Keeping it Real – Making Changes to Your Family Diet

by Fiona Cristian

How many of you converting-your-family-to-raw moms have said that at one time or another?

“I wish I’d known about raw food before I had my first child.
I wish I’d known about raw food before I had my first child.
I wish I’d known about raw food before I had my first child.”

You’re sold on raw, doing it most of the time, but your children are digging their heels in and your husband (also sold on raw but struggles with cooked food ) doesn’t help matters by saying,
“OH – It’s not fair, can’t I have some?” when he sees the children eating something cooked!!!

Despite all the opposition, I remain positive about our home eventually becoming a mostly, nearly, almost totally raw food home.

Why? One reason, hearing these words from my 12 year old daughter: Read more »

My Favorite Lemonade

by Lyn Wright

I got this recipe years ago – I think from the Juiceman.  When my son was growing up this was his all time favorite treat.   If I wanted to give him something yummy and watch him light up – this was the way to do it!

I had a daycare back then and the kids who were used to a lot of sugar couldn’t even tell the difference from the sugary ones they were used to.  I had tried other sweeteners, like honey, but they never tasted like ‘real’ lemonade.   This one does.

Be sure to get organic lemons so you can use the peel which is loaded with lots of great nutrition.

• 3-4 Apples
• 1/4 – 1/2 Lemon (depending on the strength of the lemon)

Run them through your juicer and enjoy!  That’s it!  So easy and soooooo good!

For Pink Lemonade – pour you Lemonade in the blender and blend in some Strawberries.

For a Green Smoothie – pour your Lemonade in the blender and add your greens.  Lemons really taste great with greens.

Need less sugar than the apples provide?  Try Vicky’s recipe for Lemonade using Lemons and Stevia.

Lemony kisses!!

Lyn

Successful Self-Dentistry: The Secret to Naturally Healthy Teeth & Gums

This week, it’s probably not a coincidence that I’ve been studying up on successful self-dentistry via my friend Nadine Artemis and on Monday this week, my 10-year old daughter, Mika, fractured her tooth at the root.  She had a bump-in when some shorter, younger kid came ripping around the corner at school.

After an emergency visit to the dentist, the prognosis is that she’s got 12-weeks of repair to do.  If she can keep her 10-year old body still enough not to bump that tooth for the next 12 weeks, then she might be able to save her tooth.  If not, my little princess is going to be a toothless wonder bug.

Naturally, this has motivated me even more to share with you a bit about what I’ve been learning thanks to Nadine’s information on Successful Self-Dentistry. You can click here to listen to the interview yourself, and you’ll see the kit that I bought for my little family.  We took the time to go through that call and highlight a few of the key points for multi-taskers like me out there:

Here are a few key points you’ll get out of this call:

If you do the standard thing of brushing your teeth, maybe flossing and going to the dentist every 6 months, you are going to have cavities at some point. The little bits of peppermint flavor you’ll find in most toothpastes aren’t going to cut the mustard when it comes to oral health.

The most important things to focus on Read more »

Believe in Green Blendtec Ripple Maker Winner: Ada Ketchie

- by Stacey Terry

Well my green smoothie go-getters, I hope you’ll agree that our BiG Believe in Green Blendtec Ripple-Maker winner was definitely worth the wait!  In celebration of International Green Smoothie Day in August, we raised over $10 000 for The Lower East Side Girls Club with the help of passionate green smoothie and green environmental enthusiasts like the lovely Ada whom I’d like to introduce you to today!

Not having a glorious green machine like a Blendtec herself, Ada borrowed a blender in order to spread the green smoothie ripples.  Over the course of her many demonstrations, she managed to serve green smoothies to nearly 100 people, not to mention the other hundreds of people she either e-mailed or showed off her green smoothies to.  That kind of passion, that kind of belief in a better world just can’t be measured!

Ada will never have to borrow another blender.  She’s soon going to have THE ultimate green smoothie ripple-making machine… a gorgeous Blendtec blender!

I hope you’ll delight in reading Ada’s story and seeing all the green enthusiasm she put into her project.  Be sure to send her a comment below to keep that green enthusiasm shining and reaching out!

And now, on to Ada’s letter…

Read more »

BiG Green Smoothie Ripple Makers: Carla Likich

- by Stacey Terry

[zdvideo]http://www.greensmoothiequeen.com/images/gsq/videos/carla_big_4.flv[/zdvideo]

Well things are finally starting to roll along!  So, I’m back to share another fabulous Green Smoothie Ripple-Maker story with you!

And if you only knew the lengths taken to share the videos in this post…!!

hehe… it took A LOT of effort and computer time from Carla and her sweetie, Mark, but they managed to chunk and then send in videos of Carla’s green smoothie presentation in honour of Believe in Green!

These videos are just ONE of the presentations that Carla gave and took video for!  I’m going to save some of the videos for a future post, but Carla’s Ripple-Making skills are as green and go-getter as they come!

Carla writes: Read more »

Delicious Raw Spaghetti!

