Souped Up Soup!

Yesterday I posted about my "take a peek into the produce bins and concoct some sort of soup for dinner" experience in the kitchen.  I commented that tonight's soup would be similar but with sautéed celery instead of the kale. (My apologies on the typo about "now add the onions and garlic" as it was supposed to be add the onions and kale. I fixed that boo-boo.)

OK, so the planned soup just got souped up. I discovered 4 buttercup squash, from Old Market Farm, in my garage last eve. Now I did not exactly lose them, they were just momentarily forgotten. I decided to get them into the house before they froze and started rotting on me.

So I roasted the squash this AM. Revving the oven up in early AM helps to warm the chilled downstairs after a cool night.

To make this soup quickly, on an eve after working all day: get the squash steaming first, before you sauté the celery and onions. Cut a small to medium buttercup squash in half, remove seeds, and put into a pot of water that has about 1 inch of water on the bottom. When water starts to boil, reduce heat to a gentle simmer, and cook squash for about 20 minutes. It will be ready when you finish with the sauté and soup prep. 

Kitchen Advice: Never boil your veggies in a pot full of water; steam in the least amount of water you can get away with and not go dry. This goes for potatoes you are cooking to mash. Less water means less nutrient loss. Pour off cooking water into a coffee mug, let cool, and drink. Get every cell enhancing mineral and nutrient any way and every way you can!

Now get going on the celery & onion saute'!

• Sauté the medium sized onion, cut into small chunks, and the celery leaves in bacon fat from local, pasture raised pigs, no nasty curing chemicals added. (Use whatever you like for gentle sautéing: pasture raised butter, coconut oil... I would avoid most vegetable oils but that is another blog post and story!) The celery will sauté quickly, add the celery after the onions are just about finished.  This way you do not over cook the celery leaves.
• Add approximately 3 1/2 cups of goat's milk to the blender with 3 big cloves of the Birdsfoot garlic.
• Add the onion and celery to the blender.  
• Plop in big scoops of the squash, at least use one half of the cooked squash. Be careful scooping the squash out of the shell as it is hot and a steamed squash gets mushy not rigid like an oven roasted one. (Add lots of butter and sprinkle with curry, the other half of the squash, while it is still hot so the butter melts. Mash the butter and curry into the squash. Put into a dish and take to work tomorrow!)
• Sprinkle in, oh maybe 1 tsp. of medium heat curry powder (Nature's Storehouse or the Potsdam Food Coop). I use more curry with squash or pumpkin soup because the squash flavor can handle it without being overwhelmed. Besides, the spices in curry are amazing healers!
• Blend until the consistency and smoothness you want in a cream soup is achieved.
• Pour in soup pot and gently warm.
• Ladle into soup bowls and add a pinch of unrefined sea salt, if desired.

Don't forget the beet gratings!  Beets soup up the soup in several ways:

• fiber
• nutrients
• raw veggie with dinner
• contrasting color to the pretty orange soup (this artsy cooking style feeds the heart, mind, and soul!)
• beets are used as cancer therapy in Germany and Russia!  Why wait to use as therapy; prevent health problems now!

Quickly grate the beet using my metal cheese grater. I sprinkled the beet gratings on top of this generously curry seasoned cream of squash/celery soup.

If the pot is big enough, or the eaters few enough, you will have left overs for lunch or later dinners this week!  OR... freeze in a wide mouth, quart Ball canning jar (leave head space for expansion during the freezing process) and enjoy in a week or two!

Cheers and happy, healthy cooking!

Please Remove Shoes & Negative Attitudes

I painted this door sign years ago. I have glued and removed it from a couple of front doors. I was inspired to create it because of a bumper sticker: "Mean People Suck." I also related that sentiment to negative people and their energy.

This past Saturday I watched the documentary film Symphony of the Soil. I was reminded of the beautiful method of how soil rebuilds itself when we care for it in natural ways, recreating nature's gardening methods.

Another message that was clear to me: how farming with chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides is much like fraternizing with negative people - soil / soul sucking!

These chemical means of farming literally suck the life out of the soil. Chemicals slowly and insidiously kill off the soil microbes, fungi, earth worms, and various other life forms that are essential to healthy soil and life on this planet. Chemically farmed soil becomes dry, pale, lifeless, and infertile. Food grown in this soil is nutrient deficient like the very soil it was grown in. 

Negative people and negative energy (i.e. watching, listening, or reading the news) do the same to us. These things slowly and insidiously suck the life from our body, mind, and soul. Negative energy in our life is a real force that leeches the nutrients from our every body cell just as chemical farming leeches nutrients from the soil.

Chemical farming is a stress to the soil, to all biological life, and to this planet.  (All are one and the same.)

