Tag Archives: raw food recipes

Raw Beauty Tabouleh Salad

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Okay, so I’m pretty obsessed with my tabouleh salad right now- and I think once you make it and try it, you will be too!
It is delicious, fresh, super easy to make, and packed with health and beauty benefits.

PARSLEY: This herb has so many health benefits. I try to throw it into my green smoothies every day, and this dish is another way to incorporate it easily into your diet. Parsley is rich in the beauty Vitamins A and C, folic acid, and has flavonoids that act as antioxidants- which put the kabash on free radicals creating damage to the cells.

Parsley is also very high in iron, and the high vitamin C content assists the absorption of iron. It is a blood purifier and helps to kill bacteria in the body.  Parsley is an excellent digestion restorative remedy. It improves the digestion of proteins and fats, and because of its high enzyme content, parsley benefits digestive activity and elimination. It also helps cleanse the liver of toxins and rejuvenates it.

If that weren’t enough, parsley is also high in Vitamin K, chlorophyll and essential fatty acids- and helps balance hormones in us women! Now I bet you think of parsley as more than that a dinky garnish you push to the side of your plate with the edge of your fork! :)

HEMPSEEDS: (One of my favorite seeds) Hempseeds are 33% easily digestible plant protein, and 3 tbs. serves up a whopping 11 grams of protein! Loaded with Omega 3 fats, and the beauty minerals magnesium, zinc, iron and phosphorus, these little seeds are perfect little gifts of nutrition from nature. These are NOT of the same strain as the um, smoking kind of hemp, which contain THC. So don’t worry, you won’t get high from them (only a natural high from the amazing flow of nutrition!), they are legal…and they WILL help your skin and hair will look gorgeous.

LEMON: Lemons are amazing cleansers that should be included regularly in your diet. Lemons contain hundreds of enzymes and are one of the most restorative foods for the live. So here is yet another way to get more lemon into the diet- what a Godsend.

(And finally…) The Recipe!

-    1 huge bunch of either curly parsley or Italian flat parsley, or 2   smaller bunches
-    ½ white onion, diced
-    1 organic tomato, diced
-    5 heaping Tbs. of hempseeds

-    Juice of 1 lemon
-    1 clove of garlic
-    ¼ cup of first cold-pressed olive oil
-    High quality sea salt, to taste

The other good news is that it takes like 7 minutes to make this salad of beauty and health!

Chop the parsley and throw it into a large bowl, along with the tomato, onion and hempseeds. In a blender, combine the lemon, garlic, olive oil and sea salt and blend until a smooth consistency.

Pour over the salad and mix well, and you’re ready to go!!


** Note: If you cut up an avocado on the side to eat with this salad, the way I do sometimes, this would make a wonderful, filling, and super nutritious raw lunch or dinner.

I hope you love this as much as I do. :) Have a beautiful rest of your week!

xx Kimberly

Raw Acai-Goji Granola

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Hey Guys,

After the last post, some of you requested that I posted the recipe for the granola I was making on Sunday…so here you go!

It’s helpful to have a dehydrator, which is basically a low-temperature oven, to make raw granola. I keep mine around 105 degrees. 116 degrees is the temperature where the enzymes in food start to die and the properties of food get denatured, so a dehydrator, simply blows warm air over the food, dehydrating it over hours instead of cooking it at high temperatures.

The brand I have and like is Excalibur. The dehydrator is the tool I use to make all my flax crackers, vegetable crackers, etc., as well as harder cookies and treats, and marinated, crunchy nuts and seeds (like my spicy cayenne pumpkin seeds). Dehydrating is a time commitment though— a few hours on the weekend like once a month is what it takes me to make all the flax crackers I need—- and its not really necessary when you’re starting out. By FAR the most important investment is a great blender!!!!

BUT that being said, if you don’t own a dehydrator, simply turn your oven on to the lowest possible setting, and leave the door cracked open. You can wedge something in the door to keep it cracked open and to keep it from shutting. That’s what I do when I travel without my dehydrator to a client’s house for a few days, and don’t want to lug it along.

WET mixture:
-    1 frozen packet of Acai* (available at Wholefoods and other health stores)
-    1 cup organic Thompson raisins
-    ¾ cup raw coconut nectar or maple syrup
-    Juice of one lemon
-    1 Tbs. vanilla extract
-    1 tsp. ground cinnamon
-    ¼ cup sunflower seeds (soaked for 3 hours and rinsed)

-  A pinch of high quality sea salt, to taste (optional)

* Please note: Acai is a fat-containing fruit, so it digests pretty well with seeds. I don’t recommend using apples or other fruits for this recipe.

