Raw Foods For Real People

There are a lot of different ideas about what a healthy diet consists of.Some people focus on vegetarianism or veganism, organics,less processed foods,whole foods,and now raw foods has become a more common idea.

What I've found is that most changes you make for health are changes your body appreciates, but there is always another healthy thing to do just around the next bend. You have to be kind to yourself or you can get overwhelmed with it all.

I've known people that refused to eat food served when they were guests in someone's home. I've known people that didn't even get together with other people because they had completely isolated themselves with their food rules.

In short, I've seen a lot of healthy eating turn into unhealthy living because people were not willing to be flexible and to care for other people more than they cared about how they eat.

(Please know I'm not talking about people who have serious medical needs to avoid certain foods. That is a whole different ball of wax and of course in a case like that I know that you need to take care of yourself first.)

One of my life philosophies is "people first." In my life people come before money, before things, before selfishness, and also before food issues.

To me, my health is important. But so are the people in my life. I do not want to be the person that lectures their friends about the soda they drink or the processed food they eat. I do not want to be the person that brings weird stuff to potlucks that nobody will touch. And I definitely don't want to be the person that doesn't go and be with others because of food.

I can take care of my health for every meal of the week, and be a good sport if I go someplace where eating something else is the norm. Last Sunday was a perfect example. We had a luncheon after church. They were serving subs, chips, veggies, and other picnic-y sorts of things. I wasn't going to get picky about the white bread or nitrates in the lunch meats. I ate subs and a few chips, drank water, skipped dessert, and all was well. No big deal. Just eat and have fun with the people in your life! I have 20 other meals this week that I can eat healthier than that!

So please know that when I share my ideas with you it comes from a place of saying, "Hey! This worked for me. Maybe it'll work for you." If not, then hey--I like ya just the same no matter what you eat! ;)

Today I want to tell you about my breakfast smoothies. I have been into smoothies for breakfast for at least a couple of years now. I started with it because fruit is considered by some health gurus to be the ideal first food of your day. (And excellent book to read is the oldie-but-goodie Fit For Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond) It's easy to digest so it doesn't start out your day by creating a sluggish digestive situation as will happen if you eat a heavy breakfast.

My smoothies usually consist of:

3 bananas
some frozen blueberries (maybe a half cup)
frozen strawberries (probably 1 cup or more)
as much fruit juice as it takes to make the fruits go around in the blender (I use whatever kind of juice I have in the fridge--apple, orange, in a pinch I've used lemons and limes, and if I'm out of juice I just use water)

You can whiz it all up in your blender, smoothie maker, or in my case, a Vita Mix. This recipe makes enough smoothie for everybody here that wants smoothies for breakfast. I love to give my kids smoothies! Typically my husband and I will each have a tall glass, our older kids will have large coffee mug sizes, and the littler kids will have smaller amounts.

One great use for leftover smoothies is to make popsicles out of them. It's very fun for kids to get popsicles for breakfast or treats any time. :) You can also leave the blender pitcher in the fridge with the leftovers in it and have some smoothie later in the day.

Some days I feel hungry for something else after about 3 hours or so, so at that point I may eat some homemade whole wheat bread, some whole grain cereal, drink some veggie juice, or eat my lunchtime salad early. It just depends. Since I've been eating healthier I've noticed that my smoothie seems to take me all the way to lunchtime a lot more often.

There are a zillion variations on this smoothie. When peaches are in season I use those, and I toss in apples, leftover grapes, or whatever other fresh or frozen fruit is around. Some people like to put yogurt, milk, or milk alternatives such as rice or soy milk in smoothies. For me, I like it that I'm just having the fruit. If I had a reasonable way to make juice from apples I would even make my juice that goes in it raw and make it an entirely raw breakfast.

Smoothies can work for anybody: raw foodists, vegetarians and vegans, people with special dietary needs and allergies, and for anybody who just enjoys a really delicious and quick treat to start their day. Try it!

I would like to tell you about a discovery I made.Fairly recently I heard about the benefits of drinking water with freshly squeezed lemon juice in it.It's good for your liver, and it's good for helping your body's pH level to lean more toward alkaline, which in turn helps to promote good health.

So I started out with lemon in water and not surprisingly, it was sour.I didn't enjoy it, but was able to drink a lot of my water that way throughout the day.

Then I read an article that reminded me of stevia.Stevia is an herbal supplement that sweetens foods without calories and has a zero on the glycemic index.I bought some the other day and decided to see what I could do with it.I ended up discovering a healthy lemonade that my enitre family loves!

All I do is use a citrus juicer (just a hand-twist model--$2 at the store) to squeeze the juice from two fresh lemons, add enough water to mostly fill a two-quart pitcher, then add two droppers of the liquid stevia.Yum! The kids are wild for it and are very excited to have a tasty treat. They normally only get juice in the morning and water for the rest of the day. Now I am letting them drink healthy lemonade all day long and they feel like they are really getting something fun. :)

This morning I experimented with using this lemonade in my smoothie, instead of juice. It worked just fine, and now my smoothies are all-raw, and lower calorie.

