jonvon´s magic cerealgo raw simple granola cereal
i get this in the local health food store for ten bucks. you could also try sprouting your own seeds, which i haven't done yet but i really want to try and hopefully will this spring. i'm not sure what homemade sprouted flax/buckwheat groats will look like. the ones i buy look and taste like granola cereal. i think sprouting my own will be healthier and cheaper. we'll see...
manitoba harvest shelled hemp seeds
manitoba harvest chocolate "hemp bliss" hemp milk
fwiw, the manitoba harvest hemp products are better tasting than anything else out there, in my experience.
vegan gorp made of roughly equal parts of:
organic walnuts
organic sliced almonds
organic pumpkin seeds
organic hulled sunflower seeds
organic dried fruit (cranberries, blueberries, whatever you can find)
organic dark chocolate covered raisins
fresh fruit such as:
organic blueberries and/or
organic strawberries
directions
mix together:
one tablespoon of the cereal (sprouted flax / sprouted buckwheat groats)
one tablespoon hemp seeds
two or three (to your own taste) tablespoons gorp (hint: that gorp recipe is awesome)
add a tablespoon or three (whatever you like) of blueberries or strawberries or both. basically whatever fresh fruit is in season. sometimes i use organic frozen blueberries. if i take the cereal to work in a jar (which i do every morning during work days) the frozen blueberries keep everything cool, which is really neat.
add some chocolate hemp milk over the top and you have jonvon's magic cereal. during the week i put the hemp milk in a separate jar and add it on top when i get around to eating.
i usually eat another piece of fruit as well, like an orange or a small organic apple. i like really small apples. just the right amount for me and very tasty.
advanced vegan fu
i add two pills of chlorella that i take with water. i highly recommend doing this. chlorella (an algae grown in japan) has lots of protein, minerals and antioxidants, is extremely cleansing, and will help your body rejuvenate itself and make you look and feel younger. i say this out of my own personal experience - your mileage may vary, especially depending on what the rest of your diet looks like. (in case you are wondering, i am not affiliated with any of the companies that make the products.)
along with the chlorella, i drink organic matcha tea. the chlorella will clean you out due to the high amount of chlorophyll. the antioxidants in the matcha will come along with a "push broom" and sweep up the junk.
i used to have some problems here and there with my mood when drinking matcha but when i drink it in context with the "magic cereal" and the chlorella, i don't have any problems at all. everything is nicely balanced for me. my energy levels, mental clarity and immune response are all incredibly strong these days. sometimes people cough in my face and i just think, no problem. i very rarely get sick now and when i do, it never lasts long. the cereal/fruit/chlorella/matcha routine works very well for me and sets up my whole day.
warnings
fiber intensity:
whether or not you are a vegan, this is a LOT of fiber. you will likely get thirsty. so plan to stay hydrated. have a bottle of water near you the rest of the morning and afternoon and drink, lots, if you get thirsty.
if you are NOT a vegan or vegetarian, you might also experience some bloating or gas. you might even consider doing half a tablespoon each of the base ingredients and work your way up.
if you overdo it, if you add more than a tablespoon of the primary/base ingredients (hemp seed and flax/buckwheat groats), my experience is increased thirstiness due to the extra fiber. you may need to sit and be quiet while you digest too, if you feel nauseous at all. that feeling may be (if your experience is like mine) your body telling you it needs to concentrate its energy on digesting all that fiber.
basically what i'm saying here is, don't overdo it with the base ingredients, and don't underestimate the amount of fiber. the fiber is really good for you and will help you avoid colon cancer. but take it easy and work your way up.
note: the gorp is not nearly as fiber intensive as the hemp/flax. the flax is really the most intense ingredient in terms of fiber, from what i can tell.
i started out doing four pills of chlorella, but toned it down to two. starting out you might consider one and work up to two.
expense:
when you add all of this stuff up, including the chlorella and matcha, you are spending around 100 bucks. here is a rough estimate of what i am spending:
cereal ingredients: ~ 50 to 60 dollars
matcha: ~ 10 dollars
chlorella: ~ 24 dollars
i was spending about five dollars every morning buying fruit and kashi bars and peanuts. the cereal ingredients last about three weeks or so, the matcha about a month, and the chlorella maybe month and a half or so. i don't quite have it down to a science with that. but... when i add up what i was spending ad hoc, 25 dollars a week for junk, that's about a hundred dollars or so a month. so in the long run i'm doing way better with the cereal routine since it is my health we are talking about and over the long haul the costs are almost equivalent.
one morning i forgot my cereal, or didn't have time or something, and i fell back to my old kashit/fruit/nuts junk food routine (as i think of it now) and after eating, i felt as though i'd poisoned myself. the benefits to the "magic cereal" routine were so obvious to me at that point that now i work extra hard to make this happen for myself every day, especially during the work week. sometimes i vary a bit on the weekends with other things.
sprouted ingredients:
sprouted ingredients are alive. in other words, they are literally "sprouting" - they've started growing and have sort of been "arrested" in this early growth stage. this means that all sorts of biochemical things are going on with the plants. there are amino acids and things available during sprouting that aren't available at any other time. sprouted foods are very healthy to eat (really darn fascinating). but... because they are in that state they are also more prone to having bacteria attach to them. humans aren't the only ones that want to eat them! and they are more susceptible to infection than they would otherwise be.
