Will it blend? Blender Show Down at the First Rawsome Sunday in Berlin

This past Sunday, my friend Alex from Wamos Zentrum organized the first Rawsome Sunday in Berlin, an entire day of workshops, talks, showcases, samplings and information around raw food. It was a great event with almost 30 attendees, "wheatgrass messiah" Piter Caizer from L.A. was giving lessons on juicing and making Essene bread and raw burgers and I was teaching how to make delicious smoothies and raw nutella. A full synopsis of the workshop can also be found on rohspirit.com (in German).

One central part of the workshop was the ultimate blender test. See also this article on wasabimon.com on this issue. This Sunday 4 blenders were tested:

• my commercial Vitamix "Vitaprep 3" (about 800€ in Germany)
  
• the famous K-Tec (about 600€)
  
• Omni Mix (Taiwanese Vitamix imitation) (about 250€)
  
• Saro Omni Blend V (K-Tex imitation) (about 250€)
  

The test was a simple orange, carrot ginger smoothie, blending oranges, carrots, ginger, cashew nuts, vanilla, dates and coconut oil.

The blends were rated based on smootheness and the results were rather obvious.
The winner was the Vitaprep 3, followed by the K-Tec. The cheaper Taiwanese imitations are not getting close to the consistencies these commercial high speed blenders can achieve.

One test, I would not have even dared to do in any of the other blenders was making the most healthy and delicious raw nutella. For this I blended hazelnuts to a flour first in the dry Vitamix, then added dates, raw cacao and coconut oil and blended the whole on highest speed using the tamper to push things down constantly. This creates a very thick and sticky cream, impossible for any household blender. AND the challenge was even higher, since I assumed that the dates, Alex handed me were already pitted... well... they weren't, I figured when I heard the sound of the blades meeting the hard date pits... :-o
BUT the Vitamix even coped with this and broke them all down!!

So, my resume: I think the Omniblend is an ok alternative for people who want to start on a raw food diet and want to experiment with smoothies, raw soups, patés and alike and don't want to spend the extra dollars for the professional brands.
However, as soon as you want to do more with it and use it very frequently, especially in commercial environments, I would not try to save any money here and go for the well established brands that have been tested for years and used in raw food restaurants all over the world. There is a reason, why all raw foodists swear on their Vitamixes.

Oh, and I do NOT take any responsibiliy for any damages due to householdblender testing with date pits inspired by this artice ;-)

b.alive! in the New York Times

The past few months have been very inspiring and I had the chance to connect with so many amazing people just by following my passion. Lovely freelance writer and mother Kimberly Bradley popped into my dinner club for lunch this spring because a friend had told her about it and here I am, my picture in the New York Times.

Recently, film producers Eric Swartz and Sarah Bolton from Memphis came to Berlin for the 20 year fall of the wall celebrations to shoot a documentary on an artists perspective of Berlin after the reunion of which I will be part as well :-) You can check out some of their footage on their facebook page Children of the Wall.

I could go on with things that have been happening, but I guess my point I want to make here is the law of attraction. Follow your passion, do what you believe in, and things will come to you "miraculously". There is no rocket science to it, just live with integrity, b.yourself, b.honest, b.passionate, b.alive! :-)

Young Coconuts - the food of the gods

There has been extended silence on this blog but it has all been for a good reason: traveling, training, self-development and back I am, full to the rim with new inspirations from recent travels to Thailand, Singapore and Bali. All of these places are little heavens for raw foodies and not at last because of one particular exotic fruit: Fresh Young Coconut. Young Coconuts are an amazing superfood. Not only do they contain up to half a liter of thirst quenching, tasty water, which at the same time is full of electrolytes and therefore a natural isotonic; it's actually the closest naturally existing liquid to the human blood, for which reason it is often used for blood transformations in developing countries if there is no blood from the correct type available. Even the Food and Agriculture Organization fought for a patent in 2000 to market coconut water as a new isotonic sports drink. Check this article on 7 benefits of coconut water.

But let's take a look at it's use in the culinary arts. The thin and soft flesh that you can scoop out from the coconut once you emptied out all the water and openend it up, can be used in a variety of dishes due to it's wonderful consistency and delicate subtle flavour, like in this coconut ceviche that I prepared a few days ago. In this dish, the texture of the coconut reminds of the texture of a squid (ceviche traditionally is a Mexican seafood dish).

