Great pre-or post-workout!
Ingredients:
• 1 medium beet, peeled and chopped
• ½ cup strawberries, fresh or frozen
• 1 Tbsp cacao powder
• 1 serving Vegan (you choose) Chocolate Protein Powder
• 1 cup water
Place all ingredients into the blender in the order listed and secure lid. Blend for 30-45 seconds or until desired consistency is reached. Pour into glasses and enjoy!
Most always inflammation begins in the gut!
The Anti-Inflammatory Smoothie!
Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Serves: 2
Ingredients
1 inch of fresh ginger, grated
1 inch of fresh turmeric, grated
Handful of baby spinach
Handful of watercress (or rocket/arugula)
1 small soft avocado
1/2 capsicum
Big handful of flat-leaf parsley and/ or coriander
1 cup coconut water (or filtered water)
Big pinch of cayenne
Pinch of unprocessed sea salt
Instructions
As with all days pay attention to what you are putting in your mouth….. this greatly impacts your health, your life and your mood!
Be well my friends and I am here to empower you on your journey of great self love!!
Jennifer
I used to love posting on Facebook when I began my business it was pretty cool to watch my likes grow…..now 2 years later I feel frozen before I post. What’s that about? I mean what happened to the carefree, happy postings that were not meant to do anything other than post info about what I thought was interesting, funny or a must read for anyone out there. I realized I have become judgmental about my own beliefs and started questioning myself more and more.
Some may think that is a good thing, I however feel that this really shook me from my happy place and tossed me in a heap of the sticky unknowing. I have been sitting in this place now for quite some time and once you get here, it is hard to pull yourself back to where you were. In fact, I’m not sure if I will ever be back in my cushy little blissful social media life because now there is this new facet, one that has been tainted by people I don’t even know and that is part of who I am now.
Which direction do I take? I’ve never had to ask myself this, I’ve been a happily driven entrepreneurial spirit since I was in college . What do I do to get my “me” back?
I think what started my gradual slippage was the constant need to keep up with the social media bandwagon. Christ, it’s constant! Then trying to keep up with the format changes on Facebook, WordPress, Instagram, my website…. and link them together and post things daily because there is tooooo much pressure from your colleagues when you see all their stuff…..aaahhhhhh, IT’S TOO MUCH!!!
I just became frozen and I gradually started slipping and loosing my interest.
Of course there are also those jerks out there who say they are your friend (but really who has 400+ “friends”) who just want to argue their point to the death knowing that they make you look like an ass if you counter their post. I know this seems trivial, and years ago I would never think this could affect me this way, but it got me and has kept me quietly wondering if anyone else knows what this feels like.
There is an addiction to checking in with these social websites, and before you realize it you have become hooked and are an internet junkie. You can spend all day at your computer and pretty much not do a dam thing but waste your life trying to create an image of what you would like others to think you are. I used to think our kids are so screwed up because they never had a moment to focus on their life without all of their friends knowing what they were doing. I’m right about that and did not notice that my life too has been greatly affected by this world of social media posting, reading, and keeping up with it all.
I feel relieved that while I was awake in the wee hours of the dark morning I was able to decipher the monkey chatter in my head; you know that voice that keeps you awake after you wake up to pee. While the world was quiet my brain was fully active with great ideas, direction and energy and a message to myself that I still have it and in order to go get it I must let go of the time freezing comparisson that has grown from getting way too connected.
I love my blog, it is where I come to share my thoughts, recipes and the part of me that did not get lost on the social media self judgment witch hunt! I feel peaceful reeling myself back in and am thankful for those crystal clear thoughts that I paid attention to last night, I feel unstuck and ready to roll. I’m going to feed my chickens, clean my bunny pens and check back into my life!
As with all days eat, heal, be true to your inner voice and live your life like no one is watching!
Jennifer
My husband Michael
This is a quick story of what is going on right now in my life. The reason I am sharing is I want to help empower you to think twice about medical advice when the first course of action is antibiotic use or antibiotic use and a radical trauma that may or may not heal the problem.
