2 frozen bananas
1 orange, peeled
Handful of spinach
2 cups water
It was soooo good. Like a tropical dream.
Green Smoothie Challenge Group/Message Board
Thanks to Jessica for the great idea…
I created a “group” on Yahoo! for our challenge.
Join today!
Happy Foody 
