Friday, January 28, 2011

VOTE FOR ALMOST VEGAN!

Hey Everybody! Please vote for one of my favorite bloggers out there, Amber Shea Ford. She runs the awesome blog "Almost Vegan" and she has some of the best raw food recipes out there!

She is in a contest for a "raw chef-off" and I would love it if you could vote for her! She deserves to win this!

VOTE FOR #5 AMBER SHEA FORD!

Let's help her win this!

Best of luck Amber! (Not so sure who else is gonna read this but hell, I tried! Hahaha)

Cliff

Monday, January 24, 2011

Olio-Garlic Kale Chips

This might seem basic for a lot of raw fooders out there, but kale chips are delicious. I always struggled with recipes that required you to soak nuts and seeds, or to add a bunch of different ingredients for complex combinations. Kale chips are supposed to replace things like potato chips right? We need convenience! Convenience I say!

So... I was messing around with some different ingredients and have developed the best kale chip recipe I've had in a long time. As a "vata" constitutional type, I need things to be oily to balance out my natural tendency for dryness. These chips are both crunchy, and oily, just like the good old American greasy potato chip! What a God send!



Here's the recipe:

1/4C Raw Organic Macadamia Nuts (NO SOAKING NEEDED!)
1/2C Raw Organic Cold Pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 or 3 cloves of Organic Raw Garlic (you can always up the garlic if you like it more pungent)
1/2t Herbamere

Just blend everything in a Vitamix and pour it over a head of destemmed kale. The picture shown is of curly kale, but I would imagine that dino kale would work fine too. Make sure to massage it into the kale, and then throw it on a teflex sheet in the dehydrator at 105 degrees until crispy. It doesn't take long so overnight or even 4 or 5 hours will do.

BE CAREFUL. These things are highly addictive. I had a moment where I was watching a movie and eating these things, and I went through 4 trays in one sitting! Yikes!

They're amazing though. Please let me know if you like the recipe! It's an original! :-)

(AND, it's good for phases 1 and 1.5 of the Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine diet if you're interested!)

Best,

Cliff

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine Phase 1.5 CREATIONS

Hey everybody! Since I've switched to Phase 1.5 of the diet I've felt a lot better. As I previously mentioned, my light headedness has ceded, and I'm still feeling that sensation of stable energy that I had before!

What's interesting is that my appetite has gone down a lot, and I can make it through the day with small snacking and maybe one or two bigger meals. (like a soup, smoothie, salad, wrap, etc.) It's been nice though not to have all of that pressure of preparing so much food.

I thought I would share with you guys a few of my favorite new dishes that I made! I had two birthdays where I was asked to make cakes, and I got a chance to use my new SPRINGFORM PANS! These have seriously revolutionized my raw-food life and make my "cakes" look SO BEAUTEOUS. (good word right?)

Anyhow, tons of pictures below. Check it out!


This is one of the berry popsicles I mentioned. They're a great dessert and are completely low glycemic. Stoked about the lack of blood spikiness. 


This is a picture of the first cake I made. My neighbor Lauren had her birthday, and I wanted to give her a present to thank her for being an awesome friend and for lending me her paddleboard so often! It was a vanilla coconut creme (from rawmazing.com), with an almond date crust (recipe compliments of June Louks), and layered with blueberries from the Malibu farmer's market! (see here: www.malibucopia.com)


Check out that layering! Skills! hahaha


They loved the cake. It was a good compliment!


Undoubtedly the coolest looking dessert I've ever made. Same recipe as above but a bit smaller. (The Louks only had 5 people, and the Weissmans had 10 or 12 I believe.)


The birthday girl and her mom and sister.


Mom and birthday girl!


Tree of Life Phase 1.5 Keylime Pie! Yahooo!!! (so good looking right?!)


Tree of Life Curried Carrot Avocado Soup! It made a great dinner last night.