My husband was lying down in bed when the kitty (Luce) decided to pounce on his feet! This is something that is common place at our home with the 8 cats (yes I said it out loud) that currently live with us. This particular time Luce scratched Michael’s big toe in the crevasse where the nail goes into the skin. I know that it bled a bit and was painful that night and thought that was the end of it. A few days later I looked down at his foot and his toe was bright reddish purple and HOT! I was astounded he did not say anything to me about it (the big dummy) and so I needed to develop a healing plan ASAP!
We soaked in Epsom salts 2 x day, poured Hydrogen Peroxide over the area and let it bubble and finished with antibiotic cream (which I had to purchase). I put on a band-aid to keep out the dirt and had him wear flip-flops no tennies and thought we were making great progress.
Our cat Luce
It was no longer reddish purple but still a different color in the pink tones and about the 5th day I noticed a slight swelling along the outside of the scratch extending about 1/4 inch above the toenail towards the knuckle. I didn’t like the looks of that and it was becoming very painful. I did a minor probing that evening with some needle-nose tweezers to see if by chance there was a piece of cuticle under the nail. While doing this I started to peel a bit of the top layer of the inflamed skin to try to open the abscess. My husband did not enjoy this one bit, it was super painful and getting him to hold the flashlight for me and stay still while I create pain was…..let’s just say better for me. I was successful however in opening up the abscess and helped it drain some! I felt that was all that we could do and that needed to be done.
The next day Michael was in pain and he wanted a doctor take a look. The Doctor gave us two options after looking at the toe for 30 seconds both of which seemed a bit radical: The first was a round of hard-core antibiotics plus antibiotic cream and soak the toe in Hydrogen Peroxide 2 x day for 7 days; The second option was to take off the toenail right away to clean the abscess, additionally take antibiotics for 7 days and let the toenail regrow. That was it, the only 2 choices given. This guy was a whack job!
I looked at Michael who was about to pass out on the table after being told that they wanted to rip off his perfectly attached and intact toe nail. I gave him a smile and a reassuring squeeze and told the doctor we were definitely not taking off the nail and secondly my husband needs to proceed with caution regarding antibiotic use due to his battle with C Difficile. I requested that we take the most gentle treatment to move forward with and soak the toe in the peroxide and put an antibiotic cream on. He seemed a bit miffed and said that if it didn’t work in 7 days to come back and he will remove the nail and left the room!
Melaleuca Oil
For the first 2 days I filled a shot glass full of Hydrogen Peroxide and had Michael lie face down on the bed with his feet hanging over the edge. I placed a stool under his foot and stuck his big toe in a shot glass full of Hydrogen Peroxide and let it soak for 10 minutes. Boy did it fizzzzzz! Afterwards I put on the cream as recommended by the doctor. I followed the instructions for the first 24 hours. On the second night instead of the antibiotic cream I used doTerra Melaleuca oil. I thought my husband would jump off the bed since it can burn a wound like crazy…..To my surprise it didn’t burn! Recognized by its more common name “tea tree”, Melaleuca has been revered for its cleansing and regenerative properties, especially for the skin. Composed of more than ninety different compounds, Melaleuca has limitless therapeutic applications.
Lavender Oil
Oregano Oil
The next day there was a noticeable improvement and the pink color was fading to normal toe color. I added to the oil regimen the addition of lavender and oregano (super hot) oils and again these did not burn his toe at all! Lavender is widely used and accepted for its calming and relaxing qualities. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, used oregano as a cleansing agent as well as for digestive and respiratory support. High in antioxidant activity, oregano contains phenolic acids and flavonoids (dilute when using topically). Not only were we making warp speed healing progress my man smelled like a little herbal drug store!
By Sunday morning the abscess had completely healed from the inside! and all that was left was a callused outer skin with a small little red spot from the night I opened it up with the tweezers.
I will always use antibiotics when I feel they are warranted but what I learned most from this experience is to trust my inner healing goddess (which we all have) and allow my incredible CPTG Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade oils a chance to heal the body more gently.
