heavenly highs

what's a wine swilling, meat eating, sugar addicted, fifty something, single girl to do when she can't play with her best friends any more? this has perhaps been the most challenging part of operation "clean up". who has this kind of discipline? i wasn't raised with discipline after my strict naval father passed away. i was only twelve when he set sail and he scared me so much that it took at least a year to find my stride again.


i got started early with the usual line up of gateway essentials.. cigarettes from france with fancy gold filters, i thought they would get me high if i rerolled them in groovy tatooed rolling papers.. coming of age in the 60's and 70's, this was a perfectly normal assumption. i even tried oregano and dill, spices from mother's kitchen that had that "look alike" quality.  dissatisfied, i moved swiftly on to the real thing. i found myself in woodstock at the tender age of eleven with my best friends gettin' high with their hippie mother, she was my idol! drinking followed shortly thereafter, a natural segue since all of our parents were alcoholics and booz was more plentiful than tap water. in fact at our house, i am pretty sure it did come out of the tap. i liked mine good and sweet, daiquiris were my specialty. i even brought my blender to boarding school and found plenty of occasions to use it. ahh, the good ol' days..

needless to say, my bad habits continued through my teens, into motherhood and beyond. it only took 39 years for my body to devolve into a vortex of system failure. lyme disease didn't do me any favors but if i had taken better care of the temple, the termites may not have gotten a foothold. and i didn't have the best attitude either if you must know.. that mind body connection was severed early on, a birth defect i guess.. i was hard wired for fun first and for me and my tribe, pleasure seeking was a serious way of life.

imagine the indignation of having to part company with my bad habits? by now, i really only had one. SUGAR, which of course included high end oaky chardonnay and big luscious reds, Mmmm. i still salivate when i recall the mouth feel and the heady high but it is now my work, with a vastly improved body, to find more wholesome highs. to my delight and surprise, they are in abundance.

in case any of you need a refresher, here's a partial list:

1. getting up in the am clear headed and refreshed.
2. exercise. i almost forgot how but thankfully, my body did not.
3. life giving and healing food, it's so much better than D.O.A
4. chewing your food. really chewing.
5. performing "hurricane katrina like" evacuations daily
6. having the time and energy to play with your pets.
7. downloading new music from itunes, i have been living in the musical dark ages

8. cleaning my windows..  amazing view, dim visibility
9. SPRINGTIME!
10. barefoot. take off your shoes people! they are cutting us off from earth's energy. if you want a quick jolt of life force, don't delay!
11. discovering that you are a woman still ( or a man ) having sex, more sex, glorious sex!!
12. young thai coconuts
13. divine chocolate mousse, see recipe below...

2 ripe avocados
1/4 cup maple syrup
 a few chopped dates or 1-2 tbls raw sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tbls raw cacao powder
1-2 teas vanilla
1/3 cup water
2 tbls coconut butter optional ( makes it richer and thicker )
all ingredients can be altered to your preferences

put all ingredients except the cacao into a vita mix or food processor
add cacao when blended
set in fridge or freeze for a really good time!

to be or not to be

is that really the question?

dear hamlet,

to be or not to be is a moot, existential point if your "kool aid" is causing this vexing psychological inquisition. you, kind sir, have enough problems on your hands with murder, ghostly apparitions and madness, real and imagined to be seeking proof of your existence. at least in your century, your poisons were distinctly separate from your balms.. in ours, were told that poison will heal us..

