Weeds

Looks like a beautiful flower doesn’t it??  In fact it’s a weed…….one that grows wild is out of control and taking over parts of BC where I live.  It started back in about the late 1800′s someone on one of their travels brought back a couple of seeds…..now it’s rampant.  it’s not native to here so it is taking over.  You can only get rid of them by taking out their roots, but it’s more like a tree, so it’s not easy.

They take over no matter where they are and they seem like the are beautiful…….but really they are a weed.

Just like a garden that you plant if you don’t tend to it, anything will grow, especially weeds.  They will take over and choke out any other good thing growing.

Just like your mind.  It can be a beautiful garden or not.  You are are the gardener and can plant whatever you want in it and if you do’t tend to it, or water it or weed it…..anything will grow, it will grow out of control and before you know it the weeds have strangled the beautiful flowers or plants.

Thoughts of health, love, joy, prosperity, creativity or lack, limitation, fear, anxiety, yeah buts….., my thighs are too fat and so on.

The choice is always yours.

Are you planting beautiful flowers?

Forgetting to weed out the weeds?

Forgot you even had a garden at all?

The outer circumstances and environment of your life are directly related to your inner state.

You are the creator of you life whether you believe it or not.

So, how’s your garden doing and what are you growing??

Woke up to this beautiful site – Dear in the Native Medicine cards are about Gentleness……be kind and loving to yourself yet firm at the same time!!

JB

Spaghetti Sauce – Raw & Vegan

You can do so much with tomatoes and depending on the time of year the taste can be beyond words!!!

This recipes is easy and tasty.

Of course I used the Spiralizer to make the Zucchini noodles, which you can find on the Shop page or your local health food might sell it if they have carry raw foods there.

Recipe

-  1 cup Sundried Tomatoes  - they add a nice flavor and can be found in most stores, I didn’t use the ones soaked in oil and I soaked them in water for about an hour, anything longer than 10 minutes should be fine

-  2 – 3 Tomatoes Roma, depending on the size of them

-  2 cloves of Garlic

-  1/2 tsp Sea Salt

-  juice of 1/2 Lemon

-  8 – 10 Basil Leaves

-  Pepper to taste

Drain the Sundired Tomatoes and put all ingredients in the Vitamix (or Blender) process until the desired consistency is achieved, if you like it kind of chunky or really smooth, it is good both ways!!

Pour over your Zucchini noodles (or pasta) and garnish and serve immediately.  Serves 2

Enjoy!!!

JB

Be YOU!!!

I was out walking in the woods yesterday and came across these funky looking mushrooms, I have never seen this kind before and we get alot of mushrooms where I live.  It got me to thinking –  no matter how different one may seem to appear…..BE YOU.  We are all unique.  That is why we are here – to creatively express our divinity…..no matter what others may think.

Have a great day!!!

JB

Soul Food

By just saying that you’re probably thinking some good Southern cooking – Collard Greens, BBQ’d foods and more but that is not what I am talking about!!

Believe it or not it’s not about food we eat this time.

It’s about knowing who you are, what you like and feeding your soul that kind of food.  It needs to be nourished too.

When you shut down who you really are

It shuts down your Life Force.

Now, I believe we need to feed our bodies as healthy as we can, but what about our souls…..that whisper, that yearning, tugging or quiet voice and we reply with a yeah but, maybe one day, oh I couldn’t never do that, oh I could never make money doing that, oh one day, when I retire blah blah blah

Do you feed your Soul?  If so how?

Me – I love creating in the kitchen, walking in the rainforest, spending time on the beach, having a massage, doing my photography, and now I’ve found another piece that really feeds my soul.

What about you??

Feel free to share and leave a comment.

JB

Why Vegan or Raw??

Let’s start off by defining what Vegan  & Raw are, found on line -

Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products.   Ethical vegans reject the commodity status of animals and the use of animal products for any purpose, while dietary vegans (or strict vegetarians) eliminate them from their diet only

In other words they don’t eat (and for some use) anything from an animal……no meat, fish, dairy, eggs, and sometimes honey.

Raw Foods- firstly Purely Raw Food is purely plant foods. Fruits, Vegetables, Greens, Nuts, Seeds, Grains, etc. No foods from animal sources. This means no dairy, eggs, or flesh. Raw food has never been subjected to heat over 38 degrees Celsius. This is also our body temperature. Anything that has been heated to above our own body temperature is dying because the enzymes, vitamins and minerals begin to deform and die at this temperature. Our bodies do not recognize cooked food as food at all. Instead cooked food is treated by our system as a toxin.