SO. Allow me to elaborate on what's been going on. The birthday dinner for Hailey at the Louk's house was so much fun. They always have something going on (with 4 daughters it's always going to be action packed!) and it was great to catch up with all of them. Their garden was doing especially well, and I got to go home with a giant bag of local lemons! The dinner was spectacular and the cake was a big hit. All in all it was a lot of fun and I always leave there feeling awesome. It's nice to be in a family environment once in a while.

I have a lot of homework this week so it's been tough to find time to post lately. I will try though! Stay tuned and thanks for readingggggg

All the best,

Cliff






Monday, January 17, 2011

Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine Phase 1.5

Ok... Today I feel way way better. No light headedness, no cravings, and stable energy. I feel as though the addition of low-glycemic fruits (strawberries, blueberries, coconut water & pulp, etc.) has helped me sustain this diet.

I have a "key lime pie" in the making, as well as an eggplant casserole, and a few popsicles. I mixed blueberries, strawberries and almond milk in a blender and put it in some popsicle molds, and I can't wait to eat them!

I will be sure to post some pictures of what I'm eating. I can totally do this. Feeling great!

Best,

Cliff

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine Phase I diet UPDATE

Ok, so today is officially the end of week one of my experiment. I'm going to give you a bit of a run down on my energy levels, what my food intake looked like, any problems I may have had, my levels of exercise, and what kind of supplementation I was taking.

Let me first begin by telling you what kind of "constitutional type" I am. I have read a ton of information about different physiological / mind-body types that exist, and where I fit in to all of that. Cousen's book "Conscious Eating" provides some very in-depth material to gain a better understanding of these types. I recommend you check it out. Here's what my "types" are:

Vata-Kapha dosha: (predominantly Vata, somewhat Kapha) For more info on the Ayurvedic doshas check out: www.whatsyourdosha.com
This also means that there are a number of different considerations I should take when eating, such as frequency, types of foods, temperature of the foods, form of the foods etc.



Fast Oxidizer: Means my metabolism burns through things much easier, and I should therefore eat a diet that has a higher ratio of proteins to carbs.

Ironically, I've found that I navigate naturally to these kinds of foods already. I rarely feel totally satiated by just a salad, I usually need something like nuts and seeds or a pâté to go along with it before I feel full. Also, I've always had issues with "gastro-intestinal disruption" (aka, I fart like a mother-f***er if I eat a ton of beans) when I eat non-sprouted nuts, seeds, legumes. So raw food was a great move for me because I no longer had that problem. (wow can't believe I'm putting this on the internet...)


As I mentioned before, I have quite the love affair with sugar. Fruit and I get along famously, and I might as well be hooked up to an IV of honey 24/7 because I eat it so much. However, I have noticed that while my energy is better on raw foods than cooked foods, (when I eat cooked I get straight up lethargic) it still has some pretty significant ups and downs. This is why I was interested to see how I would do without all of that on Cousen's Phase I diet.

So far, I have noticed some great changes in my energy level. Especially the first 4-5 days. I felt alert, stable, sharp, and I stayed that way until nighttime. These last two days however, I've begun to feel a bit more tired. I wonder however, if that's due to the fact that I've been staying out later at night with friends. Also, I haven't totally adjusted to California time, and I think part of me is still back in Connecticut. I wake up at about 7:30AM every day (a miracle for me) and usually feel energized. These last two days however I've felt relatively tired. That could just be because I was out until midnight. (not that crazy I know...) During the day though, I haven't felt as pumped up as I did the first 5 days... Maybe I'm detoxing? Maybe I wore myself out when I went paddleboarding in the morning? Who knows.

