Raw City Life ~ live raw, live well! » Raw Food Prep

Nutrition Info on your fruits and veggies

Julie — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:19:13 +0000

I added a new widget to the right side bar from SkipThePie.org

Type in any fruit or veggie (or any other food) to find more information about the nutrients in the food. It’s for some quickie info. For a more in depth look at the nutrients you need to check out NuritionData.com - which also has information for all kinds of prepared food you’d find at your store and restaurant. You can easily find out the nutition data in any of your raw recipes using these sites.

NutritionData.com is where I found the info
for this Papaya Romaine Banana smoothie recipe.

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Healing Cancer

Julie — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 23:02:33 +0000

My cousin died of breast cancer recently – she had a SAD diet (standard american diet) – she microwaved her food, drank instant tea and instant coffees, drank lots of cows milk, ate meat, ate packaged, processed foods-just pop ‘em in the microwave and rarely ever a live fresh raw fruit or vegetable. My best friend just died of breast cancer in January. She ate meat, drank wine, cooked food and rarely fresh raw fruits and vegies. And when she began fighting her cancer she only used accupuncture, massage and other natural alternative methods – but didn’t change her diet. When the doctor gave her 2 weeks to live, then she asked about the Gerson Institute Therapy. It was too late.

Get some nutrition in you! It’s easy to add a raw green smoothie to your daily diet for a month - see how you feel! It seems to be easier for people to be cut on, to take a pill, to get a shot. I’ve heard that people would change their religion and anything else before they change their diet. Be courageous, get emotional support. Just try.

If you would like to learn more about the facinating Gerson Institute and their program, here are some videos featuring the vibrant Charlotte Gerson, daughter of Dr. Max Gerson. I have put the time length of each of the videos as well as a little description of the content.

“The Gerson Therapy is a safe, natural treatment developed by Dr. Max Gerson in the 1920’s that uses organic foods, juicing, coffee enemas, detoxification and natural supplements to activate the body’s ability to heal itself. Over the past 60 years, thousands of people have used the Gerson Therapy to recover from so-called “incurable” diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and arthritis.”

This site has some interesting pages and here is a link to a page on the Gerson Protocol that gives an overview of the program.

TAPE ONE

Tape 1
1 hour 55 min.
Healing and Preventing Incurable Diseases

TAPE TWO

Tape 2
1 hour 45 min.

Workshop: Doing the Gerson Therapy at Home Part 1
- not drinking water on the program
- pure water for enemas, soups and other external uses
- thyroid function, immune system and cancer
- thyroid function, cholesterol and heart disease
- fats, oils and tumor growth
- the importance of flax seed oil (not flax seed)
- organic food and composting
- forbidden items on therapy
- seeds, legumes and enzyme inhibitors
- spices, juicing and cooked foods on the program

TAPE THREE

Tape 3

1 hour 57 min.

Doing the Gerson Therapy at Home Part 2

- Why do the coffee enemas
- chemotherapy and Gerson therapy
- info on a diabetes, gout, obesity treatment success
- why you can feel bad while detoxing (the healing crisis is a good thing!)
- medications, vitamins Gerson treatment uses
- prevention
- what radiation does
- detoxify and rebuild (toxins in the home, personal products, fluoride, makeup etc)
- stress, addictions
- helping the body heal itself

TAPE FOUR

Tape 4

1 hour 40 min.

Charlotte Gerson demonstrates food preparation
_________________________________________

_________________________________________

Here are 1 more inspiring videos about Gerson, the medical community, nutrition, our health etc.

THE GERSON MIRACLE – View “The Gerson Miracle” on Hulu.com!

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Salad Bars – ewww

Julie — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 07:12:42 +0000

It’s difficult enough to stay raw while being out and about and doing business everyday. You pretty much have to bring your own meal and/or start having meetings in venues where food is not the focus.

I’m bringing this up because I don’t go to salad bars anymore.

I ran across an old email correspondance I had with Souper Salad, a salad bar chain.

