80/10/10

Raw Vegan Valentines Day 80/10/10 Style: Cherry Mango Love Smoothie

February 13, 2012 by Veronica Grace 10 Comments

Whether or not you have a sweetie on Valentines Day this year, you can make your own 80/10/10 style holiday meal pretty easily. Make a beautiful breakfast smoothie for yourself or your loved one, or slice up some mangoes into heart shaped pieces. There you go, festive and edible!

It’s just starting to become mango season, you will see them available at grocery stores slowly, but they will be in full availability starting in April.

I got these mangoes from Costco and they are starting to ripen up.

How To Cut Mangos Into Heart Shape Pieces

To make heart shaped mango slices, you’re going to need a really sharp preferably thin knife. Slice off the cheeks of the mango (around the inner woody pit) and trace an outline on the skin in a heart shape, or any desired shape. Carefully cut out the mango trying to be as smooth in your cuts as possible. When you’re done you can trim any choppy bits after to make it look more streamlined.

Serve your mango pieces on top of a fresh fruit salad or smoothie. You can use any leftover scraps in a delicious smoothie as well. I saved mine for the smoothie below.

Raw Vegan Valentines Day Smoothie: Cherry Mango Love

Serves 1

Ingredients:

2-3 ripe bananas (spotted all over)
2 ripe mangoes (very soft and wrinkly all over)
1-2 cups frozen black cherries (Dole, H-E-B and Costco all have these available. Costco in Canada)

Directions:

Place mangoes in the bottom of your Vitamix or blender, then bananas and then frozen cherries on top. If you need to you can add a little water to make it blend easier, but I like my smoothies thick. Blend until smooth.

Serve and garnish if desired.

Additional Tips:

If you don’t have frozen black cherries, you can use frozen raspberries. Strawberries are a possibility, just make sure they are sweet.

You can easily make this a green smoothie by adding some spinach to it. The cherries will mask the green colour and make it look more purplish.

What do you think of this recipe? Are you doing anything special for a raw vegan Valentines Day?

80/10/10 Recipe: Grapefruit Soup With Step By Step Pictures!

December 14, 2011 by Veronica Grace 5 Comments

Grapefruit soup is an easy 1 ingredient (mono) meal you can have for a breakfast or a snack. It’s 80/10/10 friendly and fat free. They key is to use very sweet juicy grapefruits. My favourite are red grapefruits. Right now we’re in Texas for Christmas, so we are using the Texas Star Grapefruits here. They’re quite good. I wouldn’t suggest using this recipe for more sour white grapefruits.

My friend made this for me and I photographed him doing so, so you can easily see how to get an easy to eat grapefruit meal with no seeds or excess peel or skins.

For this recipe I used 3 grapefruits. 2 to cut into chunks and 1 to juice over the chunks.

(Fat Free Raw Vegan) Grapefruit Soup

Using a sharp knife, cut off both ends of the grapefruit so you can see the flesh inside. Cut away enough that you don’t have any white pith or peel left.

Flip the grapefruit onto one of the cut ends and start cutting off the sides of the peel and pith all the way around.

Now cut the grapefruit into 3 slices and remove any seeds you see.

Continue cutting into slices.

Stand up the centre piece and cut around the middle, like you would the core of an apple. Discard this piece.

Line up your slices and now cut into bite sized chunks.

Your first grapefruit is done. Continue the same process with the second grapefruit and place the pieces into a bowl.

Slice the 3rd grapefruit in half. Remove the seeds.

Using a knife or a citrus reamer squeeze the grapefruit and turn to release the juice. Alternatively you can use a citrus juicer.

Continue juicing the other side of the grapefruit.

Serve!

What do you think of this simple recipe? You can also do this with sweet oranges or pineapple. The key is to use sweet ripe fruit. Makes sure to eat this right away as the fresh juice will oxidize and go sour if you leave it out or in the fridge for a few days.

How To Enjoy Eating A Lot Of Apples or How To Have an Apple Happy Meal!

October 22, 2011 by Veronica Grace 6 Comments

FTC Notice: This post contains affiliate links that go towards supporting the blog.

