Smoked Chipotle Kale Chips

Yummy Kale Chips… and No MSG!

Everybody who tries them seems to rave about Kale Chips…and for good reason. Their texture crackles, crunches and delicious disintegrates in one’s mouth, and the ruffled edges of curly kale so nicely capture whatever flavorings have been added.

Thing is, many of the favorite recipes out there use raw cashews and/or nutritional yeast to give a kind of “cheezy” flavor. I love raw cashews, but I almost never used them in my recipes because they are both hard to find and very expensive. And I never use nutritional yeast - A, because I don’t like the flavor, and B, because I minimize the use of anything that may include forms of monosodium glutamate (MSG). People debate about whether nutritional yeast does or does not include a form of MSG, but whichever the case, it doesn’t taste “right” to, it doesn’t taste or feel “undenatured” in my body, and that’s always what I go with. So I won’t be including it in any of my Dehydro recipes.

Instead, I’m going to explore recipes that can be made from Utterly Pedestrian ingredients, or very simple, natural “superfood” ingredients very common in the raw world, such as Chia Seeds, Raw Cacao, Goji Berries and such.

Fresh curly kale, rinsed and shaken dry.

Adding the dressing to the kale...

Smoked Chipotle Kale Chips

These Smoked Chipotle Kale Chips use the neutral taste and texture of blended Zucchini to help create a kale-sticking dressing to distribute the flavor before dehydration. And the flavors are simple: smoked paprika, Chipotle Tabasco sauce, olive oil, lemon, and quality natural crystal salt.

So E-Z!!

Take a few minutes to rinse & shake the kale dry, a few minutes to make the dressing and rub & squish it into the kale, and then you just pop it onto a couple dehydrator trays, bung them into your Dehydro unit, flick on the machine and off go! No reason to feel intimated by the process of dehydrating, or to think that it is something laborious.

“How Long Do I Dehydrate? What’s The Right Temperature Setting?”

If you’re nervous about navigating potential enzyme-killing heat… relax. First, ascribing fear to how you’re feeding yourself is hardly a health-promoting outlook. Thinking stressfully is as much (or even more) a liability for your health as eating denatured food. And that, in my view, is the key here: you are minimally denaturing your food. You are taking a whole food, cutting it, seasoning it, subjecting it to some low temps to remove moisture. That is all.

Dr. Gabriel Cousens, a well-known raw guru, discovered that the “sweating” phase when dehydrating fruit & vedge actually lowers the temperature of the food and cause mold or fermentation if not adequately heated at the outset of the process. His recommendation is to start the process out at 145 degrees F, and then lower it to around 115. And that is what I do: 145 for the first hour, then 115 for 4-5 hours, or overnight, til done.

Smoky, zesty, spicy topping

Ready for the dehydrator!

Crunchy & ready for snacking!

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It’s A New Day

What a great relief, on both accounts.

It feels so good to be “kitchening” again after such a long hiatus. Setting up a new homestead, settling into the rhythm of a new job, adjusting to life in a new town, and stabilizing all these changes took awhile to sort out, but the dust has settled and I’m ready to pick up where I left off!

Where that was: hitting the dehydration recipe phase of my “Daily Recipe” program, which I will be ending around Labor Day. All subscribers will retain access to the recipes through that weekend. And between now and then it’s going to be very heavy on the Dehydro Recipes, as that is the one group of recipes I haven’t touched upon.

Dehydrated Raw Recipes

Me, personally… I need crunchy, bready, savory cracker & sandwich-bread raw substitutes in order to stay extremely high raw. I need chips to eat my Chopped Salads with, and wraps or flatbreads for my Salad Sammiches, and normally I use organic corn tortilla chips and toasted Ezekiel bread to fill the bill.

As I just loathe the taste of flax seed, which is what most raw crackers & breads utilize to get everything to stick together (because of its gelatinous nature when moistened, flax seed has been called the “egg” of the raw world), I’ve been at a disadvantage as far as what to use for chips & flatbreads. So…I’m going to be experimenting with other methods to bind raw ingredients into chips & flatbreads. Chia seeds will factor in heavily, as they have an even higher “binding” quality but a milder flavor. I’ll also experiment with using some high-pectin, high-soluble-fiber fruits as binders. For example, Persimmon has been on my mind as potentially being a great Dehydro ingredient. And berries as well. We’ll see. I anticipate some interesting surprises to emerge as they did in previous recipe-creating waves.

