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.
Hope every one is enjoying their day. We are really excited because we finally have a nice warm weekend here in NC which is great for the farmers markets
We got some questions regarding our workouts – mainly with the Tracy Anderson mat method. This is the end of our 2nd week of doing her exercises which we do about 5 times a week. And we are starting to feel like we are getting stronger and getting a little bit more definition in our bodies. We know it is a slow process along with everything else in life but we thoroughly enjoy her fitness concept. So we plan to continue it! We have not been doing much running lately just about once a week. Yoga about 2-3 times a week!
After yesterdays Tracy’s session we enjoyed another great post workout pudding! Similar to ones you saw yesterday! Love all the different combinations we seem to be just throwing together, yet all have some main ingredients like lemon or lime and something green to help alkalize us!
As I mentioned yesterday we created a delicious avocado pudding that we just absolutely LOVED! Plan to make this at least once a week You do need a special ingredient to make it.. sunflower lecithin or any emulsifier would do like guar gum, etc. Though we personal love sunflower lecithin we use it in many of our recipes. Love the results it provides puddings and smoothies. What it does is that it combines all the ingredients together and gives a nice lightness to the puddings. It helps provide puddings especially this one, such creamy, and lightness that it feels like you are almost eating air!
Pictures just do not do this avocado pudding justice!
We inhaled this pudding in like zero point 2 seconds
Pure2Raw Recipe: Mesquite Avocado Pudding
Ingredients:
one ripe avocado, pitted
1 tbsp mesquite
1 tbsp carob
3 packets of stevia or any sweetener of your choice
Place all ingredients into food processor and blend on high speed for a few seconds. Stop and scrap down the sides and blend again for a few more seconds till it is fully combined and light and fluffy texture!
Optional topping: sprinkle with more mesquite
And place in a nice martini glass and enjoy!
I guess I did not like it Wiped the class clean!
We have finally come to the end of our fermented drink and foods series!! We will be showing here soon how to make water kefir! Another easy and healthy drink for you to incorporate into your daily life Water kefir has become a staple in our daily life. Video coming soon and plus an update on how our sauerkraut in a bowl is doing!
News:
Going along with our bloggy shirts we will be adding a few more t-shirts to our online store. Hope you like them!
All these shirts that we have been showing that are for sale are from our older sister who just launched her own organic high quality t-shirt company! We are so excited for our sister because these has been a life time dream and project of hers and now she is finally doing it!! She just needed a little extra push from us to get it up and running
We hope every one likes the shirts and they will be added to our online store sometime today! So get those orders in Please help spread the word about our sisters new t-shirt company called Raw Threads! She is working on her online website and once she launches the site we will let everyone know but for now you can buy them from us!
Also for our Pure2Raw online goodies will be adding some St. Patty’s Day treats like Mint Chip Kremes, ‘Green’ Cookie and all of our ‘green line’ flat breads will be on sale from starting this weekend till March 10th. **They will be added to our online store soon!
And speaking of wonderful lady entrepreneurs following their dreams check out the ever so lovely Eating Bender as she embarks on her journey of starting her own company Pursuing our Passion! I wish her and her business partner Jill all the success. Owning a business is a very challenging thing to pursue but one that is worth it in the end especially if it something you are truly passionate about! We know Jenn and Jill will do great!
Hope everyone is following their dreams and loving life to the fullest
It makes us so happy that everyone is loving our t-shirts!!!!! We are so excited for them and think they will be great for everyone to wear and enjoy Hard to believe the Fitbloggin is only a few weeks away. Michelle and I got so much work to do from now till then.
on our blog a few times or two.. we like to call it our favorite cocktail Synergy is the brand, and you see it out in your stores and if you do not have the time to make kombucha yourself. But I promise making your own kombucha is not that hard! And makes it more affordable when you make it yourself!
There are just so many great health benefits about drinking this fabulous drink! I really think incorporating this drink into one’s lifestyle would not hurt because many people lack ‘healthy’ bacteria in their diets! A simple natural fermented aged culture, made with pure water, sugar and black or green tea. Kombucha is a probiotic. Pro = in favor of; biotic = life. Kombucha balances the pH naturally. Pro-biotic drinks are good for us, they aid digestive health and they give our digestive system balance. Probiotics – means “for life.” It is used to describe products which include microorganisms that are beneficial to health.
And once you drink kombucha a few times you will start craving the flavor and taste. It is sour and can be fizzy!
