St. Patrick's Green Chocolate with Gojis



Cinnamon Chocolate Bars with Goji Berries


Chocolate Turtle Bites


More info at Aura'sVeganKitchen

We're going to keep this short and sweet (Frank and birthday vgifts will be back next week). You've probably seen the updates to our main menu. Don't be alarmed. You'll find everything you need, just in slightly shifted format. Just so you know, we based these changes on input from both experienced and new users who were not familiar with LiveJournal. Our goal was to reduce barriers to usability and make LiveJournal more accessible and easy to navigate. Please note that this is a work in progress. We welcome your detailed suggestions in feedback. We thank you, in advance, for helping us improve your LiveJournal experience.

We've updated the global navigation menu:

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Thanks again for joining us. Frank and company will be back next week!

Hello, hello!

I'm running super low on groceries, but when I go to the store next I only want to get the bare essentials in order to use up what I have in the `fridge.  I'm running a blank on any ideas for what I could make that isn't a salady-type thing, smoothie, (although if you know of anything of those two that are outstanding, I'm open) or requires a dehydrator/juicer.  Would anyone happen to have any suggestions?  Please help!


Refrigerator Contents:

2 453g/16-ounce bags Shirataki Noodles (Are shirataki noodles even raw-friendly? I've had 'em for a while)

441 g/15.56 oz. Raw Wheat Germ

380 g/13.22 oz. Golden Flax Seed

314 g/11.4 oz. Almonds

197 g/6.9 oz. Sunflower Seeds

186 g/6.56 oz. Flax Seed Meal

170 g/6 oz. Ginger Root

157 g/5.54 oz. Dried Cranberries

130 g/4.5 oz. Brazil Nuts

92 g/3.3 oz. Cashews

48 g/1.70 oz. Baby Spinach

6 Yellow Onions


Pantry Contents:

Agave

Braggs Liquid Aminos

Cacao Nibs

Chia Seed

Coconut Butter

Dried Goji Berries

Hemp Seed

Maca

Mesquite Powder

Nutritional Yeast

Spices

Spirulina

Tea

Lately the only thing that I've really been able to eat withouth getting sick has been smoothies. I really only know how to make good tasting fruit smoothies though and was wondering if anyone could help me out with making smoothies with other ingredients (that I already have)? This is what I have:

-Kale
-Beets (Red)
-Baby spinach
-A carrot
-Broccoli
-Bananas
-Blueberries
-Garlic
-Ginger root
-Almond milk
-Nutitional yeast
-Matcha
-Hemp protein+fiber powder

I don't have a juicer and the blender that I use is an immersion blender. Can anyone please help?

Iv switched my morning meal from some sort of green smoothie to a mixed bowl of fruit, but the last few days after i eat a few bites i get a massive headache coming on. I'm wondering if it might have to do with the fruit, that perhaps i am eating too much or that the fruit might be too ripe and more sugary? 

Just wondering if this might be a common or im just looking in the wron direction.

wordy_icons
Searching for words to the wise? Come celebrate the joy of witty userpics in this creative, sharing community. A great place to strut your stuff or hunt down the perfect turn of phrase to complement your mood du jour. If you love the art of snark, you'll find inspiration, admiration, and entertaining jubilation.

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cookingfailures
Whether you're a wizard or a passionate novice in the kitchen, we've all had our share of recipe disasters. From the fallen souffle to the runny chocolate mousse to the lasagna that looks (and/or tastes) like it's been eaten before, come embrace your epic fails through photos and stories. Help others learn from your cooking calamities or simply revel in the fun of failure.

x-posted

We're finishing up a few odds and ends before our next major release. Our mighty Ops guys continue to slay spambots and balance load times on a highwire without a safety net (which is kind of tough dressed in full ninja gear). Down on solid ground, we're celebrating this week's virtual birthday party with a warm toast to pants. If you can rearrange the letters of your favorite city, state, and/or country (feel free to combine these elements) to spell one of Frank's favorite treats (e.g., pants, wire, paper, etc.), he'll send you over a can of whipped cream to top it all off (provided you return the empty can for his midnight snack)! And, with that, let the word scrambling commence!

