Why Liquid Nutrition? ~ Guest Blog Post by Gabrielle Brick
Today’s guest post is written exclusively for the Edible Goddess blog by Gabrielle Brick, a Health Motivator and Educator and Longevity Specialist with over 15 years experience. Gabrielle is a spectacular chocolatier, having created The ONE Chocolate Bar and a line of Avatars, the Snack of Superheroes! You can keep up with and learn more about my good friend Gabrielle on her blog!
WHY LIQUID NUTRITION?
How do I even begin to answer this question? 
My initial response is because Iʼd rather not chew! I mean really, if I am to be honest, my initial dance with liquid nutrition came from being tired of chewing and taking the time to sit with such huge meals in order to get all of my nutrients. Read more
Mexican Fiesta: Secret Hot Pepper Kale Chips!
This article has been reposted from www.ChristianBates.com with permission from Christian. I had to repost this – this is the most delicious kale chips I’ve ever had and I guarantee if you make them, you will clamor over them! Christian’s blog is jam-packed with cutting edge Superfood nutrition information, my goodness!
You’ll notice that the larger natural food stores these days will have a whole section just for kale chips as big as the rest of the raw food section! This snack/dinner item is healthfully addictive, but unlike potato and corn chips, it is bursting with minerals without the carbs and congestive cooked oils. Now you can make yours at home fresh, the Mexican-style hot pepper way!
Take 4 large bunches of kale (Farmers Market or garden grown is best) and de-stem each leaf: hold the lower stem with one hand, take your other hand and pull out to the tip, stripping the leaf from the fibrous stem. Shred the leaves with your hands and place in a large bowl. If you don’t want to compost the stems, chop or dice them up and mix into fresh guacamole: this will make the guacamole take longer to be gobbled up! Fact: Guacamole is always eaten up faster than any other dish at a raw food potluck…at least until these kale chips came along!
Place the following in a high-speed blender:
2 Cups spring water
1 1/2 Cup sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, or sesame seeds or combination of all three, soaked
1 Cup hemp seeds
1/2 Cup cold-pressed organic olive oil
5 Brazil nuts, soaked
Juice of 3 to 4 limes (or lemons, but limes really hit the spot with raw Mexican fair)
1/2 medium-sized heirloom tomato
1/2 medium-sized sweet bell pepper
2 medium-sized garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 teaspoon dried chipotle or cayenne
1/4 teaspoon dried jalepeno (or 1/2 teaspoon fresh)
1/4 teaspoon cumin seed
1 pinch dried habanero (careful not to get this under your fingernails)
OPTIONAL: 3 Tablespoons fresh aloe vera inner gel
Blend on high until creamy, then add:
1/2 bunch cilantro, de-stemmed
OPTIONAL: 2 teaspoons of your choice of medicinal mushrooms extract powders (reishi, cordyceps, chaga, etc)
Blend lightly, keeping the cilantro in tiny bits, but not turning the batter into a homogenous green. Pour into the bowl of kale and sprinkle on:
3 Tablespoons spirulina powder
Mix together with your bare hands, coating every kale leaf. Spread thinly on dehydrator trays with sheets and dehydrate at 120*F or less for 24 to 48 hours.
Eat by itself or serve with a Mexican dinner containing other highly mineralized dishes:
RawFried Beans (Bean free mock refried pinto Bean Recipe)
White Nacho Cheeze, Dairy Free
Spicy Meat-free Ground Beef
Raising Children Consciously With Raw Foods (Guest Blog Post by Tera McCurdy)
Today’s guest post is written exclusively for the Edible Goddess blog by Tera McCurdy, an inspiring raw mom of one of the most adorable (and truly healthy) kids you’ve ever seen. To connect with Tera and learn more about her lifestyle, visit her on Facebook!
It has been close to three years since the first day I decided to follow the road not so commonly followed and yet is as ancient as the oldest of carvings… a raw, organic, live food diet – truly an illumined life path paved with deep greens, rich reds, golden hues with purples & blues – a yellow brick road of sorts.
I am a mother of one sweet little boy who has grown up thus far to love his greens not because I have made him eat them, but because we discuss where are food originates from and why it’s important to enrich the soil to feed the plants, which in turn feed our bodies that nourish our minds and spirit. I remember at about age 2 he would occasionally remark with a cute little spark….“Mmmm, this is so good and it’s really good for my body!“ I tell this to you all not to glorify that my son likes his fruits & veggies but to share the nuggets of experience to those that yearn and are willing to fill their little munchkins golden tummies with precious foods of the enamored rainbow that has been continually gifted to us from the ground up.
