The Benefits of Juicing

Juicing greens provide an enormous source of vitamins that our bodies need for good health

The Benefits of Juicing Start With Nutrition

Are you getting all of the nutrients you need to be healthy? With juicing you can benefit from the vitamins and minerals found in a huge amount of vegetables just in a single glass of juice. You can avoid getting sick, feel less fatigued or worn out, and learn how to control your weight without compromising your nutrition.

Our green juice consisted mainly of kale& lettuce

Our family decided to start juicing vegetables and fruits this January to strengthen our immune systems and feel healthier. This morning we each drank two full glasses of this freshly juiced green juice, containing:

• English cucumber (with the peel left on)
• raw broccoli
• romaine lettuce
• collard greens
• kale
• carrot
• organic celery

Our main inspiration to start juicing was Joe Cross, an Australian juicer who promoted the benefits of green juice diets to cure illnesses and obesity in two movies, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" and "Hungry for Change". After watching these inspiring movies, we decided that starting the day with green juice was something that we wanted to try. According to juicing literature, necessary amounts of vitamin B6, beta-carotene, folic acid, selenium, vitamin E and chromium provided by Green Juice can be difficult to obtain in our regular diets. 

We were also interested in juicing the fruits and vegetables higher in vitamin C so we could continue fighting off colds for the rest of the winter. So we threw in a peeled orange, a peeled lemon, and a cut pear into our "green juice" concoction.

Juicing Pulp Provides More Dishes for More Meals

Sometimes the leftover pulp after making the juice can provide more delicious prepared dishes. By pouring a large bowlful of pulp into a soup pot, adding some tomatoes, fresh garlic, chopped onions, dill, basil, and some lima beans - and letting this vegetable stew simmer all day, another meal has suddenly been produced.

With the remaining two bowls of pulp, a great idea would be to make a vegetable loaf, sweetened with honey and cooked with some of the soy flours or rice flours still kicking around in the cupboards. This loaf can be part of a nutritious snack or lunch in the upcoming week. It's an all-natural, pure, and chemically-free way to reuse vitamin- and mineral-rich foods.

Back to School Resolutions

Back to School Resolutions are the product of the mental reset button we feel each September

Back to School Resolutions Are All About Going Forward

Forget New Years resolutions - Back to School resolutions are the ones I always make. They do not necessarily relate to being a parent either, since my son is almost finished university and doesn't need me buying his clothes or packing his lunches anymore. They are about my own return to school, my own wellness over 40, and my own improvement in achieving wellness goals and maximizing life in a new age zone.

What are back to school resolutions, anyway? They are the product of the mental reset button we have from decades of closing the chapter of summer and embarking on a return to school. They are from our childhood excitement about starting a fresh new grade each September with a fresh new pencil case full of sharpened pencils and a new 3-ring binder with paper, dividers and a box of reinforcements on hand. (hmm, what I really mean here is a new laptop, cell phone, music and clothes...)

Being a Better Everything

I still get excited every September about starting something fresh! But now my resolutions are about passing to the next proverbial grade of life, not about passing from grade 7 to grade 8. I still think that my current resolutions are influenced by a mindset from three or four decades of deciding to be a "better everything" in order to have a good year - the year from September to June, that is.

Here are 7 quick ideas to kick start your own career, financial, environmental, or wellness aspirations:

• Whether you're a new grad or facing a working retirement, pursue the next level of your career by upgrading your skills in a way that's relevant to the marketplace as well as your own personality

• If you really want to get to work feeling grounded and able to take charge of your own productivity, walk at least part of the way to work

• Buy fresh food and cook it

• Whether you have kids yet or not, think about them and their kids of the future - reduce your car usage and if possible get rid of your car and use transit

• Save money painlessly by managing your personal cash flow

• Consider chemical-free skin care products - it's hard to believe that many of us smoked cigarettes at our office computers in the 80s; well, in the future people will look back incredulously at the amount of chemicals we put on our face daily when there were other alternatives out there

• Try something out of character and take up dancing

Cold Summer Borshch

Cool Down With Vegetarian Borshch on a Hot Summer Day

4-5 beets
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
1 potato
1 onion
dill
1 can brown beans
sour cream

Chop up and cook beets, carrots, celery, potato, dill and onion in a large saucepan full of water. Add brown beans and simmer for 1-2 hours. Cool overnight in fridge. Blend mixture in a blender (optional). Add sour cream (or plain yogurt). Dress with more chopped dill and serve.

