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

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

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

The Stand

It's Christmas morning! Yahoo! I'm waiting in my room because I've been awake for about 15 minutes, but I can't go downstairs until 10:30. My parents have this tradition where we aren't allowed to go downstairs until they have finished "setting up." Frankly, it's just a method of torture, and when we were little, we would literally be screaming from the stairwell to "hurry up!" and to "have mercy!" Anyhow, I thought it was lame that I wasn't going to post all the way until the 8th of January, so here is a bit of an update on some of my vegan-ness in CT.

I've been going back to my all time favorite vegan / raw place in CT: The Stand. I have their blog link on this page, and I used to work for them. It was such a blessing to have worked there, and without their influence, I never would have been set on my raw food journey. Mike and Carissa are the owners and Amy is their all-star manager. Mike and Carissa are like the older siblings I never had, and every time I see them it's a blast. They're hilarious and if you're ever in Southern CT, definitely stop by for some of their world famous smoothies, juices, sandwiches, wraps, and VEGAN DESSERTS.

Anyhow, they've commissioned me to come by on the 27th and repaint their store! I'm so excited to help out and redo their chalkboard menu, and to paint a wall. They're paying me in FOOD (my favorite kind of currency) and Carissa are just going to have a dance party that night and get some work done. I'm so pumped!

Also, I met up with my two brothers at a new Chipotle chain that opened up in the town next to us. The northeast, (unlike southern California) is starved for good mexican food. While I don't eat there often, I LOVE the Chipotle business model. I am so excited to see things like organic beans and rice, humanely raised meat, and LEED certified restaurants go mainstream. While it's far from perfect, I believe that these baby steps are signs of massive progress! Chipotle is a sign of good things to come! Organic, fresh food can be lucrative, AND popular.

ALSO! For christmas dinner I had morning star farm "chicken strips" seared in a marinade by The Raw Foods Witch: ACV, honey, nama shoyu, and olive oil. Delicious. It was paired with mashed potatoes, and a big salad. Merry Christmas everyone! I'll post if I get any exciting kitchen gadgets!

Best,

Cliff

Some foods

Ok so this is a picture of that dressing I was talk about. Note, it is NOT made by good mood foods. I bought the lemon tahini dressing in the hopes that it would be as good as their honey mustard dressing. BIG FLOP. DO NOT BUY GOOD MOOD FOOD'S TAHINI LEMON DRESSING. IT SUCKS. However, Rod Rotundi's pomegranate dressing HAPPILY took that shitty dressing's place. So delicious.






This is a picture of some sushi I whipped up. I have a lot of leftovers at the moment, and the filling is made of (yet again) the curry mushroom burgers I had made, the rest of my kimchi, radish sprouts, spinach, and ENOKI MUSHROOMS! I can't wait to eat those for lunch tomorrow! Yahoo!






Finally, here's a picture of the pesto pizza I made today. It's a spelt cracker topped with my famous walnut pesto, marinated tomato and mushrooms, and some pitted kalamata olives. amazing.

that's all!

-cliff

RAW VEGAN PUMPKIN PIE

"Ani Phyo's Kitchen" Book Review