Karen Knowler * The Raw Food Coach

How To Make A Green Juice

Last Friday I filmed a few more videos for YouTube. It's been a while and I felt it high time to focus on the greens and sprouts, so here's the first...

How To Make A Green Smoothie

Today we posted my three remaining food prep clips on YouTube:

• Green Smoothie
• Marinated Mushrooms
• Marinated Vegetables

These were made (as you'll be able to tell!) the same time as those that went up last year but I held on to these for another project. As I've decided to do a fresh batch of filming for 2008 these three are free to leave my secret stash, so it is with great green hugs that I share with you the all-time classic Mango and Spinach Green Smoothie. Enjoy!

Super-Easy Party Cocktail

I have always been a lover of sparkling drinks and the occasional glass of wine. As my tolerance of alcohol is pretty much zero, over the years I have found a new and rather more innocent joy in serving all of my drinks - from my morning green smoothies to my water and fruit juices - in a very large wine glass. Realising that sometimes it is the "stuff" that surrounds our food and drink choices that is attractive is a huge help in letting go of less-than-healthy choices. In my case, as one example, I realised a couple of years ago that, for me, a whopping 80% of the perceived pleasure I felt from drinking wine could be attributed to the actual shape, feel and holding of the glass! Sad but true! It's just that "sophisticated" long-stemmed, bowl shaped glass thing that does it for me... : )

And so it is that when I throw a party or am entertaining I LOVE to come up with new non-alcoholic drinks - usually based on fresh juices and sparkling water.

Today I came up with one that is so easy it is almost ridiculous! Tasty, refreshing and it even somehow tastes mildly alcoholic, this is one I will be making again and again and 10/10 for ease and speed!

Karen's Sparkly Pineapple Punch

To make 2-3 large wine glasses glasses (1 litre's worth), you'll need:

• A juicer
• 1 ripe fresh pineapple
• 16 medium fresh strawberries
• Sparkling water

Simply juice the pineapple and strawberries together catching the juice through a fine strainer in case of bits, and pour into a jug. This should make about 500-600ml of juice depending on how large and juicy your pineapple is.

Fill the jug up to the 1 litre mark by pouring in the sparkling water. NB: Mind the froth! You'll need to wait for it to settle a bit to get a more exact measurement.

When you have your litre, taste-test. See if you'd like more water or other ingredients (you might wish to add apple, melon or raspberries for example). When you're happy, pour into glasses, perhaps adding ice cubes or decorating with a fresh strawberry or pineapple ring... or if you're feeling particularly creative, make some cute fruity ice-cubes with raspberries or small pieces of strawberry inside. Just beautiful!

Cheers! Enjoy your drink!

Raw Popcorn Recipe?

A request:

Not for the first time I've been asked if there's a raw food recipe equivalent to popcorn?

Anyone know of one?

I'm pretty sure I heard Dr Doug Graham once say that dehydrated Brussels sprouts taste like popcorn but I've never actually tried it...

Sounds curious, that's for sure... not a great fan of Brussels!

Pine-Apple-Berry Juice

This recipe is the business!

I emailed it out to my Successfully Raw readers last Friday, but it has so enthused me and my taste buds that I want to share it here!

Pine-Apple-Berry Juice

(Makes one large glass)

* Half a fresh juicy ripe pineapple
* 1 small handful of raspberries (about 12)
* 1 apple

Directions

1) Simply place all the ingredients into your juicer and get as much juice out as you can. If you're using a non-green juicer like a Champion or centrifugal juicer then it's worth putting the wet pulp through again to get even more precious drops out!

2) Give it a good stir and ..... mmmmmmmmmmmm.

I know, an expensive habit to form if you don't grow your own raspberries, but you're so worth it!

My Current Favourite Juice

I just completed a 90-minute teleclass with The Raw Divas, Tera and Amy. It was a great call, I just love teleclasses.