Negative people and negative energy stress our physical body, our emotional/mental being, and our soul. Negative energy activates the stress response. This response eats up nutrients from our body cells. This is one reason why stressed people get sickly looking (pale like the stressed soil), age faster, and contract more acute illnesses (colds, the flu, etc.) and go on to develop more chronic lifestyle diseases than relaxed, peaceful people.

Touch each other's lives, and your own, gently!  Northern Sun T-Shirt!

POSITIVE Action to take:

Surround yourself with warm, loving, positive energetic people

AND

Be a warm, loving, positive energy person!

See and inspire the good in everyone, including you!

Whole food RECIPE:  Tourlou Greek Mix-Mix (made with local ingredients!)

This is positively delicious!

• 5-6 medium ripe tomatoes (Richard Paolillo's & Vanessa Bittner's Old Market Farm)
• 1 medium eggplant (Kent Family Growers)
• 2 medium red potatoes (Keim Amish Farmer)
• 1 large red pepper (Keim)
• 1 large red onion (Birdsfoot Farm)
• 4-5 good size cloves of garlic (Birdsfoot Farm)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup olive oil (I used 1/4 cup olive oil and 1/4 cup of Kriemhild Dairy's pasture raised butter)
• dash of nutmeg and thyme, I am a heavy handed dasher! I would say a good full tsp. of thyme and slightly less than a tsp. of nutmeg
• unrefined sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste after cooking

The finished Tourlou, Mix-Mix, with chickpeas. 

1. Cut veggies into bite size chunks and mix together well (except garlic)
2. Spread out in the bottom of two 8 x 13 baking pans
3. add oil, butter, bay leaves, nutmeg, and thyme and mix together
4. Bake at 350 F for 1 hour, set timer for every 20 minutes and mix-mix away adding water to not "fry" the veggies! This makes for a juicy creamy mix-mix!
5. If veggies not tender enough after 1 hour, give them a few minutes more
6. When finished cooking add the garlic via garlic pressing into the mix of veggies
7. Serve and add salt / pepper to taste
8. Serve with chick peas added to the mix or chunks of chicken
9. A side of whole grain pita bread, warm of course, is nice
10. Perhaps a 'lil Greek goat's milk feta too!

Hints:

• This dish can be eaten hot or cooled. Traditional Greek serving is when cooled allowing the flavors to meld. 
• I have used zucchini, yellow squash, buttercup & butternut squash, sweet potatoes... The eggplant, tomatoes, and onion are required... after that, add veggies to your delight. The more you make, meaning the fuller the baking dishes are, use more tomatoes to add to the creamy goodness.
• Another serving suggestion: To get a raw veggie salad in with this yummy dish serve with a Fall cabbage-root veggie slaw OR  sauerkraut.

Enjoy!

Life Force Energy, Healing The Collective Soul

Photo and inspiring words compliments of Ali Hotmer of www.Twin Tree Healing.com, West Chester, PA

Life force energy flows through us. Life force energy flows through all living things.

When we expose our self to life force energy (it is all around us, we breathe in life force energy) our mind, body, and spirit (spirit is life force energy) become more vibrant.

As I was walking through my wood I had thoughts; thoughts I felt compelled to write about and share. A few weeks ago I wrote about the healing powers of the great white pine. This healing power of being in the woods, surrounded by trees and plants, I will expand upon.

                                              I really do hug trees!

The woods are alive and vibrant with life force energy. This energy radiates from every living thing. When we walk in a forest, the emanating energy of one plant or tree overlaps the emanating energy of all the other plants and trees around it.

When you walk in the woods, you are literally bathing your mind, body, and spirit in the life force energy of the woodland plants and trees. This is powerful medicine, powerful healing energy.

This healing energy has the strength to bring peace and serenity to you, the strength to heal from deep inside your being.

To your natural, healing medicine bag I recommend you add a daily walk in the woods (even 5 minutes) and bathe yourself in the life force energy, the collective soul of the world.

Poster available through United Plant Savers

Suggestions to enhance the flow of your life force energy: 

• walk in the woods,
• just get outside and walk,
• acupuncture,
• reiki,
• massage,  (a new massage therapist in town, Adrea Elizabeth, is looking to grow her clientele)
• yoga, (more yoga in the Canton - Potsdam, NY area),
• any energy healing!
• AND, how about trying this: (You will be glad you did!).

Naturally Simple Ways to Weigh LESS...

Naturally Simple Ways to Weigh Less

and Live More Every Day of your life!

This is all about re-balancing your body, mind, and spirit to create a vibrantly healthy you... inside and out. So much more than the number on the "scales!"

