Live Life Veg

Who doesn’t like warm, gooey cinnamon rolls straight from the oven, covered with sweet, delicious frosting? Well now you can have your cake and eat it too, as the quote says. These rolls, however, are raw and alive, pure and nutritious- and yes you can still have them warm if you choose to use a food dehydrator!  Perfect for Christmas morning.

Note: I will be posting more raw food recipes as the benefits of raw food are endless, and we could all eat more raw foods for better health- I myself am doing a 100% raw food trial for 30 days, and feel better already.

Here is the recipe, via Wasabimom.com.

• 1 1/4 cups almond meal
• 1 1/4 cups ground flaxseed
• 1 dash cayenne pepper
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 1 pinch sea salt
• 1 cup soft pitted dates
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 1/8 cup agave nectar
• 1/4 cup raisins, plus a little extra
• 1/4 cup chopped nuts

Combine the almond meal, ground flaxseed, dash of cayenne pepper, 1/2 Tbsp. cinnamon and pinch sea salt in a bowl and set aside.

In a food processor or blender, process dates, water and vanilla into a paste. Remove half of the date paste and add it to the dry ingredients, along with the olive oil and agave. Mix these ingredients with your hands until it forms a dough. You may need to add a little water and/or agave if it is too dry, but be careful not to add too much.

Spread the dough out on a piece of parchment paper, and flatten/shape it into a 1/4-inch thick square.

Add 1/4 cup raisins and 1 Tbsp. of cinnamon to the rest of the date paste left in your food processor or blender. Process until smooth. Then, spread a thin layer of the paste onto the dough square, making sure to cover the whole surface, and top with a sprinkle of extra raisins and the chopped walnuts.

Using the parchment paper to help hold everything together, carefully/tightly roll the square into a log. Chill in the refrigerator, and then slice into about 1-inch thick rounds. Makes about 8 cinnamon rolls.

The cinnamon rolls can be eaten right out of the refrigerator or warmed on a dehydrator.  (108 degrees F for 12 hours.) Keep them in the freezer until you’re ready to dehydrate them. After they’ve been dried, you can keep them in an airtight container in a dark place for a few days.

Cashew Cream Frosting
1 cup raw cashews or pine nuts soaked 4 or more hours
1/8 cup water
6 Tbs honey or dates (substitute agave nectar for honey)
juice of 1 small tangerine and the entire peel
1 tsp vanilla

Blend until smooth and creamy. Add a little extra water if you want it thinner. Drizzle on top of dehydrated cinnamon rolls.

The holidays are here and the days are ticking away to Christmas. As you shop and frantically search for the perfect gift, keep the environment in mind this year with eco-friendly gifts. Or maybe you just have a environmentally conscious family member or relative you need to shop for. Whatever the case may be, you can keep your impact, as well as costs, low with these gift ideas.

Eco-Herb Planter

Candles always make a great gift. Dani candles are a combination of 100% soy wax with proprietary essential oils that are pure and nontoxic. Soy wax also lasts longer than conventional wax. (danibath.com, $16)

Bamboo Serving Set

A great holiday recipe, this will be a hit with raw foodists and non raw foodists alike on Thanksgiving!

Raw Pumpkin Pie Crust

• 2 cups pecans or walnuts (raw)
• 1/2 cup soaked dates
• Dash of sea salt

Blend the crust ingredients in a high speed blender or food processor, then evenly distribute in the bottom of a pie plate.

Raw Pumpkin Pie Filling

• 2 cups shredded pumpkin, butternut squash, or sweet potato flesh
• 1 cup soaked dates
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp freshly diced ginger
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp coconut oil
• Dash of vanilla
• 1/4 cup almond milk or water to help blend

If you donʼt feel like shredding the pumpkin by hand, simply cube and place in a high speed blender or food processor until itʼs nicely chopped.

Then add the rest of the ingredients and blend until nice and smooth. You might need to add more liquid to get it to blend well.

Pour into crust, then chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before serving. You can top it with some raw chopped nuts or a bit of cinnamon if you’d like.

You will find this dessert comparable if not better than traditional pies. And it’s totally raw and healthy too!

The conversation usually goes something a bit like this:

“Yeah, I’m a vegetarian.”

“But that looks like fish you’re eating.”

“Oh yeah, I eat fish.”

Immediate questioning will usual follow and occasionally heated debate as the “vegetarian” and their interrogator cover the issue of what is an animal and whether fish feel pain. But the simple definition is:

“A vegetarian does not eat any meat, poultry, game, fish, shellfish or crusteacean, or slaughter byproducts.”

Simply put: no dead things. Vegetarians do not eat fish.

“There is ample evidence in peer-reviewed scientific journals that mammals experience not just pain, but also mental suffering including fear, anticipation, foreboding, anxiety, stress, terror and trauma,” says Revd Prof Andrew Linzey, director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and author of Why Animal Suffering Matters.

“The case for fish isn’t so strong, but scientific evidence at least shows that they experience pain and fear. Anyone who wants to avoid causing pain should give up eating fish.”

But there is a wider problem of identification.

“Fish don’t invoke the same compassionate response that a calf, lamb, piglet, or duck does,” says Ms Gellatley. “We are mammals, we relate much better to other mammals. When we see a pig in a factory farm and you can see that animal is in pain that has a very direct effect on people.”

Fish-eating vegetarians used to have their own term- “pescetarian”- although it seems not to be in common use today. But, Ms Gellatley says, there is a rise in the use of a new term for the part-vegetarian.

“The name ‘flexitarian’ is coming into use. It’s fairly meaningless really.”

There is a view that after a period of healthy growth in the 1990s, classic vegetarianism is now stagnant. It rose from 0.2% of the population during World War II to 1.8% in 1980, according to the consumer research company Mintel.

The firm’s most recent survey suggested 6% concurred with the statement “I am a vegetarian”. But the Food Standards Agency’s recent Public Attitudes to Food Issues survey found just 3% of the population was strictly vegetarian, and 5% partly vegetarian. Viva cites a survey done on behalf of the Linda McCartney vegetarian food brand which suggested a figure of 10%.

One of the reasons it’s so hard to assess the level of vegetarianism is because of the multiple definitions of the term. It is clear, however, that meat-free and meat-substitute meals make up more and more of what we eat. The marketers and the activists are dealing with new groups of people, known as meat-avoiders and meat-reducers. Outside those who have a clear philosophical platform for eschewing meat, there are increasing numbers of these people, either cutting down on meat or trying not to eat it where possible, but without necessarily ever calling themselves “vegetarian”.

Mintel categorises 23% of the population as meat-reducers, people attempting to eat less meat, probably mainly for health reasons. Another factor is climate change- livestock rearing produces methane, which is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in global warming terms, according to Lord Stern. It identifies 10% as meat-avoiders, people who plan to eat little or no meat but sometimes lapse, and who might well accept the ethical basis of vegetarianism.

“More than a quarter of people say they eat less meat than they did five years ago. There is a shifting change in the diet,” says Ms Gellatley. “A third of our membership are meat reducers.”

But despite the health messages about certain kinds of meat, and the arguments over the amount of energy it takes to produce meat, a large majority of people are still eating it, and many have a serving every day.

A delicious recipe via Youtube from raw food author and chef Jennifer Cornbleet. The pasta is raw and gluten-free and is topped with a raw marinara sauce. Enjoy!