Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 09:59 AM
Happy Sunday everyone!!
I have been up for 2 hours and have done nothing besides writing this long and useful post!!! Don’t you just love Sundays!! An official excuse to be lazy, right??
Anyways our friend Averie asked us to share our favorite things. It has been a topic we wanted to do just never got around to it, so when she mentioned it we thought now is a great time to share.
Twin’s Favorite Things – again these are from our own experiences you can make your own call
How we go about getting our ingredients. We do most of our shopping online although if we are low on certain ingredient and we know a local health food store around us sells it we will just by it from them. We try to buy in bulk as well because in the long run it saves you time and money.
1) Coconut Oil - best quality and tasting - Artisana Premier Organics coconut oil and coconut butter
best for your money – one gallon tub from Sun Foods
best convenient – sold in most health food stores Nutiva
Other high quality coconut oil brands we have been enjoying Vivapura and Virgin Coconut oil De Coco Creme
2) Best online stores to shop: how we shop the most are Natural Zing, Amazon, Navitas Naturals, and Mountain Rose Herbs. For specialty items Raw Food World and Sun Food.
What we have been know to buy at Natural Zing: MSM powder, kelp noodles, coconut oil, tahini, maca, lucuma, yacon syrup, chia seeds, spirulina, raw cacao powder, raw cacao nibs, camu camu, and nuts and seeds, hemp seeds
Amazon: coconut water, Artisana and Navitas Natural brand products, dehydrator, vitamix, spiralizer, mandoline, nutritional yeast
Navitas Naturals: chia seeds, raw cacao, sprouted flax meal, yacon syrup, mesquite, maca, hemp seeds, lucuma and stevia
Mountain Rose Herbs: cinnamon, turmeric, sea salt, maca, chia seeds, chorella, spirulina, dulse flakes, any spice really, green tea (for making our kombucha tea)
3) Hemp products: Best overall Manitoba Harvest (can be pricey)
Best second choice Nutiva
Other overall decent hemp protein Ruth’s Hemp (we get from Natural Zing) or buying in bulk from Whole foods or Mountain Rose Herbs
4) Stevia – powder we like the best is Sweet Leaf the packets (which you can find in most heath food stores)
Second best is – KAL Pure Stevia Extract liquid (we get from health food stores)
Third best is – Stevia powder from Navitas Naturals (this is an acquired taste)
We find to like most Stevia products but we prefer liquid forms of it the best. We know for some Stevia is hard to get used to though we have been using if for over 3 years and we hardly notice it anymore. To us it is worth the after taste or getting used to factor from it having no calories and for us it is truly the best sugar substitute. We use it a lot in our bakery and personally!
5) Other random ingredients we use and where to find them
Nutritional yeast – most health food stores sell it (RedStar is our favorite)and Amazon
Irish Moss and Sunflower lecithin – I mentioned this yesterday
Florida Crystals Organic Sugar – we use for making kombucha and water kefirs (most health food stores sell this brand)
Native Forest Unsweetened Classic coconut milk – again most health food stores should sell this
Living Harvest – hemp milk (unsweetened)
Pacific Foods – Almond milk (unsweetened) and Hazelnut milk, and Rice milk
Again how we go about purchasing these items varies every time we need something. Some times it comes down to money, convenience or brand loyalty. It really all depends what we are shopping for and what we are low on. It also comes down to personal preference and money.
This great lady also has great tips on buying in bulk. Also we know because we have done it that most health food stores allow you to buy in bulk (cases) like Whole Foods, Earth Fare, and any local health food store in your area. Just go and ask the customer service area and they should be able to help you out. Buying in bulk is great especially for a family with lots of mouths to feed! Mountain Rose Herbs again is a great place to do this as well because they offer bulk discounts to everyone and their products are organic 
We hope this list of our favorites helps you along your journey of finding great healthy additions to your lifestyle like is has ours! Please let us know if you have any specific questions.