For example, the versatile nature of Zucchini! That was a revelation. And not surprisingly, my first two Dehydro recipes both include Zucchini as a main ingredient! Also, the Miraculously Meaty combo of Mushrooms and Almond Butter…that’s one of my fave discoveries, ever. Wow. A combo even a steak-eater can appreciate. I suspect they are going to find their way into more than one Dehydro recipe

Not all these Dehydro recipes will be crackers and chips and flatbreads. I’m going to focus on crunchy raw snacks as well — a whole range of Kale Chips, Sweet Potato Crunchies, Raw Granola, Dehydro Fruit Crunches, and lordy knows what all else. Thus far with the recipes, it has felt like pioneering a new food culture, learning how to use and think about simple ingredients differently. And the intention to stick primarily with Utterly Pedestrian ingredients remains. Simple foods one can make without any fanfare, and enjoy on a daily basis. Food For Real People, not the Fussy-N-Fab that you’d order in a raw restaurant.

My new Smoked Chipotle Kale Chips...yum!

The Live Green Smoothie Challenge

If you’re new to the LGS Challenge, click on the link at the top of my site to read about it. It’s an approach to using Live Green Smoothies to help radically “jack up the raw” in your diet to help faciliate a radical improvement in your health, energy, and well-being, and to help with weight loss. It was a critical factor in how I transformed my physique back in 2005 from a size 18/20 to a 6 in just 7 months, without “dieting” or any kind of fat/carb/portion monitoring. (Read My Story for those details, or just check out my Before & After pics.) And be sure to use my EZ Browze Recipe Library link to scan the photos & recipe titles for recipes you might like to try, yourself!

At this juncture, I’m endeavoring to bring my own weight back down to where it was — I put on some unwanted weight this past year, where frequently I was just logistically very challenged to include significant amounts of live foods in my diet. Generally speaking, in the last couple years where my dancing has been very much on hiatus, my physique took a toll and I’m soooooo ready to reclaim it!

So if you’re in a similar boat, or just wanting some company while you “jack up the raw” for your own reasons, please check in daily here. I may be posting around 4 recipes a week, but I plan on blog posting daily to the site on other subjects. And I’d love your comments, feedback, and participation in the discussion.

A Kale & Red Grape LGS with "Moringa" protein/chlorophyll powder. POWERFUL.

Going Down a Size…

Day 4 started with my putting on size 10 pants for work, rather than size 12. So… although the size down is snug, I’ve worn them only twice since buying them (at the same time as the 12s… for “when”), and I wore them comfortably all day and that’s a decent milestone for just three days into this fresh Challenge!

Meals

Breakfast: Two slices of toasted sesame Ezekiel toast, with grass-fed butter and raw honey.

Live Green Smoothies: Just one blenderful today… it’s all I had ingredients for in the morning, though the spirit was willing to make more. Kale, Red Grape, and Pear.

Lunch: A “Salad Sandwich” conjured from the corporate cafeteria — I had the chef toast up some multi-grain bread while I assembled a pile of baby greens, carrots, red onion, dried cherries (or are they cranberries, I wonder?) and crumbled feta with a decent squirt of hot sauce. And then I stuffed the toast with the salad, with a bottle of LGS on the side. ‘Twas scrumptious!

Afternoon Snack: Quick run to the Starbucks-around-the-corner for a warmed-up chocky-chip cookie and a doppio espresso macchiato “with extra foam” (AKA, “roman cappo”, from my experience).

Dinner: I had a couple bites of a washed-rind cheese similar to Brie while grocery shopping at King’s after work, with a couple rice-life wafer crackers. And I had a few bites of Ritter dark chocolate-marzipan. And after a trip to the salon for a much-needed haircut, I poured a couple small martini glasses of Shiraz to enjoy whilst cocktail-chatting with the Boyz and our Visitorz for the evening. But… that’s it.

Low appetite for the day, and it feels directly connected to the increased inner sense of balance, calm, and energy I’m feeling! I was BUZZING with energy all day long, and was super-productive & creative at work — a great feeling!

Exercise

Nada. Bizzy after-work errands segued into relaxing & festive social Friday gathering, with early-to-bed. And that capped the day of great!

“Tree of Life, Vigor, and Vitality”, art by Elle Nicolai

Energy!

