Growing edibles in winter is actually easier than growing them in summer, when the demands of water are greatest. The simplest container - a half barrel, old terracotta pot or quickly constructed redwood box - can easily do the trick so long as it's protected from critters and has a hole at the bottom for drainage. Fill it with a rich mix of soil and compost and you're ready to roll.
There are plenty of edibles that you can plant in wintertime, including garlic, leeks, onions, radishes, lettuce, peas, potatoes, chard, spinach, rhubarb and other leafy greens such as bok choy and kale.
Organic vegetable starts are available at many nurseries. Two of my favorites are Green Jeans in Mill Valley and O'Donnel's in Fairfax. Here are some growing tips for common winter vegetables.
]]>You've heard the talk. Yes, everyone's juicing but you.
So, what's the deal? Well, here it is: juicing takes all the fiber out of your favorite fruits and veggies so all that's left is the good stuff.
I know, you're thinking, What? I thought fiber was good for you. I'm supposed to increase my fiber intake, right? Well, yes...sort of.
Here's the thing--it's nearly impossible for us to get the daily dose of vitamins and minerals our bodies need through the food that we eat in a 24 hour period. Juicing makes it easier.
Of course, you can take supplements. In fact, you probably should take supplements. However, fresh fruit and/or vegetable juice absorbs more easily into your system, increasing your body's ability to utilize all those vitamins and minerals.
Juicing is also much easier on your digestive system. The less energy your body has to use digesting food, the more you will have left over for other things like running, jumping, laughing, and living.
Those battling disease often incorporate juicing into their plan for recovery, allowing their bodies the energy needed to heal.
]]>A couple of weeks ago I spent five days in "The Haven of Life". Chiva Som is a two and a half hour drive from Bangkok and is one of the most beautiful places on earth. This is my sixth visit and I always stay in the same room every time, room 303 - The Chamomile Suite. I love this room that overlooks the pool, palm trees, yoga pavilion, and ocean. It is a place where I recharge my batteries for the year-end and take time out to refresh the mind, body, and spirit. I dropped 8lbs. by following a 5-day Classic Cleansing diet comprising of vegetable juice, potassium broth, wheatgrass, and lots and lots of water.
I combined this with a daily massage (including my first ever facial) and a brilliant 5 Element Massage using hot and cold stones. I also worked out every morning, played tennis with Tam every day (four wins out of four - 3 in a tie-break and one 7-5). I had a water aerobics class daily and at least one hot tub and steam every day. I didn't speak to anyone except the tennis pro for the entire five days and it gave me time to focus on positivity and replenishment.
]]>But my dirty secret is that I just don't love vegetable juice.
Dr. Oz has changed all that, bless him.
I'm not really an Oprah fan, although I do think she has used her celebrity for some great things to help others, but I saw Dr. Oz on her show one day talking about the green drink he has every morning.
Of course, when I saw the ingredients, I had this intellectual reaction: Gross. But when Oprah tasted it, she deemed the flavor, "fresh." I decided to try it.
I'm in love. Plus drinking it in a wine glass gives it a whole new edge.
This is my modified Green Drink.
1 handful of fresh spinach
2 celery stalks
1/2 green apple, peeled & cored
1/2 cucumber, peeled
1/4 tsp minced ginger (I buy the jar)
juice of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1/2 lime
fresh parsley (I like a lot)
crushed ice
1/4 c water
Blend until liquified.
The key for me is the crushed ice and water that make it cold - more palatable - & slushy. And seriously, the taste really is fresh.
But as I drink it, I bring in the big gun(s): visualization. I visualize the chlorophyll moving oxygen around in my body. (Chlorophyll helps improve the efficiency of oxygen transport.) And I think about all the enzymes marching around inside, defending my cells. (Enzymes play essential roles in protecting cells from damage - take THAT, potential cancer - but they are destroyed by heat; i.e., cooking vegetables.)
]]>The salads were fantastic.
Highlights were:
marcona almonds LAVENDER sugar and sea salt
chickpea fries with HERBS romesco sauce
today's LEAVES and THINGS (v) - this was incredbile
dressed lightly with LEMONGRASS-infused olive oil, sea salt & buddha's hand
cool pasta salad with homemade beet casarecce (v)
BRASSICAS a la catalan (v)
red pepper tears, MINT, thompson raisins, pine nut & soy milk pudding
burrata with three slow-cooked GARDEN VEGETABLE condimentos *
pumpkin seed oil, saba, wild fennel crackers
carta da musica with fresh-picked GREENS *
truffled pecorino, trumpet chips with ROSEMARY
rustic rancho gordo 'yellow eye' bean soup (v)
torn bread, ROSEMARY, chili & BLACK KALE
homemade CARROT gnocchetti with TARRAGON & mimolette *
spiced "crumble" of carrot pulp, almond & mace
Great kale, celery, parsley juice, but at $9 for 16 oz it is pretty costly.
