Low Fat Raw Gourmet: Crêpes

Merry Christmas, all; hope you had a great time opening gifts and hanging out with your wonderful family!

My family is full of cooks and food connoisseurs, so we like to do different cuisines for holiday meals. This year, the theme is French food.

Not eager to be left out, I decided I would take part in this French cuisine theme myself! I plan upon having a creamy, nut free, salt free, raw red pepper bisque (it's delicious); I'll definitely post that recipe in the near future!

For dessert, I shall be enjoying crêpes...yum!

This has got to be the easiest crêpe recipe ever. Its also super duper yummy & 100% fruit! It does use a dehydrator, but its still a great once-in-a-while treat, methinks.

Ingredients:
—3 bananas
—¾ avocado
—8 - 12 halawy dates (or 4 - 6 soft medjools)
—¾c water
—½c berries, +a few more for the filling

There is three parts to the recipe: the crêpe, the creamy filling, and a berry coulis to drizzle on top.

For the crêpe:
Blend bananas together in blender. Spread into two circles on a dehydrator sheet (you may want to spread a teeny bit of coconut oil down first, so they dont stick). Dehydrate until pliable, but not sticky (I just dehydrated mine overnight).

For the cream filling:
Blend dates (pitted), avocado, and water (don't add it all right away) in blender until smooth and creamy.

For the coulis:
Blend berries of your choice into a sauce (I used strawberries).

Assembly: (wait until your ready to eat or almost ready! If you assemble agead of time, the banana crêpe may absorb water from filling and turn back to mush.)
Spread half the cream on one side of each crêpe. Sprinkle some whole berries on top (I used raspberries). Roll up the crêpes, and drizzle the coulis on top. Now you're done, enjoy!

Low Fat Raw Gourmet: Chili

It's Christmas Eve! Happy day-before-the-overly-commercialized-stolen-from-the-pagans-everybody's favorite holiday. Ok, no more cynical.

Today, Daddy spent hours crafting a very complicated cooked vegan chili out of beans, mushrooms, and lots of spices.

I'm generally opposed to beans and salt and cooked things, so I decided instead, I would make a healthier version of their dinner that I could eat at the same time. I searched the internet, looking at traditional cooked recipes, overly complicated raw recipes, and the simplest of the simplest lowfat fare, and I think I've come up with something somewhere in between!

Like the sushi recipe I posted yesterday, this is a more complicated, more gourmet low-fat raw recipe - though it's still not nearly as long or painstaking as many high-fat gourmet raw recipes! If you're a chili fan, this is a good way to eat ligit chili yumminess and keep it low fat, raw, and salt free.

So without further ado,

(I know, my phone camera sucks. My apologies. Haha)

Recipe will feed 2 'cooked' people or 1 LFRV.

Ingredients:

• 3 tomatoes
• 8 sun-dried tomatoes (more for a richer, deeper tomato flavor; less for a lighter, fresher flavor)
• .5oz dehydrated mushrooms (I used shiitake)
• 1 zucchini
• .5 onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 or 2 red bell peppers
• 1 or 2 poblano peppers
• 1 - 2tsp cumin
• 1Tbsp chili powder
• dash oregano

1. Blend sun-dried tomates with a little water in a blender to form a paste
2. Put tomatoes (quartered), mushrooms, garlic (minced), sun-dried tomato paste, onions (chopped up), cumin, chili powder, & oregano in food processor; blend until chunky
3. Grate, julienne, or cut zucchini into small cubes (I grated)
4. Slice or julienne peppers into small, thin strips
5. Mix together, and let sit 2 - 12hrs (the longer it sits, the more the flavors will blend).
• You could put it in the dehydrator to warm it/make the flavors blend faster
6. Serve & enjoy!

DIY Tutu Time!

Hello, my name's Kati; I'm 16 years old and I spent the afternoon making myself a tutu.

Have you ever found yourself craving some tutu action, but are too poor or unwilling to buy yourself a professionally made tutu?

