In the kitchen

Healthy Morning Smoothie:

Eating raw greens are essential to get the vitamins and nutrients you need, a lot more beneficial than your multi-vitamin pills ;)
 ---- Below is my daily morning breakfast smoothie ----

Ingredients:

• 2 leaves of organic kale (remove the leaf's vein)
• 3/4 branches of organic parsley (mostly the leaves)
• a big spoon of organic frozen berries (blueberries, raspberries,...) 
• 1 scoop of wheat grass (check my blog entry about the benefits of wheat grass)
• unsweetened almond milk (please, no vanilla...), or coconut milk -- quantity depends of consistency preference

Blend all ingredients, add a straw, and... Happy Healthy Morning to you :D

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Fast & Easy Vegan Pancakes (for Sunday mornings )

Make a good and healthy breakfast, perfect for those sundays you don't have much left in the fridge!

Ingredients - for 2 to 3 persons:

• 1.5 cup of whole wheat flour (or almond flour, if you want to go GF)
• 2 tablespoon of baking powder
• 1.5 cup of unsweetened almond milk or coconut milk
• 1 big cup of chopped berries
• a dash of salt
• Optional:
• A handful of omega 3 seeds (flax, sesame, sunflower)
• a spoon of organic vanilla sugar

I do not use oil in the pancake mix however I use a napkin with a bit of coconut oil to wipe the pan with in order to avoid "sticky pancakes".

Serving suggestion (as shown below): Topped with some cut bananas and a bit of raw unprocessed honey. Add to this, hot water with fresh mint leaves and lemon, a green smoothie and a shot of Udo oil and you have the perfect healthy sunday morning breakfast!

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DIY Almond Milk

I decided to try my own almond milk, since when you buy it in store they always add so many things in it, and I use this a lot for my smoothies. The result was quite good so I decided to share the recipe, even more that this is REALLY easy.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of raw almonds
• 4 cups of water 
• Optional: vanilla pod, honey or other natural sweetener (I rather not use any sweetener, since this is the reason why i wanted to make my own milk)
• You will need plenty of cheese cloth to drain the juice

1. Sink the almond in water for 12 hours with a pinch of salt (+ the vanilla if you have some)

2. Rinse the almonds well and drain them.
3. Pop them into your blender with the quantity of water given in 'ingredients' (ratio 1 to 4). Note: don't fill your blender completely as the mixture will expand.
4. Use the cheese cloth to drain the juice, you will have to this in several steps if you put an initial big quantity of almonds. On the cheesecloth will remain soaked almond powder: do not throw this away!

5. Spread the almond powder in a big oven plate over a cookie sheet and pop it in the oven on low heat for  a few hours until dehydrated. You can leave it like that or pass it to the blender once dry to use as flour in your cooking :) I have enjoy that part a lot!

So you made almond milk and almond flour! You can add your natural sweetener in the milk jar. Place your almond milk right away in the fridge and consume it within a couple days as it does not have any preservative.

almond flour (not blended) gathered after drying up

almond milk obtained (2 cups of raw almonds)