Making Kale and Okra Chips

Dehydrated foods are still considered raw as the dehydration process does not kill the living properties of the food. And they taste wonderful. I have always been a big snacker and like to keep kale chips and dehydrated crackers on hand. Helps keep me from reaching for the bad things. They are more filling and don't cause the bad cravings that eating other snack foods do.

There are many ways to make kale chips and many recipes. This just happens to be one I like.

Dino Kale

I am not sure I even knew the word kale before I began adding raw foods to my diet. I usually use curly kale but this looked rally good in the organic produce section of Whole Foods. Kale is great in salads and absorbs toxins in the body. I am sure the best way to eat it is just like it is but today these lovely leaves are getting coated in a tasty sauce and going in the dehydrator.

I love the way water droplets look on the kale - like crystals. Prettier in person than in this picture. Some of the fun in preparing raw food recipes is taking time to notice the color, smell, texture and nice surprises like the way water looks on kale when washing it.

Remove the stems from kale because they are tough and can get very sharp when dehydrated and can hurt to eat it. I put the stems aside and will juice them later.

Fresh Organic Okra - sooooo good! 

I confess, I ate a few of these while I was preparing the kale. I am not doing a thing to these - just throwing some of them on the dehydrator and keeping some out for salad later.

I found these raw cashews at Farmers Market. I soaked them and let them dry out a bit. Nuts and seeds have enzyme inhibitors and you need to soak them. This starts the germination process and makes them much better for you. Do some research before preparing nuts and seeds. It is fun to find out more about the food we put in our body and it is important to find out the proper way to prepare food in order to get the most benefit for our bodies. Cashews can get slimy if soaked too long and can taste nasty if dried too long. A lot of this is trial and error. These taste amazing so I must have done it right.

If you don't tolerate nuts well or are allergic you can substitute raw zucchini. I rarely use nuts and seeds in my foods but on occasion they are a nice and filling treat. I typically make this recipe with raw zucchini instead of cashews. I have found that zucchini can be a good base for a lot of dips and fillings in raw food dishes. They are bland so they take on the flavors of the food and add good texture. They are good for you and not that expensive when buying organic.

Put the cashews in a food processor until they are chopped fine - I used about a cup. I don't really measure anything and just add ingredients until it looks and tastes good.

One medium size red bell pepper - add to the cashews and blend until smooth. You may need to add a bit of filtered or spring water to the mix.

I add about a tablespoon of Nutritional Yeast - it has a cheesy taste.

Now add other ingredients:

Finely chopped onion

Garlic

Chipotle Seasoning - taste as you add as this can get a bit spicy

1/2 lemon - juice only

Himalayan Sea Salt - great mineral properties

And anything else you would like.

Remember to taste test as you go but try not to eat it all before you put it on the kale.

This is what I ended up with and I scooped some out for dipping veggies later.

Now mix it into your kale (by hand works best) - when it looks really messy it is ready to be placed on the dehydrator trays.

Make a lot because they will shrink quite a bit.

I added okra to the top tray.

This will take quite a while in my dehydrator because it is old. Time varies depending on your dehydrator and if you don't have one you can make these in the oven. Just put them on a cookie sheet and set the oven on 150 or lowest setting. Time will depend on your oven. I have never made them this way so you will need to do some research to find out how long to bake them. They are not exactly raw when oven baked but still way better for you than a bag of potato chips and they'll taste great no matter how you make them. When they are nice and crisp they are done.

Here they are!

Some chips will be ready before others so make sure you check them as they are dehydrating. This is the first batch to come out of the dehydrator and they are so good and perfectly crisp.

If you have a kale chip recipe you would like to share, I would love to hear about it.