Stuff you should know:

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If you have a paid or permanent account, you can send five free Squirrels in love vgifts through Monday, March 15th at 4pm, PST! You'll see both the free and the $0.99 squirrels displayed until they've scurried off to their new homes. Please send only one vgift at a time. In other words, you'll need to complete check-out and start a new order for each vgift you send. If you're not receiving vgifts (from friends and/or Frank), you may have disabled them. To enable vgifts, visit Edit profile (under Profile), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and select 'Do not disable' from the drop-down menu. Have fun!

Help is on the way!

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We've crowned a header

Congratulations to ohterlus for submitting the winning header, which will go live next week and keep us leafy through mid-April! You can submit designs for our next header contest at ljnewscontests now until March 31st. We'll post a poll in the news to let you decide which header will sit at the top of LiveJournal from mid-April to mid-May. All artistic interpretations are welcome. The winner will get a $25 LiveJournal gift certificate. All other contributors will receive $5 gift certificates. Our heartfelt appreciation for sharing your talent and creativity!

For this week's winning photo and more adventures with Frank & Meme, we'll catch you under the cut!

( Read more... )

Sorry if I am a bit all over the place here... This experience has been a major test of my organizational skills LOL... it seems like feast or famine around here... I either have too much to work with and not enough time to use it all, or I have a lot of meals in the works and nothing to eat (other than a salad or a smoothie - loving green smoothies BTW, I never was much of a fan of spinach and I detested Kale... been having both regularly now! Amazing what some fruit can do for you to hide such things) So I am just curious, how do you meal plan when so many things seem to take some time to prepare (sprouts and the like) How do you not get totally thrown off when one night doesn't go as planned due to an unexpected change in schedule or something? I really hate it when I throw food away :(

I've been doing pretty good, but there have been times where I needed to cook just so I would have something to eat, but I have kept it vegetarian (like escarole and beans made with canned beans). I do have to say, I have a lot more energy, which is good, because it feels like it takes me longer to make raw meals (that are interesting beyond salad... I love salad, but I get bored easily and like to "cook:".) I have been trying recipes from a book called Living Cuisine art and spirit of raw food, not exactly "simple" meals LOL. Some successes and some disappointments... I get the feeling the taste for some things is an acquired taste after being used to eating things cooked for the past 38 years. (Like some kind of eggplant manicotti (with some kind of nut "cheese" It just didn't do it for me, though it LOOKED awesome!) Having trouble giving up certain things as well, but if I can get to about 80% raw, I would be happy :) I don't know I could give up milk products completely, but for now, one step at a time :)  It's hard because I am single, and so many things seem to make family sized meals... I can only eat the same thing so many times in a row! I mean, it is weird to me to plan ahead to have a snack of nuts! (is it ok to eat them unsoaked?)

Right now, I have quinoa, broccoli, and japonica wild rice sprouting... plan on making "sushi" with cukes, avacado, and sprouts, and some kind of rice salad with basil and tomatoes and some tabbouleh (with quinoa instead of bulgar)... but I had to plan for those things three days in advance, and now all of a sudden I have to work unexpectedly on Thursday which throws EVERYTHING off LOL.! I suppose I just need to get more salads for back up ;) but again, I hate throwing food away especially when I spent so much time trying to plan it so tht things will be done in time... you know sprouted at the right time, dried, etc. So how do you do roll with the flow of your life and maintain all of this!

As a side note, what are the best greens for green smoothies. I know I shouldn't lean on one kind for too long and need to mix it up. I did spinach all last week and Kale this one... what others are recommended? Also, what fruits do you like dried? So far I have done banana (fav) Kiwi (another fav) mango, papaya, and pineapple. Looking for ideas of ones that don't need much done other than slicing and putting in the dehydrator. Hmmm... think that is it for now... can't wait for my garden to kick in... what I grow will help me narrow my focus on meals a little based on what ingredients are readily available...

Is blending bad for raw food? Does it do damage to the nutrients somehow? If anyone has any information or good links with more information, I'd greatly appreciate it. Seems like everything is fairly positive regarding blending, but I'd just like a bit more info.

Thanks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8543906.stm

There's a video to accompany the article, as well, but here is the text of the article.

"Cooking is something we all take for granted but a new theory suggests that if we had not learned to cook food, not only would we still look like chimps but, like them, we would also be compelled to spend most of the day chewing.

