Too much pulp!!

And Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake!"

Last post I wrote about the BENEFITS of JUICING and why I LOVE it so much! But one issue I had for a while was knowing what to do with all the left-over juice pulp! It seemed such a waste to throw it out and my compost heap is having a hard time keeping up with that amount of fruit n veg scraps I go through!

And so, I make BREAD. I make CAKES. I make BURGER PATTIES.

To make delicious, tasty kitchen creations, all you need is your IMAGINATION... (or the help of me with a recipe) ;)

Left-over pulp will keep in the fridge for at least a few days if you're not ready to use it straight away. Sometimes I keep my carrot pulp seperate from my celery pulp seperate from my beetroot pulp... and sometimes I keep it all mixed together!

To make bread - combine 1 part ground flaxseeds to 2-3 parts left-over fruit or vegie pulp then add whatever you wish... spices, garlic, onion, lemon juice, curry powder, herbs, tamari, dried fruits, etc. You can do it all by hand or throw it all in your blender. You might need to add a drizzle or oil or water to help bind it until it's of a dough-like consistency. Spread it on teflex sheets and dehydrate your bread for an hour or so, flip, and dehydrate for another hour or so. The length of time depends on how thick your bread is. If you dont have a dehydrator, you can use your oven and set the temperature to 40 degrees, spreading your mixture on baking paper-lined trays. GLUTEN FREE. WHEAT FREE. and depending on what you choose to put in your mix, it can also be FAT FREE AND SUGAR FREE. Use it for sandwiches or as a side with a big green salad.

To make crackers - as above, just spread your mixture thinner and dehydrate longer! Serve with raw dips or pate or eat as is!

To make burger patties - as above, just alot fatter and shaped like burger patties! Experiment with almond meal or other nut pulp (left over from making nut milks) in place of flaxseeds, or in addition too! Dried herbs are also really good. Blending fresh tomatoes are good for extra juiciness in your patties. Dehydrating time is usually alot longer due to the thickness (and any added juciness) of your patties. Serve on raw bread, large green leaves or field mushrooms, with salad or vegies, salsa or nut cheese.

These are "Conversation Burgers" by Gena

To make cake - well here's where you don't have to think coz I've got a quick and easy CARROT CAKE recipe for you! An all time favourite, I was so excited to make this RAW!

1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup raisins/sultanas/dates/figs
1 cup carrot pulp
1/4 cup shredded coconut
1 tsp flax oil
1 Tbsp ground flax seed
1/4tsp each of cinnamon and nutmeg (MINIMUM! If you're like me, and LOVE your spices feel free to add more)

Pulse walnuts and raisins in food processor until crumbly. Then TASTE TEST HERE (fun part) - if you want your mix sweeter add more raisins or dates, agave syrup or honey and pulse again. I like my cakes not too sweet.
Then add the rest of the ingredients and pulse again until it starts to form a “dough”.

Shape your cake dough into a square or round cake on a plate, or put into little individual silicon moulds like I did. I got 5 small cakes out of my mix.

For the icing - I experimented and used

1/4 cup soaked cashews
1/4 tsp coconut oil
1/4 tsp agave
squeeze lemon to taste and a drizzle water

Blended it all until smooth and spooned it ontop of my mini cakes, followed by a dusting of nutmeg!

So tasty. So cute. So good on a little plate for afternoon tea.

Get ya juice on!!

In the past I've been more of a smoothie girl. I had read about all the benefits of JUICING but I still couldn't get into it (only when one's really ready right?). Well my time has come! I've been JUICING everyday for the past week or so and I CAN'T GET ENOUGH! I'm LOVING IT!!

