What I eat in a day

What I eat in a day...

Today I decided to do a no fruit day, I've been eating a lot of fruit - dried and fresh because I've been busy recipe testing but noticed my tounge was starting to get sore. Ive managed to tune into my body and it's signals to what it needs and what it needs less of, you learn to catch the signals early, the body becomes sensitive when you look after it and you learn to communicate to its best advantage. On my detox training we were taught about food combining which is pretty crucial to good digestion... It takes eating raw to the next level. Il do a sepperate post on food combining later, but for now... This is my no fruit day, daily intake :)

I always start the day first thing with 1ltr of water (body temperature) with 1/2 squeezed lemon juice added, I then wait about an hour until I eat anything as drinking while eating depletes the effectiveness of the digestive enzymes.

Breakfast...

I'll post the full recipe for this in the next few days but I wouldn't be without this brekkie it's such a powerful combination of super foods and protein, there is so much energy and power contained in this breakfast. I literally love it.

Hemp protein powder, hemp seeds, ground flaxseeds, Chia seeds, Macca, Lucuma, Oat bran, carrot, almond milk, stevia, cinnamon.

Lunch 

Red pepper hummus with added hemp protein powder and seeds, a selection of raw veggies, raw onion bread , raw burger, olives.

Dinner 

Raw veggie crudités, 1/2 avacado, Flax crackers, Raw veggie pattie and nut cheese, Raw spicy squash soup made with hemp seeds, tahini, cayenne pepper,

Paprika, cauliflower & carrot. 

There are so many things we can eat on a no fruit day, it's just about preparation... 

Cheeses, crackers, pizzas, lasagnes, zucchini pasta... Etc etc

Haaaaappy tummy ☺️

Lime and strawberry cheesecake

      Lime and Strawberry cheesecake

    Ingredients

Filling 

•2 avocados

•7tbs melted coconut oil

•1tsp Irish moss paste 

•Stevia

•1/2 tsp vanilla beans

•1/2 cup fresh like juice

•6 tbs agave (substitute with stevia water mixture or a date juice if you don't like to use agave).

Blend the mixture together and put in the fridge for 5 minutes to firm up slightly.

Base

•1/2 cup cashew or almonds 

•3/4 cup coconut flakes 

•1 cup mix dry fruit (gojis go well with the taste of the filling) 

•1tsp ground flaxseed

•Pinch Himalayan salt

Blend everything except the dry fruit so a powder is formed. Then add the fruit and blitz up to form a dough. Press into a 6-8" pan and dehydrate until the moisture has been reduced by 1/2. Leave to cool in the fridge.

Line a clean cool pan with cling film and transfer the "biscuit" base into it, scoop the lime filling out and spread evenly on top. Set back in the fridge to set.

Strawberry layer

•1/2 tsp psyillium husk powder

•1tsp Irish moss paste

•6-8 strawberries

•Agave or stevia to sweeten

Blend the ingredients together and stand aside to firm up. Check the consistency and then spread on top of the lime layer.

Decorate with lime zest and sliced strawberries.

When the cheesecake is set after a couple of hours remove from the pan and peel off the cling film. 

It won't loose it's green color because the lime juice stops the avocado from oxidizing. 

Enjoy :)

Summer Fruit Pudding & Cream

I stumbled upon the idea for this recipe completely by mistake when I was making the topping to a cheesecake and added too much thickening agent (psyillium husk powder) resulting in a texture which resembled the gooey consistency of the bready outer layer of a summer fruit pudding.

I played around a bit more with the ingredients and am excited with the results, plus I got to use all the wild blackberries I'd picked from the hedgerows... Love a bit of foraging! 

I looked online and can't find any raw vegan recipes for this pudding, the bread layer is quite dense but apart from that I really doubt if anyone would be able to tell the difference between this and the original recipe made with the standard bread/sugar/dairy etc...

Ingredients 

Bread

•1/2 cup of berries (ones with no seeds)

•1/2tbs psyllium husk (ground into a powder)

•2tbs oat flour

•1tsp agave or of stevia mixed with 1 tsp water

•1tsp Irish moss paste or 1tsp ground chia seeds 

•2tbs water

Add all the ingredients to the food processor or blender except for the psyllium. Blend until smooth. Add the psyllium powder and blender again until a dough is formed. 