I truly believe that it is instinctive for children to lean towards the most high connection of the vibrant green’s & shiny pigmented fruits. In a child’s eyes, color is of primitive importance. I believe that a varied selection can be enticing especially if there are fruits – and more importantly – vegetables present for them to touch, feel, taste and learn about. We have a modest garden in our backyard with an array of fruits and vegetables that I have cultivated over the past few years, tending to the compost on a year round basis, feeding the worms (Vermiculture) kitchen scraps and so on. While doing this he has witnessed my passion and determination to enrich that soil of ours, plant the seeds and then wait in excited anticipation for the new growth.
I think that above all he has felt that he too is a part of this integral process and to have the ability to walk outside with a sense of confidence and in freedom to choose a tender young piece of Kale out of the garden or a fresh ripe Tomato has given him much gratitude and warmth for the origins of life and respect for himself and life in general.
I allow him to help me in the garden and talk with him as I would as if he were a little friend or a little person, which is what he is, rather than a baby. I feel that by practicing this form of communication with him has taught me more then I could have ever imagined. The intelligence of children is amazing and I feel that by honoring them this way is sacred and is a gift in itself. It’s interesting because really a child just wants the attention of his or her parent and by spending the time together and really engaging in the exchange is actually a time saver in the long run because just like us, children want to be listened to, noticed, loved and appreciated.
As a collective society of people on this glistening globe of color, we as individuals influence each other everyday with unique facial expressions, varied thoughts twinkling in our consciousness, and the words we weave. We all are connected in this quilt of life like the most eye catching patchwork that one has ever encountered. Ultimately we each behold a magnificence so beautiful and full of shimmering light that I believe we are all meant to shine. Wouldn’t it be pretty amazing if we can all truly realize the patch of warmth that we can offer to one another! Now that would be one high quality quilt of life worth snuggling up to!
Let’s lead and feed ourselves, along with our children, the foods that contain the sun’s energy – after all, it’s here to lure you to your highest potential. Consider creating a garden patch and grow cabbage, carrots, kale, whatever your heart desires! But mostly, have fun in the sun and enjoy the process.
With warmth from my patch to yours,
Tera McCurdy
Nourish & Detox on Longevity Elixirs VS Just Green Juice (Guest Blog Post by Christian Bates)
Today’s guest post is written exclusively for the Edible Goddess blog by Christian Bates, co-creator and formulator of the WildBar. To read more about our current low-glycemic lifestyle, check out this article. 
Hi Edible Goddess fans! This is Bethanne’s love, Christian Bates. I love boosting my health through therapeutically nutritious elixirs, superfood drinks, and tonic herbs and occasionally doing a fast or cleanse on them, and I really hope you do to or will start to today. Read more
Guest Blog Post on Natural Beauty by Angelina Elliott
Today’s guest post is written exclusively for the Edible Goddess blog by Angelina Elliott, a best selling author, Master Herbalist, and Raw Vegan Chef (among much else!). To read more about Angelina, check out her sensational blog!
I was raised on beauty. My mother was a model and always emphasized the importance of taking care of your skin. I would watch her do her beauty routine and emulate her in every way. I grew up traveling and living overseas. I was completely hooked on French beauty magazines. I loved how French women always looked so fresh and beautiful. My mom used to tell me that French women had the most beautiful breasts in the world so I always thought to myself, when I grow up I will have the most beautiful everything in the world. I was a kid, but that didn’t stop me from manifesting beauty in my life. I would sit and dream up all kinds of things to put on my face and that led to a life long passion of making masks and other beauty treatments. I was obsessed with coming up with the very best formulas.
My love of beauty also led me to a life of clean living. I quickly learned that the better you ate, the prettier you woke up. Fruits and veggies give glowing skin whereas Oreo cookies and soda give you pimples and dull lack luster skin! Who wants that? I was an avid lover of fruits. I ate berries all the time and I was a complete orangearian! I loved, loved, loved oranges! We had an orange grove behind our house where I would play for hours on end and eat oranges until the cows came home. I am convinced that oranges are essential for woman’s health. For one thing, they look like mammary glands and another, they are full of vitamin C. What a combo! I used to love to rub the excess orange juice on my skin and wear it. Actually, this is where my idea for Wearing Your Food came from and the start of my book co-authored with Shannon Leone, Get Naked And Wear Your Food. I loved the way my skin looked after a day of oranges. Considering I was just a kid, it is amazing to think back on these times and realize I was so in tune with beauty and nature and the direct link between beauty and nature.
