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This is John Kohler with OKRAW.COM. This will probably be one of my best episodes that I
have given you so far. Now, I don't necessarily like to give like recipe demos, you'll notice
that I do have a whole lot of recipe demos because I want to teach you guys much more
than recipes, you know, in our culture here in our society today we're all taught to follow
the leader. So follow the recipe, follow what the head guy says, you know, and I want you
guys to start thinking for yourself cause beyond just eating a healthy diet I think
it's very important to make changes in this world that we live in today and start thinking
for yourself, because so many people today are just directed on what to eat, what to
think, and what to do in life. So this video today is very valuable because what I'm going
to teach you guys is concept in how to think for yourself and make your own delicious raw
salad dressings by using, you know, different ingredients that you have available at home.
And I've come up with this method over many years of trial and tribulations to find the
best method to make tasty salad dressings that you'll actually look forward to every
single night to eat, actually last night's salad dressing -- it was delish -- actually
some sesame seeds, macadamia nuts, two brazil nuts for my selenium, also some citrus juice,
a mixed citrus juice of tangerine, lemon, and blood orange, with some a little bit of
garlic, and some uh, miso for the salt, and MAN -- that was delicious! So one of things
I think is that the salad should be the main dish of your raw foods lifestyle, when you're
eating a lamb-based raw lifestyle, vegan lifestyle, or just a conventional lifestyle, you wanna
eat LARGE salads because salad greens and the greens salads are the most nutrient foods
on the planet but, you know, a lot of people have problems just eating salad greens alone
because they don't taste good. So, I want you guys to make the healthy salad dressing,
so without further ado let's just go into the clip where I'm going to share with you
guys how to make your own delicious raw salad dressings at home.
John inside: Welcome.
Hello everyone thank you for coming tonight. Uh, today I will be giving a talk, a talk
about some salad dressings that you can make at home. This is a very special talk because
I haven't given this talk for about, man, about three years now, so it's going to be
really good really exciting I mean this is basically what I've learned over the last
eighteen years of being into living a raw-foods-diet. You know, I've tried to learn, the best way
possible. Now, how many people here have heard my story before and heard why I got into the
raw foods diet? So there's a hand full of people so for those of you who haven't, um,
I'll go ahead and just briefly get into it give you a really quick summary because I'm
not here to tell my story I can talk for hours about my story, but basically why I got into
the raw food diet is because I had a health condition. When I was younger I had what's
called spinal meningitis, you know, I was hospitalized put into the intensive care unit,
as you may know, spinal meningitis can be fatal. K deadly actually. So I was in the
hospital, the doctors told me that I might not make it out alive and that's not a fun
place to be at any age but especially when you have your whole life ahead of you and
you just graduated college and you're in your twenties. So, you know, I had a lot of time
to think in the hospital and the doctor with his standard western medicine couldn't guarantee
that I was going to walk out of there and I started maybe questioning if western medicine
was what I wanted to really, you know, put my faith into if I got sick again, ha, or
if I even made it through that situation. So while I was in the hospital I thought a
lot about a lot of different things, what I thought most about was: what is the most
important thing I have right now, you know, I mean is it all the money in the world or
if I have my nice corvette you know with convertible, you know, is that really worth anything if
I don't walk out of here. So instead of valuing money and things that like normal society
would want me to value I really had to shift my focus because I lost the thing that was
truly the most valuable to me, which is my LIFE. I don't want to lose my life, you know,
I can lose all my money you know that wouldn't be fun but I'd rather have my life than my
money. I'll give that up any day. So um, I learned that my health is my greatest wealth
and after that time when I did get out of the hospital I asked the doctor Why did I
end up in the hospital, nobody else I know got sick with the spinal meningitis why did
I get it and he said well you have what's called compliment immune deficiency and what
that is, basically he blamed a chronically weak immune system on bad genes, defective
genes, that I've have since birth and that I was more susceptible than getting a sickness
whether it's spinal meningitis or anything than the standard person, he said next time
no matter what disease I may get I may not be so lucky and get out of a situation so
at that point, because is started valuing my health I'm like okay I got to do anything
I can to increase my health to make it so that I don't end up in the hospital again
and the doctors are not telling me again that I might not make it out of there alive because
you know the only odds I had was up to the higher powers it wasn't up to the doctors
at that point and I don't like, I mean I have faith but you know I want to do anything in
my control to be as healthy as I can. From that point on, it has been a long journey
and I had to determine and learn how to eat the healthiest way possible so I found of
course juicing and then raw foods, and I found that by eating fresh fruits and fresh vegetables
in their minimally processed state is the healthiest things for us to eat. And that's
pretty much what it is. And during this whole time I've always tried to use this principle
I call "CANI" C-A-N-I stands for constant and never-ending improvement. So whatever
I do today I try to do a little better tomorrow. Just the other day I was researching ancient
fruits to see if ancient fruits from, you know, thousands of years ago if they had as
much sweetness or sugar as the ones these days. And my research showed that tropical
fruits absolutely did have very similar properties to today's fruits although you know some of
the non-tropical fruits were, but that's a whole other story, but nonetheless I constantly
researched and learned new things to build on what im doing so then I can truly be as
healthy as I can so I'm really diving in deep to raw foods specifically for my health. Some
people might get into it for weight loss or because they're vegan and need a plant-based
diet and that's the next logical step for people that are eating a plant-based diet
is to go raw and plant-based but I got into it specifically for my health and that's what
I've been focusing on all these years. That's the background I have. I want to mention this
because it is very important to me. Not everybody who is into raw foods is doing it for their
health, there may be a chef and they wanna make fancy stuff that taste good. But not
always the stuff that tastes good, even if it is raw, is not healthy but that's a whole
other talk that I can give about that so that's why I advocate eating whole foods in their
natural state as much as possible and uh for the most part tonight those are the ingredients
that I will be using for this talk 'cause you know I read a lot of the answers that
came up on the meet-up questionnaire when you sign up to come like most people I use
like olive oil vinegar dressings with the raw dressings because we don't know any different
we are not taught any "raw dressings" when we are a kid we are taught to use you know
stuff out of a bottle and olive oil and vinegar which is, you know, could be raw! But in my
opinion, that's not the healthiest dressing to eat, it can definitely sabotage your health
goals in my opinion. And I mean the very simple reason for this is
Number one: Nutrient density of the foods (so, we take olive oil, or hemp oil which
is better, or any oil whether it's olive oil, hemp oil, or coconut oil, sunflower oil, if
you're using an olive oil or oil in vinegar dressing the main problem I see is number
one it's one hundred percent fat). We have a lot of fat-phobics maybe in the room or
just in our culture in general and we don't wanna eat a high fat diet or too much fat
cause we think it makes you fat and you know I'm not going to debate that either, but in
just one tablespoon of oil and it's not a lot you know it's one hundred and twenty five
calories is on the label. So you know, just by eating a little bit of oil with some vinegar
and if you put two table spoons and I'm sure you are dumping the oil on you're not measuring
it could be three hundred calories in just a little bit of oil and then you dump it over
a salad that's this big your salad of leaves might contain only eighty calories so now
you're eating a really high in fat diet and another problem with oil is that it doesn't
contain a lot of nutrition and besides the oil or the fat there's no micro nutrients
there's no you know other healthy properties in it that are really healthy for us. So that's
why I, you know, don't recommend eating oils. Now, I'll tell you a story this is kind of
a funny story when I was young into raw foods I thought I could buy the best highest quality
olive oil I could buy because once again if you go to a regular grocery store and you
buy regular olive oil it may not be raw it may be extracted with nasty chemicals and
may be doctoring it up with like cheap canola oil and all this other stuff but I got this
stuff called berriani olive oil and it's actually grown on organic groves and near Sacramento,