If you would like any information on doTerra Oils and herbal healing please let me know. I would love to introduce a more natural way of healing for you and your family.
I have been an avid organic gardener for over 10 years and before that would dabble with various plants and veggies. I love the taste of freshly harvested lettuce and kale and feel super charged that it came from my land.
This year my garden was a true disaster. I planted from heirloom organic seeds, replenished my dirt with my own compost which is usually amazing and I have had the worst yield. My crab and devil grasses are at an all time high, my chickens figured out how to get in my garden and destroy any new baby lettuces that actually had a chance. And then there were those seeds, I mean entire rows, that never sprouted not even one! UGH I was frustrated and saddened.
Then one day I saw an interview on 60 minutes that was about aeroponic tower gardens. It had the skeptic in me saying that is not a way to garden, hydroponics/aeroponics is for growing medical marijuana, not food. So I halfway listened to the story. A few weeks later a colleague of mine told me about her tower garden and how much fun she has had with her boys teaching them to grow food.
When the same topic comes into my life from completely different sources a little light inside me says WAKE UP JEN! This is something your life needs to learn about. So I set up a phone meeting with my friend and she walked me through the benefits of the tower garden system. Before I hung up she helped me order my first tower garden! Within a week it arrived in boxes and it was like Christmas in June!
I love jigsaw puzzles and dove into all the boxes to set out on assembling my tower garden in my kitchen! As my husband sat at the kitchen table working on his computer I quickly covered every inch of counter top and floor space with all the parts and pieces.The large green reservoir holds approximately 20 gallons of water which is pumped up the tower on the inside and recycled continuously. Its a truly brilliant system. I also got a steel dolly to be able to rotate my garden and move it around easily and an extension kit to have 8 more holes to grow food.
I will say there were not too many parts, the size of the parts on the other hand were a bit cumbersome for my tiny little space but I was determined to assemble my tower on this beautiful Sunday morning and have it ready to use by days end!
With only one glitch, which was assembling the additional two towers, my tower garden was up and ready to be moved outside within an hour. I really had no idea that it would be so tall! I was thrilled to be ready to take it to the next step and plant my veggies.
The only thing I did not foresee was the timing of growing my own seedlings to fill the tower garden. So if you are planing on growing the seeds that come with your tower garden kit there is no need to assemble your tower garden (unless you are like me and cannot wait to see it up) until your seeds are ready to be planted in your tower. I skipped this step and went to my local garden center and purchased 6 packs of organic romaine, heirloom kale, some dill and strawberries. I rolled the plants in my hands to remove most of the dirt from the root-balls to fit them properly into the baskets provided that snap into the hole you see in the tower. I also found the smallest plants at the nursery knowing their root-balls wouldn’t be as developed and would be less traumatized by removing their dirt.
The planting took about 30 minutes and I enjoyed every moment as my tower became filled with possibility! I tested my PH to make sure I was starting with a balanced level, adjusted it until the reading was correct, put in the required amount of organic mineral blend and plugged it in. I had a small snafu with the timer but figured it out by day 2. When you test your system to ensure that the pump works just make sure you flip the timer switch to on that way your timer starts working immediately. Sounds basic and simple, but I however was overly enthusiastic that my assembly worked on the first go and since I had programmed the timer once it started I thought that was all there was to it.
The placement of your tower is paramount to its success and also to its’ water requirements. How much daily sun exposure you get, whether its morning to early afternoon or afternoon till evening will help you to balance the amount of aeroponic flushes per hour your plants need.
So two days later I hopped on a plane and took off for Italy.
When I returned home to my great surprise this is what my garden looked like!
Zero maintenance, all this needed was a turn every few days and I’m not even sure it got that while I was away and the reservoir of water was down only 2″!!! Now each day I harvest a head of my own organic lettuce, some kale and I’m thrilled I don’t have to fight the weeds or pick off the pincher bugs.