We find it a much better choice over regular sodas on the market because of the health benefits from drinking kombucha! So go give it a try if you have not already!
Now we are not experts but we have been making our homemade kombucha for a few months now and absolutely love it and know that if we can do it anyone can do it!
Here is the video of Michelle showing how we make our kombucha! Enjoy!
Now we purchased our Mother Scoby from Cultures of Health. They also sell kits that includes mason jars and strains!! But the Kefir lady sells them too. It comes with directions. And the mother comes in a packet on ice. Just place the mother in the fridge till you are ready to place it in tea. Only use pure black or green tea nothing with flavors.
As you will see in this video Michelle splits a baby from the mother, you do not do this with the one you buy. After your first batch you separate the two to make two batches, and the cycle continues with each scoby.
Like the music??? We are getting fancy over here, haha.
Have fun making your homemade Kombucha!!! You can flavor any way you like once it is done fermenting.
Recipe:
For One quart you will need
1 1⁄2 t. loose tea or 2 tea bags
1/4 c. sugar
3 1⁄4 c. (approx.) water
some starter tea from your previous batch (or first kombucha does come in tea)
For Half- gallon
1 T. loose tea or 4 tea bags
1⁄2 c. sugar
6 1⁄2 c. (approx.) water
1 c. starter tea, although we never do that much
Brew the tea with sugar to dissolve. Let it cool to room temperature before adding scoby. Put scoby in mason jar, with whiter side up, and cover with cheesecloth. Leave on counter at room temperature, out of direct sunlight for at least 5 days. We let ours ferment from 10 to 30 days. The longer it ferments the less sugar.
News:
St. Patty’s day is coming fast. And in honor of the great fun holiday we are going to be offering sales on our ‘green’ product line and offering some special extra treats for the holiday like mint chip macaroons and green cookie!
We will posting those new items up on our store here soon and we will let everyone know when the sale on our green crackers and flat breads will be going on for.
Well they are officially ready, so we have added them to our online store.
An easy fun way to advertise your blog ; ) And helping the environment by purchasing organic material!!
We are running a special SALE on them in honor of FitBloggin. The special starts today and runs through March 19th. So hurry and get your order in before sale ends.
Note these shirts run a little big. Shirts are prewashed, preshrunk, and side seamed.
Happy shopping! Tomorrow we will be announcing our St.Patty’s Day specials!!
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!
Everyone ready for the big hockey game tonight?? Go USA!!
Lori and I enjoyed a nice relaxing night last night, nothing beats a good glass of wine & a movie : )
Hope everyone was able to check out all the amazing giveaways. Although we forgot some other great giveaways, Debbie is giving away Glass Dharma Straws and SPARK book and Michele, Raw Juice Girl , is giving away a $30 gift certificate to Glass Dharma Straws, and Kristen is giving away nut butters.
Again sorry for the short post yesterday, we had a long day. Got up early for the farmers market, which was a great a day to be outside! The sun was out ; )
Following the market we attended our first farmers market meeting. It was the annual meeting, where all the vendors come together and discuss the market, budget, etc. I must say it was interesting…and long. It went on for about 4 hours ugh. But we are very excited to be apart of a Nationally Recognized Farmer Market. The Carrboro’s farmers market even has been in magazines such as Bon Appetite!! We are ranked third in the nation.
Working at a farmers market has its ups and downs, just like any other job. But it is fun to get out of the house and talk with our customers!!
Do you support your local farmers market? If yes, Great!! If no, why? Do you not have one in your area?
We are very lucky to say we are surrounded my amazing farmers!
We did not workout yesterday…gasp..But we are okay with it, because life just sometimes gets in the way. And your body does need a break! Although our goal today is to fit a workout in…Tracy Anderson and yoga hopefully!
We have been seeing and hearing about a lot more people giving fermented foods a try!! ; )
We know fermented foods can be scary, but once you do make them a few times you will see how easy they are….and become addicted like us! Would you all like us to do some more videos on how we make our fermented foods? Just let us know!
We got a busy day…lots of prep work for the week ahead, cleaning, paying bills, cleaning out garage, and other house work!
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.
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.
How is your Friday?? So glad everyone enjoyed our story about us becoming bakers and creating Twin Cakes Bakery. In cased you missed them you read them here, Part 1 and Part 2.
Don’t forget we announce the winner to our giveaway tomorrow...so get your comments in today!
We have been extremely busy here…non-stop in the kitchen getting all our Twin Cakes Valentine’s Day Orders in.
