Indian Summer

Walking around Philadelphia today was grand.  I love when there are days with no agenda and no appointments.  You can just simply be.  The weather was great too!  It was fairly cool and breezy this morning and then the temperature warmed up a bit, leaving a feeling that we were somewhere in between summer and fall.  Pretty yummy.  When I got back home I started working on my own blend. 

Indian Summer Smoothie

*Handful of organic strawberries
*1 cup vanilla soy milk
*1 tsp. cinnamon
*a double dash cardamom
*1 tbsp. maca root powder

Blend and find bliss.

Green Goodness Smoothie

After experimenting with many greens and fruits I found a lovely blend:

1/2 cucumber

3-4 romaine leaves

1 avocado
1 pear
1 1/2 cups of coconut water
3-4 ice cubes

Mix all of the nutritious goodness in a blender. Yields enough to share with a buddy.

Note: Keeping this smoothie all to yourself will make friends green with envy. Spread the love.

A Day in the Life of an Almost Vegan

This is a snapshot of a day in my food journal focusing on my elimination diet. I cheat a little bit with some processed snacks but they are healthier options when it comes to a case of the munchies. Note #1: I'm including exercise/movement on this list because it nourishes the body. Note #2: I'm classifying my day as "almost vegan" even when there's no sign of meat on today's list because each week I do eat a little meat. I am considering cutting it out altogether. Although when I've had to give up alcohol, caffeine, dairy, eggs, chocolate, and most processed foods, I feel a girl's got to have at least one vice. For me, it's bacon.

* 7:00 am - Yoga!

* 7:30 am - Smoothie - almond milk, hemp seeds, peaches, flax, maca, vanilla, and cinnamon.

*7:40 am - Dry brushing before the shower

* Morning, Noon, and Night - Orange herbal tea with a little bit of honey

* Lunch - Salad w/ veggies & beans; dressing: olive oil, lemon, black pepper or tahini; Lentil soup.

* Snacks - Bear Naked granola, hemp/flax oatmeal, or Go Raw products.

* Pre-workout punch - peanut or almond butter and crackers

* Running

* Dinner - Leftover panang curry (coconut milk, veggies, and rice) from Chabba Thai.

* Yoga/Stretching

YUM!

Note to self: get more H2O and veggies on this list.

Response to self: OK

Research Methods and Bar-Hopping

What do these two things have in common? Research and bar-hopping are tons of fun when:

a) They are combined for the purpose of rating smoothie and juice bars.
b) You are a holistic health junkie and are subsequently turned on by such research.
c) You are a geek (for being turned on by any research).
d) You are conducting the research with an uber cute fellow geek, a man we'll call "C."*

We met up on Sunday to hash out the details. We plan to visit a variety of randomly sampled Philadelphia blending establishments and evaluate them on the following variables and merits:

Flavor
Quality of ingredients
Atmospherics (Friendliness of staff - Ambiance - Clientele)

Note 1: "Company you keep" will not be factored into the equation as a cute man friend would surely confound the results.

Note 2: We haven't entirely decided if juice concentrate automatically lowers the quality rating. Your thoughts?

Here's the scale we are working on to rate the bars. These will likely require operationalization.

1) Orgasmic

2) Dreamy
3) Average Joe
4) Buyer's Remorse

The equation for final calculations is currently under review of a trusted mathematician and will be published here shortly.

We welcome your input before implementing this very important research project. We got so excited that we forgot to do a literature review.

*Editor's note: It is with sadness I inform you that "C" is no longer with HHJ. He had an unfortunate accident involving some rabid flamingos and Tina the polar bear at the Philadelphia Zoo.

Cute research partner "S" will be completing the project with me (Yum!).

Stay tuned...

Adventures in Blending

Christmas came early this year thanks to Olivia! Her enthusiasm for health is infectious (in a good way, of course) and it was awesome to have her literary contributions at Holistic Health Junkie. What's not to love? Handsome man friend + top notch blender + adventure abroad!

Olivia's blog post got me thinking about what I've been feeding my Oster (that's not an elaborate word for "mouth" - just my blender). Here are a couple new items I've included in recent smoothies. I'm going to try some of O's suggestions as well!


