Sometimes I just don’t make it to the grocery store when I need to.  Like yesterday.  So I woke up today and had to scrounge around the bottom of the fridge to find something for breakfast.  I came up with this delicious raw food recipe for an amazing breakfast smoothie, Spiced Bunny Love! 

We always have a big bag of carrots at the bottom of the fridge because carrots are good in and on everything!  And bananas, 99 times out of 100, we have frozen bananas on hand too.  So, I decided that would be the base for my raw food recipe–a delicious smoothie.

Spiced Bunny Love

10 carrots, juiced (about 2 cups of juice)

3-4 frozen bananas, broken up into chunks

3 dates, pitted

1 1/2 TBS coconut butter

1/4 tsp vanilla bean powder

1/2-1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Put carrot juice, frozen bananas, dates, coconut butter, vanilla bean powder and pumpkin pie spice in a blender and blend until smooth.  Taste and adjust the seasonings if needed. Divide between two glasses (or pour into one really big glass) and enjoy this delicious and quick raw food recipe!

Carrot juice tastes amazing and is so good for you!  5 oz of carrot juice gives you 24 mg of calcium, so this smoothie will give you a little more than 35 mg of calcium if you share it with someone else.  Carrot juice is also very high in Vitamin A which helps not only with our eye sight but also with our lungs, skin, brain, bones, and cell growth.  Carrots are also a great source of Vitamin C, B1, B6, K, and D.   Just one cup of carrot juice provides 34% of the daily recommended value of Vitamin C.  That’s just another reason to start throwing carrot juice in your smoothies!

The carrot juice in this raw food recipe turned what otherwise would have been a very bland smoothie into something great and it added a whole lot of extra nutrition!  We’ll be adding carrot juice to a lot more of our morning smoothies.

The post Raw Food Recipe: Carrot Juice Smoothie appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.  But really, what I scream for are ice cream sandwiches!  I just love them!  So what’s a girl to do when she can’t get any raw foods locally?  You’ve got it, just make them!

What I love about making ice cream sandwiches is that you can customize them to fit your mood.  One day I might be feeling like chocolate while another day I might want something pumpkin.  You can either change up the ice cream recipe or the cookie recipe to fulfill your desires!

Here are the basic raw recipes:

A Healthy Vanilla Cookie

2 C almonds

1/2 tsp salt

1 TBS vanilla extract

1/3 C date paste (dates that have become a paste after a spin in the food processor)

Place almonds, salt, vanilla extract and half of the date paste in the food processor.  Process well and scrape down the sides.  Process again, scrape down the sides of the bowl again and add the rest of the date paste.  Process again.  You are looking for a dough that will hold it shape and will not crumble when you apply pressure.  Scoop 1-4 TBS of the cookie dough into balls and flatten with wet hands into a cookie.  Aim for making an even number of cookies (ice cream sandwiches take two cookies) and eat any leftovers.  :-)  Place finished cookies in the freezer while you make the ice cream.

Raw, Vegan Vanilla Ice Cream

1 C cashews

1 C Thai coconut meat

2 C Thai coconut water

1/2 C agave nectar

2-3 vanilla beans, scraped insides only

Put all ingredients in a high speed blender and blend well.  Keep on blending.  When you insert a spoon into the mixture the back of the spoon should come out cover in air bubbles.  If you don’t see air bubbles on the spoon, keep blending until you do.  Pour the finished mixture into your prepared ice cream maker and follow the manufactures directions.

So now you’ve got your cookies ready and frozen and your ice cream ready.  The ice cream may need to go into the freezer for a little while to finish setting up.  It needs to be scoopable and you don’t want it to be dripping ice cream all over the place.  Simply scoop a bit of the ice cream and sandwich it between two cookies.  Press down firmly to ensure the ice cream will stick the two sandwiches together.  Then place the finished ice cream sandwiches in the freezer until you are ready to eat!

Both of the above recipes are easy to adjust to your desires.  Want chocolate cookies?  Omit the vanilla extract and add 1/4 C cacao powder instead.  Want pistachio ice cream instead of vanilla?  Add 1/4 C pistachios to the blender and 1/4-1/8 C chopped pistachios to the ice cream maker during the last 10 minutes of its cycle.  Feel free to dip the finished ice cream sandwich in chocolate, too, that is divine!

