Hemp Milk Recipe

I think this is so much easier to make than other nut milks because you don't have to plan ahead and soak nuts. You are also getting an amazing dose of magnesium, essential fatty acids, and a fabulous array of minerals. Hemp is the shit.

Sophie taught me how to make hemp milk.

Hemp Milk

2 T hemp seeds
2 cups water
2 T lecithin
pinch of salt
1 t vanilla
sweetener to taste

Blend the hemp seeds with one cup of water until very smooth. Strain this, rinse out the blender, and pour the cup of hemp milk back in. Put the rest of the water and everything else in and blend it to combine.

That's your hemp milk. I usually double this recipe and use the milk in tea, smoothies, or sippin from the bottle.

Chia!

In addition to sprouting, I have been adding chia into my diet because of it's low cost and fab nutrient profile. This is seriously one amazing little seed and quite yummy. I can't believe it's taken me this long to get into it, as I have been reading about it's virtues for about a year now. Here are some highlights:

Chia:

• Is quick and easy to make. It takes about one to five minutes of actual work depending on how fancy you get with flavoring, and ten minutes of waiting.
• Can increase energy because it is packed with nutrients and absorbs slowly into the body.
  
• Levels out blood sugar, so you can eat it with sweet things and not get a crash. From the Chia Cheet Sheet: "Chia slows the impact of sugars on the system, if eaten together. Chia gel creates a physical barrier between carbohydrates and the digestive enzymes that break them down, which slows the conversion of carbs into sugar. That means the energy from the food is released steadily, resulting in more endurance."
• Absorbs a tremendous amount of water when it's made, and this helps with hydration and retaining electorltes.
• Helps swish out your digestive system, meaning better poops! Everyone loves pooping. From the Chia Cheat Sheet: "Chia seeds bulk up, then work like an incredible digestive broom, sweeping through your intestinal tract, helping to dislodge and eliminate old accumulated waste in the intestines. Many people find their stools also become more regular once they eat chia."
• "Chia seeds typically contain 20% protein, 34% oil, 25% dietary fiber (mostly soluble with high molecular weight), and significant levels of antioxidants (chlorogenic and caffeic acids, myricetin, quercitin, and kaempferol flavonols). The oil from chia seeds contains a very high concentration of Omega 3 fatty acid - approximately 64%." (from: www.omega-3-chia.com/chia.cfm)
• Is low calorie but high bulk.
  

Angela Stokes has created the great little Chia Cheat Sheet I referenced above. It has more information on this yummy and amazing seed.

Chia is a little black and white seed that looks like teeny weeny dinasaur eggs. To eat it, you soak it in water or some flavored liquid for ten minutes or more. The longer is soaks, the more soft it gets. Soaking the chia seeds creates a clear gel around the seed/dinosaur egg looking part, so when ready to eat they look like fish eggs or tapioca or bubble tea. It is fun watching the chia "grow".

Chia could be the raw version of beans and rice or oatmeal because it is cheap, filling, a little bit goes a long way, and it is so easy to make. I am very excited about this!

So far I have only been having sweet chia, but I am interested in some savory recipes. Surprisingly, the chia tastes really good (to me) just plain soaked in water even though there is not much flavor to it.

Here are some recipes I've been enjoying.

Vanilla Mulberry Brain Tapioca

Chia Seeds
Hemp Milk (see the recipe here)
Lecithin
Vanilla
Mulberries
Cardamom
Honey



First soak the chia in water for ten minutes or more. Then add the rest of the ingredients to taste. Sika came over for some pre dinner dessert and we had this. She said "Oh my. You've really outdone yourself."

That was very nice.

Apple Chia Super Bowl

Blend together:
apple 1 1/2
ginger 1/2 inch section
vanilla 1/4 t
honey 1.5 T
lecithin 2 t
pollen 1 t
mesquite 1T
cinnamon 1t
salt pinch
water 2 cups or so

Pour over 3 T chia seeds, leave to set. This recipe comes out bright yellow!

Also check out my Apple Cinnamon Chiameal recipe, published in another post.

Finally, I leave you with a not very amusing video about chia. This video is mostly for the "someone really spent their time making this?!" factor. It is from the site: chiabritney.com where you can buy a chia pet that looks like Britney. Umm, no thanks.



Chia Britney - The Movie - video powered by Metacafe

Sorry Britney, you got nothing on Mr. T.

Mr. T Stuff

Eating Cooked and Red Lentil and Rice Borscht Recipe

Note: This posts contains some personal thoughts about eating cooked food which may or may not interest you. The recipe is at the bottom. Feel free to skip to it.

I have been eating a bit of cooked food to save money (beans and rice, but other things too), although that's not why I started putting it back in my diet a month and a half ago. It has been an interesting experiment.


It started when I was visiting my aunt in California, and she made this beautiful vegan pot pie/shepards pie/something like that. It was the first vegan thing she'd ever made, and I was so touched by it. It didn't really seem like a big deal to eat it, so I did. I felt fine, which surprised me. I felt my senses getting a bit dulled down (that could have been the wine), but I didn't vomit or anything. It was just cooked vegetables, no flour, tofu, or grains, so I think this helped. Before this, I was eating all raw for quite a while.

