A little warm water.
1 Tbsp raw honey
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp kelp
For best palatability, this should be taken as a shot.
My mistake? Sipping. Oh dear Lord!
(Addendum - Nixing the kelp from the mix makes the shot infinitely more palatable! And you’re supposed to work up to 1tsp of cayenne 3x/day.)
Just sampled some of the cold brew coffee I started last night. Nice! But… Having grown up in Tampa, FL, I tend to like my coffee “Cuban style” which is half very very strong coffee (think “espresso”) topped off with warmed or steamed half & half. I tried this method with my cold brew - 2 ounces cold brew (it’s a concentrate) and up to half the mug with hot water, topped off as mentioned above. Over all, a weak cup o’ joe. The cold brew has a nice texture and flavor, don’t get me wrong. And I think I’ll be tweaking this method as time goes by because I don’t want to just give up after the first try. Note that though this isn’t necessarily a “cheap” method of making coffee, I was able to do it with what I have at home without buying one of those fancy-schmancy cold brew mechanisms now on the market.
So, how I did it was as follows: I measured about 1/2 pound of beans (thinking I had enough room in the French Press for that much ground), and upon seeing how much I had in ground beans used half. Filled the press to full with filtered water and left to sit overnight. In the morning just press the coffee down and there you have it. Cold coffee concentrate. You could, of course, just use a pitcher and a thermos-top filter instead of the French press if you don’t have one of those. I’m a novice to this method, so don’t quote me as an authority when you try it yourself. Although, do try it yourself and let me know what you come up with!
Next in my pretty little head is Raw Vegan Food. But first! Some backstory. To understand this little bit I will go on to you need to know, maybe, that 1) I’ve been working hard on losing weight - see I’ve always been a skinny girl until about 8-ish years ago when the pounds/fat started packing on due to a rocky marriage and a mental illness requiring a large assortment of various psychotropic meds. In less than 8 years I went from 160 pounds and a size 10/12, to 210 pounds, size 18. Even though I’m 6′ tall and I “carry it well,” that was very scary for me and after having a baby recently I decided I really need to shed the excess weight before Avdi and I have more babies. So, dieting and weight lifting is my MO nowadays. Dieting not being, however, the fad diets that go around, but rather sensible (”Primal“) eating. And know that 2) I am a “foodie.” Now, on we go to the Raw Vegan Food thing.
As I look around for interesting recipes to try out, and ways to prepare old favorite dishes I often come across eating in the raw. There are a lot of benefits to eating living and raw foods, and raw vegans swear by their diet. Good health, longevity, a clear brain and better eyesight are all touted as benefits of a raw diet. I have been doing a juice cleanse periodically (yes, I know, not recommended for lactating mommies - gimme a break, I have thoughts on that too, but I digress) and the day or so following I’ve decided to eat raw in effort to ramp back up to the Primal diet I am becoming accustomed to.
One site I’ve come across belongs to one Russell James of the UK. See pics of his delectable creations here (they’re all raw!!). The food looks so tasty that I’m thinking I should plan a trip to England just to take one of his weekend classes to learn to make this stuff. I wonder if it tastes as good as it looks? Well, after having a day of raw yesterday I think I can safely guess that it probably does.
Yesterday’s menu was tasty, although hear me out. The breakfast I had, though delicious, was texture-wise a disappointment. It was a shake comprised of fresh orange juice, a banana and ice cubes. The problem here is that our blender seems to melt the ice rather than crush it, so what I ended up with instead of a creamy banana-orange slushy, was a very watery banana flavored orange juice. Tasty, but lacking. Not the fault of the recipe, though. And it was filling. I seem to not be needing as much food as I used to. Or maybe I’m training my body to eat less and rather focus on activity whether mental or physical.
Lunch was also a disappointment. (I know, you’re thinking, “But you said the menu for the day was tasty!”) So, the menu included a garden salad. One-fourth head of red leaf lettuce, 1/4 head romaine, I used 1/2 sliced avocado, 1 wedged plum tomato, a carrot thinly sliced, and 1/4 thinly sliced cucumber, topped with lemon juice and cold-pressed evoo. Strangely, I was excited about the salad, until I sat down and realized I’m eating a salad. A plain old, ordinary salad. I like salad, but I was hoping for a raw creation that was tease my taste-buds. Alas, it did not.
So now, dinner. Here’s where it got really, over-the-top good, and also the reason why I consider my raw day yesterday a wild success. Well, for me anyway. Dinner was a Creamed Zucchini soup followed by Cherry Sorbet for dessert. The soup contained all blended in a blender, zucchini, avocado, celery, garlic, dill weed, salt (I used “Real Salt“), lemon juice, evoo, and I garnished it with a dash of cayenne for heat. The kids had theirs warmed because they weren’t thrilling over the idea of a cold soup as I was. Avdi liked it, said it was quite tasty, but after the heaping bowl of luscious decadence he was still hungry. I was not, however, even if I felt like I could eat what was leftover of both kids’ soups - which was substantial. (My kids are so picky!) The following dessert was simply organic frozen cherries mixed in a food processor with a bit of raw local honey (recipe called for Agave Nectar, but mine hadn’t arrived yet - it’s on order in bulk from Amazon). Run it in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions, and voilà! cherry sorbet. Freeze it first, of course. The recipe made 4 generous servings.
I might add that though raw vegan food is of interest to me, I will probably not become a raw vegan. I do enjoy my raw, local milk and raw local honey. And to my recent discovery jerky is also, technically, raw, though marinated and dried. I could do raw if I included those things, however my family would not approve. One recommendation by Rose Lee Calabro suggests including 50% raw foods in one’s daily diet. That sounds reasonable for me and my family. Maybe I can go a step further by including raw in my personal diet (breakfast and lunch) a little more than that. Will blog about it as time goes by.
(N.B. - With regard to weight loss, just wanted to add that my total weight loss since the beginning of this year when I started, in earnest, to try the Primal diet/way of eating, and weight lifting, has been 15 pounds, and 4″ off the waist.)