This has changed my perspective on growing my own produce. In three and a half weeks these delicious veggies grew without any input from me other than running an extension cord to the pump! I did not have to add water, which is something I would have had to do daily to keep my lettuces alive normally. I am already starting to get ready for my second planting and feel that even on my farm in sunny southern California this is a system that makes the most sense for me to grow my lettuces, kale and herbs. In fact I can see how I could easily use two towers all year round to keep my family’s need for fresh organic salad materials available every day. I will still use my normal in ground garden for tomatoes, things that climb like cucumbers and peas and for crops that would be altogether to large for this type of environment such as squash and eggplant but I have a new found appreciation in the aeroponic tower garden.
The system includes:
If you are interested in ordering your own tower garden click on the photo above or this link and it will take you to the tower garden website. If you are like me you may find this is not only an amazing way to grow healthy food for you and your family, you may find this could be a wonderful business adventure to become involved in. You have the power to create what you want in your life, my advise is to eat, heal, live and love your live!
Feel free to email me with any questions you have regarding growing your own food. If I can help you create your own small island of sustainability, then I feel we are making the change that is so needed in our world.
Today is a brand new day! I know we have all heard this before and yet we often keep repeating the same way of doing our life including what we eat. In order to feel our BEST I believe alternating what we eat makes a huge difference in not only how we feel internally but in how our bodies PERFORM. If we eat the same thing, day in day out we will often find it to be boring and more often than not our body will eventually build up a bit of an intolerance for the same thing. This is especially true with wheat and gluten products. Introducing new foods to rotate in is a very good way to take notice of how your food makes you feel.
So to start my week of with a new twist, and I highly recommend you give this a try, I dressed up my gluten free oatmeal a bit differently. Not only is it DELISH, it is soothing and loaded with lots of minerals and nutrients your body needs to perform well.
Gluten Free Oatmeal cooked with organic raisins, organic cranberries and organic cherries. I then add some organic almond milk and a very small amount of raw organic honey after it is cooked but while still on the stove to warm the milk and make it creamy. Also while still on the stove I put in a teaspoon of organic raw unprocessed coconut oil, sprinkle liberally with organic cinnamon and today I am trying a new super food product by Spectrum Essentials called Decadent Blend! This has Flax and Chia seeds ground together with coconut and cocoa. OMG off the charts wonderful and this should keep me satisfied until well, I am hungry again. 
Cherries and Antioxidants:
Did you know that cherries rank among the top 20 foods with the highest concentration of antioxidants. In fact, the standard one-cup serving of cherries has the capacity to carry 4,873 antioxidants!
Raisins
Cinnamon
The active principles in the cinnamon spice are known to have anti-oxidant, anti-diabetic, anti-septic, local anesthetic, anti-inflammatory, rubefacient (warming and soothing), carminative and anti-flatulent properties.
Cinnamon has the highest anti-oxidant strength of all the food sources in nature.
Oatmeal
I hope this will give you some inspiration for switching your breakfast foods to help change your outcome for the day!
As with all days EAT, HEAL and LIVE!!!!
I have a lot on my plate I have 40-ish animals, 2 kids, 1 husband, a new career and I cook nearly everything we eat each day starting at 5:30 making my hubby breakfast and lunch to take to work. I sometimes don’t stop until 5:00 and by then I am tired and its time to start to think of cooking dinner and locking down the farm and feeding the rest of the animals their dinner.
I do not want to stop exercising and yet I find myself wanting to put that last on my list of things to do especially in the winter with the shorter days, cold weather etc. Most often I succeed and run out of time to get in a workout and my lazy self wins. Inside my head I am doing two dances; a celebration for the lazy winner and a sad dance of disapproval for the high energy side of me that loves to move and sweat.
Today however I have figured out how to accomplish a few tasks and combine them. I do not consider this multitasking I will call this being fit and focused with prioritizing my to do list. Each day on my farm there are things that need to be done but its cold and dark in the morning and by the time I get outside to feed my animals I leave little to no time for yard or garden tending.
