Bottoms Up! Let's Kill the Fat Talk!

I frequently can be found wearing just kale, a very hardy plant.

Love Your Body!

As we come into a new year, and not that we're into making resolutions because they're kinda corny and hard to commit to, BUT, if there is one thing you do start, oh, say, NOW, then how about we STOP FAT TALKING. Let's be honest, we all do it. Whether it's silently in our own home, whether it's thoughts directed at someone else. We all have bodies. They are all different. If you care for yours and treat it right with good, nourishing food and regular exercise, it will reward you with years of service. So, stop with the 'if only I could lose a couple of kilo's'' and the" look at her she has a thigh gap, bitch'' talk, you're better than that. Way better. You're perfect in fact. 

I'm liking these ads, made by Kellogg's, but before you slam them for being Kellogg's (and arguably, large corporations like this are partly responsible for the world we live in full of unrealistic photoshopped expectations) I LIKE THE MESSAGE here. Let's all take note and make a pact to stop beating up on ourselves and start loving the skin we're in. We only have one body, love it well.

          

   

The Juice on Juicing

I LOVE JUICING! It is the fastest way to literally FLOOD your body with vital nutrients. Be careful that you’re not flooding your body with sugar though (as you would if you’re buying juices from juice bars).

Drinking a ‘fruit juice’ from one of these places, could mean the equivalent sugar from say 6 oranges, 5 apples, 1 beetroot. That’s A LOT. The sugars in fruit are designed to be eaten AS fruit, the fibre helping slow down the process and not overload your poor old liver with fructose!

So, the juice I have 90% of the time is GREEN, chock full of chlorophyll which has the same make-up as human blood except blood has iron in the middle and chlorophyll has magnesium. It is the fastest way to get the body going in the morning, (I venture faster than the fastest espresso!) because it goes straight into the blood stream, starting I the mouth (through the porous mucosal tissue) and then from the stomach. Sure, you need to EAT greens too, but when you juice them, you can juice LOADS more than you’d ever eat, and it’s a super way to get the best out of some veggies that are harder for some people to eat- such as kale.

If you don’t have a juicer, don’t worry, I can show you the cheapest way to juice on the planet!

But here’s a couple of notes on juicers:

1)     Centrifugal juicers (like the Breville Juice Fountain) are not a bad starting point but the centrifugal juicers don’t break down the cell wall fully and A LOT of goodness is sent away with the pulp. They are also next to useless with green leafy veggies.

2)     Cold press juicers are good, they are a bit $$ and a bit slow, but essentially, they crush the goodness out of the plant. I have one but I don’t use it because I find the pulp is too wet, which makes me wonder how many nutrients I’m not getting. You also have to put hard veggies through to keep it moving and I mostly ONLY have greens.

3)     A juicing bag (sometimes called a nut mylk bag) made from tulle (from the fabric shop or you can buy them ready made). Use a good high speed blender such as an Optimum or Vitamix which will break down the cell wall, add a cup of water and fill with your greens. Strain them through the bag, wringing the bag well and you’ll get a nice dry pulp.

If I’m training hard or have a special occasion, I’ll make other than green juice for different times of the day.  Here are some ideas:

Green Means Go Juice!

First thing in the am, this baby will flush out your cells with goodness, enrich your blood and get you ready to go go go! I would drink about 1 litre of this and I would keep a litre in the fridge for the next day.Your’re looking for a total of about 1.5kg of greens but you’ll work it out based on how much you make as you experiment. Most important note here is VARIETY, don't juice the same thing every time.

• ·      Kale
• ·      Spinach
• ·      Lettuce
• ·      Bok choy
• ·      Coriander
• ·      Fennel tips
• ·      Parsley
• ·      Mint
• ·      Dill
• ·      Celery
• ·      Edible weeds!
• ·      Ginger
• ·      Turmeric
• ·      Cucumber
• ·      Lemon (your worm far or compost won’t like the pulp with citrus I it so add at the end)

·      You may want to add an apple to sweeten this up the first few times.

Purple Monster

A great tonic before a big night out (and after), beetroot is great for your liver!

• ·      2 Beetroot
• ·      1 little apple
• ·      ½ Carrot
• ·      Ginger
• ·      Lemon

Cheeky Tart

Small amounts of this one will suffice, but I LOVE it after a big ride with some ice cold water. You’ll feel it hydrating you instantly and it’s so refreshing on a hot day!

• ·      1 whole grapefruit
• ·      1 peeled grapefruit
• ·      1 peeled orange
• ·      1 whole orange
• ·      1 whole lemon
• ·      1 peeled lemon
• ·      ginger

·      You could add some fresh herbs to this if you like.

Please, where possible MAKE SURE YOUR PRODUCE IS ORGANIC or at the very least, reliably spray free. With the quantities I juice in, I sure as hell don't want to be exposed to all those chemicals in a concentrated form. I grow heaps of veggies, it's not that hard, I totally recommend it!

The juice bag method takes max 15 minutes, but you can make 2-3 days in advance and keep in a sealed jar in the fridge. Yeah, sure, in an ideal world, we’d juice every day, and of course, it’s not as good on day 3 as on day one, but do you have time to juice every day? if you do, good for you! Remember our mantra at Raw Ambition: Do what you can do, and what you WILL do. Don’t raise the bar so high you give up on it.

Recipe: Rawsome Fruity Christmas Mince Pies!

There's nothing like wrapping your ho ho ho gear around a crunchy, tasty pie is there? And being Raw doesn't mean you miss out! I soooo would not be raw if I couldn't have me pie!

For the pastry:

1 cup cashew flour

1 tablespoon maca powder

½ tablespoon coconut nectar

1 tablespoon cinnamon powder

¼ teaspoon salt

A splash of water

(credit to the wonderful Omid  Jaffari at botanical cuisine for creating the original version of these tart shells!)

Method:

To create cashew flour, blend in vitamix or good food processor in short bursts so as not to heat too much.

Transfer to food processor and add other ingredients, processing to a dough-like consistency

Press the dough into mini tart moulds with removable bottoms and dehydrate for about 8 hours, remove from moulds and dehydrate on a mesh tray for a further 6 hours. Place shells carefully into a sealed container until ready to use.

Fruit mince

3 organic apples (sweet variety) with skin on, roughly chopped

1½  cups raisins

1 cup cranberries or sour cherries

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon grated nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon allspice

Zest of one lemon

1 tablespoon coconut nectar

2 cups water or fresh apple juice

1 teaspoon vanilla powder or one vanilla bean scraped

Tablespoon of light rum or Cointreau

Method:

Place everything in the food processor and mix till combined and roughly uniform in chunk size. Transfer to a rectangular pyrex dish and place in dehydrator for about 16 hours, allowing it to reduce and become relatively firm.

Assembly:

Take a tart shell and fill with mince, top with lemon zest and serve with coconut yoghurt (recipe below) . These taste really good if you pop the shell and mince into the dehydrator for about 30 minutes prior to serving. 

Yoghurt

1 cup cashews (soaked min 2 hours ideally longer)

Meat from two young coconuts

¾ cup coconut water

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

¼ teaspoon salt

1 probiotic capsule

Using a high-speed blender, mix till smooth and creamy- the longer you soak the cashews, the creamier it will be. Make sure there are no lumps and be careful that the blender doesn’t overheat.

Leave in a warm spot for 5-6 hours then refrigerate; use within 7 days.