if you grew up anything like me in the 20th century, your parents, through no fault of their own, taught you that doctors and pharmacies are the places we go when we are sick. and like our parents, i passed this along to my own children who thankfully have had little in the way of illness or madness. i would however, characterize it madness to inject their tender hydes with vaccine after vaccine to allegedly protect them from the virulent diseases that hardly exist anymore (hello immune system!) and so begins a lifelong dependency on the good doctor who belies the hippocratic oath with each scribbled scrip and the all important health insurance whose premiums are tantamount to your mortgage payment. but unlike your castle, your monthly offering to the health insurance industry, leaves you out in the cold. peace of mind is an illusion here and the piece of my mind that i would like to share with the medical establishment is that they have just lost another customer. the irony is, that aside from drinking poison or being blindsided by a city bus, i no longer have any use for the soon to be mandated health care system. it doesn't cover my chosen health care program. the drug industry absolutely does not want you to know that healing foods, herbs and whole food supplements would make their pharmaceuticals obsolete. think of the fallen heroes and fortunes lost, it makes me giddy with delight! sucker turned seeker, i crossed over to the other side and the street ( looked both ways ) and found everything an over treated and under nourished person could want at my local health food store.



as is evident in this cartoon,  there are two very different sorts of people who inhabit these places. now that my food is my medicine, i never go to the drug store anymore. which group would you rather belong to? it certainly is telling that we have to spell out the h-e-a-l-t-h  f-o-o-d store to distinguish it from the other variety. remember when the pharmacy was known as the d-r-u-g  s-t-o-r-e? but to make it sound more ambiguous, they renamed it the pharmacy. another salient question might be.. why are chemicals assumed safe until proven dangerous while nutrients and healthy lifestyle choices are assumed useless until proven effective? like hamlet and his ilk, we have really lost our minds but the really, really good news is that one by one, we are awakening to the natural order, healing plants and age old wisdom. we have managed to survive the shakespearian era, the industrial age and so far, global warming and unlike the tragic heroes of literature, our own human failings, greed, ego, power and deception have not yet done us in so let's beg the question before it is too late.. to see or not to see then we can talk about being, our well being that is!

check out this article titled:  "good health is no accident"

http:/www.naturalnews.com/028647_health_literacy.html

grazing in the grass

one third of the earth's surface is grass. it's a global obsession for many. we grow it, mow it, admire it but not too many of us eat it. history tells us grass has been around long before mankind. there are over 9,000 different species of it. countless animals survive on it yet it wasn't until 1940 that we figured out just how nutritious it was and developed it for human consumption. i must admit, i have always wondered how blades of ordinary grass could possibly sustain so many of the enormous muscle bound animals who graze on it.

i never had a single good reason to try wheatgrass despite knowing about it's long reported health benefits.. i "was" healthy and planned on staying that way and besides, i had heard, in whisper tones, about the way it tasted so it was never going to be on my to do list, ever! i laugh now at how this promise to myself has backfired. and yes, the reports were correct, wheatgrass is cloyingly sweet and can cause the gag reflex. it is not ever going to taste good no matter how you disguise it but since the prescribed daily amount is only 2 oz twice a day, i have yielded to the old adage that medicine is not supposed to taste good and that it's benefits far outweigh it's palatability. don't be fooled by the attractive glass and pretty color!

i can credit wheatgrass, above all else, for returning a homeostasis in my body. it took all of three weeks to notice changes especially to my skin. i unwittingly conducted an experiment that proved wheatgrass was, in fact, a miracle cure. before i started growing it, wheatgrass was often difficult to find and in a short while i would have a return of symptoms. this happened three times until i figured out that it always came on the heels of missing my daily shots.



i have still not mastered the growing process but believe me, i will. i am highly motivated due to the expensive price per oz. at the local health food stores. i am including a rather self aggrandizing photo of one of my more successful batches of grass to impress you. when i can do this with my eyes closed, i will be quite smitten with myself!

i tell you this so that you will consider discarding the panoply of store bought and doctor prescribed cures in your medicine cabinet. wheatgrass is a cure for everything, one size fits all. realistically, i don't expect too many of you to actually take my advice but if i can plant the seed, you might allow it to grow into a healthy solution when next you need one!

food safety bill is anything but...

i am already breaking one of my golden rules about this blog ( see subtitle ) and that is to report only good news. this is so outrageous that i would be remiss if i did not bring it to your attention.