]]>My Summer Adventures in Juice Cleansing
Some people call themselves experts or even gurus (yes, I have heard someone introduce themselves as a "guru") on nutrition, raw foods, weight loss, or enlightenment, or all of those. They write and/or speak publicly about conclusions they've arrived at through years of experience and diligent research. I, on the other hand, don't claim to have conclusively figured it all out, nor do I have time for hours of detailed investigation. I just try things for myself and write about it while I'm sorting it all out--like a guinea pig with a notepad, jotting down reports on the experiment phases, tossing out random hypotheses.
The latest trial? I finally did a juice fast. Yes... a juice fast, juice feast, juice fiesta, call it whatever you want. The point is, just juice. I've spent more than five years living on mostly raw foods and immersed in the world of raw foods, and I'd never done a juice fast. What kind of raw foodist am I? I have always felt like I should do a juice fast, especially reading about everyone else's adventures with the 90-day juice "feast". But doing something just because you feel like you should feels all wrong and not very motivating. The point was that I just didn't want to do it. That is, until recently.
Late one Sunday night I was sitting on my couch reading a recent issue of Get Fresh and trying to think of what to write for my next installment. I came across an article titled "Detox in Devon." With photos of lovely looking stone cottages in the sunny and green English countryside, the piece described a week-long cleansing juice fast getaway. It included mention of the retreat's heated indoor pool, pine sauna, and on-staff masseurs. It also reported that guests experienced an average weight loss of ten pounds along with the clearing of emotional blockages, and that they "tend to sleep more than they've ever slept in their lives."
As soon as I read this, I started to cry. I had some pounds to lose, blockages to clear up, and most of all, a serious rest and relaxation deficiency to repair! I wanted to go there, now. I immediately went to the website and sent them an email. Then I looked up flights to England. Ouch. The expense of flying overseas, plus the fact that their next availability was not for a couple of months, made me designate this as Plan B, and I turned to figuring out a Plan A.
After only a few minutes of searching online, I found a place that sounded comparable. It was called Gentle Earth Retreats and was in Ithaca, New York, only a four hour drive from Manhattan. There was a seven day program starting in just over a week. Perfect! According to the photos online, it looked like a sweet and comfortable place and was run by a pretty woman named Katherine. It was 2 o'clock in the morning, but I wanted to call the number listed and wake her up to check on availability. I wanted a spot now. What if someone else called before me? I settled for email, writing a note laced with enough personal details meant to elicit some degree of sympathy in case there was any discretion on her part in securing me a room.
When I woke up a few hours later, I had an email reply from Katherine telling me that she had just one private room left and that I could have it. Hooray! Everything is right with the Universe. Thank you. I was thrilled, and immediately started making a list of all the things I was going to bring (pajamas, slippers, etc.).
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Kale is the food of wonders for many dieter because it is very low in calories and is saturated with vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. Kale is also good for the heart and for controlling blood sugar levels because it is high in dietary fiber. A cup of fresh kale can have as low as 40 calories, and contains no cholesterol and fat. Like many vegetables, kale is very sensitive to high heat. Cooking kale in high heat will destroy many of its nutrients. For best results, boiled kale in a closed pan or use a pressure cooker. If you are not scared of calories, use flaxseed oil for dressing because it is very high in omega-3.
]]>Imagine a place where nearly half the population is obese and medicated. Imagine that a quarter of the people smoke cigarettes, and they bathe themselves in a toxic stew of chemically-laced foods, medicines and personal care products. When they're not infertile, they give birth to mutated babies that have been imprinted with a lifelong tendency towards heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity.
Is this some obscure third-world country? Nope. It's Louisiana and Mississippi, the two lowest-ranking U.S. states in the latest annual health report released by the non-profit American Public Health Association.
The report compared the health of U.S. states, declaring Vermont to be the healthiest.
And yet, even then, the healthiest state in the United States is filled with obese, junk-food eating, over-medicated people. The truth is that even the healthiest U.S. state isn't very healthy, and the U.S. population as a whole suffers from more degenerative disease than any other nation in the world.
It's not just from a lack of health insurance, either. Health insurance only covers conventional medical procedures, and those do nothing to prevent disease in the first place. There is virtually no drug, no surgery and no advice from conventional medicine that truly prevents or reverses any disease at all.