Stevia is a better alternative to other sugar substitutes. So many of those are truly bad for your body, plus taste disgusting. Stevia is actually good for you. Although I wouldn't say stevia tastes exactly like sugar, my family felt that it was close enough that we could enjoy it and not feel like we were getting some yukko aspartame or splenda taste to suffer through. My husband tried out stevia in his coffee and thought it was excellent that way too. (just 2 drops is all it takes!)

The liquid stevia cost $11 for a 2 ounce bottle. Although that seems kind of expensive, it seems that it is going to pay for itself. I normally spend about $15-18 for two weeks of juice here. I would be very happy to reduce or eliminate the juice consumption and offer healthy lemonade instead. Lemons fluctuate in price, but if you get the ones in the bags they aren't very expensive. Considering the health benefits, even if it turned out to be a little more expensive than juice, it would be well worth it to me to make that change in our diets.

One of the ways I try to get lots of raw veggies into my diet is by eating salads. Most days I have at least one big salad, and some days I even have two of them. Many times people will balk at the idea of eating a big salad, saying that they don't really like salad very much. Often when I tell these people about all of the wonderful stuff that goes into one of my salads they say, "Oh, yeah. Well, that actually does sound good!"

So, today we have Salad 101.

I used to buy all of my salad greens and wash and chop or tear them one by one, but it really took a lot of time and therefore was easy to not be consistent about! I started looking at the bagged greens that are prewashed and decided to give them a try. Up until the other night I actually felt a little guilty for not buying my spinach in a bunch rather than in a bag, but then I did a little investigating. I took a bunch of spinach and weighed it, made a guess at the amount of weight that I could deduct for the very long stems that I could cut off, and took note of the price. Then I went and looked at the bagged spinach and compared the prices. I discovered that the bagged spinach is actually cheaper than the bunches! YAY! I can have my convenience AND a bargain with my healthy food. I love it when that happens.

Now, before we get very far here let me tell you that iceberg lettuce is NOT lettuce for your salad. Iceberg lettuce is almost completely void of flavor and nutrition. Pass on by it, people. Pass on by. Lettuces for your healthy and delicious salads should be dark green and dark red. Get some drama going on in your salad bowl! When I have the time I love to get a head of the red leaf lettuce and use that along with the spinach. When I don't have the time for cleaning the lettuce myself I get one bag of organic mixed lettuces and use it along with lots of the spinach. If I'm going for cheap, I just use the spinach which is great all by itself as well.

Like many people, I don't have time to make a salad every day. What I do instead is make a huge salad that will last us about a week. Here's how it goes:

Start with a large bag of spinach, plus either a bag of prewashed lettuce or one head of leaf lettuce. If you decide to rewash the bagged items, make sure you use a salad spinner or something comparable to get the greens really dry. Keeping your salad dry is the key to having it stay nice for you all week long.

I use a very large bowl to alternate the spinach and lettuce, throwing it into the bowl to mix it up. Then I start adding some fun stuff!

Recently I discovered bags of Broccoli Slaw in my produce department. These bags contain shredded up broccoli, carrots, and red cabbage. Again, it's all prewashed, so all I have to do is throw some in! I do not like chunks of carrot, cabbage, or broccoli in my salads, so this texture works out great. It adds color and flavor plus nutrition. One of these bags is less than $2 and lasts me more than 2 weeks.

You can also get matchstick carrots, cut similarly to the Broccoli Slaw, and add those to your salad if you enjoy more carrots, more color, or can't find the Broccoli Slaw at your store.

Cherry tomatoes are the best tomatoes to add to your salad when you want it to stay nice for a week. Just wash, dry, and throw them in! If you can't get cherry tomatoes you can obviously use any other kind, but if you are going to add any tomato that you are going to cut up, don't add it until you are about to eat.

I love sweet peppers in my salad, and you can always find green ones for cheap at the grocery store. However, if you are like me and want lots of pretty color in your salad, spring for the red or orange sweet peppers instead. I LOVE to see little red and yellow and orange treasures in my salad bowl. It is so pretty and makes me feel even happier about eating a salad. Some of my younger children will even come around to peer into my salad bowl and ask for bits of pepper or little tomatoes. They are learning that salads are interesting and delicious!

You can keep your salad in a covered pot in your fridge if you have the space, or just use gallon size or larger zip lock bags. This salad I am describing usually fills two gallon bags in my fridge. They are always front-and-center so when I am feeling hungry I see it and remember to have a salad first. It looks fresh and pretty in my fridge as well.

When it's time to eat, why not have a salad first, even if you're going to eat other things also? I use a Tupperware bowl that has a 12-cup capacity, because I like to have lots of room to stir my salad around and not have it spill over the sides. I usually start with about half a bowl of the salad I've premade, and then I add even more goodies to it!