Line your pudding bowl with cling film and roll out the dough so it's about 3/4 of a cm thick, making sure to leave enough dough for the lid which you will put on after the filling goes in.

Filling 

•2 cups mixed berries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc

•1tsp agave or stevia with 1/2 tsp water

Cut the larger fruits such as the strawberries into smaller pieces and mix the fruit and the sweetener together. Set aside for 5 minutes to let the fruit juices sink to the bottom then drain the excess juice out of the bowel and set aside for later.

Jam

•1/4 cup mixed berries

•1/2 tsp agave

•3/4 tsp Irish moss paste

Pulse the ingredients together in the blender to form a jam consistency and then fold through the fruit filling mixture.

Place the dough lid on top to seal the pudding and pull the cling film firmly up around the edges as you want to seal the two bits of dough together so the fruit juice won't leak out. 

Place a plate with a flat bottom on the top and place In the fridge for 4 hours to set.

Berry Coulis 

• 1/4 cup mixed berries

Using the fruit juice that has been set aside from earlier add to the blender the 1/4 cup of fruit and blend until smooth. Pass through a sieve if you want to remove the pips. Transfer to a serving jug and place in the fridge.

Delicious Sweet cream

•1/4 cup cashews (soaked overnight is best to activate he enzymes which increases their nutritional value by over double!)

•4 tbs water

1tsp agave or stevia with 1 tsp water

•1/2 beans from vanilla pod or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 

Blend together until smooth, creamy and no nutty lumps. This is soooo delicious!!

Transfer to a serving jug and place in the fridge.

After the pudding is set remove from the cling film wrap place the right way up and decorate with a few extra berries. Serve with the coulis and the cream on the side.

Melly- My Raw Truth

This blog is about everything that makes me happy and has improved my life in some way... I guess I started out this blog with the way I live a raw vegan lifestyle because I know there is a huge shift happening among us and people are moving this way and are asking for alternatives to the way we live and eat.  It goes deeper than that, it's not just about food... as the word 'raw' rings through to my core...it's really about The raw truth, my authentic rawness, living a raw existence, having a "raw and ripe heart" like the shambala book describes.

My heart pendant necklace.

What I will be posting on here will be recipes, poems, friends, famous authors, gurus, songs I've written, some of my life lessons and stories, streams of consciousness, photos, thoughts, philosophical ideas, quotes, art, inspirational YouTube links and some of my own videos.

My journey...

What prompted me to write this blog was the fact I keep getting messages and emails everyday through from friends and relatives that see the way I'm now living and are intrigued... Curious... asking me questions about my new life... maybe they're bemused to the sudden 180 I've done and are obviously curious as to how I live my life...  it was a life I used to look at other people living and be fascinated with... It was a journey to a place of the complete unknown that I was just thrust into at the beginning of the year.

8 months ago in January 2014 I travelled to India... In a desperate state... But from the outside looking in no one would have known what was going on inside of me because my life must have seemed like any girls dream... I was working as a model booking some 'amazing' jobs and landed some acting roles too, I was dating various guys, earning good money, flying to various "hot spots" for work and play, living in a beautiful flat, surrounded by friends, I had a supportive family...  

But no matter what it looked like... I was dead on the inside and the fact that I had the seemingly perfect life that society tells us we must have just made me feel even worse about myself... Then the fact that I just couldn't manage to (in the words of friends and family) 'pull myself together' made it worse because technically there was no reason for me to be so depressed. I was clinically depressed and slowly unravelling further... Yes there were certain events that triggered this move into this new realization but i'll keep that for another time... and I couldn't be more grateful to those seemingly nightmare circumstances as they thrusted and forced me to WAKE UP... There's a great quote that goes something like...

"sometimes our greatest blessings are disguised as are our biggest misfortunes". 

I just new there had to be more to life... I kept saying it over and over to myself... I didn't know where this voice was coming from but it was from deep down in my core... I didn't know how or where to go to find the answer...  I was just completely lost. And what made it worse was that my perception was that everyone would just think I was being selfish... just not being able to get a grip with life.  I don't expect everyone to understand, I don't understand everyone else's journey either... That's ok, it's all perfect just the way life is unfolding right now..  the fragment of the oneness that we all are really.. is experiencing it this way... right now.

