Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies

This is a tasty, healthy recipe for anyone on a Raw , Vegan, Vegetarian or normal diet. It’s a great desert for kids with Mother’s who knows the dangers of processed sugared snacks.
Super quick to make. About 15 minutes total.
Makes 16
1 ½ cup raw almonds
1 cup dried, pitted tart cherries—Available in most grocery stores
2 tbs. Ionized water
2 tbs. Agave nectar—a low glycemic sweetener available in health food stores
¼ tsp. Vanilla extract
2tsb. Raw Chocolate Powder Reserve for rolling dough in. (available in health food stores)
Run ingredients through a food processor fitted with and "S" blade until oil is released in nuts and dough holds together. Roll into small balls, roll in raw chocolate powder. Flatten. Eat or store in fridge until you want to eat them.

By Nedalee Ruiz
Nedalee is the author of The Desperate Parents Handbook
http://www.desperateparent.com/
Nedalee recommends http://HealingWaterMachines.blogspot.com for more articles on health and healing.
And http://HealingDiets.BlogSpot.com for articles on diet and nutrition.
Copyright © 2008 By Nedalee Ruiz
Permission granted to reproduce in entirety only including links and author credits.

What I Ate

1.9.08
Exercise--- 100 crunches
Breakfast---Blueberry Smoothie
Lunch---Fruit scones broken up into a bowl like cereal, almond milk and a few dried blueberry’s on top, because I was in a super big hurry.
Dinner—Big Salad
Snack—Homemade Lavender Berry sherbet---not sugar, super yummy
5 -16 oz glasses Alkaline Ionized water total for the day.

1.10.07
Breakfast---A bowl of fresh cherries. Tastes great, and they are of course raw. My concern is that they are full of natural sugar and no protein, so they may give me short-term energy but not lasting energy like the almonds in the blueberry smoothie would.
Snack—Carrot Dill crackers and humus, Orange—More natural sugar Notice I needed a snack before lunch, which isn’t typically the case.
Lunch---Claim Jumper restaurant, salad wit beets and lots of thousand island dressing and beef dip sandwich. Worse yet, I ate the whole sandwich when I normally only eat half. The sandwich had real bread, real beef and cheese, none of which are really diet foods and the extra thousand island had fat and sugar. Even the beets are high natural sugar. Probably not good choices but I’m human and it tasted good. Oh, I had two cups of decalf tea sweetened with Stevia.
Dinner—A frozen store bought burrito because it was convient and I forgot that I still have lots of the raw chili which would have been a much better choice. The burrito tasted really nasty. I also had 3 raw chocolate cover cherry cookies, which gave me the idea to experiment with a mint chocolate cookie recipe soon.

5 16 ounce glasses of Ionized water. I drink Ionized water because it helps clean out your cells. It's molecule size penetrates the cells better than regular water.

Over all, I had low energy all day. It could be because of what I ate or it could be because I started work at 5:30 am, or because it was an overcast day. Either way, I’m about results, and I think the food choices at least contributed to the low energy. Don’t want that. Will try not to do it again. So if the cherries and orange, which were natural and raw, had too much sugar and no protein to give me energy, what about the cereal that most of us feed our kids to start their day? No less than the third ingredient on the box.

1-11.08
Exercise 10 minutes on rebounder
Breakfast—1/2 Blueberry Smoothie
Lunch—Salad and six flour tortillas with honey butter and salsa. Ok, so the flour and honey butter wasn’t the best. 2 glasses Tropical ice tea sweetened with Stevia.
Didn’t get to drink enough water because I was away from home and didn’t take it with me.
It’s 10:00 p.m. and haven’t had dinner or a snack, been VERY busy all day and not hungry. Will have some nuts soon. Alright, I admit it, I never got to the nuts. It’s never good, when dieting to only eat two means. Never, never, never do it, you won’t lose weight. But I have a good excuse, I wrote 3 purchase offers yesterday.

Raw/Vegan Cajun Creole Chili

6-8 servings

3 cups tomatoes, blended or 1 can tomato sauce
2 cups lentils, sprouted in high pH alkaline water
2 carrots, grated1 ear of corn, cut corn off cob
Juice of one lemon or lime
½ red bell pepper chopped
½ cup white onion chopped
2 teaspoons Cajun Creole Seasoning by Spice Hunter, available in stores or spicehunter.com or Chili Powder
3 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon ground cumin
pinch cayenne pepper

Combine all ingredients and let marinate several hours or over night in the refrigeration before serving cold.

By Nedalee Ruiz
Nedalee is the author of The Desperate Parents Handbook
Nedalee recommends Healing Water Machines for more articles on health and healing. Copyright © 2008 By Nedalee Ruiz Permission granted to reproduce in entirety only including links and author credits.

What I'm Eating

1.7.08

Breakfast--Blueberry Smoothie

Lunch--- 1 Baja Burrito

Dinner--- Raw Chili

Snack--- 2 Raw donut holes. A great sweet snack. Mine have been in the fridge for about a month and still seem to be fine. I eat one now and then.

