I was in Whole Foods the other day and saw an Easy-to-Grow Mushroom Garden and I thought how cool is that! What is just as cool is the story behind the company that makes these kits, Back to the Roots  (the acronym, BTTR is pronounced Better). It was started by two strangers who were in the same class at Berkeley University where the professor talked about how one could grow mushrooms in used coffee grounds. They individually emailed the professor who actually had no idea how to actually grow mushrooms, but suggested they contact each other since they obviously had the same interest. With that first introduction Alex Velez and Nikhil Arora became mushroom farmers and supplied oyster mushrooms to their local Whole Food store and neighboring restaurants.  Their goal was to create the ability for people to grow their own mushrooms at home. Hence, the Easy to Grow Mushroom Gardens was born.

Check out their inspirational and sustainable story here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alex and Nikhil are passionate about assisting people to grow their own sustainable food and using waste (coffee grounds, in this case) in a productive way. They partnered with Peet’s Coffee and Tea for all the coffee grounds they use.Their long term goal is to create a generation that will know where all their food comes from and to educate and inspire others to work towards a more sustainable future.

The Easy to Grow Mushroom Garden comes in a recyclable box that sits on your windowsill for direct light. All you need to do is mist it twice a day and you will start to see little mushroom pinheads appear within the first seven days. The oyster mushroom crop grows to maturity in about 10 days. It is possible to get up to four crops with one kit, with each crop reaping about one pound of mushrooms. The kits can be bought at all Whole Foods across the United States or on the Back to the Roots  website for $19.95.  Check out some great recipe ideas here.

Are we all counting the days when our youngins’ head back to school? I am already thinking about the 160 lunches I will have to prepare for my daughter throughout the year. Yikes! Plus this little 6 year old has been a vegetarian since she started eating solid foods. Thank goodness I discovered these Pure Organics bars. Veroncia Bosgraaf created these bars when her 6 year old daughter made a conscious decision not to eat meat again. They are raw, organic, gluten-free, kosher and full of fruits and nuts with no refined sugars, no chemicals, no genetically-modified stuff. They are packed full of antioxidants, vitamins, and omega-3 fats, fiber and protein.

I bought one of each; Apple Cinnamon, Cherry-Cashew, Chocolate Brownie, Cranberry-Orange, Trail Mix and Wild Blueberry, to see which one my daughter liked, thinking that the only one she will go for is the chocolate one. To my surprise she liked them all! And so did her 4 year old sister.

I feel that I found the perfect solution to make those lunches just a little easier for me. I just need to add a (reusable) bottle of water, a few (whole grain) crackers and a cookie and she is good to go. Her lunch box will surely come home empty this year!

Go to ThePureBar.com to purchase online or to locate a store near you (Trader Joe’s & Whole Foods carry them).

If you read my last article on Raw Foodism (here), you are well aware that I am a firm believer of balance in your life. In my opinion, you will only ever be able to truly enjoy the succulent things in life once you have your health figured out. You need to get to a place where you can feel good about yourself every single day and develop a lifestyle that does that for you; that would be one where you’re not constantly counting calories or constantly feeling hungry.

Getting there can take a lot of hard work. You need to find a form of exercise that you can do regularly and you know you will stick with. For me, that’s yoga. For others, it’s running, swimming, walking, kick boxing, etc. But whatever it is, it has to be something. Next, you need to figure out your eating practice. What we put in our bodies has such a drastic effect on how we look and feel. It’s very easy to eat unhealthy foods – they’re thrown in our faces EVERYWHERE. But personally, I feel extremely unhappy when I am eating crappy or fatty foods. At the same time, I think it’s very easy to eat healthy foods. However, the hard part is figuring out what types of healthy foods or healthy “diets” work best with your body and your lifestyle. It often requires that you gain a lot of knowledge on a lot of different theories and do some testing on your own body to see how it reacts to those dietary changes. I’ve tested out a few theories and I am happy to say that I feel as though I have figured out what types of foods my body needs to maintain healthy operation. By the way, the best sign of a healthy body is regular, healthy bowel movements. I’m talking once or twice a day, very easy to pass, on the large size. If your digestion isn’t healthy and regular, then something inside is not happy and you have some serious figuring out to do! So get to work!

