davidtamburo:

GT’s synergy kombucha. My absolute favorite thing.

I love love love this product. I had one of these babies today. YUM!

Oh also, yay for probiotic foods and drinks! 

So Collard Greens are a super nutritious and DELICIOUS cruciferous vegetable. The leaves can be big or small, and for this recipe you will need the big’uns because they are the wrap part of the Collard wraps. Is that sentence redundant? Lol, whatever.

My collard wrap recipe:

Ingredients, (meal for one) :

Large collard leaf 

Shredded beet

Shredded carrot

Quinoa

Sesame seeds

Chopped avocado

Cultured vegetables, if you have them.

Love 

This is a basic composition, you can add whatever you like really, and that includes things like bean sprouts or humous. Pretty much whatever you can fit into your collard leaf. 
Cultured vegetables are things like sauerkraut and kimchi, which are super good for you because of the good bacteria that they can introduce to your intestinal flora, making it easier to digest your food. We talked about how important digestion is in a previous post. Probiotic food is SOGOODFORYOU.

The method to making these is pretty simple and I bet you don’t even need me to tell ya. But for those of you want instruction anyway here is what I did!

Lay the collard leaf flat. Put a layer of quinoa on the leaf, then add your other chopped and shredded ingredients. Wrap this up as best you can and voila, yummy delicious nutritious rawness. These are great for lunches at work! 

http://youtu.be/OSt0DmAPDm4

Here is a great video on sprouting! Sprouting is an awesome way to get a lot of great health benefits out of beans and grains that would not be available to you if they weren’t activated by germination.

Energiseforlife.com states: 

“A sprout possesses all of the energy, vitamins and nutrients and power that enables it to be transformed from a small seed into a strong plant. At this stage its nutritional value is at its highest for instance, sprouted seeds can contain 400% more protein than lettuce and over 3900% more beta-carotine.”

”The nutritious value of sprouts is remarkable with sprouts containing a greater concentration of vitamins, minerals, proteins, enzymes, phytochemicals, anti-oxidants, nitrosmines, trace minerals, bioflavinoids and chemo-protectants (such as sulphoraphane and isoflavone) which work against toxins, resist cell mutation and invigorate the body’s immune system than at any other point in the plant’s life – even when the plant is fully matured.

The abundant enzymes in sprouts also makes them easily digestible as their delicate cell walls easily release elemental nutrients.

Many different types of sprout are available including alfalfa, broccoli, little radish, mung bean and a range of mixes including fitness mix, gourmet mix and aromatic mix.”

Digestion is one of the bodies most important functions related to getting what you need from your food. The better you can digest your food, the more nutrition you can get from it! An easy thing that you can start doing RIGHT NOW for FREE to easier digest your food is chewing more. Many ayurvedic doctors, raw foodists, and other people who are in the know regarding digestion and health have recommended this and I can tell you from personal experience that it makes a huge difference, even in your eliminations (nice word for poop, lol)
How much is more? Some say 50-100 chews per mouth-full, but I have been going for 20-25 and 20 seems pretty reasonable and usually gets everything nice and processed.
Why does this help? Chewing food is apart of digestion. At this stage saliva helps to break down the food and the more we chew the more our saliva has a chance to do its job in the digestion process, therefor making it easier to absorb nutrients and overall digestion also becomes much easier. 

Back to Sprouts!!
It is SO cheap and easy to sprout your own sprouts. I have started with Mung beans which pack a big protein punch and only take about 2 days to sprout. I’m sprouting THREE JARS and that was only half of the amount of mung beans that I bought for 2 dollars!!! There are many other “sproutables” too. Here is a chart of different seed types and some info about sprouting them.

 

I really want to try sprouting quinoa next!!
I encourage you to look into this as it seems like such an easy way to pack some more nutrient dense foods into your diet without spending a fortune, and it’s also a really fun project.

Here’s the progress of my beautiful little mung bean sprouts over a two day period… :-)

And there we have it folks. Easy. Live food.  

This is a resource and a journal. Here I plan to record some of my discoveries, triumphs, learnings and inspirations regarding healthy eating, veganism, and even raw food. I want to use this as an archive of sorts for information I want to hang on to, and I also want this to be a resource for others!
Let’s get this started! :)