8 ½ 16 ounce glasses of Ionized Water

I was really jonesing for something sweet last night and will try to find a new, healthy raw dessert since I’ve been eating the donut holes for a while and because I want you all to know that that they exist.

1.8.08

No formal exercise but I passed out 300 flyers and got pretty winded.

Breakfast--- Blueberry Smoothie ---Sorry guys, your not going to get much variety from me there. I like this, and I don’t normally eat breakfast. I like that I can make up three days worth at a time and grab it on the run.

Lunch---2 pcs. Onion Herb Bread page 78 Living in the Raw Gourmet, with humus, sliced tomato, ½ avocado salted.

Snack---Fresh fruit cup

Snack---Carrot Dill Crackers—page 72 Living in the Raw Gourmet, it’s a bread recipe but I made it thinner into crackers. Spread with store bought humus. Plus Trader Joe’s Chicken salad—not diet, vegan, vegetarian, or raw, just what was left over in my fridge and about to expire. I’m going to Newport Beach tonight and was hoping to eat light so Ronnie might take me to my favorite restaurant.

Dinner--OK, it worked, but that means I ate too much. 3 Bar-b-ques beef ribs. Mash potatoes and some really great peanut coleslaw with spinach and cilantro in it. I ate all the peanut slaw first to fill up and the rest last. Didn’t even enjoy the ribs or potatoes and brought most of it home to my sons. The Bar-b-que sauce and the slaw both probably had lots of sugar in it.

5 -16 oz. Glasses of Ionized Water

Another snack---3 Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies very good and easy to make, will publish the recipe soon.

Fear of Fat

When I started eating more raw foods, I found that many recipes were very high in fat. I was a little worried about gaining weight even though people professed that I would lose weight. I had just enjoyed a wonderful tasting raw meal when I expressed my fear to my husband who assured me that my body would begin to burn the fat instead of sugar. The words had hardly come out of our mouths when I opened to this quote from Ani Phyo’s book Ani’s raw food kitchen. "Some folks worry about how eating fats affects their weight. Good fats are necessary for our organs and body functions, and they’re good for our heart. The more fats we eat, the more our body lets go of tats, because it knows more will be coming in. The less we drink, the more our bodies retain. The more we drink, the more it lets go of." Truthfully I had also heard this from other sources, but worried how it would work on MY body. Well, in my first 7 days of experimenting with this high fat way of eating natural foods I lost 5.3 pounds. And gained tons of energy.
Burning Fat, Fat, Fats, Fear of Fat, Healthy Fat

Week 1 Diet Results

Week 1 Diet Results

Started 1-1-08 at 165.5
Weigh in 1-7-08 results 160.2
Result 5.3 pound loss in one week. YEAH!

I have to tell you I really step on that scale in fear because of the high fat content in the new style of eating. I will be posing an article about that soon called Fear of Fats.

Changes--- I notice that I'm not needing to eat as many snacks. My new bathroom habits which I will spare you the details, are evidence that all the new fiber in my diet is cleaning me out. I have much more energy. As a matter of fact, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and started writing this at 6:13 a.m.. A big change from when I met Ronnie 41/2 years ago, I hadn't gotten out of bed before 8:30 a.m. in many years. Lastly, five days into this new diet, I've noticed a significant change in my skin. I had beautiful, almost perfect skin in high school, but have had some acne from my 20’s through current 40’s. I've always said that it’s unfair to have pimples and gray hair at the same time! Anyway, I've had a couple of zits the last tow days, but the rest of my skin is brighter and smoother and softer. I think it’s because of all the healthy oils in my new healthy living diet. Many people say t hat they see changes in their skin after drinking alkaline water. But for me it’s taken the water and the diet.
By Nedalee Ruiz
Nedalee is the author of The Desperate Parents Handbook http://www.desperateparent.com/
Nedalee recommends http://www.healingwatermachines.com/ for more articles on health and healing.
Copyright © 2008 By Nedalee Ruiz Permission granted to reproduce in entirety only including links and author credits.

Fail to Plan or Plan to Fail

When I started this new way of eating on the first of January, I didn’t really have a specific plan or menu. I had a general idea and plan. But like my girlfriend last night said, "Everyone tells us what not to eat, but no one tells us what to eat." So the first couple of days of my diet, I kind of floundered around from meal to meal trying to figure out what to eat. To help others out, every two days, I plan to post what I ate and what exercise I did. And once a week I will post the results if any. About every other day, I plan to post other health-related articles. I can’t post actual recipes of what I ate unless it is my own creation, but I plan to soon post links to the books I got the recipes from.


1/3/07
Breakfast—Blueberry Smoothie

Snack--- Apple

Lunch—Batter from my herbed raw bread. I couldn’t resist! I can’t give the full recipe because it’s not mine--- but it had apples, pecans, flaxseed and about 7 other spices including garlic and onion which I love. It's Onion Herb bread, page 78 from Living in the Raw GourmetRaw bread sounds gross but it uses no flour or yeast and isn’t cooked but is dehydrated in an oven, the sun or dehydrator. The batter of this recipe tastes great, we’ll see how the bread tastes later. I made it into hand size patties like hamburgers to use as a base for future sandwiches instead of real bread. The fragrance of the spices in the bread is filling my house and smells so good even upstairs.

