EAT MORE FRUIT!

A very, very, berry good dessert.

This calls for surinam cherries and mulberries, which we have on the property, but I realize that not everyone has access to them. So, although the surinam cherries really make the dish, you can substitute any blend of berries or acidic fruits. Be creative! Let me know how your different concoctions turn out!

Serves about three saucy people

Coconut Crepe:

3-4 coconuts’ worth of young meat

Coconut water, as desired

Berry Sauce:

1 mango

A cup or so of your favorite berries

Blend the coconut meat, slowly adding in the water until you get a nice consistency (not too watery, but thick enough that you get a nice, thickish layer when spreading). Pour the mixture onto dehydrator sheets, making sure to not spread it too thin. Keep in mind that it is going to dehydrate; we want these to be paper-thin when they’re done. Dehydrate at 110 degrees (or thereabouts; you can adjust the time if you’d like to keep it at a lower temperature) until dry, probably about six or seven hours.

Blend the sauce ingredients, but save a small portion of the mango and a few berries to mix into the sauce.

If your crepe turned out right, you should be able to scrape it off the sheet in one piece. Mine didn’t do that, so I decided to fold it on the bottom, like a cake layer. But if you did it right, you should be able to assemble it like a crepe or a samosa-type fold. Use any remaining sauce to drizzle prettily over the top. Garnish with mangoes and berries, if you’re like me, or mint if you’re a better dehydrator-er.

A raw Pad Thai that’ll knock your socks off!

I hate almond butter. I don’t like nuts in general, as they tend to close my throat up and feel too heavy to me. That being said, this is fricking delicious. It’s sweet, yet savory. Exotic. And so good I literally licked the plate when I was done.

Serves two - three

3/4 cup of almond butter

1/2 cup of coconut water

1/2 lemon, juiced

1t-1T ginger

1 clove of garlic OR 5-6 garlic chives

Your favorite kind of raw noodles

Some chopped veggies (green beans, tomatoes, peppers, peas, etc.)

Blend everything together and pour over noodles and chopped veggies. Pretty easy. I used carrot and yellow squash noodles, since we didn’t have any zucchini or cucumbers left, and it turned out fantastic. Kelp noodles would also be good, as they’d soak up the flavor of the sauce.

I mentioned some seaweed soak water that works in this - add two or three tablespoons - in place of nama shoyu (what most raw Pad Thai recipes call for) but it’s not necessary.

You can adjust the coconut water based on how thick you want it to be. As it is, it worked well to coat everything, but was a bit thin. That’s fine by me, since it’s so fatty, but others might prefer it thicker.

Lemongrassy deliciousness in a soup.

So, I’m back in Hawaii. There’s not a lot in season at the moment, but we have craploads of lemongrass, so this awesome soup came into being. It tastes so complex and…well, not raw. And it has no fat. Bring it on, I say!

Serves two as a starter

4 cups of coconut water

1-2T lemongrass shoots

1/4 cup of your favorite seaweed

4-5 Keffir lime leaves (or a bit of lime juice)

1t-1T ginger (optional)

1/2 lemon, juiced

2T cilantro

Two or three cups of your favorite chopped veggies

Put the seaweed in half a cup of water and soak for about fifteen to twenty minutes. Then, blend a cup of coconut water with the lemongrass, lime leaves, ginger, and lemon juice. Strain that mixture and blend with the remaining coconut water and cilantro. Mix in the veggies, and you’re done!

For the veggies, I used shredded carrot, Chinese cabbage, diced zucchini, Bell pepper, and some mushrooms, but you can use whatever turns you on. The broth is the important part.

Unbelievably easy applesauce.

This recipe was borne out of part of an apple pie recipe I made recently. It is so good and so like conventional applesauce it’s crazy. And it’s just two (or three) ingredients!

Makes a sizable portion for one

4 apples, chopped into large-ish pieces

10-15 dates

Cinnamon to taste (optional)

Blend until applesauce-y consistency. Seriously, it’s that easy.

The truth about tahini.

For those of you who are unaware, tahini is a sesame seed paste most commonly used in its roasted form to make hummus. In its raw form, it’s milder, and is used for everything from salad dressings to raw mayonnaise and back. It’s generally praised for its high nutritional content and, well, deliciousness. But what’s really going on here?

First, the good stuff. Tahini has high amounts of multiple B vitamins (1, 2, 3, 5, and 15). These are important because they promote healthy cells, speed metabolism, help out your immune system, and generally do a lot of good things (including preventing pancreatic cancer, according to a scientific study). It also has 35% of your RDA for calcium. I don’t need to tell you why calcium is important - especially for us girls. It also makes an addictive salad dressing.