Back to raw foods! Personally, my body is happiest when I eat a high percentage of raw foods. In fact, the more raw, the happier it is. The only issue for me is that getting myself the right balance of protein and iron and fat requires a bit more work if I’m eating all raw. I simply cannot always have an abundance of dark green vegetables around all the time, especially when I’m on the go. In my case, it is far better for me to eat some cooked meat and avoid iron-deficient anemia (which is very common in menstruating women), then to eat a bunch of raw fruits simply because they are the only raw thing around. Please remember, it is very important to provide your body with the right balance of nutrients that it needs. Simply eating raw foods does not make you healthy (and neither does being a vegetarian or a vegan or any other form of a dietary decision). No matter what you eat or do not eat, if you don’t make sure your body gets the nutrients it needs, you are not doing something healthy for your body. That said, I still feel as though a lifestyle rich in raw foods is an extremely healthy lifestyle (and certainly a healthier lifestyle than one without any raw foods!) If any readers are not feeling 100% about their current diets, please, give raw foods a try! I think you will be blown away by how much energy you have.

However, if you don’t know very much about nutrition, it is important that you read about the theories behind raw foods so you can learn how to incorporate them into your lifestyle effectively. Our resident Succulent Wife has already a few suggested books that she found helpful. I don’t want to re-review any of those books because I think she’s done a great job but I will mention one more quickly. If you’re looking for a great raw food cookbook, one of my favorites is EVERDAYRAW by Matthew Kenney did a great job putting together lots of delicious recipes that are a bit more on the simple side. The book has tons of beautiful pictures, is very easy to follow, and uses ingredients that are readily available. However, it doesn’t talk much about raw food theory. It presumes you already know about enzymes, etc, and is simply there to give you some great food ideas. I LOVE it!

To be honest, there is also a lot of great information out there on the web (although, you have to be discerning. It’s just jumbled up with a bunch of crappy information also). But if you’re interested in raw foods, please do yourself a favor and do some quick research – whether that means picking up a book or reading some articles online. Or better yet, try having a green smoothie for breakfast. It’s SO simple and quick AND will provide you with energy that will last for what seems like forever!

Green Monster Smoothie • 1 tablespoon flax seed • 1 banana • 1 to 2 cups fresh spinach • 1 cup almond milk (or regular milk or any other dairy alternative) Put all those ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

You will be amazed how energized you feel and how long before you feel hungry again. If you try this green smoothie, I guarantee you that you will begin to believe in the benefits of raw foods. In my eyes, they are undeniable.

Next, you’ll just need to learn how to work more raw foods into your life. It’s much easier if you have some equipment. A good masticating juicer, a blender and a food processor are most important tools to start with. And for those who are a bit more committed, a dehydrator, a sprouter and wheatgrass grower become essential. I will discuss those in further detail in my next post. Please let me know how you feel about the Green Monsters!

Note: The Succulent Wife is thrilled to welcome Natalie Greggain of Purely Juicers as a raw food expert & contributing editor. Yeah!  Natalie’s upcoming articles will certainly demystify raw food and juicing practices while providing all the essential tips & tricks on how to easily introduce raw foodism into our complicated lives. Stay tuned for more how-to articles on raw food and juicing along with some pretty fantastic (and easy) recipes.

Raw Foodism has been around for centuries but it has become increasingly popular over the last 5 years. I find that whenever the subject of raw food comes up, people ask me things like: Why would anyone decide to stop eating cooked foods? How could they possibly survive? What the heck do they eat? … Are they crazy?

Now, I will certainly answer those questions, but first I’d like to get a few things out in the open. I know a lot about raw foodism and tons of other types of “diets” or nutritional choices. I believe whole-heartedly in the benefits of raw foods; however, I, personally, do not eat 100% raw foods or even fall into any particular category of diets (vegetarian, vegan, etc). I eat pretty much everything. In my eyes, diets and ways of life will only benefit you if you figure out how to “follow” them in a way that works for you and will work for you for your whole life (or at least large chunks of it- I’m talking 5-10 years minimum). Unless we feel like we have balance in our lives, we will never be able to maintain that unbalanced lifestyle and we will eventually “fall off the bandwagon”. Which is why diets fail – people go on some extreme eating regimen for a month, lose weight, then go back to normal life. A few months down the road, the weight is back and it’s time for to diet again. But losing that weight gets harder every single time. So, the sooner you learn to live a lifestyle that is balanced with healthy nutrition, exercise and enjoyment (because it’s important to be able to indulge in life’s succulence without feeling guilty about it), the sooner you will be able to say goodbye to dieting. It takes a lot of work and attention (and certainly devotion), but if you can find a way to provide yourself with a healthy balance, you will never have to diet ever again. Cut back on over indulging – maybe, but diet, never!