OK. Here's the fun stuff. This is an example of what I would typically eat in a day:

Morning: Ball jar full of Green Juice: cucumber, celery, ginger, lemon, dino-kale
                Fresh Almond Milk: almonds, purified water, stevia extract
                Tree of Life Granola: recipe is in the book...
Noon:      Avocado Kale Salad: Recipe is in the book, but you can imagine what's in this...
                Fennel Soup: It was my first stab at raw soup... it was weirdly filling (recipe is in the book)
                Magic Wands: Literally the strangest snack I've ever had... It's this nori roll with this spicy filling... it's dehydrated... super odd, but weirdly tasty as well
Night:      Almond Hummus: This recipe blew my mind, I had no idea raw hummus could taste so simliar to Garbanzo hummus... (which, as previously noted, makes me very... "windy")
                Italian Crackers: Run of the mill flaxy type cracker. Not bad.

As time has gone on though, I've become way less interested in eating that much. My intake has decreased, and maybe I should amp it up again to see if my energy levels change or not. For now though, somebody is crashing in our living room, and I can't use the dehydrator b/c it's too loud. :-(

ALSO... I have had some problems so far. I have been prone to anemia / low blood pressure for a while now, and when I was a very unhealthy vegetarian, I actually passed out in the shower once and bumped my head reaaaaaally good. My parents were terrified and the doctor said I needed to up my iron intake. (surprise surprise) SO... all along this journey I've been careful to take iron supplements. I take vitamin code "iron" and I've even been doubling the dosage because I have been feeling the symptoms of low blood pressure so much! I get really light headed and often feel like I'm going to pass out. It's not good! I'm kind of nervous about it, and I asked one of my fellow raw foodie gurus about it. She said that if I'm eating a high amount of dark leafy greens, then I should be fine in terms of iron. She recommended I up my intake of fresh pressed oils. Not quite sure how to do that though b/c I no longer have my morning smoothies. (you can't have bananas or fruit on Phase I which makes smoothie creation impossible.)

What's odd though, is that I've been exercising quite a bit as I've recently taken up paddleboarding. I feel totally fine on the water, and didn't even feel weak in the slightest when I was out there. So I'm perplexed as to why my symptoms only flare up when I'm sedentary for a while... It's a bit nerve wracking.

Anyhow... my next phase that I start tomorrow is Phase 1.5. It allows for some low-glycemic fruits to be introduced as well as my FAVORITE THING IN THE WORLD: COCONUT WATER!!! I expect this addition will make it much easier for me to continue. I felt kind of lame about not following Phase I for the whole 3 months, and then I re-read the chapter on the different phases. Cousens says that Phase I is intended for people who are "highly mycotoxic" and have a plethora of different diseases. Phase 1.5 is for those who are "moderately mycotoxic", and I believe I definitely fit that description. So... while I'm technically not following his recommendations to a T, I feel as though it suffices. It's great reference for the future if I ever do suffer from some serious health complications. At least I'll know what to expect if I try to heal myself.

Wow... this is a pretty big post haha... If you read this thanks for hanging in there!

Best,

Cliff

Saturday, January 15, 2011

RE: lack of social life

Ok, so remember how I said I was having difficulty with maintaining a healthy balance with my social life and raw foods? That definitely was true last night.

I went out with a bunch of friends to one of my FAVORITE restaurants. These guys use farmer's market ingredients, and have some of the most creative dishes ever. They even have a GOAT CHEESE, GORGONZOLA, ARUGULA, MUSHROOM, TRUFFLE OIL, THIN-CRUST PIZZA. That's right. You heard me correctly. When you eat this thing, angels sing, and your mouth has several consecutive sensory orgasms. It's a wild time. Despite the fact that it was great being able to hang out with everybody, I was so incredibly tempted by all the food. Not to mention that one of the great social lubricants is: WINE! I couldn't even have that! So when we went out to bars afterwards, I was "that sober guy". It was terrible. I don't usually drink to get drunk, but if you've ever been out in Venice or Santa Monica, you know that the Friday night bar crowd tends to be heavy on the "desperate 30-somethings wishing they were young" kind of people. Yikes. It's way more fun to have had a couple of drinks and to cut loose... Maybe this is a warning sign to me? Maybe I rely too much on alcohol to make those kinds of situations tolerable? Who knows.