You can add chopped tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, nuts and seeds, some chopped up hard boiled eggs or some chopped up chicken or turkey, and a lot of times I break up some of the raw burgers that I make in my dehydrator and add those as well. Guacamole is awesome in my salads, and I LOVE to make a fabulous, easy raw salsa, which is my very favorite salad dressing of all time. I have a section of my fridge that has all the salad goodies handy so all I have to do is start grabbing stuff and tossing it into my bowl.

Just like the breakfast smoothies, salads can be really easy and can be adjusted to whatever your eating goals are. For me, I try to make it filling and beautiful, and if I can have it be all raw I really like that. If you can take 5 or 10 minutes once a week you can have lovely salads available to you all week long. If you don't junk them up with tons of regular salad dressing, it's so healthy and delicious. You can make a positive change for your health rather painlessly.

I have another favorite aspect to my salads that I just have to tell you about. It's my carrot stuff....(recipe from Serene Allison's awesome recipe book Rejuvenate Your Life, available from AboveRubies.org resources)

In a food processor:
4 large carrots
half a sweet onion

Whiz it up until it's nicely chopped. Then add:
the juice of one fresh lemon
half a teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 teaspoons cumin
1.5 teaspoons sea salt
and 1.5-2 cups sunflower seeds or almonds (or any other nut or seed that you like)

Whiz, whiz, whiz!

I LOVE this stuff. You can use it in so many ways. A lot of times I add a lot of it into my salads. Sometimes I eat it all by itself. You can also put it on a burger (meat or veggie) or use it to stuff a sweet pepper and so on.

With a good food processor this is really quick and easy to make, and keeps in the fridge for more than a week. This recipe makes enough to fill two quart jars. I keep it with the other salad goodies and never forget to throw it in with the other stuff I'm eating. Yum!

This is very simple: I love my salsa! Once I started making salsa and enjoying the fresh, glorious flavor of it, I was able to say goodbye to fattening salad dressings forever. It's been an easy, painless change that's good for my body. Here's how you do it:

In your food processor pulse (but don't liquify):

4 large ripe tomatoes
1 red bell pepper
2 tomatillos (don't leave 'em out! They rock!)
half a sweet onion
3 cloves of garlic
sea salt (approx. 2 tsp.)
a few cracks of black pepper
one tablespoon of raw honey
the juice of 3 lemons or 4 limes
approx. one tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Just pulse it up and...it's salsa time!

This recipe usually fills two quart jars for me. I keep them in the fridge and dump liberal amounts onto my salads. It is AWESOME!

I recently upgraded from an old, half-dead food processor that made every processing job a multiple-step process. I could only process less than 2 cups of food at a time, and it was wimpy. Eventually I decided that if I was going to be able to stick with my healthy eating plan, I had to have the right tools. A new food processor had to be gotten.

Well, baby, let me tell you, my life is revolutionized! I bought a Hamilton Beach Big Mouth food processor. It has a 14-cup capacity (the largest I found at the store) which is perfect for me since I'm usually making big batches. The other great feature is the big mouth. You don't have to cut your potatoes, tomatoes, or other thick items in half the long way. Most of it fits the big way!

The Big Mouth also has suction cup feet that help to stabilize it while you're processing like crazy. It's easy to clean, dishwasher safe, and I LOVE IT! Best of all, it's not expensive. I can do anything with the right tools!

As I continue on my journey of healthy eating and raw foods, I keep trying new things. The other day I came upon something that has been a true hit at my house: Ice Cream!

Here's how you make it:

take some ripe bananas (when the skins have the brown speckles on them). Peel and chop up, then freeze. (When you see bargain bananas marked down at the store, buy them up and freeze them! Very cheap!)

Once frozen, stick your chopped bananas into your food processor, blender, or whatever you've got.

Add in a tablespoon or so of honey, and some coconut milk (maybe 2-3 Tablespoons. I didn't measure).

Whir it all up in your processor til it looks like soft serve ice cream.

Now you can eat it that way or make it into some other flavor.

If you want it more vanilla-ish, add some vanilla extract.

For chocolate, which is what we did, I added carob powder. I just kept adding it and mixing a tablespoon or so at a time until it was satisfyingly chocolately. I read a suggestion to add a little mint extract for a chocolate-mint ice cream which sounded yummy as well. If you don't care about going all-raw you could add natural peanut butter in!

Other suggestions would be to add nuts, granola, frozen or fresh berries or other fruit, etc. You can really use your imagination!

For us, the chocolate ice cream was DELICIOUS! MY 13 year old even said so, which is quite an accomplishment seeing as how he treats most healthy items with great skepticism.

I also discovered, by accident, that this can make a yummy pudding as well. You can make this up and then put it into containers in the fridge until you want to eat it. I had some leftover ice cream last night that I stuck in the fridge. This morning it was still good and I am thinking it would be a thrillin breakfast item for my children. They will be extremely delighted to know that we are having chocolate pudding for breakfast!

I think this could also make excellent frozen popsicles as well.

This is very filling so it doesn't take much to satisfy you. Try it!