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

Wow, busy has been the name of the game lately. I have been out of town quite a bit lately, and this week has been full of all day trainings at work and will continue on through Friday. I have even fallen behind on my training for the White Rock Half Marathon. I was planning on running this evening, but due to the all day training I had to stay at work a couple hours late to get some actual work done. However, despite the craziness I managed to create a smoothie for you just before heading out to climb in Arkansas this past weekend.

Today, I bring you Pomegranate Blast! This smoothie is 100% fruit, no greens, no protein powder, agave nectar or nut butter. Greens are always optional though, they won’t subtract too much from the flavor.

The Recipe

• 1 pomegranate (seeds and juice from)

• 1/3 cup of raspberries

• 1/3 cup of strawberries

• 1 banana

Instructions: Combine all ingredients in to your blender and blend! A high-speed blender such as a Vita-Mix works best, as it will pulverize more of the pom seeds.

Also, on another note I will have a couple photos posted soon from last weekends trip to Arkansas. I hope to make that a promise, especially seeing how I only posted once in this past week. Even though this week is looking very busy I hop to get a post up by Thursday at the latest.

RAW Food, Smoothie Tuesday by OrganicClimber
fruit, pom, pomegranite, rasberries, RAW, smoothie, strawberries
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One of my favorite fruits is the mango, especially ripe juicy ones. One problem I have though is that often times I can be lazy and not want to mess with deseeding a mango just to eat a snack. I also frequently crave these when on climbing trips, but they are often quite messy and would certainly be a pain to deseed while out on the trail or even while car camping for that matter. So I decided to dehydrate this tasty fruit after tasting a store bought version.  Mine of course are cheaper, taste better and have zero preservatives or artificial ingredients. I would most definitely say this is the beef jerky of fruit. Anyway, without further or do here are the directions on how to dehydrate mangoes.

First grab two to three ripe juicy mangoes.
Step two, deseed those bad boys. See Image below.

To deseed a mango hold the mango vertically and find the “knot” at the top of the mango. Take your knife and move a bit to the side and then slice all the way down. You may have to maneuver around the seed a bit as they are never exactly in the middle. After this, repeat on the other side. Also, it will be worth your time to remove excess mango flesh from the seed to throw into the dehydrator with your slices. No need to waste.

Third, skin the mango. You will notice from the picture I skinned the mango after deseeding. I have since discovered it is much easier to skin the mangoe FIRST, then deseed. However, if you wish to leave some skin on your dehydrated mangoes you will want to skin them after you deseed. In this case I was leaving the skin on several of them so this would be the best method. Although the skins are harder to eat, especially dehydrated, they contain lots of nutrients.

After skinning the mango, cut into evenly sized slices and line them on a mesh dehydrator sheet. I believe one mango makes about a tray of evenly spaced mango slices if using the Nine tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator.

After placing the mangoes on the dehydrator trays, insert them into the dehydrator and dehydrate at 115 degrees for about 24 hours.

The finished product will have a nice leathery texture but still have somewhat of a moist feel to them. You don’t want to turn these into chips, so be careful not to dehydrate for too long. I also recommend about 1/4 inche slices, but feel free to experiment and find out what you like best. But remember the thicker the slice the longer you will have to dehydrate.

For those that don’t have a food dehydrator I highly recommend the investment, especially if you are the outdoors type and spend lots of money on things like granola, nuts, seeds and things like Power Bars and Cliff Bars. With these bad boys you can make your own homemade version for a fraction of the cost, and you have fun doing it in the process. It’s also much more gratifying to eat something you made yourself.

They dehydrator I used and recommend is the Excalibur. They have a 4, 5 and 9 tray model. I rarely use all 9 trays, but when I do need that extra space I am glad I have it. The size of the trays also are different on each model, so that is something else to consider as well when looking to purchase a dehydrator. I would also suggest staying away from the circular dehydrators that are stacked. The downside to these is your drying temperatures are not even at each level, you have to rotate your trays throughout drying times. With the Excalibur you get consistent drying temperatures on every tray.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions about dehydrators or anything else I post about for that matter.

Peace…

Climbing, Health & Fitness, RAW Food, Recipes by OrganicClimber
dehydrated, dehydrator, dried, Excalibur, foood, fruit, mango, mangoes, RAW, vegan, yummy
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My apologies from neglecting the blog this past week. I was in a car accident earlier this week. I was rear ended on the highway while sitting at a stand still in traffic. The guy behind me must not have been paying attention and plowed into my little Toyota Matrix at about 50+ MPH (he was driving a giant Dodge truck with a humongous brush guard). That is just my guess at how fast he was going, but with the damage it did to my car it had to be at least that fast. My body is still recovering from the accident. My back, neck and right shoulder are still very sore. Hopefully more rest and a couple additonal trips to the Chiropractor will fix me up.  So, this past week has been spent recovering and shopping for a new car since mine will likely be totaled out.

Anyway, I got the idea for this post partly because of the accident. I have been spending so much time resting and shopping for cars online I have gotten lazy and didn’t make my daily salad a couple of times this week. One of those days I decided to stop at Kroger on the way into work and pick up some fruit to eat for lunch. During my visit I remembered Lara Bars were available there, so I picked up a couple of those as well. For $6 I was able to get two Lara Bars and a tropical mix fruit cup, which was very tasty. The Lara Bars provided the boost of calories needed to make it a substantial meal.