So you live in a Northern climate, it’s winter, there’s not a lot of tropical fruit around, there’s not really any “ripe” fruit around, you don’t have a lot of money to spend on produce; you’re hungry and want an easy inexpensive meal.

My friends, let me introduce to you the apple. It’s quite versatile and easy to get ALL over the world all year round. They keep well, can lasts for weeks if not months in the fridge or a cold cellar.

But how do you get this apply-goodness inside you without it being a pain in the jaw and eating all those waxy peels?…

80/10/10 Recipe: Raw Vegan Pomegranate Apple Grape Juice

October 19, 2011 by Veronica Grace 4 Comments

FTC Notice: This blog post contains affiliate links which go towards supporting the blog. We got some delicious pomegranates from Costco this week, so I’ve been eating them different ways, snacking on the seeds, straight juice and mixed juice. Today I’m having an (80/10/10 diet approved) antioxidant rich breakfast: a bowl of raspberries and a pomegranate, red grape, apple juice. Pomegranite juice on it’s own isn’t so bad, it just has a really bitter aftertaste. If you find it too strong and want to enjoy some nutritious juice this season, mix it with other sweet juices. Apple, grape, or pear works best. Maybe even an apple celery pomegranate concoction would be nice as well. To juice a pomegranate you’re going to want to use a citrus juicer. The kind you press the handle down onto it. I have a Breville 800CPXL that works great You can try a hand held citrus juicer, but they’re not easy to juice like oranges, and you will find you get whole pieces stuck in crevasses near the peel. For the rest of my raw vegan juice I used my regular Breville centrifugal juicer , which I enjoy as it’s much easier to use and clean than my previous Jack Lalane juicer. I tried that one and actually returned it, it was too messy to use and clean.

Raw Vegan Pomegranate Apple Grape Juice

Ingredients: 1 pomegranate 2-3 peeled apples 2 cups of red grapes (sweet) Directions: Cut the pomegranate in half and using a citrus juicer, juice half of the pomegranate at a time. Really press down with the juicer until the pomegranate seeds all come out. Repeat with the other half. For any seeds you missed in the strainer, use a spoon and push down on them to pop out the last bits of juice. Take your apples and grapes and run them through a centrifugal juicer. Pour into a tall glass, ensuring the extra foam stays in the container and doesn’t go into the glass. Now pour your pomegranate juice into the glass with the other juice and mix. Serve with ice cubes if desired. Enjoy your delicious juice without the bitter aftertaste of pomegranate!

80/10/10 Recipe: Raw Banana Pear Berry Smoothie

October 13, 2011 by Veronica Grace 3 Comments

FTC Notice: This blog post contains affiliate links that go towards supporting the blog.

This is a really easy 80/10/10 and raw vegan fruit smoothie to make, using some ripe fruit. You want to use ripe bananas that are soft and lightly brown speckled and pears that have turned from rock hard green to soft yellow with some brown flecks.

Make sure you have ripe pears as well. If your pears have any bad spots in them cut them out before using. If your pears are really ripe like mine were it won’t add much of a gritty texture to your smoothie. Unripe, hard pears are NOT good in smoothies!

Raw Vegan Banana Pear Berry Smoothie

Ingredients:

3 large ripe bananas
2 very ripe bartlet pears, seeded
2 cups frozen mixed berries

Directions:

Place bananas, pears and berries into Vitamix or blender. (If you don’t have a Vitamix you need to add some water to blend) Using the tamper, push the fruit down towards the blade and turn onto 5 and then up to high. Blend for 45 sec to a minute until smooth.

Enjoy!

What do you think of this smoothie recipe?

80/10/10 Recipe: Low Fat Raw Vegan Green Pea Lemon Dill Blended Soup

October 7, 2011 by Veronica Grace 2 Comments

Green peas and dill are some of my favourite green things to eat. So I decided to combine them into a tasty raw soup recipe.

This is sort of a chunky style raw soup with diced veggie chunks in a blended base. Feel free to customize it as you like, but I find that having something to chew on in raw soups is nice so it’s not just eating smoothie with a spoon.

Alternately, if you don’t love green peas raw, you can substitute more of something else like zucchini, cucumber or even diced peppers.

