Embracing My Health

Dandelion Greens

I’ve tried creating dandelion greens smoothies before and have thrown away entire batches. Today, I found and made one (after harvesting aka “weeding” some lush dandelions growing in my front yard). I gave a small glass of it to my husband, Paul, who said: “It tastes summery.” It’s the lemon that does it, I’m sure. But as I type, I’m sipping down this smoothie and it is yummy!

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch dandelion greens (I used 6-8 large leaves)
• 1 med lemon (peeled)
• 2 apples
• 1 banana
• 2 cups of water
• cinnamon to taste
• a little stevia to taste
• pinch of kelp (optional)

And blend!

Posted for Evan.  Evan mentioned he’s been interested in trying raw food and has been debating about either adding in raw foods or going “gung-ho.”  Like I told Evan, for many people, going gung-ho can actually be too hard on the body. I’d suggest starting by adding in green smoothies each day. I’ve discovered this myself and have read again and again… Raw food is a journey. Definitely start by adding in raw foods. As you transition more and more to raw food will definitely change your health and how you feel. That’s been my experience (in a big way!). Thanks Evan for your comment! Keep me posted on what you do and how it works for you.

For a more in depth conversation on green smoothies and their health benefits, I highly recommend reading Victoria’s book Green for Life.

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As the Russian proverb says: New- is something old, that has been long forgotten. This summer I re-discovered green smoothies. What do I mean by green smoothie? Here is one of my favorite recipes: 4 ripe pears, 1 bunch of parsley and 1 big cup of water. Blended well. This smoothie looks very green, but it tastes like fruit. I like green smoothies so much that I bought an extra blender and placed it in my office, so that I could make green smoothies throughout the day. More than half of all the food I’ve had in last several months have been green smoothies. I have so much more energy and clarity that I have removed green juices from my diet. (Juicing has been something that I’ve been doing regularly for years.) Green smoothies have numerous benefits for human health.

1. Green smoothies are very nutritious. I believe that the ratio in them is optimal for human consumption: about 60% – ripe organic fruit mixed with about 40% – organic green vegetables.

2. Green smoothies are easy to digest. When blended well, all the valuable nutrients in these fruits and veggies become homogenized, or divided into such small particles that it becomes easy for the body to assimilate these nutrients, the green smoothies literally start to get absorbed in your mouth.

3. Green smoothies, as a posed to juices, are a complete food because they still have fiber.

4. Green smoothies belong to the most palatable dishes for all humans of all ages. With a ratio of fruits to veggies as 60:40 the fruit taste dominates the flavor, yet at the same time the green vegetables balance out the sweetness of the fruit, adding nice zest to it. Green smoothies are simply the best tasting dishes for the majority of adults and children. I always make extra smoothie and offer it to my friends and customers. Some of them eat a standard American diet. They all finished their big cup of green smoothies with complements. They were quite surprised that something so green could taste so nice and sweet.

5. By consuming two or three cups of green smoothies daily you will consume enough of greens for the day to nourish your body, and they will be well assimilated. Many people do not consume enough of greens, even those who stay on a raw food diet. The molecule of chlorophyll has only one atom that makes it different from a molecule of human blood. According to teachings of Dr. Ann Wigmore, to consume chlorophyll is like receiving a healthy blood transfusion.

6. Green smoothies are easy to make, and quick to clean up after. Many people told me that they do not consume green juices on a regular basis because it is time consuming to prepare green juices and clean the equipment after juicing, or to drive to the juice bar.

7. Green smoothies are perfect food for children of all ages, including babies of six or more months old when introducing new food to them after mother’s milk. Of course you have to be careful and slowly increase the amount of smoothies to avoid food allergies.

8. When you consume your greens in the form of green smoothies, you can greatly reduce the consumption of oils and salt in your diet.

9. Regular consumption of Green smoothies forms a good habit of eating greens. Several people told me that after a couple of weeks of drinking green smoothies, they started to crave and enjoy eating more greens. Eating enough of green vegetable is often a problem with many people, especially in children.