I was quite thrilled that I could walk into Kroger and provide myself with delicious RAW foods without breaking the bank. Had I gone to Urban Eatz, as I usually do when I forget to pack my lunch, I would have spent $8 on a large salad that isn’t totally RAW. The only down side to the food purchased at Kroger is that none of it was organic. It’s kind of a shame that Lara Bars are not organic, but if they were they would definitely cost more. I am just going to have to start making more on my own to bring on days I am feeling lazy and don’t want to make a salad.

I will definitely bee keeping this in mind for my trips to Colorado this summer. Rather than eating greasy fast food I can just swing into a Kroger (or just about any other grocery store) and pick up up a pre-packaged fruit cup and a Lara Bar. It will be even better if I could find a Whole Foods, they are more likely have an organic option on the fruit cups.

Case in point, living a RAW food lifestyle (or increasing your RAW food intake) is not quite as hard as some people make it out to be. Granted I will never be eating a 100% RAW diet, it is pretty easy to maintain a high RAW diet without putting tons of effort into preparing elaborate meals that take hours to prepare. Those meals have their place, but I believe it’s important to keep it simple.

As far as my car shopping goes, I think I have pretty much settled on the Subaru Outback. It’s not offical yet, but it is most likely going to be the car I end up getting. Once I make a final purchse thought I will post about it, because my lifestlye as a climber has a huge impact on my purchase. It’s crazy how much life decesions revolve around climbing.

p.s.  Sorry for the crappy picture. It was taken with my iPhone. I did not have my real camera with me at the time.

Climbing, RAW Food by OrganicClimber
Climbing, easy, food, fruit, LaraBars, lifestyle, meal, RAW
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As a rock climber I spend long days outdoors hiking around and exerting large amounts of energy scaling up rock faces. This requires a lot of energy, so when I am out climbing I want to eat a diet that will allow me to perform my best. I believe this is best accomplished through a RAW food diet. The days I am at the crag at least 2/3 of the days food intake comes from RAW foods.

Most of my RAW food intake is through fruits. Typically I will carry with me: 3-4 bananas, 2-3 apples and an orange.  The reasoning for the high fruit intake is that fruit (as well as vegetables) is easily and quickly digestible, thus providing me more energy for climbing. The fruit provides energy in the form of glucose, which the body turns into energy by using oxygen.  Fruits also contain lots of water, and we all know drinking lots of water is essential to the human body and even more important for an athlete during performance days.

Protein is also essential for energy, as well as muscle recovery. On crag (climbing) days I consumer most of my protein through nuts and seeds, or the occasional smoothie with hemp seed protein added in that I blended up the day before.  Nuts and seeds are high in protein and an essential part of a RAW food diet. Just don’t overdo it, as they are high in fat.  I will usually pack a home made trail mix with me consisting of cashews, almonds and raisins. Sometimes I even throw in pumpkin or sunflower seeds as well.  My Buckwheat Treats also contain a lot of seeds and are high in protein and I usually have these with me as well.

A new snack I have recently started bringing with me on climbing trips are Chocolate Chia Seed Crackers. Chia seeds are magical little seeds that are extremely nutritious and have tons of health benefits. One of their major advantages is that they slow down the breakdown of glucose, thus making the release of energy last longer when eaten with fruit.  I often sprinkle chia seeds in my fruit salads for this reason. These tiny little seeds also pack tons of protein.

One of the major advantages in my opinion of the high RAW diet on climbing trips is that it affords me more time to climb. There is never a long stop down for lunch because I am always eating throughout the day between climbs. I do however occasionally have to wait on climbing partners but can usually find others to climb with while they stuff their face with foods that will begin slowing them down later in the day.

In the past I would feast on gummy bears, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or turkey sandwiches and all sorts of other random junk. Sometimes I would even forgo eating altogether.  But now that I am smart about what I eat I find I not only perform better while climbing, but I enjoy it more too.

Here is what a typical daily meal looks like for me when on weekend climbing trips.

Breakfast – A smoothie I prepared the evening before, sprouted grain cereal (not truly RAW, but still very healthy) toped with agave nectar, bananas, raisins and hemp seed milk or almond milk. Since the smoothies won’t keep very long I have started to dehydrate them into a giant fruit rollup. I will have this for breakfast on the second day. Unfortunately they don’t taste that well dehydrated because of the hemp seed and veggie powder mixture I put in them.
Lunch – Don’t really have “lunch” but I snack on lots of things throughout the day, nuts, seeds, fruits, etc.
Dinner – This becomes tricky. I usually pack a mixed green salad with fruits, but often end up going into town to eat with the crew. Most of the people I climb with rarely stay in camp to eat so I often compromise this meal. This is not ideal for me, but I am a very social individual and refuse to compromise friendship over food.

So next time you are out climbing, backpacking, biking, swimming or running try eating for energy. Eat lots of fruits and veggies that are easy to digest. I promise, you will enjoy a real boost of energy.  When I first started eating RAW foods I almost immediately noticed an increase in energy, not just when climbing, but in every day life. I no longer went into a food comma after lunch at work, thus making me more productive. But in terms of my climbing, my ability almost immediately went up. I jumped from bouldering V1 to V3 and went from climbing 5.9 to getting my first 5.10b onsight.

The benefits of eating RAW foods are tremendous!

Here are some recommended Web sites to find out more about RAW food. These will eventually be added to a resource section of this site once I finish up the new design.
Living and Raw Foods
Give it to me Raw
Kristen’s Raw
Raw Fu
Gone Raw

Climbing, RAW Food by OrganicClimber
chia seeds, Climbing, diet, energy, fruit, RAW Food
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