Twins favorite things

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.

IMG_3814We just mixed it all together and topped with more fresh parsley :)

IMG_3823

IMG_3832Amazing! 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

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Twins ingredient tips for recipes

Friday, November 13, 2009 at 02:00 PM

Hello friends,

We wanted to go over some of the ingredients that we have been using in our recipes as well as provide you all with some substitutes.

Now many of these ingredients may be new to you or yes a little more expensive than SUGAR. But the health benefits out weight all that : ) We are fortunate enough that with our bakery we get to play around with these ingredients. So if you ever get the chance to play around with these ingredients we hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

At the end of the post we provide where you can get all these goodies!

Ingredient and substitution lesson with the twins:

grab a paper and pen ;)

Ready-

Here we go-

Coconut oil

Full of lauric acid, provides energy for the body, good fat, great for the metabolism and thyroid.

Common use: baking, cooking, face, smoothies, sauces, puddings, sports drinks, bars, any desserts

Substitutes: olive oil, soy butter (if you can tolerate soy), ghee (for non-vegans), palm oil

Yacon Syrup

Low-glycemic sugar, lower in calories then most sweeteners, taste like molasses and caramel, can improve digestive health due to containing prebiotic (which is the food for the good bacteria)

** yacon also comes in powder form

** it does have an unique flavor so it may take a few times to get used to the flavor although we LOVE IT!

Common use: replace honey or maple syrup, or any liquid sweetener (we like to use it more than agave because it has more health benefits than agave), add it to anything that you want a little bit more sweetness like smoothies, puddings, any desserts, fruit, sauces, dressings, nut milks

Substitutes: maple syrup, molasses, dark or light agave, honey

Lucuma powder


Low-glycemic sugar substitute, rich maple-like flavor, full of vitamins and minerals like beta caratone, niacin, calcium and iron

Common use: great in ice creams, yogurts, desserts, smoothies, puddings, pies, nut milks

Substitutes: maca powder, yacon powder, stevia (though will have to alter the ratio in recipes), nut flour, coconut flour, rice protein powder or hemp protein (though will need to add some other sweetness to the recipes)

Maca powder

Rich in amino acids, phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals, increases energy, can help with endurance, supports the immune system and adrenal function (helps with stress) and we just love the flavor!! Gives things a malted flavor : )

Common use: desserts, pudding, smoothies, yogurt, ice cream, nut milks

Substitutes: lucuma, yacon powder, nut flour, coconut flour, rice protein and hemp powder (these will alter the taste and texture)

* we have discussed maca here before

Stevia

Zero- glycemic level, zero calorie, can improve digestion, excellent choice for those watching sugar and calories, comes in liquid or powder form

Common uses: drinks, smoothies, coffee,tea, any dessert (will have to alter the wet to dry ration), yogurt, puddings

Substitutes: although there really is no substitute if you using it for the reasons listed, although all the sweeteners list here would work, just have to alter the recipe

Dates/date paste

Natural sweetener, high in glucose (a carb for fuel), rich in fiber, full of calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, sulfur

Common uses: desserts, sauces, dressings, smoothies, puddings, snacks, bars, granola

Substitutes: dried figs, dried apricots, plus the other sweeteners listed above

Please keep in mind  when you make substitutions in any recipe, not just ours, that we ask you to please use some common sense ;)   If they batter is dry add more liquid and vice versa. Example, if you use high fats nuts (walnuts)  in your recipe, you can use less liquid due to the natural oil from the nuts. Or if you prefer stevia as your sweetener, whether liquid or powdered, you will need to “make up”  for the volume missing, so either add more dry ingredients or liquid.

We hope these tips help, and you have any questions with using these different ingredients please email the twins at twins@pure2raw.com. We would love to help you out : )

Our favorite places to get our ingredients:

Here are some new places we have come across, we have not tried them yet, but look good!

And to continue on with our dessert theme week today is

RAW SMORE’S

Now Matthew Kenney has his recipe of this classic in his book Entertaining in the Raw. And our friend Shannon Marie has done her own twist on this dessert.

And we wanted to get in on the action…. We will see this later what we did. It is still in production. We will get the recipe and pictures to you as soon as it is ready!!!

Till next time,

The Twins

L&M

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Posted in: Health, Raw Recipes, Theme Week

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