Naraya Cooking Health Recipe

SHOCKING PINK ICE CREAM 
Serves one or two or three... or me.

4 frozen, peeled bananas cut into chunks 
1/4 cup chopped red beet
Rawxies cookies or brownie chunks
1/2 cup berries
1/4 cup shredded coconut 

Blend the bananas with the beet until smooth. Add some mylk or water if needed / desired. Serve with the rest of the goodies. Yahhh baaabbay.

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 When I started making this recipe this morning my aim was to revamp one of my first ones ever (from 2011 when I started da blog). But I just realized that this turned into an almost exact replica of my immediately previous recipe, with the addition of a tart crust. Oops. Oh well! Don't cry over repeated ice cream + chocolate recipes, I always say. Actually that is the first time I've ever said that yet now I think it should be stated more often. I do eat banana ice cream and chocolate nearly every day, and positive reminders are always... positive. Ah, I just started the new semester today so my brain is already overworked. Thank goodness no one comes here for the prose. I know you only love me for my ice cream recipes and it's OOOKAY. I love you right back.




I totally failed at redoing the original recipe; it was a peanut butter crust with buckwheat, filled with banana ice cream and topped with a thick chocolate frosting. The only thing I really did the same was the banana ice cream filling. The crust in THIS recipe is made from pecans and raisins, and the "frosting" is definitely a drizzle. I guess this just means I will have to try my hand at a third attempt. I don't hear any complaints, right?

I'm finding it very relaxing, rejuvenating and nostalgic looking through my old posts (back when I just started this blog in the fall of 2011). Now I read what I wrote back then - I was 16 years old - and realize how much simpler life was. I had just started university, not sure where I wanted to go with it. I had never been in a romantic relationship. Veganism was all new and thus very exciting, with so much to explore and learn. And obviously, no one read my blog then! Or, almost no one. What I mean is that I wasn't defined by my blog or cookbooks. Of course I'm not entirely now, but you all know me through those platforms. I wasn't a professional blogger or author or vegan public figure or whatever ya wanna call me... I was simply Emily! A young teenager, freshly vegan and enthusiastic about sharing my passion for compassion with the world and everyone around me who would listen. In short: I was a baby! It's helpful for me to go back to those times, via reading my blog posts from that age, to remind myself who I was and how I got to be who I am now. As humans, we are constantly changing; physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally. For one second we are never the same. Being a human is a crazy, chaotic, entropic, wonderful experience. I decided this year that every year I want to look back at who I was a year ago (example: on New Years, I reflected about who I was at the beginning of 2014). I want to remember who I was, what I thought about myself and the world around me, and what I wanted. I've made it a goal to try to always improve myself every year. I want to look back and say, "Hey, you were awesome! But you've accomplished even more now! High five, woman." This isn't to devalue myself now, I'm not standing here - yep, I've got a standing desk - thinking I suck or anything. I just believe in consistently trying to be a better version of myself, while simultaneously loving whoever I am at any given time. After all, self-love should be everyone's #1 priority. Without it, what's the point of anything?

Loving myself is at the heart of everything I do. Maybe that sounds ridiculously arrogant, since we live in society that shakes its head at being proud of yourself and loving who you are, but it's true. We're allowed and expected to compliment our friends, peers, and partners all the time, but what about complimenting ourselves? Self-love is independence, healthy confidence and a necessity for a happy life. Get in front of the mirror today and express out loud all the things you like about yourself, physical and non-physical. You're a magnificent creature who can do anything you set your mind to.

Looking back at my older posts, I am proud of who I was then, and even more proud of who I have grown into. I look forward to future years when I can reflect on this time in my life with a smile on my face, and gratitude for myself and the world that built me. For now, I'm gonna eat another one of these tarts. Wanna join?


ICE CREAM TARTS with CHOCOLATE SAUCE & PECANS 
Makes about two big ones. 

Crust:
3/4 cup pecans
3/4 cup raisins

Chocolate sauce:
1 tablespoon cacao powder
1 tablespoon maple syrup 
1/2 teaspoon vanilla powder

Ice cream:
2 cups frozen bananas (peeled and chopped into 1-inch cubes) 

To make the crust: process the pecans in a food processor until they turn into tiny crumbs. Add the raisins and process until it all starts to stick together. Press into two lined tart tins and put in the fridge. 

To make the chocolate sauce: stir the ingredients together until smooth. Add water if it's too thick.

To make the ice cream: blend the bananas in a high speed blender until smooth and thick like soft serve ice cream. Scoop into your tart crusts. Drizzle on your sauce and eat 'em up.