DRY mixture:
-    1 cup Goji Berries*
-    1 cup sunflower seeds (soaked for 3 hours and rinsed)
-    1 cup pumpkin seeds (soaked for 3 hours and rinsed)
-    2 cups almonds (soaked 14-28 hours and rinsed)
-    3 cups pecans (soaked for 2 hours and rinsed)

* Please note: dried fruit combines well with nuts and seeds.

** Don’t get bogged down with all the sprouting times! Just remember to soak the almonds overnight, then remember to soak the other nuts a few hours before you make the granola.

1.    In a blender, blend the wet mixture until smooth.

2.    Chop all the nuts in the dry mixture (keeping as chunky as you like your granola!) then add them to a large mixing bowl, along with the Goji berries.

3.    Pour the wet mixture on top and mix well.

4.    Spread the granola on Teflex covered over the dehydrator trays and dehydrate at 110 degrees F for about 8 hours. Flip and keep dehydrating for another 8-10 hours, or until the granola is crunchy.

5.    Break into pieces and store in an airtight container in the fridge. The granola will harden in the fridge!

Enjoy and let me know how you make out with this super yummy granola!

All my very best,
Kimberly

The Raw Superfood Drink

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Something really funny happened last Thursday. I was walking towards Washington Square Park to do some errands, and at the exact second I walked up to the park a medium-sized, moss green van pulled up. A few young guys in their early twenties, floppy jeans and baseball hats opened up the trunk and started pulling out cases of Zico coconut water.
“Hey miss, want a case of coconut water?” asks one of the dudes.
“A whole case?? Um, sure? I could go home and drop them off I guess.” I shrugged. I had heard of them before and knew they were all natural- though I had never purchased them before.
“Good, take two cases!”
So I got loaded up with 2 mango flavored pure coconut water cases of Zico, I turned and went the block and a half home to drop them off. Then I turned to walk back directly the same way…
“Wait miss— you have to take another one, ’cause there is the other flavor too!”

Okay, skip ahead to now, 4 days later. In TOTAL, I received 3 cases of the coconut water that was blessed to me by the universe. I mean, what are the chances to walk by the Zico truck at the same exact time??? There was like a 10 minute window there, b/c those dudes were obviously giving them away by the case to get their sample-giving job done with. :) Well it’s all good b/c some force in the universe wanted me to share these coconut waters with you!

Granted, we go to Chinatown every single week and get a case of 9 young coconuts, so I usually never buy packaged coconut water. But since I had them, I popped a few of the freebies in the fridge, and over the past few days I’ve had a few- when I was wanting something yummy to drink, especially before and after yoga. I must say that nothing is like a fresh coconut, but the packaged ones  taste pretty good and are not sweetened, and put the idea in my head to share with you that that are a super convenient option!

So this is an excellent option for people that are extremely busy and where it isn’t possible to go shopping for fresh produce every week. Not everyone lives near a Chinatown that is a 25 minute walk away, like it is for me, to just get a bunch of coconuts. So instead, just buy a bunch of packaged coconut waters at the market next time you get a chance, and keep them in your fridge. Buy a pound of organic spirulina powder to keep in stock. Then, you can make the following drink whenever you get home from work, to give you quick energy to help you motivate to go to yoga class, do yoga at home, or go to the gym, etc. You can even have it as a superfast, easy breakfast. Blend:

The Raw Superfood Drink:

-    1 individual container, or 1 full glass, of Zico, VitaCoco or other natural, not artificially sweetened coconut water brands

-    1 heaping Tbs. of spirulina powder

Coconut water is packed with potassium and electrolytes and also helps build tone when you are doing strength-based activities, like practicing Hatha Raja yoga, etc. Spirulina is 67% green algae protein, and it also contains Omega 3 fatty acids, all the essential amino acids, Vitamin B12, over 2000 enzymes, and lots of iron and magnesium! ☺ You’ll also be amazed at how tasty it is.

Note: This doesn’t have the filling fiber of a green smoothie, and is not meant to replace it in the long term! Just an add on and emergency drink.

By the way, random thought but it just popped into my head… :) I am so excited about my yoga video, of which the filming looks amazing. One of my big projects this week is to type up the voiceover part of the segments, then I’m going back to LA soon to actually do the voiceover part and finish editing it!! It’s kind of taking a lot longer than I thought to get done…but patience is a yogic virtue after all!

See? Raw food can be easy. And even if you don’t go to the store every few days for produce you can stock up- EASILY- on these two items and make The Raw Superfood drink whenever you want! There is no reason not to. ☺

Have an awesome day.
Kimberly