Marie: Right Now In The Raw

Summer is such a wonderful time to be raw! In fact, it's a great time to begin incorporating more raw food nto your diet! During this time of the year it takes barely any energy at all to create satisfying raw dishes that will completely steal the spotlight away from cooked foods. It's just not what our bodies crave in the heat! Me, I love to whip things together in the kitchen but it's just too warm to spend alot of time doing it so my summer fallbacks are incredible soups and smoothies that I toss together in a blender in a matter of minutes. This is something the whole family can get on board with! Watermelon/ Mint Cooler? The smell of it alone sets your taste buds dancing. My daughter, who is twelve, pronounced emphatically, "Now that smells good!". Cucumbers and grapes make another wonderful pairing that can be eaten as cold summer soup or downed as super smoothie! As my husband gushed, "I could live on this!" Pineapple/ Lime Soup? Bring it on! And I swear...Mango/ Orange Soup... it will actually make you smile. When we made it at our recent Summer Soups class Alisa and I took one sip and grinned ear to ear. That was certainly a happy little soup! Anyway, while I am fiddling around in the kitchen trying to feed myself (and doing a really bang-up job, if I do say so myself), I figure, Spread the Joy! So be prepared... there's alot of it coming your way!









Marie

Alisa: On The Road To Raw



The Green Drink


O.K. Let's talk green! Green is beautiful! It's both beautiful to look at and beautiful for the body. None of us, even the 'raw foodies', take in enough greens on a daily basis. Most tend to overdose on healthy fats (olives, avocados, coconuts, nuts) and sweets (raw chocolate).

Green is the gateway to a vibrant, happy, healthy life and it is EASY to incorporate into your daily eating routine, without asking yourself to give up anything. All it takes is to add one green juice or green smoothie a day to your daily diet. That's it. If you want to take in more juices and smoothies per day, I say go for it! You will be a green superhero! But one per day will do the trick!

Simply put, greens provide the body with unending energy, fiber that the body needs and craves and all the protein needed to meet the daily recommended allowance.

Many people ask if there is a difference between a green juice and a green smoothie and, if there is, what is/are the difference(s). They also ask if a green juice is healthier than a green smoothie. There are two different camps on the subject. Some raw food experts recommend drinking juices over smoothies and vice versa; that is because some say that it is healthier to take in the whole fruit or vegetable (fiber), while others say the juice is all you really need. After researching the subject and testing them out myself, it is my opinion that they are both equally vital in mantaining and increasing one's overall vibrancy and health. The real secret, however, to really reaping their reward, is to consistently incorporate both into ones daily eating routine. Everyday one or both should make an appearance in our diet. And I do not want to hear any excuses! If we have no problem drinking our morning cup of coffee every single day, we should have no problem drinking our juice and/or smoothie every day...

So, what goes into a green juice, how do we make it and what makes it a juice and not a smoothie? A green juice is one that is prepared with mostly green, leafy vegetables, other vegetables and a little fruit. These vegetables are then put through a juicer. ( Note: they can also be blended together and the juice squeezed through a nutmilk bag). When you prepare a green juice with whole, fresh greens, vegetables and fruit, the juicer extracts the fiber from the fruits, greens and vegetables and all you are left with is the juice. When you drink a green juice, it's minerals, vitamins, nutrients and natural sugars go directly into the blood stream and little to no digestion is required to break down the juice, hence the body wastes no energy digesting but rather instantly receives , not only the juice's nutrients, but also instant energy. Among other benefits, green juices are great for fasting, illnesses such as irritable bowel syndrome and other conditions.

What goes into a green smoothie, what do we make it from and what makes it a smoothie and not a juice? A green smoothie is one that is prepared with whole fresh greens and whole fresh or frozen fruit. These fruit and vegetables are then blended together in a blender. At the end of the blending process you are left with, not only the juice, but the fiber as well. In drinking a green smoothie, the presence of the fiber allows the vitamins, minerals, nutrients and natural sugars to enter the blood stream at a slower rate, thereby helping to keep the body's glucose level on a more even keel. Your body reaps nutritive rewards along with receiving a longer-lasting constant energy. And, although some digestion is necessary to break down the fiber, it won't take nearly as much energy as if it were trying to break down meat, dairy, processed white sugars etc.

To get a more complete picture of why we should be adding more greens into our lives I highly recommend reading Victoria Boutenko's book "Green For Life - The Updated Classic on Green Smoothie Nutrition". She discusses at length the benefits of adding greens into your life. A few of the tremendous benefits are: greens are a great source of fiber, protein, chlorophyll and omega 3's; they help to alkalize and they help to maintain homeostasis in the body.

