Bright Yellow and Healthy!

Everybody has his or her own morning routine, eyes half shut, stumbling from the bed to the bathroom, and slowly waking up to the world. Let me share a secret of mine that you may want to incorporate yourself.

Every morning, before eating or drinking anything, I fill a large glass with filtered water. I grab a small wood cutting board, and a Victorinox cutting knife, and lazily grab a beautiful bright yellow lemon from my fruit basket. I place it on the wooden board, and slice it in half; the citrus smell of lemon juice quickly wakes my senses. One half I squeeze into my tall water glass, and the other I place back for use later in the day. I take a drink and quickly begin gulping down the whole glass. Ahhh! Now, I am awake!

It may taste sour, and may be hard to choke down at first. However, within a short period of time, it will become part of your morning routine, and you will love it, every second of it. 

You may be wondering, why the heck do I want to start my morning with a tall glass of lemon water? Well, there are a whole host of good reasons to start today!

First and foremost, to drink a tall glass of water after rising, helps rehydrate our dehydrated bodies. During those eight hours of wondrous sleep, we lose water due to respiration and perspiration. If you just drink coffee or black/green tea in the morning you are adding to the dehydrated state of your body. Your dehydration may also give you inaccurate cues on hunger. Many people often mistake dehydration for hunger. Instead of drinking pure filtered water, some may grab food instead. Therefore, it’s always good practice to fill up on pure water to replenish all you have lost over night.  This can even help you lose weight!

Okay, so water after rising, but why the lemon juice?

Raw lemon juice has been noted for a wide array of health benefits, especially for its antioxidant, anti-cancerous, and digestive capabilities.

Here are a few reasons why you should add raw lemon juice to your water:

Digestion: Symptoms such as bloating, belching, and heartburn are relieved with lemon juice. Also, the bowls are aided in elimination, increasing regularity and decreasing constipation.

Liver Health: Lemon juice helps stimulate the liver, especially in producing bile and digestive enzymes.

Kidney Health: Lemon juice helps prevent kidney stones by increasing citrate levels and reducing calcium.

pH Alkaline State: Although acidic in taste, lemon juice is alkaline in nature, helping balance a diet that is high in acidic foods such a meats and alcohol.

Detox: Lemon juice supports the liver and kidney, two major detoxification organs which help rid the body of toxins. This is great especially during radiation.

Immune boosting: Due to its antioxidant properties, vitamin C is able to rid the body of free radicals that can cause immune response and inflammation.

Blood Pressure: Helps lower blood pressure.

Skin Health: Lemon juice helps promote skin health, due to aided toxin elimination as well as antioxidant capabilities.

Lemon Water Combination:
- Hot water with raw lemon juice and Honey.
- Hot water with raw lemon juice, ginger slices, and honey.
- Sparkling water with raw lemon juice (my favorite).

Wow! Aren’t lemons just AMAZING! Let me know what health benefits you have seen from drinking lemon water daily.

Raw Thai Collard Wraps for Vibrancy and Health

I feel good, I knew that I would, I feel good, I knew that would now. So good! So good, because I got you!" This song describes exactly how I feel today...GOOD!

What a morning this Saturday turns out to be. I wake up refreshed, energetic, and alive. The weekend is here with two days where my biochemistry textbook remains closed, and out of service. This last week my head felt full of cotton, and my body heavy with inactivity. I can see it my classmates’ eyes, as well as in my professor, everyone is feeling tiresome and overworked. Week 7 down, and week 8 left to go. Bring it on!

With such an information overload during the week, and a test every Friday, the weekends have a whole new meaning to me. They are beautiful. Nothing can be over or under planned. A simple weekend, is just as great as one filled with parties, adventures, and friends. This weekend greets me with a quiet peace, and sunrays rays peak through my window. I breathe in and I breathe out, at ease and excited to start this beautiful day.

