Coconut Cracking

Young Thai Coconut

For those of you out there curious about opening young Thai coconuts, here’s a little how to video demonstrating the “finesse” technique. Other techniques include the “whacking”, “hacking”, “cracking” and “smacking”… none of which are featured during this video. The Live Food Experience does not take any responsibility for those who sustain injuries while attempting to open a coconut. If attempting to open a coconut for the first time be sure to use a quality sharp knife. Coconuts eat cheap knives for breakfast. Also be sure to have some one standing by un case of a coco-mishap.

If you have a Young Thai Coconut Experience you wish to share, be sure to post it in the comments below.

Be safe, and Keep It Live!

Rosemary Corn Shroom

Rosemary Corn Shroom

Hi all,

Recently I was asked, thanks to Heathy, to be a featured chef on the new website and online community Eighty Percent Raw. This site was started to provide support for individuals interested in refining their diet and moving towards a healthy more sustainable way of eating and living. March 1st was the launch of 80% Raw. As a contributing chef I put together a simple side dish recipe that requires no special training, gadgets or tools. Visit Eighty Percent Raw the innargarul March edition. In the meantime check out this video featuring Rosemary Corn Shroom.

Marinade My Mushroom

BBQ Eggplant and Shrooms

They say the secrets in the sauce, which is true. But the magic is in the marinade. The trick to making raw foods that really knock the socks off of skeptics and lovers alike is dialing in a boot shootin marinade. Good news kids, most marinades are raw and vegan already. The basic ingredients are an acid, an oil, a sweetener, salt and spices. Unpasteurized apple cider vinegar or citrus juice is your acid. You can choose from any number of organic cold pressed oils. Use agave, palm sugar or yacon syrup if your hardcore raw vegan. And if you’re not so strict use raw honey or maple syrup for sweeteners. Use a healthy sun dried sea salt or Himalayan salt.  Spices… take your pick of chemical free options.

The recipe below is a BBQ style sauce/marinade which I used to marinade eggplant and crimini mushrooms. I marinaded these guys over night and then warmed up the mixture in the dehydrator for a couple hours. The results were delicious fabulous goodness.

This recipe is featured in my soon to be released recipe book entitled “The Live Food Experience”. Subscribe to my blog and be the first kid on your block to have your very own “Live Food Experience”.

BBQ Marinade

Amount	Measure	Ingredient	Preparation / Option
3/4	C	sundried tomatoes	soaked 2 hours
1	C	water	use STS water
1/4	C	palm sugar
3	T	ACV
2	T	tamari
1	T	miso
2	cloves	garlic
2	t	ginger	minced
1	t	chili powder
1	t	paprika
1	pinch	salt
Blend all the ingredients. Pour marinade over chopped mushrooms or veggies. Marinade overnight. Add marinade veggies to salads, soups and wraps.

Canadian Adventures 2 – Mousse Crossing

Welcome to Ontario

Previously on “Canadian Adventures” from The Live Food Experience; Adam was scarfing down a pomelo at 34,000 feet on his way to visit Heathy in Canada. Although the oversized citrus managed to put up a fight, it was subdued by Adam prior to his arrival in Winnipeg. Fun stuff traveling. Actually it can be stressful and tiring,

Warm Fire

but when there are loving folks on the other end to greet you it makes it all worth it. I safely arrived in Canada around midnight and was collected from the airport by Heathy and her mother Elaine. There warm welcome offset the freezing conditions outside. I tucked in all my loose ends and gathered up all my Homeland Insecurity searched luggage and embarked upon my first adventure in Canada. That first evening in Winnipeg we stayed at the home of family friends Anya and Francis who own and operate a European shoe store and bed and breakfast. The shoe store and the bed and breakfast are separate businesses although they may honor a request for Birkenstock in bed.

Cedar

I awoke the next morning to a snowy wonderland. I was anxious to get out in the cold so Heathy and I took a walk up the snowy neighborhood road. It was a short walk. We were cold and we needed to get on the road and back to her home 5 hours away in Sioux Lookout, Ontario.

Mousse Crossing

What was waiting for me in Sioux Lookout? A warm fire, lovely dinner, happy doggies and the most amazing dessert; Strawberry Lime Mousse Cake. We now join our program that is currently in progress… Travels with Heathy:

The Live Food Experience… In your very own kitchen!

