Jamu. An ancient Indonesian healing elixir.

Encode this recipe to memory. Seriously. Drink it everyday.

It tastes so good and it is so good for you!

I was introduced to this drink last year by a local health merchant near a yoga teacher training I attended in Rhode Island. After my first taste I giggled and new that this would be a new mainstay for me.

I offer you this oh-so delicious recipe, but must offer you exactly what the healer who gave me this recipe offered me — the suggestion to be creative with this recipe. Use a chai tea bag, or another that you love. Play with the measurements of the turmeric and ginger to your personal preferences. Omit the sweetener, or bump it up. Essentially, use the recipe I offer you only as a guide. From what she described, Jamu is open to interpretation and adaptation, as I did by using almond milk.

Your body will love this powerfully healing, anti-inflammatory and oh-so delicious drink!

My vegan spin on this ancient healing elixir:

Ingredients:

• 4 cups almond milk
• 2 Tablespoons coconut oil
• 2 inches fresh grated turmeric
• 2 inches fresh grated ginger
• 2 teaspoons fresh vanilla (extract OK)
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• Stevia to taste

Blend all ingredients. Warm through and serve.

Enjoy … and Cheers to you! 

 

I recently read, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,” by Marie Kondo. This #1 New York Times best-selling book to declutter your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes us step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing … and it is nothing short of revolutionary in so many ways.

Kondo suggests that we first take all our clothes out of our closets, out of our drawers, out of any place we store them and create a giant heap, as one example. And then one by one she directs us to pick up each piece of clothing to ask, does this bring me joy? Joy? Yes, we only keep that which brings us joy!

At first I found the exercise challenging, like, gosh, I spent so much money on this item, or that item … I can’t just give it away. But as I made my way through the heap of clothing, and shoes, and handbags, and coats … I got really good at letting go of ‘stuff’ that no longer brought me joy!

It was such an awesome experience that is reaping benefits I never expected, like this ginormous feeling of freedom and lightness, way cool organization and … oh yes, joy!

I packed up 10 bags of clothes, plus shoes, plus coats and handbags to deliver to a local women’s shelter today … and I feel so good about it! Someone out in the world is going to soon reap the benefits of the gorgeous things I packed up, but no longer serve me in a joyful way! This feels really, really good! PLUS, Kondo offers an amazing way to organize and store what I did choose to keep, so my closets and drawers look so gorgeous and organized!

It’s like a new lease on life! Really.

And since I am all about sharing tools that create more healthy vibrancy in life, I’d be sorely remiss by not sharing this book title with you! If you buy the book and integrate the “KonMari Method” please leave a comment below I’d love to hear about ‘the magic’ you experience from this life-changing book!

Okay … I’m off to tackle my desk and bathroom now! Yep, Kondo offers tidying guidance for every area of life!

Glow

Fresh juices are my number one recommendation to bring vitality, vibrance and a youthful glow back to your skin with the most direct and healing benefits. Fresh juices offer you pure vitamin and mineral rich water from the vegetables and fruits you use, with all their co-factors, enzymes and organic, chemical elements your body needs to process the nutrition of each ingredient … and Glow is a special fusion of vegetables loaded with an array of phytochemical and antioxidants to bring radiance back to you skin!

This ‘plant potion’ is packed with vitamins and minerals, antioxidants and phytochemical that cleanse your liver, boost your immune system and purify your blood, which directly brightens your eyes and skin!

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:
2 handfuls dandelion
1 handful parsley
1 small handful mint
6 carrots
1 beets
1 inch turmeric
1 green apple
2 lemons (leave peel on if organic)
1 tsp cayenne

Cheers! 

Do you know that 90% of the cells in your body are bacterial and that those bacteria are actually good for you?

Do you know that those bacteria help you maintain a healthy gut terrain and that an imbalance of the ‘friendly bacteria’ versus the ‘bad bacteria,’ has everything to do with how good or how bad you feel?

Do you know that the common root cause for all disease is a breakdown in your gut wall, and that the first line of defense in your gut is actually bacterial — your friendly flora?

