Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Green Smoothies = Energy, Vitality, Radiance

I must admit, I am a smoothie snob. Somewhat equivalent to royalty thinking in that I think the smoothies I make are better than most others I've tried. In fact I have yet to try someone else's and think, 'wow, why don't I do that?' I've been making Superfood smoothies loaded with special ingredients (medicinal herbal teas, potent extracts, raw cacao, goji berries, acai, MSM, vitamin E tocotrienols and virtually all of HealthForce's superfood powders), for breakfast for several years (and not really recognizing this as a staple of the living foods community) and gladly share my tasty recipes. My weakness is creating excellent Green Smoothies. I've always felt I have enough of a variety and enough green in my repertoire already - but I'm so wrong! There can always be more. Although there is some 'green' in ALL my smoothies (typically 2 T Vitamineral Green and 1 T Spirulina - all by HealthForce), I rarely, until recently have gotten into the making of green vegetable smoothies. Although, I do occasionally add parsley, romaine and spinach, it's usually a green powder, more often than not. I have been inspired by the Green Smoothie Blog (see favorites to your right) and dashed out today to get everything I'd need to whip one up when I returned. Here's what I made, and enjoy yourself!

2 small mangos
2 bananas
7 fresh strawberries
2 handfuls of fresh spinach
1 pitted medjool date
1 T Azteca Spirulina (HealthForce)
splash of water to blend easily

This is a beginner's version. I got excited about spinach today but I do make these wonderful green concoctions with rainbow chard and kale a lot of the time. I still like to add the green powders because they are a staple to my way of living. All of this has gotten me so revved up that I am starting to plan a Green Smoothie Cleanse. My main reason is that I really haven't been as hungry as I usually am (how could that be? I'm Italian always ready to munch on something - aahhh, but that's all changing these days!) and I can tell my body is ready for a break. I've also been eating way too many nuts and reach for these when prepared living dishes seem too complex to make and I have 'nothing' handy, even though there's plenty of food in the fridge (comfort in a time of stress anyone?). With this change of season and a green partner in prevention (of all things 'bad'), there's no better time. I'm shooting for a 5 day break from anything unless it's GREEN, from Nov 1 - 5. My birthday is on the 6th (I'll be 31), and I'm looking forward to making an apple crisp with crumble topping and vanilla creme and cacao maca ice cream on top, so the cleanse must end before this indulgence. Birthdays are for celebrating - and it will be my first raw birthday! I was going to say, first living birthday' - because I like that term somewhat better - but that sounds really funny!

Note: I have never done an all-green smoothie cleanse, and will be blogging daily about my experience and what I'm eating!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Cacao withdrawals and conscious language

I took a break from cacao and goji berries the last 5 days and all I could think about that entire time was how much I missed them! It was an involuntary break- I ran out and was waiting to purchase them locally from Raw Vegan Source, the largest raw and vegan superstore in the U.S., which fortunately for me is just a short drive away. My boyfriend Mike and I took a class there last night on Conscious Language and spent hundreds of dollars on foods that I wish every single person on the planet ate. He wanted to participate in the class (as did I), but all I could think about on the way and once there was grabbing every product off the shelf as if I had been living on an island without access to fresh foods and superfoods for years and this was my reuniting with them.

Some of the fascinating phrases and thoughts we heard last night (really think about these!):

Genes have nothing to do with you.
It's the Biology of Belief, not genes.
Do you choose to be conscious?
The illusion is about ready to be transformed.
Battle the darkness.
100% of what is going on in our current world is agreed to.
What are we going to wake up to & what are we going to do with it?
Our greater self is right here, right now!
Be in your consciousness of grace.
My greatest weakness is becoming my greatest strength.
Inspire each other to accept your authority and genius.
If you know the truth of something, you have the power over it.
Pain happens, hurt is optional.
What is it going to take for me to be consistently successful every time?

What to say to yourself on a DAILY BASIS?
I AM living my life!
I reclaim my own life!

Say what your new choice is until you FEEL IT IN YOUR BODY!

VOTE VICTORY for others! See perfection in others and this will support them in seeing it themselves.

Getting back to chocolate...

I am convinced that cacao is an appetite suppressant and slimming for the body, and chocolate expert David Wolfe could explain much better why this is, but I know it to be true. It's not that I gained weight in these last 5 days, but I definitely felt a difference in my body and craved much more food than I usually do, and cooked food, which is rare (pasta, pizza). When I 'give in' I realize just how much it just doesn't work for me anymore! The pleasure and taste is nothing like it used to be. I do admit to eating raw chocolate every day and it's just part of the routine, nothing I put much thought into until it's gone, and I'm suffering (could I be addicted?!) and feeling more bloated and puffy as a result of the choices I've made in this short time.

This is the super delicious smoothie I've made this morning that keeps me feeling great until later in the day. For dinner we'll have fresh greens (maybe even w/out washing them to get some needed B12) that we picked from Raw Vegan Source (they have an amazing permaculture garden) and who knows what else. Please try this at home!

