Vegetarian/ Vegan/ Raw Transitions... Fun Times

Miss. Lidia has been very successful in being an “Eat to Live” vegan for the past month! Dr. Joel Fuhrman is an American physician specializing in preventing disease through nutrition. He wrote an amazing book Eat to Live which was actually the book that convinced me to become vegetarian in the first place!

The book explains how preventive nutrition can prevent and cure cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, obesity, etc. It focuses on the formula that Health=Nutrients/Calories. Ultimately that means that in order to achieve maximum health, you need to get the most bang for you caloric buck!

My favourite party fact from the book is that if you compare 100 calories of broccoli and 100 calories of steak (which obviously is a huge amount of broccoli and a small amount of steak), broccoli actually has twice the amount of protein!! And carnivores wonder where we get from our protein from!!

Anyways it is tough to be a vegan in the U.S., but luckily it is becoming more mainstream and NYC has a lot of great vegetarian/vegan restaurants. So good job Lidia... you rock!

I am trying to switch from vegetarian to a RAW VEGAN! Ahhh.. sounds scary! I have been doing a lot of reading about raw eating, and basically it focuses on the principle that heating food above 116 °F destroys a huge amount enzymes, vitamins and minerals. The enzymes are necessary for your body to easily assimilate food, otherwise your body has to work hard to break down the food on its own... ultimately a process that drains energy. I am no expert so I don’t want to make any false claims... but I am learning.

I have no problem eating raw until dinner as I usually have my green smoothie for breakfast :) and salads, fruits and vegetables throughout the day. The challenge is definitively dinner! Also cooked beans are not raw, but sprouted beans and seeds are raw and in fact have much more nutrition than traditional cooked beans. I really have no desire to “sprout” so I intend on just buying them at the organic store. Yesterday I made raw “vegetable fried rice” for dinner out of shredded carrot and cauliflower and many sauces. Tonight was raw zucchini fettuccini... a recipe I will be posting tomorrow.

So really raw just means that I have to get creative in the kitchen! So far so good!

For more info on RAW:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism

http://www.welikeitraw.com/

http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/

Put the LiMe in the Coconut...

I have recently discovered the joys of young coconuts. I found them at our local Asian grocery store... you want to make sure you get the white ones, not the brown hairy ones. Young coconuts are high in carbohydrates, as opposed to mature (brown) coconuts which are high in fat. The old coconuts are the ones you always hear that you should avoid because of the fat in them... but the young ones, dig in!!

Young coconut water has almost the exact chemical composition of blood plasma and is often touted as being more hydrating than water. Coconut water used to be used for IV fluid, if none was available. They float in the ocean and provide a sterile source of water. They are full of vitamins and minerals and have a natural sweetness.

Coconut Smoothie:

1 young coconut
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon vanilla

The most difficult part of this recipe is opening the coconut!! There are many step-by-step guides online, such as http://www.rawguru.com/html/openyoungcoconut.html, but basically I took my biggest knife and started hacking at it! Carefully of course! Once you pierce the inside shell, you will want to drain the water into a bowl. Then continue to cut the rest of the top of the coconut off. You will then be able to scoop out the coconut flesh with a spoon. Add the coconut flesh, water, cinnamon and vanilla to a blender and blend!! And that’s it, you have your very own, natural, refreshing coconut drink. Enjoy!

Breakfast of Champions – Go Green

To the unapproving looks of my family members, I make my super green and delicious smoothie every morning. I am actually starting to CRAVE it... it is just that good! This drink is so easy, unbelievably nutritious and a great way to get tons of spinach in your diet without chomping away for half an hour on a spinach salad!

4-5 cups spinach
1-2 frozen/ raw bananas
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds

Optional: berries (Warning: berries will make your smoothie brown!! But berries will provide Vitamin C, which will aid in the absorption of the iron from the spinach! So take your pick.)

If you have an amazing blender like a VitaMix than this recipe will be a breeze! Otherwise you will want to divide your spinach into batches to blend. So start with a cup of spinach, add a bit of water and blend. Continue to add the rest of the spinach in one cup proportions until it is all blended in the blender. Now add the banana(s), cinnamon and ground flax seeds and blend until smooth. Pour and enjoy!

I have yet to convert my family to green smoothie addicts, but I know there is hope! I’m already excited for my drink tomorrow morning!

Halloween Advice from PETA

Quick—think of a word that rhymes with "gelatin."

Odds are you thought of "skeleton," which makes perfect sense, if you think about what the ghoulish concoction called "gelatin" really is—animal bones, along with hooves, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage, all bubbled together in a huge cauldron. The coagulated goo is then added to candy, marshmallows, and, of course, that wiggly, jiggly cafeteria staple, Jell-O.

Mad Cow Disease Drives Candy Lovers Crazy
Earlier this year, candy fans got a scare when it was revealed that Mamba candies were made with gelatin from Poland—a hot spot for mad cow disease. Mad cow disease sounds like something out of a B horror flick, but it’s scary for real. It’s caused by grinding up leftover bits of dead sheep and cows and feeding them to other cows, then people who eat meat and animal products infected with mad cow disease can get the deadly new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or nvCJD, which turns their brains into a sponge. Click here for more information about mad cow disease.

Mamba makers pulled a switcheroo, swapping the beef gelatin for starch. Fear of mad cow disease has caused millions to recoil in terror from steaks and burgers—but many don’t think twice about scarfing Skittles and Starburst. Maybe they should—as experts fear mad cow disease may get passed along in gelatin.


source: http://www.peta.org/feat/halloween01/

A Cute Note From My Dad- Meatless Monday

Considering becoming vegetarian or trying to convince a friend or loved one to become a vegetarian?  Here is a sweet email I got from my dad about some interesting information he found out about not eating meat!

"Hi Lid,
Here's some information you may want to add to your website. Or not.
Try a meatless Monday. According to the New Dream Foundation, for every 1,000 people that cut out just one beef meal a week, we'd save over 70,000 pounds of grain, 70,000 pounds of topsoil, and 40 million gallons of water each year.

You can also go to www.meatlessmonday.com for some info on how not eating meat 1 day a week will improve your health, too. I found this site by accident, but it seems pretty cool.

Love ya,

Dad"

So, if you are not ready to become 100% meat-free. Try this & help the environment!

xoxo

LiMe