Green Lemonade

As I mentioned last week, my mom came for a visit Friday night and Saturday. We had a wonderful time and enjoyed a few raw items while she was here! I made her my favorite juice, but never got around to making this one for her. She liked my favorite juice so much that she made it for my dad when she got home on Saturday! Here's the Green Lemonade that I made after she left.

Green Juice (aka Green Lemonade) Juicer Detox Recipe

1 head romaine lettuce

5 to 6 stalks of kale

2 sweet apples (I usually use Fuji or Pink Lady apples)

1 whole lemon (organic is best so you don't have to peel it)

1 to 2 tablespoons fresh ginger root (optional - but I love this - add to your own taste)

Process the vegetables and fruit through your juicer.

This recipe is from Natalia Rose, who wrote The Raw Food Detox Diet. If you're interested, she has a whole program on helping you to detox! Learn more here.

Lemons are amazing little citrus fruits! Some of the benefits of consuming lemon include, hair and skin care, indigestion, fever, throat infections, constipation, high blood pressure, respiratory disorders, and it's great for the immune system.

This juice is so good! If you like lemon, you'll like this! Unfortunately, I forgot to put ginger in mine, but I'm sure it gives it a nice kick. Next time!

Glutathione

I don't have a recipe for you today, but I'm hoping you have about 9 minutes for me! I was doing some research today on detox and found some information on Glutathione that is definitely worth knowing! Let me just give you a brief overview about Glutathione before you watch the video below.

Glutathione (GSH) is an endogenous antioxidant, which means it's only produced in our bodies. It does about 20-30 things in our cells, but here are the 3 major things for us to remember: 1. Antioxidant, so it helps reduce free radicals and oxidative stress. 2. Immune system booster. 3. Detoxifier, including heavy metals and environmental chemicals.  Since Glutathione (GSH) isn't found in foods, we need to consume foods that have precursors to Glutathione, meaning they can help raise Glutathione levels. One of the precursors to Glutathione is Cysteine. According to studies, these foods can slightly help to increase our bodies naturally occurring Glutathione: apples, asparagus, broccoli, carrots, grapefruit, spinach, and tomatoes. The best way to increase you Glutathione levels is take a powdered supplement. I will have to do further research on this, but in the meantime, I'm going to increase my intake of the above veggies!! I would guess it would be beneficial to consume foods high in Cysteine as well, which include broccoli, brussel sprouts, garlic, oats, onion, and red peppers.

It's always fun to learn new things, especially if it's something that our body does for us! Even though it seems we can't dramatically boost Glutathione levels without a supplement, it makes me want to feed my body the best food so it continues to do the best work that it can! After all, we only have one.

Happy learning!!

Cleanse Soup!

Wow! What a fabulous Thanksgiving we had! We were able to spend the weekend with family in Iowa and then ended our weekend with an overnight in Galena, Illinois. It was fantastic! I have to admit that I was not able to maintain the 80-90% raw diet that I have been doing. I did bring a few items with us so I could eat some raw, but it's always hard when you're visiting people that don't eat like you. I would never want to offend anyone. We brought salad fixings, raw oatmeal, and some veggies along with our old juicer. I am glad that we got some raw things in over the weekend.

I decided that I should do a bit of a cleanse upon returning home. I came across this recipe that sounded perfect:

Cleanse Soup from the Do Eat Raw App.

2 little red bell peppers

6 green onions

3 celery stalks

1 avocado

2 tomatoes

5 leaves of kale

1/2 inch root ginger

1 cup fresh cilantro

1/2 cup fresh spinach

1 teaspoon Himalayan Salt

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 cup warm water

Chop all of the ingredients, place in a food processor, and blend until creamy! I didn't have any spinach so I left that out and I also only added about 1/2 cup of water. I like my soup a bit thicker, but you can add as much as you'd like. 

My husband had some work to do, so it was just the little man and I making soup together. He loves to help. Surprisingly enough, he loved this soup too! He ate about half of my bowl and kept saying, "spicy" in his sweet little voice! Trust me when I say that I was one happy mama seeing him eat this soup. So good for his little body after a weekend of "not so healthy" food! Soups and smoothies are always an excellent way to get young kids to eat leafy greens and other veggies they can't really chew!

Love that chubby little helping finger!!

He was leaning in to get a taste!

One of many bites! And yes, he's sitting on the cupboard!

It's difficult to take pictures when your 2-year old is attempting to help and eat at the same time. I attempted to take several pictures of the soup in the bowl all while he kept leaning over like he was going to lap it up like a dog. I'm sure he would've if I'd let him:) 

BTW, I really liked this!

Spring Cleaning.

I'm sure, well not that sure, that most of you do some type of spring cleaning every year, right? My spring cleaning usually consists of getting rid of items that I no longer need or that clutter our house. Spring is always a great time to spring clean our bodies too! There are so many detoxes available out there sometimes it's hard to know what to use. I have personally tried several different ones, because I think it's important to detox more than just once a year, unless of course you eat 100% perfect without any chemicals, dyes, or preservatives, and you maintain your life inside a "clean world bubble" where you have no contact with chemicals or pollutants. So, that leaves the rest of us to detox on occasion!

So, here are just a few that I trust:

This is "HHA Natural Detox" from Herbal Healer.  I'm currently using this one right now. It's nice because it's a whole body and just plain ole capsules!

Also from Herbal Healer is her specific detox here. IE. kidneys, liver etc.
http://web-magik.com/cgi-bin/hhaitems/search_db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&sb=5&so=ascend&Name=detox&view_records=1&view_records=GO

Due to the recent events in Japan, and the fact that some radioactive material has been found here in the US, she has a radiation detox. You wouldn't take this unless absolutely needed. If you're looking for a safe radioactive detox, just use Kelp and chlorella! The quick and easy explanation on how they work: They take up the binding sites on your thyroid so that radioactive particles cannot. Sea vegetable are amazingly nutritious and beneficial to our health. I'm also currently taking these.

This is from David's Wolfe's site. More expensive. Can just get a raw green supplement for a little less. You will have to cut and paste the URL to your web browser!
http://www.sunfood.com/food/cleansing-detox.html?utm_source=sunfood&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=110503

The good ole colon cleanse by Dr. Natura here. Yes, you may get a bit "crampy" with this d/t the tea, but it goes away once you use the restroom!

And of course eating ORGANIC RAW foods helps to detox the body as well!

So, get to cleaning the most important thing, YOUR BODY!!