I Love A Cocktail

I sure do. I have always been fond of fermented beverages....wines especially. I have even prided myself in years past on my knowledge of wines and champagnes, giving much attention to the detail of paring my heavily cooked, gourmet dinners with just the right varietal to impress and captivate my guest's palates. Then I went raw. Then I became a vegan. Then I gave up alcohol.

I knew the day was coming. My body and my complexion told me the time was fast approaching that I needed to relinquish my daily companion of spirits. Once over 40, the "mornings after" weren't cute anymore. Once high raw, my system grew more and more sensitive to the effects of alcohol, yet my beverage of choice was my friend, my comfort and my fun. So I believed.

Recently I had a routine blood test. The findings were disturbing. My liver enzymes were actually good, yet I had a condition called Macrocytosis, which is the appearance of enlarged red blood cells. My doctor told me that it was most likely my diet....the number one cause of this condition is anemia. The only other cause would generally be alcoholism. As she told me this, my heart sunk within me. Could it be that I was actually an alcoholic? She went ahead and ordered further testing.

Two weeks went by. My doctor was baffled by the second set of results. No real sign of anemia. Liver was in decent condition....so what's going on? She told me that she was pretty sure it was my diet and that I should probably not do "the raw thing." "Most vegetarians suffer from anemia," she said. I came back with, "But you say I'm not anemic?" "Well, no, but you're probably not getting enough protein. So just add meat back into your diet and we'll recheck you in a few months." I left her office that day, and I have not been back.

Intuitively, I knew what the problem was. It had to be my evening past time. I researched everything I could find on macrocytosis....everything pointed to the booze. I went ahead and started a B complex and folic acid supplementation program for good measure, but I was face to face with the fact that the time was now to put down the champagne glass and get on with my true goal of getting completely healthy.

I decided to set a realistic goal. Get through the holidays and give up the sauce on January 1st, 2008. So, that's what I have done. I haven't looked back and I very honestly haven't missed it a drop. I don't miss the headaches, the sinus drainage nor do I miss the feeling of something having control over me. I hadn't looked at it like that before I quit, but I now see that it had me in it's seductive little clutches.

I do have a powerful secret on how I've made this transition so smoothly, which is the main reason I've even gone into this saga. I have been experimenting with kombucha and rejulevac and making my own raw cocktails at happy hour. My husband and I have been loving the flavors and the way we feel. Drinking a raw concoction about 30 minutes to an hour prior to dinner really aids in the digestion and assimilation of meals. These drinks are completely satisfying and the perfect transition away from traditional cocktails and away from alcohol of any kind.

Here is an example of one of our favorites:

Blood Orange Raw Mojito

the juice of two blood oranges
the juice of two limes
a bunch of muddled fresh mint
a good squeeze of agave nectar
16 ounces of rejuvelac or kombucha

Place all ingredients into a martini shaker and gently mix. Pour into chilled martini or wine glasses. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint. Savor and allow the tensions of the day fall away.

Season of Change

2008 is off to an incredible start. I have heard from so many people that they are feeling a change in the energy or vibration in and around them as we move into this new year. Whether you believe in the study of numerology or not, my friend Courtney Pool says, 2008 is a number 1 in numerology which means its the beginning of a new cycle. I receive that and I feel it. Do you?

At the end of last year, I quit the work I had been doing for 15 years to stay home and refocus. Although I wasn't burnt out, I just simply felt that I was done. Time for a new chapter in life and my husband and family felt it too. My clients, however, did not feel it, which has been difficult....but everything all works out in the end. I am very fortunate to be in a situation where taking this sabbatical is possible and I have a true awareness that this window of time is a gift as well as an assignment.

So, what am I doing with my time? Lots of people have asked and the words haven't been coming easy. I haven't even blogged it because I don't know how to articulate but I will try to do so here and see how it turns out.

First and foremost, this is a time for spiritual awakening. Taking the time to tune into the stillness and quiet and reflecting upon what I am hearing. My life has been filled with such clamor... I long for rest from the noise and the voices, voices including my own. I have a knowing of a greater purpose, but I don't want to be the one to write it in my own strength, by my own will or ego. I want it to unfold as I go deeper into this process of just being.

