Posts by Lori

If the eyes are the window to our souls than what do yours say? Look at the whites of your eyes. Are they bright white or are tinted yellow? Not even Visene can help you here. By the way, isn’t that just another lame cover up rather than finding the source of the symptom? Last time I checked, dousing yourself with this and that and micromanaging your health is not effective or sustainable.

If the whites of the eyes are tinted yellow and they are not as sparkling as you’d like, you may consider doing a liver cleanse to jumpstart you onto a healthier diet. The whites of the eyes represent the health of the liver. Newborn babies will sometimes have jaundice and yellow tinted whites of their eyes due to immature liver function.

If you think of our bodies as one big fish tank think of your liver as the filter. Just imagine what would happen to the fish in the tank if over years you never cleaned the filter. Imagine what the water in the tank would look like. Imagine what a dirty tank smells like (if you want sweet skin read this article) . We aren’t that different from this analogy. Once the stress is off the liver the whites will begin to sparkle.

Try incorporating these practices to get that sparkle back

1. Lots of water (ideally organic water from fresh juicy fruits and veggies)

2. Foods that cleanse and heal the liver are artichoke, lemon, beets, and dandelion greens. Try drinking 64 oz of lemon water upon rising.

3. Herbs such as Dandelion and Milk Thistle can be made into a tea and consumed regularly for continual liver cleansing.

None of the above mentioned solutions will be sustainable and permanent until a clean diet is obtained and continued consistently. Remember, this is a jumpstart but will never undo the damage completely from a poor diet until the diet is changed. Just remember that it is important that the colon is very effective and eliminating optimally. The liver purges and the toxins go into the colon and wait to be eliminated. If elimination is slow, then the toxins will be reabsorbed back into the bloodstream and your efforts will no longer be effective.

I have never claimed to be a genius in the kitchen. I’ll leave that to the pros! However, I am proficient at following recipes. I don’t even follow them exactly and they still seem to work out fine.

After the video footage my son decided he did like the wrappers after all, and we devoured the rest of the wrappers. This was super fun and easy to do with my kids. What a great way to teach them a healthier way of eating. I feel good that their recipe knowledge has a healthy base unlike my upbringing. I learned as a kid how to make things that tasted good, but health wasn’t the focus. I am glad I am turning it around for my kids.

The wrappers are very filling and I can see if the presentation was done correctly that it would be a hit at events. I normally keep things simple for raw potlucks,but this would be awesome, even for non raw people.

The cheese is creamy with a little tang to it, the dehydrated tomatoes have an intensified flavor, the avocado and basil just round it out. A total comfort food! The wrappers called for spinach juice, but I used kale juice. It didn’t affect the flavor, but it did intensify the color. The wrappers tasted like creamy bites of heaven with vibrant flavors from the cheese, tomato and basil. A must try!

Thanks to Paul (the organizer of an amazing raw food metup group), we are able to see a little of what Happy Oasis shared with us on Saturday. Of course, you hear me ramble about how large the co-op has grown thanks to the dedication of Alexis (mentioned in my last post). It is a bit differnt than a CSA. We don’t pay in advance a lump sum or we don’t belong to only one farmer. If you want more information, please send me a comment and I’ll give more details. Perhaps, I will post a blog on how to set up an organic produce buying club for everyone.

Every Saturday, I help organize our local organic produce buying club. It was founded by Alexis aka ThriveSurvive in 2007. Since then it has grown to be the largest of it’s kind in the United States with over 600 members. I feel so fortunate to have been able to participate with this group. I love meeting all the people in the community who share the same interest of a healthy body and a healthy planet. My dream would be that all communities have a group similar to ours.

Later, I had the honor of meeting Happy Oasis. She is the founder of the Raw Spirit Festival. She was speaking at our local raw food meetup. I first learned of Happy from watching the “Rawkathon” by Kevin Gianni, which is a series of interviews with people who are prominent in the raw food community. I felt an instant connection and knew I wanted to meet her. She is kind and genuine. Love emanates from her being and beyond. Her stories and adventures are captivating and I find myself lost in them. I could listen for hours. I feel centered and HAPPY just being in her presence. I have never attended the Raw Spirit Festival, however this June there will be an event in Santa Barbara. I would love to see the interaction of this community and I am definitely planning on attending. I look forward to sharing with you my experience there unless you’ll be there too! In that case, I look forward to meeting you as well. 🙂

Yesterday was such a nice day. It started with checking my emails and receiving a message from Dhrumil of We Like it Raw. He has created a page called Masala that lists” the hottest mix of raw food blogs online”. I was humbled and honored that my blog would even be mentioned. It feels good knowing that somebody is reading my jumbled blogs. I love sharing my experiences and stories. Even better I love receiving comments from others stating that I have helped them. How cool is that?

I took my little poochie, Hailee out for a morning walk and just savored the gorgeous weather. I feel so lucky to be alive and have my life. I have so much to be thankful for. I am smart, healthy, and creative. I have 2 awesome kids that I spend lots of time with. I have a home that I can play around with decorating and gardening. I live in Southern California and we have such mild weather. It’s funny how fast we can forget these things and we always seem to find room for complaints on where we are lacking. I really want to turn that around and only see what is going right in my life. It definitely far out weighs any nitty gritty complaints I may have.

I came home and read 2 chapter “Loss of Innocence” from “Mastery of Love” by Don Miguel Ruiz to my children. This is such easy reading and they understand the message. Wow, this really put me in my place as a mother. It explains how children are tuned into love and enjoying the present moment. As parents condition and dump our “hell” on our kids and they develop emotional wounds like shyness, fear, etc… Our kids start to try to please us (parents, teachers, etc) for approval. Anyhow, I was brought to tears. I love and adore my children. I know they are my teachers and they remind me about real life. So much of our existence is fluff. I want the real stuff, the good stuff. The stuff that matters. I want to live in love all day long. I actually said my goal for the day was to “make love all day long”. That is my ultimate goal. I may not be there 100%, but I’ll tell you what, each day I try I grow by minutes. Before I know it I’ll be there. Practice makes perfect.

My kids and I played around in the kitchen and created this. I love when I just whip something together without any planning. It’s always a surprise. I had some serious sweet tooth going on and instead of eating something really off the charts we had made chocolate ice cream by blending frozen bananas with cacao. We just kept going from there and this is a quick video of what we came up with. Meg wasn’t in the mood to be on the camera so she acts a little silly, but kids will be kids.

Then a beautiful gift wrapped book came in the mail from Matthew Kenney. He sent me his book “Entertaining in the Raw“. Of course it is beautiful and he truly is a genius. Sorry to keep repeating it Matthew, but it’s true! I remember last year thinking there needed to be a book for raw entertaining. Ta da…here it is. Literally, my daughter and I sat and went through every picture salivating. I really didn’t know which recipe to try first. So, of course Matthew recommend I make the basil wrappers. DOH! I should have known, he had sent me that recipe before the book came out last summer. Oops! Well, you don’t gotta tell me again… I am on it! I’ll post a video of the final product as long a you guys realize it won’t be nearly as pretty as his photos show.

Anyhow, I just enjoyed a simple mellow day filled with lots of hugs and cuddles with my kids. I felt centered and balanced. So, I want to keep up with my daily goal to make love all day long. I can see how one day went and I look forward to more. Just thought I’d share. 🙂