Kombucha

2 Gallons of Refreshing Kombucha ready for bottling

Stress and bad eating can take its toll on the digestive tract and you can end up with all kinds of issues - need I say more? Being determined to be free from stomach issues I began looking into probiotics last year and found a few brands that sounded good in capsule form, purchased them and took them faithfully. They did nothing for me. So, one night while surfing You Tube I stumbled onto someone's Kombucha video (can't remember who it was) and it sounded interesting so thought I would look into it further. I purchased a bootle of GT Dave's Original Kombucha and gave it a try and it was interesting but not a flavor I fell in love with immediately. I tried other flavors and brands but kept going back to GT's Original, but at $3.49 a bottle it gets a bit expensive if you want to drink it every day. So, I decided to make my own.

I have been bottling my own Kombucha for several months now and I drink it every day. The naturally occurring probiotics works for me and as a super bonus it helps curb my appetite. If I am having an afternoon sugary/starchy craving I drink about 8 oz. of Kombucha and cravings are gone.

Scoby

Kombucha is a fermented tea. It is made with a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast called a Scoby or Mushroom. I am not going to go into all the details about what Kombucha is because there are many sites and You Tube videos that will give you all the details. Before I started making my own I did my research here at Kombucha Kamp as well as many other sites and watched a lot of videos.

Better view of Scoby - are you creeped out yet? :o)

A new Scoby grows at the top of the older one (older scoby is called the mother) and can be removed and used to start a new batch. They last for a long time if you take care in preparing your Kombucha Tea.

Before bottling the Scoby gets moved to another container and Kombucha is added to cover the Scoby. This is the starter for the next batch.

After getting your starter ready it is time to bottle the rest. Kombucha is naturally carbonated but the carbonation can be increased by leaving the capped bottles sitting out for about 24 hours before refrigerating. You have to be careful and I suggest putting them in a box and releasing a bit of the pressure every few hours or they can explode. I find that there is enough carbonation and not worth the mess and danger of flying glass.

I make my Kombucha by boiling a pot of water (medium size pot and filtered or spring water). After the water comes to a boil I add a cup of raw sugar (fair trade certified organic sugar) per gallon of tea being made and stir until disolved. Then the pot is removed from the heat and 5 green tea bags + 2 black tea bags (English Breakfast) are added. I let the tea bags steep for 10 minutes and then remove them. Add filtered or spring water to your container and add the tea but leave enough room for the Scoby and starter liquid. Let cool to room temperature before adding your Scoby or you will kill the bacteria. When cool you can add the Scoby and the starter liquid. Cover with a cloth and rubber band - t-shirt material works great or paper towel is fine - Kombucha needs to breathe. Don't use anything with a loose weave or you'll get fruit flies. Sit your container in a dark warm place. The top of the refrigerator is a good spot and you can wrap a dish towel around the container to keep the light out. Check it in about 5 days by inserting a straw underneath the Scoby and taking a sip. If not ready check daily until it is. It shouldn't be too sweet or too tart. It takes 5-7 days in warm weather and can take up to 2 weeks in winter.

Kombucha has very little sugar or caffeine because the bacteria in the Scoby eats it. You can purchase strips to test the PH balance when you first start making Kombucha (just search for Kombucha PH test strips), but after a while you will know when it is perfect just by tasting. If made correctly it helps to alkalize the body and is a great source of probiotics. Due to the fermentation process it can have a small alcohol content.

Scobys are pretty easy to get. If you have a friend who brews Kombucha, just ask them for one. You can also purchase one from a reputable online shop. I have even seen them on Etsy.

Happy brewing!

Getting Back on Track!

YUM!

Don't these Mangos look amazing? They are so good. Had to do some shopping yesterday and found these at Central Market. I couldn't even wait to unpack the groceries before eating a couple of them. Slurp! :o)

I started juicing and eating a raw food diet (about 80% raw) in February of this year. I have had many health issues over the past several years with lots of pain, fatigue, joint swelling, knots in/near my joints that made moving them excruciating, mental fog and just plain feeling old. I had gained weight due to lack of activity and that just made things worse. I would go to doctors and they would all send me off with a Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue diagnosis and a prescription for some medicine that made me feel worse, not better. I lived on pain meds and ended up with a horrible ulcer (not sure if pain pills contributed but probably didn't help).