What the U.S. really suffers from is Disease Profiteering, or the exploitation of disease by Big Business. It makes so much money to keep people diseased, there's virtually no effort to try to prevent disease in America.
When was the last time a company told you to eat LESS junk food? Or your doctor told you to eat superfoods? Or your television ran a public service announcement reminding you that sodas and refined sugars cause obesity?
When was the last time the Susan G. Komen cancer group told women to take vitamin D in order to prevent cancer? Or how about the American Heart Association telling Americans to stop eating processed meat and start drinking raw vegetable juice?
It doesn't happen. And you know why? Because disease is big business. Disease keeps the money flowing into the cancer non-profits, the disease non-profits (AHA, ADA, ACS, etc.), medical clinics and Big Pharma's bank accounts. Disease is actually a huge driving factor behind the U.S. economy, with easily one of out every five dollars of economic activity in the nation now being spent on disease.
We have become a nation that is economically dependent on disease, and there has been virtually no politician willing to stand up against it other than Rep. Ron Paul with his Health Freedom Protection Act (that will probably never be passed, of course). Notably, Sen. Charles Grassley has done excellent work revealing the crimes of Big Pharma and the widespread bribery of doctors, but that's a rarity in the Senate.
America is the most diseased nation in the world because Big Business wants it that way!
Listing health rankings by state is a distraction: ALL states are filled with masses of unhealthy people who are being financially exploited by the cancer industry, the psychiatric industry, the junk food industry and the drug industry. And what we really need in this nation is not simply a few watered-down changes in who pays for disease but rather a revolution in health that would outlaw disease profiteering, end patents on medicines, dismantle the Big Pharma / FDA corruption racket and re-educate the entire medical profession on things they should have been taught in medical school (like nutrition).
We need to stop thinking we're going to get rich off of disease and understand that it is HEALTH, not disease, that creates lasting economic abundance.
But I don't think that day is coming for America. I think America will not survive its own self destruction. We are looking at a convergence of a global fiscal crisis and a devastating health crisis. Perhaps a nation could survive one, but not both. From the ashes of America, however, smaller nation-states may emerge, granting us the opportunity to create a new health care system from scratch that encompasses both "health" and "care."
I've said this publicly before, but it's worth repeating: Any nation that does not invest in the health of its people has no future.
]]>Thank you for a very interesting article "How to help your body help itself" by David Servan Schreiber. I agree on everything except that conventional treatment is the only cure. I think he confirms this himself as the article develops.
Other friends and myself who have had cancer are a living examples. The problem is that nobody is interested to register us who have healed without conventional intervention, so there are no statistics.
As for myself I had cancer in the uterus (Stage 4) and was told to have an operation immediately. Instead I decided to set myself a time limit to try and bring the tumor to a non-malignant stage with alternative methods. My father and brother had died of cancer (lymphoma and brain tumor) and were treated by orthodox medicine. Neither of them made it so I was determined to try the alternative healing path. This doesn't mean that orthodox medicine never can help you. In my case it is true that I was healed within a month and the tumor finally vanished. This was 8 years ago.
I had been recommended hormone-replacement as I entered menopause. Now, the same doctor that had no objections to recommending me hormone pills, told me to immediately stop the intake...He also told me he would not take any further responsibility for me as I did not follow his recommendations and so I asked him to send me all the papers. I decided to give myself 6 weeks to make the change. This is an important part of the healing process as your intention is part of the healing and needs to be as clear as possible. No more malignancy in 6 weeks was the task I set for myself.
So, what did I do? Take control of my illness, never gave up hope and to find out all I could about cancer.
Basically something had disturbed and stressed the immune system and I needed to do all I could to help my body heal itself. How?
1. Find out about the acidity in your body and change your diet if necessary to balance it.
2. Check if you have Candida (a funghus) and find out how to get rid of it.
3. Check that you don't have any chronic inflammation in your body, root-fillings can be such a cause.
4. Find out where you can do kelation (cleansing of the blood from heavy metals etc.)
1. Cut kale in thin strips and bite size
2. Marinate the kale in olive or hemp oil and lemon juice.
3. Refrigerate over night.
4. Slice a red onion and marinate it in balsamic vinegar.
5. Slice red, orange, and yellow sweet peppers and add to the marinated kale.
6. Add the red onions, crumbled feta cheese, sesame seeds and hot pepper sesame oil.
7. Garnish with sunflower seeds and sliced celery.
8. Season with herbal salt and Braggs liquid amino acids
The new Dubai Mall Shopping Centre, situated in the heart of down-town Dubai is part of a massive new complex including the Burj Dubai, which will become the biggest skyscraper in the world when it is complete in early 2009.