Of course there are goals and dreams that I have. Some are new and some have been with me for many years. As I was working through a goal setting session online (thanks Dhrumil), I realized that a number of the dreams/goals on my list have been part of me since I was a young girl or teen. Why in the world would they still be lingering around and eluding me 20+ years later? That's a real question and I wanted to learn the real answer. As I meditated on it, it came to me that I had been believing, on a very subconscious level, that I either wasn't worthy or that I didn't have the courage it takes to achieve these goals. What a realization! And how very sad it is that I was holding onto that type of belief after all I've learned and after all the other people I have helped motivate and support through the years to reach their personal goals. Breathe. So, it is just a mind set...that's all. Old thought patterns are programmed in, very deeply at our core sometimes, yet I know they can also be programmed out as well.

Over time, I will likely share what some of my goals are, but for now, I just wanted to put this down for the record. I am in a reprogramming mode. A mental, spiritual and physical detox, if you will. I am so thankful to have an immediate family that "gets me" and that allows me to evolve and grow as a person without fear. I am also aware that my new friends, many of whom I've met since I have been on the raw food path, are such a gift. The inspiration and the enlightenment I receive on a daily basis is priceless. Many of you aren't even aware how your tiny little blurbs coming through on the computer or through text message, envelope me in support and raise my energy and vibration to higher levels. I feel community with you, even though a few of you are physically on the other side of the planet. From my heart, I cherish you all.

So, moving ahead...what does this year hold for us all? I live in wonder and excitement to see. I have this phrase I keep thinking in my head, "Something wonderful is happening." Do you feel it bubbling inside of you? Even if its just the tiniest of nudgings, allow it come forth and manifest. As Henry David Thoreau says, " Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler." Won't you let me know what's bubbling up on the inside of you?

Realistic Resolutions for 2008

After touting my own good intentions to the world wide web at the beginning of December, I feel as though I have already gotten a bit of the New Year's Resolution fixation out of my system. I have always been put off by the idea of making annual claims, yet each year I find myself gearing up once again, ready to right the wrongs of the previous year, purposing towards more glorious outcomes THIS time around.

So, as I awoke and checked email this morning, I had a great one from Raw Summit's, Kevin Gianni, that I'd like to share with all my readers. His reflections on making and keeping resolutions are certainly worth a read and worth taking to heart. He has also put together more help on is website, www.healthrenegade.com/blog and you can finish reading the article in its entirety there.

If you are making any resolutions or "intentions", I would love for you to share them with me. Sometimes it helps to put them out there and gain support. I am taking a little different approach this time around and I'll share those details with you in an upcoming blog. So, for now...my deepest wishes to you for a beautiful and healthful 2008. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution: Step #1

Set your intentions. To make this New Year’s Resolution last, you have to be very clear about your intentions. You have to set them with specifics as well as figure out why you really want to achieve them. It’s not enough to say “I want to eat more raw food and less animals.” You have to know why you want to do it. Is it to live better? Feel better? Be better?

How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution: Step #2

Learn to fail graciously. We’re not perfect beings. Never were. So here’s the deal. You have to accept that you’re going to waiver a bit along the path. Most of us stop when the going gets tougher and revert to our old patterns. If you want to succeed with your New Year’s Resolution this year, know that you might fall off track a bit along the way. If you do, pick yourself back up and keep going. There’s never a straight line between point A and point B. Enjoy the ride.

How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution: Step #3

Clean out your gut and keep your immune system in top condition. You may think this doesn’t have much to do with New Year’s Resolutions, but it surely does. You have to be clean physically to make good decisions. Does alcohol impair your thoughts? Of course it does. What about processed sugar or soda or a piece of kale. If alcohol can change the way you operate, so can those other foods. If you’re not clean on the inside, then you’re thoughts will be impure and lead you down the wrong path. Gut and immune system cleansing and maintenance are the first places to start even before you change the way you eat!

How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution: Step #4

Learn the program for your own body type. Don’t just jump into any fitness or wellness program without knowing your body type. They are plenty of things you can do to improve or master your health and wellness, but without knowing if you run hot or cold or in between you could find yourself down the wrong path.

How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution: Step #5

Learn how to deal with pitfalls. If you already know how to deal with the ups and downs of a healthy diet and fitness program… you’re going to know what to do when the hard times hit.

How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution: Step #6

Create a wellness toolbox. This is simply a place where you can go for options. A wellness toolbox has ideas and items that will help you make decisions when you have little time or little mind capacity left (due to stress, work or anything else that drains you). This can be an idea file or even a physical box where you keep recipes or workouts or things that inspire you.

