Mexican Fiesta: Secret Hot Pepper Kale Chips!
This article has been reposted from www.ChristianBates.com with permission from Christian. I had to repost this – this is the most delicious kale chips I’ve ever had and I guarantee if you make them, you will clamor over them! Christian’s blog is jam-packed with cutting edge Superfood nutrition information, my goodness!
You’ll notice that the larger natural food stores these days will have a whole section just for kale chips as big as the rest of the raw food section! This snack/dinner item is healthfully addictive, but unlike potato and corn chips, it is bursting with minerals without the carbs and congestive cooked oils. Now you can make yours at home fresh, the Mexican-style hot pepper way!
Take 4 large bunches of kale (Farmers Market or garden grown is best) and de-stem each leaf: hold the lower stem with one hand, take your other hand and pull out to the tip, stripping the leaf from the fibrous stem. Shred the leaves with your hands and place in a large bowl. If you don’t want to compost the stems, chop or dice them up and mix into fresh guacamole: this will make the guacamole take longer to be gobbled up! Fact: Guacamole is always eaten up faster than any other dish at a raw food potluck…at least until these kale chips came along!
Place the following in a high-speed blender:
2 Cups spring water
1 1/2 Cup sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, or sesame seeds or combination of all three, soaked
1 Cup hemp seeds
1/2 Cup cold-pressed organic olive oil
5 Brazil nuts, soaked
Juice of 3 to 4 limes (or lemons, but limes really hit the spot with raw Mexican fair)
1/2 medium-sized heirloom tomato
1/2 medium-sized sweet bell pepper
2 medium-sized garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 teaspoon dried chipotle or cayenne
1/4 teaspoon dried jalepeno (or 1/2 teaspoon fresh)
1/4 teaspoon cumin seed
1 pinch dried habanero (careful not to get this under your fingernails)
OPTIONAL: 3 Tablespoons fresh aloe vera inner gel
Blend on high until creamy, then add:
1/2 bunch cilantro, de-stemmed
OPTIONAL: 2 teaspoons of your choice of medicinal mushrooms extract powders (reishi, cordyceps, chaga, etc)
Blend lightly, keeping the cilantro in tiny bits, but not turning the batter into a homogenous green. Pour into the bowl of kale and sprinkle on:
3 Tablespoons spirulina powder
Mix together with your bare hands, coating every kale leaf. Spread thinly on dehydrator trays with sheets and dehydrate at 120*F or less for 24 to 48 hours.
Eat by itself or serve with a Mexican dinner containing other highly mineralized dishes:
RawFried Beans (Bean free mock refried pinto Bean Recipe)
White Nacho Cheeze, Dairy Free
Spicy Meat-free Ground Beef
My Superfood Beauty Elixir Juice Cleanse (Days 3-6)!
What's Left After A Day Of Professional Pic Shooting For My Upcoming Superfood Beauty Elixir eBook
My super nutrition infused liquid cleanse lasted 6 full days and each was outstanding. I felt amazing physically, but what I mostly felt was an extreme heightened sense of clarity, deep reflection and quiet internal revelations. If there is any reason to cleanse, this has got to be it. Read more
My Superfood Beauty Elixir Juice Cleanse (Days 1 & 2)!
I’ve been ready to do some sort of a cleanse for several months now and have postponed it mostly intentionally. I did this because I wanted the weather to be gloriously warm when I made the shift to 100% liquid nutrition (although it really can be done anytime). I also wanted to be able to commit to eating less of my man’s raw Superfood kitchen creations and gourmet dinners, which are really hard to turn away. The meals he prepares are so mouth-watering and scrumptious, but I can survive on his Superfood smoothies and wild grass veggie drinks for now 
Read more
3 Steps to Making a Superfood Smoothie
To make an extraordinary Superfood smoothie, there are a few significant things you can do to bring it to that next level. There are 3 steps that take this creation from a regular ole’ smoothie to one that will knock your yoga socks off!
1) Make a super tonic herbal tea. An outrageous tea can replace about half the water you put into the smoothie or the nut mylk base of a smoothie. Read more
How-To Make Smooth, Delicious & Balanced Nut Mylks
To replace dairy and packaged milks, there’s a quick and easy way to make it yourself at home that will completely surprise your taste buds.
Ideally, you’ll soak the nuts and seeds for several hours - usually overnight, but you can check in basic raw food books or online for guidelines. Nuts should be soaked for longer than seeds. Then, if you have a dehydrator, dehydrate them for 24 hours. Honestly, I didn’t used to do this because I didn’t have a dehydrator, but now that I have one and do it this way, I just think it’s so much better! Read more
My Low-Glycemic Experiment (w/ bonus cacao shake recipe!)
When I saw Christian Bates‘ low-glycemic Superfood smoothie demo at the Santa Barbara Raw Spirit Festival in June 2009, I was struck by the possibilities of eating a lower sugar diet. I was in the front row watching the demo, every move on how to create a *super* delicious smoothie that wasn’t loaded with bananas, dates, and agave. My mouth was watering and I was in total awe after tasting the low-glycemic Superfood cacao smoothie. Read more
Homemade Raw Chocolate Recipe
No matter what time of year, everyone is indulging in chocolates. Making raw chocolates instead of the processed, cooked (all chocolate is cooked unless it says ‘raw’), refined & sugar-laden chocolates, can allow you to feel guilt-free while still sharing your sweetness with loved ones. Remember, eating raw food is not about deprivation; I find the raw lifestyle to actually allow guilt-free indulgence while infusing your cells with life force and nutrition.