Raw, Vegan Vanilla Ice Cream on Raw, Vegan Vanilla Cookies. Delicious!

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Ladies, let’s face it, summer is the time of year when at least our toe nails are painted all the time.  When summer hits it’s time for pedicure after pedicure, our toes need to look pretty when we’re wearing sandals and flip flops, right?  Walking into a salon, however, you are hit with a wave of toxic chemicals.  And you know it too, just from the smell.  Rob hates the toxic smell of nail polish so much that I’m not allowed to paint my nails in the house when he’s home.  I’ve got to do it outside, especially when I need to use nail polish remover.  But what he doesn’t know is that I’ve tossed all of my toxic polishes.  I’ve gone to 4-free nail polish and will soon be investing in water based brands.

Have you heard of 3-free, 4-free, 5-free or water based nail polish formulas?  They’ve become all the rage since savvy costumers began demanding less toxic polish for their tootsies a few years back.  Not sure what I’m talking about? 

3-free nail polish means that there is no formaldehyde, toluene or dibutyl phthalate.  Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and absolutely not necessary in nail polish.  The less exposure you have to formaldehyde the better.  Toluene is a chemical that is found not only in nail polish but also in gasoline and household paint.  It’s used to help suspend the polish throughout the bottle, basically it’s used so you don’t have to shake the bottle that often.  Exposure to this chemical can affect the central nervous system, causing dizziness, headaches and fatigue and is also linked to reproductive and developmental toxins.  Finally, Dibutyl phthalate (DBP) is a plasticizer that used in nail polish to help reduce cracking and brittleness.  It has been linked to cancer in lab animals and has been suspected of causing development and fertility concerns for humans.

That’s all scary stuff.  But never fear, most big nail polish companies (OPI, Essie) have switched up their formulas so they are now at least 3-free.  Or at least, that’s what we’ve been led to believe!  A study done this year by the California EPA took samples of 25 3-free brands of nail polish and found that most of them contained formaldehyde, toluene or dibutyl phthalate!  “Ten of the twelve products with ‘toluene-free’ claims did, in fact, contain toluene. …  The study found that five of the seven ‘three-free’ product claims could not substantiated.”  OPI was one of the few brands with 3-free claims that actually stood up to the test  and came back negative for all three of the big toxins.

4-free nail polish formulas are made by omitting the big three toxins and formaldehyde resin.  This chemical is surrounded by debate.  Many people feel that if you are avoiding formaldehyde you should avoid all varieties of it, including the formaldehyde resin.  (The resin, it turns out, is actually made  combining the chemicals toluenesulfonamide and formaldehyde.  Do you think any good could come from combing toluene and formaldehyde?)  While there isn’t any concrete evidence that formaldehyde resin is carcinogenic to our health, not enough research has been done, the EWG (love those guys!) classify the ingredient as a known allergen and immune system toxicant that’s “expected to be toxic or harmful.” But others disagree and say that the chemical is safe because the formaldehyde in it isn’t the “free” kind that’s been nixed from 3-free nail polish.

4-free nail polishes are one more step in the right direction when it comes to your health!  Want to go less toxic?  Grab a bottle of 5-free nail polish.  5-free is free of everything mentioned above and camphor.  Camphor?  Yeah, you read that right, camphor, the same minty stuff that they put in muscle rubs goes into nail polish, great huh?  It really does a lot for the polish smell, yeah right.  There’s pretty much no reason at all for camphor to be in your nail polish.  Camphor is considered an irritant in large amounts–amounts that are much higher than what you’d find in nail polish.  But either way, irritant or not, there’s no point for it to be in nail polish.  So you might as well grab a bottle without it.

And finally we come to water based polishes.  Water based polishes are free of all of the above mentioned chemicals, plus many many more.  Water based nail polishes are made of mostly, you guessed it, water.  When you paint your nails the water evaporates and the residue leaves a hard coat of polish.  If you are looking to lower your exposure to toxic chemicals, you want to look for water based formulas.  What I really love about water based nail polish is that you often don’t need to use nail polish remover to get it off!  I’m not saying that it chips easily, but with some of the brands all it takes is a five minute soak in hot water for the polish to come off.  Having said that, you probably don’t want to use water based nail polish if you are planning to spend a lot of time in the pool this summer.  If you noticed your kids chewing their nails while they’ve got nail polish on, definately reach for a bottle of water based polish for them next time.  You wouldn’t want all of those chemicals ending up in their systems!  Try Hopscotch Kids a peel off formula made especially for kids.