The other day I also used the flesh in a Raw Version of Phad Thai, the traditional Thai noodle dish. Thinly sliced, the meat of the coconut gives the impression of the rice noodles the dish is usually made of.
There is plenty of other wonderful ways to work with young coconuts. A very simple thing is to just blend the meat and the coconut water and you have the best coconut milk ever! Then you can turn it into a sweet smoothie / milk adding the sweeteners of choice or into a savoury soup adding some lime, chilli, curry,... get creative. You can also make a nice coconut yoghurt by just blending the meat with a little coconut water, salt and lemon or lime juice. The water is sweet and tangy and little bit sour at the same time and therefore lends it this yogurty taste.
One of my favourite things I prepared these days are crèpes. Vegan, raw crèpes!! All the French out there, please forgive me now for misusing and abusing this reserved word...
The combination of cashew nuts and the flesh of the young coconut together with some other ingredients gives a perfect crèpes dough that you can fill with anything you would fill a normal crèpe. Here, I made a blueberry jello and a white creamy almond yoghurt using some of the coconut water, and drizzled the whole thing with a dark raw chocolate sauce. Blueberries and chocolate... delicious!!
However, my favourite, I actually invented two nights ago after coming home, hungry for something sweet. I pulled out a crèpes from the fridge, spread some tahini on it, then slivered pieces of frozen bananas on top, squeezed a few drops of lime over the whole thing, sprinkled it with raw chocolate nibs, rolled it all up and it was simply perfect! sweet crèpes, bitter nutty tahini, sweet pure banana "ice cream", a tang of lime, and the chocolate crunch turned out to be a fantastic combination. Try it out for yourself!

And in my next blog post, you will also find out, where I got all the coconuts in Berlin from to experiment with :-)

Raw Desserts: The Sweetest Art

Preparing raw desserts has become one of my favorite activities when experimenting in my raw food kitchen. Not only are they just divinely delicious, but the mere process of creating them absolutely fascinates me. Creating a raw dessert is truly an art. Going through the ingredients list of this beautiful strawberry shortcake I made a few days ago (inspired from The Sunny Raw Kitchen: Recipe of the Week: Strawberry Shortcake), you would not think it is possible to achieve such consistencies like a fluffy nutty cake base and a moussy butter or whipped cream topping. The ingredients are as simple as dried nuts, dried fruit, fresh fruit, coconut butter and agave sirup!

This is pretty much the same for most other vegan raw desserts, like this amazing raw chocolate mousse. The consistency is just like a regular one, airy, fluffy, light and the taste: heavenly, pure, dark bitter chocolate due to using 100% pure raw cacao, one of the most amazing and nutritious super foods on the planet. In its raw form, cacao has 6 times more antioxidants than blueberries, is the highest source of magnesium and has plenty of other benefits.

Not only do raw desserts taste even more delicious than some of their conventional relatives (like this raw version of a pumpkin pie), they are so much more nutritious, and better for your health, completely free from wheat, gluten and dairy and having lower effects on your blood sugar level, they can even be enjoyed by people with severe food intolerances, which become more and more common these days.

Most of these deserts I prepared recently are inspired by San Francisco's raw dessert heaven Café Gratitude. In fact, it was that raw cheesecake during my first meal at Café Gratitude a few years ago, that convinced me of the raw food trail and made we want to become a raw food chef. I just could not believe that there was a non-dairy, sugar free, vegan and raw version of this New York classic that could satisfy me at least as much as the original.

And here I am, 4 years later, making the same pies I once thought were such magical creations. Cheesecake is still one of my favourites. so this blueberry chocolate cheesecake from David Wolfe's book Naked Chocolate also hit the spot. A tangy cream from blueberries, raw chocolate and cashew nuts that tastes just like blueberry cream cheese!

Also this hazelnut chocolate cream pie was an amazing combination of nuts, seeds and chocolate. A hazelnutty crust, filled with a chocolate hazelnut mixture with the consistency of a moussy pudding, topped with a meringue made from coconut, vanilla and lemon.

I liked all of them, but with spring time and the first strawberries in season, the strawberry shortcake was my absolute favorite. The next experiment will be a mango mousse pie! I can't wait to power on my new VitaMix blender. Without this professional power machine, these desserts would not be possible. Due to its shape and the tamper, you can turn anything into a cream and even a thick cream like the one needed for a cheesecake is possible with this power blender. I haven't tried to blend my Iphone yet, but the comparable KTec blender apparently does. Check it out on YouTube :-)

b.alive Berlin Brunch , 1st edition

Last Sunday, I opened doors to the first brunch at the inofficial "b.alive raw café" at my little studio loft in Berlin Mitte. It was a great success. 11 hungry people showed up with sceptic faces wondering whether THIS raw food would actually fill them or if they need to go to have a Döner or Currywurst after. I think, noone had to :-)

The brunch menu featured:

• Banana Blueberry Chocolate Smoothies
• Raw Homemade Superfoods Granola (including Goji Berries, Maca, Raw Chocolate, etc.) served with a freshly made Goji Berry Coconut Milk and fresh fruit
• Raw Buckwheat Pizza with fermented cheese and marinated vegetables
• Nori Rolls with Fermented Wasabi Sunflower Cheeze
• Chocolate Nachos with a Sweet Spicy Walnut Saffron Paté
• Sicilian Fennel Orange Radicchio Salad with Walnuts
• Apple Pie with Caramel Cashew Sauce

