Celebrating an all-natural lifestyle

Coming Clean About My Cup of Joe

One of the first things that new clients like to declare to me is this: “Just so you know, I love my morning coffee, and I’m sorry, but I’m not giving it up.”

Hmmmm. OK. Thanks for sharing?

To be frank, this statement amuses me. Half the time I’m tempted to reply, “In comparison to some of the things you’re eating, buddy, coffee is the least of your problems. Lay off the processed food and diet soda, then we’ll talk about coffee.” The rest of the time, I want to smile and say, “Don’t worry, I’m not giving up coffee, either.” Because –after much tortured consideration — I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not.

Coffee. Java. Black gold. Cafe. Joe. Drip. Brain juice. Jet fuel. Liquid energy. Morning thunder. Mud. Bean juice. Americano. Day starter. Lifeblood. These are only a few of my pet names for the smooth, sultry, and incomparable stuff that is coffee. Few pleasures in life can compare to coffee drinking. Since my first sip at the tender age of ten, coffee and I have been good, good friends. I remember sneaking out of class in fifth grade to spend a whopping $4.00 on iced mocha from Timothy’s. A small fortune, then, but it was worth it, every time. I remember the advent of the frappucino — what a joyous day that was! I remember hot, tall lattes that steered me through every study break, every play rehearsal, and every homeroom hour of high school. I remember drinking six or seven cups of the burnt, bitter, totally ordinary, yet totally reliable brew that was churned out all over the Columbia campus for each and every day of my college career. I remember discovering real espresso in Italy during my sophomore year, and wishing that one day I might squander a paycheck on an espresso machine. Sigh. So many beautiful memories.

If coffee is so divine and dear to me, why bother writing about it at all? Why not simply guzzle it to my heart’s content, and be done with it? Well, here’s the thing: coffee’s not exactly awesome for you. It’s heavily acidic, which is bad news for reasons I’ve discussed many a time. It’s dehydrating, which is no fun. It’s a stimulant, which means it exerts stress on your adrenal system and keeps your body in a constant state of over-stimulation and recovery. Drinking too much coffee has been linked to fatigue, foggy headedness, cranky moods, and weakened immunity. And, if you suffer from IBS or a sensitive belly, coffee is very likely to exacerbate your symptoms and prompt attacks.

The news isn’t all terrible. As you’ve probably read, moderate coffee consumption has been linked to some good things, too: reduction of headaches, mood elevation, and even a decrease in changes of Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and colon cancer. I’m not totally convinced about the latter claim, but I do think that coffee can boost athletic performance, increase alertness, and (perhaps) offer us some antioxidants. Which is why I hold firm in my insistence that drinking a cup or two of coffee each day is far less harmful than eating poor, processed, and impossible to digest foods on a regular basis. But let’s get real here. Coffee ain’t kale. It ain’t green juice. It isn’t health food. There may be purported benefits, but at the end of the day, I’d suggest that the known downsides of coffee probably outweigh the potential upsides. And because it’s acidifying and can irritate digestion, it’s fairly at odds with the rest of the things I try to do for my body.

Two years ago, I decided that it was time to wean myself off. I had just quit smoking: how tough could coffee be? The answer is, relatively un-tough. Compared to the misery of quitting smoking, ditching coffee seemed like a piece of cake (OK, maybe not quite, but it wasn’t painful, either). I missed the taste quite a lot, but I didn’t seem to suffer any significant withdrawal, and my tummy certainly felt good without it. Green juice gave me the jolt I needed, and I wasn’t suddenly lacking in energy, so it seemed to me that I could and should vow to do without coffee for good. If I didn’t need it, and it wasn’t great for me, why bother?

What I left out of that reasoning was this: I may not need coffee, but I love it. Dearly. And because I ignored that crucial factor — pleasure — my coffee hiatus was not meant to last.

A few months ago, I find myself craving my morning joe. A lot. So I had a cup. And one became another. And another. And another. And, like the dysfunctional, yet stubbornly persistent ex-boyfriend I thought I’d kicked to the curb, coffee crept back into my life in the weeks that followed, guilty cup by guilty cup. Today, as I write this, I’ve gone from stolen sips of espresso and furtive trips to the office coffee maker to brewing at home each morning. So much for quitting.