Recently I prepared an in home dinner for 4 in Jacksonville, Florida. I have to say this is one of my favorite ways of introducing people to the magic of living foods. I’ve done a few these dinners in the past they all have been a great success. Most of the time there is a skeptic in the bunch or at least someone who doubts they will enjoy or feel satisfied with the meal. So far I’ve been able to leave everyone satiated, satisfied and smiling. Now there’s no telling whether or not they throw a pot pie in the microwave or thaw out a pizza once I’m out the door.

Thai Miso Soup

The menu from the other evening began with Thai style miso soup. Here’s the basic procedure:

1. Start by warming 3 Cups filtered water on the stove, not boiling just hot to touch.
2. Transfer the water to a blender. I had brought my Vitamix but any blender will do.
3. Add 3 T of unpasteurized miso.  I used my favorite chick pea miso from South River Miso to make the broth. Add 1/2 an avocado, 1/2 or a full bell pepper (yellow preferred), 1 T of Thai Curry Spice from Mountain Rose Herbs,1-2 cloves of garlic, 2 t lime juice and 1-2 t of fresh ginger..
4. Blend for for 30 seconds.
5. Cut up some fresh basil add to blender and blend for 5 seconds.
6. Pour into cups and add fresh cucumber batons, shredded carrot and bell pepper chunks.
7. Garnish with a fresh basil leaf.

Next on the menu was a veggie medley Pad Thai creation. I used kelp noodles from Sea Tangle Noodle Co., spiralized zucchini and carrots and diced jicama to make the noodles. The sauce consisted of:

• almond butter
• water
• unpasteurized miso
• tamari
• lemon juice
• olive oil
• palm sugar
• ginger
• hot pepper

Pad Thai with Almond Miso Sauce

I’m a big fan of this sauce. To me it’s good enough to drink straight. After I blend up a batch I swish water in the bottom of the blender and drink what’s left. Nothing goes to waste in the live food kitchen.

Dessert was the next order of business. I like to keep things delicious and easy at these dinner parties. I chose to make a mango banana sorbet. The sorbet is a easy 1, 2 recipe… 1. cut up and freeze fruit 2. pass frozen fruit through a masticating juicer with the blank plate… done.

I did make a special sauce to top the sorbet with. It was an agave cinnamon sauce. It consisted of:

• agave
• maple syrup
• almond butter
• agave powder
• cinnamon
• salt

I blended this mixture and put it in a squirt bottle. The agave came across very sweet to me and in the future I’d probably make this again with soaked dates or palm sugar instead of agave… regardless, it was still delicious! Schedule a Dinner Experience in your home today.

Making Sorbet

Mango Banana Sorbet

Conscious Shopping

No need to gamble...

The task of shopping is set before you and you must prepare yourself. You have a list, but is it the best possible list for yourself and the planet? What is your motivation for shopping? Are you motivated by saving the most money or feeding yourself and your family? If you answer both ways a compromise has to be made and that compromise is your health. Being an informed and conscious shopper doesn’t mean you have to spend more money, on the contrary. When you are a conscious shopper you see things at the store for what they actually are as opposed to what they are advertised as. Defining your motivation is one way to become a conscious shopper. Let’s say your motivation is simply “to feed yourself and your family.” Now if that is the extent of your answer then the food manufacturers are left with plenty of liberties in regards to defining the “food” you are shopping for. If you expand your answer to say, “feed myself and my family the healthiest and best foods possible with consideration to planet and global community” you empower yourself and eliminate the inferior food choices that make up the majority of items in the grocery store. You and I know that grocery stores abound with mountains of toxic ingredients combined together and dressed up to appear as food. This is where advertising comes in; which is just another way of saying propaganda and mass manipulation. It sounds harsh but it’s true. An advertisement for a product is successful only to the degree to which it convinces the masses to purchase the product… regardless of whether it is telling you the truth or not. Be an informed and empowered shopper and everyone will benefit.