I had noticed that my tongue felt numb after eating the salad. Other people I had salad with said the same thing. A waitress I asked said they only washed the produce in water. She didn’t know or didn’t want to say otherwise. They wash it in something called “Victory Wash.”

Here is an article about the wash stating that produce must be rinsed in water after using the “Victory Wash.”

The fact that Victory Wash is purchased through chemical companies like EcoLab is scary. EcoLab says the chemical does not need to be rinsed. Yum, chemicals.

Souper Salad washes produce in this chemical and then doesn’t rinse it off.

I emailed the company and received this email in return – I left it as is, the person didn’t take care to correct any misspellings, including the name of the town the store resides, (Sugar Land) or her own title.

_______________________

My email:

Souper Salad has been a family favorite for many years. The past few visits at this store, my mom and I both noticed that something on the salad bar items would make our tongue slightly numb. I wondered if any ingredients were rinsed in some sort of ‘food fresh’ stuff. We thought it might be the jicama or zucchini or celery – something to keep it discoloring. But this time I didn’t have any of those ingredients on my salad. I asked the waitress if the lettuce was washed in anything like that and she said it was only washed in water. But again a strange taste and odd numbing occurred after eating 2 pieces of lettuce – I didn’t eat the rest of the salad and just ate watermelon. This never used to happen in the past and don’t know why it is now. It’s not just me, it happened to my mom last time we ate there and it happened to a client last time I had a meeting there (it used to be a good place to meet clients because it offers something for everyone). We all couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but I’m thinking the lettuce and/or celery, (not sure). The usual manager wasn’t there at this time so I didn’t get to talk to him.

Thank you for your response,

Julie Howell

_____________________

their response:

Dear Ms Howell,,

Let me first say thank you for taking the time to write to us about your recent visit to our sugarland location. Our goal is to provide you with a great dining experience.

We take reports such as any possible food related issue very seriously. Please advise me if there is any further information that you need to share with me regarding your visit to our restaurant. I will certainly conduct further investigation. We do wash all our produce items in a Victory wash. The product is odor less and taste less. So that leaves me to believe that something else could of cussed your tongue to become numb.

Your feedback is very important to me and I take it very serious. Please feel free to call me if you wish to discuss this further. My phone number is 832-515-9386 and I am available anytime. I hope both you and your mom are better now and that you will give us another try. We take pride in our food quality and the food safety practices in our restaurants.

Thank you,

Jana Oravec
Distict Manager-Houston
Souper Salad, Inc.

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Kale Chips

Julie — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:20:22 +0000

KALE – The most nutrient dense of our greens and so beautiful. But most people only use it as decoration on their plate or you see it as decoration on salad bars.

One cup has 2.2 grams of protein.
10302 IU of vitamin A
80.4 mg of vitamin C
90.5 mg of Calcium
299 mg of Potassium
121 mg Omega 3 fatty acids
90.5 mg Omega 6 fatty acids

There is a lot more, but these are the ones with high numbers that I grabbed from NutritionData.com

I usually consume my kale in green smoothies with papaya and banana. But if you are in the mood for a crunchy tastey snack….

Kale Chips to the rescue!

Remove stems, tear up 1 or 2 bunchs of kale in big pieces. In a big bowl, drizzle some Braggs Amnios, Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar (or fresh lemon juice) on the kale pieces. Add 1 or 2 tablespoons of tahini and a tablespoon or 2 of nutritional yeast.

Massage in well until everything is coated. Spread on dehydrator screens and dry at 115 degrees for an hour. Check them at this time and see if all the pieces are crisp. If not, continue to dry. They dry pretty quick, no need to have the dehydrator running all night on this one!

You can’t ruin this recipe. Adjust the recipe to your taste. Search the internet for “raw kale chips recipe” and you will find lots of variations. Some add garlic, some add blended cashews and more. Check it out.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You are going to wish you bought more kale when you make these. They really do get delicate and crispy and you will be surprised how delicious they are!