ADAPTIONS: use any nut or seed instead of pecans. Use dates, figs or prunes instead of raisins. Use cocoa powder or carob powder instead of cacao powder. Use vanilla extract instead of vanilla powder, or omit the vanilla powder. Use coconut ice cream instead of banana ice cream. 

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CHOCOLATE HAZELNUT and PEANUT BUTTER CREAM CAKE with WHIPPED COCONUT CREAM

Crust:
1/2 cup oat flour
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon melted coconut oil

Chocolate hazelnut swirl:
1 cup hazelnuts
1 cup dates
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cacao powder
2 tablespoons melted coconut oil

Peanut butter swirl:
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon melted coconut oil
1 tablespoon maple syrup 

Whipped coco cream:
Follow this recipe. 

1/4 hemp seeds (optional)

To make the crust: mix the ingredients together until they aren't crumbly. If the mixture stays crumbly, add some more coconut oil or water, then press into the bottom of a 6 inch springform pan and put in the fridge.

To make the chocolate hazelnut swirl: blend all the ingredients together until smooth and similar to thick yogurt in consistency. Pour into a separate bowl and set aside.

To make the peanut butter swirl: stir together the ingredients until smooth.

Assembly: make the first layer by dropping alternating dollops of the chocolate and peanut butter mixtures onto your crust, then swirl them together gently with a chopstick. Continue doing this with each layer until you have used up your mixtures. Put in the fridge for 24-48 hours. Then coat the edges with hemp seeds if you like, and serve with the coco cream!

Alternative options: use cocoa or carob powder instead of cacao; use any other nut butter instead of peanut butter; use date paste instead of maple syrup; use cacao butter instead of coconut oil; use buckwheat flour or almond flour instead of oat flour. Substitutions are limitless!

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Sooooo going vegan is pretty much the best decision ever, because it means you can eat ice cream and chocolate all day long and get healthier and happier than ever before. How is this possible? You can make the best ice cream in the WORLD with one ingredient: bananas. You can make the healthiest dark chocolate sauce ever with super nutritious foods like cacao and carob. I eat ice cream for breakfast regularly, and I am smiling and jumping around the rest of the day, every day. Why spoon a bowl of antibiotic- and sugar-loaded bovine secretions when you can gorge on ripe fruit!? No offence to the cows. They are awesome, but we don't need their milk. Another terrific bit of information about vegan ice cream: it's inexpensive! Organic bananas are often $1.00/lb here in Vancouver, Canada (conventional ones are 70 cents/lb or so) and I KNOW they are often cheaper in the States.




Buy 'em in bulk (ask your grocery store if you get a box, or get a discount on extra ripe ones) and let ripen until they are covered in brown spots. Then peel, chop into chunks, lay them out on parchment paper-lined baking pans and freeze until solid. Finally, dump all the frozen chunks into big Ziploc bags and keep in the freezer until you want ice cream (like, everyday). The first time I made banana ice cream - also known as 'nana ice cream' or 'nice cream' - I couldn't believe how delicious and simple it was. In the recipe below I list vanilla and almond milk as ingredients, but the simplest form of banana ice cream is literally just frozen bananas. Note: you need a strong blender to do that (Vitamix or Blendtec). The second simplest? Frozen bananas + water. Ah, ain't life swell?

When I became vegan I thought I'd have to give up my favourite food (i.e. ice cream) until I realized the best ice cream IS vegan. Hello, brave new banana-filled world. It's good to be here. Join me?

OH AND JUST SO YA KNOW: I will be going away with my lovely Jack for a week in the snow-covered woods of northern British Columbia. We are escaping to his grandparents' cozy cottage in Wells, where we went in the summer, before I go back to university on January 7th. I probably won't be posting much on le blog in the next week, but stay tuned to my Instagram for daily photos of what we are eating! There is no oven and possibly no running water, so it'll be a healthy challenge for me to keep us nourished and I plan on sharing all my tips and tricks with you. Yams baked on an open fire? It's goin' down. Steaming veggies with melted snow? Expect it.


BANANA VANILLA SOFT SERVE with DARK CHOCOLATE DRIZZLE

Ice cream:
4 peeled, frozen bananas
1 teaspoon vanilla powder
1 cup almond milk (or water)

Chocolate drizzle:
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon cacao powder
1 teaspoon water

To make the ice cream: cut the frozen bananas into 1-inch chunks. Put in a high-speed blender with the vanilla and almond milk (or water). Blend until it becomes the consistency of soft serve ice cream. It may not seem like it will get to this stage, but it happens quickly and then all of a sudden your blender is full of a creamy, thick, white ice cream! Scoop this into a bowl. 