Stacey, who does an awesome job at our sister site Green Smoothie Queen, sent out this recipe last week.  It looked so awesome, I asked her if we could share it over here at Raw Divas.  xoxo Lyn

Stacey’s Sprawghetti Spree –

Pasta Ingredients:

• 1 small spaghetti squash, raw

Sauce Ingredients:

• 2 garden ripe tomatoes (these are really tasty!  If you need to use the store kind you may want to add in a sundried tomato or two)
• 1/4 fresh chili pepper
• 1/2 red bell pepper
• 1/4 cup minced onion (or dried onion flakes)
• 1 tsp. cold press olive oil
• 1 clove fresh garlic
• 1 Tbsp. or more dried oregano (or use fresh if you have it!)
• 1 Tbsp. or more dried basil (or use fresh)
• dash of sea salt

Meatball Ingredients:

• 1 cup mixed (and soaked) walnuts and pecans, raw
• 1/2 lemon, juice of
• 1/2 green chard leaf (usually it’s parsley but I was out!)
• dash of nama shoyu (raw, unpasteurized soya sauce) – you could probably leave out if you don’t have it
• 1 small clove garlic
• 1 tsp. of veggie oil (I actually used Udo’s as I’m trying to clear up my skin from poison ivy)
• dash of sea salt

Read more »

BiG Green Smoothie Ripple Makers: Mandeep Lota

- by Stacey Terry

Before we get to the good stuff…  I LIVED!!!

hehe… sorry to be so dramatic, but I’ve been a weeeeee bit anxious the last week or so about a knee surgery that finally took place on Monday.  I had to repair a tear in my knee after an exuberant dancing incident last Halloween.  Thankfully all is well, and I didn’t even mope when the nurse told me I would NOT be getting the green smoothie I requested on my intake form.

That’s okay… I’d made one the morning of the surgery, wrapped it up with a freezer pack and had it waiting in the car with my ride for when they released me in the afternoon.  And, after a night of fasting and a day of stress, I have to tell you THAT green smoothie was just about the best tasting one ever!

While I won’t be doing any jigging again just yet, I AM able at long last to get back here to the keyboard to bring you a new ripple maker story from BiG. Read more »

Tips for Overeating, Late Night Bingeing and Salt Addiction! A Coaching Session With Ka Sundance

In preparing for our Raw Mom, Cooked Dad event, I’ve been very busy conducting interviews with some amazing people. They all leave me with SOMETHING special, profound or life-changing–like an anchor that settles itself into the seat of my soul.

I walk away with a message, something I can take action on and move forward with.

During my call with Ka Sundance of The Raw Food Family, one of the anchors that settled into my soul was a discussion of suffering. Ka was articulate on this subject and discussed the fact that most people do not take action to correct or improve something until they are suffering because of it.

*BINGO!*

That was SO true. I’ve had a cyst on the back of my leg for a couple years now, and it’s not bothering me, it doesn’t hurt, or cause me any grief, and so I do Read more »

Sisterhood Spotlight: Vicky controls Gestational Diabetes with diet alone!

Vicky has been a participant in WISH and was gracious enough to share her experience with diabetes.  We felt her experience could be very helpful to others who may need to adjust their diet to help keep their blood sugar in range.  Please post any questions below.  I think this is an area we will want to be exploring more.  xoxoxo  Lyn

Hello, my name is Vicky Glisson.  I am a 42 yr old mother of five children, 4 boys and 1 girl.  Our baby girl Cadence was born at home on July 29^th.  I would like to share my experience with staying on a raw diet when I developed gestational diabetes during my 5^th pregnancy.

Our family has been on a raw diet (75-90%) since January of 2008. When I became pregnant with Cadence I was very excited to have the chance to experience a pregnancy while on a raw diet and give my next child the most nutritious, healthy start I could.

I find out I have Gestational Diabetes….

When it was time to test for Gestational Diabetes I decided not to drink the glucose drink, but to test my blood sugar after each meal with a glucose monitor for one week.  My blood sugar tested higher than normal.  When I took my results to my midwife she explained that I had Gestational Diabetes and that she could not do a home delivery if I could not keep my blood sugar in a normal range. Read more »

BiG Green Smoothie Ripple Makers: Andrea Sinclair

- by Stacey Terry

During our Believe in Green event, we challenged our participants to go out and make a difference in their own communities and spread the word about green smoothies to the most number of people!  The entire purpose of The Green Smoothie Queen is to spread the ripples of health… to change lives and health one green smoothie at a time.  And the only way that happens is for people to find out about our beloved lawnmower pulp and then try the gorgeous green gloop for themselves.

With the co-operation of the incredible folks at Blendtec, we have a spanky and spinachy new Blendtec blender to give away to the person who touched the most lives through holding a green smoothie event of their own!

I was just floored by the entries that came in.  I should have had someone there with a camera to take the photo of my face when I’d open up the entry e-mails and see what our participants had done!  I tell ya… it makes my heart expand and burst with optimism and joy when I see others reaching out and spreading the sunshine around.

We had four official entries into our BiG Blendtec Green Smoothie Ripple-Maker contest!  Read more »