Today, my friend Kristen posted an excellent article on how to kick a caffeine habit. In it, she offered many of the tips I offer to clients myself: sip juice each morning; try Teechino; depend on caffinated teas, and then move to herbal tea; try warm almond milk with cocoa powder to satisfy a craving. Awesome tips, Kristen! I couldn’t have said it better myself. The problem is that it’s not caffeine I’m addicted to. It’s coffee. I’m actually not particularly responsive to caffeine. When days go by — and don’t worry, many still do! — when I don’t drink coffee, I don’t feel very tired or cranky. I don’t get headaches. In fact, I know darn well that green juice boosts my energy far more than coffee does.

No no, the lure of coffee isn’t the caffeine. It’s the taste, the smell, the associations. Like all true pleasures, my love of coffee can’t be replicated with a substitute. No coffee-like beverage — not tea, not Teecino, and certainly not grain coffee — tastes as good to me as the real thing. And since it’s not caffeine per se that I want, but coffee itself, I’ve virtually no interest in anything that’s meant to seem like coffee, or simply to deliver some caffeine. When I quit smoking, the idea of nicorette gum seemed absurd to me. How on earth would a little nugget of nicotine help me get over my adoration of the smell, taste, and sensation of smoking? Well, ditto for coffee. You can keep the Teecino, thanks. If I’m going to drink something coffee-like, it’ll be the real thing, or nothing at all.

What about green juice, you ask? Doesn’t that help? In a word, no. Green juice is heavenly: in many ways, it’s my idea of lifeblood. But for me, it offers an entirely different experience than drinking coffee. The two can’t even be compared, and I don’t see how one is supposed to supplant the other. Of course I love and drink juice. But it’s no stand in for my tall, dark, and handsome morning bean.

So where does that leave me? Well, let me break out the counseling skills for a moment here. Whenever a client and I discuss the pros and cons of eating a food that’s not ideal, I ask my client not to think in terms of “good” and “bad,” but rather to consider the whole picture. Maybe a food isn’t exactly bad for him or her, but it tends to prompt overeating or binges that are bad, both physically and psychologically (many women feel this way about nuts, or sweets). On the other hand, maybe there’s a food that isn’t nutritionally ideal, but it gives my client a great deal of pleasure, and helps him or her not to feel deprived, which in turn helps maintain balance. In those cases, I’ll always say that the food should stay in my client’s life. Living without pleasure does not fit into my definition of health.

Of course, such a statement can be misused and taken to extremes: if my client’s pleasure happens to be heroin, or Big Macs for dinner each night, I’ll most likely declare that the pleasure afforded is vastly outweighed by the harm done to his or her body, and we should work on strategies to excise the habit. This is what I ultimately had to do with cigarettes. Yes, I loved them, but I knew that they did me too much harm for me to keep them around on the grounds that they gave me pleasure. With some habits, there’s no middle ground.

With coffee, fortunately, there is. Coffee’s not doing my body any favors, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not sending me to an early grave, either. I drink an eight ounce cup or less almost every day, but not every day, and I don’t return to the coffee maker all afternoon for more if I can help it. I drink the caffeinated stuff, but it doesn’t make me overly jumpy. And the nice news is that my digestive system is now so strong, and my terrible IBS such a distant memory, that coffee doesn’t send my body into spasms of discomfort. Score!

I know that this isn’t a balance that should be abused: if I were to push the envelope and drink coffee three or four times a day, I’d likely begin to feel sick. But fortunately, I won’t. I’m not perfect, but I do possess fairly impressive stores of discipline (to counteract my equally impressive stores of coffee love), and I know I won’t often go beyond the pleasureful morning cup — or perhaps an afternoon cup, if that’s my pleasure instead.

Is coffee undoing all of the good things I do for my health? Nah, I don’t think so. It’s probably making me more acidic, but the amount of juice and alkaline foods and greens I put in my body should do a fine job of counteracting that effect. It’s probably stressing my adrenal system a bit, but to be honest, my stress levels are far more responsible for any adrenal fatigue I’ve got, and I’d rather spend time working on stress management than depriving myself a sip or two of liquid joy each morning. And since my own vision of health includes certain things that aren’t necessarily biologically ideal, but boost our pleasure and enhance our waking experience, a little bit of coffee in the morning is actually not so very out of keeping with my own talk.