To make the drizzle: stir the ingredients together until smooth, it will take a second for the cacao to combine with the liquid. Drizzle on your ice cream and enjoy! Add whatever else you like: berries, almond butter, cinnamon, cacao nibs, chia seeds, hemp seeds, coconut... I like using this delicious mix from Blend Co. 

ADAPTIONS: you can use cocoa or carob powder instead of cacao. You can use whatever non-dairy milk you want. You can use coconut nectar or date paste instead of maple syrup. You can use vanilla extract instead of vanilla powder. 

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I wasn't sure what title to give this recipe, because it's really awesome and delicious, but how do I get across the gist of it in one name? I can't call it: raw vegan cheesecake with swirls dyed by beet and carrot juice. No one would click that. Well, almost no one. I would click it. That sounds cool to me. But we are getting off track. I will explain the recipe now.

I had a vision of this... probably in a dream or something. I can't remember exactly but I certainly had a clear image of it in my head and felt the desire to make it into a reality. Originally I was imagining much darker pink and orange colours, along with green swirls (from green juice!) but I give up easily when it comes to food and let this cake happen instead. I might go back to that initial idea in a few months, but for now we will all have to deal with this recipe. Call me optimistic but I think we will manage, somehow.



This cake is freaking TASTY. The base is your regular ole cashew cream, except I sweetened it with fresh orange juice, then divied it up into different mixtures, adding beet juice to one and carrot juice to another. Thus you wind up with a pink or reddish mix, an orange one, and a cashew coloured one. You swirl 'em all together and you get this gorgeous, healthy cylinder of yum. Plants are awesome. Unfortunately these photos are not. Fall as arrived and that means lots of clouds. Usually cloudy weather makes for great lighting buuut today it was just dark all day. Nuttin' I could do.

New topic: have any of you read The Secret? It's about the law of attraction. Look it up if you don't know what I am talking about. Honestly, I am normally highly critical of stuff like this and prefer to base my logic in good science. However, I cannot deny that it seems to really work for me, the law of attraction that is. Over and over I find myself saying something out loud that I want to happen, sharing more personal desires with loved ones, casually in conversation, or as I am writing in my journal. In any case, soon after I mention an aspiration or start thinking about one more frequently, it seems to materialize in my life! Let me give you some examples.

(a) My first book deal. A couple years ago when I was 19, I had been thinking of eventually writing a cookbook because everyone was telling me I should, and of course it was a super exciting idea for me as well. Lo and behold, my amazing publisher found ME and the rest is history. You can buy my first cookbook here, and pre-order my second one here.

(b) My mattress. About a year ago I started thinking more seriously about getting a new mattress. I had been researching and discovering all sorts of bad news about conventional mattresses. I was looking online at organic mattresses but they were like $5,000... nope. Out of nowhere, a mattress company - IntelliBED - specializing in non-toxic mattresses and healthy sleep gets a hold of me and wants me to have one of their beds to review (and keep). Please learn more about my mattress here, because IntelliBEDs are seriously amazing and deep sleep is just as important as diet when it comes to health.

(c) Animal rights activism. I have been saying to a few people lately that I feel like I am not doing enough. I am busy with university, maintaining my blog, writing books, and trying to manage a social life so I don't have much time to focus on activism for animal welfare and environmental campaigns, but I genuinely do feel like I should do more. I plan to get much more heavily involved in that kind of work when I graduate, but for now I just sign as many petitions as I can. Even still, seemingly out of the blue I am getting WAY more animal rights organizations contacting me than I was before.

Maybe these are lame examples and you think I've gone cooky. I totally agree with you. But at the same time... it feels really uncanny when this stuff just keeps happening over and over. Lemme know your thoughts. Let's eat that cake now.

CASHEW CREAM CAKE with FRESH JUICES

Crust:
1/3 cup pecans
1/3 cup dried coconut shreds
2/3 cup medjool dates
1 teaspoon rosemary leaves (optional)

Base:
1 cup cashews (preferably soaked for 2-4 hours)
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon chunk ginger root 
3-4 tablespoons melted coconut oil
1 tablespoon lucuma powder (optional) 

Extras:
1/4 cup fresh beet juice, as needed
1/4 cup fresh carrot juice, as needed

To make the crust: pulse the pecans, coconut and rosemary (if using) in a food processor until they become small crumbs. Add the dates and process until it all sticks together. If it's too crumbly, add more dates. Press into the bottom of a lined springform pan; the one I used is about 7 inches. Put in the fridge. 

To make the cake: blend the base ingredients together until smooth. It should be like thick yogurt at this point; if it's not, add more cashews or coconut oil. Separate the mixture equally into 3 bowls.

