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The Wonders of Raw Chocolate… and a Yummy Scrummy giveaway!

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It’s Chocolate Week here in the UK, so happy chocolate eating everybody!

Those of you who know me will be aware that I’ve become just a teensy weensy bit obsessed with raw chocolate. 😉  For most of my life, I’ve never been that bothered about chocolate… but all this changed when I experienced my first piece of raw chocolate.  As soon as I popped it into my mouth, I could feel its magical properties taking hold.  I was hooked!  I immediately went home and googled ‘raw chocolate’ to see what I could find out about the wonder food.  I also got myself a copy of David Wolfe & Shazzie’s ‘Naked Chocolate’.

Have you ever wondered where cacao beans comes from?  Well, they come from the beautiful Theobrama Cacao.

(c) Luis Ovalles

I love the cocoa pods.  Aren’t they beautiful!  Here’s a shot of them at various stages of ripening.

(c) Medicaster

And here’s a peek at the cacao beans inside one of those beautiful pods:

(c) US Department of Agriculture

And what did I discover from my research? Well, listen carefully chocolate lovers…  raw chocolate is SUPER GOOD FOR YOU!  It’s absolutely brimming with nutrients, which explains why my body felt like it was ‘zinging’ after one small mouthful.  Here’s a list of some of the important nutrients found in raw chocolate:

  • Magnesium (important for a healthy heart, muscle relaxation, strong bones, growth and repair, brain function. Sadly it’s the most deficient mineral in the diet)
  • Calcium
  • Iron
  • Zinc
  • Copper
  • Manganese
  • Phosphorous
  • Thiamine
  • Riboflavin
  • Niacin
  • Vitamins B and C
  • Antioxidant flavonols
  • Phenylethylamine (PEA) (dubbed the ‘love chemical’, PEA seems to help create feelings of attraction, excitement and euphoria.  PEA is noticeably abundant in the brains of happy people 🙂 )
  • Anandamide (known as the ‘bliss chemical’.  Anandamide is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘ananda’ meaning ‘bliss’)
  • Stimulates the release of Serotonin, Tryptophan and Dopamine (also powerful mood-enhancing nutrients)
  • Fibre

The above is just a fraction of the nutrients contained in raw chocolate.  It truly is a ‘super food’!

Raw Cacao Beans (c) David Monniaux

Cacao has been dubbed ‘Nature’s Prozac’ as it contains three neurotransmitters – serotonin, dopamine and phenylethylamine (PEA) – which help alleviate depression and are associated with feelings of well-being.

It has also been suggested that eating raw chocolate can help with weight control as it diminishes appetite.  I’ve experienced this for myself.  In the past, I could have easily guzzled a whole box of milk chocolates.  With raw chocolate, I literally feel full up after one or two small pieces.

So why should we be eating raw chocolate rather than regular chocolate?  Well, most commercial chocolate is highly processed and heated to very high temperatures, which means that most of the nutrients are destroyed or altered.  Commercial chocolate is often loaded with refined sugar, causing energy spikes and slumps, as well as weight gain.  It can also contain processed fat, various synthetic chemicals, artificial preservatives, cheap emulsifiers and other fillers.  Adding dairy milk also blocks the absorption of the great antioxidants in chocolate.

I love making my own chocolates and giving them to friends & family. This is a shot of the Macmillan event where I sold raw chocolate to raise funds for the charity.

At the Love Food Festival in Bath yesterday, I bumped into Dan and Paula from Elements for Life, and I bought some bars of their award-winning Yummy Scrummy raw chocolate brownie.

This delicious raw chocolate brownie is packed with goodness, and topped with lush goji berries.

To celebrate the fact it’s Chocolate Week (and recognising it would indeed be greedy to keep all the bars for myself 😉 ) I’m going to give you guys a chance to win a bar and experience the delights of Yummy Scrummy for themselves.  🙂

To enter the giveaway, simply leave me a comment and describe your  favourite chocolate flavour.  My current 3 favourite flavours are goji berry & nut; orange; and coffee.

The winner will be chosen at random at 7pm (GMT) on Monday 17th October.

Good luck everybody! 

The Agonies of Dairy

Published on by Sharon6 Comments

When I was doing my degree and PHD (many moons ago) I spent a lot of time to-ing and fro-ing to Paris.  As soon as I arrived, I would head straight to Bastille to buy a pancake from this little crepe stall that I adored.  My favourite pancake filling was nutella and banana.  After savouring every mouthful of the pancake, I would then spend the next half hour or so sitting on the steps of the Opera de Bastille, clutching my tummy in agony!

I’ve spent a lot of time sitting on these steps!

It would take me another 4 years to realise that I was actually allergic/ intolerant to dairy.  Throughout my student life, everything I ate seemed to give me stomach cramps and upset stomachs.  Being a vegetarian, it was likely that most dinners I ate at university would have contained dairy (this was a long, long time ago when the classic response to ‘I’m vegetarian’ was to serve you pasta or vegetables covered in cheese).

I went to the doctor’s a few times over the years, but they would put the stomach problems down to ‘student lifestyle’.  I put up with it for years (with a little help from bottles of kaolin and morphine).  The ‘lightbulb’ moment came when I complained to a friend that even a cup of tea would leave me in agony with stomach cramps.  Ding!  I realised the culprit must be dairy.   As soon as I stopped consuming dairy, all the symptoms stopped.  No more stomach cramps, no more upset stomachs… and even the patches of eczema that I’d had all my life completely vanished!

