Whether you’re planning Valentines for a loved one, or are going to be pampering yourself on 14th February, here’s how to keep the love all-natural, raw and vegan.
Cacao Butter Massage
Massage is sensual and relaxing, and can be great for your skin’s health. A chunk of slightly warmed organic cacao butter is all you need for a great-smelling, moisturising massage bar. Coconut butter works well too, and melts a little faster in your hands.
For a little more pizazz, melt some cacao butter over a bowl of hot water or in a dehydrator, add a few drops of fragrant essential oil or some rose petals, and pour into a heart-shaped mould to set.
For more elaborate and luxurious homemade raw bath recipes, have a read of The Holistic Beauty Book.
Romantic Raw Chocolate
What would Valentines be without chocolate? Our Passion bar, aptly-named and with a heart-decorated wrapper, makes a perfect post-dinner treat. Or make a gift of the Rawr Love Collection – 4 raw vegan chocolate bars (including Passion), with red ribbon, heart-themed tag and optional gift message. Alternatively, create your own chocolate gift.
Bathing with Love
Run a relaxing, nourishing bath, adding essential oils, a few sprinkles of grated cacao butter, rose petals, or a natural pre-made bath soak, such as Raw Living’s bath salts or bath bar. Don’t forget the…
Toxin-Free Candlelight
Most regular candles are made from petrochemicals, which release toxic fumes as you burn them. Not terribly romantic! Make sure your Valentines candles are made from plant wax, such as these tea lights from Funky Raw.
Raw Dinner, in or out
If you’re in the UK and are lucky enough to live in or visit London, there’s an increasing number of raw restaurants where you can enjoy a romantic meal out - Saf, Inspiral Lounge, Vantra, Wild Food Cafe to name a few. If you want to eat raw at home without the preparation, Raw Fairies offer a food delivery service.
Dinner at home allows you to tailor your meal to your partner’s (or your) favourite raw foods. For example, if you both love avocados, why not make a delicious avocado-based salad followed by chocolate-avocado pudding?
Check out these raw food website and book suggestions for recipe ideas. This list of aphrodisiac raw foods will help give your dinner an extra boost!
We’re really excited that Planet Organic are now stocking our raw chocolate bars! To celebrate, we’re holding sampling sessions at their London stores throughout the month. Get along to the following stores between 11.30 am and 2.30 pm on the dates below to try a sample. See you there!
Saturday 12th Nov. – Planet Organic, Muswell Hill
Tuesday 15th Nov. – Planet Organic, Devonshire Square
Wednesday 16th Nov – Planet Organic, Torrington Place
Thursday 17th Nov. – Planet Organic, Westbourne Grove
Gabriel Cousens is well known in the raw food world for curing diabetes at his Tree of Life centre in Arizona (the subject of the must-see documentary Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes). His book There is a Cure for Diabetes explains how he achieves this – through a series of cleansing, a specific low sugar diet (phase 1), exercise, herbs and supplements.
As a type 1 diabetic, this is really exciting. So I gave the phase 1 diet a test run.
Phase 1 is the first stage of Cousens’ Rainbow Green diet, from the book Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine. Cousens recommends his diet for anyone – not just diabetics or those healing from illness.
The diet covers 3 raw vegan phases: phase 1 (very low sugar), phase 1.5 (low sugar, but including low GI fruit and veg like berries and carrots), and phase 2 (almost all raw veg allowed, higher GI fruit as an occasional treat). People with serious illness or needing a major cleanse are recommended to follow phase 1 for 3+ months, then go to 1.5 and then to 2. Those needing less cleansing are recommended to start with 1.5, then 2. Phase 2 is ongoing, basically a raw vegan diet that isn’t too heavy on the sugar.
I planned extensively for my phase 1 experiment. I assumed that eating no sugar – no raw chocolate, fruit, or even ’sweet’ veg like carrots – would be incredibly hard, so I drew up detailed menu plans for every day.
It was surprisingly easy to follow. I did occasionally crave ’something more’ between meals (i.e. something sugary), but I was never hungry, and the food was so tasty! The recipes in Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine are amazing – this is a fantastic recipe book, even if you have no interest whatsoever in following the 3 phases. Definite favourites included the Rawtwurst Wraps, Chili, Pasta with Red Pepper Marinara and Israeli Salad. Many of the recipes I’ll make again and again. There were very few I followed that turned out badly – that doesn’t happen for me with many raw recipe books!
The only downside to my phase 1 menu was that it was very, very nutty. This was partly down to my menu planning – I included too many entrees and nut-based sauces from the recipe book for it to have been a truly cleansing diet. More green juices, smoothies and simple salads would have been better – I just got too excited by all the wonderful recipes!