And Lori was correct in her guess with what our dinner was from last night! Kelp noodles though we a great twist And speaking of this lovely lady she is hosting a great giveaway – an ice cream maker If you get an ice cream maker you can start making delicious ice cream like this
Cookie dough Ice Cream
Back to our dinner:
Kabocha Kelp Noodles
We blended in our roasted Kabocha from earlier this week add in some salt, leftover sage that we roasted with the squash and some water. Threw it all into the blender and blended till creamy though ours we kept on the thick side
Than created a ‘green’ sauce to over the top, you know us with our greens! Green sauce was a blend of tahini, yacon syrup, apple cider vinegar, parsley, shallot, sunflower lecithin and water! Blend till creamy. And pour on top of kelp noodles and kabocha squash mixture.
We just mixed it all together and topped with more fresh parsley
Amazing! We think all squash lovers would approve of this sauce A great way to end a Saturday night. One reason why we created this dish was to show a customer at the farmers market yesterday morning what else to do with squash. She mentioned she does not know what else to do with winter squashes and that’s when we thought of using it as pasta ‘tomato’ sauce! Although we feel this would work with any veggie dish!
We got lots of goodies lined up today for the big game! Super bowl day! We can’t wait to show you all what we come up with tomorrow 
Cheers from the Twins. We have no favorite for which team to win we just want a good game to watch and the commercials!
Till next time,
The Twins
L&M
Posted by: Pure2
Posted in: Hot Topics, Miscellaneous, ingredients, product review
Tags: coconut oi, favorite things, hemp, kelp noodles, raw ice cream, shopping online, squash, stevia, sunflower lecithin
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 01:49 PM
Hey everyone
I woke up feeling a bit tired…my mind never really seemed to rest so did not get the best sleep. I had my usual pre-workout bar about 20 minutes before heading to the gym.
Gina and I headed to the gym for our morning workout.
My workout:
20 minutes of walk/run
I run for 3 minutes at 6.0 and walked at 4.1 for 1 minute
10 minutes of uphill walking
I walked at 4.0 started at incline 4.0 worked up to 6.
20 minutes of 3 min run/1 min walk (same speeds as above)
10 minutes of uphill walking
walked at 4.0 at incline 6 going up to incline 8.
Overall felt fine…legs were a little tired but I have energy! Plus I had a large appetite, which was weird because normally I am not that hungry so I made my hemp shake a little bigger and topped it was goji berries and cacao nibs. Perfect!
Today in class at 105 degrees we finished testing our final recipes
I started with my raw desserts: 3 mini creamed filled raw cupcakes
raspberry cream, banana creme, and curry cream
My work station…
Raw cupcakes come out perfect…time to fill them
I love cupcakes….YUMMY
And top them
Overall pretty satisfied but I am making some tweaks so the final on Friday will be a little different thanks to Whitney and Ladan’s feedback : )
Next up was my coconut rice sushi
They tasted great just did not held together, which takes away the point of being sushi…so I am redesigning this so check out Friday what it will be…I am excited!!
My lunch was taking my leftover fillings from my cupcakes and threw in some basil and swiss chard…kept it simple plus couldn’t waste the yummy fillings
This was so good…the bananas, coconut meat, agave, dates…so sweet just the way I like it
I started feeling a bit tired so Gina and I split
I love these cinnamon spiced brigadeiro!
Then we finished class with pricing out our recipes…ugh..I hate this part of recipe making. Thankfully I had my computer and pulled up the pricing format the sis and I use at Twin Cakes Bakery.
Well time to relax a bit before heading to yoga at the Yoga Room with Laura.
Have a great Tuesday everyone!!
Till next time,
Michelle
The Raw Twins
L&M
Posted by: Pure2
Posted in: 105 degrees academy, Health
Tags: 105 degress, hemp, prework bar, raw cupcakes, Twin Cakes Bakery, yoga
Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 08:41 PM
Have you heard of or done hip hop yoga?
Hip Hop Yoga is one of the newest yoga routines that is becoming big. Even celebrities like Reese Witherspoon enjoys her class of hip hop yoga according to Yoga Dork . It is mix of hip hop music, yoga and dance. We have not tried hip hop yoga until today we thought we would give it a try.
Our typical yoga is more slow and meditative. Although we sometimes mix in yoga with calisthenics, similar to the routine of Jennifer Aniston did in Self Magazine in December 2006.
