Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Juicing, Baking & Fun Ideas.. in My New House!!

Well, we still don't have internet up, but we are finally moved into our house!!! We're still waiting on a few items, but it will soon be a home and I cannot wait!!! I'm working on my yoga room these days, and waiting on the rest of my couch to get here! I just bought a new bookshelf to give my (thousands of) books a home. That is my project for tonight after dinner..... and when my husband is home to help me!

I mentioned I don't have internet yet... so what do I do? Get tea and chill out at Barnes & Nobles for a couple hours, hahaha.

I've got some pretty fantastically exciting news as well! My dehydrator will be here on Friday! :-D that means lots of raw vegan foods to come to my blog!!! I can't wait!

Where to start for today......

Hmm.... How 'bout breakfast!

I've been going juicer-mad the past few days. I've figured out my system with my juicer, and it doesn't even make that big of a mess/isn't that much of a bother to use. Very excited. The first time I ever used it, I was wearing half of my juice. It was awful!

Carrot Apple Orange Ginger Juice!
-1 large orange
-5 med sized carrots, chopped
-1 apple, chopped
-1 inch sized nub of ginger (peeled)
Run all ingredients through the juicer and..



Delicious! Best juice I've made myself yet!

Carrots are delicious in juice, it's always been my favorite kind of juice (I've never been a juice drinker before my juicer, but I still would buy the Odawala carrot juices and loved them)

This juice is packed with nutrients. Carrots provide Vitamins A, C, D, E, K, B1 & B6, not to mention the Calcium, Potassium & Magnesium! Lot's of good feel good things to keep that wonderful body of yours happy!


I promised Joe that I would make him his favorite muffins. These are SO DELICIOUS, they are VEGAN, NO BUTTER/OIL or milk! AND there is only half a cup of sugar in them. Very healthy and seriously moist and delicious. The original recipe is actually from www.neverhomemaker.com
But I've changed it a tad bit. I don't use orange zest & I use dried Cranberries... Actually.. I use the naturally flavored Orange Cranberries from Trader Joes (These are DELICIOUS!)


Basically, it's super easy. Combine the wet ingredients in a bowl. Combine the dry ingredients into another bowl. Combine, add to your muffin tins and bake at 350 degrees. The original recipe says 15-25 minutes... I usually find they are done within 15 minutes.


I actually shouldn't have these due to the wheat flour.. but honestly, I can't help myself and I ate one. What's a little tummy ache when you get to taste something fluffy and heavenly? (Just kidding. I do not recommend making bad decisions like this haha. Gotta try them with buckwheat flour so I can make them for myself! )

After my wild and crazy baking, it was safe to say I was ready for lunch so I made a monster & veggie wraps.

These are some of the easiest wraps to make. Sliced cucumber + sliced avocado + shreded carrot + sprouts wrapped up in a rice paper wrap.


My monster:

This one consisted of a handful of Spinach, half a Banana, about 3/4 cup of Unsweetened Almond Milk and 2 Tablespoons of raw cacao nibs (I've missed using these recently)

Doesn't it look yummy!!

It WAS! and when I was done..... BAM!

I got a new idea!!!

Mint Chocolate Chip Green Monster????????
Why yes.

I must!

I HAVE TO TRY!

I must!

I will :)

Tomorrow!

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Sunday Night Sunflower Valentine Brownies (Whew)

Truth:
I've spent far too much of the day playing Angry Birds on my husbands phone. I'm not sure why.. but I kinda kick butt at it ;)

I had to stop, so I decided to make my blog for today! Wheeeeee...

I must post pictures of my yummy snacks today. They were interesting, yummy and fun.

Starfruit!
Home made popcorn! (no butter/packaged high fructose garbage yuck-corn) Instead I put salt, pepper & chili powder on it.
Kale Chips. Salty Kale Chips. Which would have otherwise been very yummy. Oops.


Raw Sunflower-Almond Brownies.