10. Green smoothies can easily be freshly made at any juice bar, restaurant or health food store for the great convenience of health-oriented customers. Please bring a copy of this article to your local juice bar.

I encourage the readers of this article to start playing with green smoothies, and to discover the many joys and benefits of this wonderful delicious and nutritious addition to the menu. Here are more ideas for your green creations. Some of my favorite greens to add to green smoothies: parsley, spinach, celery, kale and romaine. My favorite fruits for green smoothies are: pears, peaches, nectarines, bananas, mangoes and apples. Strawberries and raspberries taste superb in green smoothies, when combined with ripe bananas.

Delicious Combinations To Get You Started

Mango-parsley
2 large mangos
1 bunch parsley
Water

Peach-spinach
6 peaches
2 handfuls of spinach leaves
Water

Mango-weeds
2 mangos
1 handful of lambs quarters, stinging nettles, purslane, etc
Water

Strawberry-banana-romaine
1-cup strawberries
2 bananas
1/2 bunch romaine
Water

Apple-kale-lemon
4 apples
1/2 lemon juice
4-5 leaves of kale
Water

Kiwi-banana-celery
4 very ripe kiwis
1 ripe banana
3 stalks of celery
Water

Pear-kale-mint
4 ripe pears
4-5 leaves of kale
1/2 bunch of mint
Water

Finger banana-spinach
10 finger-bananas
2 handfuls of spinach leaves
Water

Bosc pear-raspberry-kale
3 bosc pears
1 handful of raspberries
4-5 leaves of kale
Water
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Victoria Boutenko teaches classes on raw food at South Oregon University and, as a result of her teachings, many raw food communities have been formed throughout the world. Victoria and her family have lived on a 100% raw food diet for nine years and all four have cured their incurable diseases. The transformation of Victoria’s family to raw food is described in her book, Raw Family. Victoria is also the author of 12 Steps to Raw Foods. Her two children have written a book containing delicious raw food recipes called Eating without Heating. Visit Victoria’s site at http://www.rawfamily.com

This recipe, I confess to not having tried yet. I plan to make it this week. It’s a popular one and Carol Alt – who includes it in her book, The Raw 50 — says it’s a favorite of hers.

• 3 cups raw pine nuts
• 3⁄4 cup cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil
• 2 whole lemons, zested, then peeled and quartered
• 1 medium shallot
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 2 teaspoons whole black peppercorns
• 1 garlic clove
• 3⁄4 cup purified water
• Salt to taste
• 1 medium or 2 small red beets
• 3⁄4 cup fresh tarragon leaves
• Cracked pepper to taste

Directions

• Soak the pine nuts in enough purified water to cover them for 1 hour. Drain, put the pine nuts in a food processor, and add the olive oil, lemon quarters, shallot, and zest. Process for about 8 minutes until the mixture is well combined and clumps together.
• Pour half of this mixture into a blender and set the rest aside. Add the yeast and 1 teaspoon of the peppercorns to the mixture in the blender and blend on medium speed for 2 minutes, until thick and smooth. Transfer the “goat cheese” to a bowl and refrigerate, uncovered, for 1 hour.
• Meanwhile, place the reserved pine nut mixture in the blender. Add the remaining teaspoon of peppercorns, the garlic, and the water, and blend on high speed for 1 minute, until smooth but quite liquid. Add the salt, and set the sauce aside.
• Roughly chop the tarragon and fold 1/2 cup of the leaves into the cheese once the cheese has completely chilled. Add salt to taste.
• Peel the beets and slice paper-thin. Lay out half of the slices on a clean surface. Spoon about 1 tablespoon of the cheese onto each slice, then top each with a second beet slice. Arrange on a baking sheet in a single layer, sprinkle with salt, then store in the refrigerator.