Do you have an old bolt of tulle just laying around, and you don't know what to do with it?!

Then this post is for you!

I made this tutu out of some elastic I found in mom's sewing desk, a few inches of thread, and a bolt of tulle from a thrift store.

This garment shall be used in an upcoming video - shall be tons of fun; stay tuned! :D

But anyhow - now I shall share with you the secrets of making a fabulous tut all by yourself!

First. I found a piece of elastic and cut it so it would fit around my waist, like so:

Then, I took my tulle and cut it into pieces; I assume any size will do, but for the size & fluffiness of mine, I made squares about 2.5' long by 1.5' wide.

Gather the tulle in the middle and fold it over on itself, and tie it around the elastic using a larks head knot. I tried to take a picture of this step, but it really didnt work. So I found a picture of the knot on the internet:

Did that all the way around the skirt (32 knots for me, may be more or less depending upon your size). Aaaand here is the finished product: (:

Thinking About Trying Fruitarianism?

These are just a few tips that I have for... Really, anybody. Specifically, those thinking about starting a fruitarian, frugivorous, raw vegan, frugan, vegan, or vegetarian diet!

Greens. My diet does consist of some greens, though ethically I don't feel that this is ideal. Obviously I would prefer to be eating nothing but freely given fruit - however, there are no 100% fruitarians in nature, and minerals tend to be much more abundant in vegetables - so, I believe that for optimal health, one must eat some veggies, the best being delicate leafy greens like lettuce (try to stay away from cruciferous and root veggies, they are harder on digestion). To stay as ethical as possible (if this is your goal) always make sure to only take what you need without killing the plant - for me it is an important difference, between taking what I need and killing.
I don't eat things like seeds, nuts, grains, spouts, and root veggies - as it is necessary to take the life of a plant in order to eat any of these. These are not ideal foods for humans, at any rate, so I advise that everybody stay away from them.

Eating enough. Another important thing is to eat enough! Fresh fruits have high water content, so it will seem like you are eating much more, but you actually won't even be getting ENOUGH calories! At first you will want to make an account on a website like Cron-O-Meter that will track your calories and nutrition daily... Make sure you are getting AT LEAST 2,500 calories every day to fuel a healthy, exciting, adventurous lifestyle!

High carb, low fat! This is the healthiest diet! Try to keep your carbs:protien:fat ratio to 80:10:10. Fresh fruits and veggies will supply this ratio very well, but try not to eat too much avocado or durian. Carbs fuel your body and give you energy and happiness (in addition, carbs never make you fat! Even if you did over eat on carbs...which is all but impossible...the excess carbs would be burned off as excess heat.) Too much fat or protein in your diet will make you feel less than your best, and lead to serious, degenerative diseases like diabetes or colon cancer in the long term. Though they can be enjoyed in moderation, try to keep from eating too much of fatty fruits like avocado and durian.

Stay away from cooked food! Did you know that when you eat cooked food, your body reacts to it as a pathogen? That doesn't sound very healthful, right? It's not! When we cook food, carbohydrates carmellize, proteins denature, and fats carcinogize, producing compounds like acrymalide, which has been proven to cause cancer in mammals. In addition, most other nutrients are destroyed with heat, meaning that you are basically just eating empty calories - no wonder cooked meals leave don't leave you energized and invigorated!
(As a side note, if you must eat cooked foods, try to eat them steamed, as for some reason, studies show that this has the least carcinogenic effect on foods.)

Follow these tips and your diet will provide you with everything you need, in terms of nutrition! If you choose to follow this path, you are about to reach a whole new level of amazing, vibrant health, and you are just going to want to shout it to the world, 'cause its that great. (;

Good luck on your journey, and for sure feel free to leave a comment or send me over an email at ktms_96@yahoo.com, I'd love to provide whatever support or guidance you might need.
Or, feel free to just search my blog... I'm pretty sure I have some useful stuff in there (though a lot of it is also outdated, back from when I was eating high-fat.)

Wishing you all peace, love, fruit, and loads of sunshine! ☼