RAW Living and Learning

Look at my views Enjoying the beauty of the North Carolina mountains once again and it feels wonderful! Traveling is easy, if you eat raw, with just a little bit of planning. Of course packing the blender is essential so green smoothies can be enjoyed every morning.  Stocking up on fresh produce once you reach your destination is a must. I knew that this trip was going to include Storm's fantastic recipe for raw vegan collards so I made sure that I printed out the recipe. The thought of heading for the hills of North Carolina made this recipe so relevent!!! I found the most amazing organic collard greens at the local grocery store (thinking-- how could I not!!) and also some Heirloom tomatoes; not to mention sweet white onions, so well known in the South. A little pre-planning (soaking and grinding my cashews into flour at home) made this a snap to put together once we reached our destination. I enjoyed this amazing raw recipe for lunch and dinner on two diff...

The garden went in pretty easily this fall and I am hoping I can harvest some great produce. My neighbor was sweet enough to give me 4 cucumber plants (love yah!) that he started from seed. Unfortunately one of them did not survive a tropical downpour that we had a few weeks back. But the remaining three look just fine. I also planted some marigolds as a border, they remind me of my Grandma and Grandpa that are no longer with us--memories flood back each time I look at the beautiful flowers--you'll see those down below in the updated pics. I decided to plant the majority of the garden from seed. As you can see, the plants planted are tomato and peppers. And as I said the cucumbers against the fence were grown from seed, thanks Bubba!!! In the front row I planted seeds for Chinese Cabbage;  the second row is all Romaine; the third row is Collards; the fourth row is Kale. One of my cutie pies is in the backround modeling our banana trees. We have 3 hands on the trees right...

It is essential (for specific health issues) in our household that we get our EFA's in proper proportion every day. The easy way we achieve that is by loading up our morning green smoothies with them! Another way is to enjoy them in a luscious raw pudding!!  I alternate and rotate and combine two or three of the following in our daily green smothie: Nutiva White Chia seeds, Nutiva Hemp Seeds, Organic Flax Seeds, raw pumpkin seeds, raw sunflower seeds or Hemp Oil. Our goal is to get the perfect balance to reap their anti-inflammatory properties, this is essential for us. The way that most Americans eat leads to an overabundance of Omega-6 fatty acids which actually promotes inflammation in the body. The good thing is we don't eat like standard Americans so there is not much concern that we will have too many 6's but I still need to pay close attention to our intake of Omega-3's. Plant-based eaters do not have a DIRECT source of EPA and DHA in their diets so...