Raw Bento

“Maximum yield” were two words on my mind when I shopped at a Whole Foods near my hotel in SF. I didn’t want to weigh myself down with fruit that needed to be cut nor did I want to make anything more complicated than a smoothie.

Also, since I was going to be less raw, I thought that with every raw bite, I should make it count.

I stocked up on these power-packed raw products…

Chia seeds for omega fatty acids and calcium, plus they are very filling.

Goji berries in the US are very much more expensive than in Japan but I thought it was worth it because these babies have so much protein and anti-oxidants.

Hemp seeds are great to sprinkle over a smoothie or pudding and also makes instant milk. I don’t even strain the pulp because my Tribest blends it into a fine residue that I can’t detect in my smoothies. And hemp — this is a powerhouse of nutrients!

Dried white mulberries are also full of mysterious goodness. I actually bought them because I’d heard so much about them. I’m not too crazy about dried mulberries as they’ve got an earthy taste but they are good in my chia puddings.

These Go Raw pumpkin super chips give me my daily dose of iron. Yeap, pumpkin seeds are full of iron…

I’m a big fan of Brendan Brazier’s work so I had to try his Vega powder. The list of ingredients are impressive and I’d say the maca and chlorella won me over. The taste has got mixed reviews and the vanilla chai one seems to do alright with banana and spinach. With any other fruit, it gets weird, but overall it has a strong flavour (due to the maca no doubt) so I’m not sure if this could be a daily thing for me.

However, one packet of this in a smoothie does help me curb nasty cooked carb cravings which set in at night. Brendan Brazier’s book, Thrive Fitness, says that if your body is getting all the nutrients it needs, it won’t get hungry so easily.

Young coconut juice in a packet — awesome! I prefer to drink this as a pick-me-up rather than any caffeinated drink. I was in Vegas and had a tipple or two which left me under the weather one morning so I downed one of these and felt much better after.

My usual breakfast routine in SF and Vegas was to start with a wheatgrass and orange/grapefruit blended drink. I bought some sunflower sprouts in Vegas and blended them with pink grapefruit and they totally perked me up. At home I usually wake up to a large green juice, so this would be my best variation of vitamin C and green magic without using a knife.

I get hungry a couple of hours later so I always prepare some hemp seed milk to soak chia seeds to make a pudding. I dump goji berries, white mulberries, blueberries, banana, and raisins into that and an hour later, I have a bowl of deliciousness. I toted these puddings along in Tribest containers in the car if we were setting off at 7 or 8am to eat them later.

This is my mini fridge at Hotel Vertigo in SF…