So now that I'm a convert, I'll preach a bit :)

JUICING, obviously, is not the same as BLENDING (I get that now). Don't hear me wrong - blending is still a FANTASTIC addition to anyones diet, but is not a replacement for juicing. WHY? Because juiced foods have all the fibre and solids removed making it EXPONENTIALLY easier for your body to absorb all the nutrients - with maximum speed and efficiency, and minimum effort from the digestive system! Every bit of nourishment can then be used to REGENERATE rather than digest (and for those of us that are on a journey to learn all about our digestion issues, and to help them function better - JUICES ARE A GOD SEND).


But be warned about that beer-like frothy head!! Ideally, you don't want this. I strain my juice, strain again, and strain again, then pour it into a big tall glass (and a little extra one) ready to drink. I do this so my LIQUID VEGIE JUICE is as LIQUID as it can be. Sounds ridiculous hey? Well here's the scoop; that frothy head is SOLID in comparison to what's beneath it. To drink juices that still have the pulp present would be MORE taxing on your digestion than it would be to eat and properly chew all those fruits and vegies in their solid form. And then you're in for digestion upsets! If there is ANY fibre present in your 'meal' (think smoothies), chewing is necessary to prepare the stomach for digestion (I'm sure you all know someone who doesn't chew their food well enough and wonders why they always have tummy troubles).
Heard the line "drink your food, chew your juice" ... a rather odd one in my opinion anyway, haha, but I get where they're going with it.

You want the purest VITAMIN - MINERAL - RICH - ELIXIR you can get!

(Beetroot obviously...then... lemon, ginger, loads of greens... I can't remember what else!)

On a RAW FOOD DIET, juicing is extremley important in order to get sufficient nutrients; they're like the missing puzzle pieces.
Even if you're a meat eater, green vegie juices will do you wonders! Try drinking a green vegie juice before your meaty meal. By lowering your body's pH from a more acidic state to a more alkaline state, green juices will conteract the acidic animal protein and put your body back into balance. Beautiful! (and you might find you want meat less... well there's my little wish anyway)

GREEN JUICES ARE A BEAUTY SECRET says Matt Monarch. I truley believe this now. I feel FANTASTIC, my acne is clearer, my eyes are brighter... I'm a juicing groupie. Loud and PROUD.

(This one had 3 small apples, 3 carrots, 1/2 lemon, a big chunk of ginger, 6-8 big Chinese broccoli leaves, and 3-4 stems of celery - leaves and all)

The benefits of JUICING could easily fill a book (and there's loads of proof already out there). I did go into a little detail with you guys (as I'm a brand new groupie with so much excitement around this topic!!), but to be as straight to the point as I can be;

TRY IT YOURSELF!

For me - it's cause and effect. I didn't need to know all the scientific research stats - I did know them and that still didn't start me juicing until now. But I tried it. I only had to try it. I put it to you also - try a VEGIE JUICE everyday for a week and get back to me on how you feel :)

As for what you can do with all that left-over fibre rich juice pulp... you'll have to wait til the next post ;)

Emotionally Raw

I've been RAW now since January 1st, 2010. Not all that long really. I was dabbling into RAW the latter part of last year and was feeling AMAZING that I decided to go FULL RAW at the turn of the New Year.

I first began looking into raw food mid-2009. Having followed a vegetarian diet the past 11 years, and slowly transitioning to having no dairy, no fish, and then vegan, RAW seemed to be the next step for me - for many reasons.


So I initially thought of trying a 100% RAW VEGAN DIET for 2 months (I had been eating MOSTLY RAW for 5 months prior to this) - January and February. And after that I'd re-assess, see how I felt, and decide whether or not it was working for me, etc...

It was then in April someone was asking me about my diet - when and why I went raw, and it was only then I realised my "2 months" had long passed, I was still eating RAW, and I hadn't had any thoughts about whether or not it was for me - it was as it was - and obviously working well for me.

