Liver Love: Juice Recipe by Angela Stokes-Monarch

This recipe by Angela Stokes-Monarch can be found in the 10-Day Juice Cleanse guide.

Makes about 1 quart/ 32 oz/ 4 cups

 Ingredients:

• 2 beets
• 2 handfuls of greens of your choice
• 2 cucumbers
• 2 small fennel bulbs
• 1 lemon/lime, peeled
• 2 inch chunk fresh ginger

Read more »

Raw Green Juice Recipe: Fen-Omenal!

Fen-omenal!

- Recipe by Angela Stokes-Monarch

In commemoration of our new juice cleanse program debuting next week, we’ve got another leafy yet lovely green juice recipe for you to slurp your way to vibrancy and health!

You’ll love the taste of fennel in this juice. It’s light, refreshing, and the lime and lemon juices in the recipe help to lift and sweeten the flavour a little too!

Whether you’re taking part in a juice cleanse or simply wanting to increase the amount of potently powerful greens in your diet, this Fen-omenal green juice recipe is certain to leave you feeling… phenomenal!

Read more »

Meet BiG Thinkers Robyn Openshaw, Majora Carter and Angela Stokes-Monarch

I want to just take a few moments to acknowledge the different participants we had on the Believe in Green event.  Green Smoothie Girl, Robyn Openshaw. We picked her to help us kick off this event, because she knows how to keep it real. Some of our guests are known for their extremist points of view, but depending on where you’re coming from, these ideas can be a bit overwhelming.

Robyn knows how to speak to anyone and help create a comfortable gradient with objectives that feel realistic. She also is the single mom of 4 children (3 of which are teenagers) and so she knows how to shop on a budget, multitask, run a business and still make time for healthy living. You can sign up to access her interview here:

I am delighted to present Majora Carter.

Major was so busy we had to reschedule this interview about 4 times!  That’s probably part of the reason that when the interview started, she thought I was just another annoying journalist.   Jimmy the web wonder worker actually forgot to edit the part where Majora told me to look online for the answers to the questions I was asking!!

*gasp!* She thought it was a print interview.

I’ve never felt THIS worried that I’d be met with one word answers during an interview. She was a tough nut to crack, but once I managed to speak a few of the words that resonate with her, she actually ended the interview by calling me “sweetheart.” I received a lot of great feedback about this call. Majora was the first person to help create a public park in the South Bronx in over 60 years!!

If she was a tough nut to crack, it’s only because that’s what it takes to make things happen where she lives. The thing you need to know about Majora is that she’s seen a lot. She grew up in places you and I have never really known and she CHOOSES to live there still because she’s committed to making things better. I suggest you sign up to catch this interview and for more information about her, visit her website or catch her super-inspiring TED talk!

The next si-star to grace our BiG stage with her presence was the lovely Angela Stokes-Monarch! What a treat to connect with her again. She’s come along way from being 160 pounds overweight and while in the beginning her motivations were to lose weight and improve her personal health, she’s now inspired by her ability to touch the lives of tens of thousands of other women and men around the world.

I invited her to take the BiG stage because she’s invested a lot of time recently in learning more about sustainable living, and she’s nearly achieved that ideal for herself. When you sign up to catch this interview you’ll get to hear about some of her favorite resources for growing your own food and sustainable living, and you’ll also find out what she wanted to be when she was a little girl and how, in a certain way, that’s exactly what she ended up doing!!

You can sign up to access these calls for FREE at any time, but I suggest you fork our the ten smackeroos that will go to helping the Girls’ Club, too.
Thanks again for your support!

SPECIAL GUEST 'Raw Celeb' SHAZZIE

Shazzie is a raw mom whom I am thrilled to share with all my raw moms:

Shazzie was born in 1969 and is from the UK. At the age of 16 she became a vegetarian and was an ethical vegan 2 years later. At the age of 30, Shazzie became a raw foodist for health reasons. For almost four years she ate an exclusively raw vegan diet, then, during pregnancy, she ate some cooked food due to cravings and sickness. She spent a long time happy at 95%, but recently went back up to 100% raw, and is loving it even more than before!

Becoming a raw foodist was an intrinsic part of her journey towards mental, spiritual and physical freedom. She’s written four books: Shazzie’s Detox Delights, Detox your World, Evie’s Kitchen: Raising an Ecstatic Child and Naked Chocolate: The Astonishing Truth About the World’s Greatest Food, co-authored with David Wolfe, and two ebooks: Ecstasists Anonymous and Raw Britannia.

In 2004, Shazzie gave birth to her beautiful daughter Evie. Evie is also a raw foodist, and was full-term breastfed, unvaccinated, co-sleeps and is as natural as someone can be in the UK! Shazzie has appeared in the media on numerous occasions. Though she’s a committed full-time mother, she still speaks at some events. I discovered Shazzie from stumbling upon her blog which she wrote everyday for 9 years well before blogging was popular! With similar parenting styles and uber optimistic outlooks, we have become lovely friends. I have always been totally inspired by her refreshing candidness, humour and unique perspective- she is such an ORIGINAL!

Before going raw, she was overweight, depressed and just ‘lost’ as she puts it. And now she is living the life of her dreams and teaching by example hundreds of thousands of others how to do the same. Unlike alot of other raw teachers out there many of whom do not have children, Shazzie really knows what she is talking about, and tells it like it really is as a raw mom.

