Category: Superfoods

Super Chia Smoothie

You will love, love LOVE this smooth smoothie! I do! I am enjoying it right now while I am writing. I simply have to share this wonderful recipe which started in some kind of a minor because I was out of bananas and leafy green vegetables and didn’t feel like going out in the rain. My throat was feeling soar since last night and I felt tired when I woke up this morning so I had to make a super smoothie fast!

I was wondering how to replace the smoothness of a banana in my smoothie. I opened my fridge, hm, soaked chia seeds could do the trick. And ripe pears for some sweetness. My favorite loyal coconut oil would help too for sure. This is how I brew this overnice super boosting smoothie. After drinking one glass I feel the energy coming back and the sourness has gone.

This smoothie is packed with essential fatty oils (3 to 10 times the oil concentrations of most grains), proteins (one and a half to two times the protein concentrations of other grains), linoleic (the unsaturated fatty acid which the body can’t produce) and calcium ( it contains the important mineral boron, a catalyst for the absorption of calcium).

TOOLS YOU NEED

  • A blender
  • A sharp knife
  • A cutting board

INGREDIENTS FOR ALMOST 1 QUART

  • About 3-4 cups rejuvelac (you can also use water, tea or coconut water… but the rejuvelac is so great!)
  • 1 C soaked chia seeds
  • 2 C blueberries (when you take frozen berries in winter, you don’t have to add ice)
  • 2 ripe pears
  • 2 TBS coconut oil
  • 2 tsp maca
  • 1 tsp bee pollen
  • 2 TBS supergreen powder (Amazing Grass is very good and tasting lovely!)
  • 2 TBS hemp seeds
  • 2 TBS honey

THE MAKING OF…

Blend until very smooth ( a bit longer to break down all the chia seeds) and soak all the goodies in this goddess drink…

TIPS

  • Chia seeds have no taste so you can easily add other flavors while enjoying all the great nutrients of chia (EFA’s!)
  • You can add chocolate, goji berries… their rich flavors will always take over from the chia seeds
  • Soak a few cups of chia seeds overnight and store what you don’t need in a sealed glass container in the refrigerator; they stay good for two weeks
  • Chia seeds can help you to lose weight because of their good fats. Moreover they are very filling and help you control hunger in a natural way



Green Green Grass Of Home

Grown wheatgrass

Nothing is as simple as growing grass and yet… a lot of people seem to have trouble to get those green blades up and ready to juice.  So I thought it might be a good idea to tell you how you can be successful in growing your lovely waving  grass  in the light at your window. What are the most common problems I hear about?

  • Mold
  • The berries take a long time to sprout
  • The grass is growing irregularly and much too ‘thin’

I must say I had some trouble when I started too. All you need is a little bit of practice and some good tips. When you have a problem, ask yourself what is the cause and you go on from there to find your own solution. But you won’t have to with this little guide…

Green Green Grass Of Home

Let me start from the beginning; sprouting the berries. The first times when I was sewing my wheatgrass, ( and I bet a lot of starters do) I simple threw the seeds in a tray with organic soil, drenched it with water and put it up in the light because when you need to grow something, it needs light no? Nope, it doesn’t! Actually seeds need to be in the dark to be triggered and sprout. They need that signal; “you are under the ground so better start growing so you can see the light!” To grow your grass easier, you have to help it a bit by soaking and sprouting the seeds first.

Soaking

SOAKING BEFORE SEWING

  • Rinse one cup of wheatberries so eventual residue can come off
  • Soak  them covered up with pure water overnight
  • Next morning rinse them until the water is clear
  • Put them in a sprouting bag or jar and turn the jar upside down so the water is removed and the seeds can’t get moldy
  • Cover up with a dark towel and place them where you don’t forget about them
  • Rinse them 2 to 3 times a day
  • When they get their little tail, they are ready to sew

Ready to sew, the tails may even be smaller

SEWING

  • Take a plastic tray that is perforated (this is important so the seeds will never be too wet and grow mold)
  • Make  a layer of organic soil of about 1.96 to 2 inches (the quality of the grass is depending on the quality of the soil!)
  • Wet the soil but don’t make it too wet (mold)
  • Now you can sew your sprouts; very thick! You may not see any soil anymore or you will only have some poor blades)

Every day!

  • Spray the seeds
  • Take a piece of newspaper, make it wet and cover the tray with it (this way the seeds can keep the moist they need)
  • Place this tray in a dark, cool place
  • Wet the newspaper every day, and spray the soil and seeds very well(this way you won’t get too much water in the tray)

White Grass After Two Days

  • After two or three days, you will have lovely white grass
  • When it is about 2.7 inches or 7 cm high, take the newspaper off, get it out of the dark and bring into the sunlight!