I felt fabulous pretty much all the time when I ate all raw. My moods leveled out, I had tons of energy, I didn't need too much sleep (although I never got to where I was sleeping four hours a night. I think I need all that dream time), and physically my body didn't get fatigued as much and recovered from exercise rapidly. I biked everywhere carrying tons of stuff on my bike, stood for 12 hours straight, hiked, ran, all that kind of stuff, and my muscles were rarely sore.

Although I wasn't sick before I went raw, I felt like I was almost on the verge of getting a cold quite often. I felt right at the tipping point of being unwell, and emotionally, I didn't feel too great. I just knew I wasn't living at my potential, so I thought I would try this raw thing out. It worked.

I didn't start eating cooked food again because living on just raw food wasn't working for me. It was working great! I didn't even crave or miss anything (not even Thai food. Okay, actually I missed beans and rice, but that's really it).

I think this foray into cooked food it is really about experimenting. I think of this time as slipping my big toe back in the water, to compare and remember what it is like to have cooked food in my diet. I think it's about making sure I'm making the very best choice for myself, rather than just nodding along with the popular statement "cooked food is poison".

It has been very interesting to observe how my body feels after I eat things like canola oil, tofu, bread, grains, and any cooked oils. It doesn't like them. Especially with bread, my eyes and face get very puffy, and my little glands in my neck get huge. I also find if there is nothing raw, I eat till my belly is uncomfortably full and then still feel hungry. This is really a drag.

I miss the way I felt before, so I will probably stop eating cooked food again (except maybe beans and rice :). Besides, I honestly feel like you can't beat a good salad.

This is the first cooked recipe I've posted on my blog. It is yummmy! When I first made it I could hardly stop "mmming" as I ate it. It is very simple to make, uses only a few ingredients, and packs a big feel good punch in the tummy. It is great the next day. After I ate this for breakfast as left overs, I felt great and had tons of energy. I don't know if it was the beets or B&R, but it worked for me that morning.

This soup is awesome for three reasons:

• it has a great color,
• the red lentils disintegrate nicely to create a creaminess which I think is cool,
• and it is super cheap.

I have made it with both olive and coconut, and they both do different things to the soup. I like both, but might prefer the coconut because my little glands seem to like it better.

Red Lentil and Rice Borscht:

one onion
2 T oil (olive or coconut)
two beets, with beet greens
1/2 to 1 c red lentils
1/2 rice
water
salt
caraway
miso

Slice the onion. I like half rings. Cook the onion in the oil at the bottom of the pan. Add some salt and caraway seeds, and stir it around until the onion wilts. Then add the beans and stir those until they are coated in onion and oil juice. Add as much water as you want, around 6 cups or so, and cook the beans and rice until they are soft. Half way to three quarters through the cooking time, add chopped beet root, but leave the greens and stems out. Once the rice is cooked, turn the burner off and add the beet greens and stems.

I served this with a spoonful of miso in each bowl. This way the soup is cooled enough so the good bacteria in the miso don't get killed.

The New Oatmeal

Cinnamon Apple Chiameal

There are three parts to this meal, so it looks complicated, but it's really not. You can make this in about the same amount of time as real cooked oatmeal, if you have hemp milks already made (milks is so much more fun to say than milk singular).

If you don't have the hemp milk, then you can make this in the same amount of time as it would take you to make cooked oatmeal and milk a cow (or hempseed).



If you don't have hemp milk you can leave it out and it is still yummy.

Here are the directions:

• First, make the AppleSauceyLiquid in a blender.
• Pour this over 2 tablespoons of chia in a bowl.
• Put it in the fridge and let it sit for about ten minutes to overnight if possible. The longer it sits, the softer and more oatmealish it gets.
• Deck it out with flava.

When you eat it in the morning, pour that hemp milks right over it and stir. Then get ready for a big day on the farm.


AppleSauceyLiquid

Basic:
one apple
cinnamon
ginger
lemon
vanilla
pinch of salt (optional)
1/2 cup water or so

Optional Additionals:
honey or agave (try it without this, you might be surprised)
lecithin
mesquite
green powder like VitaMineral Greens or Greener Grasses
cardamom

Hemp Milks

2 T hemp seeds
2 cups water
2 T lecithin
pinch of salt
1 t vanilla
sweetener to taste

Blend the hemp seeds with one cup of water until very smooth. Strain this, rinse out the blender, and pour the cup of hemp milk back in. Put the rest of the water and everything else in and blend it to combine.

That's your hemp milks. I usually double this recipe and use the milk in tea, smoothies, or sippin from the bottle.

I think this is so much easier to make than other nut milks because you don't have to plan ahead and soak nuts. You are also getting an amazing dose of magnesium, essential fatty acids, and an array of minerals. Hemp is the shit.