California. They harvest the olives. They actually have an old stone mill grinder that
grinds up the olives and presses out the oil and then they don't filter it so like this
is like one of the best quality really raw olive oil you can get and I had it in my cupboard,
and like many people into raw foods, I used to make olive oil vinegar dressings and my
friend, my good friend doctor Rick Dean would come over to my house and always give me stuff
like John why are you always using olive oil and vinegar?? And I'm like Rick, this is very
good, this is the best olive oil you can get it's unfiltered it's you know organic it's
cold pressed all this kind of stuff and he kept giving me stuff about it and I never
really understood why he gave me so much stuff about my organic cold pressed olive oil. And
you know finally one day I realized it, number one it is a fractionated food so it's just
the fat of the olive missing all the nutrients and it's also very high calorie and the other
thing is you know at the point I was when I first got into raw food is actually a good
thing I was eating olive oil because I was actually eating more salads but and I felt
fine after eating it but then at some point things shifted I would eat the olive oil and
feel real tired after I ate and that's because you know getting into raw foods what I was
doing the standard American veganish red meat you know I was doing something better. I finally
plateau-ed and I need to go you know further than that. I'm not saying you should quit
your olive oil today but you might want to be more aware of this is you are using it
and I'm here to actually show you a bunch of different options that are in my opinion
a lot healthier than using some of the oils. So uh let's see here, so I guess the main
reason for the salad dressing is because it will allow you to eat more salads I know some
people that answered the question here also use like bottled dressings from trader joe's
or from whole foods and using a bottle dressing gets you to use more greens I think that's
GREAT. You know definitely keep that up! Also I would encourage you to you know make a HEALTHIER
SALAD DRESSING than the highly processed salad dressings that are out there I mean some of
the different salad dressings may contain different oils maybe GMO and contain many
different additives or preservatives so you're missing out on the extra nutrition you COULD BE getting if you make your own
salad dressings fresh. So if we eat more salads this is really great because I think a raw
foods diet should be the main dish I mean it should be one of the staples of a raw foods
diet. The main reason for this is because the leafy greens and uh the most nutrient
dense foods on the planet so how many people have been to whole foods? And seen the ANDI
score system they use, few people, so if you go to whole foods there is this ANDI scoring
system and any produce items are scored and many other items are scored so basically what
they do is rate the nutritional content of the foods in whole foods or many of them anyways
on a scale from like zero to one thousand and a thousand is the most nutrient dense
food which means it has the most nutrients, vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, biochemicals,
antioxidants, and bionutrients, per calorie. So for example, if you want to look at a low
nutrient dense food it's like a soda is like a one. And on the top list it's like the kale
the collard greens the bok choi let's see uhhh watercress and basically at the top of
the list is pretty much all the leafy greens the thousands of kale it comes down then you
have those fruit/vegetables the leafy greens then you have maybe some vegetables then you
have the fruits. So if you're eating the fruits the vegetables and the leaves you're eating
the most nutrient dense foods on the planet which are the least amount of calories but
contain the most nutrients in there so most Americans if they're eating McDonalds or other
fast food restaurants they're eating a lot of calories but low nutrients. And I think
nowadays we're getting far too many calories as a society and not enough nutrition so that's
why the salad should be the main course because it has the most nutrients per calorie and
can help you in my opinion achieve your weight loss goals also your health goals it has definitely
made me a whole heck of a lot healthier. And so uh most people don't eat enough salad so
that's where the dressings come in they can allow you to eat more salads my goal every
day is to eat two pounds of leafy green vegetables and that is a lot and you know some days I
may get a pound just today this morning I juiced about a pound of spinach in my morning
vegetable juice so that's already a pound and then I eat one pound of greens for my
salad at night and there's my two pounds and the other thing I could do is like make a
greens smoothie and use about a pound of leafy greens or eight ounces you know in the smoothie
and that's definitely a lot of greens and you're not used to eating that volume of greens
don't start tomorrow, start small and the make it bigger so you know you're not shocking
your body with all this nutrition all at once. Too much of a good thing may not be a good
thing if you're not used to it. So this talk is to get people away from eating
from bottled dressings so uh dressings that have highly processed although potentially
raw foods. Such as like many oils, many oils are cold pressed but just because it is raw
doesn't mean it's automatically the healthiest thing we'll explain more about that. Uh let's
see yeah the and so I have some examples here here's the HEMP OIL, and it says it is cold
pressed so it's probably raw but because it's raw you know I wouldn't necessarily choose
it I mean we got the hemp oil and the hemp seeds here, what they do they take the hemp
seeds they basically press them out they press out the oil and then it's like juicing a carrot
when you juice the carrot you get the juice and that would be the same as the oil then
you get the pulp and I didn't bring one back here but the pulp would be the PROTEIN POWDER,
so if you're buying protein powder for your protein hemp powder is basically they take
out the oil they have a waste product now they sell it to you as protein powder whereas
in my opinion it's much better to get the whole hemp seed and then you get the oil in
the protein all in one better package it is not going to oxidize and the hemp oil needs
to be refrigerated or the oil can go rancid or when it's in a whole packaged form like
found in mother nature it's going to be more resistant to going rancid and bad. I guess
the next ingredient we will go over is we got the oil and then we got the vinegar! So
um many vinegar especially if you are not using like uh apple cider vinegar may not
truly be raw so based on my research which was a while back balsamic vinegars are not
raw but if you want to get a raw vinegar and you do want to use a vinegar still I recommend
something like this they have this at the store. This is the apple cider vinegar raw
and filtered. Kind of cloudy down there. And I always like to get the the highest quality
ingredients no matter what ingredient I am using. Another new product that's coming out
lately I guess I got the coconut vinegar and this is actually the coconut amino acid which
we will talk a little bit later in the talk. So if you're not using like an oil vinegar
dressing what are you gonna use? You're gonna use whole foods real WHOLE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
to make your salad dressings and uh once again as I talked about the nutrient density these
are the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. So the equipment you're going to need to make
your salad dressings are basically you're gonna need a blender. It's just very simple
a juicer may also be helpful but it's not totally required so I got I like to recommend
the vitamixed turbo VS and this is the standard carafe the comes with it's the sixty four
ounce carafe. What many people don't know is there is a smaller thirty two ounce carafe
this is actually a good size for making dressings 'cause sometimes you know getting your dressings
out from the bottom of the carafe can be a little bit of a hassle. Two assist in that
I've got this nice spatula here and this is actually from Williams Sonoma, especially
when I'm using like ten dollar pound macadamia nuts as my dressings I don't wanna leave any
residues in the blender carafe and it gets right between the blades really well to scrape
out all my dressings. I have a good demonstration on youtube where I compare the nutribullet
and the vitamixed. And it doesn't do as good of a job as the vitamixed. Now if you do have
a regular blender one of the techniques you can use for the dressings which I'll show
in a minute you will see me dump all the ingredients in the blender and just turn it on it just
going to liquefy everything and break it up into a nice creamy sauce that you guys are
going to TASTE in a minute! But if you don't have a vitamixed you know I'd recommend number
one saving for when you are SERIOUS about getting healthy because it's the device and
the blender that I find that uh breaks down the food the most, if you have a blend-tech
it's just about the same as the vitamixed but I prefer the vitamixed over all but if
you have the standard blender what you're gonna do is add all your liquids you know
and I'll show you guys in a minute you're going to have to add all your liquids first
and instead of just putting the whole hand full of nuts in at once you're going to maybe
just add one let it blend, at two let it blend, add three...this way it doesn't overload your
blender with like two much at one time. One of the things I liked about the vitamixed
is that it's so powerful it'll only make cream out of the nuts there will be NO NUT FRAGMENTS.
