The weather warmed up pretty fast here in Central Ohio of late. I went from having the heat on to having to open windows and put box fans in them so we wouldn’t have to resort to using the A/C, all in the span of one week. My kids reminded me that this was popsicle season and to avoid all the plastic wrappers and popsicle sticks that ALWAYS make their way to the carpeted areas of the house, we generally make our own. Here is our latest recipe. I have been making the popsicles for the kids and I drink the remaining as a smoothie. Delish and easy peasy!

Coconut Berry Smoothies and/or Popsicles

2 cups vanilla flavored coconut milk
1 half of a ripe banana
1 cup mixed frozen berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries)
1-2 tablespoons Kids Calm Multivitamin Liquid- Fruity Splash flavor (optional)

Blend well and pour into popsicle molds or smoothie glasses. Enjoy!

The Natural Vitality Multivitamin I use in this recipe is a great product with vitamins sourced from whole foods. That is important to me. It is really tart so it is best to add it to water or put it in a sweet smoothie. We tried adding it to juice but since the juice was tart it made for a drink that was just to sour for my kids. They love these popsicles and smoothies though and supplementation for them is important to me with the nutrient depleted food and soil conditions today. It also has lots of magnesium, which is very important for them to get enough of. We have tried their other magnesium products like the Natural Calm but they like Calm Multi better.

Features:

24 Fruits & Veggies
Omega 3 DHA and EPA (fish oil)
Vitamins and Minerals
Natural Calm Magnesium
Calcium
Amino Acids

This is good stuff and we plan to use it all summer. Enjoy!

It’s a wrap! Time for some weekly updates and awesome links. I chose the photo above for this post because I have been channeling my innermost Groovy Green Goddess lately. I have been feeling nothing less than amazing and ethereal lately. My general happiness with every moment of life and my gratitude has skyrocketed. I have no “special” circumstances in my life that make this nirvana easier to understand so I think I am just doing something really right with my diet and health of late. The winter blues that sucked me into a black hole of depression every year for the past 3-4 years… nada. There is not a black cloud in sight. I walk around with a goofy smile all day just so happy to be me and to live the life I do. I cannot say for sure which lifestyle/dietary change has brought this on, there have been many, but here are some of the recent changes I made:

• Paleo Foods – I have gone primal. I eat like a caveman… or uh, a cavewoman rather. No grains, no beans/legumes, no added sugar, and almost no dairy either. I do allow some dairy like my Passion Fruit Chobani, Jeni’s Ice Cream, and shredded Parmesan. All foods (with a few exceptions) are as high quality (organic/grass fed/local/pastured) as I can get my hands on. I went from a high carb, low fat, low to moderate protein diet to a high fat, moderate to high protein, low carb diet. I have more energy than my kids!
• I am eating lots more coconut oil and coconut products. Just today I got a delivery of Coconut Cream Concentrate to make some grain free brownies this weekend. Booyah!
• Eating more naturally sweetened dark chocolate.
• I am supplementing. This is pretty new really since the only kind of supplementing I did before was greens powder in my smoothies. I am taking Vitamin D and making it a mission to eat more eggs from pastured, local chickens. When the local organic delivery service we were using closed we were left without good eggs so I stopped eating them. Recently we found a place really close to our home that sells pastured eggs though. Woot! I am also taking fermented cod liver oil, spirulina, and bile acids (because I have no gall bladder).

January ‘s Conscious Box arrived this week. The theme is “Renew Your Intentions”. I guess it is fitting that so many of the products seek to provide help with health and wellness goals since that is usually tops on our list! I enjoyed this box but have to admit that several things in it did not interest me.

Here is what it contained:

Raw Rev 100 Chocolate & Coconut Bar – This was the first thing to be touched in the box and it was divine. It is raw, vegan gluten free and dairy free. It’s made up of fruit, seeds, nuts, and cocoa so it is grain free and acceptable in this paleo household. Yum is an understatement!

Sacred Chocolate Mylk – The tiny package had a single candy heart in it but it was enough to elicit a moan of pleasure. It was creamy smooth like silk and really delicious. 100% organic and 60% cacao. I am not sure if you can buy these at Whole Foods but next time I am in there I will be hunting for them. I only want or eat chocolate once a month so these would be nice to have around so I don’t go bizerk and try to buy a Nestle bar.

Green Tara Spirulina Energy Bites – Sadly I did not like the taste of these at all. The ingredient list is organic bananas, organic sesame seeds, organic coconut, organic dates, and spirulina. So why did these taste like a bar of nasty soap? Ew!

But I do like the idea of eating more spirulina so I plan to save these and throw them in green smoothies.

