Tag Archives: be real

Morning Jing
A good healthy raw breakfast that is sustaining and quick to prepare is easier to achieve with some of the lovely new products on offer now.  One of them is Morning Jing, a super-healthy protein food containing special extras to boost your jing.  I am all about the jing at the moment, so this breakfast makes me very happy, it makes my tastebuds happy and makes my stomach happy too as I find it easy to digest and sustaining without being heavy.  But you may be wondering, what’s jing, and how can you use this protein powder?

Jing is the Taoist name for reserve energy, that adaptive/adrenal energy that we need to survive stresses of all kinds.  If your jing is low, you’re going to feel cream crackered all the time no matter how much high-energy healthy food you eat.  Loss of jing can be difficult to reverse but the great Taoist tonic herbs are good for this.  Morning Jing contains ho sho wou, maca and bee pollen so it’s great for sustained energy.  It has a mildly sweet, nutty flavour and in this recipe it’s partnered up with chia seeds which are also tremendous for sustained energy.  My thanks go to Chris Wood of Raw Living for the recipe suggestion.

Jing Breakfast

2 T chia seeds

1 cup of nut or seed mylk*

1 T Morning Jing powder

½ T maca

1 pear or apple, sliced

sweetener (such as raw honey, coconut nectar etc) to taste

1 T coconut oil (optional)

1 T flax meal

Put the chia into your breakfast bowl and add the nut mylk, giving it a good stir until the seeds are all submerged and there are no clumps.  Leave for 20 minutes while you go off and have your shower.  When the seeds are soaked and have become gel-like, you can stir in the other ingredients, except the flax which is best sprinkled on top.  Add extra mylk if you prefer it less thick.  You could use different fruit: berries of any kind, dried fruit or banana are good in this.  Unless you have tin ribs you might want to avoid sprinkling nuts because nuts and fruit tend to argue with each other in all but the strongest digestive systems.

*for nut mylk eg almond, soak 1/4 cup almonds overnight, rinse, blend with 3 or 4 cups water, strain through nut mylk bag.

Another recommendation I can make for a good breakfast is Raw Living Be Real, a raw cereal based on crunchy, delicious ‘buckwheaties’ with lots of goodies added to make it a real treat.  You can eat it like normal breakfast cereal or sprinkle it on raw muesli, or even sprinkle it on a chia-based breakfast as in the recipe above.  But for a truly belly-filling, obscenely tasty breakfast dish, try the ‘Be Real-ly Outrageous’ recipe in my other blog article this month.

Chocolate Dream Cream, Sacred Chocolate, and Be Real

Valentine’s day is a wonderful excuse, if any were needed, to have a decadent feast of the greatest superfood on the planet – chocolate!  Let’s start with breakfast; how would you fancy a crunchy, chewy and delicious granola cereal smothered in a rich, thick, silky and extremely chocolatey smoothie and topped with super-sprinkles?  It’s a heavenly way to start the most romantic day of the year.

This breakfast idea uses Raw Living ‘Be Real’ cereal which is based on crunchy buckwheaties with various good things added, depending on which variety you choose.  I’ve tried both Be Happy (goji) and Be Good (the chocolate and mulberry version).  Both are delicious eaten simply with nut mylk of course, but this recipe would a great Valentine’s breakfast treat.  I also eat it sometimes when I want to feel full up to my eyes without feeling overstuffed, then not feel hungry for hours and hours.  You can get everything you need for this recipe at Raw Living.

Be Real-ly Outrageous

1-2 servings of Be-Real

1 recipe of Choc-Full Smoothie:

• 2 T of chia seeds soaked in 1 cup water
• 1 T cacao powder
• 1 T carob powder
• 1 T lucuma
• 1 T non-gm soy lecithin
• 1-2 T coconut butter, no need to melt
• 1 T cashew or macadamia nuts
• 1 T tocotrienols (optional but makes it extra creamy)
• 1-2 T raw honey/coconut nectar or other sweetener
• pinch pink salt (only about 1/8 t but vital!)
• 1 T maca (to be added after initial blending)
• 1 T bee pollen
• Other sprinkles if desired eg cacao nibs, goji berries, chopped raw chocolate bar

To a high speed blender, add all of the choc-full ingredients, except the maca.  If you don’t have a high speed blender, omit the cashew or macadamia nuts, and maybe use coconut milk instead to get the creaminess.  Add a little water and blend until smooth.  Add the maca and some more water (you’ll need about ¾ cup altogether but don’t use too much or the smoothie will be too runny) and blend again for 20 seconds.  Taste to check sweetening level.  Put your Be Real into one large or two smaller breakfast bowls and pour over the chocolate mixture.  Sprinkle with bee pollen and any other delicious things you have on hand, and spoon-feed to your beloved.

For a Valentine gift, one of Sacred Chocolate’s heart-shaped raw chocolate bars would be a delight.  If you have a girlfriend who loves chocolate but hates what it does to her thighs, this gift will get you big brownie points.  Raw chocolate has none of the hip-and-thigh plumping hazards of conventional chocolate because it doesn’t contain dairy products, refined sugar and hydrogenated fats.  It DOES have all of the taste and melt-in-the-mouth qualities we love about chocolate because it IS chocolate – it’s the real thing, just without the junk.  Sacred Chocolate has all the taste and meltiness big-time, and is wrapped in pretty foil and love.  The kind I tried, ‘India Sunset’ contains cardamom, curry and saffron, unusual flavourings for chocolate but I love it.  I couldn’t taste the curry, but the flowery scent of cardamom comes through and the other flavourings give this bar of really top-quality chocolate a hint of complex, exotic flavour.  Love it, love it, love it.

Another chocolate treat not to be missed on Valentine’s or any other time, includes Raw Living Chocolate Dream Cream.  This is a raw chocolate spread containing amazing superfoods like ashwagandha, reishi, he sho wou and gingko.  Its deep chocolate taste carries a hint of licorice and it isn’t cloyingly sweet.  It can be spread on bread, fruit, cookies or (as it says on the label) ‘a good friend.’  Come on, it is Valentine’s, after all.  In the photograph you can see I’ve plastered a healthy dollop onto raw oatmeal raisin cookies.  Dream Cream is rich, so putting this amount on a cookie makes quite a filling snack.  In raw food preparation, so many things have to be prepared fresh from scratch or thought about hours in advance for soaking that it feels like real luxury to have a jar of chocolate spread that I can just grab and smear onto whatever comes to hand for instant gratification.  Happy Valentine’s Day!

Be Real

You know what I missed the most since going raw? Cereal!  A lovely big bowl of crunchy cereal with lashings of cold milk.  That was my fave comfort food since as far back as I can remember.  Any kind of cereal would do as long as there was lots of it.  Of course, when I went raw I knew I could make my own style granola but to be honest it just didn't cut the cereal mustard.

Imagine my delight when Kate mentioned she was working on a raw cereal range?  I couldn't wait to get my greedy little hands on the new Be Real!  I ordered all three varieties, Be Bright, Be Good and Be Happy.  All are made using sprouted buckwheat, berries and superfoods.  Be Bright is strawberry and coconut, Be Good is chocolate and mulberry and Be Happy is goji and orange.  Talk about the best combination of flavours ever! These are just delicious with a lovely hemp or almond milk topped with fresh berries.

There's little surprise in my household that Be Good is my all time fave, being lovely and chocolatey.  I love how filling these cereals are which is surprising because unlike your typical home-made granola these are very light and easy on the digestion - ooh, did I mention they have probiotics?  :)

These are fabby to have in the cupboard, not only guaranteed to make your breakfast extra special but to satisfy that mid-afternoon or evening snack attack!