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Big Screen green drink alert

Julie — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:33:24 +0000

We’ve seen the Iron Man drinking green drinks in his movies – I rememberd a Big Screen Green Drink Alert from the 1999 remake of the Thomas Crowne Affair starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. Many times in the movie Rene Russo’s character, Catherine Banning, is seen drinking a thick green drink. Obviously the green smoothie is why she has that sexy trim body!

Another more recent Big Screen Green Drink Alert…

I just saw Queen Latifa in her role as Leslie Wright in Just Wright. She is a physical therapist working with an NBA All-Star Scott McKnight. During his recovery she hands him what looks just like a green smoothie. (I’ll post a green smoothie scene pic when I can – this photo is just clipped from the preview).

Have you seen a green drink on the big screen?

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Low Fat Raw Vegan

Julie — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:58:46 +0000

Found the Holy Grail in raw food. The 80/10/10 low fat raw vegan information from Dr. Doug Graham.

Every page I read I wanted to bookmark. Its informative and backed with tons of research. It’s all about the natural way we are meant to nourish our bodies… and you can find it all at your grocery produce department. You don’t have to order exotic supplements and powders and other fancy raw crap that is being peddled online — know I know why that peddled crap and the way it was marketed always bothered me. It’s because it’s just not natural. It’s not needed. (And OMG someone is actually selling “raw water” now).

When I read that the medical industry has published studies that say diabetics need to eat fruit and stay off the fat – it blew my mind. There are doctors out there telling people to not eat fruit because of the sugar content! When you eat fruit, the body sucks up that awesome juicy nutrition and uses the glucose for energy and the insulin receptors do their job and attach to the sugar and use it and move it out of the system. BUT when you have fat in your system taking forever to digest and get out of the system, the poor little receptors can’t do their job because the fat is blocking them. They are like little fat bouncers standing out front of a tough biker bar shaking their head no. So the sugar floats around wondering what to do. If diabetics stayed off fat, they could get off their meds.

The unusual title of the book refers to getting 80% of calories from carbs (fruit) 10% of our calories from protein (greens) and 10% of our calorie from fat (nuts, avo, seed). See NutritionData.com and NutriDiary.com to check the nutrients from your food. For example here is the nutrient data from my usual green papaya smoothie:

Papaya Green Smoothie
200 grams papaya (a good full cup cubed)
100 grams banana (one medium about 7″ long)
100 grams romaine (5 or 6 leaves)
1-2 dates (soaked first)
2 cups water

Nutrition Data:
Calories – 253
Fat – 1 g
Sodium – 15 mg
Carbs – 65 g
Fiber – 10 g
Sugars – 42 g
Protein – 4 g

Here is the nutrition data on the individual ingredients:

Papaya – 200 grams (a full cup cubed) Calories – 78 Carb – 19.6 g Fiber – 3.6 g Sugar – 11.8 g Fat – .2 g Protein – 1.2 g Vit A – 2188 iu Vit C – 123.6 mg Folate – 76 mcg Calcium – 48 mg Iron – .2 mg Magnesium – 20 mg Potassium – 514 mg Sodium – 6 mg Omega 3 fatty acids – 50 mg Omega 6 fatty acids – 12 mg	Banana - 100 grams (1 medium about 7″ long) Calories – 89 Carb – 22.8 g Fiber – 2.6 g Starch – 5.4 g Sugar – 12.2 g Fat – .3 g Protein – 1.1 g Vit A – 64 iu Vit C – 8.7 mg Folate – 20 mcg Calcium – 5 mg Iron – .3 mg Magnesium – 27 mg Phosphorus – 22 mg Potassium – 358 mg Sodium – 1 mg Omega 3 fatty acids – 27 mg Omega 6 fatty acids – 46 mg
Romaine – 100 g (5 or 6 leaves) Calories – 17 g Carb – 3.3 g Fiber – 1.2 g Sugar – 1.2 g Fat – .3 g Protein – 1.1 g Vit A – 8711 iu Vit C – 24 mg Vit E – .1 mcg Vit K – 103 mcg Folate – 136 mcg Calcium – 33 mg Iron – 1 mg Magnesium – 14 mg Phosphorus – 30 mg Potassium – 247 mg Sodium – 8 mg Omega 3 fatty acids – 113 mg Omega 6 fatty acids – 47 mg	Medjool Dates – .25 grams (1-2 dates pitted) Calories – 66 Carb – 18 g Fiber – 1.6 g Sugar – 16 g Fat – .3 g Protein – .4 g Vit A – 35.8 iu Vit K – .6 mcg Calcium – 15.4 mg Iron – .2 mg Magnesium – 13 mg Phosphorus – 14.9 mg Potassium – 167 mg Sodium – .2 mg

