Please keep in mind we are not nutritionist or doctors. We recommend checking in with your doctor before making any changes to your diet and exercise routine. Most of our information is based upon our own experiences and research, although we do hope you keep an open mind.
Almost the weekend I know many of you are excited about that! Though we never really get ‘weekends’ anymore. Well things have been extremely busy around here which is always a good thing right
We are so happy that everyone is considering making their own fermented drinks! Promise once you make them a few times you will get the hang of it!
We definitely have been eating well over these past few days.
Going along with our Tracy Anderson workouts and Yoga, we have been running once a week. A short simple 20-25 minute run/walks. It has been great to get outside when it is nice out to stretch the legs though mainly we have been doing Tracy’s workouts!
Also we have been playing around with different pre and post workout snacks/puddings
Like this one
A pre-workout chia mesquite date ball
A chocolate coconut date ball
Both have been great still a minor tweaking to them but overall gave us the energy we need for a great workout with not being too heavy.
Some post-workout puddings we have whipped up are
Chorella hemp seed yacon lemon pudding
Another one
Spirulina lemon yacon pumpkin seed sludge
Both of these have been great and few ingredients! Love having either pumpkin seeds or hemp seeds after our workouts because give us the vitamins and minerals to help our body recovery from our workouts along with adding lemon to help alkalize the body! Our puddings are not as pretty as our good friend Shannon Marie’s pudding in a jar
Sauerkraut with more steamed leeks and fennel with some steamed sweet potato. Nice and warm and comforting!
Tuesday we enjoyed our grapefruit spinach smoothie
Yesterday morning we started our day with a 14 oz fresh juice!
Since we snacked on some of these the night before (we were practicing new recipes for our Twin Cakes bakery) We were not really hungry for a large green smoothie so juice hit the spot!
Gluten free vegan banana sticky buns – recipe came out great! Love that when that happens because gluten free ingredients are not cheap
Don’t worry we have lots more great eats coming Last night we made a delicious avocado coconut kefir pudding – we will share the recipe tomorrow! Believe me it is heavenly!
News:
Remember out blog t-shirts are only on sale till March 19th!!! Keep those orders coming And for those of you who were asking these are girl size shirts. Sorry guys, we will get a men’s shirt soon!
We were blown away by how many people requested our recipe for our chocolate chip cookie pie. We have to thank Jessica again for inspiring us to create it, man she has much more amazing goodies we have been dreaming about to make ; ) We are thinking about sharing it.As you all know we are a business, so some things are special to us (and took a lot of time and work), but we are working on a cookbook!!!
But as I mentioned we are considering sharing it…we will see ; )
Today’s video is our first attempt at making our first compost! Our friend Mike, who by the way has 4 great blogs that cover all great topics and tips, so go check them out. Mike did a post recently how to make compost, so we thought why not give it a try.
Lori and I are always looking for ways to be more “green”. Mike is always sharing great tips for helping out the planet. What do you do that is green?
Here are just a few things the Twins do:
enjoy a raw food vegan lifestyle
bring our own bags to the grocery store
shop locally
use glass over plastic, when possible
turn off lights when not in use
unplug electronics, etc
energy efficient light bulbs
use towels over paper towels
keep thermostat at lower during winter and high during summer (off most of the time)
have bamboo and cork flooring in our house
reuse, reduce, and recycle everything we can
Now we made our first compost:
- large bin
- organic soil
- coffee grounds
- juice pulp/food scraps
- shredded paper
Yay we have no idea what we are doing, but it was fun. The best way to learn something is to just do and learn as you go. We challenge all of you to make your own compost if you do not already do so. Let us know if you do!!!
We will see how this goes
Following the gardening trend Mike again inspires us with his homegrown vegetable garden out of pots…in NY…off his balcony. He is truly an amazing person!
So look what we did
Bought an aloe leaf plant from a local farmer! Instead of buying the leave from Whole Foods (which is the one on the right). We are going to try to grow our own plant. The farmers said they are easy to grow.
And
Bought cabbage from the farmer as well to start growing our own cabbage. Since we go through it so much from making our sauerkraut! We see how to do with our garden and compost! Only time will tell.