The idea behind eating a diet consisting of more raw foods is simply that the more whole, fresh and raw one's diet is, the less amount of energy is needed for digestion and the benefit to that is that if the body is not using all of it's energy for digestion it can expend it on more important matters. It can expend it in healing the body when necessary; directing it's healing energies to the parts of the body that need it in that moment. And, if no healing is necessary at that particular moment in time, then your body just gets the awesome benefits of feeling energized! Isn't that what we are all looking for in our lives - more energy, feeling more vitalized and vibrant?

So, what is the final answer? Incorporate both green juices and green smoothies into your daily routine. One day do a juice, another a smoothie and so on. If you are wild and crazy like Marie and I, you can take a juice and a smoothie on the same day. Go even wilder and crazier and add in a shot of wheatgrass juice and Brain On and watch out! You will have so much energy you will not know what to do with yourself. Imagine that... too much energy! What a concept. No matter how you look at it you will be giving your body the stamina, vibrancy and great health it deserves and was meant to have! It's a win/win all the way around!

Marie / On the Road to Raw

The Green Drink

Every morning Alisa would come into the Bed and Breakfast with a large glass containing a green drink. It looked remarkably like slime, reminding me of something from an old B science fiction movie – something that grew and devoured a town. But Alisa drank this stuff as if it was ambrosia and, despite it’s somewhat toxic appearance, when she offered me a sip one day I decided “why not” and gave it a try.

That afternoon I was driving myself into town, shopping list stuffed into my purse, to get all the ingredients I would need to make myself one of those verdant concoctions the following morning. You couldn't help but be a convert; it was really good, made of fruit and all kinds of superfoods including cacao nibs. Alisa, with her self- admitted chocolate fetish, always put in at least two tablespoons of those. They have the reputation all by themselves of being mood altering – which probably explains why Alisa was always so eminently even tempered.

I started drinking the green slime concoctions every morning when they took the place of breakfast. All of a sudden – just like that – I was starting my day out raw. I barely even had to think about it. Strangely, even though I’m always creating these elaborate breakfasts for my guests, I never eat any of them myself. Oh, sometimes I would love to! I stand around waiting for leftovers like a dog expecting scraps from the table. But most often there are no scraps to be had. I wash empty baking dishes and pie plates hungry and unfulfilled with a few hours of work still ahead of me before I can eat. I end up starving to the point of ravenous by the time I get home around 11:30 after clearing the table, washing and drying dishes and cleaning the rooms. I inhale my lunch as if I’d spent a week on hunger strike! Don’t ask me what I ate… I wouldn’t know except that it usually began with bread – the first thing I could shove into my mouth! The green drink takes me three minutes to make in the morning- most of it blending time and it satisfies and staves off hunger well into the afternoon. A revelation! When I get home henceforth, I calmly make myself an enormous salad full of everything I can find in the crisper. I add some nuts. I cut up an orange. That salad could sustain ten men. Within a week of doing this I realize that I am living my day- at least until 5 o’clock – totally and irrevocably Raw. Almost immediately I experience a shift. It’s funny but I begin to feel strangely happy. There is almost an aspect of feeling drugged. In the raw food literature, they frequently talk about how raw food is the fountain of youth, the experts regaling us with ‘proof’ that when you eat a raw diet you tend to eat less and people who eat less live longer and look better. Well, that’s all very well and good but what I feel is happy – sometimes so happy that I have to cook something or eat a doughnut just to get a feeling of relief. I’m not used to so much ecstasy. I believe that there is something narcotic about such a pure diet… all those fruits and vegetables, the blender buzzing like an orgasm. Raw food guru, David “Avocado” Wolfe tells us that introducing raw foods into our diet helps to remove the junk that has built up in our bodies and that as we move through this purification “you’ll feel a sense of intuitive powers. You may feel a sense of absolute relief… you may feel a sense of just gentle and ever increasing energy. You’ll definitely notice an enhanced change in your immunity.” Alisa says once you really go raw it opens you up to so many possibilities, not just physically but mentally. I believe it has opened me up to the possibility that I might be insane because where else could all this happiness be coming from? It’s unnatural! I look around me and see that the floor isn’t properly swept. There is a spot on the glass of the back door. I catch sight of a little tear on the corner of the bedroom rug – perhaps something the cat decided to scratch at when I wasn’t paying attention enough to pay attention. I notice that my daughter’s homework is not in a neat pile on her desk but fanned out sloppily like discarded cards. I notice that all is not perfect but in the midst of it all I smile. Boy! Do I feel good!