To serve, pour the sauce onto a deep serving platter and arrange the ravioli on top. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup of tarragon leaves, and salt and cracked pepper.

Paul, my husband, sent an email to a work colleague who is battling cancer.  Here’s that email.  I’ll expound on each of his points below in posts to follow over the next few days, but this is a great introduction on how and why nutrition makes all the difference in our health – whether it be improved general well-being to battling disease.  So without further ado…   I present guest blogger: Paul Moment.

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DON’T let the final word on this cancer come from the doctors. Seriously. I strongly encourage you to, along with the doctors advice, take matters into your own hands and educate yourselves on alternatives and supportive regimes.

Specifically, raw food. Janece has been getting us into raw food and the anecdotal results are pretty startling. She just read me some stories tonight about raw food’s effect on cancer – specifically gynecological cancer and advanced leukemia in the stories we read. (Editorial note: These case studies can be found in Carol Alt’s The Raw 50: 10 Amazing Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, Snacks, and Drinks for Your Raw Food Lifestyle.)  In both cases the cancer was neutralized to the point of completely disappearing, while the body’s critical nutritional indexes skyrockets. We personally had a friend with a very aggressive brain tumor who extended her life expectancy from months to almost two years just with nutritional changes, even though she didn’t know about raw food. Again, these are all people with very very serious health issues and the scariest kinds of cancers.

Here’s why Donna (Editorial note: name changed) should strongly consider trying raw food:

1) Nutrition is literally who we are. The only thing our body has to build itself, maintain a internal environment conducive to energetic life, and battle disease is what we take in — food and vitamins. When food is cooked, the important enzymes, fats, and chemical makeup of the food are altered and depleted, leaving our body bereft of the vital compounds it needs for cell building and disease prevention. Cancers exploit damaged and weakened immune systems. An important way to hold back cancer is to build an unfriendly environment for it by increasing the body’s overall vitality. In addition to cancer-fighting, raw food also contributes to healthy hair and skin, reduction or elimination of allergic symptoms and even serious conditions like irritable bowel syndrome etc.

2) Doctors know shockingly little about nutrition and its medicinal importance. I heard a stat once that most doctors only take one nutrition course in their almost decade-long medical training, and most of their ongoing training is in drug therapies – chemicals that can further disable the body’s natural disease fighting abilities. I strongly believe (and I believe the evidence is clear) that food is medicine, and it’s a much more pleasurable medicine than the chemo that Donna is potentially facing. At the very least, I hope she will take it on as a vital part of supporting her return to health, and no doctor is going to tell her to not try and eat healthy during the next months.

3) Raw food contributes to a non-acidic internal composition. In the early 1900s a scientist (Dr. Otto Warburg) won a Nobel prize for his work on how cancer is starved off and rendered much less potent in alkaline blood environments. Meat, sugars, dairy and other foods contribute to highly acidic blood environments (which additionally contributes to systemic inflammation, also problematic) whereas plant-based foods are highly alkalized. This accounts for the startling results that cancer patients have experienced switching to raw food.

4) Raw food is more energy-generating. Raw food is not only rich in all of the vital nutritional compounds, but it also frees the body from taking its own resources to try and milk some nutrition from the food. Having strong nutritional support mitigates stress and anxiety, which I’m sure Jim and Linda are feeling in abundance.

5) Raw food is delicious. It’s pie, lasagna & raviolis, smoothies, juice, sashimi, raw cheese, and tons of other delicious food. I am/have been a meat and potatoes kinda guy, preferring that even to sweet stuff. When I first heard raw food, I imagined bitter skinny people chewing nuts, but it’s really delicious and deeply satisfying – way more than I would have imagined.

Janece and I have been seeing fundamental body results. The anecdotal and study evidence is very compelling. The resources to take on a raw food lifestyle are abundant and well-developed. It’s easy, delicious, quick-acting, and cheaper than drugs. If Donna introduced just raw juice cocktail and greens-based smoothies into her diet, that would be enormously beneficial.