So the breakthrough was simple; pick one task in the yard/garden that requires repetitive movements and that can keep me active for 45 – 60 minutes. As I looked around my yard today there was so much I could do since I have been neglecting my yard since….um December (gasp!) I picked the most urgent, my leaf covered roof. I lugged my rake, shovel and a broom up a ladder to my rooftop and proceeded to work myself into a nice elevated cardio just with raking and shoveling. To add to my workout I had to climb up and down the ladder to stomp down the leaves in the green bins I had place below. I have 3 green bins so I would climb up and down 2 times per bin and jump and stomp the leaves down so I could cram more in. When my bins were full and placed out on the street I walked down to my neighbors and borrowed two of theirs and played repeat. So with two more bins came more raking, shoveling, ladder climbing, bin stomping and lugging them to the street.
All in all I worked out for 45 minutes and worked up a nice heart rate. I know I could have done more but for today I was able to accomplish working out and getting one thing done on my farm that needed to be checked of my to do list. Tomorrow will be a new adventure and I think I will now look at my chores around the property as my daily exercise routine and really work at getting fit while enjoying my farm and garden chores.
I have never had a post come up as unauthorized so this means something new to me. Does Monsanto now control what we can publish in our blogs? And my last post simply disappeared. 
Fellow Californians I am writing to you to encourage you to vote YES on Proposition 37 this November 6th. I believe this is the most important item on our ballot and understanding what you are eating is your right. This whole issue about raising your food prices is absurd, all that will be changing is showing the ingredients on the label and that foods that contain GMO ingredients will no longer be able to sell them as “Natural”.
It makes sense to me and should to you too because if you had a choice between chemically laden foods or truly natural foods I’m guessing you would probably choose the natural option for you and your family.
So take a moment at the polls and please vote YES on prop 37!!!!!
Having a clean house is something that I try to accomplish, or at least most of the time strive for. Over the years I have become more and more sensitive to common household cleaners and chemicals and have noticed as I walked through the cleaning isle of the grocery store my throat becomes scratchy and my nose runs. What I didn’t realize is that I was developing a reaction from being overly exposed to toxic household cleaners and could no longer filter these toxins because my body filters have been on overload.
From cleaning ingredients powerful enough not just to cut through grease and grime, but also human bone and tissue to products labeled “nontoxic” and “green” that are in fact laced with hazardous ingredients, more than a few of the products on the market made Environmental Working Group’s recent “EWG Database Cleaners Hall of Shame” list.
Here are some of the most toxic cleaning products on the market, according to EWG.
All-Purpose Cleaners
• Simple Green Concentrated All-Purpose Cleaner—This product is anything but green. It contains 2-butoxyethanol, a solvent that soaks through the skin and damages red blood cells; even more dangerous is that some people miss the fine print and don’t dilute it.
• Citra-Solv Cleaner & Degreaser—Orange may seem natural, but these sprays contain d-limonene, which can react with ozone in the air to form tiny harmful lung-penetrating particles and the known carcinogen formaldehyde.
• Clorox, Fantastik, Febreze, Formula 409, Mr. Clean, and Spic and Span— EWG says many sprays sold under these brand names contain quaternary ammonium compounds or ethanolamine, compounds that can cause or trigger asthma.
Safer Solution: Create your own potent germ-killing cleaner for pennies by combining nine parts water and one part white vinegar in a spray bottle. For extra-tough jobs, such as those involving raw meat, you can spray hydrogen peroxide (spot-test first) followed by the vinegar solution and kill virtually all germs.
Stain Removers
•Whink Rust Stain Remover—A product used to brighten porcelain toilets and sinks, the fine print says, “May be fatal or cause permanent damage.” The product can also penetrate the skin and attack underlying tissues and bone. Is a bright-white commode worth it?
Safer Solution: For natural cleaning, dump half a bottle of white vinegar into the toilet, shut the lid, let sit overnight, and then scrub and flush in the morning.
