Bright Orange 

This one is brilliantly orange… beautiful to look and and OH SO DELICIOUS!

In Blender put

• 3 oranges peeled and sectioned
• flesh from 2 ripe mangoes
• flesh from 2 ripe peaches

Use your juicer to extract the juice from

• 6 large carrots
• 2 granny smith apples

Add juice to blender and puree.

Pour over crushed ice. Serves 3

So anyway… Angela gave me an idea for the post and that is to give you a glimpse of my preparation. You see a huge part of my preparation takes place only a couple of times a week, and this is a huge time saver over the week. I also REALLY do not like to be caught unprepared with no ready to grab food. Eating mostly vegan, mostly raw, I am hungrier more often than if I were eating foods with denser calories.

So here is what I did this morning. First lets start with the vegetables and fruits I am going to prepare, that I get all out… (I have a very large kitchen with lots of counter space.

What I did this morning.

1. Made a huge veggie salad,
2. put veggies and fruits "ready to eat" in containers for snacking
3. made a fresh  smoothie.

Time in Kitchen 1 hour, 10 minutes. What you see above is an accurate (close to) view of the fruits and vegetable amounts I processed.

2 pounds carrots – 3 large, peeled chunked and set aside for juice,  2 large, sliced thinly in bowl for salad,, and the rest cut in 'sticks' in container for snacking.

1 head of celery – 2 stalks sliced in bowl with salad, The rest cut in 'sticks' in container for snacking.

Peppers chunked and tossed in the salad,

Beets – washed, tops and thin root removed, 3 set aside for juice, the rest in container for later.

onion – 1/2 chopped in the salad,. The rest saved for something else.

Beans (Yellow and Green) 1/2 of each chopped for salad,, the rest topped, snapped and in container in fridge for snacking.

Broccoli – 1 head…. 1/2 of the florets in salad, 1/2 the florets in fridge for snacking and the stalk set aside for juice.

Cucumber half – chopped for salad

1 cup frozen mixed berries in the blender for my smoothie

Apple set aside for juice

Grapes washed and put in serving sized containers (6) for snacking

Flax seed oil in blender for smoothie.

Once the veggies were prepared and salad put away, and snacking sticks strips etc put away, I took my carrots, broccoli stalk, beets, and apple that I had set aside and juiced them. Then I put the juice in the blender with the berries and the flax seed oil and made a YUMMY mid morning smoothie for my snack!

So now I am ready for the day. this amount of produce will do me 2 days in summer because I am not eating much else. It also encourages my daughter to eat better (she grabs a container of grapes and some carrots for school snack) and my son who LOVES raw fresh green and yellow beans. In the winter I am eating other things as well because the produce is not as nice or as abundant as it is from local farms right now!

:-)

My Best Day Yet!

Gosh darn I just feel so fantastic today! I really do! It’s a little over 2 weeks now of consistently eating real, whole, nutritious food and this morning when I woke up I just felt like singing! I have a ton of energy, and that cloud of depression that’s been doggin’ me for years seems to have lifted somewhat!

How AMAZING!

So this morning since I felt SO good, I did everything right! First I headed in here to the computer and checked my email with my coffee. Then I went out to the kitchen, grabbed a juicy nectarine and ate that while I flipped through the mail. Off to the livingroom for some stretching, and then downstairs to the tread mill. I did 20 minutes on the treadmill, and then upstairs to do 20 minutes on the recumbent bike. More stretching, and a BIG glass of cool alkaline water.

Then I went back to the kitchen to prepare for the day. One of the things I’ve noticed while doing this (almost) completely raw vegan diet is that I am eating fruits and vegetables in quantity, and having to prepare something every time I need to eat makes me grumpy.

So here’s what I did. First I ran 3 huge carrots and a Granny Smith apple through my juicer, so I would have something filled with life and sunshine while I worked (I saved the pulp for… see picture!) :-). Then I grabbed some containers that I already had of larger pieces of broccoli and cauliflour, and another container of carrot and celery sticks and grabbed a handful of each and chopped them up, along with a green pepper, red pepper and small garden onion (top and all) tossed it all together and put it in a comtainer back in the fridge for my salad later in the day.

Apple-Carrot Juice – fresh from the juicer- SOOOO good!

There are many people who will tell you that you shouldn’t be drinking to much apple-carrot juice straight from the juicer because there is too much sugar in it. This is true IF you are eating a diet that includes grains, fats, meat and dairy. If you are eating vegan or mostly vegan, 80% or more raw, mostly whole fresh foods, you don’t need to worry about that. Just make sure you eat a whole piece of fruit before hand, to add some fiber to the mix.

So the next thing I did was make a batch of cornbread muffins. Now I use a mix – a brand called Bob’s Red Mill – It’s a brand that I can get in the health food and organic goods section of our local grocery store. It is a fantastic product for busy health conscious people.  You need to add 1/4 cup oil, water and 1 egg (or substitute)

Ingredients in package:

Product Details Cornbread and Cornmeal Muffin Mix is just plain good!

Contains stone ground whole grain cornmeal, whole wheat pastry flour, evaporated cane juice, buttermilk powder, sea salt, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, corn starch, monocalcium phosphate), and baking soda. 

The next thing I add is a half cup of raisins and the pulp from my carrot and apple juice. You will probably need to add another 1/2 cup of water or so. Mix up, drop into muffin tins and bake 3 minutes longer than called for because of the extra ingredients.

Is your mouth watering?

I will put this over in the recipe section as well. You’ll see me talk a lot about Bob’s. I am not affiliated with them in any way what-so-ever. They simply have fantastic products.

Talk about a productive morning! Now I have all afternoon to work on the website. I’ve promised a forum for the Be Naturally Well community, and I want to add a couple more recipes and a product review. It’s a BIG day!

Have fun, stay fit!