the more i delve into my health, your health, human health the more i learn about the alarmingly low standards and practices in our own government where our safety is concerned. codex ( codex alimentarius committee, meaning food code ) is a global body formed in 1963 to safeguard food standards around the world. sounds like an organization of the highest order until you look more closely.. most people are blissfully unaware to the extent that their activities affect our health. as i write this, codex is attempting to degrade our health freedoms by dispatching a phony food safety bill that in fact, will undermine food labeling in this country and around the world. if you care about the high potency of supplements, gmo ( genetically modified organisms ) labeling and maintaining a high standard of organic foods then please watch these three short videos. rima e. laibow md. medical director of the natural solutions foundation, articulates precisely what will happen if we don't lend our signatures to the petition at the end of this post. please, take a few minutes to review the information and take action! thank you, your children and grand children will thank you too.

the health freedom usa website has all three videos and a link to sign the petition

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=5276

and because i don't want to be responsible for being the cause of your outrage, here is a great salad dressing ( vitriol free ) BTW, vinegar mixed with food actually impedes digestion but taken alone, apple cider vinegar, in particular, has long been, a great tonic for many health conditions. weight loss, diabetes, and balancing the PH to name a few..

lemon tahini dressing

3/4 - 1 cup of high quality olive oil ( i use 3/4 )
the juice of one lemon
2 tbs. braggs amino acids, nama shoya, or tamari
2 tbs tahini ( optional )*
1/4 ts. cayenne pepper
2 tbs water, more if a thinner dressing is preferred
2 big garlic cloves
2 tsp ground mustard seed ( optional )*

in a blender, combine all ingredients except the oil
when blended add oil in a slow drizzle until well blended
adjust seasoning to taste add sea salt if necessary

* everyone has slightly different preferences.. i like the tahini better than the mustard seed. enjoy!

proverbally yours..

the world is full of chattering voices, in and outside our heads.. some wise and inspiring and others, banal or injurious. i am learning to tune out the vast majority, including my own, that no longer serve me. just filtering is a daily grind but it is getting noticeably freer of debris. even while i pen this, i realize the futility of wondering what took so long. i used to feel older not wiser, watch out for that one! but we are here now hopefully in relative sound mind and body to do the work we haven't done and to soldier on toward our best lives. we will never get it done no matter how hard we work or how long we live. this, of course, frees us up to forget the past, disregard the future, lose the stress and guilt of everything and just do our best and have fun.. how refreshing!! despite having been a student of therapy and self help for twenty years and while there have been crises averted and lessons learned, it doesn't much matter if life continues to be an uphill struggle. buddhist proverb #1 "when the student is ready, the teacher appears." my last and most important teacher came in the form of rotten health and this is my path forward. proverb #2 "if we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep walking." now that i can walk again, i'm hoping for enlightenment but failing that, wicked smart, gifted and super healthy will do.

as a simple student of new habits, the buddha and the blogosphere, i am actually beginning to feel much younger than my fifty years in the way that learning makes you feel, anticipatory, engaged and confident. proverb #3 "wherever you go, there you are." this may not seem like much at first glance but the security of knowing your in good hands, your own, is priceless! i am not staging any more dramas in this lifetime nor am i expecting a sudden mutiny or an early demise but just to be on the safe side.. proverb #4 "when the tree falls and the monkeys scatter," you don't have to take it personally. i do not claim to have mastered anything but the journey is definitely shaping up! i don't feel like i need as much baggage anymore, my goal is to fit it all in the overhead compartment. the more i have stored in my infinite wisdom, the less i need to show for it.

and just one more thing.. as aging is inevitable, the premature variety is not.. www.realage.com thanks to new food and good information, which is all forth coming, i am currently getting younger. although the outside has not caught up to the inside job that i am working on, later this year, i will be celebrating my 50th again. no fanfare necessary. hmm, on second thought.. maybe an annie leibowitz photo shoot, she needs work right? and if all else fails, i can always fall back on yet another proverb, "the older the ginger, the hotter the spice."