The Live Green Smoothie Diet

You’ll be so surprised how this tastes… no one would ever suspect that there’s fresh, raw zucchini in it! Talk about a reason to over-plant your garden with squash this year!

You can even make this rich, creamy smoothie utterly non-fat… or luscious-it-up with a bit of raw cacao butter, which really makes a fabulous difference in taste.

What a great, healthy way to get your chocolate fix!

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Raw chocolate and raw maca go together brilliantly. I already have a “ChocoMacaVerde” Live Green Smoothie recipe on my site for pairing those two, and you can also add a teaspoon or raw maca powder to my Liquid Brownie recipe for spectacular results.

Now here’s a third option, one without hemp seeds or avocado, but still creamy, luscious, and mild. Can’t taste the maca in this one at all…tastes just like a creamy chocolate milkshake!

And, of course… you can always add some fresh spinach or parsley to make this a Live Green Smoothie!

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(Before chocolate is completely set.)

Chocolate is set here, but much darker than shows up in the photo.

Frankly, this is a great chocolate to make when you just want chocolate… forget the nuts & nibs.

Honestly, when you make a raw chocolate treat like this for the first time and experience and fast and easy it is to make something so satisfyingly delicious, you’ll wonder why you ever made those Peanut M&M runs to 7-11.

This particular chocolate is a little different from my other raw cacao recipes… it highlights some awesome Mexican vanilla a friend so graciously gifted me recently (a gigantic quart-sized bottle… can you imagine???), and is nicely salted to offset the sweet. For best results, definitely use the best quality vanilla and naturally mineralized salt you can get your hands on.

And if you have all these good-but-simple things already in your kitchen as staples, this is a no-brainer to whip up on-the-fly. If you don’t have macadamia nuts or nibs, you can use any other nut or seed — and don’t forget Goji Berries. Or you could just eat the stuff off a spoon as soon as it’s mixed up.

I swear to you, it takes probably just two minutes to get to that point. That’s how quick a chocolate-fix this really is. Heh.

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If you haven’t yet tried any of the smoothies I’ve been whipping up lately with fresh aloe vera gel, maybe this will be the one to send you over the edge and buy a handful of aloe vera leaves at your local grocery store. I’d like to say that this is my favorite one, but the thing is, every smoothie I’ve ever made with fresh aloe has it’s special appeal.

This one… a rich dark-chocolatey blast of well-being from both the intense choco-magnesium and aloe-polysaccharide. Both frothy and refreshing… and it’s made without any nut milk, and without the addition of hemp seeds. Quite spectacular, really.

What a delightful discovery. This one will become a regular in my kitchen, absolutely.

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Former Girl Scout that I am, I’ve quite a few memories of scampering about the Minnesota woods on camping exhibitions equipped with baggies full of homemade “gorp” (a combination of peanuts, raisins, M&Ms, and other portable goodies for munching on-the-fly).

Even as a non-camper, it’s a good strategy to make a nice raw equivalent and keep it on hand for snacking, or to tuck into your bag for “just-in-case-I’m-stranded-without-anything-healthy-to-munch-on” when you’re on-the-go, or even for enjoying with a glass of wine instead of cheese.

If you frequently get a craving for crunchy food, and an apple or carrots Just Will No Do, make this and keep it about. It’s also salty… a great appeal for those like me who find sweetness abounding in the raw world and are left looking about for the grounding quality of savory foods.

You can switch up the ingredients in this recipe to accommodate your tastes and what you have on hand. But the key is that you moisten and salt your chosen ingredients, so that the salt sticks satisfyingly to each piece.

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I’m visiting family in Florida right now for the holidays, and when I saw the giant bowls of freshly picked, home-grown oranges, tangerines, grapefruits, and lemons in their kitchen, I knew straightaway that citrus was going to figure prominently in a few of my recipes this week! Then my mom asked me to show her how to make some tasty raw chocolate goodies, and I knew the first thing I wanted to make: these deliciously juicy chocolate-dipped tangerine slices!

What a great combo… the sweet, juicy tang of tangerine with luxurious dark chocolate. And so easy… you whip up the chocolate in minutes, dip the fruit twice, and store the plate of treats in the fridge. Nothing complicated, other than waiting a few minutes in between dips for the chocolate to harden in the freezer.

When you bite into these babies, the delicate hard-chocolate shell crunches into the cool sweetness of the tangerine for a juicy bite that’s both refreshing and just slightly decadent! And if you can find “tangelos” at your grocer’s instead of tangerines, even better — you won’t have to spit out a pip when you’re done!