So the main question you’ll have for me now is, where do I get these amazing non-toxic / less toxic nail polishes?  And my answer is: Amazon.  But also check out your local health food store to see what kinds of brands they stock.  Here are a few awesome brands for each category.  Happy (and healthy) nail painting!

3-free: OPI, A Beautiful Life, American Apperal, e.l.f., Aura-Soma, BB Couture, butter London, China Glaze, Color Club, Del Sol, Hard Candy, Karma Organic Spa, Manglaze, Milani, My Earth, Niyot, SolarActive, Spa Glow, Wet n Wild.

4-free: Curtsy & Bow, Nailtini, Orly, PeaceKeeper (one of my favorites!), Pop Beauty, SpaRitual (another of my favorites), Rescue Beauty Lounge, Uslu Airlines, Inglot.

5-free: Dashing Diva (I really like this brand), Dazzle Dry, Essence, Helen E, Lippmann, Mavala, No Miss, Nubar, Obsessive Compulsive, RGB Cosmetics, Sante, Zoya.

Water Based (where all of my nail polish money will be going from now on): Acquarella, AllyKats, Anada, Aqmore, Cosmay, CyberCos, Earthly Delight, G2Organics, Girl Power, Honeybee Gardens, Hopscotch Kids, Scotch Naturals (a mom created this line and Hopscotch Kids), Lvppon, Piggy Paint, Polished Mama, Refreshingly Free, Safe Nail Polish, Sula, Suncoat, Trendin Cosmetics.

The post What toxins are in your nail polish? appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.

Family celebrations took us to Chicago earlier this month.  And, surprisingly enough, we actually had the time and the chance to visit some of the raw food restaurants in the area.  We’ve only been making the trek to Chicago at least once a year and for the past 3 years have not been able to swing a trip to any of the raw food restaurants while we were there.  Thankfully, we were able to change that on our last trip!

We rode the Metra into Chicago and promptly made our way to the raw food stand in the train station.  Yup, you read that right, there is a raw food restaurant/stand in the train station.  I would be eating there every day if I took the train into Chicago for work, it just makes staying on a raw and living food diet so easy.  RAW is a small food stand in the middle of The French Market, a market in the downstairs of the main train station in Chicago.

We stopped in for a quick snack but you can easily get a whole meal, either to eat there or to take with you.  They even offer meal plans!  We grabbed their green juice of the day and some kale chips and took seats at a nearby table.  Rob and I were both impressed with the juice, but even more so by the heavy glass bottle it came in!  We didn’t really want to walk around with a heavy glass bottle, so we finished our juice (and returned the bottle getting $1.50 back) before emerging into the city.  I highly recommend stopping by Raw if you find yourself in downtown Chicago.  You can find out more about their menu and meal plan here: chicagorawfood.com

My Mom had mentioned that she’d never tired kale chips before, so we did our best to save some for her to try on our walk to her office.  I am a fan of any kind of kale chip, but especially when you put spirulina or other supplements in it.  I won’t pass up an opportunity for spirulina to taste good.  And those kale chips were awesome.  My Mom liked them, too.

We picked up my parents, who played hookey from work, and headed off to Karyn’s Raw Cafe for lunch.  We got there a little late in the afternoon, so the restaurant only had patrons at two other tables.  Karyn’s setting is gorgeous and upscale, as one would imagine for a fine dining restaurant in Chicago.  The service was impeccable and the food came out quick, those are normally my only two complaints about raw food restaurants.