At the end Tera asked me for the green juice recipe I mentioned, as this is what I drink for brunch many mornings of the week.

It's big, it's juicy, it's green and it's sweet. What more could you want from a juice, eh?! I LOVE it.

Karen's Green Goddess Elixir

Makes 1 litre (which is how much I can drink after the gym : )

* 1 medium RIPE pineapple
* 2 apples
* 1/2 lemon including its peel
* 1/2 lime including its peel
* 1 bag of organic spinach (approx. 200g)
* 5 sticks celery
* 1 whole cucumber including peel

Simply juice the whole lot, pour into a jug, stir well. Pour, drink, pour, drink!

Keep in the fridge any you can't drink, and enjoy it cool later. Keeps well owing to the lemon and lime.

Let me know what you think!

RECIPE: Raw Muesli

Simple but profound - EVERYONE seems to love this recipe whatever their diet and it works great for breakfast as well as for a snack or supper. (NB: The photo is not the actual recipe, it's the closest I could find until I have one...) There are so many variations of raw muesli, you could quite possibly eat a different one every day of the year. When you see one of these fresh raw mueslis bursting with colour and life sitting waiting for you on your kitchen table, you’ll never be tempted to go back to the dried, processed and “dead” mueslis of old ever again.

Ingredients

For muesli:

• 1 banana, sliced into rings
• 1 apple, cubed
• ½ handful brazil nuts, sliced into small pieces
• ½ handful hazel nuts, sliced into small pieces
• 1 handful almonds, whole or sliced
• 1 handful dates, fresh or dried, chopped into small pieces
• 1 handful of raisins (preferably pre-soaked, but not imperative)
• 1 handful of raspberries OR strawberries OR blueberries
• 1 handful of coconut chips

For nut milk:

• 1 cup almonds
• 2 cups pure water

True Success

I've been reflecting a lot lately about what "success" really means. Not least because as I watch my son continue to grow up (as they tend to do...) my priorities in life continue to change - as he changes, and I do too - and so naturally we begin to ask ourselves...

So what matters? What REALLY matters?...

Well, apart from the obvious "being the best mum I can be" which is always going to right up there at number 1, to me helping to make a significant difference in global health, wealth and happiness matters... Big time!

And today's post is about my next contribution to just that!

Now, this may not surprise you, but I've always been a very driven kind of person - right from babyhood according to ma! Being successful at whatever I did has only ever been "the ONLY option"! Failure was not in my vocab and as such very very rarely did it show up in my life. However, in my youth and adolescence I didn't always quite have the oomph to put all my great ideas into practise (a little bit chubby, foggy and junked-up you see), and while I did do well at almost everything I tried (bar running cross country, which I do my very best to forget!), no way did I have the ability to "go all day and then all night" (ahem) like I do today some 20 years later.

Why? Well you can guess that bit, can't you?! Since going raw I genuinely do feel how my little "Super K" icon looks.

And for the past 8 years, in fact even before then, I have felt driven to bring raw food to the mainstream for that reason, and many others besides. Quite simply raw food changes bodies, faces, health, energy, happiness and lives...

And since I came across that info and experienced it first-hand for myself I have said to myself that if I did contribute in some significant way to helping raw food go mainstream (I feel daft even writing it, I mean, why on earth isn't it already?!!!), then I would really consider myself a success. Success in "personal achievement and contribution to the world" terms anyway.

In fact, so driven, so passionate, so determined have I been, at times it has felt as if I was almost possessed by something bigger than me to do what I do. Whether it has been to reinvent and steer The Fresh Network, to publish Get Fresh! magazine, to put on yet another big event, to create the Fresh Festival (and make it happen), to do that one more "Oh my God I can't believe I'm having to answer this question" media interview or to write the next article or book, it has been unceasing in its power to move me to take often-quite-big-and-a-little-bit-scary action!

