Whether you are living a “normal”/ Standard American Diet, a vegetarian diet, a vegan diet, a high raw vegan diet or a fully raw vegan diet – either way – incorporating more raw fruit and veggies into your diet can only do you good.  The beauty of thriving on raw fruit and veggies lies in their pure simplicity – no labels to read to decide if they’re good for you or not, no worrying about nasty additives/colourants and preservatives and no fretting about the nutritional quality of the meal – its fruit and veg!  You can’t go wrong!  A patient was asking me for advice on how to live a healthier lifestyle the other day and I told her to focus more on eating a healthy diet as she is very overweight.  She said that she would like to improve her diet, but can not face the prospect of having to read food labels on everything she eats before deciding whether it is acceptable or not.  I told her I never read food labels at all!  She was shocked, but the reason is simple – I live on wholefoods…whole, unprocessed fruit, veggies, nuts, seeds and occasionally some grains.  None of these foods need labels – they are full of pure, cleansing, energising goodness….

Ok – enough rambling on and let’s get to business.  This is my raw vegan take on a regular cereal.  The banana slices and fruit bits substitute the cereal bites and the smoothie liquid takes the place of regular milk.  You could use a nut milk or rice milk instead of smoothie liquid, but I like to use smoothie liquid as it adds more vitamins and tastes deliciously sweet at the same time.

Please note that this is not a recipe as such, but rather guidelines to give you some inspiration and ideas.

Cereal

• ripe banana slices
• frozen berries of any kind (small round ones like blueberries or currants are particularly nice)
• Dried white mulberries

“Milk”

There are several options here:

• Banana milk  Place a few frozen bananas in your blender and slowly add water until you reach a runny/milky consistency.  Taste and add sweetener (like stevia or maple syrup) if needed.
• Spiced up Banana milk  You could add cinnamon, vanilla, chai spice, maca….whatever flavour you would like.
• Chocolate milk  Make banana milk and add raw cacao or cocoa powder to taste.  I like to add a bit of maca to this too as I like the malty flavour that maca provides along with the cacao.
• Berry milk  Add some frozen or fresh berries to your banana milk.
• Mango Date milk  Add frozen mango and fresh dates to the banana milk and blend until smooth.  The mango adds a sour/tart tang while the dates provide extra sweetness.  My husband loves this combination.  (I’m all for the chocolate milk…)
• Date milk  If you want something really sweet, you can soak dates in water overnight.  You can even chop up some brick dates and soak them in water.  Brick dates don’t provide the same caramelly flavour of fresh medjool dates but they are still delicious and much cheaper, plus they are available all year round.  Add the soaked dates, their soaking water and as much extra water as needed while blending until you have a nice smooth milk.  I LOVE to add tons of raw cacao, a bit of vanilla and maca to my date milk to make a very rich, luxurious chocolate milk packed with calories:)

Toppings

• Any seeds you have on hand – chia, pumpkin, sunflower…
• nuts – cashews especially
• goji berries
• dried cranberries
• raw cacao nibs
• chopped up cacao paste or dark chocolate
• chopped up raw brownie bites
• dessicated coconut
• chocolate sauce:D
• Little balls of peanut butter (really good in chocolate milk)…..etc etc etc

Instructions

Slice your ripe bananas into little rings and put into a cereal bowl.  Make your milk and pour it on top.  Add any desired toppings.Enjoy in bed:)
Dr T