Since I’ve stopped eating dairy, I’ve never looked back.  I feel far healthier, my skin’s clearer than ever, I weigh less and I have no more stomach pain.  People ask me if I feel that I’m missing out but the answer is no, not for one moment as I’ve never felt so good. 🙂

I’ve subsequently found out that most of the world’s population is lactose intolerant.  Studies have also shown strong links between the consumption of animal protein and increased risk of heart disease, hypertension, obesity, diabetes and the common cancers.  More than ever, I’m glad that I’m unable to consume dairy.

Another reason that I don’t feel that I’m missing out is that all my favourite dairy-based treats, like cheese cake and pancakes, can easily be ‘veganised’, with no compromise on taste at all! In fact, I love the dairy-free versions even more than the traditional ones! You’ll find lots of delicious dairy-free treats in my Recipes section, including these scrumptious dairy-free and egg-free crepes ♥ 

Vegan Crepes

Super easy veggie burgers

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Veggie burgers are great fun to create as there’s no end to the combinations of beans, veggies and flavours that you can use.  With my birthday money, I decided to treat myself to a burger press in the hope of making a more professional looking burger than the usual pattie I mould in my hands. 

The burger press arrived today and I couldn’t wait to try it out!

This week, I opted to make cannellini bean and chick pea burgers with a spoonful for crunchy peanut butter to give them a nice crunchy texture.  M said they were one of the nicest burgers I’ve ever made and Lil’ L said they were ‘delish’. 🙂  I think the burger press helped.  Within a flash the mixture was turned into professional-looking burgers!  I’m very pleased with this new addition to my (ever increasing) kitchen gadget collection 😉

My simple veggie burger recipe can be found here.

Colourful Vegetable Pastry Bake

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Tonight, I decided to make one of our family’s favourite dinners… the quick and easy colourful vegetable pastry bake.  To give the bake a protein and calcium boost, I spread some creamy cashew nut and tofu spread on the pastry as a base, before adding some basil pesto.  I then sprinkled pieces of courgette, pepper, olives, almonds and pine nuts on top.  I served it with a portion of crispy kale, and chopped cherry tomatoes and basil drizzled with walnut oil.

Colourful Vegetable Pastry Bake

I made Lil’ L’s pastry bake slightly different to the adults’ portion.  As Lil’ L still won’t eat tomatoes, I added some tomato puree to the base of his pastry bake instead.  I also whizzed the peppers in my mini chopper so that they were much finer.  Lil’ L said he loved the dinner and we did too! 🙂

Something good for the weekend… Delicious dairy-free wholemeal scones!

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Dairy-free wholemeal scones

On weekends, we love to have something special for breakfast or elevenses.  Today, we decided to make some scones and eat them fresh out of the oven.  We made them dairy free by using soya milk and Pure dairy-free sunflower spread.  To add a touch of wholefood goodness, we used half wholemeal and half plain (all purpose) flour.  We served them with a big dollop of St Dalfour’s sugar-free strawberry spread and fresh strawberries.  The result was a tasty scone that is far healthier and nutritious compared to classic scones. 

Lil’ L said it was definitely worth the wait for these (ie. the wait for me to actually get out of bed and make them 😉 ) and proceeded to eat 2 scones… then come back a minute later for another one!

The recipe can be found here.

Crispy Kale… and Angulimala!

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For today’s Wednesday Workshop, I chose the famous Buddhist story of Angulimala.  Knowing the boys in my group this term, I thought they’d find a story about a fierce bandit brandishing weapons very appealing 😉  As the story is so violent, I thought I’d better create a milder version, suitable for the primary school age group.  I didn’t want to be responsible for nightmares about murderers and necklaces made of severed fingers!!!

Last night, M drew fantastic pictures of Angulimala (pre and post meeting Buddha) for the children to colour.  I loved the “embellishments” that the children made to the pictures.  A couple of boys drew lots of swirling black smoke around the head of the ‘robber’ Angulimala and then golden light around the head of Angulimala the monk.  Apparently, this was to demonstrate the state of Angulimala’s mind (black smoke = troubled/suffering; golden light = calm/positive).  I was very impressed.  These kids are only 7!

Leon Angulimala

As usual on a Wednesday, Lil’ L wanted spinach pancakes for dinner.  As I didn’t have any spinach left, I made regular pancakes and filled them with pieces of roasted sweet potato, roasted garlic and pine nuts.  To make sure he had some greens, I roasted half a bag of kale to make ‘crispy kale’.  This was meant to be shared by the whole family, but by the time I sat down for my dinner… the whole lot had been munched!

Crispy Kale

We’re all loving “crispy kale” at the moment.  When we stopped having dairy at home, I needed to make sure we increased our intake of other sources of calcium.  Kale is a true “super food”, packed with calcium and other good stuff.  I looked on the web for inspiration of tasty ways to serve kale, and kept coming across American recipes for ‘kale chips’.  I decided to have a go at roasting kale and was amazed to find how deliciously crispy it turns out!  It tastes very similar to the ‘crispy seaweed’ that we get in our Chinese takeaways.  Our kale intake has gone from one extreme to another this year… a bag of kale used to languish at the bottom of the refrigerator, used occasionally to make ‘5 veg mash’, but now we’re going through 1-2 bags a week!  Lil’ L absolutely loves it.  It’s a great way to get kids eating their greens!  The recipe can be found here.