Fresh Home-grown Basil Tops Home-made Wheatless Pizza

Home-grown basil grows beside tomatoes and petunias in thriving urban garden

Home-grown herbs and vegetables in your balcony garden

My fresh basil plant grew indoors for awhile, until I could tell it was time to put it outside. So I created a combined herb and vegetable garden in one of my long balcony planters this year, planting basil beside a tomato plant, and even planting a hanging petunia plant beside them for color. Everything grew together comfortably and each species seemed to thrive without killing off any of the other. A truly model ethos for an  urban garden!

Home-made gluten-free pizza with fresh red pepper, cheese, and fresh herbs

Home-made gluten-free pizza made with brown rice flour

Home-made gluten-free pizza, made without wheat, is made with about 2 cups of a combination of brown rice flour, potato flour, and sorghum flour; then 1 package of yeast, 1 tsp of sea salt, and 1 tsp of xantham gum - and that's pretty much it. You just add 2 eggs (or 2 egg-replacements, as I did), 1 1/2 cup warm water, 2 tbsp olive oil to the yeast, stir, and then mix it all together with the different flours and other dry products. Mix it well. Roll the dough into 2 balls, cover and let stand in a warm place for 1/2 hour to let it rise. 

Afterwards, flatten each into greased pizza pans, and cook just the pizza dough for 5 to 7 minutes. Then bring it out of the oven, spread tomato spread for pizza on the dough, cut red peppers, cheese, fresh sage and basil, and put on top. Bake the pizza for another 20 minutes. Makes two 12-inch pizzas.

How to Avoid Preservatives in Food and Products

Preservatives can be avoided by reading labels, researching online, and finding suppliers who sell food and products without them.

BHA in Food

If you eat potato chips, lard, butter, cereal, instant mashed potatoes, preserved meat, beer, baked goods, dry beverage and dessert mixes, chewing gum and many other foods, you are eating butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) - a preservative that prevents food from going rotten. The latest environmental research reports that "the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies BHA as a possible human carcinogen, and the European Commission on Endocrine Disruption has listed BHA as a Category 1 priority substance, based on evidence that it interferes with hormone function."

You can avoid BHA by buying fresh food, cooking and baking yourself, and even making your own beer.

BHA in Skin Products

BHA is also in skin products, and is often recommended for aging skin since it has many of the same effects that estrogen does.  On Skin Deep, a cosmetic database, BHA is rated "highly hazardous" (9-10 out of 10).

Avoid BHA by reading labels

Buy Fresh Food and Fast Track to Wellness

Buying fresh food and cooking it will put you onto a fast track to wellness. Buying fresh can be a little more expensive than buying canned or frozen foods, but with a little comparison shopping you can keep your costs down, and it's worth it. Not only do you eliminate many preservatives and chemicals from your diet, it tastes better and you get more protein for your buck.

My 89-year old mother is an inspiring role model for wellness 

I also come from a family of fantastic cooks who all cook real food and buy fresh.

In the past year my mother has sent me three wonderful books on diet, Wheat Belly Cookbook, Moosewood Restaurant, and Moosewood Restaurants Cooks at Home. I don't know if other families are like this, but may of my family's emails, phone conversations and visits have some discussion of great recipes in them.

And it has paid off - at 89 my mother looks about 70, is extremely sharp, has the energy of a 50-year old, and is a great role model for Wellness Over 40.

Back in the 1970s no-one in our family was allergic to wheat

On the other side of the family, my Ukrainian grandmother was another great role model and lived into her mid-90s.

Not only did she buy fresh and cook real food, she grew most of it herself in her legendary garden.

When our family celebrated Ukrainian Christmas Eve on January 6 each year, all of the 12 meatless dishes were home-cooked by my grandmother.

Back in the 70s when this picture was taken, no-one in the family had wheat allergies yet. Was wheat different back then?