And when it does this, you're basically breaking open the cell walls to explode the nutrients
in the food which creates there being more surface air so that your digestive system
can get more nutrition out of them. I mean the other thing you can use, you can pour
these ingredients all over your salad but then make sure you chew very well, um id rather
blend them up to get better extractions then I don't have to chew as much then I already
spent an hour maybe even more to eat my salad because chewing is VERY IMPORTANT. And don't
underestimate the power of your jaw. Why making a salad dressing out of produce is better
than chopping and putting the ingredients on your salads. Say for example you're gonna
have a big salad, and you know you wanna put some bell pepper in there you're gonna take
the knife and chop up the bell pepper and you know just slices of little chunks and
you're just gonna throw this on top of your salad and pour the dressing on top. So does
anybody have any ideas why it's better to actually throw the pepper In the vitamix to
cream it up instead of actually chopping it up on top of your salad?
AUDIENCE: Breaks down better! John: Breaks down better, right, so when you
put it in the blender, it will break it up, how many people have heard like it's better
to cook a carrot than to eat a carrot raw because you get more nutrition out of a cooked
carrot? Anybody? I mean it's a thing that is constantly going around and that is the
absolute truth. A raw carrot compared to a cooked carrot, you're gonna get more nutrition
out of a cooked carrot. Because the cooking process breaks open those fibers and cell
walls. But if we compare a cooked carrot to like carrot juice to even a blended carrot,
then guess what, then guess what has more nutrition? The one that is blended or juice
because now you're doing the same exact thing but now it's without the HEAT, because in
the heating process you're losing some of the vitamins like VITAMIN C it gradually goes
down. So by the same token, same thing with the tomatoes, and the lichopene, you cook
a tomato and that's why you eat tomato sauce instead of eating a whole tomato. That's because
the cooking process breaks open the cells walls but guess what the blenders and the
juicers will also do that so that's why it's better to blend your tomatoes up in your dressing
and then fractionate it to make more surface air open those cells so you get better absorption
of the nutrients in there including the lichopene. And all the other hundreds of vita chemicals
and vita nutrients in the foods you're eating. So often times, this may be boring to a lot
of people, but often times my salad is just a big bowl of whatever leafy green I have
whether it's arugula or you know, romaine, or spinach, and then I'll just uh a whole
bunch of stuff in the blender and pour dressing over it. So it'll be just the leafy green
and the dressing. If I'm getting you know I don't know creative might put a couple tomatoes
on top but why do that I like to eat really simple and that's another thing I want to
talk about -- when you're making some of the recipes and I'll show you only a few examples
you want to try and keep it down to a minimal amount of ingredients, you don't wanna try
to put everything but the kitchen sink in there 'cause I've made a few horrible things,
once you start adding too much stuff then you gotta like overcompensate with something
else and we've all done this in the kitchen and it's not a lot of fun so just keep it
simple. All the recipes I strive to make are under six ingredients and usually some days
like today we're going to make a salad dressing with JUST TWO ingredients. It's insane. So
let's see here, okay, next, ingredients for a whole foods salad dressing for those of
you guys taking notes, this is where you want to start taking some notes it's the important
part of my talk, um there's three components to any wholes foods salad dressing that I'm
gonna make NUMBER ONE is the the base! The base is the majority of the blending it's
gonna be about a majority of the blender (points to/measures on carafe). THE BASE. Next, is
the thickener. So the thickener is not going to be as much quantity as the base and the
thickener is less quantity and we'll go over what these are in a minute. And then finally
the last component of your salad dressing is your FLAVORING AGENT. And that has the
least amount of quantity. And we'll explain what all of these are with all the stuff I
got on the table. So first lets go over the base, so the base of your salad dressing should
be something "water-rich". So that's something with a HIGH water content. Some of the things
you could use are fresh fruits so whether it's organic cherry tomatoes or larger tomatoes
that could be a base. Uh if you have a bunch of peppers you could use that, I like to remove
the seeds first, blend that up as a base and so now you have a nice water-y base. Or you
could use some non-sweet fruits or sweet fruits. One of the sweet fruits I like to use are
sweeter fruits and I wouldn't necessarily use a banana in my dressing but I would use
acid or SUB-acid fruit. So things like you know um citrus (really works well). Something
like strawberry really works well. I made a pineapple dressing but I don't like that
so much. The main fruits I like to use are the citrus and the strawberries. And I've
experimented with others ones, and oh, mangos. Mangos work really well. But you'll find ones
that you like. So we got the fruits, whether they're acid or sub-acid, and we got as the
base the non-sweet fruits then we can have something like JUICES. We can use fresh juices
as a base instead of the whole fruit and so today we got a few different juices. We got
some fresh made carrot juice earlier today so you could use some vegetable juices, maybe
use some cucumber juice, that could be your base. Uh I like carrot juice because it's
a little bit sweet, you can make celery juice. That would be kind of a weird base but you
could do it. We also have some of a tangerine um orange juice here. And another one that
is really cool we have some sweet lime juice. How many people have taste sweet limes before?
We'll talk more about that in a minute. So you could use a juice as your base. Another
thing you can use as your base is coconut water which is super water rich. Coconut water
adds a tinge of sweetness to the base and you can also use white Mexican coconut water
as a base so don't use the brown coconut water 'cause that tastes kind of funky. So the next
thing you're going to want to add is a thickener so the thickeners can be something like NUTS,
so any kind of nuts that you may have or seeds, or why don't we go over them since we have
a whole table full of cool stuff to show off. Uh so hemp seeds. That's a great thickener.