Since today I crave the sense of purity, I am inspired to share a meal with ingredients that shine in their purest forms. Raw food is cleansing and cooling. If one is overworked, overheated, anxious, nervous, or stressed, eating raw foods can bring a sense of clarity. Especially on warm sunny days when all you crave anyways is something fresh and bursting with color. The high dose of unaltered vitamins, minerals, and oils available in raw foods, is a great way to cleanse and boost your body and soul.

Raw collard wraps, are a great way to make an easy, beautiful meal. Since I love the combinations of Thai spices and ingredients, I decided to venture down the path of East Asian cooking.

I don’t believe that collard greens are traditional Asian vegetables, but here we have heard of them often in southern cooking, smothered in butter and cream. Collard leaves are wonderful. Not only are they a versatile vegetable, where one can use them creatively in many ways, but also they are overlooked superstars. Perhaps you have heard that cabbage and broccoli are great against cancer due to high amounts of sulfur compounds. Well, so is the collard leaf. It has four main compounds that are part of the glucosinolate family, which are easily converted to isothiocyanates. Isothiocyanates help support the body in detox and immune system functions, as well as working against inflammation. Collard greens are most highly noted with their ability to support the body in the prevention of bladder, breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers.

However, what is the most exciting news for me is the ability of collard greens, as well as other cruciferous vegetables, to bring a healthy ratio of progesterone and estrogen in the human body. Cruciferous vegetables have a compound called diindolylmethane, or DIM. This phytochemical is able to modify the metabolism of estrogen, by blocking estrogen receptors. This enables the body to naturally balance its progesterone and estrogen levels. High estrogen levels are associated with breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers, as well as infertility. DIM not only inhibits “bad” estrogen from estrogen receptors, but it also promotes the production of beneficial estrogen.

So, I would say, eat cruciferous vegetables often! In today’s world, we are constantly surrounded by pesticides and consume high fat diets. These both promote elevated  “bad” estrogen exposure. Men and women alike can support healthy aging, by eating a whole foods diet, and adding collards, cabbage, and broccoli, more often as mainstay vegetables.

These wraps are great as appetizers or can be the main course of a meal. My simple papaya and lime salad would be a great addition to these delicious wraps. 

Raw Thai Collard Wraps

Makes 4 Wraps

Ingredients:

For the wraps:

4 collard leaves

1 cup shredded carrots

1 cup thinly sliced red cabbage

1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced

1/2 ripe mango, thinly sliced

1 avocado

8 basil leaves

1/4 cup dry roasted peanuts, roughly chopped

For the dressing:

Juice of 1 lime

2 Tbsp organic seasoned rice vinegar

2 Tbsp sesame oil, organic cold pressed

2 Tbsp maple syrup

2 tsp tamari

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1/2 thai chili pepper (or any spicy chili pepper)

Directions: 

1.  First start by preparing the dressing. This allows the flavors to infuse while you prepare everything else. You can make this dressing ahead of time for more flavor. 

2.  In order to properly crush the garlic cloves, press down firmly with the side of a large knife. This crushes them. I place the side of the knife on top of the garlic and with the palm of my right hand I push my weight on top of the clove. This allows the juices to flow out without the chunks of garlic.

3.  Finely chop the 1/2 chili pepper and put in a glass jar with the crushed garlic cloves. 

4.  Add the remaining ingredients and stir well. Allow the dressing to infuse at least a half an hour prior to serving. 

5.  Then prepare the collard leaves. Chop off the stem, and carefully with a sharp paring knife shave down the thick stem of the collard. Try to cut it down as flat as possible without cutting into the leaves. 

2.  Once your "wraps" are ready, place the cucumber down first in the middle, then top with the shredded carrot and cabbage. Spoon two teaspoons of the dressing on top.