Pictured from left to right:

Hemp Seeds (from Nutiva via Whole Foods) - provides a nutty taste and 2 tablespoons will get you 11 grams of protein!!!! Added bonuses: omega 3, zinc, magnesium, and iron. It also tastes great on pasta and salads!

Flax Seeds - Essential. Fatty. Acids. (and fiber).

Chia Seeds - 2 tbsps offer 10% of daily calcium needs, omega fatty acids and 6 grams of dietary fiber!

Maca Root Powder - (contents not pictured) helps with stamina, libido, and fighting stress and fatigue. Yum. Yum. Yum.

Whole Foods sells flax seeds in bulk and they are very inexpensive. You can also snag your hemp supply there for around $10/8oz bag. I store the hemp and flax in the fridge. The chia seeds and maca powder are available at Nativas Naturals online store. A health food store in my area happens to carry their products (Yay!). The Navitas website includes a store locator.

My favorite blends to date:

Blueberry + raspberry + strawberry + frozen acai + chia and flax seeds

Banana + hemp seeds + oat milk

Any smoothie can get old over the course of time. If you find yourself in this predicament I recommend the Smoothies Bible. It contains over 300 recipes and they are organized by health topics. Hung over? Have a headache? Want to boost immunity? There are specific recipes for them all. No excuses for boredom either! The smoothies in this book are mighty tasty!

Next adventure: Smoothie and juice bar-hopping...with a cute and saavy research partner.

Keep in touch!

Any Given Sunday

I found heaven today and it couldn't have come at a better time. After working 12 hour days this week I vowed for a work-free weekend (after completing a Saturday morning presentation). I headed for Manhattan to catch up with gal pal Nirali and her beau Ambrish.

On Saturday night we celebrated a belated Diwali with saris, garba, and dandia. It brought back great memories from Diwalis past! Did I mention that dandia provides a great workout?

Sunday brought about another enlightening experience. I had been itching for months to visit Pure Food and Wine restaurant to delve further into raw foods exploration. As far as raw foods go I've experimented with juices, ice kream, "cheese" and other snacks. I figured it was time to take the next step and if I could fall in love with high-quality raw dishes it might jumpstart more complex culinary adventures. It turned out that the restaurant was opening later in the evening. Thankfully, One Lucky Duck, the take out option via PFW, was open!

Nirali, Ambrish and I had a hard time picking just one item off the menu. We ended up choosing the following super fabulous raw/organic shakes:

* Banana Nut (we all agreed this was our favorite of the three)
* Avocolada
* Blue Sunset

Check out the link above for ingredients and more tasty treats.

We walked off the smoothies on the way to the uber yummy Hummus Place for fresh chickpeas, pita, and falafels.

We finished the meal off with some orgasmic treats: One Lucky Duck's moon pie, mallomar, and tiramisu. All were incredibly divine. I think Nirali's moon pie selection was the most decadent although you can't go wrong with the others. Unfortunately I carried the desserts around NYC for much of the day and some of them got tossed around a bit. I lost the opportunity to take pictures of them while they were still intact and presentable but found another blog post with pictures of these luscious desserts.

I also purchased the high-in-demand cheesy quacker crackers. Having loaded up on raw foods treats I decided to pace myself and try them another day. More on them later (probably tomorrow :).

All in all it was one of the best weekends ever - fabulous friends, spirited Diwali, amazing Fall weather in a great city and superb raw foods!

The Tastiest Smoothie in the World!

No, I didn't mash up these cute baby key lime pies! But the quest did start with a hankering for them. As I'm avoiding eggs and milk and cream, I was sh** out of luck for a quick fix. Then, the Universe answered my prayers!

I was flipping through some raw "cook" books at Border's last night and randomly came across a key lime smoothie recipe. I had tried a raw and alkalizing recipe for key lime before and it was not working out. I experimented with the ingredients and all I got was chewy avocado cucumbery mess. Blech. The latest recipe is not completely alkalizing but it is raw. And it is mighty tasty!


If you like key lime pie you must check out the smoothie recipe in Living Raw Food by Sarma Melngailis. Sarma is also partner and executive chef of Pure Food and Wine restaurant in Manhattan. I plan to check it out this month!