So what does it mean to you if your gut wall breaks down? (Think gluten, sugar, alcohol, prescription drugs like antibiotics and birth-control pills, heavy and hard to digest foods like animal protein and stress from the modern diet and lifestyle.)

Your body can no longer produce Vitamin B-12 or the enzymes that would normally destroy harmful bacteria in a healthy body. Your body can no longer fight off bad bacteria, yeasts, mold and fungi. Your body can no longer digest properly. And to boot? If these bacteria pass through your irritated and broken digestive wall and enter your bloodstream, they can induce strong inflammatory responses by your immune and nervous systems.

Think imbalance. Inflammation. Overproduction of mucous. Poor to zero absorption of nutrients and depression. Think toxic waster matter backing up in your cells and tissues. For example.

Think breakdown at the foundational level of your whole body.

Consequently, as a result of this breakdown, you may suffer from symptoms ranging from the everyday, seemingly common, seemingly trivial allergies to digestive symptoms, to auto-immunity to more serious chronic and degenerative diseases, which is why I always recommend taking a probiotic everyday.

Probiotics, the good bacteria, boost your immune system, increase absorption and assimilation of the nutrients in your food, and even impact your cognitive and emotional wellbeing.

Without a healthy balance of friendly flora in your gut, your body is at risk of poor absorption and poor assimilation of all the good nutrition you are eating.

Yes, if your gut health is off, you might not even be absorbing the nutrition from the very best organic produce you buy!

With today’s modern diet and modern lifestyle, a probiotic is non-negotiable to create a healthy inner-terrain. 

I also highly recommend including fermented vegetables in your diet everyday, like raw-fermented sauerkraut and kimchee to inoculate the gut with food-grade probiotics. While pill-form supplements are very useful in rebalancing your health, your body will recognize the food-grade probiotics in fermented vegetables much more readily. You can buy raw-fermented veggies at Whole Foods Market or natural health food store, or you can make them yourself.

If you’re ready to start healing your gut, seriously, you’ve must know that my first recommendation will always be, you’ve got to remove inflammatory foods from your diet.

Then, to start healing your gut, click here for a very high-grade probiotic, and if your ready to whip up batches of live-fermented veggies yourself, grab  a copy of the quintessential book on fermentation, Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Ellix Katz.

Start supporting friendly-flora growth by one, eating whole foods, and two taking probiotics and you’ll see them return the favor manifold!

Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow

I recently read a quote that caused me to laugh out loud, on the spot, “Only dead fish go with the flow.”

With a slightly different angle, it reminded me of a quote I had on a poster years back from the Book of Paul, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.”

Both quotes remind me of the larger ‘get healthy’ conversation that I am so committed to because of the transformative benefits I experienced from going against the flow of common thoughts and ideas about to heal a sick body, my sick body.

I never knew anyone who went to an alternative doctor or healer — c’mon, I was an Irish-Catholic, middle-America, roast beef and mashed potatoes suburbia-girl!

But my doctor’s advice just didn’t make sense to me. Like taking a Zanax 3 times per day to stop the chronic anxiety and IBS symptoms I experienced. So agreeing to eating ‘weird’ food, read as unprocessed, nutrient-dense, live foods didn’t require a second thought.

Living life like a “dead fish,” going with the flow, not breaking from mainstream medical diagnosis and treatments didn’t make sense to me one bit. It was an easy decision to break from ‘the pack.’ I was sick and the symptoms I was experiencing were taking over my life. But know fully well, things like plant-based, high-raw, eating in ways to heal and nourish my body were as remote to me as the planet Pluto is to Earth.

In the spirit of breaking from the pack, and even more, in the spirit of discovering if there is a blind spot, a thing that you do not know you do not know blocking your understanding of what is really best for you, I offer you these questions to consider:

• Do you eat in ways, do you do ‘things’ in ways that are familiar, comfortable and more in line with what everyone else in your world does, yet you intuitively know does not work for you?
• Do you indulge in eating foods that you know are too heavy or just flat-out not good for you, but breaking the habituated patterns of ‘this is how everyone eats,’ is just too daunting for you?
• Are you sick more often than you’re willing to deal with now? More tired than you know is ‘normal?’ Symptoms and care-for-symptoms more a prevalent than “seizing the day” mode of operandi?
• What impact do you think avoiding these sorts of questions has on the your quality of life?