i keep the sprouted stuff, and the hemp seeds, in the refrigerator. but even that doesn't keep them good forever. i never have a problem with the hemp seeds, but the flax/buckwheat DOES start to go bad. i rarely get to the bottom of a package before they start to go bad. i can't smell them going bad, but i can tell after i eat them that they've started to turn. if that happens i take a couple of echinacea and that solves it for me. but then i have to get new cereal. this is partly why i am interested in doing my own sprouting. the ingredients will be fresher that way. the cereal is sprouted at a facility somewhere, then shipped, then it sits on the shelf, and then finally i buy it. i put it right in the fridge, but it would be better if i did it myself.
so, for this reason, i always keep the two main base ingredients separate from the gorp and put them together on the fly "at run time". that way if it turns out the flax is starting to go south, i don't lose the other ingredients.
i don't ever have any problems with the gorp and i don't keep it refrigerated. it sits in a big glass jar on the counter.
good luck and let me know how it goes. :-)
discussion thread| 1 |
I don't know about the flax, but buckwheat is incredibly easy to sprout -- it only takes about a day -- and if you're serious about going raw, I don't see that you have a lot of choice. (Note: I am not vegan, but I do have vegans in my life. I've tried, but I get ill. Not just wonky from the dietary change -- that happens as well -- but I seem to fall victim to every little sniffle that comes along. I don't subscribe to the blood-type nonsense, but I do believe that some people are differently adapted from others, and there seems to be something fundamentally carnivorous about me.)
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Stan i have a friend who has fibromyalgia and she says the same thing - that she needs to have meat. she's a bona fide animal lover, is one of the most compassionate people i've ever met, a living saint really, but she says she has to eat meat or else she doesn't do well.
we've all got to pick our own path, or, at least walk on the path that picks us, right?
i've begun to realize that my veganism is as much a spiritual thing as it is anything else. it started out from my reading The China Study (the science blew me away) and from there, other books as well, but something happened when i made the decision to go vegan, some kind of spiritual difference. it was like i could feel a light switch snapping on, and snapping off, at the same time. i haven't been the same since.
i never expected to become a vegan, but i've personally been much healthier since i've been one.
i have a vegan stereotype in my head - you know the one - doesn't wear clothes unless they are made out of plants, is politically active in some way (PETA or Greenpeace or...), and is generally very thin, pale, pasty, or otherwise unhealthy looking. i didn't want to be that vegan. i wanted to know How To Do It.
i ran across a fellow named Brendon Brazier. i went and saw him speak. he was incredibly intelligent - a genius in my opinion - but also what was interesting, i couldn't tell how old he was. he looked like he was in his very early twenties. i thought, how can this guy have a company that sells food products, and have written a book or two, and compete in the iron man, and on and on, at his age? and then from a few things he said i did some quick math and realized he was in his mid thirties.
so, i read one of his books - bought it right there and had him sign it. he's a triathlete and has been a vegan since age 15. how in the world did he do THAT? the demands on the body for triathletes are enormous. so i read his book (he's got a few out now) and every time i pick it up i learn something new or remember something i've already forgotten.
i think without his advice i might have turned into that sickly vegan we've all seen. this magic cereal recipe comes partly out of Brazier's principles. the combination of hemp and flax for instance gives a really strong amino acid profile.
with everything you have going on Stan, it might be that you could do everything "right", and still not do well. who am i to say? the body is enormously complicated and so is nutrition, and it seems to me if you throw chronic disease into the mix, well, sheesh, who knows what the right thing to do is after that? you just have to follow what your body is telling you right?
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btw, the spiritual difference that occurred in me - what i am getting at there is i've realized what a personal choice this is.
i do hope that more people will see the value in veganism, or at least in a diet that is not so meat intensive. i hope that it will become much more widespread. but at the same time i think it will remain largely a personal choice, unless we run into real sustainability issues. of course there is a lot of debate around that already...
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I finally made your "magic cereal" recipe this morning with a cup of Yerba maté, & two chlorella tablets and could immediately see the benefits.
Before today, I was doing organic coffee +organic half n half + organic sugar AND organic granola + organic kefir + organic banana, and this is clearly a similar vibe but more evolved. Going with the Yerba maté eliminated the uncomplimentary stress of the coffee, sugar & dairy, and using Hemp Milk in the cereal, eliminated the dairy of the yogurt, all of which were pushing my PH to the acidification side. With your cereal, I am getting all the sprouts, nuts, & seeds that have been in short supply in my diet, Omega-3s from the hemp milk & sprouted flax, to bring my fatty acids into balance, antioxidants from the blueberries, comprised of mostly foods that are highly alkaline forming in the body, and raw to maintain as many living enzymes as possible, to reduce stress in the digestive system, & speed cellular regeneration, with the cleansing chlorophyll blast from the chlorella. awesome!
I gave this a highly "evolved" rating on twitter:
{ Link }
This is the way to do a healthy plant based diet.
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xmen of cereal! hahahaha
yeah man this is all just Thrive principles, remixed! the real genius here is Brendan Brazier.
i agree about the immediate effects - no question, i was able to tell a difference very quickly from what i was doing before vs. this routine.