Do any of you grow your own food, or have you thought about growing your own food?
Till next time… got exciting news we will share later!
Happy Saturday to you all! I hope you all are having a glorious weekend so far
Our farmers market this morning was a good one though it was freezing and windy! But we managed to pull through!Going along with our typical farmers market in Carrboro we got some great news to share! We got into another local farmers market here in Durham. We are totally excited about this because Durham is one of the largest farmer markets in the nation!!!!!! Though we are a little nervous :/
Yesterday we did manage to get some Tracy Anderson workout action done and got to enjoy this post workout pudding!
Hemp seeds, black sesame seeds, yacon syrup, chorella and splash of water! Michelle and I are just loving our puddings lately! There are such fun for us
A little bit later we enjoyed a glorious green smoothie
Green kale, granny smith apples, water, stevia, lemon, fresh ginger, coconut oil, maca and sunflower lecithin
We had an early dinner yesterday because from our intense morning workout sure got our metabolism going all day long! Love that!
Fermented veggies, topped with turmeric, black sesame seeds and fresh garlic! (yes we love raw garlic. When eating garlic it just feels so powerful and it feels like it is just killing all the ‘bad’ stuff inside of me) I know weird but I just love it!
And a side of lightly dehydrated kale chips topped with a random roasted butternut squash! Perfect!
Than for dessert last night we gladly devoured our favorite pudding though this time with a twist!
A creamy and thick key lime avocado chia pudding with some mesquite in there! It was absolutely heavenly and very filling I must say which I love. In love with mesquite!!! Best ingredient to change some dishes up I must say. Go ahead and buy some and see what you think
Seriously making this pudding again in the future. We just threw mesquite in to see how it would taste and it was amazing!!!!
And sipped on some homemade kombucha tea afterwards as our night cap
Our morning today started at 5am and some lemon water. Before heading out the door for the market Michelle whipped up a simple coconut kefir basil mint smoothie. YUM YUM! Wiped the cup clean!
Getting back from the market we made a carrot cake wrap! To die for I must say!
I know Katie would be so proud! Ever since Katie make all these delicious carrot cake eats like her Carrot Cake Pancake roll ups and carrot cake pancakes! Michelle and I have been craving to create something carrot cake of our own And this is what we came up with!!
Raw – Gluten Free – Vegan Carrot Cake Wraps!
SOOOO GOOOOOOOOD! Craving more of it but there is no more we ate it all
But that is ok because wait until you see what we are creating for our dessert tomorrow night!!!!! Hint: what got some inspiration for this lovely lady!
We wanted to go over a few things going along with our coconut kefir video. Michelle forgot to mention a few things. Many of you might see kefir starter packs in your local stores or online. The difference between the kefir starter packs and the grains is that the packs only last a few times while the grains could possible last a lifetime. That way you really only have to buy the grains once because they will continue to populate and make more. Though if you are just curious and starting out with making kefir the starter packs are a great way to go.
Going along with the grains there are two types water and milk. Both are great! We use both. And now for the ‘milk’ grains you do not necessary have to use dairy to make them as you saw in our video coconut milk seems to be working out just fine. Yes you all may be thinking that the ‘milk’ grains are not vegan, which is true. But we do not make our kefir using ‘real’ milk just coconut or hemp milks and we are loving it because it is very similar to real kefir and it has the sour and creaminess that we love. So to us it is ok even if it started out with real ‘milk’ grains. Though you may experiment with whatever type of grain and liquid you feel most comfortable with doing. We plan to show more on making water kefir later this week.
Anymore questions please just let us know. We are here to help and would love to see more of you trying out making your own kefir!!!!
Ok enough of kefir now onto our eats for over the past few days.
Going along with Gena’s theme of saying “I LOVE TO EAT!” And you all know Michelle and I love to do that. Though we have struggled with eating disorders too. Our journey was a little bit different (our food issues all were based around our stomach issues- we would not eat because we did not want to feel like crap) though eventually over time we finally learned to love food again and embrace ourselves and the food we eat. We also struggled with our body images that we know many of you deal with as well though we will save that big topic another day!