Into The Light

  • Now the miracle happens and it is always lovely to see it happen; photosynthesis turns the grass green and makes it grow
  • After about 7 days, your grass will be about 6 inches or even more

Ready for Harvest

HARVEST & JUICE

The way you harvest your grass is just as important to receive all the minerals and nutrients. Most minerals are close to the soil.

Harvest

  • Take a sharp knife or scissors and cut off the grass as close as possible to the soil.
  • The best way to get all the juice out of grass is juice it with a slow juicer or manual juicer.
  • If you don’t have either of them, you can make a diluted version with your blender: put two handfuls of grass in it and pour a little bit of water on top to get it going, blend and strain through a fine sieve or a nut milk bag. This juice is not as strong as the real thing, but it is still better than having none. This is how I did it until I could buy my slow juicer.

Wheatgrass Juice From The Blender

TIPS & NOTES

  • Don’t blend grass too long in your blender; it may dull the blade
  • Mold can be caused by too much water, but also by too few water! When you spray your seeds, you have much more control.
  • Choose a very good organic soil to benefit your grass at the fullest! Grass absorbs about 97% of all minerals in the soil; so if you want to have good quality wheat grass, the soil has to be rich in minerals.
  • Buy organic seeds who will give you all you need.
  • Something I always do to give my soil extra vitamins and enzymes is when I rinse my smoothie glass, I use that water to spray the grass. If it doesn’t help, it sure won’t harm and by the way; I am sure it is the best fertilizer for my grass.
  • Don’t let the seeds sprout too long. Don’t wait with sewing until their tail is very long; it will take away their strength and they will grow slow and look poor. A little tail is all you need; the wall is now soft enough and the sprout is ready to grow.
  • Wheatgrass can be different depending on the kind of seeds you bought. Some seeds give long, narrow blades as the ones I was growing above. But you will also notice that other pictures have grass with wider blades. I prefer those because they are much juicier.
  • If you always want a tray ready, start a system with a routine that keeps you juicing and drinking this healing grass.
  • When you have mold, you can’t juice the grass anymore. Throw it upside down on your compost; it brings oxygen in compost.
  • You can grow and harvest one tray twice; it will look rougher and not as long anymore but just fine to juice!
  • The grass will “eat” all the soil and form a “mat” with the roots. This is first class compost!
  • A great organic brand for wheatberries is Geo. The seeds are strong and the grass is …. sweet and green! To purchase feel free to visit my website.

Geo seeds and their grass

Good luck! If any questions, feel free to email me.

Super(b) Smoothie

The less I think about what to put in my morning smoothie, the better it gets! Of course you have to be lucky with the individual tastes of the vegetables and fruits you grab because they vary every day. But well, I was lucky and if you have sweet pears and bananas available nothing much can go wrong with this combination.

Slamming Smoothie

TOOLS YOU NEED

  • A blender
  • A sharp knife
  • A cutting board

INGREDIENTS

  • 4 small leaves of kale (or two large ones)
  • A frozen banana (you can take unfrozen too)
  • A sweet pear
  • Fill up your blender with spinach
  • A grab of parsley
  • A handful of Goji Berries (it adds sweetness and so many great nutrients!)
  • 1 tsp beepollen
  • 1 tsp Maca
  • 1 TBS coconut butter
  • Rejuvelac (see the recipe here; I added slices of lemon and mint to this batch)

THE MAKING OF…

  • Throw everything in your blender
  • Blend and chew that smooth smoothie! Cheers!

    Super Smoothie

Alive Smoothie

I make smoothies every day. But sometimes you have that one smoothie which exceeds all others. It is a combination of factors and you don’t have them always under control. Each smoothie tastes different, even with the exact same ingredients. Simply because all vegetables and fruit add their own personal flavor. One banana can be soothing sweet and another hardly have any taste. Same with juices; one pound of carrots can taste like heaven and another will be rather bitter and spoil your sweet soup. So a lot depends on that willing touch of your chosen fruit of that day.

Notice the oxygen bubbling up in this smoothie! Ready to shake you up and make you come alive!

Sometimes you think you are brewing the greatest smoothie ever and when you take your first highly expecting sip, it turns out you can hardly swallow it down. It happens to everybody. So what can you do then with that rich smoothie, full of nutrients and expensive superfoods and greens and fruit? Drink it up with two fingers shutting your nose? Because the last thing you want to do is throw it out!

I discovered how to save those “failures” and have a wonderful drink after all. Just pour that smoothie in your nut milk bag and sssquuueeeze out the juice. The pulp is a great fertilizer for your wheatgrass (mingle it under your soil, all those minerals will be soaked by the grass and provide you strong shots!) and the juice… the juice is just great! The taste changes and you can pour all the glorious nutrients down to your body.