I will be 48 next month and can see the big 5 0 racing towards me. I want to be 50 and fabulously healthy, not 50 and old. I want to do the things I love, bicycling, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, gardening and anything else I want to do. And I want to do those things well into my senior years. I want a clear, sharp mind and to look as young as possible for as long as possible. And frankly, for the last few years I have just felt old.

At the end of last year I decided enough was enough and started looking at alternative ways of healing the body. Stress is a big one and that was the first one I decided to eliminate. My job was very high stress and long hours so I decided to make some changes there. I was a real estate agent and had an art business on the side which I loved. So, as of January of this year I left real estate and started doing art full time. I still have stress on occasion but it is more in the normal range and manageable.

I researched everything I could find on living a healthy lifestyle and at the end of January I found the raw food diet (more of a way of life than a diet). I ordered a juicer and started figuring out what works for me and things started changing very fast. Most of my meals were raw vegetarian (about 80% raw). I lost 28 pounds in 3.5 months, my skin looked better than it had in ages, I had energy, very little pain and almost no swelling in my joints, my mind was sharp and clear, I was working outside in the yard and found my heat tolerance was better. I was doing things I hadn't done in a long time and it felt great. So many wonderful changes.

(Me on the left. My partner, Carsen, in the middle and right photos. Taken at White Rock Lake in Dallas, TX)

The pictures above were taken in mid June and we had a blast. This year we learned that we love canoeing and kayaking (mostly kayaking). This is not something I would have been doing last summer. It feels so good to have energy and to be almost pain free! You think I would never go back to my old ways of eating, but...

I did fall back into my old habits - not all of them, but enough to start reversing the progress I had made. For about a month now I have been slowly going back to my old ways of eating and I am feeling it. All the old problems are returning - not all the way but soon I will be back to where I was if I don't make some changes NOW! Big wakeup call. I actually love my new habits and it makes no sense why I would let them go. Maybe subconsciously I wanted to see if my old habits were really responsible for my health issues. Guess I got my answer.

Time to get back on track!

Breville Juice Fountain Compact

The picture above is the juicer I own right now and I have been using it since mid February. I purchased this one because it was the cheapest of the Breville juicers and I didn't know if I would stick with this or not (really figured I would not do this more than a couple of weeks). It is a great juicer if you use it occasionally. My partner and I use this daily and we juice a couple times a day. The waste container fills up way too fast and has to be cleaned out before you can continue juicing. And it has one speed so harder vegetables and fruits need to go through again (messy) in order to get the most out of them (and you want to get the most out of them because organic produce is a bit pricey). Cleaning out the waste container is pretty messy. The juice it makes is great though so no complaints there. Last week I ordered the Breville Juice Fountain Elite and can't wait for it to arrive.

My daily juice is usually pretty green and consists of (all organic) kale, chard, cucumber, zucchini, celery, spinach, 1/2 small lemon and fresh ginger. Today I really wanted something sweet for breakfast so this is what I had:

Red curly kale, carrots, beet, strawberries, celery, chard, green apple, 1/4 lemon, and it made 12 oz. of the best juice. Isn't it a pretty red? I wanted more because it tasted so good - should have made a quart. Perfect juice for such a hot day and it was very satisfying. I drank this hours ago and am still running on the energy boost.

There is always waste after juicing and I hate to throw it in the trash. This will go into my compost bin later today. Sometimes I mix other ingredients and spices with the pulp (depending on what I juice) and put it in my dehydrator to make crackers.

It feels good to get back into healthy eating again. I expect a few detox symptoms but hopefully they won't be too bad. In a week or so I will be feeling better than ever. Just the extra energy I have today is a huge improvement.

I would love to hear your juicing recipes and stories of what you do to keep healthy.