March '08 Food and Recipes

Eat more chocolate!
by Milosh Rodic

Dear yogis, here is what you are sure to agree is the best news from the world of raw foods (aka living foods, Sun food Nutrition):

Chocolate is good for you! You can, and would benefit greatly from eating it every day!

You read that right. Chocolate is good for your health. However, before you tear open that chocolate bar wrapper, there are some things to consider. Store-bought chocolate is usually cooked and often mixed with sugar and milk, leaving you with very few of the vast benefits that raw chocolate can offer. For instance, the cooking process of chocolate can keep you up all night as if you drank a trough of caffeine, whereas raw; you could eat it and still get to sleep. In its raw state, cacao is the highest source of magnesium in nature. Again, the cooking process of chocolate destroys magnesium, which also happens to be the number one mineral for brain health. The cacao bean, along with other magnesium-rich foods such as blue green algae, kale, and blue berries, has a distinct purple color. That's the magnesium. It is no coincidence then, that the third eye (Ajna) chakra is associated with the color purple.

The benefits of Magnesium go beyond brain health. It also helps you stretch further. What yogi doesn't want to improve this aspect of their practice? Magnesium also gets the bowels moving, helping to keep your digestive system regular. Specifically, Cacao is known to open up over 300 eliminative pathways in the body. It can also help you love better. You see, Cacao, as well as the fresh blue-green algae E3 Live (aphanazomenon flos aquae), have PEA (also known as the "love molecule").

The following raw chocolate recipe is sure to rock your world. It is easy and fast. Remember, fast food is good food…when it is fruit on a tree!

EASY-YUMMY-Raw-CHOCOLATE

Ingredients*:

Raw Cacao Powder, nibs, or beans
Coconut Butter
Celtic (grey), or Himalayan Crystal salt (pink)
Dark Agave Nectar

Optional ingredients:

Maca (higher extracts deliver more power)
Spirulina - a great source of protein (building blocks of life)

Appliances:

Bowl
Spoon or spatula
Plastic lid or flat dish

Directions:

In a bowl, pour about a medium handful of cacao powder or ground nibs/beans.
Put about 4 tablespoons of coconut butter (more butter makes it brittle and sexy, less butter makes it fudgy and chewy).
Add about 2 tablespoons of agave syrup to taste.
A pinch or two of salt.
If you're using maca and spirulina/chlorella, a teaspoon of each is great.
Mix it up!
Pour or spread onto a flexible lid or a flat dish.
Place into a freezer for 15 minuets--if you can wait that long :)

One last thing: don't be afraid to experiment! And remember to bless your food by placing your hands over it, holding loving intention. You can also etch words or draw magical sigils (symbols) on your chocolate to anchor and eat your intentions!

*A note on some of the ingredients:

-Raw cacao powder works best, but if you can only find beans or nibs, use a coffee grinder to pulverize them. The beans and nibs have more original cacao butter.
-Always buy good quality coconut butter. This will be c. $20.00 a bottle. It is worth it! The taste is better, the nutritional quality is there. Don't waste your money on bad product and then a) mar your experience of how the food really should taste, and b) end up having to buy better stuff anyway. You want oil to be extra-virgin, cold pressed, and organic (always, at least….only "wild crafted" is better than organic).
-Agave nectar is a low glycemic sweetener. It won't spike your blood sugar like sugar. Sugar has been demineralised. Agave is safe for diabetics to eat. It is sweeter than sugar. It tastes like a cross between Honey and Maple syrup. Gabriel Cousens okays this (Spiritual Nutrition, Rainbowgreen Live food cuisine).
-Natural salt is actually good for you, whereas table salt is actually poisonous. Like refined sugar (served like a drug at parties in Victorian England), table salt has been demineralised. Table salt looks like black squares under a microscope. Natural grey and pink salt look like snowflakes and fractals! Your body can and wants to absorb natural salt because it is needed in digestion and is used by the adrenal glands. Table salt gets stuck in your body because it has been altered from its original state and can't be recognized.

Explore more about Cacao with Ron and Nadine at www.livinglibations.com. You can also visit David "Avocado" Wolfe's site www.rawfood.com and his amazing book, Naked Chocolate.

Be sure to check out Milosh's blog, "Milosh Thinks" (http://miloshthinks.blogspot.com), for more ideas on living raw. He'll be back in future issues with more raw food tips that can help you improve your practice through nutrition.