Don’t get me wrong: getting back together with coffee isn’t exactly something I’m proud of. If I were, I wouldn’t be writing this little wry apologia for the habit. But I do think it’s important for us all to recognize the value in certain gentle imperfections. Would I like to love coffee less, and want it less? Yes. I’d no doubt be better off. But since it does mean a lot to me, and since my life is otherwise bursting with good foods and habits, I like to think that the joys coffee affords me stack up sort of evenly with its dangers. And, after two years of trying to avoid the stuff simply because I know it’s not ideal, I’m ready to welcome it back into my life. If I can drink my green juice first, and if that sometimes satisfies my taste for morning thunder, great: I’ll skip the java. If not, well, I’ve got a lovely French press at home that’s just dying to be dusted off. And I’ll be happy to get reacquainted with it

OK, readers. You’ve stuck with me this long. Tell me: what gentle imperfections do you like to keep around? And why?

Have a lovely night, all!

xo

P.S. I highly recommend anyone who’s been following Jamie Oliver’s show — and those of you that haven’t — to check out Heather’s wonderful “insider” post on school lunch.

A Rockin Raw Wrap

Hey guys!

Glad you’re into the Sun In Bloom menu! I’m not quite done with my tribute to this fabulous new eatery. I have one more SIB inspired recipe to share with you, and it’s a winner.

So a few of you may have noticed a special wrap on the SIB menu: the rockin’ veggie, described as “live hummus and toasted vegetables (dehydrated bell peppers, zucchini, carrots) with a mix of sprouts, cucumber, cabbage dressed in sib’s fresh live tahini dressing & invigorating lemon vinaigrette.” Um, holy yum! This whole dish sounds like heaven to me, but one thing in particular stuck out: the dehydrated veggies. Why, I thought when I read this, has it never occurred to me to chop and dehydrate veggies to chop into nut pates, cauliflower rice, or hummus? What a simple, yet revelatory idea!

So, with a nod to Aimee Follette, I decided to make my own version of a “rockin’ veggie” wrap. No, it’s not quite as complex as the SIB original, but it was mighty good, and it was actually easy to assemble at work!

Gena’s Rockin’ Veggie Wrap (serves 1)

It began by my marinating 1 cup of mixed veggies in a quick marinade of equal parts olive oil, lemon juice, and nama shoyu for about two hours. I removed the veggies from the marinade, spread them on a teflex-lined dehydrator sheet, and dehydrated them for about four hours. They emerged slightly shrunken, soft, and delicious.

If you’re trying this at home, you could easily put the veggies in an oven set low (say, 275 or so) for about an hour.

I stored the veggies in the fridge overnight, and brought them to work with me the following day, along with a 1/2 cup serving of my digestive friendly hummus (NB: you could also use zucchini hummus, regular hummus, or a bean dip of your choosing), and four large Lacinato kale leaves. At work, I mixed the veggies and hummus together, like so:

…and stuffed the filling into the two kale leaves (to do this, I spread it at the bottom end of the kale leaf, leaving about an inch of space, and rolled up from bottom to top).

Cute, no?

I served these alongside a salad + simple tahini dressing, and concluded that it was one of the best lunches I’d had in ages (I was rolling wraps as I went along, so only two are pictured here):

See?

Now that’s what I call a crack wrap.

This lunch reminded me that sometimes the best and most inspiring ideas are the most simple. I have a feeling that dehydrated veggies will be making more frequent appearances in my kitchen, in myriad ways!

That’s my news on this foggy Monday night, friends. Hope your weeks are off to good starts. Quick head’s up that my friend Zesty is hosting a bread giveaway at his blog — Asiago cheese not required!

I’ll be back soon with yet another giveaway of my own. Night, folks!

xo

The Gena Divine

Hey all!

Glad you’re excited about Sun In Bloom! The commotion over my scrumptious Bella Divine salad, coupled with my own fond reminiscences, inspired me to take a stab at recreating it at home this weekend. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult! It wasn’t perfect, either–in order to fully capture the perfection of Aimee’s dish, I’d need her secret sesame ginger dressing recipe. But it was close, and I’ve got to thank Aimee for giving me what I’m sure will become a regular favorite dinner salad in the Choosing Raw kitchen. I added carrots and some red cabbage (my fave salad toppers) to Aimee’s original dish, and I omitted the olives (I’m not an olive fan). You could make some adjustments of your own, of course: the nicest thing about salads is that they invite variation.