Dinner---2 Baja Cheeze Burritos with Taco nutmeat and red pepper corn salsa. From Pages 151, 154,164, and 189 of Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes I will say that they took a little more effort to prepare than I would have expected for something called raw food, but well worth it! This is gourmet raw food after all. When I asked Ronnie how it looked, he said "Worthy to be served in any restaurant." When he tasted mine, he said, "It was bursting with flavor," and I agree. One burrito was more that filling, but I had made two so like a pig I ate them both because they tasted so good.

Snack--- 1 Raw Donut hole. Page 228 Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes

1-4-08
Exercised 20 minutes on the rebounder.

Breakfast--- Blueberry Smoothie

Lunch--- 2 pieces of the raw Onion Herb bread I dehydrated yesterday. page 78 from Living in the Raw GourmetIt was so good. I didn’t need anything with it. Don’t let the name fool you, there is no flour, sugar, what or yeast in this bread. The main things are apples & flaxseeds. Lots of fiber and omega oils.

Dinner---1 Baja Cheeze Burritos with Taco nutmeat and red pepper corn salsa. From Pages 151, 154,164, and 189 of Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes

1-5-08
100 Crunches. Crunches are like half sit-ups

Breakfast--- Almond blueberry portage—raw. Page 36 Living in the Raw Gourmet I didn’t think it tasted great, but I didn’t use fresh coconut like the recipe suggested. It was quick and easy to make.

Lunch---Tuna on the raw herbed bread I made before, page 78 page 78 from Living in the Raw Gourmet. I didn’t choose tuna because I thought it was healthy or a good diet food. I chose it because it was easy. My husband was making one for himself on real bread and offered to make me one, I agreed as long as he put it on my raw bread.

Dinner--- 21/2 cups of my real ham, potato, cream and butter soup. Not the best choice for a diet, but it tasted good and was still around. I’d planned to eat a raw chili concoction. I had wanted to make it in the morning but got distracted. Turns out, this raw eating takes some planning, as the recipe needed to "marinate a few hours." I still had some of the left over burrito stuff that I really like but wanted to save it for lunch. Ronnie is already trying to figure out how to take those to work for munch as he likes them so much from the couple of bites that he had of mine.

Changes--- I noticed I haven't needed snacks the last few days. My new bathroom habits which I will spare you the details, are evidence that all the new fiber in my diet is cleaning me out. I have much more energy. As a matter of fact, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and started writing this at 6:13 a.m.. A big change from when I met Ronnie 41/2 years ago, I hadn’t gotten out of bed before 8:30 a.m. in many years. Lastly, five days into this new diet, I’ve noticed a significant change in my skin. I had beautiful, almost perfect skin in high school, but have had some acne from my 20’s through current 40’s. I’ve always said that it’s unfair to have pimples and gray hair at the same time! Anyway, I’ve had a couple of zits the last tow days, but the rest of my skin is brighter and smoother and softer. I think it’s because of all the healthy oils in my new healthy living diet. Many people say t hat they see changes in their skin after drinking alkaline water. But for me it’s taken the water and the diet..

I’m drinking lots of Alkaline Ionized water from my Melody Water Machine. I drink about 5-8 16 ounce glasses of water a day. It is high pH water and I’ve worked my way up to a number 3 setting which gets me about a 9 Ph. I cook with a number 4, which gives me about a 10 pH.
1.6.08
Breakfast--- Dehydrated raw fruit scones Page 75 Living in the Raw Gourmet broken up into pieces for a delicious cereal with almond milk. I’ll talk about the negative things about cow’s milk in another post.

Lunch---Went to El Torrito Restaurant. Took one bite of my favorite chips and was repulsed by the thick coating and taste of lard. Something that I’d never had the taste buds to discern before. I had their Mexican Caesar Salad, two glasses of Tropical ice tea sweetened with Stevia that I carry in my purse. Two vegetable enchiladas, ½ cup pinto beans, and 1 ½ tbs. sweet corn cake. The corn cake has sugar and butter, so that was the first actual sugar that I chose to eat in a week. The beans wouldn’t belong on an alkaverian diet. The cheese on the enchiladas wouldn’t belong on a Vegan diet and the cooking of the food wouldn’t belong on a raw diet. I will explain the differences between those styles of eating in a future post.

Dinner---Raw Chili and 3 spoons of salsa.
The raw chili was a totally new experience for me. As an American, I’m used to eating Chili, and most foods, cooked and warm. Even after I prepared it and let it marinate for a day and a half, I sat looking at it trying to buck up the fortitude to try the first bite. Cold chili sounded completely unappealing. I couldn’t even get my husband to taste it. With fear and trepidation, I took my first bite and was low and behold it was good, very good. Because I lacked so many ingredients from the original recipe, and had to improvise and over come, I will publish the modified version soon. I’ll tell you now that it had no meat or beans but rather carrots and lentils and lots of other great tasting fresh vegetables. The original recipe had celery and I will omit it in mine as it tasted out of place in the dish.