The Mall itself had a soft opening on 8th November 2008 with 40% of the retail outlets opening their doors. In these early stages of the Mall's opening it seemed perfect to put in the first Juice Master Juice bar into action and test its success with the Mall's growing number of daily visitors.
Juice Master have found a partner company Planet Nutrition, and new Master Franchisee Rami Abduljawad to start the roll out of Juice Master in the Middle East.
After a week of intensive training with the UK Juice Master team, the new juice bar staff were up to Juice Master standards of excellent service and knowledge. UK Juice Master trainer Kris Talikowski said, "opening juice bars in different parts of the world provides its challenges, but as a brand we are ensuring that whichever Juice Master Juice Bar you get your juice from, the staff will be loaded with knowledge to help you make the right choice and pass on some valuable information about juicing".
The menu is the same as is available in Europe but now with the addition of Juice Master 'shots', including the new favourite The Ginger Shot.
The Juice bar had a launch party last Wednesday where a new and growing Juice Master Dubai fan base came out to try some free juice and smoothies. The official launch of the Mall will be in early 2009 and Jason said, " I will back in February for the official launch, but I am pleased to say, even though the Mall isn't 100% ready yet, the fresh juices and smoothies at Planet Nutrition are. It has been a fantastic opportunity to open our first Juice Bar in the region and I am sure many more will follow".
Pictures are taken from the launch night on Wednesday 26th November.
]]>British study that pitted traditional Buddhist meditation against acidic anti-depressant drugs for symptoms of depression found that meditation prevented more relapses. The "Telegraph" reported that fifteen months after an eight-week trial, only 47 percent of people using meditation experienced a relapse compared with 60 percent of those taking highly acidic anti-depressants.
"Anti-depressants are widely used by people who suffer from depression and that's because they tend to work," said Professor Willem Kuyken of the Mood Disorders Centre at the University of Exeter. "But while they're very effective in helping reduce the symptoms of depression, when people come off them they are particularly vulnerable to relapse."
"The meditative alkalizing technique known as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), works differently. It helps people learn to focus on the present (which has alkalizing effects) instead of dwelling on the past (which has acidic effect) or thinking of the future, which is also acidic," states Dr. Robert O. Young, Director of the pH Miracle Living Center, in San Diego, California. "It teaches people skills for life," said Kuyken.
"What we have shown is that when people work at it, these skills for life help keep people well," said Kuyken.
"I have found that when you incorporate an alkaline diet of green foods and green drinks, daily alkalizing exercise, daily alkalizing breathing, daily meditation and/or prayer, and alkalizing nutritional support, you start feeling better. And, when you start feeling better you start thinking better to the point you forget you are depressed. This can all happen within just a few weeks," states Dr. Young.
]]>In a fascinating experiment -- on himself -- Dr. Alan Greene, a pediatrician and author in Danville, Calif., decided to find out. For the last three years, Dr. Greene has eaten nothing but organic foods, whether he's cooking at home, dining out or snacking on the road.
He chose three years as a goal because that was the amount of time it took to have a breeding animal certified organic by the Department of Agriculture. While food growers comply with organic regulations every day, Dr. Greene wondered whether a person could meet the same standards.
It hasn't been easy.
"This isn't a way of eating I could recommend to anybody else because it's so far off the beaten food grid," said Dr. Greene, 49, the founder of a popular Web site about children's health, drgreene.com. "It was much more challenging than I thought it would be, and I thought it would be tough. There were definitely days where there was nothing I could find that was organic."
Other writers have ventured off the traditional food grid, notably Barbara Kingsolver in "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and Michael Pollan in "The Omnivore's Dilemma." But what makes Dr. Greene's experiment remarkable is the length of time he devoted to it, and his effort to incorporate organic eating into the routines of everyday living. His findings offer new insight into the challenges facing the organic food industry and those of us who want to patronize it.
Organic farmers don't use conventional methods to fertilize the soil, control weeds and pests, or prevent disease in livestock.
Organic methods often lead to higher costs, and consumers can pay twice as much for organic foods as for conventional products. Last week, the financial advice Web site SmartMoney.com reported that to feed eight people an organic meal of traditional Thanksgiving foods, a shopper would pay $295.36 -- a premium of $126.35, or 75 percent, over a nonorganic holiday spread.
To cut back on the cost of an organic diet, Dr. Greene said he had to cut back on meat. "Whenever you go up the food chain, the costs pile up," he said. "If you don't eat meat at every meal, if meat becomes more of a side dish than a centerpiece, you can fill the plate with healthy organic food for about the same price."
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