Think Thin Crunch Bar – Can’t comment on this one as it did not pass the ingredient test and will be chucked or donated (since I have some other food to donate). It has soy protein isolate in it, as well as peanuts, which we are trying to avoid.

Parma Vegan Parmesan – I haven’t tried this yet but I think I will add it to a salad later this week. I have no issues with regular parmesan cheese but the ingredients aren’t bad in this alternative. It is gluten free, soy free, and dairy free. Ingredients: raw organic walnuts, nutritional yeast, organic pumpkin seeds, organic sunflower seeds, kelp, organic garlic, organic hemp seeds, organic sesame seeds, Himalayan crystal salt, & organic herbs.

Kelapo Virgin Coconut Oil – Organic, cold processed, and fair trade. This is good stuff and we use coconut oil quite often around these parts.

Guayaki Yerba  Chai Spice Mate  - Herba Mate, tea… it’s all the same to me. I did brew one of these and it was okay but why drink something unless you really like it? That is the way I feel about tea and coffee. I only like them if I add lots of cream and honey, so why bother?

Ancient Treasures Tea – See above. I am giving all teas to my husband.

Golden Earth Perfume – These perfumes are made of 100% pure therapeutic grade essential oils and are infused with crystals. The Euphoria blend, which is what I got, is rose, jasmine, and agate crystal. No synthetic fragrances. Since I am not big on perfume and especially not jasmine, I gave this to my daughter who is happy as a clam with smelly stuff. I do love the concept of their perfume though!

Eco-Dent Tooth Powder - Very foamy and efficient tooth powder though not great tasting but what tooth powder is? None that I have tried. There was also some Eco-Dent gum. I am not a gum person so I will likely give it to my kids.

Ancient Minerals Magnesium oil and Magnesium Gel – I squealed in delight when I saw these. I love Ancient Minerals Magnesium products. Magnesium is so important for staying healthy and yet supplements are not absorbed well. Topical magnesium is much better and I was all out of the oil, which I prefer over the gel.

CleanWell Hand Sanitizer – I like the company and I like the product but I am just not a big user of hand sanitizer. This will likely be donated to the local homeless shelter.

Jo-Sha Eucalyptus Wipe – This product did not thrill me either for the same reason. I suppose an essential oil wipe could be used to clean off gym equipment or dirty hands but so can soap and water. Stuff like this is just not practical in my life when there are easier and cheaper solutions.

I hope there is lots of chocolate in February’s box!

If you have ever embraced a plant based or raw foods diet then you have likely heard of Brendan Brazier.  He is an Ironman Triathlete who also happens to be vegan. I have read about him in various raw foods books since he is quite the fan of raw foods but mostly I knew of him from his product Vega, which I have used in smoothies. Even if you are not raw it is beneficial IMO to look to raw supplement powders because they always tend to be made from whole, organic, healthy foods that are as close to their natural state as you can get. Despite being a fan of his product and admiring his achievements I never picked up any of his books. I guess I figured they were geared towards athletes and that did not interest me much. But after reading Thrive Foods I am thinking I should reserve some of his other books at my local library because this book at least, was very relevant to my life and to anyone concerned with healthy foods I suspect.

The concept behind it is very near and dear to my heart since I call myself a nourished vegetarian. That primarily means that I subscribe to WAPF ideas while maintaining a vegetarian diet. More specifically it means I try to eat a nutrient dense veggie diet. Thrive Foods is one of the best books I have read though that explains exactly what that means.

It was Brazier’s search for foods that would help him recover fast and make the greatest gains in his athletic training that lead him to the ideas in this book. He figured that if he wanted to keep improving his body and performance then he needed to concentrate on the regeneration process our bodies go through after we exercise. How well and how fast we regenerate depends on our cells – the biological building blocks. If our cells do not have everything they need to function they experience what he calls nutritional stress. At first Brazier did what most athletes do… consume mass quantities of food thereby consuming mass quantities of nutrients. When he didn’t get his desired results he decided to analyze his food choices more carefully and realized that being fed is not the same as being nourished.

He discovered that macronutrients is what he needed to be looking for. Foods that had the most bang for their buck or the most maronutrutrients per calorie, ie nutrient density. What amazed me was the idea that is our body’s search for missing nutrients is what causes us to feel hungry and not a need for more fuel (calories). I always thought  that when we felt hunger pangs it is was calories to keep the home fires burning that we needed. But after reading this book it was a light bulb moment for me because true enough if I eat a big handful of pretzels/crackers I will be hungry literally 5 minutes later. If I eat a banana though, I am satiated for awhile, even if it had less calories in it. It is in fact nutrients our body is asking for and here I thought my ravenous hunger of late meant I was not eating enough calories to support my increased exercise and weight lifting activities. For the past week or so I have been very mindful of nutrient density when choosing foods and have experienced almost no hunger even though I ate less calories than previous weeks. Whether that will mean more muscle remains to be seen but I am pretty convinced.