You can use something like pine nuts. So pine nuts are fabulous nuts to use. All these you
can buy at the store. You can also use pistachios as a thickener these are wonderful, hard to
find raw pistachios, oh and here's one, whole raw organic cashews, I would say you can use
this as a thickener but I would be highly cautious when using raw cashews that are from
major brand like now or even from the bulk bins at whole foods. Even if cashews are labeled
raw they are probably not really raw because they have been heat processed in extracting
them, and in addition I have bad reactions when I eat cashews they don't tend to digest
well for me and let me tell you another story. When I was actually in Costa Rica, I was staying
in a butterfly sanctuary which was a beautiful place and out in front of the butterfly sanctuary
they have this beautiful tree and it was huge and had all these little fruits on it. And
they're all like multi-colored and they looked like apples with a little cashew-like appendage
on top and what that was, it was a cashew apple tree. The cashew apple tree makes cashew
apple fruits. They're for some people, not for others. I don't particularly care for
them too much and then they have the little nut as an appendage on top and the interesting
thing is if you look down below you'd see all the fruits were gone but there would be
all the nut appendages like on the ground like no animals were eating them, so I'm like
what's going on, so I asked the host, you know the guy who owns the place, and I'm like
how come no one is eating the raw cashews aren't they really good, he's like no man
you can't pick those up 'cause if you try to peel them the appendage thing there's like
a little coating on there it'll burn your skin, I'm like no way, he's like you gotta
pick them up we actually gotta roast them over the stove and that like burns off the
toxins in there. So the animals don't even eat those and with heat processing you can
heat them up and get toxins out. But if nature really doesn't want us to eat something like
that, then maybe we shouldn't be eating it. And plus the other fact is it doesn't really
digest well for me. But with that being said, there are certain companies that sell they
are really raw cashews and they get them out in a special way and this kind of stuff. But
I still don't believe they are that good, so instead of using cashews because cashews
are relatively inexpensive and they make a nice creamy sauce and unfortunately you know
in most raw food recipes they ALWAYS USE CASHEWS and it bugs me so much because of the you
know they're not really raw. And they don't digest well for me so what I recommend instead
is something like this stuff right here, macadamia nuts, I pick my own macadamia nuts in Hawaii
off the tree and had them fresh not even dried, they taste more like a water chestnut they
are absolutely delicious and the macadamia nuts digest a lot better for me and one of
the things that I didn't talk about was you'll make it a 3 to 6 ratio which are essential
facts in all these different nuts. If you use almonds, they are very rich in omega-3.
I like the macadamia nuts because they won't mess up your three to six ratio and they are
very omega-3-rich. Most people are deficient in omega-3. Macadamia nuts also have a very
neutral flavor and uh will make an excellent cream sauce as well or even better, in my
opinion, than cashews because they have more flavor than them. And these ones are from
Hawaii these are some of my favorite ones. Let's see, next nut, oh this nut is crazy.
Some people heard of peeling nuts? None. So, peeling nuts are very rare and very hard to
find so it's the only place in Las Vegas that sells them. If you want something, you know,
you're trying to get off the oil this is the next best thing. These are probably the most
oil-rich nuts in the world. I mean, for example, if we look at the nutrition facts like serving
size one ounce uh calories per serving two hundred and sixteen calories from fat two
hundred, so that's like almost all fat. So that's going to give you nice rich texture
in your salad dressing. So the peeling nuts, yeah definitely really good.
Now let's see what other things we have here. Yeah so, those are the um thickeners, now
besides nuts as a thickener, nuts and seeds, 'cause you know maybe you're trying to do
a lower fat thing and you don't wanna eat that many nuts or seeds, oh another seed I
have sesame seeds on the table, and you know the thing that I also want to say is on the
nuts as a thickener, I'm not using that much as I mentioned earlier the base is the majority
of your blender carafe and the nuts and seeds or the thickeners not going to be as much
so in general my guide, and I don't really like to measure things out in my kitchen,
I like to use you know one or two handfuls of the nut or seed into my dressings. That's
my nut or seed allowance for the day I don't try to eat a lot of nuts and seeds while they
are definitely better than oils they can be higher in fat I don't want to eat you know
too high of a fat percentage because I have seen over the long run that eating a high
percentage of fat may not be the healthiest thing because now if you're eating higher
in fats that's where your calories are gonna come from you're now displacing other nutrient
dense foods like the leafy greens and the fruits that you should be eating in my opinion
instead of higher fats so yeah one or two handfuls of the nuts and seeds. Now if you
don't want to use nuts and seeds as the thickener because we need something to make it thick
otherwise you can just pour the orange juice over your salad as a salad dressing which
you could do but it always goes to the bottom of the bowls and I like something that sticks
on you know that's going to have a nice texture in my mouth. So besides using the nuts and
seeds, what you can also use is dried fruits, I dry my own tomatoes, you can use something
like sundried tomatoes, also I dry my own peppers, um I grow my own peppers and then
I dry them myself, you could also just buy red bell pepper or yellow bell peppers, orange
bell peppers, and dry them yourself, when they're on sale, cut them up, and then dry
them so you have these to add as a thickener to your recipes, you can also dry other you
know vegetables like zucchini will work really well, use them fresh instead of dried, but
basically you're looking for something that's going to soak up some of this moisture and
instead of it being a watery consistency, you wanna make it more rich and thick and
creamy and that's what some of these thickeners do so sometimes what I'll do instead of adding
you know like I don't know one handful of sesame seeds I might add a half handful and
then I'll just add a few sundried tomatoes to help thicken that up. So this is a way
you can get away from eating more nuts and seeds, if you don't want to. Another thickener
you can use is just standard vegetable so zucchinis a nice vegetable 'cause it's kind
of dense you know there's a no bean hummus that people make without the chickpeas they
use the zucchini as a thickener you can use that actually in your salad dressing as a
thickener as well. Something like carrots you can use carrots as a thickener although
it's gonna add a lot of TEXTURE which you know is not something I'm super looking for
I want a nice, I like a nice creamy, dressing myself. And then finally after the uh base
and thickener we have the flavoring agents. You're going to use the least amount of quantity
in your dressing as a flavoring agent so let's go over some of the different flavoring agents
I have on the table today. Let's see here, so some people may think "Oh so John, is Bragg's
Liquid Aminos a flavoring agent??" Well yes, absolutely Bragg's Liquid Aminos can be a
flavoring agent this is an all purpose seasoning from soy protein. Now while this may be raw,
and I don't see where it says raw on the label anymore but it used to say raw on there, um
I don't think this is necessarily a health food in my opinion. Way back in the day, there's
a big internet controversy about the Bragg's Liquid Aminos and that it contains naturally
occurring MSG and the story I have about Bragg's Liquid Aminos is really interesting I was
actually at a raw food retreat up in near Portland, Oregon. And there was these chefs
uh making dinner one night and they came out with a it was a carrot-avocado-creamy soup
and actually we're gonna make a dressing very similar to that, and they used the carrot
juice and avocado and they put a bunch of Bragg's in there and then probably some other
ingredients, and they sent it out to everybody and everybody ate it and after I ate it I
started getting a headache and I'm like man I'm eating the raw foods and I'm getting a
headache like this shouldn't happen you know I mean I don't wanna get a headache that's
not a good sign when my body reacts to something 'cause I rarely EVER get headaches. So then
I'm like okay John you're just overly sensitive because you've been doing this for so long
and you've been pretty "clean" is what Iike to say, anyways somebody else in the table
said oh you know I ate the soup and I don't feel so good. And I was like "Ahh, something's
going on here." And then I saw somebody else actually at another table get up and start
walking out of the room like they didn't look good so then I immediately got up and walked
after him and said "Hey what's going on?" and she said, "well I ate the soup and I don't
feel good I'm going to go back to my room." I'm like okay man something's going on I gotta
go in the kitchen and find out what's happening, what was in the soup that's making people
not feel so good and I asked him and he said there are carrots, avocado, Bragg's Liquid
Aminos and I was like "Aha! It is the MSG in Bragg's Aminos." And I started asking well
hey man did you know that Bragg's Aminos has naturally occurring MSG? And he's like "No."
