Natural Products Expo West

The Natural Products Expo West took place Friday - Sunday, March 12 - 14 at the Anaheim Convention Center.  Expo West is always an amazing time, with so many awesome people coming together in one place to make new friends, reconnect with old ones, and generally celebrate life, while also accomplishing some business, and this year was no exception.  

I worked the show as an Athlete Representative for two of my sponsors, Manitoba Harvest and Sunfood and split my time at the show between their two booths, with a little time to walk around Sunday and check a couple other products.  Vapor Brothers threw a phenomenal party on Friday night in their hotel suite, with live sitar and drumming, 4 different vap stations, open bar, and catered by Au Lac!  Definitely one of the best gatherings I have ever attended in my life!  All of that was just warmups for the Julian Marley concert later that night, all time! Then Saturday night was the Organic Roots concert that takes place every year, another awesome show, and Sunday finished up the show with a dinner at Au Lac with the Sunfood team, and this incredible weekend became one future Expos will be compared to for years.

Working the Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods booth with Certified Nutritionist Meghan Atkinson 

President and Co-Founder of Manitoba Harvest Mike Fata with the Founder of To-Go Ware Stephanie Bernstein, creator of reusable bamboo utensils that help you reduce your forkprint

Co-Owner of Sambazon Jeremy Black helping provide information on acai at their booth

Sunfood COO Brian Bowers with a raw cacao pod

Vapor Brothers party was one of the best ever!  Their booth rocked too!

Julian Marley sharing some irie vibes with the Natural Products family

Coconut Bliss and their vegan coconut milk dessert, while not raw a very worthy substitute for ice cream

Cole Meeker at Artisana with their mental coconut butter to sample

Sunfood team dinner at Au Lac to finish out one of the best Natural Products Expos yet!

Veggie Nori Wraps

One of my favorite raw vegan recipes is a twist on sushi, using a raw nori seaweed sheet and filling it up with a selection of sliced veggies.  You can mix up the ingredients to create a variety of different recipes, all being rolled up into a live wrap with delicious selections of flavors.  I make one version using thick slices of avocado, with nut butters swiped on both sides, this one here with almond butter and pine nut butter.  Then I chop up some black botija olives and sun dried tomatoes to sprinkle on the nut butters, and season with some cayenne pepper and sea salt.  Then I cover the whole spread with shelled hemp seeds, and add sunflower greens and mixed salad greens before then wrapping it all up into the nori sheet.  Another option I love is to replace the nut butters with my living pesto sauce, great variety of flavor for these incredible entrees.  The olives and nut butters are all available at Sunfood Nutrition, and Manitoba Harvest has the best shelled hemp seeds ever.  The other ingredients can be found at most organic grocery stores, such as the raw nori sheets, sun dried tomatoes, cayenne pepper, and sea salt, and the produce, including avocados, sunflower greens, and spring mix, can be found there as well or at your local farm or farmer's market.  Enjoy!

Avocado, almond and pine nut butters, with diced black olives and sun dried tomatoes

Cover with shelled hemp seeds and fresh sunflower greens

Add organic spring mix, wrap it up, and enjoy!

Living Raw Vegan Pesto

Pesto is one of my favorite recipes.  But not the traditional recipe with cheese, I prefer a raw and living vegan mix I make which is a blend of various nuts and seeds along with fresh basil and garlic.  I use a mix of pine nuts, macadamia nuts, pistachios, walnuts, and pumpkin seeds, but the special ingredient is to include Manitoba Harvest Shelled Hemp Seed.  Hemp seed is one of the best sources of complete protein (containing all of the essential amino acids), is easily assimilable, raw, vegan, and best of all delicious, and has Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) omega-6 and omega-3 in an ideal ratio for human consumption (3.75:1).  For more info on nature's superfood read hemp nutrition.  

First thing to do is to soak all of the nuts and seeds overnight (except hemp seeds and pine nuts) in order to remove the enzyme inhibitors and make them easier to digest.  I like to keep my pesto sauce a little chunky and thick, but my usual ratio is 1 cup of each of the nuts/seeds (pine, macadamia, pistachio, walnut, pumpkin, hemp) equal to that many cups of fresh organic basil, so for this recipe 5 to 6 cups basil, approx 1 to 1 1/2 cups organic extra virgin cold pressed olive oil, half a clove of organic garlic, and 2 tsp of sea salt.  Any of the above ratios are able to change based on your preferred taste, such as more garlic, less sea salt, or different nuts (almond, brazil, hazel) for a different flavor.  Rinse and pick all of the fresh basil leaves off of the stems, chop the fresh garlic, and add olive oil and sea salt to the nut and seed medley in a food processor and blend.  

Creating a raw vegan live food entree is simple.  The living pesto sauce can be placed on top of thinly sliced zucchini creating veggie noodles for pesto pasta, or used in veggie nori wraps (recipe to come soon), for a variety of delicious meals resonating with life!  Enjoy!

Ready to mix it up!