After 6 months of constant awful damage to my health through bad diet, poor life choices, negative influential people, a heart murmur caused by severe anxiety and a sense of self loathing, my body and mind gave up... I could feel my brain inside my skull frying and short circuiting, I was suffering deeply and one afternoon sat on the bedroom floor I found myself 'surrendering' everything I knew... All the things that I thought would make me happy hadn't, the 10 year goal list I had written for myself that year I had already achieved 80% of and it was then that I realised I clearly had no idea what would really make me happy... So I surrendered... I left London, my job, friends... everything that had built up my identity as to who I was... Goodbye.

For some reason the idea of going to India had stuck in my head after a friend recommended aryuveda treatment to heal her depression...  before I got on the flight to Goa  I said to my mum 

"Even if I have to shave my head and become a monk to be happy I'll do it" 

Something I didn't realize that only a short few months later sat in an Ashram in southern India I would seriously be considering.

The journey so far has changed my life... That is an understatement! I'm living my  truth, found a passion of which there are many... to heal and help others... where as before I was passionless... lifes university and mother India taught me hard and extremely painful lessons but I couldn't be more grateful. 

I'm not a success by societies standards... I'm not as beautiful, skinny or glamorous as I could make myself, I'm not making loads of money or booking prestigious clients, I'm not going to the best restaurants, clubs or events... I have no plans for a conventional relationship, marriage or kids and I don't think hard about the future... To most I live a life completely out of control, and I agree... I'm living with little control little needs and have ultimate trust that everything works out, yes it's a higher trust in universal powers... which I know sounds bonkers to most of the people that knew me before... that's ok. 

I've learnt what's truly important... A connection to something higher than the 'I' the 'ego' a connection to love, a happiness in my heart, a steady ground within myself, the growth of roots, it's something beyond good and bad, it's something beyond balance... I'm more often than not at peace and have connected to the healer inside, I trained as a reiki practitioner, a yoga instructor, a raw chef, a nutritionist and finally connected back to everything that is love. I'm able to help now.. I'm able to be the support, be the uplifter, find the sacred energy within to heal myself and therefore others when the time is right. It's an infinite source...

Finally the Ghandi quote actually made some sense to me... It wasn't just something you say when talking about world peace... I actually got it on a deeper level.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

I realized I had to heal myself first before even thinking about attempting to help others or heal the planet... I know this might sound selfish to pretty much most people bought up in our western society... but it is basic sense.... I learnt that If you put yourself first and make yourself happy and when you learn to truly care and love yourself then everyone in your world will soar and benefit by default because you are in alignment with your true nature and therefore intrinsically know the best way to raise the vibrational tone of everyone, connect to mother nature and the whole planet. When you feel shit you're no help to anyone... Family and close friends were suggesting I go and work in a charity to get over the depression, I tried and it made me feel even worse about feeling bad for no reason. How can I help someone else when I can't even manage to brush my teeth?! So... I decided to get happy, sort my shit out... I.e put your oxygen mask on first then help the person next to you. How can you love another if you don't love yourself? Infact learning to love yourself is probably the least selfish thing a person can do... It's fucking hard...

"If you can not love yourself first so you can not love others also" - osho

After eight months of traveling around India, California and Bali I'm now back in Hampshire catching the tail end of the English summer, this isn't a break in life's adventure, the lessons and teachings are happening just as strong here as they were in India... Parts of the old me are constantly being torn apart, things I thought I new are being ripped off, I often wonder how many layers this onion has... But over the years we've all put on false identities, been coated with belief systems that don't necessarily serve us or others in anyway. They're all being taken from me... Sometimes it's scary, sometimes I'm petrified, sometimes I have to learn the lesson more than once but always when I sit through it love prevails and I come out cleaner, more aware, connected and the love inside me grows. Going through this "spiritual stripping" is not for the faint hearted and I'm sometimes on my knees for days until I settle into a knowing... And it's something that can't be learnt in a book,  it's an experience. It's like trying to describe what water tastes like to someone whose never drunk before or describing what you're seeing when you look in a kaleidoscope. Knowledge is amazing and it's empowering and can uplift us but the actual experience is the growth of the soul. 

I got sent this yesterday 

"Where does it all end you asked ...I don't know maybe when the last layer- the last mask has been dropped? When the last bit of protection has been torn down? When our hearts have been broken open so wide that there is no way for it to close again? When we are stripped naked for all the world to See who we really are? When The Last Little Sense of Security is lost?"