There are so many people who, that are not into their health like I am, that use Bragg's
Liquid Aminos and not even know that there may contain MSG!, in health recipe books,
etc . So I discourage you guys to use Bragg's even though it may be healthier than other
things, but nonetheless there are better options out there.
Coconut Aminos is actually a new option and I haven't fully researched this but once again
I wanna encourage you guys to eat wholes foods, if it's coming in a bottle that's like this,
I mean how the heck did they get coconut aminos out of a coconut we all know what a coconut
looks like I mean how did they make this brown stuff that comes in a bottle. Just basically
add some like salty taste you know you wanna salty taste I recommend not using anything
like this you might just wanna use salt! So while you could use salt as a flavoring agent
because we all know that is a flavoring agent I would highly discourage you guys from using
salt. Now why would I say this you might wonder? Well john this is real salt (HIMILAYYAN ROCK
SALT) this is the healthy stuff! This isn't the iodized salt that you know all the doctors
tell us don't eat salt because it raises your blood pressure and can cause a whole bunch
of other things that can happen to your body that's not normal. The reason why I say that
is because you know the issue is not whether it's from the Himalayas or Celtic Sea Salt
from France, it's all about the sodium content in my opinion. You know there's standard iodized
salt is like ninety nine percent sodium chloride and even if you go to one of these guys Nature's
First Sea Salt called the real salt or the Himalayan rock salt. These are still very
high in sodium. Let me go ahead and give you some numbers here so according to the US RDA
for sodium is, anybody know? (to audience) fifteen hundred milligrams is what the US
RDA says for the average person you know if you're younger or older it's different, but
on average it's like fifteen hundred milligrams. So guess how much iodized sea salt is fifteen
hundred milligrams. It's like point, it's around point six five of a TEASPOON like that's
very little salt that's your whole daily allowance according to the US RDA now if you're putting
more than a teaspoon in your dressing you know there's that and all the other stuff,
if you're eating kale chips it has salt. You're really eating more salt than what's even recommended
but you know the standard American eats WAY TOO MUCH SALT in my opinion. You say "well
okay john I'm gonna be healthy instead of using the iodized sea salt I'm gonna use the
real salt or the Himalayan salt you know how much of this stuff could I use??" Well guess
what? Can anybody, does anybody want to take a guess of how much of this stuff you can
use before you meet your fifteen hundred uh milligram US RDA allowance? Pretty close.
It's like 1.13 teaspoons or something! Still not very much. I mean that's almost double
but not quite but still you know many raw food chefs add too much salt and that's already
more than your allowance. All the fruits and vegetables you're eating also are filled with
sodium especially if you're eating celery so now you're eating more than your daily
allowance. Now some things like eating leafy greens I wouldn't have a problem with you
guys eating more than your daily allowance of leafy greens 'cause most people don't eat
enough but I do have some issues with eating too much salt so highly discourage you guys
from eating this salt, now you might be thinking "John, if I'm not eating the salt what do
I do to make my food taste good?" well throw this stuff away and I'll show you the better
option, well actually, we're gonna keep one of these on the table here 'cause I'm going
to compare these side-by-side for you guys. So the better option in my opinion, is to
get rid of these guys 'cause we don't want these guys here either. The better option
in my opinion are these guys right here and what are these guys? These guys are SEA VEGETABLES.
So once again, so this salt is mined in Utah "a locally sourced product" I like that. But
it's just uh one thing it's only the salt. They also extract the salt from the sea and
yes there is some mineral contamination here with some other minerals in there but once
again it's mostly sodium and you can really overdue it quickly. And you know the US RDA
is fifteen hundred milligrams for me personally my personal goal is about one hundred and
one thousand milligrams. So you know, I could, just by using my numbers, then the amount
of salt I use I can go even lower. So for that reason, I recommend these guys because
what these guys are are these guys are salt rich and mineral rich foods that are more
foods as found in nature. so these are from sea vegetables which are basically um plants
or algae that grow in the sea. And then they are just dried. Because they are grown in
the sea, guess what, they have a wide access to the salt and all the other minerals that
are washed into the oceans and they ABSORB IT. So for example you know instead of using
salt in your recipes I highly encourage you to use some sea vegetables so if we go over
the uh sodium content for example uh one table spoon of this stuff contains only eighty seven
milligrams. So I mean you can eat a whole table spoon it is eighty seven milligrams
grains of salt that's like not really contributing much to your daily allowance of if you're
trying to do fifteen hundred or for me I'm trying to a thousand. And this one, oh this
one doesn't have the nutrition facts on this one...let me see about this...yeah this one
okay it's seven thousand five hundred milligrams for one tablespoon whereas one tablespoon
of this you got eighty seven milligrams of sodium, so that's like dramatically.. I mean
the sodium is like over your daily allowance and in my opinion can cause an issue. Um so
this stuff is much lower in sodium but besides the sodium content I'm really interested in
you guys eating you know a trace mineral rich foods so many people might take a Centrum
from their trace minerals but you know in nature we would get our trace minerals from
the foods we eat but unfortunately as many people may know our soil is devoid of minerals
especially as regular farmers even many organic farmers are only putting can be concerned
about three minerals are put back into the soil MPK, you know hardly any farmers are
putting trace minerals back into the soil, and you can do this, I actually do this, but
so it's not only the salt that lights up our taste buds on our tongue but we also have
trace mineral receptors so although this doesn't have a sodium content of salt it tastes also
really good just because all the other minerals including potassium and a whole host of minerals
in there. What I am really concerned about for myself and for many other people is the
sodium content you know in every cell in our body there's what's called sodium potassium
pump (to audience) how many people have heard of this. So the sodium potassium pump means
we need to have a certain volume of sodium and potassium in our cells because that's
how cells move things in and out of the cell. And if you don't have the right ratio then
you may not be working often and every cell in your body is not gonna be working optimally
as collectively as a whole you're not working optimally. Once again most people's sodium
potassium ratio is way off 'cause they got far too much sodium and not enough potassium.
So for example this dull seaweed is three hundred and ninety one milligrams of potassium
and eighty seven milligrams of sodium so this will raise up your potassium (to audience)
what's another good source of potassium? Bananas! Thank you that always comes up. If you're
eating more salt at least eat more bananas to get a balanced ratio so that it's more
balanced. But I just say, chuck the salt and you know eat this stuff that has sodium but
also has potassium so you know if you think "oh sea vegetables are boring there are only
a few kinds!" well check this out, there's this store here they got all different kinds.
And these are really rare to find. And they got the dolls flakes, and I like the dolls
flakes because they don't taste fishy to me. They're actually quite good. So that could
be a good salt substitute for you guys. The next one we have here is the comboo flakes
and uh once again the sodium on this is uh more it's two hundred and twenty two milligrams
the other one's eighty seven but the potassium is still five hundred and sixty. So that's
still over the double amount of potassium. And each one of these have flavors, this one
is the comby flakes, the sodium on this one is two twelve potassium three eighty two milligrams.