I think you’ve probably figured out by now that I’m not trying to convince you all to make a drastic change to your lives and begin a new raw food lifestyle. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t think everyone could benefit from eating more raw foods or that some of you can achieve balance through raw foodism. Therefore, I’m finally going to answer those questions:

• Why would anyone decide to stop eating cooked foods? Substantial amounts of research shows that the enzymes in food begin to break down and eventually get destroyed when they are heated past 120 F. Have you ever been told not to over-cook your vegetables? That’s why. As we lose those digestive enzymes, it is harder for our bodies to access the vitamins and nutrients in our foods. So, raw foodists are simply trying to provide their bodies with full access to all the nutrients in their foods.
• How could anyone possibly survive on a raw food only diet? Well, eating raw foods actually makes it easier for one to survive. When you eat raw foods, you give your body more nourishment than you would from the same amount of foods if they were cooked. So, you actually need to eat less. Trust me, I say this from experience. I notice a very drastic difference in my energy levels when I am eating more raw foods, and I find I have to eat much less. Since our bodies get so much nutrients from what we eat when it’s raw, the energy seems to last so much longer. I’m sure you’ve all heard of green smoothies? Try making yourself one – I’ll post a recipe soon. It’s amazing how long it takes me to feel hungry after I have a green smoothie for breakfast.
• What the heck do raw foodists eat? Most of the time, raw foodism is also accompanied by vegan (and preferably organic) ideals. That means no animal products (no meat of any kind, no dairy, no eggs, etc). Along with these ideals often comes the desire to support more sustainable agricultural methods. Therefore, raw foodists try their best to eat local, seasonal, organic food that was grown using sustainable methods. So, raw foodists eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, young sprouts, nuts, seeds, cold-pressed oils, and a whole lot of herbs and spices. Although that may sound a little limited, it really isn’t. Cooking raw foods does not mean you take a bunch of raw vegetables and chomp on them. In fact, cooking raw has really encouraged me to explore with new spices and get creative in the kitchen. Almond milk and raw nut butters were like this divine discovery of mine – we are currently in the middle of a very serious love affair. Raw foodists also make tons of really cool dehydrated creations that are like traditional baked goods (but different). Raw flax crackers and flatbreads are delicious! And graw-nola, yyuuuuummm! The array of food options is really a lot less limited than it seems.
• Are raw foodists crazy? Absolutely not! A little extreme perhaps but if you give the lifestyle a bit of a try, I think you’ll start to understand why some people are 90% – 100% raw. It has been my personal experience that the more raw foods I eat, the better I feel and the more energy I have. So why don’t I eat 100% raw then? It takes a lot of effort that I don’t always have. Do you know what it would be like to head up to a friends cottage and refuse all their delicious foods and only eat salad? Or a dinner party? Life is far too short for me to give up all those succulent things. Like I said earlier, it is important to be able to indulge without feeling guilty. However, just because I’m not 100% raw, it doesn’t mean I’m missing out on the health benefits from the raw foods that I am eating.

So hopefully I’ve stirred up some interest in increasing your raw food intake. I think everyone should add a little raw to their lives! Stay tuned- I will be providing more information and tips on how to live raw in a manageable way!

Learn more from Natalie in her blog that posts tons of great juicer recipes.

But last night, I indulged. While every body else was left to scramble for leftovers, I selfishly and joyfully partook in the very fragrant, creamy and delectable raw Carrot-Ginger Soup from The Complete Idiots Guide to Eating Raw book.

With Mark Reinfeld’s (one of the book’s authors) permission, I gladly share their recipe here, an easy one to try if you want to experiment with raw food cooking, uh, preparation.