For some people that is just way too out there, doesn’t make sense or those types of people are just weird.

I am only going to talk about dietary things here, but if you think about this for example we are the only species that drinks another species milk…..why?

For meat we need to use a knife and fork, if we looked at animals in nature who are true carnivores, they teeth, mouths and digestive systems are set up completely different.

I could go on into ethical, environmental and in way more detail about health in general, but I will let some of the resources listed at the end of this blog do so as they will do it much better, I just wanted to present some info to you to maybe start you questioning some things along the way.

If we have all these diseases like stroke, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and I could go on, related to diet…….why not fix it with diet as well?

Instead we have all these medications which mask it.  Now I am not bashing things here and I do believe that there is a time and place for that, but the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over yet expecting different results.

Why would someone who has one of those issues not want to take responsibility or empower themselves and learn what they could about treating and fueling the body better, get to the root cause instead of putting a bandaid on it?

In my  teens I used to drink a ton of milk, I loved milk, that is what I drank at every meal.  I also had an ulcer by the time I was 18.  Now I can’t blame it on milk, but I was living with my Aunt at the time inToronto, as I was in college and she took me to aNature Path Dr.who got me off milk immediately (I had to drink Goat’s milk instead and that actually cured me of drinking milk altogether) and in a short time my stomach settled way down, my ulcer healed.  I have never been one to eat yogart, I just don’t like it.  Cheese on the other hand I have liked, and good cheese has been a weakness for me, but I also know that it clogs me up, weighs me down and now that I really know what is in dairy, where it comes from……..I don’t miss it at all.

Have a look to see what you are really putting into your body, where it comes from?

Our bodies after all are our best instruments and we should take great care of them if we want them to be around for a long time and living fully – it’s proven more of a whole foods, plant based diet rocks!!!

K, I will get off my soap box now, but I hope maybe this left you with some questions.

Here are a couple of films that you can probably get at your local video store and I highly recommend checking them out.

Forks over Knives

Hungry for Change

Food Inc

Food Matters

Fat Sick and Nearly Dead

Doesn’t that nice, juicy fresh orange look great?? It tasted that way too!!!

Have a healthy day!!

JB

Have you heard about the Thrive movie yet?

If you haven’t heard about I highly recommend watching it and I hear it’s FREE right now.  It will open your eyes to what is really going on and

we need that now more than ever.  You can catch the website at Thrive Movement or see a trailer of it here.

Here at Gaiam TV you can watch an interview (get your 10 day FREE trial and this is not an affiliate link none of these are) with Foster & Kimberly Gamble of yes Proctor and Gamble who is behind this movie and movement.

The movie THRIVE is mind blowing ~ “What On Earth Will It Take?” sums it up but what is different here is that the movie gives us the ANSWERS!!!

Have a great day!!

JB

Why is it that we can be so good during the week and crash on the weekends?

Do we hold it all in and then expel on the weekend, letting go of anything and everything

Even when it comes to eating healthier.

Have we ever put the corrulation together of what we do and are doing each moment, each day to how we eat or relate to ourselves

By that I mean how many of us are really doing the things that we love, that our spirit whispers to us that are us down at soul level compared to what we think we should be doing,  have to do or need to do.

Where does our soul fit in along the way?

It’s like we almost live 2 lives, one of holding on and one of letting go, chilaxing, quiet desperation. Then Monday comes again and we hold on, hold it in.  We can restrict ourselves for the week, in many different ways but with food inparticular –  no I can’t have that I’m on a diet or that is the wrong food group or I have to exercise 4 times this week as I ate way too much on the weekends, and then really let go and do / have whatever on the weekend.  It sounds like restriction, demands, self criticism and never a feeling of being good enough.

We live in a world that we are constantly innedated with advertising telling us we aren’t good enough!!

What if we just let go and breathed.

Gotta pay the bills, dam I put on 5 lbs, my job needs me, my thighs are too fat, I’m not driving a nice enough car –  blah blah blah,

I have asked or said to myself many times, we weren’t put on this planet to work 40 plus hours a week or work 40 plus hours a week at a job that doesn’t fulfil or isn’t in line with me, saps my energy or for a pay check

Yet I also know that some situations call for that as life and basic survival are way out of whack now.

