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Eating for Energy Recipe of the Week: Alkalizing Cucumber Soup

May 26th, 2010

Hello beautiful people! This week’s Eating for Energy recipe of the week is Alkalizing Cucumber Soup. I decided to start with a soup recipe because I’ve never tried a raw soup before. I’ve always suspected that I wouldn’t like them, and I finally had a reason to test that theory. Plus, I had all the ingredients on hand, and it looked pretty easy.

Ingredients:

  • Avocado
  • Cucumber, peeled and chopped
  • Chopped fresh dill
  • Lemon juice
  • Dulse flakes

(For recommended amounts see Eating for Energy page 234. Sorry, but I can’t divulge all of Yuri’s secrets!)

Makes two servings.

The directions say to throw everything into a blender and blend until smooth and creamy. I had my doubts about how well avocado would do in my blender, but I figured I’d just follow the directions to start with and adjust if needed. So, I threw everything into the blender and turned it on low. Sure enough, the blades created a vertical tunnel. All the ingredients got pushed to the sides and just sat there.

So, I transferred everything to my mini food processor. This worked better, but not great. It took longer than expected and left the cucumbers chunky.

Using the amounts of ingredients recommended in the book, I ended up with a goo closer to the consistency of a dip than a soup, so I added more lemon juice, altogether about twice as much lemon juice as recommended.

The end result was a delightful minty green colored soup with dark purple flecks. Very pretty. (I would have taken a picture, but that’s not my forte, and it probably would have done more harm than good.)

Taste Test

Now, comes the most important part: the taste test!

In a word: pleasant.

I didn’t have very high hopes for this recipe after it took so much longer to make than I expected. I thought it would take about 10 minutes to just throw it all into a blender and blend it up, but it took more like 50 minutes. I originally thought it would be not great but good enough to make when I needed something quick, and since it wasn’t so quick …

However, I was pleasantly surprised. It has a very light, refreshing taste and goes down easy. I thought the dill would overpower the cucumber, but no. My daughter Ali liked it even more than I did, which is surprising since she doesn’t like cucumbers. The aftertaste is the best part. After I got done with it, I didn’t drink any water for quite some time because I didn’t want to wash the lingering taste away.

My 8-year-old son Michael said, “Yuck! … but it goes away quickly.” Meaning, he didn’t like it, but that was easy to deal with because it didn’t stick around in his mouth for a long time.

Lessons Learned

Changes I will make next time:

  • Use a mini food processor, not a blender.
  • Mash avocado up by hand.
  • Process cucumber by itself first. Then, add all other ingredients.
  • Use more dulse flakes to make it a little saltier.
  • Maybe add a bit of water to thin it out just a little more.

Conclusions

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I will definitely make this again, and with these changes, I expect it will take only 10 minutes to make.

Next week, Blueberry Morning. See you next week!

– Terri

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Posted in Client Journeys, Raw Food Recipes

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3 Raw Food Recipes for the Summer

May 16th, 2010

23_popsic_lgWith the return of beautiful summer weather, many of us begin to put away the last remaining items that we use regularly during the winter.

The big bulky sweaters return to the back of the closet; the winter tires come off the family car; the mittens and scarves are stored away and replaced with light hats to keep the sun off our heads. One other area of de-winterization, even for non raw food enthusiasts, tends to be in their diet.

During those cold winter months, we crave those hot foods to fill our bellies and warm our insides. Big, thick and steaming soups, hot meat pies straight from the oven, and mugs of hot chocolate are all the rage as the weather rages below freezing outside. But in the summer months, we tend to put away those hot foods in favor of cool salads, iced teas and other cold items intended to chill us out as the mercury climbs. We do this without any thought towards using more raw food recipes.

One of the most obvious summer foods is one that you can use for any number of easy raw food recipes – the watermelon. This enormous fruit may be mostly water, but the juicy flavors are synonymous with sunshine and picnics.

And while the temptation may be there to simply split the fruit open and feast on it by the slice, there is much more than can be done with watermelon in the summer. One great dish for raw food enthusiasts and those simply seeking an apres-sun dish is the delicious watermelon soup.