I've previously made these as Walnut-Almond Brownies.. recipe below..

But, I had ground up sunflower seeds I needed to use up. So it's basically the same recipe, except the sunflower seeds over walnuts.


Soak your half cup of dates for 5 minutes. While you're doing that.. mix up your ground nuts and cacao powder.



Once you're dates are soaked & soft, process with agave nectar & vanilla to make a date paste... then mix.



Now you need to blend everything to fully incorporate the ingredients. I find this is easiest using my hands. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty! That's part of the fun of it all.


Once everything comes together, you will notice it makes a big ball of "dough."
Go wash your hands off, and then re-wet them a tiny bit. You need to form the "dough" into squares or balls, and it is easiest if your hands are a bit wet. It keeps the "dough" from getting too sticky.


I'm weird and like the sweet/salty chocolate thing, so I sprinkled some Himilayan Salt on top of a couple.


And for Valentines Day of course :)

I also wanted to post my Asian Salad I made today for lunch. Really yummy. If your local sushi restaurant serves the Cucumber/Octopus Salad before your sushi and you like that, you will love this :)

Peel a cucumber....
Then peel/cut it into "noodles" like so...


Like how it matches my multi colored toes? Ah well, I liked it.

Soak up some wakame. (I buy this at the Asian store, MUCH cheaper for a huge bag there vs Whole Foods. Wakame and most sea veggies have a lot of nutrients. Never hurts to throw it into your salads.)

In a bowl, mix up about 1/4 cup of rice vinegar with 2 spoons of sugar, sesame seeds & a pinch of salt.
Pour this into the bowl with your cucumber & wakame and let it sit in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes.


Take it out of the fridge and plop it onto your plate :)



Yummmm.

Tomorrow morning, I PROMISE I am finally posting the Green Monster blog! I am going to leave my camera by my protein powder so I don't forget. I keep forgetting!

Now.. time to go interrupt my husbands game of Angry Birds.

It's sickly addicting.

Don't try it.




Saturday, February 12, 2011

Cukoo for Coconuts!

So.. here's the deal.
Yesterday I ate an enormous amount of candy. The previous days, I've been drinking a glass of wine with dinner a few times in the week. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with moderation..right? Well.. I'm not so sure. I've noticed I'm becoming progressively more lethargic and tired each day this week. Which isn't good. I haven't been eating candy hardly at all, but last night was surely enough to cover me for the entire year. "Candy" to me is anything processed, filled with refined sugars, artificial flavorings, high fructose corn syrup crap. I have no issues with having sweets/desserts, as long as they are natural. Anyways, point is, I could feel it taking a toll on me this morning.

Sooo, this morning, a Green Monster went down (I will make a blog about these soon!), and I decided no more wine/candy for at least a week. I want to completely remove candy from my diet, I don't know why chewy gummy crapness is so attractive to me some days! Wine I will re-introduce.. But if I can stay away from garbage candy (again... I feel these are different than desserts/sweets) then that would be ideal!

Off to the gym we went for a very serious workout, which left me completely depleted at the end.. We came home and I decided to try making a fresh coconut meat smoothie.. but first...
I ate massive amounts of watermelon. Hydration, hydration!

Now.. for the coconut cracking...
This is a young coconut. Attempt number one was a fail. I attempted several more times..
Then I called Joe.
Ta-daa!
Coconut water anyone?
I scraped the meat out.

Cleaned it. Oh yummy.

Threw in a bit of these bad boys... (rough estimates = a pinch of Sea salt, a tsp vanilla and 2tbsp of raw blue green agave... though regular plain ol' agave should work fine)

It was pretty good. Next time I'd throw in some frozen pineapple chunks though!


Coconuts make you cukoo :)



Peek at dinner?
The recipe is from http://www.ohsheglows.com/, These "Pizza's" are sooooo yummy. My favorite. The only thing different I do is I add more water to the cashew basil cheese. It smooths it out quite a bit :)

So, I do plan on making the Green Monster blog, possibly tomorrow. I intended to do it this morning but forgot. Blame it on the candy.