Tell me about your latest project and why raw moms would be interested:
Sure, Love! I wrote Evie’s Kitchen because I was asked to by countless women who wanted to raise raw children but didn’t have a comprehensive guide book on how to do it. There are so many people who actively promote the raw food diet, and most of them don’t have children. They can give theories but not first-hand advice. There was definitely a gap in the market, well more like a big crack! I wrote it because I wanted to introduce raw foodism alongside other natural parenting methods, as it should be.

So I’d love to give you one of the 180+ recipes that’s in Evie’s Kitchen. If this tickles your small one’s tastebuds, then you know where to find more:

Joe’s faked ecstatic beans

100g soaked pine nuts
50ml olive oil
50g goji berries, soaked and drained
½ red pepper
4 sundried tomatoes
2 dates
¼ teaspoon of paprika

Soak the pine nuts and sundried tomatoes in water for at least twenty minutes, then drain and rinse.

Pitt the dates. Blend everything apart from the pine nuts in a high-speed blender.

Pour the sauce over the pine nuts, mix and serve as is, or put in a dehydrator for half an hour or so at 115°F/46°C to enjoy warm. (If you’re in a hurry, or don`t have a dehydrator, you can warm it gently in a pan on a low flame, stirring all the time and testing with your finger until it becomes hand hot.)

What is the main benefit you have noticed since you have gone raw?
Everything! Literally, from how I look to how I feel! I was in such an emotional, physical and spiritual mess before. I knew I was all wrong inside, and didn’t know why, then when I found out about raw food it all made sense. And raw food leads on to so many other things, it gives you this clarity and realigns you with your higher self enough to only ever do what’s 100% right for you. I didn’t have a clue what was right for me before, I just did what I thought I was supposed to do, even though I knew that wasn’t right either. I am eternally grateful to raw food, yoga and plant spirits for giving me myself back.

What is the main benefit you feel your daughter experiences being brought up raw?
Evie was breastfed until she was four, and full-term breastfeeding is really important for all children. She rarely gets ill, and when she does, she recovers quickly. I’ve never had to take her to the doctors with an illness. Evie is extremely right-brained, which is clearly a result of her raw diet. She’s psychic, empathetic, loving to the extreme and very, very funny. The way she connects with adults is astounding, she looks them right in the eye and really checks them out! There’s not a shy bone in her body, she’s really good at stories, and seems to know far too much for someone her age.

What would you say is the biggest obstacle you face being a rawmom?
Getting it right with very little information out there. I’ve seen too many raw kids suffer with malnutrition, and I couldn’t understand why, when raw food is supposed to be the best diet ever! I spent four years diligently researching childhood nutrition from every angle as I was raising Evie. I got the final pieces of crucial information into Evie’s Kitchen just before it went to print, and am fully satisfied that I got it all in there for other parents to make use of. You shouldn’t have to research that much, but when there’s nothing out there substantial enough about raising raw kids, and when there are all these ill, skinny, toothless raw kids, then you have no choice. Secondly, I’ve been a vegan for 22 years and having looked at all the nutritional information surrounding veganism from a child’s perspective, I introduced a few organic free range eggs into Evie’s diet after she stopped breastfeeding. God, that was hard! But you know what? Evie isn’t me, and I have to do what I feel in my heart is right, and not impose my belief systems upon her.

How have you triumphed in the face of that obstacle?
With getting it right, first in Evie, now in Evie’s Kitchen. I’m so glad I’m an obsessive writer and researcher! With much thought and research, I started adding eggs to Evie`s diet. We’ll soon be living in a place where there’s the opportunity to get some rescued chickens and give them loads of love and space to roam. I’ll feel a lot happier about her having their eggs because the animal industry is just too horrible. I don’t want her to be part of that, but I do want her to be nutritionally complete. I won’t compromise her health for anything.

What is your biggest/best tip for mom’s who are new to raw and want to feed their kids this way?
It’s different for children who aren’t being raised raw from birth, as they have their tastebuds set up for a specific group of foods that they’ve been exposed to. I cover this in Evie’s Kitchen, because it’s an increasingly pressing subject.

First, don’t make a child go raw overnight unless he wants to, or is ill! The best way I know of is to alter the drinks first. Make fresh juices, adding as much green juice in there as possible before you get the “yuck” face pulled at you. Make almond mylk with a little bit of Salba/chia in it, and add two Ortho-Bone Vegan capsules to it if the child is still growing. Sweeten it with dates or raw agave nectar. Have an abundance of crudites cut up in the fridge for snacking. Marinate julienned vegetables in tamari, apple cider vinegar and cold-pressed oil and serve with their normal food. Make fruit puddings, and other ecstatic foods. OK, that’s not one tip, is it?

Best tip: take it very slowly, and don’t punish your child if they don’t like your raw meals. I always say to Evie “I spent a long time making it so please just taste it three times and if you don’t like it I’ll make you something else.” I believe I learned that tip from YOU, Shannon! It normally works.

With your 20-something Goddess looks its hard to believe you are turning 40 this January. If I could ask you anything, it would be, do you realise how special and beautiful you are?
Gosh! I’m really grateful for that. Thank you, Shannon, but look who`s talking! I do know I’m controversial! LOL; It’s all perfect. Knowing there are people committed to living their truth and passion everyday, and sharing it with others just like you are, really blesses me. I hope you realise how special and beautiful you are, too!

Bliss you, all your raw moms,
Shazzie (www.shazzie.com)