Therefore in honor of National Eating Disorder weekwe wanted to show you all that eating healthy can be fun, delicious, and comforting! And of course great for your body and mind!
Hits the spot of us both every time. We are huge fans of key lime!!!!
And of course to start our day today …. green smoothieThis delicious smoothie was filled with dino kale, grapefruit, coconut oil, sunflower lecithin, stevia and lots of fresh ginger
Lately all I have been craving is sauerkraut and grapefruit! Not sure why but I guess those are not bad things to crave
Ok well I challenge of all you to say you love FOOD and yourself!!! And talk about food and why you eat food. Remember food is not your enemy as long as you are eating what is right for your body and it makes you feel good. It took Michelle and I a very long time to realize this and now we are happier than ever! Though not every day we are perfect or 100% happy with everything, though we are grateful with the food choices we make and know that we are on the journey to a better health!
Now go out there and make some delicious food and tell us all about it.
Today we wanted to talk about what we have been doing for workouts snacks both pre-workout and post-workout! We get many of our ideas from Brendan – you all know we are fans of his. We have talked about his most recent book here if you are interested in learning more about him and his whole concept of food and fitness Great read!
We have been trying puddings as most of our snacks. We are huge fans of puddings, we like really thick puddings too! Ok we might have weird taste buds
We enjoyed eating this delicious pre-workout snack a few days ago
This date mesquite ball was perfect for a quick but intense workout to give you the energy you need! We plan to make more of these again soon and keep in the refrigerator to have on hand.
Another pre-workout snack that we have been playing around to see if it gives us energy and makes us feel good while working out is coconut kefir. For example this one
Coconut kefir mixed with spirulina, dates, vanilla, banana, coconut oil, maca, and cacao nibs.
Our bodies really seemed to like it. We ate this about an hour or more before we worked out. We felt it was great for our hour long workouts!
We have been making some fun post-workout puddings. *warning some may not look the prettiest but promise you they were amazing!
Like this one
This was pumpkin seeds flour, spirulina, lemon juice and zest, yacon syrup, maca and a splash of water.
It made a very small pudding but that is all we needed immediately after working out. We than come back about an hour later or so to make a large green smoothie!
Another great and very thick pudding was this delicious ‘>chocolate Vega shake that we made into a pudding.
We just took some Learn more>”>Vega Protein powder and mixed with maca, chia seeds, lemon juice, stevia, and a splash of water. Stirred till everything was combined. Yummy and thick a great post-workout snack in our opinion and our bodies seem to love it!
And after today’s workout we had something very similar though we made it out of hemp protein powder. (sorry no picture).
As you can see some of these pre and post workout snacks had ‘sugar’ in them from bananas to dates. This is about the only time we have any sugar except for stevia and yacon syrup. Though we are really going to try to cut back even more on our overall ‘sugar’ intake for a couple of weeks and rely mostly and vegetables and healthy fats (and certain fruits) to fuel us (with the occasional protein powder puddings).
We actually took a few weeks off from having any protein powder but these past week we have incorporated them back into our post-workout snacks. We have been trying to increase our intensity of our workouts and our overall strength training program so decided to give the powders a try again to see if we noticed any great improvements.We will keep you all updated on how we do with that!
So far we are feeling great and loving the way we are feeling before, during, and after our workouts! With fit-bloggin coming up soon we are giving ourselves a little challenge to keep our intensity up and eat very clean. We will see how that goes
Now here for some exciting news that we have been talking about lately!
In honor of our love for blogging and fitness. We teamed up with a new and up-coming ‘green’ t-shirt design company to help us create fun and cute shirts for all to enjoy! More information on that soon!
We will be selling these shirts on our site very soon. Here is a sneak preview of what they will look like!
Currently these shirts are in production. And of course these shirts are going to be on high quality organic cotton and approved with the Twins stamp of approval
**We will take pre-orders on these 100% organic cotton shirts – just email us at twins at pure2raw.com. If you are going to the FitBloggin event you will receive a 5% discount. These is a great way to advertise your blog and workout at the same time. They will be great conversation starters. You will see Pure2Raw Twins wearing these shirts while at the FitBloggin event in March.