However - right now - to be frank and completley honest, as I write this post, I feel like shit. Truthfully. I'm on my fantastic, amazing, RAW vegan diet that usually makes me feel ALIVE, ENERGETIC, clear-headed and FULL OF BEANS... and today I feel like absolute shit.
I feel flat. I didn't want to get out of bed this morning - or yesterday, or the day before. I'm silent and not talking to anyone. I'm slow in my movements, have fluctuating appetites, and feel a little spaced out.

Um... ok, that's nice right? What does RAW FOOD have to do with all this?

RAW FOOD = DETOX.

Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. Spiritually.

"When the going gets tough, the tough gets going" - not on RAW. When the going gets tough...you sit in it! There's nothing to fall back on. No processed refined fast food junk to numb out on. No endless cups of coffee or bottles of cola to get your kicks from. When shit comes up, as it always does, you sit with it. You work through it. It's painful. It's hard. It's challenging. It's where I'm at right now. Today. But it's also where I've willingly put myself. And I need to remember this.

This is why I went RAW. Pure hell to some people I'm sure. But for me, it was the next step in my journey. I knew this. As I moved further along my spiritual path, I began to receive increasing guidance that eating a raw food diet would help me progress at a more rapid rate. And so the story goes...

David Wolfe says "raw plant foods, laughter, joy, bliss and unconditional love all exist on the same frequency". He says tuning into this frequency raises the overall vibration of your energy field, causing anything that is vibrating at a lower frequency, such as fear, pain, doubt, cancer, ugliness, depression and toxins to eventually percolate out to be ejected from the body.
THIS IS DETOXIFICATION.

By eating RAW I'm allowing my body the energy it needs to process all my emotions and spiritual pursuits, instead of using that energy to process and digest cooked foods, refined sugars, and starches.

Paul Nison in Raw Knowledge says in order to reach the soul, you can't be weighed down with food.
"Once we clean our minds and bodies, we are able to live with the lightness that less eating and a clean body will produce and we will be able ready to get in touch with a much higher place."



That's where I'm heading. That's why I eat RAW.

With CONFUSION comes CLARITY I tell alot of friends and clients.
Right now I'm taking my own advice.

A Weekend of Food

My little sister had her 22nd birthday party last night and I decided I wanted to make a few tasty raw finger food treats for Brock and I to enjoy, and enough for others to try. It was the first raw-finger-food I had really done and I LOVED IT! Baby steps... next time I'll definatley be testing out a few more things.

Here's what I came up with...

Stuffed mushrooms - celery, carrot, zucchini, onion and an amazing marinade


Bite sized wraps - wrapped in finely sliced daikon


Zucchini rounds with cashew cheese, cherry tomatoes, fresh basil


Crudites - with zucchini hommous


After all that colour comes the sweets...

I love making the sweets (my friend Kara keeps telling me she loves eating them - we work well together). I ALWAYS have a stash of assorted choccies, bliss balls and such things I've made in my freezer so I'm never without. These are an old favourite re-invented and inspired by Heathy's Sweetly Raw

Introducing the Chocolate Cups...

This one has a hemp seed butter/agave mix oozing from within once bitten into...
And this one has a macadamia nut butter filling, topped with cashews



And tonight we had our family dinner. Mum made cannelloni (an old family favourite) so I thought "YES RAW CANNELLONI!!" I sliced my zucchini, used my leftover cashew cheese and blended it with some red capsicum, nutritional yeast (not typically raw but its a delicious nutty-cheesy flavour and high in B vitamins), and a few other things... then mixed loads of chopped broccoli through it and rolled it up... then topped it with a rich tomato sauce.


Oh my god! Yep, IT WAS AMAZING!


And make mini-raw-cannelloni-bites for everyone to enjoy :)


And for the finale...Chocolate mud cake





Buon appetito!!

Walnut Spiced Tea Cake

I've had a small ABUNDANCE of WALNUTS in my pantry of late after finding some on sale in bulk, so I thought what better to do with these amazing little bundles of goodness than make a WALNUT CAKE!

I found a recipe a while ago here but decided to alter things just a little - mainly on the icing.

