Celebrating an all-natural lifestyle

Stress relief.

Today I sent out the following Twitter SOS:

OK tweeps. I’m feeling anxious today. Suggestions on how to mellow out in short order?

I thought it was worth sharing the array of responses I got:

get outside in nature and do some yoga!!!!

in my place we have some chamomile tea with honey or passion fruit juice. it calms you down. i also like to run.. helps unwind.

Make a Maca shake! Calms me right down

breathe, chamomile tea, more breathing, chocolate (thanks, Mara)

a few yoga poses? a small nap? reading a chapter of a good book? call me? haha (c/o Jacquie)

kombucha? works for me. (Alas, Bitt, the carbonation doesn’t agree with me)

I listen to my fave music and jump around to it!

1) Turn off twitter 2) find a book 3) find a bench in Central Park. Works for me….

kava tea for instant relief!

And my personal favorite came via direct message from a friend who suggested, in so many words, hot, hard sex.

All of these suggestions were great, but some of them demanded a little more time than I had. So in lieu of a stroll to Central Park with a book, I decided to go for a little power walk, get a ten minute chair massage, and make this:

I’m gonna call this one Pinkberry soft serve. A reader recently mentioned that she finds my regular soft serve a little too sweet for her taste, and is there anything I can do to cut it? Why, yes. You can add a tablespoon of lemon juice to my regular soft serve recipe. The result? The ’soft serve we all know and love, but with a hint of tartness. A raw vegan spin on Pinkberry, if you will.

It was hard to stay anxious after this:

Not chocolate. And not sex. But pretty good anyway.

Also good for staying calm is a nutrient dense salad of the week:

That’s a homemade sunshine burger over massaged kale. Quintessential comfort food. Lauren, it made me think of you!

Definitely not good for anxiety is staying up too late on a Sunday before the work week. So I’m outtie, friends. But first, tell me — what are your quick tips for keeping stress at bay?

xo

Sinful Smoothie

It’s fun to misbehave.

The running joke among my friends and colleagues is that I’m sorely in need of a vice. They’re sort of right: I don’t drink. I don’t smoke (anymore). I don’t do drugs. I don’t sleep with anyone, these days married men. Older men used to be a weakness of mine, but I’ve grown out of it. I don’t cheat or steal. I go to bed early (unless I’m working late), and wake up early. I’m always almost always on time for work.

And as for food — well, I’m not exactly fighting off a junk food habit

What’s a girl to do? It’s not as though I’m about to take up gambling. When my friends point out my lack of vice, I either admit defeat or launch into a long rant about how I hate the whole idea of “vice,” because it implies that everyday life is lacking in pleasure and fun, which makes us crave the forbidden, which is a fundamentally depressing for so many reasons…and so on, and so forth.

But let’s face it, they have a point. We all enjoy channeling our inner teenager, and that’s what we do with the occasional misdeed. It’s exhilarating to break a rule, or a norm. Do I think that “vice” is fundamentally overrated? Sure. If you’re counting the moments to your next drink, or line, or joint, or you next illicit liaison or inadvisable shopping spree, you probably need to invest your everyday existence with a lot more passion and fulfillment. But once in a while, it’s fun to play with the idea of vice.

Which brings me to the title of this post. You guys know about my love of coffee, right? I hesitate to even call it a vice, because a) in moderation, coffee isn’t so bad for you, and b) vice implies something off-limits, and believe me, coffee is hardly off limits in Gena-land. I really can’t think of a habit I’m less interested in changing. But in the grand scheme of my health freak lifestyle, I’d have to say that my java fixation wins the “one of these things is not like the other” award. Especially when it’s flanked by green juice and kale salads and beans!

So over the weekend, when I dumped half a packet of Starbucks’ new instant coffee (which tastes fabulous, by the way) into an otherwise healthy, alkaline smoothie:

…it felt deliciously sinful.

It was Sunday, and I’d just whipped up a sumptuous banana smoothie for breakfast. I was about to serve it up, when my eye caught the little red box of Via in my pantry. Hmmm, I thought. Wouldn’t this smoothie be better if it were coffee-flavored?

Did I dare?

Reader, I did. Into my super healthy smoothie went half a packet of Via. It was delicious, and if you should wish to invite a little vice into smoothies of your own, here’s the recipe:

Gena’s Sinful Smoothie (serves 1)

1 large, frozen banana
2 tbsp hemp protein
Half a cup of homemade hazelnut milk (or any nut milk)
Ice (about half a cup)
1/2 packet instant coffee (about a teaspoon)
1 tbsp coconut butter

Blend all ingredients in a blender on high. Add more nut milk if needed.

Yes. Sometimes it’s fun to make mischief.

After I made this, I realized that the smoothie was not only infused with coffee, but coffee that’s corporate and neither organic or fair trade. Meh. Those concessions to imperfection are way less cute than my original one. But I bought the box for travel emergencies, and I buy organic and fair trade the rest of the time, so I’m just going to put Via in the “imperfect” category, and leave it at that.