Served chilled, this dish is great for the evenings, just before the sun goes down. All you have to do is combine the flesh of a good sized melon in a food processor with a small amount of ginger to taste, the juice of a medium lime, and a few leaves of mint. Blend until smooth, adding cold water as needed, depending on the consistency you desire. Strain if you like, or serve as is, garnished with an extra mint leaf.

Another great summer raw treat comes from the huge selection of green smoothie recipes that can be found online. Green smoothies give you all of the energy you need, in a cool refreshing drink. For optimum results, process a handful of spinach or kale with a medium orange, a touch of lemon zest, a bit of raw honey, a glass of cold water, a half cup of ice and half of a cucumber. This delicious drink will serve you well as a breakfast, or a patio sipper on a scorching hot day.

Another summer favorite is the simple popsicle, but many of the store-bought options are loaded with processed sugars and artificial colors. For a healthier raw version, try mixing together your favorite smoothie – maybe a delicious banana-strawberry smoothie – and freezing your own treats on a stick.

This way, you will know exactly what wonderful foods you are eating, know that you are not resorting to sugars to provide flavors, and you can customize your frozen desserts and have a different flavor every single day!

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Posted in Raw Food Recipes

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Difference Between Raw and Alkaline Diet

May 12th, 2010

One of the difficulties with something as positive and helpful as a raw food diet is that there is going to be a lot of information out there for you to digest, if you will pardon the pun. Starting a raw food diet is enough of a challenge without having to decipher all of the details, words and jargon that can be tied to something that can be as complex as raw foods.

One of the areas that tends to throw off new raw food enthusiasts is the apparent overlap between a raw food diet and an alkaline diet. These two areas share a lot of common points, but it is like comparing apples to oranges in some ways – they’re very different, but they are both still fruits.

If you want to learn how to eat a raw diet, you should have some understanding of the differences, first and foremost. By definition, a raw diet is simply that – eating nothing but foods that have not been cooked, heated or processed by raising their temperatures. Raw food diets are largely about the natural living enzymes that exist within the foods we eat, and trying to preserve those enzymes so that they can be consumed by our bodies, not by the cooking process. A raw diet may include a great number of foods that help to reduce the body’s pH levels, but that is not the focus.

An alkaline diet focuses on the pH levels of foods, and how those foods affect your overall health and their impact on your body’s acidity or alkalinity. An alkaline diet tries to get you to consume foods that will reduce acidity in the body, bringing you closer to a more natural and health-preserving base or alkaline pH level. Many of the foods that help you to keep an alkaline body pH are raw fruits and vegetables that are staples of the raw food diet – but keeping raw is not the main focus of the alkaline diet.

People tend to seek out raw food help for a number of reasons, including finding an increase in energy and helping to strengthen their immune systems. But one of the key points of interest for many raw food practitioners is those living food enzymes. Consuming these enzymes aids the body in the healthy absorption and digestion of food, and the elimination of waste products.

The alkaline diet has a different goal, that of reducing the acidity of the body as a whole. Many people seek out the alkaline diet because of problems such as acid reflux, which causes them a great deal of discomfort. Creating a more alkaline system can help to eliminate acidic problems like gas and heart burn.

Both ways have their benefits, and can incorporate aspects of the other plan in order to create a full and functional eating program that will give you the benefits that you desire. Lowering your acidity and increasing your intake of living food enzymes can aid you in becoming a stronger, healthier person.

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Posted in General Nutrition

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Does Eating for Energy Live Up to Its Claims?

May 6th, 2010

Hello beautiful people! My name is Terri. I’m 33, and I’m really excited to be one of Yuri’s new contributors to his blog. I suppose I should start by telling you a little about myself.

I was raised on a SAD (Standard American Diet). I spent the majority of my 20s with very low energy. I started having migraines around age 26. I suffered from hay fever, which I had developed when I was 17. I was congested and tired all the time. I never felt like doing anything and just wanted to sit on the couch all the time. That’s all I had energy for. No doctor ever gave me a reason for this. According to the doctors, I was in good health.