Our lunch started off with two appetizers, the Bruschetta and the Cheese Plate.  My parents were curious, how can they make bruschetta if they aren’t using bread?  And how do they make cheese without any dairy?  Well, they were impressed by the bread and cheese!    The bruschetta was a gorgeous mix of tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, garlic and herbs on top of a dense sprouted  herb bread, topped off with a drizzle of balsamic and pesto.  I’m glad my step-dad asked everyone to try it, there was a lot of garlic, and it was really filling!  My Mom really liked the cheese plate.  It came with four kinds of cheeses: basil, jalapeno, red pepper and curry.  The cheeses were soft and tasty served with crackers, crushed nuts, and crumbled dried fruit.  We all thought the jalapeno cheese would be the hottest of the bunch, but surprisingly it was the red pepper cheese that was.  Rob and I weren’t impressed with the crackers, they were very bland, which I guess is what you would want because bland goes a lot better with four very differently flavored cheeses than anything else.  We tried our best, but couldn’t finish the cheese plate, it was just too much for us to eat while still saving room for our entrees.

We all ordered something different for lunch.  My Mom quickly picked out what she wanted.  Pad Thai.  She loves Thai food but no one else in the house does so she orders it every chance she gets when she’s out.  “How do they make noodles out of coconut?” she asked.   You just cut the meat into strips likes noodles, I replied.  She really liked it.  Her dish was light and creamy, coconut noodles with a creamy curry sauce topped with peas, bean sprouts, mushrooms and carrots.  It was the perfect dish to have after the appetizers.

My step-dad, ever the lover of Italian food, decided to go with the Basil Scented Ravioli.  I was never really sure where the basil scented part of the ravioli came in to play, but he was happy with his choice.  We all guessed what the ravioli wrapper was made of because we just weren’t sure.  Turnip, our waitress said.  I’ve never gotten my turnip ravioli to come out looking that perfect every time!  I guess that’s what happens when you make it in a restaurant setting…  The ravioli was stuffed with a macadamia cheese and topped with an olive marinara sauce.  It was good, similar to something that I make at home, but being able to order it while out to eat and not having to do the dishes made it even better.

Thank goodness Rob and I don’t mind sharing dishes.  We knew all most right away what we wanted, but we couldn’t decide between two dishes, so we got both and shared.  I ordered the Tamales.  I am such a sucker for tamales because you all most never seen vegan tamales available.  I was so happy with the tamales, they were filled with an organic corn mixture, tomato puree, mushrooms, asparagus, olives and olive oil.  On the side it came with a mango salsa.  I really loved the tamale.  But, we agreed to share, so Rob and I ended up switching plates.

Rob ordered the Empanada.  We were both really intrigued by the empanada, you would be too after reading it’s description: “Flax and corn masa pastry dough stuffed with three pepper chorizo and house blend chili spice, served with a side of authentic raw chocolate mole and a salsa verde.”  The filling was good, I will admit that.  But there was way too much flax in the pastry dough, it only tasted like flax and that is not a flavor that Rob and I like very much.  I knew after one bite that Rob was not happy with the empanada.  Neither was I, to be honest.  I ate my way through the filling, which was very good, and left the pastry dough on the plate.  I knew I wouldn’t get the tamale plate back from Rob, the tamales were too good!

Over all, I highly recommend Karyn’s Raw Cafe.  We had a great experience eating there, the service was great, and all of the food (except the empanadas) was amazing.  It was a great place to take my parents who didn’t have any exposure to raw food other than looking at the pictures I post on Facebook.  I can’t wait for our next trip to Chicago so that we can go back to Karyn’s and get dessert!

The post Chicago’s Raw Food Restaurants appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.

Happy 1st official day of summer!  Any plans for the long day of sunshine ahead?  My plans include spending some time outside to soak up some rays!  But not too much time as we are expecting a high of 95 degrees today.  To me, summer means spending time outside, by the pool, in the garden, mowing the lawn, hiking in the woods, and generally just being outdoors.  That’s what it means to a lot of people, too.  There’s always that question though in the back of my mind, should I put sunscreen on or not?

There are generally two camps, the put sunscreen on whenever you step foot outside camp and the never put sunscreen on camp.  If you are part of the put sunscreen on camp, I think it’s important to arm yourself with as much knowledge as possible before heading out to get a new bottle of sunscreen.  And thankfully, the EWG, those same amazing people who bring us the Dirty Dozen and Clean 15, do all of the work for you!  Check out the infographic at the bottom of the page.  For more info on good brands of sunscreen, visit the EWG’s sunscreen home page: EWG Sunscreen.

If you are part of the other camp, also make sure to read all of the tips the EWG gives about avoiding sunburns.  They’ve got tons of great info.   Happy summer!

