Long Time No Blog

I'm back! It's been a while since I've posted, and a lot has happened since then. I finished my 3 weeks raw à la Tree of Life, and it was an amazing experience. I've also transitioned to my more standard raw food diet which is a balance of 80% raw and 20% cooked.

Here is a break down of how I felt during the entire period of time:

Week 1: The first couple of days went great. I felt energized, inspired, and committed. However, as the week progressed, cravings began to kick in, and I experienced some mild detoxification symptoms. (Fatigue, light-headedness, mild headaches, irregular bowel movements, etc.) Finding the right balance of time to spend on preparing food was difficult. I made it through though.

Sweet Potato Fries... It was a miracle that I was able to resist them... Taylor looks like she's enjoying a rather large piece of bacon. Covered in cheese of course.

Week 2: I definitely felt the cravings kick in during that week. It was really difficult to balance my social life (my friends all eat meat, drink, smoke, etc.) with the dietary choices I was making. I was faced with many situations in which things like nachos, onion rings, pizza, etc. tempted me. It was tough, but the only thing that made me stick with the diet is the results I was noticing. I felt extremely clear headed, happy, balanced, and very energetic. My detox symptoms began to fade after the second half of the week. It was a good stretch.

My new pitcher! Filled with TOL Almond Milk... Thanks for the Sur La Table giftcards Mom and Dad!

Week 3: The only challenge towards the tail end was finding time to make food. I was feeling a bit uninspired, (and broke!) and had a ton of homework to accomplish during this week. I must admit though, I felt at the top of my game. My skin had really cleared up (I have issues with dryness on my nose... it gets flaky sometimes! Kind of gnarly...) and I felt like a raw food machine. I would wake up around 7am alert, and ready to go, and I would be up until midnight without batting an eye. All of my homework and papers from that week got really good marks, and I attribute that to my eating patterns. It was a great way to finish.

English Bulldog puppy skateboarding in Venice Beach... I can't wait to get a dog one day

Post Diet Mayhem: So on the day after the 3 weeks were up, I went over to my friend Azzurra's house for a potluck dinner. I brought a raw salad with Matt Amsden's Orange-Hemp dressing. (I previously couldn't have oranges b/c of their high glycemic index! So this was exciting!) Azzurra made a great meal with several different options (some were purchased at Lemonade in Venice Beach) and it was a great time.

 The spread... (My salad is the top-right dish)

 Azzurra being a good host

The Damage

Although I had a few pieces of mozzarella cheese, I wasn't too worried about what I had eaten. It wasn't until afterwards that the real damage started. Somebody busted out the ingredients for CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES. These were organic, but FAR from vegan, and I didn't hold back in the slightest. Those things came out of the oven and went immediately into my stomach, only to later clog up my intestines and negate the past 3 weeks of hard work. Worth it? Psychologically, perhaps. Physically? No. To give you an idea of how hard I fell, I had about 12 of those bad-boys. It was pandemonium.

Raw "Beegan" Chai Sorbet... 

Did I forget to mention I finished that off before the 12 chocolate chip cookies?

Since then, I have been generally pretty balanced, with the exception of last night... (bad choices were made) and I'm ready to hop back on the raw food bandwagon.

Moral of the experiment? Raw food makes you feel amazing. I was happy, productive, calm, and energized... Which is exactly how I would want to live my whole life. :-)

Best,

Cliff

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

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

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

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

RAW VEGAN PUMPKIN PIE

"Ani Phyo's Kitchen" Book Review

just say NO to... Agave?

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/03/30/beware-of-the-agave-nectar-health-food.aspx

http://www.raw-living-food-success.com/natural-sweetener.html

vlog about mercola's B12 spray

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check out the link!

http://products.mercola.com/vitamin-b12-spray/

raw food blues

it's official.

I sent all of my cooking stuff back home to CT, and now I am officially high and dry here at school. I can't eat raw!

Granted I could go to rawvolution, or juliano's or something, but frankly i'm broke and I can't afford it.

I have been hitting up my favorite cooked food restaurants as of late because I can't cook in my dorm, and although it's been great to binge, I feel like $h!t.

BTW... whenever I don't eat raw, my nose gets really red and dry (I have no clue why this happens) and I call it the "rudolph syndrome."

It's always a good indicator of whether or not i'm on track.

I will just have to wait until CT for some more amazing raw food, but until then, I will post a few things here and there about whatever is on my mind.


Best,

Cliff

Intent!

SUP YO

This blog and I have a couple of goals:

1. To show that raw foods are great

2. To help out people who are interested in raw foods

3. To chronicle my journey as well as my mom's journey into raw foods

4. To get some awesome feedback from people in the raw foods community

5. To use the internet and its virus-like speed for positive ends

A bit about myself,

I am currently a junior at Pepperdine University in the lovely Malibu CA
I am originally from New Canaan CT, and will be returning there shortly for summer vacation
I have been vegetarian since 2005 (and have dabbled with veganism / raw foodism)
I first became interested in raw foods during my time as an employee at the Stand Juice Company in Norwalk CT. Check out their fbook page. http://www.facebook.com/pages/the-stand-juice-company/53522968548 Mike and Carissa are the coolest.
I am not 100% raw, and I doubt I will ever be 100% anything
I like family, friends, dogs, art, music, FOOD, swimming, traveling, speaking mandarin and french, running, and all sorts of other stuff.

You can be assured that:

Video posts will be regularly added
Links and news will be regularly added
Interesting / Funny / irrelevant material will be added for good measure

I hope you enjoy my blog!

Best,

Cliff