Things seriously started to kick in Day 3!

Staying higher raw starting to become easier… living foods start to have their own magnetic pull, as if they’ve deposited something in my bloodstream that makes me turn to them with more ease. And the feeling of having tossed off lethargy and becoming more alive is so palpable and rewarding… why turn back now?

Meals

Breakfast: French press Italian Roast with two slices of toasted sesame Ezekiel bread generously slathered in grass-fed butter.

Live Green Smoothies: Whoops… dashed out of the house without making them for work! The Big Snow, and all its associated shoveling, took up my morning smoothie-making time. But the day ended up being high-raw, nonetheless! And in the evening… enjoyed 1/2 a blenderful of an LGS with rich Kale, Red Grape, and Goji. My son had the other half.

Lunch: A large salad with baby greens, carrots, cucumbers, red peppers, red onion, dried cherries, and a bit of feta and Saracha hot sauce to give it zest. Also, some clear broth from a bowl of chicken soup.

Afternoon snack: I love something smallish & sweetish in the afternoons, but I wasn’t equipped with my healthier choices and the snow kept me office-bound, so… I found myself sniffing out the coffers of my colleague’s office drawers. A few of those mini Reese’s peanut butter cups did not satisfy, and reminded me that raw cacao and Green & Black’s are far superior choco-offerings than what’s readily available out there!

Dinner: I made a giant bowl of a Savory Papaya Salad, with one giant papaya, two avocadoes, some red onion, fresh garlic, 1/2 a jalapeno, and bit of sea salt. Self & Boyz scarfed this down like salsa with some organic tortilla chips… ’twas awesome. Explosively juicy, slightly sweet, savory, crunchy, salty, creamy, and rich!

Evening snack: Whilst watching the 2nd disc of The Fellowship of the Ring, enjoyed a scoop of freshly home-made Pumpkin-Spice Frozen Yogurt… and then the afore-mentioned LGS!

Exercise – The Bar Method!

Completed most of the “Designer Sculpting” Bar Method workout. I am a serious Bar Method aficionado. The Bar Method shares similarities with Callanetics and The Lotte Berke method… and I’m fans of all of them.

And yes, that’s an affiliate link, if you feel called to order the workout and give it a try!

Sandra Taylor’s Art – “Blissful Heart” water color

Bring On The Bliss!

Woke up this morning with that “raw bliss” settled neatly on my heart. Happens so quickly for me when I’m jacking up the raw with LGSs, like I’ve tapped intravenously into the Living Joy of the universe. Truly, Live Green Smoothies are “liquid sunshine”! They’re my “stress guard”, enabling the stresses of this fast-paced, high-pressured life to roll off my back like duck off a water.

Yesterday’s Grub

Started off the day with an LGS: a large handful of rich, dark curly kale blended up with three “seedless” clementines, a large gob of cold-pressed coconut oil, and some locally harvested spring water.

I say “seedless” because the bitter taste of blended orange pips that permeated my smoothie pretty clearly proved the label on the clementine box wrong. But I drank that whole thing anyway, and am glad for it. Good thing, too, because the day was fraught with some dietary challenges.

Grabbed a pumpkin scone from Starbucks on my way into work. And then whoops, forgot, team luncheon in celebration of someone’s birthday! We headed to a Persian restaurant where I made a light choice of some falafel with salad. Expertly done; clean, quality food. Not high-raw but at least… “rawish”.

Dinner… finished off the smoothie. Had a small portion of eggs & such I made for my Boyz, along with some freshly home-made goat yogurt “ice cream”.

‘Twas a day of 50%+ raw, only one blenderful of Live Green Smoothies… but the knowing that on the path to things eventually hitting critical mass. In a good way.

Update on yesterday’s first day with my own 2011 Live Green Smoothie 85% Challenge…

Came home from work and rested, and resting segued into more resting, then deep resting, then sleeping, then deep sleeping… and waking fabulously refreshed this morning!!!

Haven’t felt so refreshed in zonks! And that is worth not having pushed the envelope to “get my sweat in” as was my original intention.

Thing about “jacking up the raw” with live foods… they can put you very quickly horizontal at first, as a way to cleanse, repair, and nourish.

And such was deliciously the case for me last night.