The post Summer = Sunscreen? appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.

Whenever and where ever a vacation takes us, I always make it a point to stop in to a few local, small health food stores.  Not only are they great places to stock up on a few supplies while traveling, but usually you’ll find ingredients and brands that you would have never come across back at home!That’s why I always make a point of it.

When we were down in Florida, we stopped at a store called Earth Origins Market.  It was such a great find and pretty close to where we were staying too!  They had a small organic juice bar in the store (a really great way to rehydrate after being out in the sun all day) and tons of packaged raw food goodies that we’ve never seen in any store around us before.  When we stopped in the store, we happened to be on a mission: we were searching for all of the ingredients to make raisinettes for Rob’s mom.  (Check out our recipe for raw raisinettes here.)

But we found so much more than just the raw raisins, coconut oil and cacao powder that we needed!

There was an awesome brand of raw chocolate bars that I’d never seen before, which really surprised me because they are made in Asheville, NC, so you think stores in NC would carry them!  Check out Raw Shakti Chocolate, rawshaktichocolate.com.  This chocolate company is founded on great principals, bringing you organic, raw, stone ground chocolate, made in small handcrafted batches.  They offer 5 varieties of chocolate bars, everything from a very pure bar (just cacao and coconut palm sugar) to bars that are infused with orange oil and maca powder.  We tried the Loco for Coco bar, which was topped with shredded coconut and black lava salt!  This is probably one of the first raw chocolate bars that has disappeared quickly and not because I was eating it!  Rob, who hardly ever eats chocolate would slip away for a while and before I knew it, there was only one small square of chocolate left!

We also found some awesome Bright Earth Foods products.  I’ve seen the brand before in a few stores, but there was never very much of selection.  Rob, who’s been eating a lot more cacao lately, grabbed a bag of their raw, peeled cacao beans.  I’ve never seen them peeled like that before.  And I’m not talking about cacao nibs, either, these were the whole beans, and they were peeled!  We debated over whether to try their goji berries or golden Incan berries and decided on the Incan berries as they are my favorite.  I really hate it when you buy a bag of dried berries and they are hard as a rock, but these weren’t!  They were so soft and delicious. I definately recommend Bright Earth products, www.brightearthfoods.com.

And on top of all of the great finds, this store had everything we needed to make the raisinettes!

The post Health Food Stores, a Vacation Treat appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.

We are back from a long and much needed vacation to Florida!  The weather was perfect, the company (Rob’s family) was great and the special occasions (our 2nd wedding anniversary and Rob’s cousin’s wedding) were amazing.  A lot has changed since we’d last been in Tampa area, one of the raw food restaurants has closed!  Grass Roots has shut down both of it’s locations and begun a meal delivery service. 

On our last day in Florida, we happened to be out and about around lunchtime.  And we just happened to be near one of the raw food restauratns in St. Pete, Leafy Greens Cafe!  A quick change of directions and we were on our way out for a fabulous and satisfying lunch.  With a slightly cranky passenger in the car with us, we did some fast thinking to please everyone: we’d drink smoothies and juices at the restaurant and order some entrees to go.  Everyone was happy.

I started off with a spicy Carrot Ginger juice and Rob had their Bunny Love smoothie.  The Carrot Ginger juice was a perfect drink to have after being out in the sun all morning.  It was refreshing, light and delicious.  Rob’s Bunny Love smoothie was similar to my juice, but made with frozen bananas, carrot juice, ginger and spices (it tasted to me like pumpkin pie spices).  His was amazing, it’s definately something we’ll have to make at home! Our other companions had a smoothie they made up on the spot: frozen bananas, almond milk and raspberries, strawberries and blueberries.  They loved the smoothies too! (My version of the recipe follows below).

While we drank our smoothies the kitchen staff was busy working on our to go order: Tuscan Pizza and The Real Deal sandwich.  I’m glad we decided to get our food to go, our one complaint about this restaurant in the past had been that it took a long time to get our food.  But by the time we were done with our drinks our orders were ready!