I’m copying Janece on this. She is researching this pretty thoroughly and has a ton of important resources. We’d love to give you any support in this that we can. You have our email.  Janece also has a health blog called “Embracing My Health” – http://www.embracingmyhealth.com. A couple of books we’ve found helpful – “Green for Life” by Victoria Boutenko and ““Eating in the Raw” and “The Raw 50″ by Carol Alt.

Who doesn’t love Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup?  I mean, what’s not to love?  Oh, wait, let’s read the label…

Ingredients:  High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Water, Cocoa, Sugar, Potassium Sorbate – Preservative – 2% or Less, Salt – 2% or Less, Mono and Diglycerides – 2% or Less, Xanthan Gum – 2% or Less, Polysorbate 60 – 2% or Less, Vanillin – Artificial Flavor – 2% or Less

There is three different kinds of sugar in Hershey’s Syrup… the largest amount (as well as the #1 ingredient), high fructose corn syrup, being the absolute worst for you.  Most of us are learning just how bad high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) really is for us.  The word is getting out so much so that the Corn Refiners Association has started putting out advertisements trying to convince you that it is actually natural and good for you.

Don’t buy it.  These ads are akin to the tobacco ads of yore where a kindly and smiling doctor with a stethoscope around his neck advised you smoke a cigarette to reduce stress and improve your health.  Yeah, not so much.

HFCS is used because it is… cheap!  Food manufacturers like cheap because it improves their bottom line.  But, let’s be clear, it does not, will not, and cannot improve your, um, bottom.

There are lots of easy, quick,  and healthier chocolate syrup options out there for you.  Recipes like this one eliminate the HFCS, corn syrup and preservatives and still provide you with a tasty chocolate syrup… that’s cheaper than buying the Hershey’s brown bottle to boot.

And if you want to forgo the sugar but still have your syrup too… there are several raw chocolate syrup recipes out there that are delicious and dangerously close to being… *gasp*… good for you.  Here’s just one example of what I found: (more can be found searching for chocolate sauce recipes online)

The below recipe is sweetened with agave syrup.  Agave is wonderful because of its low-glycemic impact!  A great sweetener option!

Deep Dark Delicious Chocolate Sauce

2 T raw cacao powder, either ground from raw cacao nibs or purchased as powder (I like Nativas Naturals or Green & Black’s.)
2 T raw agave syrup
1/2 t coconut oil or other organic raw nut oil

Mix the agave syrup and the oil or water together.

Slowly whisk (do not use your blender) the raw cacao powder into the agave syrup mixture, mixing it in until well-blended into a smooth sauce. The amount suggested is a rough guideline. How much cacao powder you will ultimately use depends on the consistency you want.

(recipe source: AdventuresInRawFood.com)

Enjoy!!

I picked up The Raw Food Detox Diet from the library. Truthfully, the primary reason I chose this book was because it was the only raw food book in the library at the time.  Turned out to be the right first book for me.  It gave me a starting place to investigate raw food.  Over the last several months, I’ve been increasingly curious about eating raw food and its benefits.  I actually started in on eating some raw food in my day before I read this book.  As I read the book, I found out (lucky me!) that I started as I should… not too fast.  For most people, it’s wise to have raw food be a journey and not something you dive in, head first, into the deep end.  For most, it’s too much of a shock to the system and you’ll end up feeling sick, unhealthy and running away from anything resembling raw food.

Raw food is exceptionally good for you.  But when eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), our bodies are ready for the powerful nutrition, enzymes and detoxifying effects that raw food provides. My biggest take-away from this book: Green Lemonade! I start my day with by juicing a head of romaine, 5-6 leaves of dark green leaves like kale, collards spinach, or wild greens, 2 apples (usually Fuji), and a whole lemon. I vary the combination of these, mostly in what dark greens I use… but follow the general recipe. It is certainly unlike anything you’ve had before, but surprisingly tasty and addicting. And Natalia Rose asserts that you may feel the impact of drinking this on your health from the first day. I would agree. I did!

