Posts Tagged ‘breakfast’

3 Ways to Get Your 10 Servings a Day [how to get more fruits & vegetables]

June 7th, 2010

For years, you have heard about how you should be eating ten servings a day of fruits and vegetables in order to get the most out of your everyday diet.

But ten sounds like such a large number, especially when most of us only eat three meals a day. Where can we fit in those extra seven servings?

It is too much to snack that many times in a day, so many people simply dismiss the ten servings suggestion as a great idea – for someone else. Maybe professional athletes or fitness gurus can get to ten servings of raw foods a day, but not a normal person, right?

But what most people forget is that a serving is not a meal all by itself. A serving is simply one portion, which can be part of a meal along with many other portions. So eating ten servings of fruits and vegetables a day can be as simple as having three servings within each meal, with one small snack later on in the day.

For example, breakfast offers you plenty of opportunities to have more than one serving of fruit. You can have a banana for breakfast, along with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and a handful of blueberries. Or, if you are really in a rush, you can combine all three servings into a fresh morning smoothie. Combining some fresh greens like spinach in a food processor along with pears, apples or kiwis will give you a great meal you can drink on the go, and provide you with a great selection of your daily requirements of fresh raw foods.

At lunch, you can easily create a delicious salad that will give you at least three servings of fruit and vegetables. Rather than settling for a simple green salad, mix it up depending on the seasons. In winter, some sliced carrots will help to keep you full and satisfied; in spring, enjoy the first batch of peapods; in summer, cool things down with a mix of citrus fruit segments; and in the fall, you can use squash or avocado to give your salads some seasonal weight.

Dinnertime will allow you to be just as creative, and still get in a ton of fruits and vegetables. If you want, you can use a veggie as the main course – a squash can be eaten right out of the peel, or you can slice it out into a raw pasta. If you prefer to have a different type of main course, you can still use fruits and vegetables both on and beside the main item.

For example, if you have cold-smoked salmon, you can use citrus to further “cook” the fish, or you can wrap the fillet in thin slices of butternut squash. Beside it on the plate, you can have a fresh vegetable medley that will give you an extra serving. And of course, for dessert, a bowl of mixed berries, or a raw seasonal fruit tart should be enough to give you all ten servings of fruits and vegetables in a single day, without feeling like you have forced it.

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Posted in Food For Thought

Tags: breakfast Dessert dinner fruits Healthy Eating lunch raw snack supper ten servings vegetables

Raw Food Made Easy

April 19th, 2010

Raw foods recipes often sound a lot harder than they actually are, and the very best ones look like they have taken hours of kitchen prep time to get onto the table. This sort of impressive presentation gives a perception that eating a raw food diet is going to be a lot of hard work – but nothing could be further from the truth.

There are plenty of easy raw food recipes out there that are incredibly delicious, and are even easier to prepare than their cooked-food comparisons. If you have your doubts, take a look at these three meals in a typical day on the raw food diet, and you will see just how easy it could be to switch your diet to an all-raw way of eating.

For breakfast in the morning, many people do one of two things – they either pour themselves a cup of coffee and forgo an actual breakfast, or they chow down on sugary cereals, drowning in over-processed milk. While the cereal is better than simply skipping, neither option can hold a candle to the power and flavor of the mighty green smoothie recipes that you can incorporate into your everyday life in a raw eating plan. All you need to do is combine leafy greens with some firm-fleshed fruit, and after a few seconds in the blender, you have an easy raw breakfast.

Lunchtime can be a hassle – you only get an hour, so a fast food hamburger is often the best pick out of a pathetic local selection. But if you take into account the cost of that food and the time you have to wait in line, you’ll be saving on both by packing a raw lunch to bring with you. A hearty and delicious salad will fill you up with vitamins and fiber, instead of heavy, processed fats and sugars. You will feel the benefits from the very first time you make the switch – when that dead period hits everyone else a little later in the afternoon, you will still have energy to spare from your easy raw lunch.

Dinner can take upwards of a hour to prepare, with plenty of time spend watching the oven or stove top. But an easy switch to a raw food diet means that, very simply, you put your food into the dehydrator instead of the oven, and other prep times are comparable or less, meaning that eating raw will actually give you more than just higher levels of energy and better delivery of vitamins – it will also give you back time at home. And don’t worry about getting bored – meals can be as simple as chilled soups, or as complex as raw pizzas.

The key to eating a raw diet is never to let the perception and the fear dictate how you eat and what you consume. If you simply dive in and try it, you will find that there are an abundance of raw meals that are incredibly easy to prepare, surprisingly delicious, and as varied as your old ways.

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Posted in Raw Food Recipes

Tags: breakfast cooked food Cup Of Coffee Dead Period delicious Delicious Salad dinner easy Easy Raw Food Recipes Food Comparisons Food Hamburger fun green smoothies Impressive Presentation leafy greens lunch Lunch Dinner Lunchtime meal Plenty Of Time Prep Time raw raw diet raw food diet Raw Food Recipes Raw Foods Recipes smoothie recipes Stove Top Sugary Cereals Typical Day

Raw Food Smoothie Recipes

March 23rd, 2010

iStock_000003025292Small If the last smoothie that you had came from the mall, I have big news for you. While it might have been made fresh to order, and it might have contained all sorts of delicious fruits, it was probably about as healthy for you as a big, heaping bowl of chocolate ice cream – with whipped cream and sprinkles.

Yes, those smoothies from the fast-food joints are not smoothies that are going to do you any good. If you want a true smoothie – one made only from raw ingredients, and one that is going to make you feel great inside and out, then there is only one place to go – your own kitchen.

Not only will a smoothie made at home cost you pennies on the dollar as compared to what you can buy at the mall, you can control the contents in a way that will really benefit you.

For instance, let’s say it is early in the morning, but not early enough. You have five minutes to get out the door and head to work – no time to brew a cup of coffee, and certainly no time for a properly prepared breakfast.

You could stop somewhere and pick something up, but this recipe will take less time than even the most efficient drive-through window. All you need to do is toss a handful of leftover greens from last night’s dinner – be that spinach, kale or lettuce – into the blender, along with a cored apple, a drizzle of honey, and a cup of ice water. After less than a minute of blending, you have a great, healthy green smoothie that you can pour into a travel mug and enjoy on your way into work. It is nutritious, delicious, modifiable and incredibly easy. What more could you ask for in the morning?

But what if it’s not the morning? What if you’ve just come in from a hard workout, and you need to replace all the fuel you’ve just burned in your system?

You could grab a glass of pasteurized and otherwise dead milk, mixed with a dose of chocolate-flavored syrup. But why not replace the fuel with something of a higher octane than that?

Grab your trusty blender, and toss in a handful of your favorite fruits and berries, along with a few ice cubes, a cup of water and some nut milk – almond tends to work best for flavor, but go with whatever you prefer here. There are other milks available, including raw soy milks, so experiment a little, and find out what works best for you.

If you like a little more sweetness than the berries and fruit provides, add a bit of raw honey or agave syrup. Blend until smooth, and drink while it’s still cold. You’ll get a healthy dose of vitamins and minerals, fluids to replace what you’ve sweated out, and some protein to help those tired muscles to recover. And you’ll do it without all the added processed sugar and the hard-to-process milk products that your regular smoothie stop will usually toss in.