1. Feed your soul with primary food.  Friends and family, physical activity, spirituality and a satisfying career feed us. Lack of primary food creates over-reliance on secondary, edible food.
2. Drink water. Most people are chronically dehydrated. We often mistake thirst for hunger. If you feel hungry between meals, drink a glass of water before giving into cravings. Limit liquid calories from soda, juice, sports drinks and “enhanced” waters.  Stick with nature made!
3. Eat a plant-rich diet. Plant foods are typically lower in calories and higher in fiber than meat, dairy and processed foods, while providing loads of essential nutrients.  Purchase your animal products from farmers who raise the food in a natural manner; healthy and naturally balanced foods make for a healthy, naturally balanced human. Make certain you do get enough fat and protein in your daily diet to satisfy hunger, appetite, and nutritional needs for YOU.  Each of our needs is different!
4. Chew your food well. Digestion begins in the mouth. By thoroughly chewing your food, your body will better assimilate nutrients; you will also slow down your eating. It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that it is full. By slowing your eating, you’ll feel full, satisfied, and better nourished on less food.  More nutrients in each cell mean a healthier body!
5. Eat real food; avoid processed, packaged foods. Avoid products with high-fructose corn syrup or a long list of unpronounceable ingredients. (Reduce or eliminate refined sugars from your diet; glucose, fructose, any “oses”.) Packaged and convenience foods tend to be highly processed, lacking the nutrients your body needs, and are often loaded with empty calories. Avoid artificial sweeteners.  Avoid refined sweeteners, even stevia products.

If you have attended my workshops or been supported by me as a client:  Remember the cellular health information from the Whole Food slide show?  Feed your cells well!  Need to experience this workshop? Join me and the Local Living Venture on Thursday, September 25th for the start of the Whole Health and Healing Academy!  

A few more tips for balancing mind, body, and soul weight.

1. Eat raw foods:  raw fruits & veggies, raw nuts and seeds, raw nut & seed butters.  Raw foods are rich in nutrients that are not altered by the heat of cooking and provide natural enzymes needed in the body for many processes including digestion.
2. Eating enough healthy fats and protein to satisfy your appetite and your body’s nutritional needs:  choose naturally raised animal products for protein and fat and the omega 3's found in naturally raised meat, eggs and dairy products, wild salmon, avocados, walnuts, raw nuts and seeds.
3. Eat breakfast. Skipping meals causes your blood sugar levels to peak and dip, affecting your energy and moods. It can also cause overeating later on because you’re so hungry.  With this said, listen to your own body and what you know works for you.  Some people do much better without breakfast and have no problems with the rebound overeating later in the day.  Be conscious of you and your needs. I can personally admit I am not a breakfast eater.  I get hungry by 11 AM or so. I listen and follow my body's requests for food.
4. Eat mindfully. Turn off the TV. Get away from the computer. Sit down and savor the food you are eating with no distractions.  Eat from a space of unconditional self-love!
5. Get moving. Do any type of physical activity every day. Find movement or exercise you enjoy.
6. Get outside.  Your body needs fresh air and natural light.  You will create life long health benefits!
7. Sleep, rest and relax. Breath work creates relaxation, slow down & breathe deeply.  Ask me for my educational handout on breath work.  When you are sleep-deprived or stressed, your body will crave energy, causing cravings for sugary snacks and caffeine as an energy boost.
8. Schedule fun time. Boredom and stress can lead to overeating. Make sure to take time to laugh, play and participate in activities that bring you joy.
9. Find a mindfulness practice and use it every day. (Yoga, Tai Chi, Tae Kwon Do, Meditation, Prayer...)

PS  Just a reminder about the Whole Health & Healing Academy that starts Thursday, September 25th. Join us to create vibrant health in your life!

Energy Out = Energy In

We will not be talking about calories here. 

I was having a chat recently about good luck and bad luck, why not so happy things seem to happen more to some people. I brought up the idea of our energy, the energy we put out in the world with our thoughts, words, and actions. I made the suggestion that perhaps if our thoughts and words are mostly negative in nature we may be actually drawing these negative happenings to us.

The response I received was this: "That's impossible. No one is in control of what happens to them."

So I then threw out this immediate thought: (I am not always good with on the spot thoughts but I do love teachable moments. Ask my kids!) 

"If some one is part of a prayer list, ladder, or tree, they are called upon to say prayers for another person or family when there is a sickness or some hardship. The person then sends prayers, i.e. positive energy, to this person or family in need. Is this not using thoughts, our mind's energy, to create a positive response or outcome?"

We agreed on this.

So my next thought I threw out was... "If we can use our thought process to move energy in a positive direction for someone else, does it seem reasonable that our thoughts and words can do the same for us?"

"Point well made" was the response.

So I ask you to ask yourself questions:

• What kind of energy do I put out into the world with my thoughts, words, and actions?
• Is there a correlation between my positivity or negativity and the general events in my life?

The energy we put out in the world comes back to us ten times over.

Whatever you put out to the univere is what you will get back from the universe.  This is one of the essential threads of the universe.