Any other suggestions/requests for what type of blog to make? I also was considering making a "what's in my fridge" type of deal...

Let me know what you think! :)

<3

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Italiano & Raw Key Lime?

Ohio right now....
Looks pretty gorgeous! I'm sure it's suuuuper cold out there. Haven't been outside since this morning when we went to the gym. I've probably spent way too much time in the house today... way too much. I've gotten bored.. and as you may know.. when I get bored, I start cooking/baking. Joe got some Vodka Pasta Sauce a couple days ago, it has too much acid in it for him to just pour it on top of some noodles (and anyways, who wants to just pour store bought sauce over some plain noodles?) and it makes his stomach hurt. Sooo, I told him I'd bake it into something so we can use it up. Whole wheat baked penne noodles anybody? Well.. I made something like that.

annddd.. Voila!
What is it??

Almost a full box of whole wheat penne pasta (Joe made some of it earlier in the week.. I just used the rest of the box)
2-3 T olive oil
about 1 1/4 cup of Vodka Sauce (it has all the cream/chunky tomatos/etc in there)
Handfull of spinach
about 1/3 cup chopped zucchini
a few sprigs of fresh oregano, chopped
handful of cheese

Preheat oven at 350 degrees. Boil up the noodles as normal, drain
in a heat-safe bowl/container/pot? (not sure what the thing is called), pour in the penne. Add olive oil and toss to evenly distribute. Add spinach, zucchini and oregano. Mix it all up. Pour in the Vodka Sauce... mix it all in! Top with cheese and bake for about 20-25 minutes. I had no idea how it would taste, but it must have been good.. Joe ate over half of it!


For myself, I used Zucchinni Noodles! For those who don't know, I'm allergic to soy & yeast & possibly wheat-gluten (I'm pretty sure..) So I'm staying away from the whole wheat noodles. I've got some brown rice pasta I plan on trying soon. Anyways, so I mixed up some Basil Cashew Cheese (per http://www.ohsheglows.com/ recipe) with Marinara sauce with 1/2 a portabella mushroom & a bit of chopped onion and poured it with some of the zucchini noodles (I just used a vegetable peeler to peel and then make noodle type strips of it). Next time, I will deff eat this 100% raw. It was good warm, but it wasn't necessary to cook it. Plus.. it would look much prettier if all of the noodles weren't mixed in.

I know it looks weird.. but I promise.. tasted really good! haha.

No dinner would be complete without:

I first picked up this bottle because I've had the movie Black Swan stuck in my head since I watched it.. But it's actually really good/tasty!

Even more than wine, no dinner is complete without dessert! Raw Key Lime Pie??? Yes mmhmm, please!

Soak a cup worth of raw cashews overnight (or if you're forgetful like me, over night and all day long). I know it sounds silly, but it's really important to soak your nuts!

Take about a cup of walnuts & 'process' it with about a cup of rasins. Please bare with me, most of my kitchen stuff is currently in storage.. So I guess I ghetto-ed it up when i was preparing this..


This is what it lookes like once it's processed. This is your crust. Normally you would press it into a pie pan and then stick it in the fridge. Well, I don't have one.. soooo, I used a plate and my wonderful didgets :)

Stick it in the fridge for about an hour or so.

Take your soaked nuts.... er.. soaked cashews and process them with about 3 T of lime juice, 4T of raw agave nectar & 1 t of vanila extract. blend it alll up and stick it in the fridge.

Once items are cold, spread your cashew cream over the pie crust..... then stick it in the fridge.


Basically.. it looks like this once it's done..

If you're super skilled (which I am not) you can even slice a bit of lime to decorate it a bit.
As I said.. I am not.
Yummy blood!

(just kidding..)

Well, there you have it! Blog number two down!

From Joe & I, we hope you have a fabulous night!


Goodnight!!!