And once again on these guys you only need a little bit you just put like uh tablespoon
and you'll be good. Uh this one has eighty one milligrams this one's the nory flakes
you can just take whole nori sheets and blend that up in your blender it'll fractionate
it too. Potassium one thirty four. Still a really good ratio. Finally we got this stuff
right here. This is actually the sea lettuce flakes and uh this is the sodium eighty seven
potassium three ninety one so yeah the sea vegetables are really good. They also have
the products here similar this is the product that I use which is actually called the sea
greens and the sea greens is actually a mix of a powder uh seaweeds actually this one
just has like the one the knotted rag seaweed but over in Europe and this one is kind of
fishy it's kind of like kelp and you could also get the kelp powder which are also pretty
inexpensive which tastes the most fishy but they have once again a lot of the trace minerals
in there. This one I use over in Europe they found a lot of research with these especially
in England and Ireland where these some of these seaweeds are formed. You know it's just
there's like the next level. The whole food it's just been powdered. So I like to just
add this to my dressing to give it the salty flavor whenever I want without adding just
the, you know, the extracted salt. I also get all the other minerals vita minerals and
vita chemicals found in this seaweed as well. So besides that as a salty flavoring agent
another thing I'd like to use is the chickpea miso I'm not into uh standard misos with soy,
I don't like to eat a lot of soy, in my diet although I do eat nato .....i do like the
chickpea miso so the chickpea miso does contain some uh sea salt so that's once again high
in sodium but also has other ingredients so fermented foods and you're probably getting
some beneficial probiotics in here much lower in the concentration of the sodium than just
using the straight salt itself and also it'll give a nice flavor to your dressing.
Another thing I'd like to use instead of usually just pick at one different flavoring agent,
another thing for the flavoring agent I'd like to use that will also add a salty flavor
is some fermented food so I always take a look at the sodium content of the fermented
foods so uh some fermented foods may have a higher sodium content than others. So this
farmhouse culture, this is one of the lower sodium content foods this is actually four
tablespoons of this stuff is two hundred and ninety six milligrams so I mean that's a bunch
of stuff you can dump to get a salty flavor. But not only are you getting the salty flavor
you're also getting the beneficial probiotics in there and also it has a nice really good
zing instead of like a vinegar to my foods. Another thing I like is the kimchi, so the
kimchi also when they do ferment foods mostof the time when you buy them they do add some
salt you can make these at home yourself without salt, and I have a video on youtube to explain
how to do that. So yeah, this adds a flavor, plus adds a little bit of salt because I do
think it's important to get adequate amount of salt I'm not going to say don't eat any
salt! You know I have had friends in the raw foods who've been into it for a long time
they haven't shunned anything that had salt in it including potentially sea vegetables
and then they got their sodium levels checked and they were actually low in sodium. Now
that's probably outside the norm because probably in my opinion most people in raw foods are
eating far too much salt especially if you're eating you know processed and powdered packaged
raw foods because anything you eat like kale chips and other things they're always gonna
add salt to make it taste good! What I like to say is if you have real nutrient dense
food like foods out of my garden they taste really good without adding nutrition because
it's high quality produce it has the trace minerals in it from the soil that I'm building.
And the problem today is that most foods in our conventional system including organic
foods are not grown with trace minerals so they taste kind of dull and bland plus that's
intensified by harvesting the produce then shipping it and then you buying it one week
two weeks three weeks maybe even a month later. When the taste of the food goes down, guess
what. The nutrition also goes down as well. So let's see uh besides using those things
if you wanna do like the no salt thing you can definitely do that add a flavoring agent
such as this one right here and herbs and spices so you can use herbs and spices as
flavoring agents whether you're using fresh herbs (which I recommend I'm growing some
rosemary and uh let's see uh sage right now, in my garden that's doing really well despite
the weather) just harvesting that and throwing it in the dressing adds some flavor. You can
also use dried herbs but this is actually called a Italian seasoning organic this is
the salt-free seasoned blend. How many people buy those little spice jars (to audience)
it's like what, three or four bucks, for a spice jar. This whole thing is one pound and
this will last you for a year it's fourteen dollars and fifteen cents. Or like, you know,
split it with your friends and also with the store here they can actually special order
for you other spice blends so like you could get a curry spice blend I think curry is a
good spice to use cause it has the tumurc in there and uh tumurc is probably one of
the best vegetables for antioxidant potential so yeah tonight we are actually going to use
a little pizza seasonings in one of the dressings I'm going to make. Another flavoring agent
I like to use besides the fresh dry bell peppers and sweet peppers for like a thickener I use
like a little hot pepper. So this is like a hot pepper I got from my garden. That's
super hot so I'm not going to put the whole bud in there, I'm going to remove the seeds
so that adds as nice hot and spicy flavor. You can also use cayenne pepper if you don't
have your own dried peppers. So those are some flavoring agents once again we'll go
over those: herbs, fresh or dry, spices, sauerkraut, seaweeds, you could also use dried fruits
or veggies the dried fruits would be this or some of you know vegetables! Dried vegetables.
Okay I also want to mention: don't use salt as a flavoring agent. We went over all that.
We used seaweeds instead, and the seaweeds will dramatically increase the trace mineral
content of your foods especially if you're not growing your own food in rockdust rich
soils. So I guess now the fun part I can actually make some stuff after getting bored and almost
falling asleep with my lecture here. Audience: John?
John: Yes. Audience: Quick question. Uh seaweed dried
is that still raw or .... John: so the question is, is seaweed still
raw if it's dried? It depends on the company and the process they use to draw it, like
in California I harvest my own seaweed and you can use fresh seaweeds in your dressings
which I recommend unfortunately that is unavailable to most people. I do have a video on youtube
if you wanna learn how to do that. Um but nonetheless it depends on the person drying.
So if you support a small company like there's many companies out in you know northern califronia
in like Mendocino County that actually harvest the seaweeds and then you sundry and in many
places may sundry uh their seaweeds especially if they're small companies but big mass companies
might not be sun drying so it's potential like you know instead of using like powdered
dulse flakes which actually may be heat processed hotter than what we would like you could just
get whole dulse weeds and just put whole dulse weeds in and the blender will fractionate
it anyways. So it's always recommended to get the seaweeds in the largest pieces you
can and also try to go direct to the source of course that will also cost you more money.
So you know probably some of the seaweeds I buy are not TRULY RAW. You know but I'd
rather be you know how many seaweed am I really eating? Like shaker this or shaker that and
most of them are pretty good in general they're mostly raw some of them may not be. I think
the benefit that adding it far outweighs the "oh my god, I'm eating a little bit of cooked
stuff!" right? 'Cause I've only been 99.999.. percent raw
for about eighteen years and I don't expect anybody to be one hundred percent and if somebody
is saying they are one hundred percent, unless they are living on an island, growing their
own stuff, I don't believe them. And that's another thing, you know, and the goal is not
one hundred percent raw foods. What the goal is for me is about one hundred percent health
so you know there are products that I would consume like some of the powders out there
on the shelves that you could also use as a flavoring agent which are really good too
'cause they're high in via chemicals and nutrients, but they may be heat processed hotter than
what I'd like but I'm not like "oh it's not raw I can't eat it!" No. this thing has really
good nutrition for me. You know, and until I start growing my own spioralina it's the
best I can do so I'm gonna include those things because I think it's so beneficial for me
to have. And you each need to make your own decisions on what those foods are for you.
