Eight common mistakes that occur on Raw Food

by Victoria Boutenko
http://www.RawFamil y.com

http://rawlivingfoo ds.typepad. com/1/2007/ 11/eight- common-mi. html

1. Many raw fooders do not eat enough greens.
Solution: Regularly consume energy soup or green
smoothies to guarantee the proper amount of greens.

2. Many raw fooders do not consume enough fiber,
soluble and insoluble.
Solution: Drink more smoothies or energy soups instead
of juices.

3. People on a raw food diet often consume too many
fats. When they try to imitate cooked dishes they
substitute starches with nuts.
Solution: Use nut pulp left over from making nut
mylks, use more seeds and less nuts, and use more
fruit and vegetable pulp from juices in your mixtures,
to minimize the consumption of nuts.

4. Raw fooders commonly try to become too perfect too
fast. They don't give their bodies a chance to adjust
to such a radical dietary change.
Solution: Gradually adjust and purify your own
individual diet to help you ease into the healthiest
diet for you.

5. When people change their diets they usually decide
the other components that make up health are no longer
important, such as sunbathing, exercising, proper
rest, fresh air, etc.
Solution: Practice a well-rounded healthy lifestyle.

6. People on the raw foods diet often over-indulge in
some particular foods and neglect the variety of other
fruits and vegetables.
Solution: Eat foods in reasonable quantities.

7. The biggest mistake raw fooders make is that they
listen to the raw food authorities and don't trust the
invaluable messages their own bodies communicate.
Solution: Keep a diary of your daily food
consumption and how it affects your well-being.

To add #8: Dietary Variety - perhaps just an emphasis
of #6 - At Creative Health we often found that after a
year on Raw Living Foods many people we experiencing
imbalances because they had settled into a routine of
only 6 or 7 foods they were eating. Dietary variety is
very important! Try everything in the veggie aisle.
Experiment with the unfamiliar in the fruit aisle. Try
different grains and seeds.
Even if you just toss a bit of this and that into the
blender, you'll still gain the benefits that each food
gives us.

The Supreme Machine

How much value would you put on a machine that is so special that there are no others like it, no spare parts and yet it must run continuously without stopping for up to 100 years?

The machine, of course, is your body. The value assigned to it is up to you. But before you decide how much your body is worth, you should appreciate a few things about it. You ask it to do some phenomenal things, including process huge amounts of information, both input and output, on a daily basis; interface with others on many different levels; produce another human machine for continuity of the species; and under certain circumstances, perform feats of strength and courage.

Those things your body does because you tell it to; but what about all those things your body does every day, day after day, year after year, with little or no thought or decision on your part? Consider this for a moment - if you are an adult of about average weight, here's what you do in 24 hours:

Your heart beats 103,689 times.
Your hair grows .01714 inches.
You breathe 23,040 times.
You eat 3 pounds of food.
You perspire 1.43 pints of liquid.
You speak 4,800 words.
You turn 25 to 35 times in your sleep.
You lose 7.8 pounds of waste weight.
Your blood travels 168,000 miles.
Your nails grow .000046 inches.
You inhale 438 cubic feet of air.
You drink 2.9 pounds of liquid.
You move 750 major muscles.

It pays to take care of this fantastic, one-of-a-kind machine, since there are no spare parts!

Now that you have some idea of what this superb creation does, do you properly take care of it? It relentlessly performs its daily functions and asks only periodic attention, proper fuel, some rest, exercise, and an occasional checkup. Now that you know a little bit about what your body does and its minimum requirements, what is it worth? Of course, it is priceless, so be sure to maintain it with the basic requirements of proper nutrition, sleep and daily exercise.

--- Source: Vitality Labs Newsletter

Raw Gingerbread Men

Karen Knowler, The Raw Food Coach 2007, www.TheRawFoodCoach.com


This recipe doesn't have to be dehydrated to taste good or hold itself together, but for the crunch factor, yes, absolutely.

Ingredients
Makes 9 small Men.

* 1 cup of golden flax (linseed)
* 1 cup pecans
* 3 teaspoons powdered ginger
* 2 Tablespoons of dark agave syrup
* 1/8 cup of pure water

Directions

1) Mill the flax seed and pecans together into a fine flour. (This is best done in the Vita-Mix dry jug, or by using a coffee mill; a food processor won't get it fine enough on its own).

2) Pour the "flour" - saving just a little back for step 3 - into a food processor adding the remaining ingredients. Process until a dark sticky ball is created.

3) Remove the ball from the processor and lay it out on a flat surface ready for rolling out. This is where you may need to use the flour you held back from step 2 as it might stick to the surface or rolling pin! So lightly coat the board you are rolling on or the mixture itself in a fine dusting of flour and then roll out into a flat dough.

4) Using gingerbread men-shaped cookie cutters, cut out your men and either leave plain or decorate, according to your preference. Once finished, you can either eat as a "fresh" version which will be juicy and slightly chewy, or you can move to step 5 where you'll need a dehydrator...

5) Lay your men out on your dehydrator tray. No protective sheeting is required as the mixture isn't runny. Depending on how crunchy you want your men (!), dehydrate anything from a few hours to 24 hours. The full 24 hours at 100 degrees F will give you crunchy men, so long as they are no more than 5mm thick when they go in to dry.


By following this recipe you'll have gingerbread men ready to go in just minutes if you opt for the fresh version. As this is my first conscious foray into making creative raw food for kids, next time around as I tweak the recipe I'll be experimenting with raisin "buttons", chocolate "icing" and goji berry clothing!

Pumpkin Bread

by RoseLeeCalabro
www.rawtimes.com

1 c barley, soaked 2-3 days, be sure to rinse daily,(good)
2 C soft wheat, sprouted 1 day
1 1/2 C fresh pumpkin puree
1/2 orange
1 tsp. orange zest
1/2 tsp. ginger
1 t cinnamon
1/2 C dates
1/2 C raisins
1/2 C walnuts, soaked and chopped
Put 1 1/2 C barley, wheat mixture in the champion juicer using the solid plate along with dates. Puree pumpkin and orange and add to the mixture. Add spices, raisins, and walnuts. Mix well, form into 3 loaves of bread and place on a tray with teflex sheet in dehydrator at 105 degrees for 4 hours, remove teflex sheet and continue dehydrating for 4-6 hours or until moisture is desired.

A large collection (over 70) videos on Raw and Living Foods: http://feralfoods.org/video.html.

Quote To Remember

"The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison."

- Dr. Ann Wigmore, N.D.