What I appreciate most about this book is a sense of rationality, of prudence and moderation.  She gets that moving towards our own individual personal health is a personal process.  What one person is ready for, another is not.  She’s gracious and flexible.  Exactly what anyone who is interested in raw food needs to hear.  For a long time, there were many who were not and militancy ruled.  The problem with militancy, it doesn’t woo or invite.   Most often, it sends people running the other direction.

There are times where her regimen for “quit exit” foods, what to combine and don’t combine, and when and how to eat your food throughout the day are daunting.  Don’t let that slow you done.   I’m still learning and I’m not doing everything she outlines to do… and I’m experiencing detoxification, increased health and energy and weight loss.  Every step we take toward more health, is just that… taking us to a place of increased health and well-being.  Our bodies are wonderful that way!

A quick mention regarding the recipes:  I do like the recipes in this book, although if you are going to be eating a fair number of raw meals… don’t plan on this being enough recipes to your menu diverse.

Overall, this is worth reading.  Pick it up at your library.  I checked it out, extended my check out period and then ultimately decided to buy it.  There are big chunks of this book that I’m not sure I agree with.  But, that said, it was a great first book for me to take me further into my raw food journey.

Recommendation: 4 out of 5 stars.

I’m LOVING my green juice breakfasts.  This morning’s breakfast: romaine, celery, parsley, spinach, carrot, apple and lemon.  Yum!

Good morning!  I’ve been offline here for nearly 2 months.  It’s been due to a combination of life events and this blog misbehaving.  But I’ve whipped the blog into submission and I’m back personally as well.  A quickie update.  Over the past two months, I gained back 12 pounds and have since lost 8 again when I realized I was slipping backwards both in my healthy habits and my weight loss goals.

My new numbers as of this morning:

Weight: 252
Height: 5′8″
BMI: 38.3

Measurements

Neck: 14.0 (-.5″)
Bicep: 15.0 (-.5″)
Forearm: 11.5
Chest: 48
Waist: 44 (-2.5″)
Hips: 49
Thigh: 26 (-2″)
Calf: 18 (.5″)

In posting my numbers, I noticed something interesting.  While my weight is 4 lbs higher than the last time I checked in 3 months ago – but my measurements are down!  I’m not certain that this is why – but I have changed my diet significantly over the last week.  If I had measured beforehand, I could have said that it was because of this change.  But since I didn’t, I don’t know for sure.

I’ve switched to eating a primarily raw diet.  I’m eating raw throughout the day with dinner being more traditional.  Today is day 6 of eating 80-85% raw.

More soon!  I hope many of you will find your way back here again after such a long silence on my end.

Embrace Love, Embrace Life, Embrace Your Health!

I made my first “official” raw recipe yesterday. I found the original recipe here at Natural Living Cuisine. Here is how I prepared it:

3 cups fresh butternut squash, peeled, seeded, grated
1 large sweet apple, peeled, corded and grated
1 1/2 cups coconut milk, homemade or canned [13.5 oz.]
2 tablespoons agave or maple syrup, optional
1 tablespoon ground chia seeds
½ teaspoon coconut oil
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon Celtic Salt, optional

I blended all the ingredients together until creamy. I garnished it with unsweetened coconut and sunflower seeds. This is a super rich, satisfying soup. Sweet, nutty and good for you*, I’m really happy with how this turned out.

Note: I tasted a sample of the soup immediately after making it.  I put the rest in the refrigerator overnight and pulled it out for lunch today.  I put in on the stovetop for just long enough for the coconut milk to liquify again.  It tasted even better today than yesterday.  The ingredients and seasonings melded together and were just perfect!

*This recipe is chock full of goodness: It has Vitamin A, C, B Vitamins, Riboflavin, Iron, Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Zinc, healthy Omega 3s, fiber and more!