Main Ingredients:
1 cup raw cacao powder
1 cup melted raw cacao butter
1/2 cup clear agave
1-2 tbsp raw almond butter (make your own!)
pinch Celtic salt (or mix of highly mineralized salts)
—
Optional Ingredients, yet use them if you have them!
pinch of white stevia extract powder
pinch vitamin E tocotrienols
pinch blue green algae
Blend in a Vita-Mix ideally (it may warm gently which is fine – you want it to be a thinner consistency for easy pouring) or in a food processor (smaller bowl inside the bigger bowl unless you double or triple the recipe). I’ve found the VM to work best. Pour into ice cube trays or cute molds and chill until frozen.
Keep this recipe simple the first few times you make it and experiment with different versions after you’ve gotten a solid recipe that you can default to in the future.
Raw chocolate on it’s own has no sugar, but of course the clear agave brings the sweetness to this recipe. I’m personally not doing much agave recently as a personal experiment, but having a liquid sweetener for this recipe is needed. From my understanding, the raw clear agave is the healthiest agave available in comparison to the others on the market.
Vitamin C Vanilla Elixir
To fortify the immune system and create resilience, make yourself a refreshing elixir throughout the winter. We have the power to never get sick again, and this drink is one surefire way to strengthen your body to resist all the unwanted illnesses that come to the surface especially this time of year.
Vitamin C Vanilla Elixir
1.5 quarts spring water (www.findaspring.com)
1 tbsp Truly Vitamin C (acerola cherry powder) OR 2 tsp camu camu (camu is a bit higher in vitamin C and a bit lower in sugar)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp organic white stevia extract powder (from the NOW brand)
3 pinches of high quality sea salt
handful of ice (made w/ spring water of course)
Optional: 2 drops of organic orange extract (the kind that is a water alcohol and orange oil mix, often found near vanilla extract in a natural foods store).
To make this brew even more tonifying, add 1 cup tonic tea (loose leaf herbs, roots, bark, teas that are decocted, then strained on the stovetop).
Blend on high until frothy and let it settle for a couple minutes. This drink will taste like vanilla cream soda w/ a slight fruity kick (which I was not a fan of when I was a kid, but now, this healthy, tasty version I crave every day).
Autumn Earth Tonic Soup
Autumn is the perfect season to get grounded. The easiest way to do this is by eating sacred healing foods, including roots, barks, and herbs that grow straight from the Earth – leaving you feeling grounded, centered, and balanced. Vitamineral Earth by HealthForce Nutritionals is the counterpart to Vitamineral Green (VMG), a live green full-spectrum nutrient-dense Superfood powder blend. The formulation is intended to include everything that didn’t go into VMG, providing you with essential fatty acids, fiber, cleansing and highly nutritive roots, barks, and colon detoxifying and supportive foods.
Autumn Earth Tonic Soup
To obtain even more nutrition from Earth, a warming way to consume it is to heat it (although you kill off the probiotics in the formula, you’ll get much more phytonutrients which is what you want). You can do it by making a simple miso soup with Earth in it (1 cup spring water with 1 tbsp Earth on simmer for 20-30 mins – don’t strain, add a spoonful of miso and drink the broth). If you’re wanting to make dinner out of it though, you can make the recipe below and have a filling, unbelievably delicious meal in 5 minutes or less on a cold autumn night.
This recipe is based on Truth Calkin’s Tonic Soup (a video exclusive to The Best Day Ever) and modified by Christian Bates (raw chef extraordinaire and co-founder and formulator for WildBar – the best raw cacao Superfood bar on the planet).
Autumn Earth Tonic Soup (all raw, vegan, organic, and wildcrafted)
1.5 cups spring water
1.5 cups tonic herbal tea (pau d’arco, chanca pierda, rhodiola, astragulus root, burdock root, kava kava, cat’s claw, horsetail, nettle leaf or root, oatstraw, noni leaf, alfalfa)
1-2 tbsp Earth
2 tbsp miso (South River brand in glass)
2 tbsp coconut oil
1/2 stalk celery
2 cloves garlic
1-1.5 tbsp kelp powder
pinch of habanero or cayenne
sprinkle of turmeric powder
sprinkle of chia seeds and hemp seeds
sprinkle cordyceps mushroom powder
Blend on high until very creamy in a Vita-Mix.
Top with diced avocado (don’t heat the avocado), sprinkle of black peppercorn, and sprinkle of fresh parsley. Don’t leave out the avocado – there’s something about adding it on top that adds to the creaminess and nourishing sensation of this tonic soup.
Optional: quirt of Kyolic’s aged garlic extract liquid and a small squeeze of lemon.
If you’re new to nutrition at this high level, be mindful that this soup will deeply nourish your nervous system, leaving you in a pleasant, yet sometimes intense, state of inner peace and calm. Experience it yourself… get grounded with Earth!