The raw pizza was definitely the brunch star. Everybody was surprised on how pizza can be raw until they figured out that the misterious black box in the corner was the magical tool: a dehydrator. This pizza was delicious, with a crust made from buckwheat and sun-dried tomatoes, a layer of fermented sunflower seed cheeze, another layer of marinara sauce and topped with a vegetable medeley of eggplants, zucchini, spinach and bell pepper that have been marinated in olive oil and Italian herbs for 24 hours. Everything together created a perfect combination of textures and flavours.

My personal favourite were the chocolate nachos with a walnut saffron paté. The chocolate in the nachos (made from a base of sunflower seeds and corn) gave them a bitterness which is well complemented by the sweetness and spicyness of the paté, made from walnuts, saffron, dried apricots, chilli and some other little secrets.

For the Nori Rolls, I used the fermented sunflower seed cheeze and flovoured it with Wasabi and Soy Sauce, used it as a filling together with raw veggies like cucuber, carrots, peppers, avocavdos and sprouts, et voilà, a beautiful vegan interpretation of a maki roll.

The celebrities of the first brunch were: Writer Travis Jeppesen, art photographer Luigi, Art Gallerist Michael Rade, Roisin Cronin, Mark Malossek, Sven Bretschneider, Fashion Youngster Reto Cameri, Fair Trade Coffee Roaster David MacGregor, DJ and Musician Snax and Berlinale volunteer Na'ama with her friend William.

Everybody, including me, was happy and shining by the end of the brunch and left with an obvious abundance of radiating energy from their first living food experience. At least the grateful smiles told me so. I am already looking forward to the next event.

The b.alive podcast is born

A long time has passed since my last blog post and an update has been overdue. Especially, since I finished this one already quite a while ago: My first podcast. Instead of writing about my food journey in San Francisco over Christmas and New Years, I decided to use this opportunity to experiment with podcasting instead. So here it is, the first episode of the b.alive podcast. Lean back, relax, listen and watch the photo stream and while you are doing this, I am hitting the keyboard to write up on Thailand where I spent my last month to deepen my massage practice and healing skills, reason for the delay in blogging :-)

Is it a brownie, a deformed truffle, tiramisu...?

The question of last nights wonderful dinner party at my neighbours Michael and Philipp was: What is it? A brownie? A deformed truffle? A chocolate cake? A raw tiramisu? ... Well, it started off with the idea of trying to copy this wonderful walnut cherry and chocolate confection that I had for desert at Alive! in San Francisco. Friday night at 11pm, I suddenly was hit by an obsession to give it a try. So I threw some soaked walnuts, soaked dates, figs, cacao powder and nibs and some orange zest into the food processor. Not having the right powerful machine yet, the consistency first turned out way too gritty. And also way too sweet. So I let it run for a while longer. And I had added too much date soak water at some point, so it was getting too soft for being a brownie like consistency. I started forming truffles and rolling then in cacao. Tasting them, however, didn't convince me. So at this point (it was 1 am), I just put the whole bowl into the fridge and meditated over it in my dreams...

Next morning, I had it. I threw the whole thing into the more powerful blender, added some cashews, some melted down cacao paste and vanilla coconut cream, cold pressed coffee, lecithin, salt, lemon juice and inca berries, which took away the overly sweet taste of the figs and dates, brought out the chocolate and gave it a beautiful fruity note. I spread it into a casseruole and topped it with some runny cashew vanilla coconut cream made from cashews, vanilla coconutbutter, salt, agave and water. Et voilà:

The result was a delicious little caky, brownie, truflly cream something that had great success and everyone was quite surprised to learn that raw food does not have to mean munching on a dry carrot. We couldn't figure out the name thing.

But it doesn't matter, does it? Let's call it the Incan Chocolate Square? Or the truffly balive chocolate mousse cake?

It's all good, it was a chocolaty, fruity, nutty, creamy delight and everyone was happy and convinced that raw foods it something worth looking into a little closer :-)

A few other highlighs of this weeks kitchen experiments were the spaghetti bolognese and the Asian Kale and Eggplant Curry with dehydrated flax crackers. No time now to into details, since I have to get ready for my next trip: To Thailand. I am going to one of my favourite retreats The Sancutary on the island Koh Phangan to do an advanced course in Ayurvedic Yoga Massage. So watch out for some exotic travel reports from the Far East soon!

I promised to give you more on chocolate and I kept my promise, and there will be more, be sure of that!

Sawadee. And Hail to Chocolate :-)