If you want to break from the pack, break from unhealthy and addictive eating habits, to look and feel your very best, to revel in all the benefits that are part-in-parcel with feeling best, you’ve got to, we’ve all got to,  challenge why we do what we do.

Is ‘it’ the best choice for you? Or is ‘it’ the choice everyone else is making?

Breaking from the pack, breaking from familiar ways of doing things, breaking from all that felt safe and sure to me at one time in my life was the best thing I could have ever done for myself.  Indeed, it was in those scary moments of uncertainty and change that I began to heal my body, and as I healed my body, a whole new world of possibility began to rise …

Only Dead fish go with the flow. Is that the best posture for you?

Who Chooses?

I recently met someone who was 50 pounds overweight. They said they wanted to lose weight. They said they wanted to look and feel their very best selves again.

But, they did not want to stop eating all of their favorite foods.

I totally get it. I remember when my ideas about what to eat came from my family’s traditions, from my friend’s and their families’ traditions, from the larger social moré traditions. Even from the ways every mood, emotion, thought and idea defined the foods I craved.

And the irony is, the modern economy continues to get better and better at satisfying our every want and desire.

As fast-food nation and the consumer economy grows, we get to satiate the complexities of everything we think we want or need right now, with what our inner world demands, what every impulse, thought and desire insists upon, rather than move closer to what we intuitively know is healthier for us, what is best for us.

So who chooses for you? Your traditions? Your friend’s and your communities traditions? Your world at large, or you?

As in the metaphor, “is it better to give a man a fish, or to teach him to fish,” do you think it is better to order a healthy meal when you are out once-in-a-while, or do you think it is better to create a lifestyle of healthy habits that ask you to reconnect to the basic laws of nature and your inner-knowing of what best fuels and nourishes your body?

If you want to lose weight, if you want to look and feel your very best, you have to deliberately choose what you want, so you can put into action a winning game-plan. Thinking about it, like the person I met, is just that, thinking about it, which ultimately leaves you in default-mode.

Need help choosing your get-heatlhy game to finally look and feel 10 years younger with results that last? Join me here: Let’s do this!

The Kale Chips

With winter-greens season upon us, yes, with bountiful bunches of fresh and local kale abound, I thought it a perfect time to offer you this time-tested recipe I’ve been refining for years. This is my favorite. The coating is thick enough to offer a great texture, but not too thick to overtake the flavor of the kale.

• 1 bunch kale, washed and dried (dry completely)
• 1 red pepper
• 1 clove garlic, peeled
• 1/2 cup cashews
• 1/2 cup hemp seeds
• 1 -2 Tbsp Coconut Aminos (or to taste)
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 lemon, juice
• Water (to thin mixture if necessary)

Blend all ingredients until well-combined except kale.

Remove main center vein from the kale leaf and break into pieces (not too small)

In batches, put kale leaves into a large bowl, pour some of the cheezy mixture over and massage.

Place massaged and coated leaves on a dehydrator tray with paraflex, or bake in a very low oven a the lowest temperature your stove allows.

 

Bake or “unbake” until crispy.

Buono Appetito!

The Bisque

I promise you this, this recipe will soon be your new favorite tomato soup recipe ever, and a staple in high-tomato season! Easy-peasy, purely nutritious and as satiating as satiating can be! The ingredients offered make only 2 servings, so I highly recommend you double or triple the recipe!

Serves 2

• 3 tomatoes, large, cubed
• 1 – 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1/4 – 1/2 avocado, diced (or 1/2)
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil, drizzle to taste
• Sea salt and black pepper to taste
• Basil, chiffonade

Blend all ingredients except the basil: reserve that for garnish!

Recommendation: Begin with 1/4 avocado and add more for extra creaminess per your preferences

Top with fresh basil to garnish

Buono Appetito!