As for the food…

What I posted in yesterday’s pic is pretty much it, minus one of the avocadoes, and plus a raspberry scone at Starbucks in the morning! I had a small bit of leftover potato gratin in the evening, then finished the rest of the choco-LGS from earlier in the day. Quite high raw, despite the white-carb elements.

Lunch was one avocado mashed in a bowl with a bit of honey, to which I added two sliced bananas. This was executed in the corporate cafeteria, at the table with a bevy of my male colleagues, a tall bottle of choco-LGS on the side. Yes, there were a few comments… yes, there were a few giggles. Who cares? Am happy to provide a little levity, no skin off my revitalizing hide.

And I plan the same for today!

The Starting Point

Weight? I don’t weight myself… I don’t have a scale, even. I go by clothing size, which for me is a better system. So… size? Loosely fitting size 12. After spending years normalized at a 6, ballooning up from too many filling-but-cheap-carbs is not comfortable. Size 12 was a celebration back in 2005 on my way down from a size 20, but now… no thank you: back to 6, pleez, and I’ll raise you a 4!

My Raw, LGS Stash For The Day

Two bottles of choco-rich Live Green Smoothies, made with a very large handful of curly kale, 3 small bananss, a gigantic knob of cold-pressed coconut oil hacked out of its container on this below-zero morning, a massive toss of raw cacao powder, a scooch of Mexican vanilla… and spring water from a local spring.

Also: two bananas, two avocadoes, and a fresh fruit cup snagged at Starbucks on the way in when I stopped to pick up an Americano for the office.

Plans for Getting My Sweat On…

If the weather allows, I’ll hit the gym tonight. But what I really want to do it set up my sauna!!!

I’ve got a 3-seater far-infrared HealthMate sauna, recently retrieved from storage, and the perfect place in my attic to set it up! Though it’s been so cold up there I’ve been putting off the task. Am so looking forward to being able to crank that baby up, pop in a CD (it’s got speakers inside!) and chill…er… bake… while the winter storms rage to their heart’s content outside.

...with my son Curran at New Year's. Happy but... size 12 and time for some paring down!

It’s Soooo Good To Be Back!

Well, after a looong stretch of moving up from Florida back to my “native” New Jersey… and then moving again and settling into a permanent residence (and my own kitchen — yay!) after not having one for quite some time… I’m finally and delightedly ready to start up regular posting on my site again. What a relief! And I’m just so happy and excited to have my own place again, where I can dig in and create to my heart’s content.

My intention is to pick up where I left off, extend the LGS Daily Recipe service from January 08, 2011 to May 08, 2011 (all subscribers already have the extension active in their membership)… and get crackin’ in the kitchen again!

Unique, No-Flax Seed Raw “Breads”, Chips, and Crackers

Now that I have my dehydrator out of storage, I’ll be focusing some special attention — as I’ve intended to for some time — on creating some unique “raw, living” recipes for crackers, chips, biscotti, and sandwich wraps, items which are personally necessary to satisfy my own lifestyle and personal cravings for crunch and density. I’ll also make some fun “kale chip” recipes and other dehydro veggie creations.

Two things will set these recipes apart from others commonly found on raw/living food websites: I loathe the taste of flax seed, which is usually used as the “binder” (the raw food equivalent of eggs) for bready things. So I’ll be finding other ways to get the job done, without the use of flax seed. And also, I feel similarly about nutritional yeast, which I do not use and suspect is a highly denatured, addictive substance akin to MSG. I have no proof, but I have observed the throngs of people who make their kale chips with nutritional yeast “and can’t stop eating until they’ve consumed the whole bunch”. People claim that over and over again, and that’s exactly what MSG-type additives do, whether used in Doritos, potato chips, hot dogs…or kale chips.

So… although I am not a “100% raw devotee”, I am a strict proponent of whole, undenatured foods, whether vegan, omnivorous, cooked, or living. And nutritional yeast will not factor into my kale chips or other recipes. So I’ll be exploring how to make delicious savory, crunchy snacks without such additives.

Time To Lose Those Excess Pounds…

The other piece I’m excited about is finally having structure and stability back in my life, so I can eat that way I like to eat, work out regularly, and invest in myself and my health in a way that I’ve very much neglected for several months. Toward that end, like gazillions of other Americans in January, I’m preparing to cinch my belt and take some action to lose the extra pounds that crept up in recent months.