For me personally I'd rather eat some dried seaweeds that are probably raw maybe not than
not include them and OH I'm just going to eat salt instead. Right? We just learned that.
But the salts raw the seaweed might not be! Come on man. What is more healthier? Alright
so, hopefully that answers your question. Alright so next let's get into some of these
dressings and start using this blender. Ok so the first dressing, I will dazzle you with
the easiest dressing first. So the first dressing what I'd like to make is actually just called
my orange juice or my uh tangerine juice so we got some fresh squeezed orange tangerine
juice here we're gonna pour that into the blender. And the ratios you know for, it it
always depends, you know I don't have like oh use this much orange juice, this much nuts,
I just kinda like start adding the nuts to thicken it up. So I don't have a uh specific
ratios for you guys but pretty much just throw some orange juice I through in about I don't
know twelve ounces or so then we're going to add a handful of macadamia nuts and then
we're gonna blend it and see the consistency. If it's not thick enough I might add a few
more macadamia nuts to the mix so we'll put that's about not quite a full handful.
After blending... Alright so with this machine it is pretty
powerful so it breaks it up and then I heard some of the nuts still in chunks so what I
would like to do is I like to pulse it that'll help to blend it up a bit more. Alright so
that's how easy this dressing was... Now I happen to use the orange juice and macadamia
nuts you can use almonds and orange juice and sesame seeds or basically any nuts you
got just a handful or two with the orange juice and you can have a different dressing
each night by just changing the nut you add into the blender that night. You could also
use hemp seeds and this is kind of thick so we can go ahead and have you guys sample this
out... Now we're going to make another dressing.
And the dressing we're gonna make next is a standard uh miso tahini garlic dressing.
This is another really easy one. And uh while we're going to use this and this dressing
is very simple we're going to use some sweet limes uh how many of you guys have had sweet
lime? Couple people. So you shop at asian markets or uh ethnic markets you may know
that sweet limes are uh I like the sweet limes because they're a lime and they should be
pretty much yellow like this and they have a really neutral flavor they're not acidic
or really sweet they're just kinda like drinking water with a hint of citrus to it. So it has
a really neutral flavor to it so I like that a lot. So what I normally do is just usually
cut my sweet lime in half and you could see inside there and I just put it in my press
and I just squeeze out some of the juice and we did this earlier so I wouldn't have to
juice all my sweet limes here. This is really simple and really easy. And that's once again
my base. The next thing we're going to add is a lemon. So I like the lemon for the flavor
and you know a little bit of lemon can go a long way. We're going to juice a little
bit of lemon up in here. So this is sweet lime and lemon. Then we'll add the other ingredients.
You can use a hand squeezer if you don't have this fancy device. And you don't need a lot
of juice to it. Pour that in there. We got some more here we'll add and this time maybe
we'll pour eight ounces 'cause last time we made a little too much. So your standard uh
dressing what we're making now is the lemon uh tahini miso dressing most people would
use like tahini at this point just put some tahini in there and blend it up and make a
nice creamy uh consistency what I'm gonna do instead is I'm gonna use whole sesame seeds
once again you wanna use foods in their whole state because I'm blending it up anyways the
blender will turn this into tahini mixed with the juice and also the whole sesame seeds
are less expensive than buying tahini. So once again probably just pour a bunch in there.
Also in this recipe I add some garlic. How many people like garlic? Wow. Almost like
everybody. So we'll make this particularly garlicy today for you guys. Garlic is one
of the easiest things to grow in las vegas actually. Plant it like once and forget about
it until it's ready to harvest. (to audience) how is that, it's just two ingredients!
A varied version of that is the strawberry macadamia nut and my brother who doesn't eat
raw or anything he's like man this stuff tastes like strawberry yogurt so I mean that's kind
of like the consistency it's like that orange yogurt but imagine eating a whole salad with
that, man, it's like ah I just can't wait for every bite. Now we got the sweet lime,
the lemon, we got the sesame seeds, we got the garlic and now we're just gonna add a
hint of the uh salty flavor. We got the uh miso here. Once again we got the chickpea
miso. Drop a little quap in there. Then blend this guy up.
So this is the chickpea miso that will come around next (passing carafe to audience to try).
So I always recommend buying shelled nuts whenever possible so my macadamia nuts I actually
order them directly from Hawaii and actually there's this guy that if you order a lot (I'm
a macadamia fanatic) ordered ten pounds and it's like ninety dollars to deliver that's
nine dollars a pound. If you go to whole foods it's like seventeen ninety nine a pound. Plus
they deliver plus there's a farmer in Hawaii that actually dehydrates the nuts so we didn't
even really talk about that a lot of the nuts like we did talk about the cashews you know
many nuts may be heat processed hotter than what we would like. This guy totally dehydrates
them at a lower temperature and you can definitely taste the difference they're much better nuts.
Audience: do you know the name of the company? John: I think it's like doctor palcos he's
on the big island of Hawaii so if you do just like uh I think it's Hawaiian dehydrated nuts
on google and you should find them basically it's just um you order ten pounds at a time
it's like ninety bucks. That's about the price. So on that point I also want to mention it's
best to buy your nuts in shell whenever possible. Because this is nature's packaging once you
open up the nut it can go rancid. Goes into whole food's bulk bins because no bodies buying
them. They're seventeen ninety nine a pound. So um, I harvest, I didn't harvest these walnuts
but I have walnuts I have harvested. And uh you know there's all different kinds of nuts.
Like I did want to show this in the demo cause it is kind of cool. so these are walnuts...oh
yeah here we go...*cracks nuts with palms*...so how many people have seen red walnuts before
(to audience). On the inside. So these are really cool so I mean this can add a different
color to your dressing. I always like to try new and exotic different food because every
different food especially in different colors may have different vita chemicals vita nutrients
so these are actually hybrid style not GMO or anything and uh yeah but these are red
so I like these a lot. Mmm. But yeah fresher the nuts the better. And uh yeah...we got
some extra dressing of this so I'll pour this out (pours out carafe).