Here’s the recipe:

The Gena Divine Salad (inspired by Aimee Follette’s Bella Divine salad at Sun In Boom)

Serves 1

1/2 bunch curly kale, destemmed, washed, and finely chopped
1/2 cup carrot and red cabbage, thinly sliced
1/4-1/3 cup sauerkraut
Single serving (about 7 grams) dulse
1/4 large – 1/2 small avocado
2 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp water
1/4 tsp powdered ginger
Bragg’s liquid aminos or nama shoyu

1) Mix the tahini, lemon, water, ginger, and a few squirts of Bragg’s (or a small drop of nama shoyu) together by hand or in a blender (I used my Tribest). You won’t need a lot of the nama shoyu — this salad gets its saltiness from the kraut and the dulse, so be wary and only use a few drops!

2) Put the kale in a large bowl and “massage” it with the dressing, till it’s soft, but still crisp.

3) Add the carrots, cabbage, and kraut.

4) Top the whole mix with thinly sliced avocado, and dig in!

Here’s the original dish:

And my rendition:

Not bad, eh? For those of you who are interested, Diana has also replicated the Bella Divine at home:

This salad really is worthy of a cult following.

For those of you who are wondering, the Kraut I used is from the lovely folks at Hawthorne Valley Farm, who make exceptional lacto-fermented veggies and sell them at the Union Square Farmer’s Market twice weekly (Weds + Sat). I happen to have my own first batch of kraut fermenting at home, but since it wasn’t quite ready for eating, I used their original flavor, and loved it.

Now you all have a chance to taste a bit of Sun In Bloom at home. But if that’s not enough, I have a special treat for my New York readers: Aimee and the folks at Sun In Bloom are offering one Choosing Raw reader a chance to have enjoy one complimentary entree dish at Sun In Bloom! To enter this giveaway, I simply ask you to go check out the Sun In Bloom menu online. Leave a comment here telling me which dish you’d love to try. For an added entry, you can tweet this giveaway or mention it on your blog, and then leave me another comment saying that you did. I’ll announce the winner a week from today. Good luck, NYC readers!

On the agenda this week:

• My favorite hummus wrap
• A tasty quinoa salad
• My on again, off again love affair with coffee

xo

Sun is Blooming

One of the most delightful parts of being a food blogger is having the chance to sample, and then write about, new restaurants and special dining spots. What’s nicer than sharing a great meal with the world? I’ve blogged about a few of my favorite spots here on Choosing Raw: Pure Food and Wine, of course; Candle 79; Caravan of Dreams; Bonobos; and Sproutcraft. Today, I’m on a mission to entice all NYC foodies into checking out Sun In Bloom — a holistic eco-eatery founded by vegan, high raw foodie, and raw community acquaintance Aimee Follette.

This may not be the first time you guys have heard about Sun In Bloom. It’s gotten some nice press lately, and my buddy and fellow blogger Diana moonlights as a dessert chef and kitchen apprentice at the restaurant. Many of my veg-friendly friends in NYC had made trips to the restaurant before I did, and returned with overwhelmingly positive reviews. Which is why I felt honored and excited to visit as Aimee’s guest last week, and see what all the buzz was about.

The world of vegan dining spots seems to be divided into two categories. There are the super “crunchy” spots–I mean the ones that smell like wheatgrass and green juice, have new age music playing in the background, and are a breeding ground for conversations about the newest work from Eckhardt Tolle or one’s most recent past life regression. As long as good food’s on the menu, I’m a happy lady, but these spots aren’t entirely in keeping with my own personal sensibility. Then there are the swanky spots: restaurants like Pure Food and Wine or Candle 79, which market themselves as gourmet dining experiences that are animated by, but not exclusively defined by, veganism. I love these spots, especially as places to bring newbies to vegan dining, but they sometimes feel a little too swank for my own taste, which is for homey, comfortable restaurants.

