The Organic Climber – Blogging about climbing, RAW foods, vegetarianism, running and cycling.

This is another one of my accidental creations that came out pretty good. I’ve also been on a chocolate kick lately as well. I may start using cacao even more now that I found out it contains theobromine, which is an alkaloid that has compounds similar to caffeine. It is known for releasing a serotonin that produces a euphoric sense of well being. I found this about after a friend of mine made the raw peanut butter cup smoothie and told me the caffeine in the cacao gave him a buzz. I knew cacao didn’t have caffeine, so I had to find out what it was giving him the euphoric feeling.

Cacao also stimulates the heart more than the nervous system as with caffeine. This could be part of why my raw shot bloks were successful, but I’m not scientist. I may find myself consuming even more cacao now in the mornings so that I’m less tempted to stop at Starbucks and pick up a coffee. Anyway, enough of my healthy hippie rants about super foods….

The Recipe

• 1/2 avocado
• 1 huge hand-full of spinach
• 1 banana
• 2 TBSP of raw honey or agave nectar
• 2 TBSP of cacao powder
• 1 cup of rice milk (or your choice of nut milk)

Directions: Blend and enjoy

If you have never used cacao before and are interested in purchasing some there are a number of places you can buy it online. The best place I have found is Lucky Vitamin. It had to be back ordered, but for the price I paid, it was well worth it. Navitas Naturals is the brand I have found I like the best, and I have tried about three different brands.

RAW Food, Recipes, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
avocado, cacao, caffeine, chocolate, navitas naturals, RAW, serotonin, theobromine
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One of my favorite raw foods is avocados, these creamy fruits are great as a snack with a bit of sea salt, in a salad, on a raw taco or a raw sandwich in this case. The thick creamy texture of this amazing fruit makes them ideal for sandwiches in my opinion.  Avocados are a staple food in my raw diet, along with nuts, they are one of my main sources of healthy fats. They are also a great source of calories. One medium sized avocado packs in 276 calories. I almost always have whole avocado in my salad every day.

Making this raw avocado sandwich is simple, and requires very little time to make. Although, not truly raw, for this recipe I use Ezekiel sprouted grain buns. Made from organically grown grains, these buns are cooked at low temperatures (higher than required to preserve enzymes) and are healthier than any of your typical store bough buns.

The Recipe

• 1 Ezekiel sprouted grain bun
• 1 roma tomato, cut into slices length wise
• 1 small avocado, cut into slices
• 1 slice of onion
• stone ground mustard

The Directions

Pile all the above ingredients onto your Ezekiel bun and spread the desired amount of stone ground mustard on the bun. Eat, and enjoy. If you want to make this meal 100% raw you can substitute the Ezekiel bread for a romaine lettuce leaf or any number of raw bread recipes.

As a side I had some of the flax seed crackers I made the other day. It was a nice filling meal.

RAW Food, Recipes by OrganicClimber
avocado, ezekiel, flax crackers, raw avocado sandwich, roma tomato, spinach, sprouted grain bread, stone ground mustard
6 comments

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This smoothie was pretty much an accident, but a good one if you ask me. Sunday afternoon I was making some Kale Chips, and as I was tearing off the leaves I kept having small pieces that were to small to make chips out of, so I would just toss them in my blender which was right in front of me, after all was said and done I had a small hand full of kale greens in the bottom of my blender.

After that I decided to make my salad for the next day and had a fuji apple I sliced up to put in the salad, but an entire apple was going to be too much for the salad, so I tossed about a 1/2 – 3/4 of the apple into the blender as well. In addition to the apple I tossed in 1/2 an avocado as well. At this point I thought I had something pretty good going, so I continued adding ingredients to the blender. When all was said and done I had added 4 TBSP of honey, 2 bananas and a cup of almond milk.

The finished smoothie originally only had one banana but the taste of the kale was still very strong, so I added one more to smooth things out a bit, for those of you that like a strong “greens” taste to your smoothie you may consider not adding the extra banana, but even with two bananas the smoothie still had a bit of a “green” taste to it, but not overwhelmingly so. Just perfect in my book.

The final recipe:

• 1/2 – 3/4 of a fuji apple chopped

• 1/2 an avocado

• 2 bananas

• 1 small hand full of kale

• 4 TBSP of honey

• 1 cup of almond milk

Place all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth

Nutritional Benefits: Kale is one of the most nutrient rich greens you can eat. It contains almost all of your daily requirement of vitamin C, it also provides loads of vitamin A and K, it is also high in fiber as well. Additionally kale contains phytonutrients, which help increase enzymes in the body that ward off harmful carcinogens. The plant is also rich in calcium, lutein (which helps improve eye sight) and iron.

I love discovering new smoothies on accident. I will likely be making this one a lot more since I don’t really care for the taste of kale by itself.
Even though the University of North Texas Mean Green lost Saturday night I still decided to name this smoothie after them; I think they will end up having a decent season.

Health & Fitness, RAW Food, Recipes, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
almond milk, apple, avocado, banana, calcium, enzymes, green, kale, lutein, mean green, nutrition, RAW, smoothie, smothy, vitamin
3 comments

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