Rob and I shared the Tuscan Pizza for lunch.  We’ve always used onion bread for our pizza crust, so it was nice to try something new.  At Leafy Greens, they use a walnut and hemp base for their pizza crust.  This combination of nuts give the crust a really meaty flavor, a great addition to the pizza.  Also, the crust was thick and crisp, so it held up well not being eating right away.  The crust is topped with a cashew hummus and a very flavorful marinara sauce.  Then they put marinated veggies on top, some basil and other Italian herbs.  The pizza was delicious, very filling and definately big enough for two to share. Want to know how we make our pizza?  View our recipe here!

We didn’t end up eating The Real Deal sandwich right away, which was a mistake on our part.  The pizza crust seemed to hold up really well, while the onion bread the sandwich was on got soggy fast.  The sandwich was still great though, with cashew hummus, guacamole, lettuce, tomatoes and sprouts.  It was served with a spicy mango salsa that was awesome.

We also got three bags of cheesy kale chips to go.  I just couldn’t help myself when I saw the bags, plus they used different colored kale, some of the kale I’d never seen before!  (Have you ever seen kale with whiteish/yellow stalks?)  They were pretty good, but I definately prefer the kale chips we make at home.  (Recipe here)

All in all, I’m very glad we stopped at Leafy Greens Cafe to give the restaurant another try.  Everyone was really happy with what they ordered, we’ll just have to do better next time about eating anything we order on onion bread sooner.  Find out more about Leafy Greens Cafe: www.leafygreenscafe.com

Next time we find ourselves in the Tampa area though, I think we’ll have to try Vida De Cafe, another raw food restaurant, right near the beach!

Berry Good Smoothie

1 Frozen banana, cut into chunks

1 C Fresh almond milk

1 C Frozen mixed berries

Throw everything into a blender and blend until smooth.  Simple, huh?  Add vanilla, greens powders or anything else you might want to the blender and blend again.

The post Leafy Greens: a Raw Food Restaurant Review appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.

Earth Day is tomorrow, April 21st, and it’s always been one of my favorite days of the year.  I can remember when I was in elementary school we always had a big festival to celebrate Earth Day.  Of course, those festivals were always accompanied by plastic trinkets like little puzzles and stickers, and I’m sure they were not good for the Earth.  Even so, the festivals always made me want to do my part to make the Earth a better place. 

There are tons of easy things you can do to have less of an impact on our planet.  Here are just a few ideas:

Grab a Glass Straw.  Growing up, I was a straw person.  I had crazy straws and big boxes of bendy straws.  Most straws, however, are made of plastic and end up in our already overcrowded landfill.  Now when I want to drink my morning juice or smoothie, I reach for my glass straw instead.  I think it’s beautiful, fun and is the grown-up version of crazy straws.  Not sure where to get glass straws?  Check out Glass Dharma Straws (www.glassdharma.com).  They’ve got a variety of beautiful straws.  Use coupon code: greenearth2012 to get 15% off through June 30th.

Recycle More.  Have a bunch of old batteries lying around the house?  Find a place locally where you can recycle them!  Have kids?  Make them go through all of their school papers at the end of the years and recycle it all.  If your city takes yard waste to make compost, make sure you put the yard waste out for them to take, don’t send it to the landfill.  Gather up a bunch of your friends and do a clothing swap, this is the best way to recycle your old clothes and get some new ones too!  I’ve made it my mission to only put out 1 bag of trash every week for the garbage truck.  I’ve been able to do that because I pay closer attention to what can be recycled and…

Start a Compost.  That 1 bag of trash every week?  That’s only possible for us because we compost, too!  Before we started composting, a lot of our trash was filled with food scraps and vegetable trimmings from making dinner.  Not any more, all of that goes directly into our compost bin.  It’s a real money saver, too, because we use our compost instead of fertilizer in our garden, under our trees and in our flower beds!

Take the pledge: join Meatless Mondays!  Not a vegetarian or vegan?  Try cutting out meat and animal products on Mondays.  It has been estimated that the meat industry produces 1/5 of all man-made greenhouse emissions.  Even cutting out meat just one day a week reduces your carbon footprint.  Once you get the hang of making Monday’s meatless add more meatless days to your week.  Vegetarian and vegan food is delicious and can be very nutritious.

Buy in Bulk.  Buying in bulk requires less packaging.  So stock up when you head to Costco.  Even better though, buy in bulk at your health food store.  I can’t help myself when I see all of those bins filled to the brim with goodies like raw cashews and macadamia nuts.  The bulk section at health food stores uses even less packaging.  Bring back bags to refill them the next time you and you’ll be doing even more for our Earth.