For the cake, you'll need...

3 cups dry walnuts
1 cup medjool dates
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp mixed spice (try more, I would next time, LOVE THE SPICE)
1/2 tbsp agave

Blend all this in a food processor until combined well looking like firm moist dough.

Pull it all out of your blender and dump it on a pretty plate. Then using your hands shape it into whatever shape you want your cake to be - round, square, STAR!


Then for the icing, I used...

1/2 small organic orange (peel and all)
1/4 cup pre-soaked cashews
1 tbsp coconut oil
4 tsp hot water
2 tsp agave
1/2 tsp mixed spice

Blend all ingredients in a blender/food processor/mini bullet until smooth and creamy! Easy!
I added the hot water bit by bit in experimentation, so if you want more or less, IT'S YOUR CAKE NOW!

NOTE: If you don't have a really good blender, chop the orange as much as you can before blending

Once you're happy with your frosting (TASTE it, add more spice, add more agave, experiment), spread as much or as little of YOUR tasty frosting all over your cake.

Decorate with coconut flakes, cashew nuts, mixed spice, cinnamon, orange pieces... use your imagination!!

Best served mid-morning... in the sunshine... feet up... with a cup of herbal tea - ooh try an orange spiced tea :)



Enjoy. Indulge. Surrender to relaxtaion.

And keep Following Your Bliss :)

Love is in the Air

How cute is this little guy? An organic baby red capsicum from the markets last week. I called them "love cap's" :)

So it's been almost a week since my last post and I'm sorry to say there's no real reason for slacking off (although I did have a college intensive 3 days running...)

Never fear - TOMORROW I will be indulging you all in a delicious walnut spiced cake with a sweet creamy orange frosting... mmm...

Simplicity at its best.

As a holistic lifestyle coach, I love walking beside my clients in simplifying their lives in whichever direction they wish for. Personally, it's a continuous daily practice of my own that I love doing; Simplifying. Finding meaning in the simple.

And so every Thursday I head down to Crows Nest for the ORGANIC MARKETS!! I love getting down in the morning and staying as long as I can because the VIBE is ENERGISING, UPLIFTING, AND INFECTIOUS!!
I always run into people I know and everytime, walk away having met someone new.

But the main reason I go, besides everything else AMAZING about my Thursdays is for the fresh ORGANIC produce - the DELICIOUS fruits that are bursting with juicy goodness. The crunchy colourful vegies that nourish my body and my soul. MMM.


Everytime I'm there there is also something really UNUSUAL and DIFFERENT to try which gets me REALLY EXCITED!!

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES and CUSTARD APPLES...
I've had MANGOSTEENS, DURIAN, and this week I picked up DAIKON (an Asian vegetable that tastes similiar to radish when eaten RAW... cleanses the blood, promotes energy circulation, increases the metabolic rate... and a whole bunch of other FANTASTIC things)


I love the SIMPLICITY of fresh fruits and vegies - eating them as they are. There's so much talk these days of "wholefoods" and people are trying to get more in their diets. FRUIT AND VEG IS MOTHER NATURES MOST BASIC WHOLEFOODS. Think about it... WHOLEfoods...

Eat them as they come - WHOLE - or chop em up and make some AMAZING salads...

Create RAW wraps...


Or stack your fav's into something that looks real spesh ;)



Happy eating. Happy creating. Happy living :)

Easter Treats

I love Easter. Always have. Always will. A celebration of new beginnings, get together's with family and friends, and of course CHOCOLATE!!

However every year I manage to make my mum's job a little tougher; as a child I'd happily gorge on any chocolate, then it had to be Cadbury eggs, then only dark chocolate, then milk free, then completley dairy free, at one point only carob, then no chocolate - only vegan lollies, then lollies with no red colourings, and now only 100% RAW CHOCOLATE - which you can't buy in pretty little easter egg shapes - BLOCKS ONLY - what a shame ;)

So my Easter Sunday started like this...
a litre of my delicious green smoothie



Then... in keeping to traditions (regardless of age) Mum had set up a trail of clues for me to find my Easter treats. Each clue led to the next, taking me upstairs, back down, round the back, upstairs again, in the kitchen, the office, and back again until I found all my treats!