I brought this plate over to my brother’s for dessert and left the plate unattended in the kitchen, only to find it half-demolished just moments later by all the kids who’d gotten to it before dinner was served. But with this recipe… all natural, rich with undenatured nutrients… who cares? Was probably the healthiest thing they ate all day.

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Maca root, a staple food in Peru and a superfood that comes to us from the Incan culture, is well-known as a potent adaptogen and long-reputed to increase libido and fertility.

Thing is, as perhaps the most potent radish on the planet, it has a distinctive and highly dominant flavor that can be challenging to add to recipes. It goes well with chocolate, though, so I set out to create a sweet “MacaNut” recipe that would enable the tasty enjoyment of maca as a food rather than via a supplemented capsule. Am happy to report my son’s review of the MacaNuts: “Tasty and delicious!”

This recipe for “pecan turtles” uses raw cacao powder, raw honey, and cacao butter — and a few other goodies — and whips up very quickly into a delicious superfood snack with the health benefits of maca.

And if you don’t have maca on hand, you can also make it. You can also make the pecan/maca mixture and layer it on top of a raw chocolate mousse tart instead of covering the pecans in chocolate. Would make a delicious dessert for a raw pot luck! And you can dehydrate the pecans without the chocolate, until nice and crisp!

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Boy, was I both surprised and delighted when I discovered how well fresh spinach goes with chocolate; or rather… raw cacao. Parsley goes great with it as well. But spinach is truly brilliant, because it adds no flavor whatsoever, only an exquisite taste of “freshness”. Added to nutrient-rich raw cacao… what a wonderful pairing!

These Live Green Smoothie recipes are great for any time, but especially handy when you’re traveling because the only fresh produce that’s required is the spinach. Everything else you can pack in your bag. And I’ve given you two different options you can make — one light, refreshing, and still creamy (the protein in the spinach does add a creamy quality); and  the other even creamier yet (”milkier“, really… that’s the quality hemp seeds add), complements of the protein and abundant essential fatty acids contributed by the hemp seeds.

Without Hemp Seeds:

With Hemp Seeds:

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This unique recipe is extremely simple, has a delicious creamy mouth-feel… and is made with cold-pressed olive oil! There is no melting of fat required. You just whip it up in your blender or your food processor, shape it and put into the freezer to firm up, then cut into pieces. 

I was reflecting on the fats that I use to make raw chocolate — cacao butter, coconut oil, and even fresh avocado when I’m making a pudding, mousse, or my Liquid Brownie smoothie. I wondered how it would be with extra-virgin olive oil… if the flavor of the olives would complement the chocolate. I suspected that there would a natural, if surprising, harmony between the two, because they are both dark, sweet, bitter, and earthy. And indeed, they complement each other very nicely.

This is a recipe you can make quickly, and then keep in the freezer. The chocolate is rich. This is certainly not a chocolate you’ll be gorging on, but the intense flavor and creamy texture will be very enjoyable with a cup of tea or fresh espresso.

It’s also a great recipe to use as a base. You can change the quantity of nibs to include various nuts, seeds, and dried fruit instead (such as goji berries or dried cherries)!

Enjoy!

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“Jack up the raw” over the holidays…without giving up your favorite food or parties!

Make plans NOW to launch 2010 feeling great, not overweight, low-energy, or depressed. Use Angela’s easy-diet 6-week program to make it happen!

The objective here was to make a super-easy, super-fast raw chocolate pudding from simple ingredients — something to pull out when a chocolate craving hits — and this sure got the job done! I also wanted to make it with cacao nibs, as I seem to go through raw cacao power like crazy, but tend to accumulate nibs. And in case others have similar habits, here’s a convenient way to use them. But certainly you could use cacao powder instead.

This pudding is rich, intense, and utterly luscious! More like a mousse, with a nice stable texture that will do well as a pie filling. You could also keep it in the freezer as ice cream (where mine currently resides). Definitely handy for when you want something sweet… but not too much, and when you want something chocolatey… but not too much. No way anyone can overeat this. 

If you don’t have a high-powered blender, you may have difficulty making the recipe as-is, because there is no additional liquid to enable the blender to “catch”. In that case, add a bit of fresh almond milk and turn it into a delicious chocolate shake! It would make for a great recipe for a raw pot luck dessert — you can whip it up and pour it out in small cups for everyone to have a taste at the end of the meal!

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