CARROT-GINGER SOUP

4 cups carrot juice (about 4 lbs carrots)
½ cup macadamia nut
¼ avocado, mashed
2 TB ginger, minced
2 tsp nama shoyu
1 TB freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ tsp curry powder (optional)
½ tsp fresh dill or ¼ tsp dry
Pinch cayenne
Pinch salt
Pinch freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup carrot, peeled and shredded (optional)
¼ cup beet, peeled and shredded (optional)
½ cup corn, fresh off cob (optional)

1. Place 1 cup carrot juice, macadamia nuts, and avocado in a blender, and blend on high speed for 20 seconds or until mixture is smooth.
2. Add ginger, nama shoyu, lemon juice, curry powder (if using), dill, cayenne, slat, and pepper and blend on low to medium speed for 15 to 20 seconds. Slowly add remaining carrot juice through the top while blending on low.
3. Serve immediately at room temperature. Pour soup into bowls, and top with shredded carrots, beet and corn (if using).

Healing foods: a carrot a day might help keep the eye doctor away. Half of a medium size carrot supplies you with 100 percent of your vitamin. A requirement in the form of beta-carotene has been shown to be essential for eye health and, due to its antioxidant activity, has been reported to lower heart disease risk.

Yield: 4 cups, prep time: 20 minutes, serving size 2 cups.
Each serving has: 479 calories, 28g total fat, 4g saturated fat, 8g protein, 55g carbohydrate, 8 g ifiber, 0mg cholesterol, 396 mg sodium

As you can tell from my photo, I opted for avocados and raw pine nuts as my garnish, since that was what I had on hand. Plus, I love avocados. I also did not juice my own carrots but took the shortcut of buying fresh carrot juice. The recipe is a keeper and now on the top of my favorites list. The soup only takes a few minutes to prepare, an added benefit.

If you are remotely interested in raw food, I highly recommend Complete Idiots Guide to Eating Raw book.  It presents a good amount of easy and great tasting recipes but, best of all , it gives all the necessary background for newbies looking to gain more information on the raw food lifestyle. It covers tools, basic prep, myths and techniques.

I’m trying the raw Macadamia-Fugde Brownies next. Watch out!

RAW FOOD BIBLE - This book needs a lot of help on editorial styling, but it’s excellent on the informational side. It covers everything you would want to know about enzymes, vitamins, proteins, fibers, etc… and how all of this relates to raw food. It’s a wee bit fanatical and granola (do not use microwaves, cell phones, certain personal care products…) but I trust its information. Lots of great recipes from many sources. I’ve tried many of them successfully. Only thing is that that there is no table of content or index, which makes finding recipes and information a little hard. I have successfully prepared the beet pâté and the pancakes from recipes in this book. The pancakes are breakfast favorites.

ANI’S RAW FOOD KITCHEN - Ani Phyo is a chef, author and co-founder of smartmonkeyfoods.com. Her book is mostly recipes, interspersed with thoughts and recommendations on living the raw food lifestyle. I’ve tried many recipes successfully but have been disappointed by a handful of them (like the black sesame seed bread which tasted like sand, until I figured out that the recipe missed out on the instructions to soak the flax seed). Still, it’s a favorite on Amazon.com.

RAW FOOD REAL WORLD by Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis, also owners of Pure Food and Wine restaurant in NYC. This couple definitely makes raw food sexy. But, many of the recipes are too involved for me and some of the recommended exotic ingredients can’t even be found at Whole Foods and need to be ordered. Their recipes seem like something that would be served in their restaurant but that’s just not practical in a “real world” kitchen. That’s a little ironic given the title of the book. Indeed, trying to extract young coconut meat from its shell with a cleaver and a crowbar is just not something that I want to do to achieve dinner on a Monday night…. Still their raw granola recipe is simple enough and is one of our favorites. All the recipes that we’ve tried came out beautifully and deliciously. I also love that the authors consider wine (and sake) allowable as it is a fermented drink. I’m considering that carved in stone. I recommend this book if you like to putz around with fancy dishes or for the valid motivational reason that you aspire to look like (or look at) Sarma.

COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO EATING RAW – This is my favorite book on the subject. It is the most practical as it explains raw food basics such as pantry essentials, techniques, tools… It is the best explained sprouting chapter that I’ve seen thus far and is the method that I will follow when I’m ready to try it. Most practical also because it lays out soaking time, prep time and nutritional information to allow for better planning. There is also a four week program that is a good guideline. One reproach: while there are a good number of recipes, I would love to have had more! Definitely a great intro to raw food.

