Skip to main content

KISS - Keep It Simple Sweetheart

A few years back I decided to make a change in my diet to incorporate raw fruit and veggies. As with many who attempt the raw food lifestyle (I do still eat meat, just much less and I try never to cook my veggies), I over-complicated things. But I've discovered two key tips that EASILY incorporate raw food into my diet... mix of flavors and marinate, marinate, marinate!

1.) Green smoothies ROCK! Mixing 60% tropical fruits and 40% dark green leafy vegetables together makes for an AWESOME drink!!! What an exotic and fancy way to get 5 servings of fruit and vegetables into your diet without a lot of work! Today I mixed 2 cups of spinach with 1 mango, 1 orange, 1 banana and 1/2 of a large pineapple with a splash of water into my Vitamix blender (you REALLY need a high speed blender for these smoothies) and got a wonderful drink that started out my morning quite nicely. Tomorrow I'm mixing coconut water, 1/2 cup coconut meat, 1 mango, 1/2 of a large pineapple with 1 - 1.5 cups of dandelion greens for another amazing and exotic elixir!
Once I got past the green color and really TASTED these smoothies, I discovered that the flavor is like nothing I've tasted before and I love it! WHY haven't I tasted anything like this before? Well.... American diets are lacking in their consumption of the all-important green leafy veggies. But if you like the clean (and surprisingly appetizing) smell of freshly mown grass with a topnote of tropical bliss, then you will LOVE green smoothies as much as I do. The added bonus, I get my live fruit and veggies in a crisp cold drink without slaving in a hot kitchen to prepare a meal. A little bit of rinsing, peeling and chopping and I'm minutes away from a delicious health-building drink that is filling and LOADED with vitamins, minerals, protein..... power!
2) Bathing my food with flavor: when I first decided to shift to raw foods, I bought tons of books on the raw lifestyle and preparing gourmet raw dishes. Most of the recipe books that I gravitated towards included interesting substitutes for my favorite dishes (i.e. raw lasagna, raw tacos with mock beans and meat, raw 'rice' and 'pastas'). What I've discovered is that all of those "substitutions" were substituting the very thing that I was trying to get away from.... high fat and calories. The reality was, I was making a change! Substituting tacos for mock tacos was still giving me tacos with still a lot of work. Now don't get me wrong, raw mock tacos are a MILLION times better than the tacos I was replacing... what I'm talking about here is the mindset. I put in a ton of time and energy creating a whole slew of substitutions so I could keep eating what I was eating. But once I changed my mindset that I was changing how I eat, I discovered that simplicity is again key.

Even when I cook meat the simplest of techniques, marinading, usually makes my dishes SING! So I put away all my "gourmet" raw food recipe books and started looking for raw sauce and marinade recipes. I now marinate my meat and veggies in the same sauce (different containers of course). My sauces and marinades are raw and healthy and add a huge punch of flavor that makes the entire meal awesome.

Comments

Past 7 Days....

My Favorite Things Birthday Give-Away!!!

IT IS ON! Ok... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!! I get to give stuff away! And not just ANY stuff.... MY FAVORITE STUFF!!!! Well, not ALL my favorite stuff, but certainly my favorites for at least ONE of my obsessions: NAILS!!! Maybe next year for my birthday I will be giving away craft supplies and exercise equipment... that would be AWESOME!!! But, this year's birthday give-away is HUGE with my favorite nail and beauty products and is open to ALL my followers. You guys are the best and deserve the best, so here is what ONE lucky winner is going to score: The Prize Haul: Konad Nail Art Stamping Set - Coraline I (I am addicted to Konad and I LOVE this set) Konad Nail art image disc - M63 (A little something extra from Kathleen... thank you) Fragrance Oil Set, types: China Rain, White Linen, Obsession (I love these for my relaxing baths) Nail Aid Nail Treatment Set including: Pink Natural Growth Therapy, Instant Wrap, Clear Liquid Bandage, Cuticle Cure, Peeling Nail Intense Repai...

Velcome To The Little Hop of HORRORS!!!

MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! So I tried to make the title sound really spooky and ran out of room to include my evil laugh... hahaha! WELCOME HOPPERS! Are you thoroughly spooked and amazed? I know I am! You already know that today is the start of our Halloween celebration with a blog hop organized by my good friend Nicole of Canadian Nickel Scrap'n . If you're currently hopping, you should be arriving here from the Fabulous Eulanda's blog ... wasn't that Caramel Corn Box AWESOME?!? If you haven't arrived from Eulanda's blog and are just now joining us, hop to the bottom of this post for details on how the blog hop works. And now for my scary good fun before you head over to Gloria's blog on the next stop of this hop. Today I've got the "Welcome" sign that I will be hanging in my foyer this Halloween. I used my Simple Frame Gypsy cut file as well as the pumpkins and faces from the Pumpkin Carvings Seasonal Cricut Cartridge (just like the one I will be g...

Inking Pink Blog Hop

Hi Hoppers! Danielle, a.k.a. FitterTwit here.... so glad you made it!!! If you're mid-hop, you should be arriving here from Chelsea's blog . Was that a great project or what!?! If you're just joining us and need to start the hop from the beginning, you're gonna want to head over to our lovely Hop Hostess Patricia's blog to start the fun here on our VERY IMPORTANT Inking Pink Blog Hop! Here's to Breast Cancer Awareness!!! My project for this hop is a reminder card..."Remember your checkups!" What a wonderful way to say "I love you" to a dear friend or family member. Now you may not be able to see it in the pic above, but I altered The Greeting Farm's Ebony so that her tee shirt reads, "Say YES to Mammograms!" So, today I wanted to share HOW I added the words to her tee. First I printed the words as small as I could and still be able to read the message using my laser printer onto the paper that I would be using to color in my im...