Can you imagine if we were able to do what we love to do, or were good at or came easily to us how life could be different for each one of us and then how we presented ourselves to the world, to ourselves and each other……it would be much more in harmony.

Possibly the need to push the pain down with food would ease or stop all together  – the need to numb ourselves on the weekend would stop, weekend what weekend? Life would just be lived each day all day, being present in the moment in the body……..so that the diet roller coast would stop, the self judgment, the stress, the denial, the pain…….we would be who we are meant to be right down at soul level.

What are you denying yourself?

What is whispering to you that you say one day, maybe but not now, or I can’t do / be / have that??

Who are you and what things do you love to have and do?

What is stopping you?

Come on now, really no excuses, no victims – what is stopping you?

Can you look in the mirror no matter what is going on in your life, how much you weigh, what you’re doing, where you are living, what you do for an income and say ‘hey you, I love you and you are enough?

Maybe today is the day!!

Make this weekend, the long weekend a great one and spend some time with you and loving you!!

JB

Amazing Photo by Stephanie Smith

Do days go by, or weeks maybe even years……and you find yourself doing the same old same old?

Are you happy doing what you’re doing?

Do you drive the same way to work, eat the same breakfast or lunch every day, or is every Tuesday chicken and rice night, you know what I mean??

Took a little trip down to Florida for a few weeks, had some r & r, good times and my sister, Steph, and I decided to try Para Gliding…..something I always wanted to do. She asked and we were in the pick up van within 15 mins on our way.

If you ever thought about doing it….DO IT!!!!

Us taking off.

Going up higher and farther away!!

Higher still!!!

Looking down……ok I will admit, the people that went up before us and when I saw how high up they were, I got thinking WTH??

But I didn’t let that stop me, besides 5 kids way younger than me did it!!

It was so calm, quiet and peaceful up there it was amazing!!

YES it was fun!!!

Do I look scared??

How can you challenge yourself today?

Or would you just like to add it to your bucket list??

Have a beautiful day!!

JB

Juicy Living

What does Juicy Living mean to you?

Are you bored? Doing the same old same old? Going the same way to work each day? Eating the same foods every day? Watching the same tv shows? Are you really living the life you want to?

What thing could you do differently to shake up the routine?  We create habits whether good or bad and we keep them.  Part of living, part of growing is stepping out and making changes.  We are either growing or dying?

How could you put a little more juice into your life besides just food?

Do something different today, start making little changes……just think where you could be in a year if you did something different each day?

Stretch yourself, go past your limits, laugh more, love more, and make it your best day yet!!!!

JB

Marinated Portabella Mushroon with Creamy Dill Sauce – RAW!!

This is a fairly easy dish to make, it does require some marinating and a dehydrator.  If you don’t have a dehydrator you could use our oven at the lowest temperature.  Just remember anything heated over 115degrees usually gets cooked and it’s not raw then.

I used smaller sized Portabella Mushrooms in this recipes, but bigger ones can be used to, you just might need to substitute more marinade.

- 4 Portabella Mushrooms (small ones are still a good size) this served 2 people

- 3 tbsp cold pressed olive oil

- juice 1/2 lemon

- 2 tsp Tamari

- 1 organic Garlic minced

Mix all together in a bowl and add mushrooms, making sure they are coasted.  Toss or stir every so often, leave to marinate for 2 – 3 hours.

Once marinated, place in dehydrator and dehydrate for 4 – 5 hours.

Marinated & Dehydrated sliced mushroom.

Creamy Dill Sauce

- 1 cup raw Cashews

- 4 oz Water

- juice 1/2 Lemon

- 1 organic Garlic clove

- 1/2 tsp Celtic Sea Salt

- 1/4 – 1/2 cup organic Dill

Throw all ingredients into your Vitamix (blender or processor) and blend well until smooth.  A little more water may be added for desired consistency.  As you can tell I made my sauce a little on the thick side with just 4 oz of water.

Slice up Mushroom and place on plate and pour Creamy Dill Sauce on top, I added a little more dill which is optional.  This could also go on Zucchini noodles, pasta or rice but it tastes great on it’s own!!

This I served with a Quinoa Salad which the recipe will follow.

Enjoy

JB

]]> http://jodiburke.com/2012/03/marinated-portabella-mushroom/feed/ 22