Floor Cleaners
• Spic and Span Multi-Surface and Floor Cleaner—California is more strict when it comes to toxic compounds, and it’s put a ban on nonylphenol ethoxylate, an ingredient in this floor cleaner that is toxic to the environment and disrupts the hormonal system.
• Mop & Glo Multi-Surface Floor Cleaner—Contains high concentrations of a substance that the United Nations says is “suspected of damaging the unborn child.”
Safer Solution: Spot-test and use the nine-parts-water, one-part white vinegar solution to kill germs on your floor.
Bathroom Cleaners
• Scrubbing Bubbles Antibacterial Bathroom Cleaner & Extend-a-Clean Mega Shower Foamer—These lung-inflaming products contain 10 percent DEGBE, a solvent banned in the European Union at concentrations above 3 percent.
• DampRid Mildew Stain Remover Plus Blocker— Contains a hazardous solvent and another ingredient banned in European Union cleaners.
• Lysol Disinfectant Power Toilet Bowl Cleaner with Lime & Rust Remover—Sure, this will kill germs in your toilet bowl…but it could also kill you or your pet if it’s swallowed. The acid in the cleaner can also cause irreversible eye damage.
• 2000 flushes and X-14 Toilet Bowl Cleaners—These chlorine-based products are “fatal if swallowed.”
So if you have any of these items in your cabinet possibly its time to do a little greening in your cleaning products. I have found that a little borax, vinegar and olive oil are some pretty strong cleaning agents and will not kill you in the process.
Check out my recipe for an all natural wood cleaner and polish in the healthy homes section , you will love, love, love how it cleans, feeds and brightens your wood and your mood!
As with all days Eat…..Heal…..Live!
As I walk down the cleaning isle in any store but a health food store the smells and chemicals give me a headache right away and I try not to breathe. Now I’m supposed to buy this stuff to clean my house right? And yet I feel sick standing with the unopened containers of all these “household cleaners” wondering which is the lesser evil. I know there are more environmentally friendly cleaning products and even those have me wondering if maybe I can do something myself. So I decided to launch my workshop series Healthy Homes Heal, which takes us to a deeper level of evaluating all that is going into our daily health including the products we use to keep our homes clean.
I think one of the best ways to change our lifestyle is one step at a time. If we have too many things to change all at once it is overwhelming and it is hard to know what exactly is helping with making you feel better. Lets start comfortably with one simple new healthy non-toxic product and remove the old more toxic one! Sounds easy enough to me and so that is the goal for the first of this series.
Home Remedies are things I love because its like chemistry class at your kitchen table and you get to choose what to make. When you start to embrace YOUR POWER and realize the things your put in your body (by feeding or simply through absorption or inhalation) have an impact in how you feel, only then can you control your health with simple things like eating organic foods, using less toxic cleaning supplies and avoiding toxicity like hanging out while your friends smoke cigarettes. 
Ok now onto making your own Wood Dressing and watch your wood become alive! What you’ll need is an empty clean spray bottle I used a 32oz. one and used every drop throughout the next two days feeding and cleaning any wood in site. I used it on my beautiful antique dressers, my floors, my mahogany doors and jambs and even my untreated outdoor wood furniture! My furniture and floors look different two days later, they are richer in color and feel smooth and satiated I guess could be the word!
Wood Dressing:
2 cups Olive Oil preferably produced in the USA
2 cups white vinegar
80 drops doTerra Wild Orange Oil or Lemon (I cannot attest for the purity of any other essential oil on the marketplace nor would I recommend using on your furniture)
Put all ingredients together in bottle and shake well. Be warned you will want to feed everything in sight! Shake bottle before each spray as the oils and vinegar will separate.
Another note once you apply this to your wood floors let it seep into the grain, wipe off excess if you feel you must . The floor can be slippery for about a half hour until it is absorbed please be careful not to slip while it dries. Use soft clean cloth for your furniture and the same principle applies here if there is excess wipe off with a clean cloth although you will find that most of your wood is starving and will drink in all this pure food!
As with all things in life love what you are doing NOW!
EAT….HEAL…..LIVE!
organic urban farm girl 