Positive out = positive in

Love out = love in

Joy out = joy in    (Yes, I am using all positive examples here... for a reason. It is positive!)

Is your life not heading in the direction you want it to? Try on a new attitude. Make positive thoughts, words, and actions part of your every minute thinking and doing. You will find positive thoughts, words, and actions filling your life!

Positive energy is healing to mind, body, and spirit.

Happy healing!

PS If you enjoy what you read here on The Whole Food Healer Blog... pass it along to friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, people you pass on the street!  Share health. The healthier we are as a community, the more positive healing energy for us all!

PPS  Talk about positive energy, pop on over to this page and get a copy of the recordings from the Radiantly YOU telesummit. Best 9 bucks you ever spent!

Cooking and Eating at Home IS the Life for ME!!

Try to sing that title to the tune of: "Farm Living is the Life for Me....!"

I confess, I do not like to eat out. The idea of eating out is fabulous: someone else doing the shopping, cooking, and washing the dishes AND I get someone to serve up the food to me!

Who can say no to that?

This writing idea came to me as I was driving my kids to school. It started off as 4 simple reasons to eat at home. And then... my mind wandered...

11 Reasons Why I Prefer to Cook and Eat at Home:

1.  I truly love to cook, to stretch my kitchen artist's muscles and create fun and tasty food with what I have on hand.

Ethiopian carrots and Brussels Sprouts: First cook up a pot of red lentils (keep them firm, not mushy), then saute' up some onions, carrot coins, and Brussels sprouts in butter.  Add in some mild curry powder to the veggies, mix in the cooked lentils, and toss with some cashews. Yummy, easy, seasonal dinner! Serve with a side of whole grain pita bread, warmed and slathered with butter, and a dish of local yogurt.

2.  I like knowing my body cells, and my kid's body cells, are being nourished with real food. I like knowing my food is being made with high quality ingredients.

3.  The vegetables and fruits I cook with... I know:

• who grew them: the Martins, the Kents, Dulli and her crew at Birdsfoot Farm, John Dewar (the local Doc gone veggie farmer)... and so many more chemical free, northern NY growers,
• where the farmer lives and grows food (no, I do not stalk my famers!) but I like to see the land, know the soil my food was grown in... that kind of picky stuff,
• how they grow the food (chemical free).

4.  The animal products I use I like to know:

• see the above farmer information and
• that the meat, eggs, milk, and dairy products came from animals that are pasture raised... out there eating grass and all the plant life that they like to eat and is their natural diet.

OK, so these goats ARE wandering in the snow... but, they are free wandering, pasture raised goats when the snow melts!

5.  Whole grains: when I cook at home I know the bread, pasta, noodles, pie crust, cake, cookies or any food made out of flour is 100% whole grains. Whole foods nourish our body cells for health and healing. Refined foods deplete our body cells and set our bodies up for chronic, degenerative diseases. I have yet to find a restaurant that serves 100% whole grain foods with pasta dishes, bread for sandwiches, buns for burgers and such, bread that is served at the beginning of a meal, etc.

6.  The minimal amount of sugar being used in my kitchen is not refined, white, cell destroying sugar. I cook with the highest quality of cell nourishing ingredients in all my food prep and cooking.

7. I know my food is not being nuked in a microwave. Microwave cooking is best avoided in a whole health lifestyle. To learn more about microwave's impact on your food and health, click here.

8.  I know my food is seasonal and local allowing my body to follow the natural rhythms of the seasons and nature. My food is living and growing in the same climate I live in and that is just good vibrational energy!

9.  I use oils that contribute to my vibrant health and avoid cheap vegetable oils such as soy and canola. I use high quality olive oil for making salad dressing. Most food establishments do not invest in high quality oils.

10. I do not have to go anywhere. Home is where the heart is and my heart is happy at home!

11.  I can dress up, or down, in any clothes I want. PJs at the dinner table? Sure, why not!  

Reminds me of an early morning breakfast when I was 20 at McDonald's in Canton. (Yes, I had a rocky start to independent, whole food eating lifestyle. My Mom did not bring me up on McDonald's food!)  A high school girl friend and I went to breakfast in our long, flannel night gowns. Made sense to us, it was breakfast and we were in our PJs. Apparently the manager was not on board with our logic!  We were asked to leave and not so politely either!

Love yourself and everyone you feed with real food!

Like my blog posts? Share with like minded family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, people you pass on the streets... The healthier and happier we are, the better world we will have!

My boys baking at home. We prefer home made, whole food birthday cakes over bakery made, refined food cakes!

PS The Radiantly YOU Telesummit has been a hit! Only 2 days left to listen, BUT...To purchase, and listen to these fabulous women healer's recorded words of wisdom,  over and over and forever, for only $9, click on the buy now button below!

Enjoy! You will be eternally grateful for these healing words of wisdom!