Where this book differs from WAPF ideas on nourishing foods is obviously the fact that it encourages plant based foods above animal products. While it is true that animal products may actually be more nutrient dense there are still rampant problems with them. Brazier goes into a step by step comparison of how efficient it is to eat animals versus eating select plants and when you consider all the resources used to grow feed crops and raise animals it is simply more efficient and less of a strain on our planet to go with plant based foods, even when considering shipping of more exotic varieties. The book even addresses grass fed and pastured animal products and does not dispute that they are favorable to other animal products for a variety of reasons. But he makes a convincing arguement for why these types of products could never be available to the whole planet. There simply would not be enough to feed everyone and that makes it unsustainable in the long run. I read the chapters that discuss this with great interest and I have read opposing ideas as well (ala The Vegetarian Myth) and Brazier definitely makes the most compelling and researched case.

The second half of his book goes through a variety of foods, page by page, highlighting why they are nutrient dense, healthy food choices. Then it concludes with 200 recipes. Many of the recipes came from celebrated chefs who specialize in plant based cuisine and this was done so we would get an amazing array of tried and true dishes that taste good. I plan on making many of them myself but I started with the Parsnip Oven Fries. I wanted an after school snack for my kids and this french fry look alike hit the spot. They cooked up nice and crispy but a bit too dark and that was my fault for gabbing on the phone while they were baking. Served them up with some catsup and the kids thought they were regular old fries (which excited them because I never make fries) with just a bit of an “off” taste. Plus they were full of healthy fats via coconut oil.

Will be trying some of the other recipes soon. I already see improvement in energy levels since reading Thrive Foods. It just makes you all that more aware of the nutrient density of the foods you are choosing and when I am aware I make better choices and get more nutrition out of my food overall. At the very least it has spurred me into eating more fresh fruit throughout the day, which has done wonders for the skin. LOVE the title too… it is about being nourished instead of just fed and it is about thriving instead of just getting by.

“Like” Brendan Brazier’s Facebook page for some free recipes from the book. Enjoy!

The folks at Zico sent me a case of their coconut water a few weeks back. I was excited to try some coconut water pre and post workout because it seems to be all the rage right now. Fitness bloggers are talking about it and pics of celebrities leaving the gym with a bottle or sippy box in their hand are everywhere. The protein bar thing didn’t work out so well when I decided to get in THAT fad but this seemed relatively harmless. Coconut water as it appears in these products is just the water found inside young coconuts and we love young coconuts here.

So why coconut water anyway? Well, it hydrates you amazingly well just like water but it has some flavor. It is low in calories, fat free, has as much potassium as a banana, and also has electrolytes like calcium, magnesium and phosphorus. There is no added sugar either, which is awesome. In actually it is isn’t some miracle drink, just a good source of nutrients and hydration. Although coconut water can be used intravenously which is rather cool.

It is MUCH better IMO than a lot of sports drinks that are marketed to fitness enthusiasts. But is it better than water? My answer would have to be maybe. If you want the extra nutrients and you like the flavor then sure why not? My husband and I both decided, after working through our case, that we prefer water. The coconut water was tasty but it just didn’t satiate our thirst like good old fashioned water. My husband liked them a bit more than I did. In fact I really only liked the “plain” coconut water and would not drink the flavored ones. Of course that is when I was drinking them straight up.

I found that I MUCH prefer to put coconut water in green smoothies where that extra bit of sweetness is appreciated more. In fact I LOVED adding them to my daily smoothies, even the flavored ones. My smoothies are not very sweet. I can taste all the greens and veggies and most other family members do not much appreciate the smoothies I make for myself but adding the coconut water gave it an extra little kick that we all liked. I also liked that it upped the calorie content because sometimes it can be hard to get enough calories in when you are eating/drinking high raw AND exercising a lot.

The smoothie in the picture above is one quart of a two quart blender… 3 cups of collard greens, a banana, some frozen mango, two scoops of Vita Mineral Green, a couple teaspoons of chia seeds, and lime flavored coconut water. It is served as all my smoothies are, in wide mouth Ball jar with a glass straw. Yum!

So the million dollar question is… will we buy more? The answer is maybe. You can get them at Amazon for about $2.00 a bottle and that is a bit expensive when we prefer water. They also come in either non-recyclable boxes or recyclable plastic bottles. Yes, the bottles can be sent out for third party recycling but that is not a sure thing. I think if I got a good deal on them I would buy them now and again… as a treat for my green smoothies. :)