“ I blog all day”
And
“If you think I’m cute you should see my blog”
**Please not these images are just an artist renderings not actually photos. Once we get the ‘actual shirts’ in we will post them
We wanted to create shirts that were fun and that everyone could work-out in!
Readers and non FitBloggin attendees can benefit from wearing one too More t-shirts to come! We are so excited!
Pure2Raw TRULY THANKS ALL OF OUR READERS and YOUR CONTINUE SUPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU TO OUR READERS and FRIENDS We love you all!
It is really Monday again, seriously where does the weekend go?
Though since we really never get a day off from work …everyday is the same to us We never get weekends!
Michelle and I did get to eat some really fun and of course interesting food over the weekend!
We have been having some juices and green smoothies of course though treated ourselves to a fun and out of this world dinner on Saturday night.
Seriously craving this dinner again – a-m-a-z-i-n-g!
We like to call it our open face tortilla!Or a.k.a tostada – Twins style! We have made one before here.
And have made some before for an event we did last year- huge hit!
We love our tostada’s. Not sure why we do not make them more. Umm… that’s going to change!
The base is a coconut tahini wrapper we made topped with sauerkraut, fresh cilantro and pureed up roasted veggies (our sauce)!
Our dinner all together now
Definitely plan on making this dish again Quick, easy, and full of flavor. It really felt like we were eating a tortilla it was heavenly!!!! Seriously reminded us of a typical white tortilla that you can get from any Mexican restaurant but this one only had two ingredients!!!!!! Love that. Great dinner that was easy on our stomachs to digest due from the sauerkraut and simple, fresh ingredients!
Last nights dinner was another success… though it was a in form of a monstrous salad.
This salad was full of arugula, romaine, and more roasted veggies Not bad eh?
Dessert was even better – we split our pecan banana cupcake with caramel drizzle. Love our raw desserts – full of flavor that splitting this was just enough to satisfy us both
Due to all the request for more videos of us making more fermented drinks and foods we plan to share some this week! Stay tuned
Been a busy Monday for us and we got a long night ahead… exciting things finally happening over here! We also have a special guest post that we did that we will reveal tomorrow.
Sorry for the late post but today has been the longest day ever. This is the first time I have been in front of the computer all day, which actually is not a bad thing for a Saturday. But just wanted to stop in and say hey and hope you are having a great Saturday. We will explain our day tomorrow….too tired.
But something to do is check out these amazing giveaways from some pretty amazing ladies
Love all the less meat protein sources support from you all! Lori and I are still trying to find our balance with everything though each week we feel we are understanding our bodies better
Lately we have been enjoying some delicious eats. We attempted to re-create the Little Debbie oatmeal creme pies (one of our childhood favorites) and this is what we came up with: our raw ‘oatmeal’ kreme cookies
Needs just a little bit more tweaking and I think we have it
We have been enjoying some fresh vegetable juices in the morning
Great way to start the day! So far our tummies have been enjoying our fresh juices again. By having such a light breakfast has been nice both with our ‘eliminations’ and giving us energy for the day!
Been enjoying lots of our homemade sauerkrauts Made a bunch of it this past weekend
This one we top with ground hemp seeds (which is another new thing we are trying – grinding all our seeds into flour form before eating, this helps with inflamed and sensitive stomachs by having things in flour form not whole seeds)
Our green smoothies have turned into our post-workout shakes YUM
Absolutely mouth-watering. We wanted to try putting some sweet (the tart crust) with something savory like sauerkraut mixed with tahini as the filling. Love the sweet and savory flavors together. Do plan on making more meals like this
Second part of dinner
Than dessert was this
And some of this
Just kidding, both of these raw desserts (oreo tart and banana kreme filled cupcake) are for our farmers market this weekend. I just love my job!
Later this week we will give a hormonal balance update! I know many of you have been asking us so we will discuss it again soon.