Speaking of reusing bags: always use reusable bags at the grocery store!  There’s no need to choose between paper and plastic anymore, bring you own!  We keep three sets of bags: one in each of our cars and one in the house, in case we go shopping with someone else.  This way we’ll never forget our bags and have to chose between paper or plastic.

These are just a few easy ways you can help the Earth out, not just on Earth Day, but everyday.  This is the only planet we have to live on, so let’s take care of it, please?

The post Go Green for Earth Day! appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.

When I heard that you can burn up to 600 calories in just a half hour while lying still, I knew I had to investigate (and try it out)!  Really?  Up to 600 calories while I just lay there?  And it’ll help me detox, too?  I could hardly get signed up fast enough!

My friend Dotty has invested in a Sunlighten Sauna, a powerful far infrared sauna.  In case you are worried, the infrared light waves are very safe, in hospitals infrared light is used to help keep newborns nice and warm.  The effects of a session in a Sunlighten Sauna are very different from the effects of a ‘regular old’ sauna.  How?  Well, the sauna you might be familiar with at the gym or your local spa just uses heat to warm the air of a room or structure up to 158-212 degrees Fahrenheit.  Whereas an infrared sauna uses “infrared heaters to to emit infrared radiant heat which is absorbed directly into the human body,” (Wikipedia).

I climbed into the Solo System that Dotty had and was prepared to sweat, a lot.  Dotty turned the sauna up, put on relaxing music and said she’d be back to check on me in a few minutes.  I loved every minute in the sauna.  I was so toasty and warm; it felt like I was in a little cocoon.  It wasn’t the dry heat that I normally feel when I’m in a regular sauna.  It was a delicious heat, I was warming up but not drying out.  I could touch the sauna walls and they weren’t hot.  My head was poking out of the Solo System, and yet I could still feel a dampness of sweat beginning on my forehead.

Dotty came back to check on me 10 minutes into my 30 minute session.  “Your cheeks are so pink!” she said.  I could feel my heart beginning to pump a bit faster.  Within those 10 minutes it was very clear to me that the Sunlighten Sauna systems definately improves your circulation.  Between the penetrating far infrared rays heating up my muscles and my body temperature going up my blood was definately flowing a bit faster than normal!

I was starting to sweat, too.  Dotty put a cool cloth on my forehead and neck.  She took the time to explain to me that studies have been done with the Sunlighten System examining the amount of toxins which are released in sweat during a Sunlighten sauna session verses a regular sauna session.  Tests found that during a regular sauna session the average person’s sweat was about 97% water and 3% toxins.  But the sweat from a Sunlighten sauna session was only 80% water and 20% toxins!

As more time passed I could feel the sweat build up on my stomach, my legs, my face, everywhere.  Even as the time passed, I didn’t get really hot or really dried out like I would have in a normal sauna.  Some of my muscles had been a little sore from working in the garden before my sauna session.  I could feel it as my muscles relaxes and loosened up.  I can see how using a far-infrared sauna would help with pain.

When my 30 minutes were up, Dotty came back to help me out of the sauna.  I was covered in sweat, from head to toe!  I had beads of sweat all up and down my legs, my arms, my stomach, my neck, my back.  I was impressed!  Dotty was too!  She said it was a sign of strong adrenals.  :)  And normally, she said, people don’t sweat too much during their first sauna session.

I absolutely loved, loved, loved my far-infrared sauna session with Dotty and her Sunlighten Sauna.  Want to know more about the Sunlighten Sauna’s?  Visit www.Sunlighten.com  or if you are in the Triangle area and want to give it a try, send Dotty an email: dottybeach@msn.com

These are the same sauna systems they use at the Hipprocrates Health Institute, too!

The post Sweat it Out appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.

I’ve been playing in the kitchen lately and have come to a very serious (in my opinion) conclusion.  Mainly that not all measuring cups are created equal!  I have a few different liquid measuring cups and have been using them for quite some time.  I noticed in the past that sometimes whatever I’d make would turn out way to thin and watery.  Well, now I know why!