Long story short, it was awesome to be with a bunch of friends for the night... but not so awesome to have to stare at my FAVORITE PIZZA IN THE WORLD and to not be able to have a few drinks in times of need. I'm working on the whole perseverance thing. Until now though, I'm feeling a bit fanatical and loserish. :-(



It's all in the name of experimentation!

Best,

Cliff

Friday, January 14, 2011

Raw Food Paradigm Shift

HELLO EVERYBODY! Ok so this is my first post since being back to Malibu, and it's Friday afternoon after my first week back at school. I can't believe that I'm already into my second semester. Time flies!

Anyhow, I had an extremely AWESOME stroke of luck upon arriving in California. I had gotten back to my apartment, and 1 hour into my unpacking process, there was a knock at the door. I went to see who it was, and it was the mailman! The Postal Service said that my boxes weren't going to arrive until Monday, so for them to arrive on Saturday was a fantastic surprise. My new Vitamix and Omega Juicer arrived in perfect shape, and I have been using them since.

However, what has changed is what I'm making with them. Allow me to explain.

I read Dr. Gabriel Cousen's book "Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine" and it totally inspired me. This guy is one of the pioneering experts in raw food nutrition and health, and his book is spectacular. It gives a short summary of his philosophy on individualizing raw food to a person's unique constitutional type in order to maximize health and well being. The diet is divided into 3 phases: Phase I, Phase 1.5, and Phase II. I'm currently in the midst of the Phase I diet which involves a no sugar, high greens diet. While Dr. Cousens recommends about 3 months (yikes!) of this diet for people attempting to heal themselves of major degenerative diseases, I'm going for a much shorter time period: 3 weeks. (I figure that since I don't have diabetes or cancer, that 3 months is a bit overkill... who knows though. I may go longer.)

Now. Let me just begin by saying that I love sugar. Not even refined sugar or fructose or any of that crap. The kind of sugar I love is in fruit! I am so used to starting off my day with a large helping of fruits and superfoods, so to be away from that for so long feels daunting.

BUT... I feel great. Like way better than I did on my old raw food regimen. My energy is much more stable, I'm in touch with what percentages of carbs, proteins, and fats my constitutional type requires, and my mental functioning feels much sharper. I remember everything, I'm more productive... It feels awesome. Tangible as well. I'm quite pleased.

The only difficulty is trying to have a social life. Now that I have all of those new appliances, making the food isn't all that difficult and/or time consuming. It's more that I can't go out to restaurants with anybody because I can't eat anything! 99.999% of my time with friends is spend eating out! (Sad... but true... I just love food...) I've decided that I need to start inviting friends to do other things like shopping, (except I'm broke) hiking, swimming, and just general interaction time. I'm learning how to be bold though and say no to tempting situations. I just hope people don't think I'm anorexic or something. I'm actually praying I don't lose weight... That's the last thing I need hahaha

But that's another challenge. People already think my raw foodness is freaky enough, so to hear that I'm on a "diet" sends off warning signals for people. Luckily I haven't had anybody express concern for me. I think they trust that I know what I'm doing at this point. Or I hope so at least...

Anyhow... I will be sure to post pictures of what a day of food looks like on this diet. It's definitely doable, and the results are worth it, but for me... I'm really missing fruit! :-(

Have a great MLK weekend!

-Cliff

Friday, January 7, 2011

Back to the Bu

Tomorrow I fly back to CA! I'm sad though because it just snowed in CT and I had this amazing moment outside today. My two dogs and I were just walking around our house's property, and the snow was coming down pretty hard. Just the silence of winter, and that fragile, faint sound of wind and snow really hit me. I loved how delicate this season is.

Also, I have a blender, juicer, and the "simply raw" dvd series waiting for me in Malibu. I can't WAIT!

More posts to come.

BEST!

-Cliff