But now more about my Alive Smoothie. I always use what I have laying around and was lucky with the combination and the great tastes of the greens and fruits. My mustard greens were soft, the banana sweet, the spinach soothing, and then… my secret weapon: rejuvelac! You know how much I am into this elixir of life. I always use it to make my smoothies the best, both taste and content.

When you use rejuvelac instead of water, you add an extra dimension; life. And that is what you will feel in your body; life. You can make a whole lot of rejuvelac and store it easily for two weeks in your refrigerator or in your basement so you don’t have anything else to do but grab and smooth away.

Alive Smoothie

TOOLS YOU NEED

A blender

INGREDIENTS

  • One sweet banana
  • A handful of mustard greens
  • Two leaves of kale
  • A grab of parsley
  • Fill up the rest with spinach
  • A handful of Goiji Berries
  • A TBS Maca
  • A TBS bee pollen
  • Fill up the blender until halfway with rejuvelac

THE MAKING OF…

  • Blend and taste. Not sweet enough to your taste? Add a juicy pear…

Drink, chew and be alive!

Mustard Green

Electrolyte Shock

When I woke up I had no idea what time it was. It was too dark, too silent, too weary to get up. I notice that I am even more sensitive than ever to the changing hours in autumn. Only one hour, but my whole system still seems disturbed after a week. Even the metabolic clock of my pets is messed up; they start waiting for food one hour earlier than usual.

Electrolytes!

I was wondering what to do about it when it struck me. I would start my day with an electrolyte shock to awaken and coop with the dark weather. So I jumped out of the bed, showered, dressed and took one of my fresh Thai coconuts out of the refrigerator. I grabbed my impressive meat cleaver -with which I will never cleave meat!- and chopped off the coconuts head.  Hmm, have to make a picture of this, I thought. I have to write about all these electrolytes in only one glass! Have you never wondered how this energizing water gets into this heavenly nut? I did!

Electrolytes in a glass

I found the answer when I was reading David Wolfe’s book “Superfoods”. What is so beautiful about coconuts is that they carry and nurture their water as a human pregnancy. Almost nine months is how long it takes to filter each quart in that hard shell. Which must make you wonder how it got there in the first place. Let me quote the master himself here because I can’t think of other words: “The water rises through innumerable fibers which purify the water before it ends up in the sterile nut.”  This water is the most powerful water in nature because of the highest levels of electrolytes.

Moreover young coconut water is very similar to the structure of our blood plasma and therefor was even used in  the Pacific battles of World War II as blood transfusion for wounded soldiers. Coconut water in our veins?? Our blood exists of about 55% of plasma (about the same structure as coconut water) and 45% of hemoglobin (for the transportation of oxygen). This hemoglobin is “essentially transformed plant blood”, chlorophyll. So this means that when you make yourself a drink of fresh coconut water (55% plasma) mixed with fresh green leaf juice or the by Dr. Ann Wigmore recommended wheatgrass juice (45% hemoglobin), you will treat your body on a blood transfusion. Isn’t this amazingly easy?!

Blood Transfusion

If you can’t imagine that you will be able to drink a combination like this, let me give you these very simple yet lovely tips.

  • Use coconut water as the base of your smoothies. It is delicious and will sweeten it up.
  • Take a glass of coconut water and add one table spoon of “green superfood” which is packed with the chlorophyll of barley, wheatgrass, broccoli, spirulena, chlorella and many others. This is what I did here and it tastes… heavenly!
  • Drink this is the morning on an empty stomach if you want the full benefits of it and a quick absorption in the blood.
  • Oh, and give this magic drink to your children before they take off to school! They will be fit and concentrated and love the taste because it is very sweet.

My body is tingling now and my mind is clear. (I drank the green version while I was writing). The effect of this booster is almost immediately. It only takes five minutes to feel your blood pump. So get those young Thai coconuts, grow your grass, juice your greens and get in tune with your body!

Sources: David Wolfe “Superfoods” and my own experiences.

David Wolfe in Belgium 2, A Trilogy

Calcification… a disease of civilization that hits all of us sooner or later. How come? Too much calcium, the wrong kind of calcium and calcium supplements. Consequence; cataract, arteriosclerosis, kidney stones, heart attack, Alzheimer, arthritis and so on and so on. In the past they were called old age sicknesses, now you can get them at young age already. That’s when I hear young people say sneering; “We are forty, we are on the decline!” A typical expression when one doesn’t know better and it is such nonsense to settle with it, no matter what age.

David Wolfe

David Wolfe confirmed my own suspicions; that a standard diet is accelerating these reactions. That raw food can turn your life around, react with strength and let your body revive. He wrote a program to reverse the process of calcification, to resolve calcium and to get rid of it. Intriguing. Why don’t we know about this? That’s also his question. I am wondering each time again why essential information isn’t shared with the population. Simple; industry, money, power. It makes me so angry!