But for me, that doesn’t involve counting calories. It doesn’t involve tracking grams of fat. And it definitely doesn’t involve seeking out “low-fat” ingredients for anything. I never did that when I went from a size 20 to a size 6 using LGSs to help me establish a high-raw diet, and since then I have come to regard “low-fat” foods as part of what causes imbalances in health.

My approach to losing weight? Focusing on maximixing the high-water-content, living foods in my diet using Live Green Smoothies. I describe my approach here, and I call it The Live Green Smoothie 85% Challenge. This approach makes it so easy for anyone to “jack up the raw” in their diet using these awesome smoothies, made in one’s own kitchen from fresh fruit & greens picked up at the local grocer’s. No calorie counting, no complexity, no “dieting” or restricting your favorite foods… just “jack up the raw” and get your 3 blenderfuls in every day, as best you can!

Weight Watcher’s New Points System — Live Green Smoothies Are Now ZERO Points!

I know more than a handful of acquaintances who are currently hitting the Weight Watcher’s bandwagon, and I’ve learned through them that WW has recently revised their point system, making recipes with fresh fruit now “zero points”. What an awesome development! Certainly in alignment with my own view that calories are NOT all the same!

So if you have friends who are Weight Watcher’s fans, do let them know about the Live Green Smoothie 85% Challenge, and that they can bolster their WW approach with some energizing, revitalizing, weight-losing LGSs!

Daily Tracking

I’ll be posting my own progress with the LGS 85% Challenge…the LGSs I’m making, the raw & non-raw foods I’m adding to that equation, and the exercise & other self-care I’ll be including while working to lose that extra poundage.

It’s great to be back. And I hope you’ll feel free to comment and share what you’re doing (and the LGSs your making!) as well!

I know more than a handful of acquaintances who are leaping on the Weight Watcher’s bandwagon

I’m a long-time, die-hard fan of Noni Juice and have been using Tahitian Noni juice, skin cream and other products since 1997. When I first came upon the product, the company that created it was called “Morinda” (after the latin name for the fruit, Morinda citrifolia) and was only 11 months old. They sold only one product: a 32 oz. bottle of carefully produced juice made using traditional techniques used by millenia in the Polynesian Islands.

Since that time, many different kinds of products made by the company (now called “Tahitian Noni International”), but the juice is still very much the heart and soul and magic of the company.

Good For Whatever Ails You…

My family have a litany of powerful anecdotal experiences from using the juice and it’s, for me, a tried-and-true first-tier medicinal food in my daily life. From burns, tummy trouble, flu, anything having to do with the skin (rashes, cuts, serious wounds, aging, sunburn) to Lyme disease, joint pain, and my daily take-to-the-gym energy drink… Tahitian Noni juice has earned its keep in my personal household.

So I’m downright tickled to see Dr. Oz, with his great following, picking Noni out of the crowd and highlighting its powerful healthifying properties.

What an amazing fruit. Be sure you check it out!

Watch Dr. Oz’s latest video on the Anti-Aging Secrets of Noni Fruit

If you — like me — love the “high” from raw garlic (so great for your heart and immune system!), and especially if you want to jack up your body’s defenses, make sure you keep jumbo medjool dates on hand so you can whip this dressing up any time you want.

This dressing is also great for anyone into using Traditional Chinese Medicine to increase chi and tonify the blood and spleen because dates and garlic are two of the foods that are said to naturally help with this. If you know anyone struggling with mono (Epstein Barr Virus) or something similar, you might want to let them know about this, as the spleen is highly vulnerable to mono. A couple years ago I was diagnosed with mono, and that’s when I learned about how to use dates and garlic together. I used to use them together to slow-cook chicken (another TCM spleen-tonifier, especially dark meat), and just those two ingredients with some good salt creates the most surprisingly exquisite bar-b-que.

But here’s a great way to enjoy their yumminess and healtifying qualities fresh, raw and lickety-split, with whatever fruit & vedge you like to put into your salads (banana would be a nifty addition to a salad with this dressing!). I used a simple combo of baby spring greens, a chopped yellow pepper, and sliced onion.

The sweetness of the juicy dates pairs so perfectly with the garlic, like a magical combo. In fact, I think this is the kind of simple dressing that a restaurant could use to create a highly addicted clientele. It’s just scrumptious!

A single batch is enough for a very large salad that can serve two people (and fill them up) as a main meal.

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