Banana pumpkin pie recipe

So last night I made a gourmet raw meal for our friends Tomar and Kerstin. The desert was my creation after having seeing this recipe recently. I modified a few of the ingredients and it went down nicely. The cool thing is this only takes 15 minutes to make!! And it's low in fat and pretty healthy!

For the pie crust you will need (roughly):

10 medjool dates

1.5 cups of pecans or walnuts

1 tea spoon of vanilla extract

1 pinch of nutmeg

Put everything into a food processor and leave on for a few minutes until you have a dough!

Optional: Blueberries, mulberries etc. This adds a variety of berry flavoured goodness. I'd like to try and experiment with a full berry no nut crust on the next one!

Pat it out evenly into a pie tray with warm water and clean fingers / spoon. This is where I would have added a bed of sliced bananas, that's the next step!

For the filling:

4 cups of pumpkin

4 bananas

10 more dates

Half a Vanilla pod scarped

A small cut of fresh ginger

Goji Berries 

Blend until perfectly smooth. Our Vitamix did this well but I can imagine cheaper blenders struggling a bit. As I said above, add a bed of chopped bananas to the pie at this point. Make sure they're ripe and sweet. I just added a bit of ginger powder to the base here. 

Go ahead and pour the mixture on top. Then decorate with the vanilla bean and nuts etc. Leave it in the freezer or fridge for it to set some more if it's too soft. A thick texture is best and you can eat right away!

The result!

Dr Morse on Spirituality v/s Academics

Dr Robert Morse just uploaded this video tonight. I had to share it, a brilliant speech on Spirituality Vs Academics. It may be a little heavy for a few but it's a great reminder that we live in a very academic world where spirituality and experience are often pushed aside. We all see it everyday, and for sure there is a place and need for academia. However the empowerment and knowledge through spirituality is on a far greater scale. To any atheists watching, keep in mind he is a spiritual teacher, and talks about God in non religious and metaphorical terms. I'll do less of the power phrasing and point you over to the video for a better understanding.

An awesome 15 minutes, watch it all if you have time.

The woody has landed

For the past two months myself and Rory have started to realize our dream of having a wooden training wall in our back room. Winter training was on the cards for some trips next year. The plan was to make it as steep as the room would allow and as wide as possible. Our landlord is very tolerant and relaxed with us and the house as long as we have respect with whatever we do. Since we moved in we've put in shelves and a campus board, modified things in the garden etc and they have been perfectly fine about it. Our wall would require a few screws into the roof on the floor rafters and about 15 x 1cm wall fixings along the back. Nothing we can't easily poly-filler and plaster upon removal.

We were lucky enough to get all the panels we needed from TCA when they modified the wall over the summer. This meant we saved money and a lot of time putting in T-nuts. Simon Brice kindly gave us a few metres of 2x4 beams and Gav gave us a load of wall fixings and various essentials too so with all this help we saved a significant amount. The rest of the 2x4, probably about 40 metres worth, we got for £75. Joe Day gave us a good starting plan and Mike Sowell was a massive help in giving us a hand with some of the technicalities with the tools and plan of action. With all this professional help and guidance we began the build!

First up we had some major amount of prep in the form of belt sanding the large panels. This was probably the most hard work of the entire build, requiring many shifts from us both and a lot of arm endurance. We had to pull a lot of T-nuts out and replace them for good ones. The garden was also coated in an inch of saw dust and ziggy hated the noise of the power tools. A few days later they were done and we moved onto sawing up the ply triangles.

We applied the brackets and made the 90 degree vertical pieces that would go into the masonry vertical wall. We then spent a day drilling and getting all the fixings in as solid and as accurately as possible. There were a few moments when we drilled and only black dust came out meaning less bolts in places, but in all we were happy and it still felt a bit over engineered. Next we secured some ply triangles and made the roof pieces rigid.