7.  Then follow with slices of mango, avocado, and finally basil. Sprinkle with a bit of chopped peanuts.

8. To properly fold the collard wraps, begin by folding the bottom edge (where the stem used to be), up and over the veggies. Then fold in both sides. Follow by rolling the wrap up. Some may want to unroll, if the filling is not heavy enough. If need be, pierce them shut with a toothpick. Usually, I do not have this problem. 

9.  As a garnish, add any left over chopped peanuts to the remaining dressing. Serve the wraps with additional dressing on the side. 

Optional: If you want them to be more hearty, add quinoa or amaranth. These two grains are complete  vegetarian protein sources, containing lysine, which most grains lack.

Reference:

Zeligs, M. Safer Estrogen with Phytonutrition

World’s Healthiest Foods: Collard Greens

Red Clover, Red Clover

I love going on long walks. In Germany I tend to walk everywhere. Everything is so close that a little shopping trip turns into a nice excuse to walk through the orchards, along the lake, or through the nature reserves. Along the way there are many meadows filled with beautiful colors of yellow, white, purple, and green. The lovely red clover is everywhere. Lucky for me I can readily harvest these powerful beauties without bothering anyone or anything.

Red clover is a common perennial plant found most often in wild meadows all over the world. Its beautiful deep purple flowers and characteristic lucky charm leaves, make it easily identifiable. As a little girl I even remember sucking the sweet juice from the petal ends.

However, that is not all they are good for. The flowering heads are harvested at their peak for medicinal use in tinctures and teas. Once dried red clover flowers can quickly lose their potency, and therefore it is good to know the source from which you are purchasing the herb. Better yet, harvest them yourself! Also, might I mention, organic/wild grown, and most definitely NOT picked along the sidewalk or road, is the only way in which to harvest these powerful beauties. If you have the time, then please find yourself a beautiful meadow and pick them yourself. I certainly do!

Popular amongst the Native Americans, and even with European herbalist Hildegard von Bingen, this little herb has won a very strong reputation as a powerful healing alternative. Traditionally it first began as a herbal remedy against muscle spasms and respiratory problems, such as asthma, whooping cough, and pneumonia.

Today, it is more often used to cleanse and purify the blood and the liver, to treat hormonal imbalances in women, and in cancer treatment. Its rich profile of vitamins B3, B1, C and minerals calcium, chromium, magnesium, phosphorous, and potassium, make it nutritionally very valuable. However, the most interesting nutritional compound is its high content of isoflavones, a phyto-chemical very similar to estrogen. Unlike chemically altered phyto-chemicals found in soy, those found in the whole form from the red clover are very much beneficial to the women hormonal system. The isoflavones of red clover help women with cramping, moodiness, breast tenderness, and hot flashes associated with PMS and menopause. It also helps induce periods that are scant or light and reduce the heavy.

With its dense and unique nutritional and healing profile, red clover has been used in Europe, Asia, and the Americas in the treatment of ovarian cysts and cancer. Most commonly red clover is found in an herbal tea blend called Essiac Tea which has been used for many years. A nurse named Rene Caisse, successfully treated many individuals with this blend for various types of cancer and blood disorders.

Although it is an herb, it still must be treated with respect. Please make sure is it of the highest quality and that you speak to your naturopath prior to extensive use. For a simple seasonal detox or to relieve hormonal symptoms, it can be used lightly without prior advice.

It is easy to dry your own flowers. Pick the flowers by the stem, quickly rinse them under lightly running water, shake off excess water, and tie them into a bouquet with hemp string or yarn. Then hang them upside down and in a few days you will have beautifully dried red clover flowers. Store the flowers in an airtight glass jar away from sunlight.

Red Clover Infusion
Makes 1 quart

Ingredients:
1 oz dried red clover flowers
1 quart pure filtered water

Directions:
1.  Bring water to boil and remove from heat.
2.  Add the dried red clover flowers and allow to steep minimum 2 hours. (I sometimes let it steep overnight)
3.  Strain out the flowers and store tea in an airtight glass quart jar. The infusion keeps for a few days when refrigerated.