So we need solvents to resolve all the calcium which is building up slowly, Wolfe claims. And he is right. Whenever a problem, there is a solution. The higher our intake of calcium, the more issues will manifest. He investigated the whole area, made a schedule and wrote a book about it.

But what are the alternatives? is what I often am asked. Magnesium, Phosphorus and Silica. Those three minerals are strong enough to build and reinforce our bones. By consuming more valuable minerals in a natural way we can prevent so much suffering. How? Green, green, green. How? Just start simple; with a fresh wheat grass juice and a green smoothie every morning; it contains more vegetables and fruits you can eat in a day.

So Wolfe created a plan and takes the problem by its horns step by step. No cheap steps, but so aren’t doctors once you start ailing. Always worth trying because doctors don’t know many answers either. Instead of admitting, they rather write an extra subscription for more calcium. Sigh.

The most important issue always is your body. It is like no other body and this is how you have to treat it, as a unicum on earth, with its specific wishes, moods and needs. What is good for one person can be a disaster for another one. So stay tuned with your body and listen what it has to tell you. Only you can understand its language.

Beautiful Nature

A short note about the Superherbs, as Wolfe is naming them. They are more powerful than any other herb and what more, they are out there for free, they grow in your garden, in the wild and waiting for you to pick them and use. What are you waiting for? Your immunity system will blossom, your nerve system will relive.

Shi Take

Some “bodybuilders” to grab in nature are:

  • Absolute top 1 of superherbs are wild mushrooms; Chaga and Reishi are the most powerful ones and you can find them all around in the woods to make strong tea. One small piece is enough to provide you of 340 oz. of tea. They also heal Candida.
  • Maytaki, Shitake (we all know that one) en Coriolis cure the nerve system. Coriolis is also an anti-cancer medicine.
  • Malva or Mallow ( marshmellows!)  – All parts are edible and deliver you 20 times more minerals than any other plant.
  • Chamomille
  • Artemisia (the name is coming from the protector Artemis)
  • Neem – the most powerful detox herb

And did you have any idea that asparagus is a medicinal vegetable?

We can do so much ourselves! Knowing where and how to start is essential and seminars like these can help you with this. tomorrow we will make a walk!

Resting

Eat Well, Live Long

This was a title I wrote about a while ago. But finding out what it can truly mean is something else.

Two days ago I received a message on Facebook from a friend who wanted me to have a look at a video. I was stunned and I still am! What I saw was an interview with Bernando LaPallo for his… you are reading this correct…. his 109th. birthday! He is looking 40 years younger! He is still alive and kicking, full of plans and dreams. I simply HAVE to blog about this amazing man and let you all know about him.

Why? He just finished a new book! It is a book with a beautiful title, breathing energy: “Age Less, Live More” Mr. Lapallo is living on raw food since 1979, thriving, still working and now planning on opening a restaurant. I am amazed AND energized by such living power.

109 years old and rocking on raw food!

What is his secret? “Superfoods” he said in the interview while taking the interviewer into his kitchen. He pointed at a big bowl of fruits on top of his refrigerator and showed us a large jar of the powder that “keeps me alive”. “Never miss it a day” he said, since the seventies.

This is such a hopeful message. I am trying to measure what it can mean for me. I don’t know what his health history is or his motivation to go raw halfway his life. Was he ill at that time or just eager to live healthy? I don’t know what raw food can restore in a body that has been very ill several years. But I am wondering since two days. Even with the knowledge around raw food and the proof I received of its healing power, I am not sure yet in how far raw food can turn the clock around. Seeing Mr. Lapallo is so inspiring that I gained a lot of faith. With the clean and raw lifestyle I am living, I can thrive till 100, no matter what my history was.

I want to invite you all to watch this short video of a man who will give you hope, inspiration and courage to live healthy, to become raw or to stay raw if you are on a cross-point in your raw food journey.

109 Year- Old Author Celebrates Birthday

Also have a look at his blog, where you can read about all his activities and lectures; http://www.agelesslivemorestore.com/

Website; www.RawLifeHealthShow.com

To end this short post, I want to share his three top health tips with you. When I heard them, I smiled because these are things I am writing about, trying to draw everybody’s attention to. It just feels so good to hear them from a man who is living long enough to prove to the world they are so true! You can see it all in this movie;

Raw Life Health Show

  1. Keep your colon clean! Keeping your colon clean means your liver can do its job (purify the blood) and keep you healthy.
  2. Take Dr. Schulze’s “Superfood” but it in the right manor; mix it with organic fruit and juice in the morning.
  3. Eat regularly and healthy: avoid fast food restaurants.