You can find these books as well as other essential tools in the Gourmet and Raw Food Amazon.com widget in the right sidebar of this blog. As you may guess, my list of books on Raw and Living Foods is by no means exhaustive. It is simply the list of the books that I presently own on the subject. I use each one of them every single week.

Also, here are some of the blogs that I have bookmarked. Each blog links to more resources and other blogs so that you can lose and immerse yourself in the raw food world if you are so inclined to do so:

• WeLikeitRaw.com: podcasts, news, recipes and inspiring before & after shots
• RawFoodistguide.com: covers basic raw food talking points
• TheSunnyRawKitchen: yummy recipes that make you want to convert immediately. I’m getting that eBook.
• TheRawChefBlog: the chef in question is Russell James. I wish he were on this continent so that I could attend his class. Will have to travel I guess. Sigh. Getting his book as well.

I’ll get into essential tools for raw food prep in a future post, but in the meanwhile, why don’t you give this quick and delicious recipe a whirl and see how it agrees with you. It is very representative of how easy much of the preparation of raw food can be. And great tasting too. Even your least suspecting guest will love it.

Red Pepper and Walnut Pâté
2 cups raw walnuts
2 stalks celery
1 large red pepper
1 large scallion
Celtic or sea salt to taste
Juice of ½ lemon
Combine all ingredients in food processor and blend until smooth. Serve with crackers or with cut veggies if you want to keep it raw. I often bring this to the office for lunch with cucumbers, celery and a few raw flax seed crackers (recipe in later post). Love it.

Let me know what you think!

Note: By no means do I intend to give anyone a lecture on raw food. I will leave that to the experts. But the curiosity and interest in the subject is prompting me to write this, to share with you what it’s like, for a non-fanatical, bon vivant person like moi to take on this type of eating style.

First off, you must know that, in its simplest terms, raw foodism is a vegan diet, all about non-processed and non-cooked foods. Prepared foods, yes. Processed, not. Organic, much preferable. So, if you are an adamant carnivore, skip to the next article. Personally, I’ve never been a big meat eater. I remember, as a child, my family going out to eat  at steakhouses (the standard for good dining in the 70’s) and I would invariably order the “filet de sole”. I can’t really take credit for how easily I can go vegetarian; I’ve just never been attracted to meat. Vegan is a harder thing for me. I love cheese and fish. Well, sushi, mostly.

Becoming a vegetarian was not really an ethical decision for me, although it has become that since I’ve adopted the practice. I will save you the rant on the reasons why one would consider becoming a vegetarian. If you are interested, the wonderful article HERE eloquently makes all the points.  Have you read Fast Food Nation? I read it in 2002 and don’t think I’ve entered a McDonald’s or Burger King since then. It also gave me a serious perspective on the appalling conditions in the slaughter houses. Isn’t it Rasputin that said that eating meat darkens the soul?

I got interested in learning more about raw foodism when I heard of its undeniable health benefits. Here’s what I love about the Raw Food regimen:

• Control of low blood sugar. In my case, the first immediate thing that I noticed was that it helped reduce (some days eliminate) my low blow sugar episodes. My family is grateful for that, i.e. not to have to deal with hypoglycemic mood swings!
• No meat, no wheat. Wheat makes me bloat. Think about it, we make glue with flour. I feel the wheat sticking to me. Seriously, I see my feet becoming pudgy as soon as I indulge in bread or pasta. That’s the first sign… No wheat in the raw food diet, so it saves me from that problem.
• Cravings, especially for carbs, disappear.
• Appetite is greatly reduced. My body seems to recognize that it is getting an abundance of nutrients and seeks nothing else. After a week or so of eating raw, I am never hungry and start eating smaller and smaller portions.
• It’s NOT as prohibitively expensive as the uninitiated say it is. I’m no longer buying expensive meat or fish or cheeses. I’m buying nuts & seeds (lots of nuts) and fresh fruit and vegetables. And agave nectar. And exotic herbs & spices. My grocery bill has practically stayed the same.
• For some, wine and sake being fermented foods, fit in the raw food diet. I first learned this from Matthew Kinney and Sarma Melngailis in their “Raw Food Real World” book. Bless their healthy little hearts!
• Energy. I definitely feel more focused and enthusiastic when I eat all raw. The difference is palpable.
• Weight loss. I lose about 5 lbs in the first week of “going back” to seriously eating raw. But since I am not maintaining a consistent raw food regimen, it’s been more of maintenance than weight loss benefit for me.
• So many fantastic food discoveries and fabulous recipes and delicious dishes (I will share sources in the next article). This goes WAY beyond green smoothies!
• It does not take as long to prepare a meal as unversed folk fear it does. It takes some planning (see below), but since there is no hot cooking involved, the meal prep is often LESS time consuming.