Hope your Monday is going well. We have had a not so typical Monday morning here. Had to run some errands, deliver an order, and then received an unexpected order. We have been out of the house all morning, but did manage to make a small juice before heading out the door.
This juice was some beet tops, carrots, fennel, and ginger. We are giving juicing a try again. We are seeing how our bodies like juicing time around now that we are feeling stronger. Hopefully we will not get too many detox symptoms.
How was everyone’s Valentines? We had a nice surprise yesterday.
Red Roses?? But from whom? And for who?
Not for me ; ( But Lori. Her wonderful boyfriend surprised her with roses. She had no idea, I had no idea. We actually first thought is was from our parents, but then as we opened the box, we both saw Love Gary. Her boyfriend is currently studying abroad in Paris, so this was a very nice surprise for Lori.
We enjoyed some good eats yesterday as well. Began our Sunday morning with a perfect cup of hot cocoa, then followed by a green smoothie.
Had a great workout. We have been doing Tracy Anderson’s Mat workout and love it!! We love her (more on that later). And we treated ourselves to Vega shake afterwards. It was perfect!! We have not had Vega in so long. I know there are some that do not like the taste of Vega, but I love it. I made it thick like pudding, yummy…
Vega Health Optimzer with a little bit of water...makes perfect pudding in my opinion.
And then dinner was inspired from Everyday Raw. One of Matthew Kenney’s cookbooks that we just love. Also I learned to make this while at 105 Degrees
Not only is the pizza raw and gluten-free, but also we made it nut-free!!! So it was very light.We made a few changes to his recipe, and it came out great.
Let’s just say love is in the air and we got some romantic readers We absolutely loved hearing all of your favorite romantic movies!!!!! Some of you mentioned some really old classics
Anyways for some laugh and giggles this Valentine’s Weekend we wanted to share with you all the top 5 romantic movies that were given. Let me tell you that there was over 52 different movies mentioned! Now that is a whole lot of love! xoxoxo
Notebook
Love Actually
Pretty Woman
Dirty Dancing, Titantic, Sleepless in Seattle, and Princess bride (tied for 4th)
Serendipity, The Holiday (tied for 5th)
It was pretty close between Love Actually and the Notebook! Both which are great movies. Here are the twins favorites:
Lori: Serendipity, Tristan and Isolde, and PS I LOVE YOU
Michelle: My best friends wedding, The Notebook, and PS I LOVE YOU
Thanks for everyone’s great comments and love for some great romance Boys listen up you could learn from these movies
Time to finally announce the giveaway!!!!!
The winner will receive this goodie package full of our favorites!!!
A bunch of Artisana Coconut oil and butters….we love this stuff. We not only use them in our personal recipes but for our Pure2Raw product line as well. It is amazing stuff with such high quality!!
Our favorite chocolate mask from Raw Gaia!!! An amazing company with wonderful products, they even sent us another mask to try out ; ) We will review it soon.
High raw gluten-free foodie enthusiasts. Passionate about fitness, nutrition, health, cooking/baking, running, yoga, wine and much much more. We are fraternal twins who are raw gluten free vegan chefs/bakers. Living our life long dream running our own bakery - Twin Cakes and raw uncooked bakery Pure2raw. We hope to inspire others to appreciate food as nourishment to the body. Embark on a healthier lifestyle where you enjoy food and exercise, and have fun living your best life to the fullest...pure&simple.
A chocolate coconut date ball
Fermented veggies and sauerkraut arugula salad~
Sauerkraut with more steamed leeks and fennel with some steamed sweet potato. Nice and warm and comforting!
Gluten free vegan banana sticky buns – recipe came out great! Love that when that happens because gluten free ingredients are not cheap 
Red Roses?? But from whom? And for who?
Not for me ; ( But Lori. Her wonderful boyfriend surprised her with roses. She had no idea, I had no idea. We actually first thought is was from our parents, but then as we opened the box, we both saw Love Gary. Her boyfriend is currently studying abroad in Paris, so this was a very nice surprise for Lori. 
After dehydrating
Final Product
Want a bite?
A bunch of 