I didn’t follow phase 1 for long enough to see massive results in my blood sugar levels, but I do think it’s a diet I could follow for some time if I put my mind to it. Like all ways of eating raw, it takes some planning (soaking, dehydrating etc), but it really does taste good enough that I didn’t feel deprived. Just take a look at some of the yummy phase 1 meals I made!
Pot lucks are a fabulous way to sample different kinds of raw food, whether you’re long-term raw or just curious. Our local one in Cambridge has met only a couple of times as everyone’s pretty busy – including running raw food online shops and blogs (Have Raw Cake and Eat It, Raw Alchemy) and being natural healers and herbalists (Nature Working) – but when we do meet the food is delicious!
We took along a raw lasagne and a cucumber, olive, leek, tomato, olive oil, lemon and salt salad (both recipes taken from Gabriel Cousens’s ‘Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine‘). Also on offer were numerous salads, a courgette and almond dip, corn crackers, goji berry coleslaw and raw cake! Just check out the juicy colours in the photo…
Have a look for a raw pot luck near you by doing a simple internet search or checking Meetup.com.
We love Sunrise Celebration Festival – an annual four-day event near Glastonbury celebrating all things organic, musical, creative, environmentally-aware, alternative and fun. This year, there were wild food foraging workshops, a raw food lecture by Holly Paige, a raw chocolate making workshop, natural beauty product making (raw cacao featured lots!) and much much more.
Veggie and vegan food was everywhere of course, but this year raw food had snuck its way onto the festival scene in a way bigger than ever before! A few cafes sold raw chocolates and cakes, there was an organic fruit and veg stall for stocking up on salad, but the best raw find was the little cafe Simply Rawgeous. Over the festival we sampled their spicy superfood green smoothie (ginger, turmeric, hemp milk, goji berries, dates, spirulina, maca, cacao and cayenne), raw falafels, raw lasagne and raw pizza – check out the pictures! Although it was tucked away in the corner, by the end of the festival it was hard getting a seat there – proof of raw food’s ever-growing popularity.
Emma MacDougall runs the rather brilliant raw food blog, Raw Food Scotland. Her site is informative and full of ideas whilst being super-friendly, vibrant and so much fun to read. So when I heard Emma had released a new e-book I was very excited to get my hands on a copy. Emma is one of those raw food educators who just seems to have so much FUN with eating raw that I couldn’t wait to read her pearls of wisdom!
‘So You Want To Be a Raw Foodist?‘ is unique. It’s not a recipe book or a nutrition manual, but a straightforward guide on incorporating more raw food into your diet. Without any guidance or support, that’s not always as easy as it sounds.
What I loved about this book is that it really simplifies the notion of raw food. Emma makes clear raw is a way of eating that you choose to follow because you want to. One thing this book won’t do is put any pressure on you to eat more raw food, drum away about how terrible cooked food is, or create some complicated nutritional science around eating raw that would daunt anyone let alone a beginner. There are plenty of other raw food books out there for that!
What ‘So You Want To Be a Raw Foodist?’ will do is:
So would I recommend this e-book? For those who are already eating as much raw as they ever want to and always find it easy – might not be top of the reading list. But for beginners – definitely. For those who’ve read a lot about raw but haven’t actually made much change to their diet – definitely. And for those who already eat a lot of raw but struggle from time to time – definitely.
You can download Emma’s book for £6.99 here, and be sure to have a good browse around her blog while you’re at it.
Neem Shampoo Bar
It’s taken me a long time to find a truly natural shampoo. There doesn’t seem to be a liquid shampoo which is 100% natural – even those trying their hardest to market themselves as just that.
Until I discovered my new hair saviour, I was facing the prospect of making my own shampoo bar – something I’ve tried in the past and wasn’t exactly successful with! But then, happy day, I stumbled across Just Bev Angelic Soaps.
Bev makes two cold-pressed shampoo bars, one with kokum butter for dry hair and one with neem, nettle, peppermint and rosemary which is especially good for itchy scalps. Both contain purely natural ingredients such as saponified olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil and other essential oils. Not only that, but they are handmade, from a family run business, use only organic ingredients where possible, and encompass reiki healing! And if you’re going away and want to pack minimally, you can even use the shampoo bars as normal body soap.
How many shampoos have fairies on them?