Speaking of non-mischevious smoothies, I also recently tried my friend Kristen’s much adored chocolate cherry bomb for the first time. Well, I certainly see what all of the fuss is about! It’s decadent and delicious. I’m not a cherry fan, but fortunately, they were fairly submerged beneath choco-banana bliss, and just lent a hint of flavor to the drink. Another winner! Thanks, Mama-to-be.

With that, I wish you all a good night–naughty or nice!

xo

Smooth and Simple Breakfast Pudding + Chia Seed Giveaway

Happy Saturday!

Meeting with cool clients? Check. Grocery shopping? Check. House cleaning/floor mopping? Check. Lunch with my wonderful cousin, who’s in town for the weekend? Check. Editing? Check. Plans to hang with a dear friend tonight? Check. Beautiful, sunny weather? Check.

In spite of a long week, this day has been a joy from start to finish. Not least because I got to play around with a cool new breakfast. During the week, when I’m rushing around and transporting breakfast to the office, I tend to stick to the tried and true. Raw options include fresh green juice from the juice bar near my office; avocado pudding (with or without sprouted bread); bananas with nut butter; or dehydrated buckwheat with almond milk. Cooked staples are my beloved oats or oat bran; leftover grains, reheated with nut milk; baked yams; and sprouted grain bread with nut butter. Simple, easy. (For more of my fave brekkies, check out this post).

On the weekends, when I have a more time and access to my juicer, blender, and stores of culinary creativity, I like to mix it up. I’ll often throw together a smoothie I’ve been meaning to try, a new juice combo, or something altogether new.

Today, I decided to try a blended chia pudding. I’ve shared some recipes for regular chia pudding with you all before; the idea this time was to blend the pudding, rather than leaving the chia seeds whole, which creates that tapioca effect you see below:

My game plan was simple: blend 1 oz chia seeds (this is about 3 tbsp) with 3/4 cup nutmilk and 2 tbsp of carob powder in my Vitamix. I quickly realized I was out of nutmilk, so I whipped up a hazelnut milk like so:

Hazelnut Milk (Yields at least 4 cups)

1 cup hazelnuts
4 cups water
1 tbsp coconut oil (an idea stolen from Sarma’s recipe for Brazil nut milk; helps to emulsify)
4 pitted dates
1 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch salt

Blend all ingredients on high for a minute or so. Strain through a cheesecloth or nutmilk bag, and serve. Will keep for 3-4 days in the fridge.

True to the plan, I blended 3/4 cup of my (very tasty) hazelnut milk with the chia seeds and 2 tbsp of carob (but you could also use cocoa powder). I tasted the pudding, realized it needed a bit of sweetness, and added a few drops of stevia; if you have a sweet tooth, you could add agave, dates, or raw honey to this recipe!

The result was a simple, tasty chocolate pudding. Now, I have to warn you: this is not a super-sweet indulgent treat like my chocomole. I liked it a lot, but I would describe it as “plain” — not too vibrant in flavor. You could definitely add sweetness to it, or additional chocolate flavor; you could also spike it with peppermint or orange extract. But I enjoyed the simple, nutty taste just the way it was; it was a perfect, mellow flavor profile for breakfast.

Lately, my girl Angela has been whipping up some crazy cool breakfast parfaits in all sorts of charming glassware. Inspired by her efforts, I decided to serve my pudding as a parfait, layered with slices of my fave fruit. After dusting off a wine glass — those babies don’t get much use in this non-drinker’s apartment — I came up with this:

OK. So maybe this “parfait” wasn’t quite as perfect as one of Ange’s creations:

In fact, it was a bit of a hot mess:

But hey, I tried. And it tasted great.

My favorite thing about chia seeds? Calcium! 1 oz, my friends, contains about 180 mg calcium, which is about 18% of your daily recommendation. This is especially cool for those of us who don’t rely on dairy to meet our calcium needs. Chia seeds also boast Omega-3s (which I’ve written about here) and a ton of fiber, so they’re pretty worthy all around. No wonder that, when I recently gave away a shopping spree at iHerb, so many of you wrote in to say that chia seeds would be your purchase of choice.

Guess what? You’ve got another shot at getting some for free! The kind people at Chia Seeds Direct – who are my go-to source for chia seeds — have offered one of my readers a 2 lb bag of chia seeds. These seeds are high quality, inexpensive, and shipped quickly, so it’s my pleasure to support them with this giveaway! To enter, simply do one, or all, of the following:

1. Leave a comment on this post, telling me what sort of chia recipe you’re dying to try
2. Tweet this giveaway, and leave a new comment to tell me you did
3. If you’re not following me on Twitter yet, please do, and then leave me an additional comment to say so.

Good luck! I’ll announce the winner next Saturday, the 22nd.

On that note, I’m off to enjoy the rest of my day. Have a great night!

xo

Astounding Revelation

I interrupt your regularly scheduled Tuesdays for the following astonishment, brought to me by my friend Ben. I (and, quite possibly, you too) have spent my entire life believing that there is only one way to open a banana. I was wrong. Very wrong. Behold, friends:

Who knew? Now you can make that banana soft serve even faster!