 Happy 2012! Best wishes for 12 months of joy and happiness.
If you were extravagant this past holiday season and inflated your spending as well as your caloric intake, this newsletter is just what you need to get back into shape. It's filled with tips that demonstrate how raw food can help you trim food costs and enjoy delicious meals that will get you on track for a healthy, happy new year.
And wait until you read how smoothies and juice drinks let you get the most value out of all the food you buy. By combining inexpensive ingredients, you can create superdrinks that are nutritionally dense, low in calories, and totally delicious.
If you're in the Bay Area, I have a special opportunity! I'm looking for a nice kitchen with an island that I can shoot raw food preparation videos in for 2-3 days in early May. In exchange, you'll get a ton of yummy raw food from the videos plus a FREE 3-HOUR PRIVATE ONE-ON-ONE RAW FOOD CLASS WITH ME. If this interests you, please email me at learnrawfood@gmail.com, with some photos of your kitchen.
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| Raw Food On A Shoestring | 
Seasonal produce is the best way to get maximum flavor from ultra-fresh ingredients...and keep costs down in the process. And in the winter time, a reasonably priced ingredient that can add color, sweetness, and health to your recipes is grapes. Red/purple grapes rank with blueberries and blackberries as excellent sources of antioxidants. Cleopatra may have had her grapes peeled, but you shouldn't. Many of the health benefits attributed to grapes are concentrated largely in the skin which has about 100 times more nutritional goodness than the pulp. If this story gets you gung-ho for grape-y goodness, a grape place to start - I mean a great place to start - is with my Banana Grape Green Smoothie recipe. It's so creamy and delicious that you may overlook just how healthy it is. Click here to get the recipe. |
Making Every Penny Count
|  Professional chefs strive to use every part of an ingredient in order to get the most value for their purchase. Using everything means less waste. That's a good idea from a cost point of view, and it's good for the planet, too.
Juicing is an insanely easy way to get your RDA of fruits and vegetables and it doesn't have to be expensive if you make use of the tough ends of leafy greens, carrots, and other ingredients earmarked for the garbage disposal. Your juicer will break down these ingredients and your body can absorb the nutrients in a juice drink in about 20 minutes, quickly satisfying your appetite.
My juicer of choice is the Breville juicer. It's easy to use and makes quick work of even the most contentious greens.
Click here for information about the Breville.
A juice fast until dinnertime is a wonderful way to cleanse your body and clean out your 'fridge, too. My Super Green Juice recipe yields enough juice for an entire morning and afternoon for one person. Apples make it sweet, leafy greens give it antioxidants, and celery, cucumbers, and romaine lettuce keep the flavor smooth and gentle.
Click here for the recipe.
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Giving Food The Cold Shoulder
| It's said that America's throw away thousands of dollars in spoiled food every year. One ingredient that seems to frequently wind up in the garbage can is the banana. Let's see if we can't reverse that trend!
It's true that bananas are fickle. They're green one day, perfect the next, and then suddenly over-ripe. But bananas can be frozen. And freezing won't substantially affect the nutritional value of a banana.
The trick to freezing bananas is to place them on a plate in the freezer for one hour. This will prevent them from sticking together. Once they're semi-frozen, you can transfer them to a ziplock bag. Be sure to press out as much air as possible before sealing the bag and returning the bananas to the freezer.
Frozen bananas will keep for one month. Adding them to a smoothie makes it a frosty treat that's as creamy as a milkshake, but without the dairy. At this time of year, when apples are in season and affordable, I like to indulge in a Frosty Banana Apple Smoothie.
Warning: even though it's difficult, drink this luscious shake slowly. You don't want to get 'brain freeze!'
Click here for the recipe.
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That's it for this month. I'm already working on the February edition of the newsletter. In honor of Valentine's Day, I'll be talking about food...love...and the food I love to eat! See you next time.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Cornbleet
Learn Raw Food |
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Be Choosy
| |  Even the busiest, celebrity chef likes to go to the farmer's market to check out the seasonal produce personally. They know the quality of the ingredients determines the quality of the dish. This is especially true in the world of raw food. The flavor and texture of inferior ingredients can be altered by cooking, or adding sugar or other processed ingredients. But in unadulterated raw cuisine, it's extra-important that you pick the freshest, most flavorful produce you can.
Here are some tips to make you a Market 'Maven' (a Yiddish word that means expert) at the produce counter:
* How to Choose a Ripe Banana - A ripe banana has a uniform yellow color, and a few brown speckles. It should look and feel quite firm, and bright. If you are not going to use a banana immediately, choose one that is slightly green; it will ripen slowly at room temperature.
* How to Choose a Ripe Pear - A ripe pair is firm, but not extremely hard. It should be free from dark soft spots, but don't reject a pear with brown 'speckles,' however, as they may signify a better flavor.
* How to Choose a Ripe Avocado - An avocado is ripe when its skin turns from green to a dark brown-green color. It also 'gives' slightly when it is squeezed gently. A ripe and ready-to-eat avocado is slightly soft, without dark sunken spots or cracks in its skin.If you are not going to use an avocado immediately, choose one that is slightly hard; it will ripen slowly at room temperature.
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Best of the Blog
| My blog is the best place to visit for my up-to-the-minute thoughts and favorite recipes. If you haven't visited the site recently, here's what's waiting for you in the archives:
Raw Finger Food for Dessert Lovers
Ring Out the Old with a Raw Food Feast at Home
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