4 cups water (half of which could be coconut water)
2 T raw cacao powder
2 T raw cacao nibs
1 T pine nuts
1 cup raw cashews
6 dates, pitted
2 tsp hemp seeds
2 tsp chia seeds
1 tsp local bee pollen
1 tsp coconut oil
1/2 cup blueberries or 3/4 cups blackberries (experiment w/ local fruits)
1/4 cup dark agave
1/4 tsp Himalayan pink crystal salt
1 T Vitamineral Greens
2 tsp MSM powder
2 tsp Maca Force
1 tsp Truly Vitamin C
small handful goji berries
small handful Incan berries
1 tsp angstrom calcium
1 droppersful Ocean's Alive Marine Phytoplankton

Blend really well. If you don't have every single ingredient, make it anyway!

I also added a droppersful of a tonic called RenewU - from The Herbalist, a local apothecary with excellent formulations (RenewU contains: milk thistle, Oregon grape, dandelion root, burdock root, yellow dock, cleavers, wild indigo, fennel, ginger).

CHILL and serve cold. YUMMY!

Monday, October 6, 2008

When it rains, it pours, and superfoods save the day

Have you ever been confronted with wondering if things happen for a reason? When it’s a dark moment and you can’t imagine it getting much worse .. can goji berries really make you happy?

When it rains, it pours, really downpours. That's a wrap-up of the last few weeks. Will superfoods save the day? If life gets out of control, do superfoods make a difference and bring you (and all your problems) back into balance? Goji berries, maca, acai, greens, raw chocolate? I certainly can’t fathom what it would be like to be under these circumstances and not be eating the way I am: full of fresh, live, organic, goodness and lots of supercharged superfoods. They strengthen my resilience and allow dilemmas to be more manageable, although I must admit the storms of life are still present. Does that sound crazy? Well, who is more likely to resort to emotional eating, overeating, and falling back into the trap of eating heavy, cooked, 'comfort' foods - the nutritionally depleted, adrenal exhausted, nervous wreck, or the raw superfood fueled, powered and energized, super-woman?

Here’s a shortened version of the current scenario. I woke up a couple days after leaving Sedona to a complete nightmare. I came to understand that my entire website was down, deleted, gone - where was it? No content was on the site, just a blank white page with some short coding about text not being found. And, to make matters even better, I was on the road driving back home to Seattle with varied cell reception from the Mojave Desert to Mount Shasta - thereby making it extremely difficult to deal with via phone (and can't do it on a laptop that has multiple viruses and the internet is shot), although critically urgent (feel like my world is ending kind of urgency). Remember this exact fear I had of this happening when I was transferring hosting companies weeks ago (what would I do if my website were all of a sudden gone - is that even possible - yes, it is, I am here to demonstrate this for you)? Yes, believe me, I've already thought, did I bring this on myself? Am I applying the Law of Attraction that well in my life? I've always had to learn lessons 'the hard way'. NEVER the easy way - that's just not my life plan. Oh, and not to mention, my website traffic has soared as a result of Raw Spirit, which is AMAZING, but only when you have a live working website for your potential and current customers to view!

Several days ago, I woke up to this issue happening AGAIN. How could this be? It is some horrible practical joke that went awry? After completely re-securing my site and database... we/they still have no idea how it occurred in the first place. My computer/tech team tell me they've never seen this in all the years they have been doing what their doing. That made me feel fabulous. My answer then, seeing as though I am getting no assistance from them, is to do it all myself - completely redesign and recreate an entire new website - in a matter of days on my own. But how do I do that without the content from the previous site? There are sooo many information-filled pages... (sniff, sniff). It feels quite overwhelming and it's been somewhat challenging at times to stay positive. My 'previous' site took months to build and once it went live, I slaved over it for several more months so it would give the essence of healing when you arrived. Believe me, it's been devastating, and there's really no better word to describe it than that.

I am one of those people that believes things happen for a reason. There is a silver lining: I've been wanting to make some changes to my site but have been having difficulties with accessing to do so, and therefore outsourcing work to a 'professional' who could do it for me (needless waste of $$$). As an entrepreneur, especially as a woman, we want to do everything all on our own, because really, who is going to do it better, or at least exactly how you want and need it to get done? Now, I will have complete control of my site, editing, designing, ... and everything else from start to finish - and I can do it without sending detailed emails back and forth to someone who has no idea of what I'm trying to embody.

I want to emphasize the power of food and its' effects on attitude and perspective. These few weeks have brought on stress that would make the Standard American come close to giving up in one way or another. Powered by superfoods and live foods, I've become more of a bull-dozer, knocking obstacles out of the way. Live foods now equal hope for me, whereas I had not really made this connection much before. That is something to really think about.

To look at the bright side of things, I want to share with you a recipe that got pulled together quite randomly and is now an evening staple!

everything is raw and organic with no official measurements:

few handfuls of sunflower seeds
hemp seeds (couple tbsp or so)
squeeze of lemon
small chunk of fresh ginger
clove of garlic
few pieces of dulse
nama shoyu
nutritional yeast
little water - just enough to get the processor moving and mixing into a creamy pate

Add a red pepper for flavor

Mix in food processor until it's well-blended. Spread with Lydia's Organics green crackers, in romaine lettuce boats, nori rolls, collard wraps and as a dip with fresh market veggies. Delicious!

IF YOU WANT TO PLACE AN ORGANIC HEALING SKINCARE ORDER, PLEASE CALL: 206.362.0520 or email me: HealingOrganically@gmail.com. Thank you so much for your understanding while I resolve this issue quickly.