In January 2008, I finally got sick of things. My mom had suggested several times that part of my congestion problem came from a sensitivity to dairy, so I thought I’d try a cooked vegan diet. At that point I had heard of the raw food diet but thought it was a little extreme. The vegan diet definitely decreased my congestion and improved my energy, but I quickly got bored with it. A lot of the recipes revolve around tofu, and I don’t do tofu.

While I was experimenting with the vegan diet, though, I continued to read and learn more about nutrition and how eating the right foods can affect your health and energy levels. In February of 2009 I decided I was ready to try the raw food diet and purchased Yuri’s Eating for Energy book. The information in Eating for Energy really seemed to make sense to me, and I started putting it into practice.

Now, I eat raw all day until dinner time. For dinner I usually eat whatever the rest of the family is eating but sometimes not. So I am mostly raw but not 100%.

I live in a household of SAD eaters but am trying to change that. My husband is really quite opposed to drastic changes to his diet, so the same unhealthy foods are still in the house. That is slowly changing, though. About a year ago when a raw food recipe book I had purchased off of amazon.com arrived in the mail, my husband said, “I’m not eating any of that crap!” Now, he’s talking about doing a cleanse this summer!

I have to say that my energy is definitely much higher these days. I can really feel it when I get lazy with my diet, especially my ability to exercise is noticeably affected. My allergies (hay fever, dairy, and gluten) are practically non-existent. In fact, I keep hearing that this is one of the worst allergy seasons in recent history here, but I wouldn’t know it if I hadn’t heard it on the news because I’ve had so little trouble with my allergies this spring! Also, when I do eat conventional dairy and wheat products, I don’t have hardly any reaction to them anymore.

So I would give that a big YES! Eating for Energy definitely does live up to its claims!

See you next time!

Terri

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Posted in Client Journeys

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Who Can Benefit From Eating Raw Foods

May 4th, 2010

You might be wondering who all of this information is for. Raw food diets might sound like a great idea – for someone else. After all, it is pretty complicated and requires a lot of dedication and will power. So should you be starting a raw food diet? Only if you fit into one of the following categories.

Are you an athlete? If you are, you could benefit greatly from eating a raw foods diet. Many athletic people – be they professional sportsman and women or weekend warriors – are coming to the realization that the myths about a “balanced” diet could actually be hurting their performance. Heavy, glutinous cooked wheat and pastas have been touted as the perfect pre-game meal for ages. But athletes are in tune with their bodies, perhaps more than anyone else on the planet. And for many, one pre-game raw meal is all it took to convince them. Eating raw before a big expenditure of energy meant they went into battle on a full stomach, but not a heavy one. They went in with more energy, more alertness, and were able to go higher, faster and stronger for much longer. Once these athletes learned how to eat a raw diet, they learned to fuel their machines better.

Are you concerned about your health? You might benefit from some raw food help. Cooked foods often have lower levels of vitamins and minerals than what might be listed in a food guide, due to the leaching power of the killing heat of the cooking process. As a result, you might not be getting the essential vitamins and minerals that your body needs to stay healthy and ward off illness. Dedicating your diet to a higher quotient of raw foods will mean that when you intent to eat your daily recommended amount of vitamin C, you will know exactly how to do it by squeezing your own orange juice. If you are low in iron, you can make yourself a salad with leafy greens and raisins to raise the iron levels in your blood. For every health concern, there is a raw alternative that is easy to measure, and better for your health.

Are you often tired? Eating raw can mean eating for more energy. Rather than suffer the eternal damnation of the ups and downs of sugar spikes, hunger pangs and caffeine addiction, you can provide your body with a more constant and reliable fuel that will have you on an even keel throughout the day.

So, what about the rest of us? You know, those of us who don’t want to get out there and get more exercise; those who aren’t concerned about their good health; and those of us who never suffer from a lack of energy? Well, if you fall into that group, there is still one great reason to switch to a raw diet – the taste. The flavors of raw foods don’t get watered down, cooked off or overpowered by sugar and salt. They are bright and bold, the way nature intended them to be.

Isn’t that reason enough to go raw?

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Posted in Food For Thought, Raw Foods

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