One day last week I finally got frustrated to the point where I had to figure it out.  How come my trusty House Dressing came out so thin?  I mean, I know I was only making a 1/2 batch and sometimes I get my math wrong, but not that wrong!  The normally thick dressing came out thin, really thin, and tasted funny.  And then it hit me, there was too much coconut water and lemon juice in it.  But why?  I’d used my measuring cup!

It turns out that not all measuring cups are created equally.  I ended up doing a test between three different liquid measuring cups: my trusted Oxo brand 2-cup measuring cup, my favorite beaker-style 4 cup measuring cup, and the collection cup from my juicer which is marked in 1/2 cup increments.  In the past I’ve measured out the juice from my juicer against my Oxo brand measuring cup and I knew that my juicer’s measuring lines are off by about a 1/4 cup.   A 1/4 cup isn’t too bad, right?  Especially since I know that when I get to the 1 cup line, it’s actually only 3/4 of a cup in there.  I can work around that, no problem.

But, Rob didn’t believe me.

He took 1 cup of water (measured with our beaker-style measuring cup) and poured it into our juicer’s collection cup.  And it read 1 1/2 cups on our juicer’s collection cup!  For a minute I really thought I was crazy talking about how all of our measuring cups measure things differently.  I took that 1 cup of water from the juicer’s collection cup and poured it into our Oxo measuring cup, it measured out as a little more than 1 1/4 cups of water.  Yikes!  Why are all of the measuring cups so different?!

I took a good look at our beaker style measuring cup and it says: approximate values.  Right there on the measuring cup in tiny letters I’d never before bothered to read.  No wonder my House Dressing turned out so different from normal!  I’d added more than an extra 1/2 cup of liquid to the recipe by measuring my liquids with the beaker measuring cup.  This really wouldn’t matter at all if I had used the beaker to measure my dry ingredients, too.  But, I know better than to measure dry ingredients with a liquid measuring cup.

So, just so you know, if you have multiple measuring cups, they may not all be equal.  I’m fixing the markings on both the beaker-style measuring cup and the juicer’s collection cup by making new lines with a permanent marker.

The post Messing up with a Measuring Cup appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.

I wish I may, I wish I might, can I share my wish with you tonight?  I wish for women’s empowerment and Tera Warner makes that possible!   The WISH summit started last week and continues through to the middle of April.  Not sure what WISH stands for?  Women’s International Summit for Health!  My dream has come true!

If you’re not familiar with Tera Warner, you should get to know her, and quick, because she’s one of my idols.  She is a mover and a shaker making all sorts of things happen for women’s health and spreading the word about raw foods, especially green smoothies.  Tera has lined up 40 amazing people to give talks over the course of 40 days.  Wanna check it out?  Click here to go to the WISH Summit.

Tera has lined up amazing speakers for this summit, even better than last years, which is pretty incredible if you ask me.  Speakers include David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, who created a system that makes it easy to organize your life, your projects, your dreams, and makes it pretty much impossible to forget things.  Sergei Boutenko is also going to speak.  He’s Victoria Boutenko’s son (author of Green For Life, Green Smoothie Revolution, etc.), and he knows more about foraging for wild food than anyone I know. I can’t wait for his call, after I plan on foraging in my very own back yard!  Kris Carr, author of Crazy Sexy Diet is going to host a great call, too.

Did I mention it’s totally free?  Interested?  Register here: Wish Summit

Other speakers will share what they know about health, meditation, empowering women, healing, fertility and sexuality.   More will chat about anti-aging, natural body care, learning to love our bodies, weight loss and exercise.  But it’s not limited to just be about our bodies, there are also calls about thriving in today’s economy, and, for the singles out there, how to date with dignity.

Sounds pretty good, right?  I’ve only just touched on a few of the topics the speakers will cover throughout the 40 days of the WISH Summit.  I love that Tera has made it possible to download all of the calls this year, a change from last year.  I don’t know about you, but I seem to hear best when I’m away from my desk, at the gym, in the car, working in the kitchen or garden, and I just love that I can put the calls on my ipod!  Plus, there are a few other great calls on the WISH site, including a truly amazing one from Sergei!

Join WISH and let it change your world.  I know it has changed mine!

I wish I may, I wish I might, share the wish call with you tonight?  Click here to join the WISH Summit.

The post I Wish I May, I Wish I Might… appeared first on Raw Life Coaching.