Audience: how long does the dressing last? John: so generally what I do is like I make
enough dressing for my one salad that evening so I won't make like big batches. Like every
night when I'm making a salad I'll make just enough dressing for that salad at night and
I don't like to save my dressings. Sometimes I'll pour the dressing over the salad and
on rare instances like I can't eat the whole salad and then I'll actually uh put the whole
salad with the dressing and put it in the fridge and then eat it you know for lunch
tomorrow but yeah once again I wanna only make as much as I'm gonna eat at that point
because then you know once you start oxidizing these things especially with the blender you
want to consume it right after you make it and so it has the most you know nutrition
in it. I guess uh let's switch gears here a little
bit and let's do a non-fat dressing or a....this recipe here is very easy I'm just going to add the mangos
these are just fresh mangos that I cut up. And I always like to put the mangos in first
to get them blended up. That way it's going to work better inside the blender. Then add
in the bell peppers and then we're just gonna add some bell peppers. So this is like one
to one ratio one man one bell pepper. And you can do this that's still kind of plain
for me though. What I like to do to spice it up a little is I actually add a little
bit of a hot pepper. So you could use some cayenne pepper and these are actually some
peppers that I grew we're going to remove the seeds because with the seeds it's gonna
be crazy hot. And we're just gonna put a little piece in there and see uh hopefully that'll
be hot enough for you guys. Not too spicy. Guys like that one? (to audience) that one's
the garlic tahini. Alright so this is the non-fat one and yeah you can add nuts if you
want some more texture in there but you know many people want it a low-fat thing so this
is a option. And you know if you don't got bell pepper that's alright use some mangos
and some tomatoes just the other day I made a salad and I didn't even have a blender and
I didn't wanna use the blender so I diced up the mango and the peppers and I just added
them to my collard greens and that was my salad. Three ingredients. Collard greens,
tomatos, mangos. And it was absolutely great. Another night I did the same exact thing but
then I added just a little bit of sauerkraut to it and without even blending it although
you know I'd prefer to blend it. So let's blend this guy up! And if you want
to go thicker you just add some dehydrate mango or freeze dried mango if you really
want a kick! Or you can add some like dehydrated pepper without adding an extra ingredient
so many times I like to add the same ingredient in a different form like a dried form to make
it thicker if I want more of a thicker texture. I tend to like my dressings thicker than thinner.
I recommend the vitamixed turbo blend it does the best job in fractionating the stuff really
well. This next one is a pretty easy one to make.
What we are going to use first is the carrot juice. We got some fresh carrot juice here.
Audience: how do you make the juice? John: the carrot juice, you just use carrots,
no water added, all fruits and all foods. You can use water as a base but that will
change the flavor. So once again we got the carrots in here we're
just gonna add some of avocado to it so this is another really easy one here and uh so
this would technically be a nut free dressing. And but the avocado still do have fat. I do
like the avocados actually instead of using nuts 'cause I like to eat water-rich fats.
They tend to digest better for me. So the avocados will actually act as a thickener
but not as good as the nuts. (to the audience) how do you guys like those dressings so far?
Audience: GOOD... John: you can do it too! Once again you can
use substitutes things if you don't have carrot juice you can use cucumber juice and that
will be more of a mild flavor. You might want to add some kind of seasoning agent maybe
some sauerkraut or Italian seasoning or something like that. So once again I'd like to encourage
you guys to use more whole foods specifically fruits and vegetables in your salad dressing
so you could maximize the best and most nutritious foods on earth in my opinion. We're going
to add some sauerkraut and add some flavor some cool flavor to this. Let's go ahead and
blend this one up in the nutribullet it's not a blender! Alright we got a good creamy
consistency here. So I think uh that's going to be pretty much the end of my demo. If you
have any questions on uh any of the recipes that I made tonight or any other questions
uh basically to sum it up you know the dressings really easy to make, you want to use whole
food ingredients, number one you got the base, which is the majaority of the mixture then
you got your thickener I use nuts and seeds, avacodo, and I used the bell pepper as a thickener
which you can also use, or zucchini can be a thickener cause you know it's pretty neutral
wouldn't necessarily use cucumber as a thickener cause it's going to add a lot of extra water
content. Got your thickener and then you just got your flavor. So a little bit of flavoring
agent whether you're using some seaweeds some uh miso some Italian seasoning. I mean there's
all different kinds of seasoning if you want a Mexican style dressing you get the Mexican
seasoning you know Sprouts Farmers market actually has a pretty good section of spices
you could just buy by the little bag here you just get a little bit of to try it you
can try the pizza seasoning the Italian or the Mexican one. Just start playing with all
different kinds of ingredients. I give you permission to experiment in the house and
have some fun. By making mistakes through trial and error you will learn the most, in
my opinion. Audience: you mentioned you were going to
make a pizza spice-dressing John: my thousand island style dressing! Add
tomatoes and pell peppers (base), add some nuts (macadamia maybe), and then add some
pizza seasoning to it, I might add some sauerkraut miso or seaweed or some salty stuff to get
some flavor. Audience: do you have the recipes written
somewhere? John: oh yeah thank you! So uh I don't all
the recipes I made I just like every night when I make a dressing it's like I take any
ingredients that I have that I can use and I just make something up on the spot. But
if you do want a few of my recipes you know most of them don't get written down but I
just make them on the spot I mean I made some of the ones I made for you guys but I never
make the exact same proportions because I never measure anything but what I did do a
while back is I actually did come up with a little book and this booklet has over thirty
mouth-watering recipes and it does have a small section of some of my dressings, the
macadamia nut dressing, that I talked about, it has a berry coconut water dressing, a mango
bell pepper dressing, a macadamia miso dressing, and mango curry dressing, orange almond dressing,
nine hundred ninety nine isle dressing, which is the dressing that I actually just told
you. In addition it includes main a=entrees. All these recipes are based on fruits and
vegetables nuts and seeds that's the bases without adding a lot of processed foods I
don't ever include in my diet. These are all recipes that at the time which was six years
ago now I did eat and I still eat many of those ones or variants of them today and I
have those available I only have a few left actually for five dollars. So you can see
me afterwards and I do have a website it's okraw.com. which is where I do an online education.
So I currently have over twelve hundred videos that have been viewed over fifteen million
times. Many of those videos may have recipes in them uh but also they'll teach you a lot
of different concepts in my teachings that I've learned over these eighteen years of
being raw, I have about two hundred and fifty videos on the raw foods I have over seven
hundred videos on growing food many of which actually I had to grown in las vegas. We should
all be growing our own food that is the most natural way to eat, in my opinion. And I also have a third youtube channel
which is called rawfoods. I made a commitment when I was sick, when
I was younger, to live in service and do something more with my life. This way I feel like I
can really help people because I am grateful to be alive and here talking to you today.
Any more questions? How did everybody like all the dressings?
Audience: it was excellent *clapping hands* John initiates voting: everyone vote for one
of these, so if you liked the first one the orange macadamia nut the best! Raise your
hand. Few people. Wow. If you liked the miso chickpea garlic one
raise your hand. That's winning so far. And if you liked the um no fat mango bell
pepper with a little bit of hot pepper raise your hand. Some people liked that too.
And if you liked the last one carrot avocado the best raise your hand. Wow so we got a
really good spread, everybody liked at least one of them the most. Hopefully I think everybody
voted. But yeah wow man that's impressive everybody liked that.
Audience: what if you liked them all? John: haha, if you liked them all *raises
hand* So I hope this was a good use of your time
so you can now go home and make more whole food based salad dressings and eat more fresh
fruits and fresh vegetables in your life so you can be healthier. Thank you.
*clapping* John outside: wow! I must say I am really
impressed with you guys! Thank you for watching this video to the end! In my past statistics
that I checked out and analytics on youtube you know just a small percentage of people
watch my videos to the end and I think that's really sad because you know in my opinion
my videos are action-packed full and chunk-full of information and knowledge that can help
you live a healthier lifestyle. So if you enjoyed this video I want you to thumbs up
this video to let others know that you liked it and they should hopefully watch it to the
end as well. And in any case be sure to also subscribe to my youtube channel because besides
videos like this I put out videos all the time. That will really teach you the nuts
and bolts on how to eat a healthy plant based raw foods diet. Any case, uh once again my
name is john Cola with okraw.com we'll see you next time and remember keep eating your
fresh fruits and vegetables they're the best.