What better treat to enjoy while walking around Florence then a gelato!
I highly recommend a stop at ‘Edoardo gelato biologico’ (not only is it organic ice cream… but it has VEGAN options too!!!) it is near il duomo.
and this concludes my Florence posts 🙂
if you missed the others find them here:
Florence, Piazzale Michelangelo, Piazza della Signoria, Il Duomo
If you go I would love to hear what you liked and disliked about Florence 
~Lisa
My daughter turned 4 last week; and she requested a pink treat.
So I came up with this: banana raspberry ice cream pie / cake
Before you start you want to peel and freeze bananas at least 8 … I like to freeze them for about 4 hours … otherwise they get rock hard frozen and are harder to blend into a smooth ice-cream ( but this would depend on your freezer )
Then you want to make the crust and throw that in the freezer as well
Crust ingredients ( place the following in a food processor and mix well )
Check for the consistency … you want to be able to shape it and not for it to crumble … so if it is too soft add more nuts… if too crumbly add some coconut oil or maple syrup. (but be carful as just a teaspoon can be all you need )
Shape into small pies for individual servings or a big pie and place in freezer for an hour or more.
Once the bananas are ready blend them with frozen raspberries. I love the taste of this ; as the bananas are sweet and the raspberries take the sweetness down. I usually add enough raspberries so that it is not too sweet … probably about 1 – 2 cup full of raspberries
Once blended take the pie crust out … fill it up and place it back in the freezer for a bit to get the ice-cream filling to harden a little…
and the you are all set 🙂
~ENJOY
I had extra ice-cream left over which was delicious without the crust as well.
Lisa
Today I will talk about my OCD with food
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| organic bananas, grapes and strawberries |
I have a crazy obsession about organic food ( and that is putting it very lightly )
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| organic apple orchard |
My food journey started long ago … having been vegetarian, I was already in a state of heighten awareness as to what I was eating … and then I got married and we started to try to get pregnant and I suffered many miscarriages and with each loss I researched everything from food to toxic chemicals around me and cleaning products and well the list doesn’t end… (will talk about the other stuff in future posts) but for this post I will stick to food.
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| organic salad |
I discovered that food that was not certified organic contained terrible stuff. Chemicals that no one should be near, much less inhale or consume. This was really scary to me, coming from an italian farmer family… who’s passion was all about gardening, growing and cultivating foods.
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| yup, that’s me and my dad |
Through 10 + years of personal research, I can no longer walk into a grocery store the same as I did 10 years ago.
The items that are sold in a grocery store are not meant to be eaten, but sadly that is what is sold and that is what people buy. I have weaned myself and my family off of all foods that are not organic… and very importantly GMOs . If you don’t already know what GMOs are, I strongly encourage you to drop everything you are doing and go research it… and I am not kidding… they are extremely dangerous and they are basically hidden in the foods that are sold in your local grocery store. One way to avoid GMOs is to buy certified organic, or look for the non gmo project seal.
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| organic cherry tomatoes |
You know the old saying “you are what you eat” … well, you are infact what you eat … the foods that go in your system affect you.
a few strong quotes that I really like :
“the longer the shelf life the shorter yours ”
“the way we eat has changed more dramatically in the past 50 years than in the previous 10 000 years.”
“you can chose sickcare, or healthcare ”
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” ~Hippocrates
“Our bodies are our gardens – our wills are our gardeners.” ~William Shakespeare
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| raw organic almonds |
No, we do NOT eat out very often … in fact I can probably count the number of times we eat out in a year. We don’t order pizza on a friday night or go to any fast food restaurants, and YES it isn’t easy … with so many ready to eat meal ideas at the grocery store and so many conveniently located fast food restaurants … making the choice to eat ‘real’ food is quite challenging. But with small changes every day … they all add up and help in a big way.
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| at an organic apple orchard |
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| boys picking organic apples |
Educating my kids about what they eat and the choices they make is very important to me … and seeing all this pay off, when they are offered junk food and they decline to take / eat it is a proud parenting moment for me.
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| brussel sprouts |
So, yes we are vegetarian … but our diet isn’t just about NOT eating meat but also about eating REAL foods … that do not contain any unwanted stuff.
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| homemade veggie burger on homemade bun |
So what do we eat ? well , we eat loads of greens and vegetables ( kale, spinach, chard, broccolli, carrots, kholorabi, cauliflower, salad, potatoes, cabbage, and so many more) fruits ( avocadoes, tomaotoes, bananas, and all the other typical fruits ) we also eat LOADS of nuts ( walnuts, cashews, pecans, and my husband makes awesome breakfasts with nuts in muffins and other yummy treats, (will post more awesome stuff my husband cooks in later posts ). we also eat lots of quinoa, pasta as well as tons of different beans ( chickpeas, black, kidney, lentils, pinto, ect ) .
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| pasta and veggies |
Our diet changes seasonly, depending on what is available or in season.
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| organic asparagus |
We are not very main stream, if you haven’t noticed yet 😉
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| hot oatmeal |
If anything, with this post, I hope that I have opened your eyes to food and what you are eating… and if you read this and you have already begun this journey of searching for real food like we have been doing, or if you have “slight” organic ocd like I do 😉 I love connecting with like minded people, so drop me a message 🙂
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| organic green and red apples |
go check out my friends’ newest blog about real food recipes here
and this one, healthy family is really awesome as well
please do share your blog if you are a real foodie too 🙂
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| yum |
till next time
Lisa
the information above is by no means health advice, and I am not a doctor, I am a MOM and a concerned shopper … and these are my points of view from reaserch that I have done over many, many years.
i am tired
wow… not sure what I have thrown myself into … I was on blogspot and it was so simple… but wanted a more personalized feeling… and so I have entered the wordpress world… and just getting this blog to look the way I want seems to be taking me forever.