Hip hop yoga is energy dance party that is athletically thrilling and spiritually soothing, so this really appealed to us. When we are looking for a quick powerful workout we mix up our yoga routine with other mini workouts like pushups, jumping jacks, etc. We put some of our favorite feel good, motivational music and have fun. Cher is one of our favorite artists to listen to because very empowering songs, like “Song for the lonely,” and “All or nothing now.”
We enjoyed our hip hop yoga session today and would do it again. Both of us felt invigorated and empowered. We do our yoga sessions at our home because the yoga classes offered at our gym seem to conflict with our schedules. But if your gym or yoga studio offers hip hop yoga we would recommend you give it a try. You won’t be disappointed.
Here is what the twins at ate today:
Breakfast started with our warm glass of lemon water followed by a bowl of fresh blackberries, figs, and a granny smith apple. Our bodies were craving fruit so we listened and felt great. It was simple and sweet!
Mid-morning snack was 2 slices of banana bread from Twin Cakes Bakery.
Yummy gluten free vegan sugar free banana bread
Then a little later we were still hungry so had ourselves one slice of Pure2 raw onion spinach bread. It is so addicting!!
Workout was 45 minutes of hip hop yoga!!
Lunch (more like post workout shake) was a very powerful green smoothie. We decided to give our new Hemp Protein powder with E3Live & Maca that we received the other day a try. The other additions to the smoothie were romaine, coconut water, stevia, cinnamon, acai powder, and fresh lemon juice. This was a strong flavored smoothie, which just made us feel more empowered. Nothing like having a good yoga workout followed by a power smoothie. The reason for the power is the Hemp with E3Live&Maca. Hemp is a great source of protien, maca contains many trace minerals, good for endurance, improves energy levels, and concentraion, and E3Live is a high-potency Blue-green algae that has more protein & chlorophyll than any food and it increases energy, enhances brain function, and raises your sense of well-being. Yep a power smoothie!!
Mid afternoon snack part 1:
We made ourselves a raw cacao mint “coffee” drink. We love to make up raw “coffee” drinks when we need that extra boost. We used to be big coffee drinkers, so having something similiar to it helps keep us away from coffee. The one we made today was full of water, mesquite, raw cacao powder, mint, stevia, and lucuma. It was smooth and simple!
Twins Raw Coffee
Snack Part 2:
We were still a bit hungry and wanted to be full for the farmers market, so we had 2 more slices of our Pure2 raw onion spinach bread with our pumpkin pesto and a few slices of swiss chard. It was satisfying and simple!
Lori enjoying her raw sandwich
Dinner was a large salad…and we ate it all. It was a mix of green lettuces, dandelion leaves, leeks, radishes, and simple dressing of fresh lemon juice, yacon syrup, apple cider vinegar, and nutritional yeast. Yes nutritional yeast is on all our salads : ) the twins cannot get enough of this stuff. The salad was simple and filling!
Michelle ready to dig in!
Night! It has been a long day,
The Raw Twins
L&M
Posted by: Pure2
Posted in: Fitness, Raw Recipes
Tags: E3Live, hemp, hip hop yoga, maca, pure2raw, Twin Cakes
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 08:36 AM
We were just enjoying a delicious blueberry smoothie after lifting weights at the gym and we were discussing how this has greens in it but it is purple. We asked ourselves, “Is it still a green smoothie if the color is not green?” We think so because it is more an idea of having greens in your fruit based smoothie to make it more alkaline. When you use fruits that naturally stain, like blueberries, blackberries, etc. it changes the color of the smoothie. We actually think these are easier for most people to drink because it is not green.
Purple Power smoothie
This purple power smoothie is made with blueberries, coconut water, maca, hemp protein (which is green), parsley (which is green), Sun is Shining (again green), and stevia. It was tasty!!
What do you think?
Do you base the value of the smoothie by its color? Taste? Ingredients?
We enjoy having smoothies that are different in color because it helps us know we are getting the colors of the rainbow. This is a good indicator that you are getting variety in your diet.
The Raw Divas did a great post on this very concept of eating colors of the rainbow. Getting different colors of foods into you diet helps you attain different vitamins and minerals that each fruit and vegetable has to offer.
The goal for today is to try to get the colors of the rainbow into your meals and reap the benefits.
Enjoy
The Twins
L&M
Posted by: Pure2
Posted in: Hot Topics
Tags: blueberries, green smoothies, hemp