Which brings me to the however part. It has a similar macronutrient profile to an almond (17-12-71, carb-protein-fat), and contains 7.2 grams of fat to every tablespoon. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but consider this: avocado has 2.3. Looking a bit high now, isn’t it? So it needs to be eaten in moderation on a low-fat diet. But that’s not the worst part: it swells in your body. I have experience with this. In three months, doing nothing differently diet-wise but adding about two tablespoons of tahini to my salad every day, I gained seven pounds. Keeping in mind that I hadn’t gained a single pound since I began eating raw foods last January - and had lost over twenty pounds - it’s a real bummer to have gained nearly half of that back. And over such a simple thing. Now, granted, I’d stopped running regularly, but for a three-month stretch, my exercising was sporadic at best, and my weight didn’t fluctuate in any way.

Not looking so innocent now, are you?

I’ve been off tahini for about two weeks now. We’ll see how it goes. But let this be a warning to you all: moderation, moderation, moderation. If you’re going to eat tahini, let it be sparingly and in small amounts. The LFRV diet calls for you to eat fruit - do so, and you’ll be much happier.

wildchildone asked: love your blog! Which Island do you live on. I lived on an organic farm in Maui and am moving to Oahu in five months :) thanks for sharing your story!

Thanks! I’m really glad to hear that. I live on the Big Island, south of Hilo. :)

Why mono-meals?

Mono-meals are an important aspect of a low-fat raw vegan’s diet. That’s not to say that we’ll make something fancier sometimes, but the majority of the time, we try to eat one thing at a time. So why would we do this? I mean, it seems so boring, right?

Maybe so, if you’re used to eating more complex meals, but once you’ve gotten into mono-meals, you start to realize the beauty of them. You actually get to taste your food. It’s not masked or diminished by other flavors. If you eat mangoes, you get to enjoy them in all their glory.

Who’d want to mask these babies?

In addition to taste appreciation, there’s also the digestive aspect. Think about it: instead of having to process five to ten ingredients (or more) that might digest at different speeds, you just have to worry about one.

But, at the root of it, it’s just the natural thing to do. Name one animal that combines two or three foods in a single sitting. If you were an ape in the wild and came across a fig tree, it makes sense that you would sit in that fig tree until you were full; who knows when your next meal would be? You certainly wouldn’t want to go searching for something else on a half-full belly. We don’t have to worry about those kinds of problems now, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t be giving our bodies exactly what they want: simple, high-carb meals.

What’s your take on mono-meals? Yay or nay?

B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

For us low-fat raw vegans, bananas are a staple food, much like pasta or bread in a standard diet. I personally eat, on average, two 7-8 cup smoothies a day when I’m in Pittsburgh, or three-four hands when I’m in Hawaii. One of my cats is named Musa. So what’s the dealio? Why is a tropical fruit the most popular food in America?

What’s so special about you?

Well, to get a fuller story, I highly recommend you read this book. But I’ll let you in on a few facts about the banana:

• Not that you’d know it by looking at it, but the banana is actually a berry. Yes, it’s grouped with other oddities like avocados and watermelons in addition to cranberries and grapes. The botanical definition of a berry is “a simple fruit having seeds and pulp produced from a single ovary”. This being the case, pumpkins are considered berries while strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and the like are not. Weird?
• The banana plant is a type of grass, not a tree. It shoots off offspring via its roots. In fact, the fruit is entirely unnecessary for reproduction.
• Some people say that it was a banana that Adam and Eve supposedly consumed in Eden, not an apple. The banana’s leaves make much better clothes, if you think about it.
• For a while there was a rumor that bananas had a lot of fat. This is utterly ridiculous. Four percent of a banana’s calories come from fat. Compared to, say, an egg (64%) or “extra lean” beef (60%) it doesn’t seem so bad, does it?
• Most likely the banana you’re familiar with is the Cavendish. Let me tell you now: you’re getting the short end of the stick. I haven’t had the opportunity to try many varieties (if you’re up to it, there’s a seemingly infinite amount) but I have had apple bananas, ice cream bananas, quad bananas, ladyfingers, and Williams, just to name a few. Apple bananas are my favorite, and if you’re ever in Hawaii, I highly recommend you get some.
• In parts of Africa, people rely on bananas to stay alive the way people in China used to rely on rice, or Europeans relied on wheat.
• When monkeys eat too many unripe bananas, their eyes and tongue turn green. Eat ripe food!
• Mosquitoes are more apt to bite you if you’ve recently eaten bananas. Maybe this explains my legs the first time I went to Hawaii. (It’s since cleared up a lot, but that’s not to say they don’t still love me.)

Nom nom nom.

So, what about you? Are you bananas for bananas?