All my coping mechanisms are being shown revealed and slowly slowly the watcher is revealed... Unearthed.

I'm feeling blessed to be back in the uk for this short time and connecting to the grounds and house I grew up in, reconnecting to a place and country that I left in such an inner state of despair... so much has changed, I'm challenged but aware and consciously wiling to take my life and those who want to come with me to the next level.

Of course as you've probably noticed  raw food is a passion now... Coming through years of disordered eating with bulimia and anorexia it's been a blessing,  in that way and I've seen how it propels my health and energy.

As I mentioned I just finished a raw chef and detox course in the heart of Ubud Bali amongst the healers and serious raw food community and am now practicing the recipes along with some of my own.

 I am pretty much free from the big desires goals and wants of the ego but have a very loose plan to create some sort of raw vegan cafe and healing space, music...  Food is just pure delicious medicine. I love it... the way I feel and thrive from eating it, the way your skin changes, the mood swings settle... I'm passionate about sharing its healing qualities with people.

It still amazes me that people don't believe there is a cure for cancer... I guess il leave that subject for another time... For now if you're interested just google Rick Simpson, Thc oil, run from the cure, Phoenix tears - 

I've been practicing non attachment which enabled me to travel for 8 months with just one piece of hand luggage and a ukulele... However now I've had to upgrade my suitcase to fit in all the raw food tools and supplements.

Non attachment means many things to me and it transpires from emotional non attachment I.e non attachment to lovers and friends across to other spectrums like desires, goals and possessions... So with that in mind this blog will not be constant, I might even abandon it for a few months or stop writing it all together or post everyday... There's no plan.

I live with trust, honesty, truth, love in my heart, connection and surrender, it was the act of surrendering that took me on this journey deep into my soul. I'm guided, I wait for signs, Infact the reason I'm on my way to Portugal was because i saw it spelt in the clouds when i looked upto the sky one day in bali!  I have no ridged plans. No end destination. Just through pure trust and love everything unfolds.

I'm a walking contradiction. One moment I think I have the answer to all of life's questions and then the next I'm thinking and living the opposite. All I know is that I live my truth for that moment in time, I just trust and surrender...

My attention is on LOVE and when we tap into love everything else falls into place, the vibrational frequency of the planet is lifted and we can heal.

Connect to the heart... To truth... And trust.

ONE love

Namaste,

Waheguru ✌️

Melly 

Raw korma curry & parsnip rice

I made this recipe for the boys on my first visit to rainbow city when there were just five of us.

And got a lot of requests for the recipe... I have gone into an organic flow mode and just add things as I go intuitively when I'm making food so dont write things down... however with Amy, Anna and Katie staying at rainbow and keen to learn how to make the recipes they are writing down the ingredients as we go whilst helping me so it's perfect so I can share the dishes with you all :)

Parsnip rice

•10 parsnips (peeled and ends cut off)

•200g desiccated coconut 

•50g raisins (cut into halves) 

•Coriander leaves

•1tsp cumin

•Sliced tomatoes for decoration.

Food process the parsnips, transfer to a bowl and stir in the rest of the ingredients, decorate with sliced tomatoes.

Veggies

You can use whatever veggies you have, soft ones like courgette are always great to use. Here the girls and I used the following...

•300g mange tout (halved) 

•1/2 butternut squash ( cubed small and massages with 1tsp oil and a pinch of salt)

•4 carrots (cubed small massages in •1tsp oil and a pinch of salt) 

•1 large courgette (sliced 1cm thick & cut in 4)

•1 1/2 apples (diced small) 

•50g raisins (halved)

Put all veggies and raisins in your serving bowl and mix them evenly, making sure to send love energy into them... so use your hands as they transmit the love energy from the cosmos directly into the food you're eating :) love love love 

Curry sauce

•6 garlic cloves

•3 medium onions

•600ml coconut milk

•50g dedicated coconut

•6tsp curry powder

•1/2 red chili

•1/2 tsp cumin 

•300g cashews

•1tsp Himalayan salt

Nutribullet/vitamix all ingredients into to a smooth creamy curry sauce. 

Pour over the chopped veggies and stir in evenly.