Nama Raw Food Restaurant

A while ago I (Katie) went to Nama, a raw vegan restaurant in Notting Hill, with three of my lovely friends Lucy, Frankie and Georgie. This was my first trip to a fully raw vegan restaurant - very exciting!

Having been a vegetarian pretty much my entire life, it was a new (and really amazing) experience for me to be able to pick absolutely anything from the menu - usually I just give it a quick scan for the little v sign.. Anyway, so Nama had me at the menu. There is a huge choice of a range of different foods, from wraps and salads to pizzas, curries and spaghetti dishes - and ALL the food is unprocessed, free from dairy, wheat and refined sugar.

I had the 'Italian Pizza'. The base was made from courgette and walnuts and it had the most delicious tomato sauce topped with a nut and seed 'cheese', caramelised onions, mushrooms, olives and sun dried tomatoes. It was amazing.

The Italian Pizza

Frankie had chilli which was made from walnuts, carrot, mushroom and pepper, with guacamole, vegan sour cream and corn chips - so yummy!

Frankie's chilli

Lucy and Georgie went for zucchini pasta with tomato sauce, caramelised onions, sun dried tomatoes, olives and mushrooms which was also really yummy (I tried them all..)

Beautiful Lucy with her zucchini pasta

After my unprocessed, raw, vegan pizza I felt like something sweet so I had a lovely little bottle of chocolate nut milk. Frankie ordered the chocolate ganache tart which we all had a little taste of - it genuinely tasted better than any other sugar-filled, processed chocolatey tart I've had in the past; the coconutty base made it incredible.

Chocolate ganache tart

Georgie with her chai tea, almond milk and coconut sugar (she was obsessed with that teapot)

I definitely recommend Nama to anyone who is interested in trying out some amazing raw vegan food!

Raw coco bites

In our opinion, one of the best and easiest ways to stay healthy is to have healthy snacks on hand all the time, so that sudden sugar cravings can't catch you off guard, resulting in you raiding your cupboard for those old sweets left over from Christmas (come on we've all been there). 

So, we wanted to make something that we could put in a little tuppawear and carry around (to work , on journeys etc) or keep in the fridge for an afternoon sweetness fix. If you have a crazy sweet tooth like I do, but still want to eat nourishing, natural wholefoods, these coco bites are for you! They’re also so so quick and easy to make, with very few ingredients, so you can whip them up on a Sunday afternoon and your sweet snack for the week is sorted.

They also look really cute so are great to serve with cups of tea when friends pop over, or put in sweet little packages and give as gifts. 

Ingredients:

12 medjool dates
125g almonds
3 tbsps coco powder/raw cacao powder
Coconut sugar to roll the bites in (optional)

Method:

Soak the dates for half an hour to an hour so that they’re really soft for blending.
Remove the stones (do not forget to do this I (Katie) have made this mistake before and it was a terrible experience).
Blend the almonds, but not so much that they form a smooth flour, you want to have them a sort of gravel-like consistency.
Add the dates to the blended almonds and blend until they form a sticky paste.
Add the coco/cacao powder to the mixture. Obviously, the more cacao you add the more chocolatey they will be so feel free to add more! Nothing can ever be too chocolatey..
Roll the mixture into bite-sized balls and then roll them in the coconut sugar if you like, but this is completely optional. we made half with and half without and both tasted great. I’d say if you have less of a sweet tooth, go without.

Let them set in the freezer for about half an hour and then enjoy your natural little sugar kick!

Blueberry and Banana Muffins

Baking is such a fun rainy day activity, but it can be hard to keep it natural and healthy. These yummy little treats are naturally gluten and dairy free and don't contain loads of weird ingredients that are hard to get hold of.

The muffins are seriously good and the blueberries make them lovely and gooey. You essentially make your own flour by blending almonds, oats and ground flaxseed - which is pretty fun!

Anyway, here are the ingredients we used to make 15 muffins:

• 85g oats
• 150g almonds (or ground almonds could be easier)
• 85g ground Flaxseed
• 4 ripe bananas
• 85g raisins (we used dried cranberries as Katie has an irrational hatred of raisins)
• 250g fresh blueberries 
• 180ml apple juice 
• 240ml water
• 6tbsp organic honey
• 2tsp cinnamon

Method:

If you have a food processor, put the almonds, oats and ground flaxseed in it and blend until it is nice and smooth. I don't, so I ground the almonds in a pestle and mortar (so old school, you might want to buy ground almonds instead) and then put those, the oats and the flaxseed in a blender and it worked just fine!

Add your homemade flour (be proud) to a mixing bowl, then slice the bananas into it. Next add the water, apple juice, honey and cinnamon and whisk into a smooth muffin mixture.

When this is done, stir in the raisins/any dried berry and the blueberries, pour into muffin cases in a muffin tray and bake for about 40 minutes.

Hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Happy baking x

Banana Honey Nut Granola

We absolutely adore granola - it's genuinely what gets us out of bed most mornings. So we've come up with another little granola recipe working in some of our favourite ingredients; almond butter, banana, and honey.

We love making homemade granola because often shop bought varieties are packed with unnecessary sugar - and I know this granola still has sugar in it, but it is much more natural and unrefined (in the form of the banana and organic honey) which is better than any processed rubbish.

Ingredients:

400g oats

1 large banana

2 tbsps almond butter

2 tbsps honey (can be replaced with date syrup)

3 tbsps melted coconut oil

100g nuts (we used a mix of walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 125˚C.

2. Mash the banana in a small bowl.

3. Add the oats and nuts into a large mixing bowl, and then add the almond butter, honey, mashed banana, and coconut oil and mix it well so that no oats are left at the bottom of the bowl.

4. Line a baking tray with some more coconut oil and spread the mixture evenly.

5. Bake for 30 minutes, but after the first 15 minutes turn it around with a spoon so that it doesn't turn into a granola bar.

6. Leave to cool and set so it becomes crunchy.

Our favourite thing at the moment is having it with banana 'ice cream' (frozen bananas blended with almond milk and raw cacao powder).

Yummyyyy!

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We're sisters/best buds who love all things healthy. On this blog, we want to share our favourite recipes, restaurant recommendations, and exercises routines. We think looking after our bodies is vital for living life to the fullest so we hope to show how easy and fun healthy living can be!