What is more complicated with a raw food regimen:

• You guessed it: kids. My 16 and 12 year old are not so receptive to some of the stranger food combinations and textures, although they have been open to tasting more and more new recipes. So we often need to prepare two variations of a meal for dinner, one for my husband and I and the other for the kids.
• Traveling. Staying vegetarian is not a problem, but staying vegan is more challenging, and eating raw is definitely harder. I hardly eat raw when I travel (I am not yet at the point of traveling with my VitaMix) PLUS the whole purpose of traveling is to experience new things, including new foods. So, I do!
• Challenge to maintain. I haven’t been able to maintain a consistent long term raw food diet. To me, that would mean 60 to 75% of my daily intake, all the time. Family, travel, holidays, business lunches, get-togethers have all been valid distractions for me. It’s not the temptation of eating cooked foods, but mostly the easy accessibility of these foods, the path of least resistance…
• Planning. You’ve got to be organized to eat raw well. That means planning ahead to have the right ingredients for the recipes that will require soaking, sprouting and dehydrating.
• I’ve been intimidated of sprouting. So have not tried it. Heard it’s real easy, but I’m just not there yet…

Even with all these minor hiccups, I persist. My husband and I PREFER eating raw. After all the periodic transgressions, we always return to raw, and every time we stick to it for a little bit longer. This way of eating will truly becomes a way of life before too long. The benefits are immediately noticeable and make the whole effort so gratifying. Oh, and so satisfying, in a most delicious way.

Stay tuned for part 2, next week when I will share my essential raw food starter books, websites and essential equipment.

Since I’m still getting used to the raw/living foods way of eating, I do find myself occasionally yearning for old favorites. In the 112 degree heat (dry heat, I know, but at that point, dry doesn’t help!) of Las Vegas, there is nothing to be done to get me to avoid visions of frozen treats. My very satisfying – and practically immediate – remedy came in the form of this mango sorbet.

I know that it’s a little late in the season to recommend a frozen treat, but a few shivers will be easily overlooked when you try this.

Now, try to remember this list of ingredients for a single (generous) serving:

• a cup of frozen mango chunks (I get mine at my second home, Trader Joe’s)
• 2 Tablespoons agave nectar
• sprinkle of Stevia (to cut down on sugar content but not too much or it will get bitter)
• half a cup of ice cubes (can hardly be called an ingredient!)

As you know, Stevia is very concentrated, so use the recommend dose for one serving or less to start. I add stevia to the agave nectar to cut down on the sugar content because I like my mango sorbet to be sweet, but you may forgo this altogether.

To prepare:

Throw everything in your blender. I was lucky enough to recently get my-long-lusted-over Vita Mix, so it’s a cinch, but if you know that your blender can crush icy things, it should work just as well.

Start on the very lowest speed and then quickly increase to the highest speed on your blender. You’ll want to push the tamper (that long stick that mixes foods without touching the blades while the blender is running)  so that you push the fruit and ice towards the blades. You should be done within 60 seconds. Don’t mix any longer than that or you’ll end up with a not-so-frozen treat!

Serve subito-presto and enjoy. Let me know if – should I say “when” – you try it!

My lunch today looked so beautiful, simple and healthy, I just had to snap it. Mixed vegetable & nut salad with honey lemon dressing and olive-sundried-tomato crackers. Miammmmm.

We took a raw cooking class at the Ki-Atsu Institute and have been running with it since. Delicious and satisfying and beautiful and a remedy to my constant low blood sugar. Love, love, love it!

More on that later!