Here’s a challenge for you:

1. Purchase quality items that aren’t advertised heavily.
2. Purchase items with minimal packaging.
3. Limit the number of ingredients in a processed food to 12 or even less.
4. Buy products that don’t use artificial sweeteners, flavors, colors or additives.
5. Purchase products with ingredients that you understand and can pronounce. If you are unfamiliar with an ingredient, write it down and look it up on the internet.

Taking this challenge and adopting these practices can go a long way to save you money and time. Let me explain. The money savings in the short term come in because you are purchasing higher quality unprocessed food items with denser nutrition. Denser nutrition means “less is more” in that your body will be satisfied and nourished with less by eating quality food rather than eating more of an inferior food. This is an easy equation for losing weight and optimizing health. Often times people choose food items on the basis of size and price while totally overlooking the actual ingredients. “Twice as much for half the price” is usually a signal to look at the ingredients. You’ll likely find an assortment of cheap fillers. Would you buy gas from a station that offered it for half the price if you knew that what was coming out of the pump was half gas and the other half water? No you wouldn’t, so don’t make the same choice with the food you purchase. In regards to saving money in the long term just think about health care costs. Shopping consciously means long term health benefits. My personal consumption choices are my health care plan. Being sick costs time and money so once you’ve removed sickness from your living equation you have extra time and money… a win, win situation. On the subject of saving time, once you raise your personal consumption standards, you will have eliminated thousands of items from even being considered. You literally have eliminated ¾ or more of the grocery store which I refer to as the “waste land” or the “dead zone”. This optimizes your shopping potential in a major way. Now you enter the grocery store with a focused purpose and that is purchasing only conscious products. These products are concentrated in the produce department, bulk foods section and in the refrigerated and freezer sections: everything else is just a distraction to be ignored. Save time, save money, save your health, save the planet and lose weight… I think we may be on to something. Give it a try and let me know how things shape up. Until next time… Keep It Live!

Fermenting Fun: Kimchi Part 2

Enjoy the spicy and dramatic conclusion of the Kimchi Saga. Health never tasted so good… although kimchi and kraut can be a bit stinky.

Apple Buckwheat Breakfast

unsprouted buckwheat

Sprouted buckwheat is a really magical food. Most people know buckwheat in terms of buckwheat pancakes but sprouted buckwheat ain’t the same thing. Buckwheat isn’t even a grain like the name “wheat” might imply. It’s a “achene” which is a technical term you can investigate. For simplicity sake let’s just call it a seed that is unrelated to wheat therefore having no gluten. Buckwheat flour used for baking and raw buckwheat groats are unsprouted and contain enzyme inhibitors which need to cooked or sprouted to deactivate. Newbie rawfooders may initially have a bad experience working with buckwheat if they don’t sprout it. Buckwheat needs to be thoroughly rinsed, soaked and sprouted. Check out this post regarding sprouting buckwheat.

Once you have sprouted the buckwheat you have a very versatile ingredient for food prep. Don’t be shy when sprouting buckwheat. The sprouted groats can be dehydrated and stored for later use in recipes.

sprouted buckwheat

Buckwheat can have a dominant flavor and texture if not used in the right proportions. When I use it in granola  I typically add 3 times the amount of nuts or seeds to buckwheat in the recipe. You’ll know if you have too much buckwheat in a recipe because it will taste bland and have a chalky feel in the mouth.

Buckwheat is a warming food which makes it a great breakfast option during cold months. It is high in calcium and also a great source of rutin which helps to strengthen capillaries. If you bruise easily or are wanting to rid yourself of varicose veins, add buckwheat to your diet.

Here’s a quick and easy buckwheat recipe. I used apple for this version but banana or pear can easily be substituted. I added hemp oil to give the porridge the satisfying effect when fats are added to a recipe. You can add a thick nut or seed mylk instead or a nut butter. Have fun with the recipe and adapt it to your liking.

Sprouted Buckwheat Apple Porridge

¼ C sprouted buckwheat

3 T shredded coconut

1 apple – cut up

2 T gojis or raisins – mix in at end

1 T maple syrup, honey or agave

1 T sweet cinnamon or 1 t cinnamon

1 T mesquite

1 T hemp oil

1 t maca

pinch of Himalayan salt

Combine in all ingredients except for raisins/gojis in food processor.