I love nature, I always have. There’s something truly magical about being deep in nature, with only the sounds of the wind, trees, birds, and small creatures. Plants have always inspired, fascinated, and delighted me. When I think beauty, I don’t think of beauty counters in malls or even the finest skin care available in spas. Instead, I turn to nature to look for the gift of beauty. For example, seaweed is legendary among Japanese women for beauty. Pearls are legendary among Chinese women. In Africa, Shea Butter is legendary among women. If you take notice all over the world from ancient times to now, you will find that the greatest beauty secrets point to nature. Cleopatra for example taught me to never take a bath without some sort of beautifying ingredient like honey and milk (for me, it was always soy milk because soy milk believe it or not is one of the most beautifying agents out there. It increases collagen and elastin in the skin). Cleopatra was all about using beautifying agents from nature. My Italian heritage taught me to eat lots of olives for beauty on the inside and to use olive oil on the outside. My Irish heritage taught me to look to the Fairy Folk for inspiration.
All of this has led me to where I am now. Although, I have worked in the finest spas & had access to professional skin care lines that as an Aesthetician that would make your head spin, I still look nature for all of my beauty needs. After all, if you really look at the latest research on anti-aging creams, potions, lotions, serums etc, you will always find something from nature in the line up. The only difference between using that and say using your own concoctions is this: you are getting it first hand, fresh, alive, and the way nature intended it, not adulterated with unpronounceable names, preservatives, cancer causing chemicals, etc.. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want that feeding my skin.
Oh yes, there’s the factor right there, FEEDING YOUR SKIN. Perhaps, I should back up just a bit here and mention that whatever we put on the skin, we are eating and drinking that substance, because the skin is the largest organ in the body and it absorbs anything and everything. If you load it with chemicals, it will start to age and die off. People think that aging is natural, yet aging is a result of what you have ingested in your life that is out of balance. Aging truly is a disease. All diseases can be summed up easily by realizing that disease starts with bad food and beverage choices, chemicals in the body, chemicals in your living environment, and toxic thinking. When we clean up these areas of our lives, including our thinking, we start to get younger, It’s really as simple as that! We as human beings though have to make everything harder than it is. It is in our nature to do this, to analyze and dissect everything.
When I was three years old, I made up my mind to never grow old and never die. People throughout my life have made fun of me for this concept and yet what I notice is this: my thinking pattern has kept me young, vibrant, and full of playful enthusiastic and bubbly energy. People younger than me now look older than me and I am simply staying ageless. It is an inside job all the way around & I am convinced of this. It is important to realize that it takes discipline not to buy into what everyone else is saying and doing, but the rewards are great! I will leave you with my fabulous beauty routine to inspire you, although you don’t have to do all that I do, as I realize this can be intimidating to those first starting out. Just stick with whatever you choose to do and you will be miles ahead of where you were before. You have to start somewhere or you will be nowhere!
My semi-typical beauty routine, sometimes it fluctuates as I am always experimenting and perfecting ~
In the AM, I cleanse my face with oatmeal, honey, and grapefruit: 1/2 cup oats mixed with equal parts of honey (I only use locally harvested, cruelty free honey from farmers I know) and slowly mix in 1/2 a grapefruit
I use gentle circular motions on my face and then rinse with warm water. I quickly splash my face with cold water.
I love a blend of jojoba, cacao butter, coconut oil, shea butter, grapeseed, olive, almond and avocado oil as my morning massage oil. I massage my skin gently and then tissue off the excess oil. I use aloe vera mixed with comfrey as my lifting serum, let that sit and then use a home-made organic moisturizer. I spray my face with home-made rose water and I am ready for the day!
In the PM, I do a pretty extensive routine on my face that includes a mask and a bath in honey and soy milk or honey and cacao butter. I cleanse my face with lemon at night – just lemon and warm water. It is important to note, that the warmer the better for opening up the pores prior to the honey treatment. I place gently warmed honey on my skin and let it sit on my skin for about an hour. I rinse the honey off with warm water and then run an ice cube all over my face. After this, I mash up bananas and place that all over my skin for 30 -40 minutes and rinse this off with warm water. Then, I warm up some coconut oil and cacao butter and massage the warm oil into your skin and leave on overnight.
During the week I also make and use various masks for my skin, alternate my flower waters that I make, and I do regular scrubs for my skin.
ORMUS + Chaos + Biodynamic + Permaculture + Superfood Garden (& how to make your own!); Guest Post by Christian Bates
Today’s guest post is written exclusively for the Edible Goddess blog by Christian Bates, co-creator and formulator of the WildBar. To read more about our current low-glycemic lifestyle, check out this article.
Last Fall, Bethanne and I rented our “Wildly Edible Super Raw Mountain Home of Bliss and ORMUS Paradise” with a half acre alongside Mt. Tamalpais in Mill Valley, CA. With massive gardening areas, the first thing I did was order lots of heirloom seeds including many vegetables from Seeds of Change. I threw most of every seed into a mason jar of spring water, GroPal, Marine Phytoplankton, Mycogrow, our saliva, and a pinch of salt to germinate and be planted under the full moon. Read more