More recently that drive, for some reason, has gone deeper and more focused still. I - like you I'm sure, have seen a real shift in the general mass consciousness around food, health, diet etc. over recent times, and my attention has turned more and more to my own private and personal work, to explore and birth more of my own style of communicating and "getting the message out there" that is free of being quite so PC as my work through TFN. I've been driven, pushed, guided, moved and even harried to help more and more people really "get" raw food - and by that I mean from a sane, common sense, easy to implement, "no brainer", fun kind of way!

To this end, as many of you know I launched www.TheRawFoodCoach.com just 4 short weeks ago, have been sending out Successfully Raw eZine weekly to rave reviews for nearly 3 months, and launched my first, already highly popular eBook "50 Quick, Easy, Healthy & Delicious Raw Food Recipes (That Anyone Can Make In Less Than 10 Minutes)" when the site went live. And my God it has felt liberating to find my own voice within this work again! (And apparently, you like...)

But what's coming NEXT WEEK is, I believe, what's really going to be my biggest raw-related "success" to date:

"How To Get Started With Raw Foods ...And Gain More Energy, Clarity and Vitality Than You Ever Thought Possible!"

This product is an eBook (a book delivered via the internet that you print off yourself within seconds of buying it - very cool!). This will be available online from early next week, once I've put the finishing touches to it. Aimed at those who are either completely new, have been dabbling for a while or who have never really quite got it or stuck with raw foods, this eBook will consist of roughly 150 pages of first-class easy-to-understand, super-easy-to-get-going-with, all-laid-out-for-you-and-ready-to-go raw food info, lists, charts, plans and resource lists that I genuinely believe is going to change thousands, if not millions of lives.

Yes, even though I am in the final throes of pulling Raw Food for Beginners together (a much bigger physical and printed tome), having now seen the power and speed at which eBooks can hit the world, this book has literally flowed out of me this past weekend like an absolute dream! I know that people have been wanting something like this FOR YEARS (including me!!).

The even better news? Even though the material within it is easily worth thousands of pounds (no kidding!), it's selling - between now and until midnight on 11 October (my birthday!) for just £9.99 - and then it will go up to £12.99 - still a complete and utter bargain. Yes, I know. Crazy, but true. (It will probably go up to £14.99 towards the end of the year, but we'll see...)

AND you get a FREE BONUS!

Such is the power of the Internet! And the bonus is "The 30 Most Frequently Asked Questions About Raw Food - Answered" which will sell separately in a few more days for £3.99, and which naturally fits in really rather well with a book such as this!

So if ever there was a time to celebrate "success" on the raw food front, then it will be next week! And I do hope that if you think it sounds like just what you need that you'll choose to bite the bullet and spend the best-invested £9.99 of your life! (You can pre-order NOW and be the first to receive a copy, just click here).

And as for other definitions of success in other areas of my life, that my friends, will have to follow on another day! Hope to be delivering one of these eBooks to YOUR inbox very soon!

RECIPES: Nut Milk Mania

In tomorrow's eZine I'm sharing my article How to Make Fresh Nut Milks in Your Blender and thought I would post some delicious nut milk recipes here for everyone to make use of, as well as for my eZine readers.

If you're still not signed up to Successfully Raw, you can do so right now. Providing you have done so before noon tomorrow (Friday 18th Aug) you'll get this week's eZine which is yet another bumper issue. To find out more, until my web site is launched in 2 weeks we've posted full details of SR on The Fresh Network web site here.

But for now, on with the recipes!

Recipe: Tasty Almond Hummous

Traditionally hummous is made with chickpeas. In raw food cuisine it's made with sprouted chickpeas - or at least it is by those who like it! For those that don't (and I sometimes do, sometimes don't...) then here's a great alternative.

By swapping the chickpeas for almonds and adding in a few fresh herbs, here's a recipe that you'll find delicious, will fill you up, will be good in a salad, wrap or spread on crackers and will keep in the fridge for about 5 days if covered.