The Organic Climber – Vegetarian running, cycling, swimming, rock climbing and raw foods.

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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I previously posted my mixed berry and almond butter smoothie recipe – one of my all-time favorites. As I continue to blog, I have realized it’s going to be hard to come up with something for Smoothie Tuesday every week, as you might have noticed, so I decided to take this old recipe and just spice it up a bit.

I had recently seen people tweeting about using raw cacao powder in their smoothies with berries. For some reason I had always though that those combination of flavors wouldn’t taste very good, but I was wrong. After seeing fellow raw foodies tweet about it I decided to try it for myself. I simply took the smoothie recipe mentioned above and added two tablespoons of raw cacao powder.

Raw cacao is basically raw coco, or raw powdered chocolate. Cacao contains a wide array of unique properties and minerals, including high levels of sulfur and magnesium. It may increase your focus and alertness and contains nutrients to keep you happy (as stated on rawcaco.com.) Best of all though, it tastes great.

For the recipe, follow the instructions for the mixed berry and almond butter smoothie and just add two tablespoons of raw cacao powder (or more if you prefer).

Even though this recipe calls for almond butter you don’t need it for this smoothie to be tasty. You can always add more agave nectar or raw honey to give it a smoother flavor.

RAW Food, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
agave nectar, almond butter, cacao, chocolate, RAW, smoothie
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After a run last week I found I only had a half bag of mixed berries left in the freezer and needed them for my breakfast in the morning, so I decided to get creative with my recovery smoothie for that day. What I came up with was really more of a delicious chocolate pudding, and let me tell you, it puts Jello brand chocolate pudding to shame! The ingredients really sound like an odd combination, and they are! But, I really surprised myself with this recipe, I honestly didn’t think it would taste that great, the results are amazing though.

The Recipe

• 2 bananas
• 1 avocado
• 2 tbsp of honey
• 4 tbs of cacao powder
• 2 tbsp of raw tahini
• 4 tbsp of hemp seed protein
• 1.5 cups of almond milk

Combine all ingredients in a Vita-Mix blender and process until you have a nice thick, creamy consistency. The result should be a nice thick pudding like mixture that can be eaten as a pudding or drank like a smoothie. I’m not much for sitting around eating lots of pudding, so I just treat it like a nice thick smoothie and chug away.

Also, remember if you are interested in purchasing a Vita-Mix you can get free shipping by going through the links on my site.

RAW Food, Recipes, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
cacao, chocolate, pudding, RAW, recovery, smoothie
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