Raw Green Pea Lemon Dill Soup

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

Soup Base

2 cups zucchini, peeled and chopped
2 cups yellow or orange tomatoes, chopped
1 cup of celery, chopped
1/2 cup dill, chopped fine
4 green onions, chopped
5 or 6 small dates, pitted
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/4 cup of chia gel (or a tbsp or two of chia seed)
2 tsp celery powder or 1/2 tsp salt (optional)

Veggies:

1 celery stalk, diced
1/2 cup zucchini, diced
1/2 cup cucumber, diced
1 cup fresh or frozen peas
1 green onion, diced

*Using a veggie chopper is the fastest way to get the vegetables into little cubes to stir into the soup.

Directions:

1. Blend soup ingredients in a Vitamix or blender until well combined.

2. Divide soup and veggies into 2 bowls and garnish with extra dill or green onion.

Enjoy!

What do you think of this recipe?

80/10/10 Recipe: Raw Winter Vitamin C Smoothie

September 28, 2011 by Veronica Grace 4 Comments

Winter time can be a little harder to get a wide variety of fresh ripe fruit. So this is an easy staple that you can add to your breakfast regime. Just make sure you are using fresh squeezed orange juice (home-made is best) and ripe bananas (that are very speckled and sweet). An unripe banana or sour oranges can really ruin your smoothie, so make sure you use quality ingredients that taste good on their own first.

If you find that you are feeling cold in the winter months, make sure you take your fruit OUT of the refrigerator before using it. You do NOT want to be drinking cold smoothies and eating cold fruit when you are already feeling cold. Then your hands will get cold and you will feel like crawling back under the covers and staying in bed.

It also helps to do a few jumping jacks or running on the spot in the morning to get yourself warmed up and feeling more energized when it’s cold and blah outside.

Raw Winter Vitamin C Smoothie

Serves 1

Ingredients:

1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

1 tbsp hemp seed

2 bananas, ripe

3-4 apples peeled, cored and chopped

Directions:

1. Place ingredients in Vitamix in order above and blend on high until smooth and creamy. If you have a regular blender you may want to chop up the apple into smaller pieces to make blending easier.

Enjoy!

What do you think of this recipe?

80/10/10 Recipe: Raw Vegan Cherry Dream Smoothie

September 28, 2011 by Veronica Grace 2 Comments

Raw Vegan Cherry Dream Smoothie

Serves 1
Ingredients:

1/2 cup water
2 cups pineapple
2 cups black cherries, pitted
1/2 mango (ataulfo is best)

Directions:

Place ingredients in order into Vitamix or blender. Blend on high until smooth. You can use fresh or frozen of any of the fruit ingredients, but fresh is best for the full flavour of each fruit.

The best tool I have found to help with pitting cherries is the Cherry It Cherry Pitter, which I got on Amazon. It rocks, for when you want to eat a bunch of cherries nice and neatly, blending them or freezing them. It can also do olives too. Not that I have tried though! This cherry pitter will be your new best friend during summer time. I love sitting around with a big bowl of pitted cherries and just enjoy popping them into my mouth one by one.

80/10/10 Recipe: Raw Cherry Blaster Smoothie

September 21, 2011 by Veronica Grace 1 Comment

I love love love cherries. I also love love love cherry smoothies. If you’ve never had one, YOU MUST TRY IT. Pitting cherries by hand is kind of a pain, but scroll to the bottom to find out how I do mine quickly.

If you live in the USA you can also look for frozen black cherries at the grocery store, those are great to have too. You can also buy cherries cheaper at the end of the summer season and pit a bunch yourself and freeze them in plastic bags to use all year which is handy to have.

Cherry Blaster Smoothie

Serves 1

Ingredients:

1 cup black cherries, pitted

1 banana (ripe)

1 ataulfo mango (or 1 cup frozen mango)

1 cup peaches or apricots, pitted (sweet ones)

1-2 dates (optional, if your fruit is more tart)

Directions:

1. Place the first four ingredients into Vitamix or blender and blend until smooth. If your blender needs a bit of water to run properly add a little to get things going. Taste test. If it’s sweet enough, you’re done. If your peaches or mangos are not very sweet, add the dates and blend again. Taste test and serve.

To pit cherries easily, I recommend the Cherry It Cherry Pitter which I got on Amazon. I love this thing!