The test for me though, is what they do to my hair. And they’re wonderful. I’ve tested both shampoo bars and although the kokum butter one for dry hair was too heavy for me, the neem and nettle bar suits my hair perfectly. The oils in the soap do cause a little build up after a week or so and then I just wash my hair once with my old-style ‘natural’ shampoo and continue on with the shampoo bar. Apparently a rinse with lemon juice would have the same effect and would be even more natural. As time goes on and my hair gets used to its new shampoo I’ll hopefully be able to use my old-style shampoo even less.
The shampoo bars are just £3 each and, in my experience, will last about 2 months when used every other day. You can buy them here. Have a look at Bev’s cold-pressed soaps and other natural bath goodies too.
Before Christmas I invested in a bunch of new books for my growing raw library – so many that I haven’t had time to go through them all yet! It’s already clear which are going to be my staples: usually those with non-specialist ingredients, beautiful layouts and the tastiest recipes. Here are my top 5 so far:
1. ANI’S RAW FOOD KITCHEN – Ani Phyo
This was my first raw book and is the one I always fall back on. With lots of recipes that don’t require a dehydrator, and lots of additional information about living the raw lifestyle (including raw food for dogs!), it’s definitely a favourite. Clear and easy to understand recipes, nicely presented, although not as high on pictures as some.
Recommended recipes: Coconut Breakfast Cakes (which we ate as pancakes on Shrove Tuesday last year), Baja Cheese Burrito with Taco Nut Meat and Red Pepper Corn Salsa (one of my all-time favourite recipes), Pecan Chai Pie.
One of the less mainstream raw books, not as glossy and photo-filled as some, yet contains amazing, straightforward recipes.
Recommended Recipes: Koftedes (‘meat’ balls that taste genuinely meaty. A great variation on raw falafel recipes), Houmus, Spinach Pie (delicious and creamy).
Jason Vale is the master of the raw juice world. Occasionally we’ll replace a meal with one of his vegetable juices, and we’ve used this book in the past for juice fasts/feasts. Has lots of nutritional information about fruit and veg, and includes juices to drink before bed or while ill.
Recommended Recipes: The Steven ‘Meal’burg (really filling juice/smoothie using carrots, apple, cucumber, avocado, cinnamon and more), The Schwarzenegger (massive juice for when you’re poorly, including pineapple, garlic, beetroot…).
An absolutely beautiful, thick, lustrous volume. One to dig out for special occasions rather than everyday eating. Recipes usually take more time to prepare and occasionally more specialist ingredients, but the ones I’ve tried have been divine.
Recommended Recipes: Soft Corn Tortillas (absolutely delicious though took a LOT of preparation. Ranks alongside Ani’s Baja Cheese Burrito as an all-time favourite), Macaroons.
Like ‘Raw Food Real World’ this makes a great coffee-table book. Really enjoyable to flick through, and the beautiful pictures alone will make your mouth water!
Recommended Recipes: Robbin’s Ice Cream (really sweet, gorgeous ice-cream, only a blender and freezer required. Mango, cashew, dates, bananas, fresh orange juice…).
I also really like Shazzie’s Evie’s Kitchen (make sure to at least double the recipes if making for yourself rather than small kids!), and Shannon and Duraz’s Raw Food Celebrations (great if making for guests). Equally there are books I would not recommend – beware those which use too many specialist superfoods, and if a recipe doesn’t have particularly tasty ingredients, it usually won’t be tasty when you’re finished. Just because it’s a recipe in a famous-name book doesn’t mean it will taste good!
There are more raw recipe books coming out all the time, here are a few more suggestions.
Easy / everyday recipes: Everyday Raw, Matthew Kenney; Raw Food Made Easy For 1 or 2 People, Jennifer Cornbleet; Easy Raw Vegan Dehydrating, Kristen Suzanne; Alive in 5: Raw Gourmet Meals in Five Minutes, Angela Elliot; Eat Smart Eat Raw, Kate Wood.
Gourmet: Living in the Raw Gourmet, Rose Lee Calabro; Raw Food Real World, Kenney and Melngailis; The Raw Gourmet, Nomi Shannon; Raw: the Uncook Book, Juliano.
Smoothies and juices: Green for Life, Victoria Boutenko; Ultimate Fast Food, Jason Vale.
Christmas and other holidays: Easy Raw Vegan Holidays, Kristen Suzanne; Raw Food Celebrations, Shannon and Duraz; Christmas Recipes ebook, Russell James.
Health-focussed: Recipes for Longer Life, Ann Wigmore; The Hippocrates Diet and Health Program, Ann Wigmore; Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine, Gabriel Cousens; The Sunfood Diet Success System, David Wolfe; Living Foods for Optimum Health, Clement.