Scoop one of the portions back into your blender and add 3 tablespoons of beet juice, then blend until smooth. Keep adding beet juice if you want, but if it starts getting very thin add more cashews or coconut oil. Scoop this pink/red mixture back into a bowl. Do this same process with the carrot juice. You should now have one beet juice mixture, one carrot juice mixture, and one plain mixture.

Assembly: take the springform pan out of the fridge, and have your three mixtures ready with a spoon for each. To get the swirl effect, just fill up the pan with spoonfuls of each mixture until you run out. Then run a chopstick through it all in whatever pattern you like. Or simply pour them in one after the other to get a layered look. Either way it's gonna taste great. Let it set for at least 24 hours in the fridge so it can develop flavour, then decorate and enjoy!

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Did you like this post? Then *subscribe to my blog* and get all my posts by email!

Did you like this post? Then *subscribe to my blog* and get all my posts by email!

The title is pretty self-explanatory: I finally got Instagram, and I'm sharing a recipe for ginger orange carrot juice. First thing's first: follow me on Instagram if you want to (...  you want to). Secondly: make this juice and feel the good ole fruit and veggie vibes! Carrot juice and beet juice are my faves right now. I love adding ginger and garlic for extra flavour and nutrition; and cucumbers, celery, apples, oranges, bell peppers, greens and pineapple for volume (and equally because they're obviously super healthy). The colour of carrot juice is legit inspiring (same goes for beet juice)! You can't NOT want to drink up a glass of this vibrant, glowing juice filled with life. Get it in ya.

Now, moving onto Instagram! I mean I suppose there's not too much to say about it; but I am really excited to have this new social media platform to share my life with you guys on. My Instagram feed will be a good picture into my daily diet and lifestyle, which I sometimes don't show on my blog (instead I generally only share my "wow!" recipes, not what makes up the bulk of my diet). If you guys want to only see the food I eat, that's totally fine; but if you're also interested in how I spend my days personally, I'd be happy to share that with you too! Just let me know. *smile*.

In other news: I just got my manuscript for my second book back from my publisher today, with their notes attached for what I should change or fix. *excited*! I can't wait to bring this new book to all of you. It's bursting with juicy goodness and the food porn you've hopefully come to expect from me. *wink*. (I don't know why there are so many asterisks in this post). This book has 100 recipes for mostly juices and smoothies, as well as about 15 for energy bars and snacks. There are chapters for ingredients, equipment, methods, tips and tricks... everything you need to begin or master a juicing- and blending-filled life! Cheers to living long and being sexy (because you will, and you are)!


GINGER ORANGE CARROT JUICE

5 carrots
1 tablespoon chunk of ginger
2 oranges 

Wash, peel and chop as needed, then juice it up and drink it down! Mmm. 
Note: this is a snack-sized juice. Double or triple this to get a full tummy.... although if you do, watch out for the ginger. Even with huge juices, I keep my ginger to about 1 tablespoon. 

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People have been telling me I shouldn't call this a cleanse, since my system is pretty much as clean as can be. I'd have to agree with this and I'll say right now I am not concerned about becoming more pure or losing weight or anything like that. I just love how I feel when all I consume is fresh juices and organic fruit! I am not restricting my calories as far as I know (although I do not, and never have, kept track); I am drinking and eating as much as I want/need so I don't feel deprived.

That being said, everyone fasts and cleanses for different reasons. Your aim may be to lose weight, detox, transition into a vegan or raw food diet, etc. Whatever your situation, make sure you have a clear goal in mind and that you do it safely! If you're "cleansing" with me, I hope you're doing great!

Today I took it easy again, certainly enjoying not having to work on my book - for now (I get my revisions back in a couple weeks). I cleaned and tidied the house, watered the plants, picked blueberries and immediately ate them, and I am still currently trying to bleach this cute lingerie-esque dress I bought at a thrift store two days ago. I figured it'd look great in white instead of black but the colour is taking a long time to come out... we'll see. Then I watched Reincarnated and almost fell asleep. Following that I made this juice (recipe below)! Hope you like it as much as I did.

























ginger jive carrot apple juice:

3 large carrots
2 green apples
1 cucumber
1/2 pineapple
1 lemon
1 tablespoon fresh ginger

Wash, peel and chop the produce as needed. Put through your juicer, strain (optional) and enjoy! 

I am really loving coconut milk and frozen fruit as combination ingredients lately. If you're getting tired of it - I am sorry. But no need to fret, because summer is quickly approaching and she promises a fresh, local, always-changing variety of new produce each week at the farmers market. I am excited to be inspired every Saturday by the organic options available to make new raw food creations for myself, my family, friends, and you, of course! But for now - I must stick with frozen fruit, and coconut milk is an excellent pairing.