I think this is the way our bodies were biologically designed to eat. Perhaps it’s not for everyone – but if you are a raw foodist that is having difficulty sticking to raw because of cooked food cravings – try low fat raw vegan, read the book. You will see that just eating more fruit obliterates the cooked food craving. And if you are eating 811 and still craving – you aren’t eating enough fruit, get those calories in! When you’re used to always trying to eat low cal, 2000 plus calories a day is hard to wrap your head around.

With all the calories you need to increase your activity – but the cool thing is…you are so full of energy that you just get up and move! You’re body wants to move. And have a total blast when you are consuming so much fruit, people are going to notice. When they see that and say the typical “where do you get your protein?” You can be straight and say “from fruits and vegetables.” Or you can have fun with them and say “How much protein do we need?” They never know. Never once has someone who has asked me that ever has an answer. There is 4 grams of protein in that green smoothie – and that’s just one meal or a snack. Well, the issue of protein is one for another post another time.

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Resplendent Raw Food

Julie — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:49:23 +0000

Sometimes, when I’m paying attention, I am mesmerized when I slice open some beautiful raw fruits or vegetables. It is all so amazing. I wanted to write about how beautiful it was but the word beautiful just wasn’t enough. I found the word “resplendent” in my Thesauraus: shining brightly; full of splendor; dazzling; splendid. It’s a good word.

There is no question in my mind that fruits, vegetables and greens were created to be resplendent so that we would be attracted to it and and want to eat our fill. It couldn’t be any simpler! Resplendent colors – (open a papaya!); incredible designs -(check out a cauliflower up close); amazing aroma (the list is too long!)

What about nuts and seeds? Look at the regal sunflower with its bright yellow petals. Almond shells hanging on a tree are covered by a thin layer of bright green meat that tastes like a Granny Smith apple. Look at dark green beautifully curly kale, so rich. Now think about that which we shouldn’t be eating… (I started to write some examples, but they weren’t resplendent and I didn’t feel resplendent writing the words.)

Mother Nature gave us a big clue what to eat: it will be resplendent! It can be so simple.

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Green Papayas

Julie — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:00:32 +0000

I love interesting salads. I get tired of salads that are made with lettuce as a base – at salad bars the lettuce is usually cut too big to fit in your mouth and it takes forever to chew them. This is a colorful and very flavorful salad – great to bring to a raw potluck or serve your cooked friends and family. Pecans or walnuts can be used, but the raw pistachios flavor really fits this combination of flavors. If you don’t have access to green papaya, you may use jicama, zucchini (soak zucchini the same as papaya), or experiment with hard squashes like butternut or carnival or for a more tart version use a Granny Smith apple as the base. (Full recipe on recipe page.)

My papaya tree is full of papaya that have yet to ripen. But the temps have been falling and I think I’ve got all the fruit I’ll get from it this season. Then this week we had snow and a hard freeze and so in preparation I covered some of my more tropical plants with plant blankets. I cut 3 of the largest green papaya from the tree to see if they would ripen indoors.

I really don’t think they were old enough to ripen indoors so I thought I’d see what I could make with the green papaya. There are other fruits that have “2 lives.” Green mangos are used as a relish and in salsas. Green plantain are used to make several cooked side dishes (patacones, chips…).

When you cut a green papaya it has a sticky sap that oozes and when dry it is waxy. (The papayas that were left on the tree were covered in dots of the waxy substance the next morning after the freeze.) I cut open the papaya, cut off the peeling, used a mandoline to make a pile of julianne strips. I soaked the strips in a bowl of water, salt and juice of one lime.