First surprise, hiding with the beers in the bar fridge (keeping nice and cool) was a blcok of Loving Earth's Organic RAW chocolate...


... Lucuma and Maca - my ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE!!


I also found a block of RAWGANIC's Peppermint Dark Chocolate hiding in the cash register, that I later enjoyed with a mug of peppermint tea.




One thing that I love about RAWGANIC chocolate (in addition to the amazing pleasurable experience of eating the tiny rich pieces one by one) are the beautiful little sayings inside each wrapper...

"To do something, however small, to make others happier and better, is the higest ambition, the most elevating hope, which can inspire a human being" - John Lubbock


I blissed out on a beautiful little MANGOSTEEN that was my gift from Brock and it was AMAZING! It was the first time I had ever had one of these little beauties and I LOVED IT!

And then... there was of course KITCHEN FUN!! Here's some pics to entice you all ;)

Super Love Treats!! These babies are a slight variation of these ones from Megan Telpner (a favourite blogger of mine)


Banana Walnut Muffins... ooey, gooey, little round balls of sweet delicious goodness, topped with a banana slice, a drop of agave, and a walnut!




And looking pretty all boxed up... SuperLove Treats, Banana Walnut Muffins, Co's Super Super Balls (with added spirulina for a difference) and Power Balls



Hope you all had a HAPPY EASTER!

Road Trip - and amazing food!

Brock and I drove out of Sydney Monday arvo and headed for CANBERRA to visit the National Gallery for the Impressionist Exhibition (I'm a Van Gogh fan and having seen the exhibition in Paris years ago, jumped at the chance to see it again).

Tuesday morning I woke feeling a little under the weather :( but was well looked after with hugs from Brock, an AMAZING green juice from James and then a FANTASTIC green smoothie Teresa made! Spoilt rotten! And instantly feeling better:)

We decided to head out for a nature walk through the valley 40mins from home... but not long into our walk we had to turn around quick-smart and start walking REAL fast back to the car as the Heavens opened up above us and came POURING down! All 4 of us were SOAKED! Sneakers, socks, jumpers, hats, tshirts... right down to our undies!
Freeeeeezing cold and hungry, we bundled back into the car, cranked the heater on, huddled up and munched on some chewy Californian medjool dates that were AMAZING! They tasted just like beautifully soft caramels. So good :)

After hot showers and warm clothes we were all in the kitchen "un-cooking" up a storm! KITCHEN FUN!!
First up, Teresa threw a bunch of things in the blender and whizzed it 'round to create a chocolatley-carameley-sweet-pudding-moussey-deliciously-amazing-dessert-in-a-mug-thingy that was pure ECSTACY :) We all moaned in BLISS with each mouthful, savouring every - last - bit.

Brock and I then ventured out in the rain to pick some of the greatest tasting tomatoes I've ever had - FROM THE BACK YARD - to use in our LASAGNA!!





Brock was the man for that job. Layers of marinated eggplant and zucchini, with strips of red capsicum, fresh basil leaves, and sliced tomatoes with James' special sauce... easily restaurant quality ;)

James also managed to whip up an incredible salad of mixed greens, grated apple, fresh herbs, and cinnamon at the same time, which was UNREAL! Try cinnamon in your next salad at home. SO GOOD!!

Teresa also made a salad with EVERYTHING you could think of in it - broccoli, carrot, spinach, goji berries, red cabbage, grapes, tomatoes... and a DELICIOUS dressing.



With BIG glasses of freshly squeezed OJ... good food, good company. It couldn't have been a better end to a cold wet day.