On this scale of vegan dining, I’d say that Sun In Bloom weighs evenly. It not in-your-face raw/vegan: no wheatgrass smell, and you wouldn’t guess upon entry that vegan grub was the order of the day until you checked out the menu. On the other hand, it’s simple, homey, and unpretentious, and it features collective tables (much like the long tables at any Pain Quotidien location) to emphasize a community-oriented atmosphere. I had an overwhelmingly positive feeling when I walked in: it felt like a warm, welcoming, and relaxed place to be.

Sun In Bloom’s owner, Aimee Follette, says that she was inspired to open Sun In Bloom because she had “been dreaming about creating a loving and nourishing community space for most of my life.” She defines the restaurant not as a vegan restaurant, a raw restaurant, or a healthy restaurant, but rather as a “holistic eco-eatery.” “An eco-eatery,” she says, “is a restaurant that uses earth-friendly practices to reduce waste consumption and promote sustainable solutions.  Holistic means looking at the whole rather than parts.  At Sun In Bloom, we focus looking at every person who walks through the door as a unique whole being…[and to] create a ripple effect and nourish the entire community.” The goal at Sun In Bloom, then, isn’t just to prepare tasty food (though there’s plenty of that), but to nourish the local community (Park Slope, BK, and beyond) and to be an ever-evolving part of that community: to respond to patrons’ tastes and requests, to educate those who want education about plant based nutrition, and to be a welcoming spot for community gatherings.

Since I arrived early to SIB, the restaurant was quiet enough for me to sample a meal with Diana and then have a few moments to chat with Aimee. I caught a few shots of the clean decor and communal tables:

Then I crept up to the counter, to ogle the tasty menu:

As I was contemplating what to get, I inhaled sampled a container of SIB’s kale chips, which are made with a sesame dressing (why have I never made kale chips again??):

Open the SIB menu, and it’ll probably be easy for you to guess what I wanted. My dinner of choice was the Bella Divine salad, which is described as “sultry smooth avocado, pea shoots, mesclun & threads of dulse dressed in your
choice of SIB’s famously live sesame ginger dressings.”

Avocado? Check. Dulse? Check. Kale? Check. In other words, a giant salad full of all my favorite things.

One bite, and I felt like I had come home. The best thing about this dish (and I’d extend this to all items on the SIB menu) is that it’s precisely the sort of meal I’d make for myself in my own kitchen. And I love this — I love the idea of a restaurant that serves up home cooking (in a literal sense) for those who enjoy vegan and raw foods. In fact, Aimee mentioned to me that the bella divine salad is a replica of a salad she made at home for herself for years and years: no wonder it’s infused with so much love and great taste!

I was a happy camper:

My hot date, Diana, got the “Western Burrito” wrap, which was made from sunflower seed “meat” with fresh salsa, avocado slices, a mix of cabbage, zucchini & sprouts, also dressed in SIB’s famous live ranch dressing:

It was a tad spicy pour moi (and NB to folks, like me, with hungry and hangry appetites: I’d probably need a wrap and a salad to be totally full) but super tasty, nevertheless.

After the meal, Aimee and I had a chance to chat some more about opening the restaurant, about the challenges and fun of being a small business owner, and about our passion for sharing raw food with other people, one salad at a time. I commended Aimee on constructing a menu around the kinds of simple, easy to prepare raw foods that customers can taste, get inspired by, and easily make for themselves at home. Gourmet raw dining is wonderful, but I believe firmly that, until restaurants show patrons that vegan and raw dishes can be easy as well as delicious, it’ll be hard for diners to take what they see in restaurants and apply it to their own kitchen ventures. The simple, delicious food at SIB is a wonderful step in this direction.

As we chatted: Diana let us taste her latest raw dessert masterpiece: an orange creamsicle:

Made with cashew cream, a nut crust, and fresh OJ, this was pretty divine. I remember orange creamsicles from my cousins’ freezer as a kid, and let me assure you that this is a damn fine recplica. Way to go, D!

It was, all in all, a lovely evening. I can’t tell you how great it is to have more and more dining options that prepare the kinds of foods I love. At Sun In Bloom, I was greeted not only by Gena-style comfort food, but also by a positive and inspiring vision of the kinds of businesses and establishments that will help vegan and raw foods gain more and more traction with mainstream diners. With Aimee Follette and people like her to share their kindness, energy, and passion, it won’t be long before more restaurants like this are blooming–here in NYC, and everywhere.

Thanks, Aimee and Diana, for a great evening!

xo

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