Soak for at least 30 minutes. Drain and then toss with sliced purple cabbage, julianned cucumber, chopped or julianned apple, chopped cilantro, chopped pistachios and orange zest. Drizzle cranberry dressing over the salad and top with a couple of sliced soaked dates per serving.

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Raw Food Leftovers

Julie — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:10:44 +0000

A really cool thing about preparing raw food is that you can keep working with the finished product. I really don’t know what to call it – for example if you cooked a lasagna – you probably couldn’t puree it and re-cook it to create a new meal.

But raw food, for example raw soups you can dehydrate, or add more raw ingredients and dehydrate into a raw cracker. Raw food never needs to go to waste.

I made a few special recipes to take to Thanksgiving with my family, (they were eating cooked). I made a green salad to share that turned out really good.
Chopped romain with pecans, diced tomatoes, diced yellow bell pepper, soaked goji berries, strawberries, cucumbers. With a light balsamic vinegar/olive oil/honey/cinnamon cranberry dressing.

My side dish was Bartlet Pears with Cinnamon Cranberry Sauce and Spiced Ginger Cream. Found the recipe on Gliving.com – this sauce had an amazing flavor!

I also had a slice of carnival squash topped with raw dressing. Just a few bites of that and I was stuffed! Guess all those nuts fill you up. I soaked the squash in salt water, drained it, dehydrated it for a couple hours which softened it a bit. Then I rubbed it with cumin. The dressing was a handful each of pecans, walnuts, almonds. Processed with a little squash, celery, sage, onion, parsley, salt, pepper. Pretty tasty!

For dessert I had a Mango Cream Tart (also from GLiving.com)

What to do with the leftovers? The squash and stuffing I turned into a savory raw bread! I ran the squash and nut stuffing through my Omega auger juicer to turn it into a paste, adding some left over red and yellow bell pepper. Then I stirred in fresh ground flax seed, the leftover cinnamon cranberry sauce, dulse, kelp, chopped raw olives, sunflower seeds and a little coconut oil. Spread out on 2 teflex sheets and dried at 110 for a few hours.

I cut it into little squares that remind me of those little “coctail rye” bread loaves. Probably high in calories with all the nuts. So I’ll make them last! Should be good with lettuce and tomato!

The mango tart was only a 6″ tart, but was so filling I only had a sliver. And everyone else was chowing down on 3 different kinds of cooked pies and didn’t try mine…so I had lots left over.

I put the entire tart in a food processor with 2 bananas, a little fresh ground flax seed, vanilla and cinnamon. Spread it on one teflex sheet about 1/2 in thick or less. Dried it at 110 for a few hours. When it was dried enough to handle, I cut it in small squares – spreading honey on some and adding coconut just for fun, (then dried some more).

These turned out good. Probably could have added something to sweeten it more – but I think they will be good as a side to a green salad with pears I think!

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Soup and leftovers

Julie — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:08:31 +0000

The weather has turned cooler here and I was craving some soup.

Using my Vitamix I pureed up some soup – kept it on high for a little longer to warm it up a bit. Being a high speed blender you can do that!

This was adapted from an Elaina Love recipe – I blended up a red bell pepper, half an avocado I had left in the frige, one small organic carrot, handful of cilantro, dash salt (I use Real Salt available from WholeFoods), dash of cumin. It made way too much for one serving so I refrigerated the rest.

Taking a tip from Ann Wigmore I dehydrated the leftover soup. I added a half cup of sprouted buckwheat (which I turned into “nut butter” by running it though the auger juicer).

I also added 2 chopped green onions, minced about 4″ of fresh rosemary, added more salt and cumin.

I poured this mixture out on a teflex dehydrator sheet and dried it at 105 degrees for about 2 or 3 hours.

I used a spatula to spread it around evenly and even shook the tray to even it out. It dried really fast, I flipped it over onto the screen in about an hour. It was too thin to actually be crackers. I broke them up and put them in a jar. If I can keep out of them, I will use them to sprinkle over salads! Really tasty, made the house smell great!

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