How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution: Step #7

Know how you make decisions and know your personality type. I’ve identified 3 types of personalities when it comes to health and fitness and just about anything else. These are the caretaker, the go-getter and the researcher. Each one has specific qualities that helps them make good or bad decisions. If you know which one you are the better off you are keeing your New Year’s Resolution.

Loving Luscious Lavender

Photo courtesy of Oregon Lavendar Association

I ordered edible lavender online over a year ago when I was making Sarma Melngailis' recipe for Lavender Ice Cream (see Raw Food Real World). I somehow ordered enough lavender for an army so it still sits in my pantry, waiting with purpose, for another raw creation. A wave of artistry swept through me this morning and here is the sweet and delicate result....

Lavender Shortbread Cookies

1 heaping cup soaked cashews
meat of 1 young thai coconut
1/2 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup pure water
1/4 - 1/2 cup almond flour (finely ground cashews would work too)
1 tbsp. edible lavender flowers
1 tbsp + 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. gold quality sea salt
a little squeeze of fresh lemon juice, if desired

Put all ingredients, except flour, into your high speed blender. Churn on high until all ingredients are completely smooth. Use a spatula to scrap batter into a medium sized bowl. Fold in 1/4 cup nut flour, mixing thoroughly, adding in additional flour until you achieve a batter like consistency. Should be a bit thicker than pancake batter. Warning, this mixture is killer delicious and hopefully you won't eat it all before it makes it into the dehydrator. (However, I hope you'll feel free to lick the bowl clean as I did this morning!)

Using a small ice cream scoop or a tablespoon, put rounds of batter onto teflex sheets on a dehydrator tray. (Mine looked like little footballs more than circles). Very gently shake or tap tray until you have the desired thickness of your cookie. Place in a 115 degree dehydrator until cookies appear firm enough to peel away from the teflex sheet, about 12 hours or more. Put cookies back onto tray and continue dehydrating until they are a bit crisp or firm on the outside and nice and soft on the inside. Approximately another 12-24 hours, depending upon your personal preference. ENJOY!

'Tis the Season to be a Raw Foodie

It is a cold, windy and overcast day in Tulsa, Oklahoma. However, this weather somehow doesn't fit my feelings on the inside. Recently I've been aware of this warm humming deep down in my solar plexis. That grand feeling that something wonderful is happening, yet I am not exactly sure what it is or how to define it just yet. Maybe it's the feeling like one has when they are pregnant...that expectancy of knowing the baby is coming, but there's no idea of how everything will ultimately go or what the baby will look like or how he/she will be, once delivered and in your arms.

As many of you know, I am not 100% raw in my daily life. I eat a high raw diet, but I still continue to eat a bit of cooked here and there. That's just my life and I have a level of comfort with that, yet there is always the elusive, full blown, hard core commitment that I see in others I've admired. You know, those special ones, the 100% raw food elite club, the members of the raw Admiral's Club, you know those I speak of, right? I watch them....I study them....I am impressed by their level of commitment and discipline. I ponder this group with high respect and honor, yet, there I go again, a hand full of potato chips into the cake hole before I realize what I've done. Just lost my membership into the inner sanctum once again.

I know....Dhrumil says this, "People fail on raw when they look for it to define their Being. You are much greater than any diet could ever be. Go 100% raw if you like, treat it as a game or a challenge, not as reflection of who you are. Don't find or define yourself in your diet." The raw guru has spoken. Even though I could technically be this hipster's mother, I respect his wisdom and his experience with this whole raw game. His success in life is merely fueled by his raw diet. My new friend Justine adds, "Raw is alive and living and supports the life choices I make...definitely doesn't define me though!" Amen to that. Finally, Jennifer adds, "I am a flame burning by Divine Inspiration, My spark is fanned with nourishment alive & vibrant. I am the fire, the food is my fuel." Enough said.

So, here is my deal.....I will give up my attachment to being 100% raw for the sake of saying it. That whole percent issue is probably overrated because it is not about the food. And it certainly shouldn't be about a competition or about being holier than thou. Raw food is NOT a religion. It is only about the food choices we make for our health. The only reason those members of the Raw Admiral's Club are so amazing is because raw foods, full of enzymes and life, recreate the body, mind and spirit on a deep cellular level. When you give your body the best fuel possible, the body responds and is capable of doing and being more than if could ever be on a heavily cooked, processed, chemical infused food diet.