We even didn’t get to eat till after 1. Just been snacking on this and that in the morning…a random day of eats for us. But the weird thing is that we have been feeling good. By not eating too much in the morning has actually given us more energy…which sometimes is hard for us because we were raised you have to eat breakfast.
Well this maybe true but we are starting to realize for us not having a huge breakfast has been nice for our energy levels. It is hard not to eat right away in the morning, but as long as we are busy we do not even think about eating, sort of ; )
Do you have mornings were you do not eat much? How do you feel? What are your thoughts on eating breakfast or no breakfast?
Now do not get us wrong, we do eat something, just not a full blow meal! And this past week we have not been eating till around 10 am. We are playing around with our morning eats, which means we have been having later workouts. We will keep you posted, but in the mean time check out Gena’s great tips for breakfast. I could go for some of those green eggs!!!
Anyways here are some food we have been eating these past few days
Kraut Salad drizzled with tahini
Avocado pudding drizzled with yacon
roasted butternut squash & brussel sprouts, with fermented veggies and some white stuff, aka coconut oil ; )
Coconut kefir pudding with coconut oil, hemp protein and yacon
pure2raw cracker wtih tahini (that we blended with cashews and maple)...sweet and savory!!
pure2raw cheez cracker dipped into cashew tahini maple spread...it was uniquely good!!
Twin Cakes Bakery has added a few new items to the Pure2raw store.
In addition, for a limited time only Valentine’s Day special treats. The special starts today Monday Feb 8 and ends Saturday Feb 13.
Treat your loved ones or yourself to healthy, fat burning (a.k.a coconut oil filled) raw desserts! We have things for chocolate lovers, white chocolate lovers, and peppermint lovers ; )
Valentine Flavors are:
Peppermint Goji Berry Cocoa Kreme Bites
Chocolate drizzled Vanilla Kreme Bites
White Chocolate Snow Caps Brownie Bites
Heart Shaped Chocolate Cookies
If you get your order in by Wednesday we will throw in a special treat!! It will be a surprise, so get your orders in now ; )
Go ahead a spoil yourself with these non-guilty treats!!
In addition to these new items we are hosting another giveaway.
Pure2raw Valentine’s Day Giveaway
One lucky winner will receive:
Twin Cakes Bakery limited time Valentine’s goodies – Peppermint Goji Berry Cocao Kreme Bites and Heart Shaped Chocolate Cookies.
And now not all our readers will go away empty handed because the great people over atRaw Gaiaare offering ALL our readers a special Valentine’s Discount of 15% off!!!
Go shop now because you are not going to want to miss this opportunity!! : )
Giveaway is going on till Friday Feb 12th!! Will announce the Winner Feb 13th.
Sorry you will not be receiving your goodies till after Valentines…we did not plan this well, LOL, but hey they you got something to look forward too!! More chocolate : )
Rules of Giveaway:
1. Leave a comment telling us your favorite Romantic movie
2. Mention the giveaway on your blog, if you have one, and come back and let us know you linked it back to us
3. And please tweet if you have a twitter account…this is optional, although appreciated ; ) xoxo
We just went for the plain cheez and cracker (our chip) match ; ) No fancy toppings for us, sorry we are boring.
And FINALLY
Pure2raw Club Sandwich
And it featured some eggplant bacon, courtesy of Matthew Kenney and we know Mrs. Fitnessista loves some eggplant bacon!!
Oh did we eat this??
Well it was a little messy, but that was okay it was worth it ; )It was actually kind of weird for us to eat a sandwich…. having a raw sandwich at that! We were eating a sandwich just like everyone else The bread is some of Pure2raw buckwheat bread (we will add this product soon) Heavenly YUMMY!
Overall we had lots of good eats that we were willing to share with others. It was great day to eat some special treats!
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.
but we thoroughly enjoy her fitness concept. So we plan to continue it! We have not been doing much running lately just about once a week. Yoga about 2-3 times a week! 
I guess I did not like it 
And our 
We have made
Lots of kraut and veggies : ) Again love all the sticky notes!!
Kraut sandwich on our 
A bunch of 
We are loving this squash…in everything!!
We poured the cheezy sauce over our 
We just went for the plain cheez and cracker (our chip) match ; ) No fancy toppings for us, sorry we are boring.
Oh did we eat this??
PERFECT!!!
Seriously our best cupcake yet!! Love the blend of sugar and cinnamon ; )
Snickerdoodle cookies. They loved them!! No one could guess they were raw cookies! We are going to have to make more.
