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Eating Fruit In The Summer Months! August 17, 2010 |
Superfood Evolution Ezine -- Issue #008
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Hello friends, Welcome again to Superfood Evolution! A big thank you to all my Superfoods-for-Superhealth site visitors for your attention and support! Here we go with my monthly newsletter #8. Many of you expressed great interest in learning more about superfoods, superhealth and achieving optimal states of aliveness! So, here it is by popular demand! It is my intent to uplift and empower your true health potential to create the best life ever for you and your family. "You are what you eat" is the first rule of thumb here, the rest just falls into place!
Eating Fruit Raw In The Summer Months!Summertime is usually a time of joy and happy spirits. Many cultures take time "off" to vacation and enjoy the sweetness of life. In Traditional Chinese Medicine the "sweet taste" is represented by the summer season. This is a time when sweet fruits are at their peak. There is nothing quite like biting into a fresh ripe peach on a hot, summer day or the satisfaction of harvesting your own wild berries and eating them by the handful. Summertime is when we eat more fresh, raw fruit than any other time of the year. Of course, if you are living in tropical climates, fruits are more readily available throughout the year, but they all have there particular cycles and times when they are bursting with juicy, sunlight sweetness.
In hot, dry and even humid weather conditions, raw fruit, with it's high energy water content and natural sugars, helps to hydrate the body, in addition to providing fuel for an active life when we are enjoying more of the great outdoors. This is the time we traditionally love to eat more fruit in our diet. The best time of day to eat fruit is in the morning, or when the stomach is empty. This will prevent fermentation that can occur if mixed with protein type foods. This is not always the case, it depends on your particular digestive tendencies....so beware!
It is always best to avoid super sweet fruit if you have any kind of compromise to the immune system, such as yeast overgrowth, fungal infections, or especially cancerous growths. Any kind of sugar, including fruit sugar, will only cause these conditions to worsen. Depending on the severity of the situation, you can eat low glycemic fruits with lower amounts of fructose. For extreme cases, however, it is best to avoid any sweet fruit and stick to Stevia as a source of sweetness. Some super fruits, like Camu Camu berry, Acai, or Mangostein, can help the body by providing high amounts of antioxidants without the excess sugar content.
7 Tasty Ways To Enjoy Summertime FruitsTypically, we love to eat fruit blended into smoothies, but we have found other ways to prepare fruit that makes for handy snacks, desserts and meals when the sweet craving arises.
1) Fruit Cubes - A great way to add fruit to cool down your drink. Juice your fruit and pour the liquid into ice cube trays or add the pulp back to create a thick, fruity ice cube for a glass of lemonade. 2) Fruit Sorbet - This one is nice to enjoy with a crowd of friends on a summer day. Simply make your favorite fruit smoothie and process in an ice cream maker and serve. 3) Green Fruit Smoothies - Smoothies are a popular meal for breakfast, why not add a bunch of kale or other dark leafy greens to the blend? Also try using different types of fruit you don't normally eat, you might find a new favorite. 4) Fruit Pies - There is nothing quite like a cold piece of raw fruit pie after a hot hike or a run on the beach. Let your imagination go wild with many fruit combo's. See recipe below for ideas. 5) Fruit Salad - We like to add a little boost to the traditional fruit salad many are accustom to. Ours involves adding different green leafy vegetables as well as advocado, cucumber, tomato, and olives (all of which are actually fruits).
6) Fruit Leather - This is one of the very first things people make in their dehydrator. It is very simple to do, just blend your fruit and pour onto a teflex dehydrator sheet. In several hours you have a handy snack for the entire family. 7) Fruit Soup - A delicious way to enjoy your fruit cold by the spoonful. Either a traditional version of an "Acai bowl" (popular in Brazil) or blend your fruit soup and add dices of other fruit. Yummy good!
A Wild Cherry Harvest
One of the best ways to enjoy raw fruit is to harvest it yourself. Somehow, fresh wild apples you hand pick always taste way better! There is nothing like wild fruit and stumbling upon a beautiful, loaded, wild tree for the very first time. Cherries are one of our favorite fruits to harvest. Over the years we have developed a kind of "wild fruit" map that we use to revisit old tree sites year after year. Recently, we went to our favorite wild cherry location and filled our baskets with these small, yet flavorful cherries. They peak in late June, early July in Northern Ca. and only last about a week at a fully ripened state. So, you have to be quick and collect them while they last. They are great dried if you harvest too much to eat at once. They retain more concentrated sweetness this way and can be stored for months.
Wild fruit offers us all the nutrients and energies from natural, uncultivated soil. Many times healthy wild fruit trees are being fed on fresh, underground aquifers and that energy is going into the fruit!
BOOK REVIEW:Ani's Raw Food Desserts
Ani's Raw Food Desserts: 85 Easy, Delectable Sweets and Treats by Ani Phyo Ani Phyo is one of those "raw foodists" who has been interviewed numerous times for her easy to make raw recipes. The reason for her popularity, no doubt, lies in the fact that her raw food meals and desserts are accessible for anyone to create in just a few minutes. You will find almost all your traditional dessert favorites made with "raw" ingredients. There are an abundance of recipes using fruits of all kinds. One of the good things about this book is that she gives substitutes for certain ingredients that might be hard to find for the average home cook. Most of all, it offers "way healthier" alternatives to dessert addictions and indulgences. You can make cookies, cakes, puddings, ice creams that can easily pass the test for any finicky child. This dessert book is a great one to add to any raw food cookbook collection. Ani's Raw Food Desserts: 85 Easy, Delectable Sweets and Treats
Recipe of the Month:Fruit Pie Recipe
Making a summer fruit pie can be a fun experience for the whole family. Children especially love to creatively contribute and build up colorful layers of fruit. The process is fairly simple and you can work with most any kind of fruit you like. Here is a basic recipe that can be expanded depending on your own personal taste or fruits in season. Pie Crust:
Pie Filling:
Topping:
As a nutritional bonus you can also experiement with adding different superfoods to your crust. There are many options here and you will most likely discover your favorite combination's the more pies you make.
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS:
DVD of the Month:Transforming Your Life With Raw Food
by Philip McCluskey An inspiring DVD for anyone wanting to loose weight. Philip shares his weight loss story, in which he lost hundreds of pounds. Obese and overweight for most of his youth, he began eating a raw food diet that humbly and permanently changed his life. This very up close and personal DVD shines with the new found wisdom discovered on his path to total health recovery. Philip further discusses how to create the most ecstatic lifestyle ever through vibrant living with foods that are vibrantly alive! Transforming Your Life With Raw Food: Philip McCluskey
Thanks for joining me on my eighth edition of Superfood Evolution. If you would like to subscribe or tell a friend click here.
Until next month... Here's to your Superhealth! Much love, Shira
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