Next up was time to put in the overhanging frame, measured with string and sawed in a fairly ghetto fashion and with a few moments of that doesnt quite fit in the way we thought it should, and a bit of creative use with the chisel we had the overhang in. I then went on a mission and the next couple of days I managed to get all the panels on, more supports made on the inside and screw a horizontal across the roof and into the floor rafters above. I then made a small room inside the wall to store bikes and boxes. It came together pretty quickly taking about 7 days of prep and building effort. We need to get a lot more holds and sell a few too. The plan is to make it primarily a woody with with the exception of a few nice bleaustone resin slopers and and mini jugs for warming up. We've ordered some 'Magic Wood' wooden holds, these are the same that we have at TCA and are amazing on the skin and for a good training effect. Check them out there BLOG. More photos of the build on my Flickr

Juice Fast + Tattoo

So on the 12th of September I decided to go on a juice fast cleanse. I was inspired to do this by many raw food teachers on youtube, friends and books and blogs of others i've read about fasting. I wouldn't technically call it a fast in a way as you still get a lot of calories. It Just gives your digestive system a huge break. As the house mates had gone to Greece for two weeks I was left with plenty of time and space to juice all day and relax, This would also be down time on the climbing and vigorous activity. I made sure to stock up on essentials like grapes, water melons, apples, celery cucumbers and greens etc.As I was without a car I had to cycle to Sunseed Organics every morning and pile my bag up with as much stuff possible!

Anyway the it went really well, I only struggled the first few days, and had mild detox symptoms and cravings. I was very surprised that cravings were not that bad. If I wanted food, I would make a juice and It would be surprisingly satiating and leave me with no hunger. On average I would get through 4-5L of juice a day and that kept me feeling very perky. In fact I decided to go for some climbing sessions after ten days in and to my surprise I felt very strong, managing a few font 7b and above boulders in one session!

Even in 20 days I noticed my skin is a lot smoother, the dark bits under my eyes have faded slightly and the clarity in my mind is awesome. With so much blood being free'd up from the GI tract it is surprising how much more conscious you can feel throughout the day. It also free's up a lot of energy to go into healing various organs in the body, essentially getting things like adrenals to perk up, kidneys to filter better, circulation increases, moving the lymphatic system and dissolving toxins.
I also lost over half a stone, mostly in the first week which then levelled off, and i actually increased a few kilos in weight again after 15 days. This is probably due to a lot of food being moved through the stools, but also absorption goes up a lot after a week juice fasting, meaning weight can actually come back on, especially if you're drinking as much as I was! I also noticed my body fat dropped and I got a lot more lean and my skin was a lot more vascular. I'll be sticking to raw foods from now on and will be investing in a masticating juicer to get the most out of the produce with as little oxidisation as possible. The magimix duo XL has served well but does struggle with the leafy greens!

I've also gone and got a vegan tattoo, something i've been thinking about for a long time. Mike used Kumo Sumi and other vegan friendly tattoo inks, and the aftercare I'm using is also made of essential oils. Veganism Is something I like talking about with people who show positive genuine curiosity towards it. In fact after one day I've already had a few people noticing it and a few newly turned vegans asking me about it. It's good to see there are more people finding benefits from a diet rich in high quality plant food free of dead animal tissues and dairy.

I've just finished reading Finding Ultra and Eat and Run, both books on vegan super endurance athletes at the top of their game. Both well worth a read for inspiration. I'll lend them to anyone interested.

Rich Roll's blog (Finding Ultra)

Scott Jurek (eat and Run).

And another great athlete, all raw and fruitarian is Mike Arnstein http://www.thefruitarian.com/ - proving simple sugars are the best for endurance running multi day ultra marathons.

I would recommend people to read through The Detox Miracle Source Book before doing any kind of fast. It is probably one of the best references you can go to for all food types, alkaline and acid, organ functions and how it is all interlinked and affected by one another. Dr Robert Morse has over 40 years of experience in the field curing many toxic human problems like 'diseases' and cancers through his tissue detox and regeneration clinic. Have a look at his youtube page for many of his lectures and videos.

http://www.youtube.com/user/robertmorsend


I also had a few people asking me what I brush my teeth with. I have been using Earthpaste, a natural rehydrated clay with essential oils, xylatol and sea salt. It's got a great flavour, is flouride, SLS and Glycerin free and edible! Also good to use on the skin and hair if you want. For all the images on the page, click to enlarge and also have a look at my flickr (link on the right of you're screen on this blog page) for more photos!