I've been circling the airport and now I am gonna land this plane....here's the deal - I am making a commitment, to myself and anyone that maybe reading this, to go 100% raw for this final month of December 2007. I am not doing this to earn my gold winged club pin or anything like that. I am choosing to do this because I want the next level of optimum health. Although I've been on that road, moving in that direction already....I want to start 2008 with the court advantage. I want to reduce the inflammation that comes from dabbling and tasting all of the treats that come around during the holidays. I want to wake up fresh and alert every morning...not partially hung over from overindulgences and foggy brained from one too many toddies. I would like to lose these lingering pounds that have clung on like a leech to my hips, thighs and stomach. I want to have my spirit clear and free from the attachments to wrong foods for the sake of tradition.

Many who read this may already be where I am going because you are living the high life and dining on a diet that is 100% raw. If you are there, save me a seat....I'll see you in January. And for any of you who would like to come along with me for this ride, hop on. Let's encourage one another. If we stumble, we can scoop one another up and get right back on track. Let me know your thoughts....I'd love to hear from you.

Photo Coutesy of Ancestry Family Blog

The Day After

Yes...I have survived another Thanksgiving holiday with my marvelous family and friends. We had a beautiful day that included dinner for 20. As a raw foodist, orchestrating a festive and appetizing menu for a guest list of cooked food eating carnivores was not a task I took lightly. The menu consisted of a combination of the best of both worlds....traditional Thanksgiving fare and the introduction, to the majority of my guests, of the beauty and health of raw foods. I guess it is good to know that my appliances still work and that I haven't lost my ability to produce gourmet cooked foods for a crowd when the occasion calls for such.

I won't be sharing my recipes in this entry, although I will get around to it. I just needed to blog my assessment of where I am today, in the aftermath of such a day as Thanksgiving. Preparing all of that food seemed excessive and I felt troubled as I was vigorously adhering to the traditions that my family has always observed. No one had a clue I was at odds with the whole affair, yet in my heart, I kept asking the question, "Will this be my last Thanksgiving to cook?" My family doesn't have a real concept of who I am or what I do as it relates to the whole raw food thing, nor do any of them seem to care. I am speaking in a broad sense because my immediate family..husband and children, get it because they live it with me on a daily basis. But parents, aunts, uncles, in-laws, etc. just look at me with a baffled look as though I am dabbling in some type of cult. Perhaps that is the reason I keep my diet so much on the down low...in an effort to simply not upset the balance of these family functions that seem to revolve around food, all cooked and always in excess.

So, through my personal discomforts of yesterday's activities, I think I've turned yet another corner. I have a great deal of acceptance and love towards my family and I am so very thankful for all they mean to me. It really doesn't matter to me if they understand or accept my diet/lifestyle. It really doesn't have to be a big deal. One or two days a year I can certainly compromise my diet and enjoy all the fun and love that flows through the crowd. (Albeit, I was popping digestive enzymes like a junkie). They need their cooked foods somehow...it completes the ambiance for them. They can see that I have made and continue to make personal changes that are having positive impact upon my health and my appearance. They can tell by my words that I am doing my homework as it relates to diet and health. I don't have to cram anything down anyones throat. If anyone wants to know more, they can ask me. That is just where I am with it all.

Yesterday made me proud to be a raw foodist. It made me realize how eating raw is so much kinder and gentler on my body, my kitchen and the resources around me. Washing raw dishes hardly requires soap. Yet today, I have pans that are soaking in my sink that may never come clean due to the residues of cooked, congealed foods. As troubled as I felt in the midst of a pipping hot kitchen yesterday, a sense of gentle peace and gratefulness has settled upon me today. My husband is waiting on me now....ready to start this day with a green power smoothie. Yes, I have much to be thankful for.

Smells Like Pumpkin Spirit

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I have been working on a smoothie recipe that fits the season. I have tried to incorporate a lot of healthy, delicious and super nourishing ingredients into this raw power refresher. It is really great if you are a raw vegan and trying to keep your B vitamin intake up (especially B12 and folic acid). Check this out:

PUMPKIN CREME POWER SHAKE

milk and meat of 1 baby coconut
1 frozen banana
1/4 cup chia seeds, soaked with one cup fresh almond milk
1/4 cup (or more) fresh carrot juice
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (add more if you prefer)
2 - 3 soaked dates
1 scoop maca powder
1 tsp. liquid vitamin B complex
1 heaping tbsp. Crystal Manna Flakes
large glass of crushed ice

Place all ingredients into your high speed blender and mix until smooth and frothy. This drink isn't only incredibly healthy and delicious, it is guaranteed to keep you rocking and fueled up for hours!