Without cooking, an average person would have to eat around five kilos of raw food to get enough calories to survive.

The daily mountain of fruit and vegetables would mean a six-hour chewing marathon.

It is already accepted that the introduction of meat into our ancestors' diet caused their brains to grow and their intelligence to increase.

Meat - a more concentrated form of energy - not only meant bigger brains for our ancestors, but also an end to the need to devote nearly all their time to foraging to maintain energy levels.

As a consequence, more time was available for social structure to develop.

'Accident'

Harvard Professor Richard Wrangham believes there is more to it than simply discovering meat.

Australopithecus
Australopithecus was ape-like but walked upright like humans

He thinks that it is not so much a change in the ingredients of our diet, but the way in which we prepare them that has caused the radical evolution of our species.

"I think cooking is arguably the biggest increase in the quality of the diet in the whole of the history of life," he says.

"Our ancestors most probably dropped food in fire accidently. They would have found it was delicious and that set us off on a whole new direction."

To understand how and when our bodies changed, we need to take a closer look at what our ancestors ate by studying the fossil records.

Our earliest ancestor was the ape-like Australopithecus.

Australopithecus had a large belly containing a big large-intestine, essential to digest the robust plant matter, and had large, flat teeth which it used for grinding and crushing tough vegetation.

None the less, it was Australopithecus that moved out of the trees and onto the African savannah, and started to eat the animals that grazed there.

And it was this change of habitat, lifestyle and diet that also prompted major changes in anatomy.

Bigger brain

The eating of meat ties in with an evolutionary shift 2.3 million years ago resulting in a more human-looking ancestor with sharper teeth and a 30% bigger brain, called Homo habilis.

Scan of human head
The brain consumes 20% of a person's energy while sitting

The most momentous shift however, happened 1.8 million years ago when Homo erectus - our first "truly human" ancestor arrived on the scene.

Homo erectus had an even bigger brain, smaller jaws and teeth.

Erectus also had a similar body shape to us. Shorter arms and longer legs appeared, and gone was the large vegetable-processing gut, meaning that Erectus could not only walk upright, but could also run.

He was cleverer and faster, and - according to Professor Wrangham - he had learned how to cook.

"Cooking made our guts smaller," he says. "Once we cooked our food, we didn't need big guts.

"They're costly in terms of energy. Individuals that were born with small guts were able to save energy, have more babies and survive better."

Professor Peter Wheeler from Liverpool John Moores University and his colleague, Leslie Aiello, think it was this change in our digestive system that specifically allowed our brains to get larger.

Energy transfer

Cooking food breaks down its cells, meaning that our stomachs need to do less work to liberate the nutrients our bodies need.

This, says Wheeler, "freed up energy which could then be used to power a larger brain. The increase in brain-size mirrors the reduction in the size of the gut."

Significantly Wheeler and Aiello found that the reduction in the size of our digestive system was exactly the same amount that our brains grew by - 20%.

Professor Stephen Secor at the University of Alabama found that not only does cooked food release more energy, but the body uses less energy in digesting it.

He uses pythons as a model for digestion as they stay still for up to six days while digesting a meal. This makes them the perfect model as the only energy they expend is on digestion.

His research shows that pythons use 24% less energy digesting cooked meat, compared with raw.

So being human might all be down to energy.

Cooking is essentially a form of pre-digestion, which has transferred energy use from our guts to our brains."
According to Professors Wheeler and Wrangham and their colleagues, it is no coincidence that humans - the cleverest species on earth - are also the only species that cooks.

Horizon: Did Cooking Make Us Human? will be shown on Tuesday, 2 March 2010, at 2100 GMT on BBC Two. It will be available for seven days after that from the BBC iPlayer"


Thoughts?

I've been really into making raw almond milk lately, but hate tossing away the pulp, even if it's just going into my compost. anyone got any ideas/recipes for what I could do with this? it's usually got a bit of date in there too (I use 1C almonds + 2 dates, typically) and it doesn't have to be raw as I'm not. I just can't stand wasting that precious lump of almond bits, you know? it's still pretty tasty but not really something I want to eat by the bowl. so. ideas?

x-posted to cheapvegan