Going to the Sunshine!!

Well, My love and I have planned an impromptu trip to the sunshine! We found great tickets on Tuesday and leave Friday! If I have access, I may blog a bit, but if not, I will have lots of fun pictures and stories to share when we return. Some goodies I am bringing include:
Organic & Raw Untoasted Nori"> (I love to wrap fresh avocado in nori when traveling)
Probiotics
Digestive Enzymes
Emergen-C Lite Packets
Young Living Essential Oils (Lavender for the sun and bites, Purification for bug repellent and bites, Theives to keep bacteria at bay and Grapefruit because it tastes delicious in my water)
(to make sure my rapid transit system stays on track)
Olive Leaf Extract II+ (1000plus Echinacea) (for resistance to Viruses, harmful Bacteria, Fungi and many parasites, Plus systemic immune support)
Grapefruit Seed Extract (for immune support, blood alkalizing and keeping bacteria at bay)

Can you guess where we are going?

Juice Feast Summary

Our beloved Green Star juicer awaiting lots of yummy veggies! I love my Green Star juicer-never waste your money on a juicer that can't juice greens. Here's some info on the Green Star from www.rawfoodworld.com:

Common high impact juicers and blenders destroy large numbers of life giving enzymes in the juice by subjecting them to heat and shock produced by metal cutting blades and high speed centrifugal rotation. With the Greenstar, maximum nutrients and enzymes are retained in the juice. The Greenstar juice extractor minimizes the loss of nutrients through the unique triturating twin gear feature, an impeller press system with powerful, low, (110 RPM) turning speed. It generates virtually no heat, thoroughly crushing and pressing fruits and vegetables, instead of cutting and shredding them into small pieces. The result is more living food per glass of juice.

Surrounding the inner core of magnets is a second level containing bioceramic particles and an outer layer of stainless steel. Bioceramic particles, produced by far-infrared technology, also emit positive ions. Magnets in the Greenstar work in conjunction with these bioceramic particles. The magnets recharge the bioceramic material and the bioceramic material recharges the magnets. Without this recharging, the effect of both the magnets and the bioceramic material each would eventually be diminished.

As the gears are spinning, the magnets and the bioceramic material are each producing more positive ions than can be held in charge by either the magnets or the bioceramic material, so these positive ions go into the juice. These additional positive ions add more vitality and longevity to the juice. GS also incorporates magnetic and far infra-red technology which enables juice made in the Greenstar to be stored in the refrigerator for up to 48 hours without losing its health building benefits. (p.s. I almost always drink my juice within the day I made it.)


My love and I began adding solid foods back to our diet yesterday...yum! I always crave a fresh, crispy apple to crunch on when I am juicing and that was my first treat to welcome us back. It was divine! Yesterday and today, we continued with the juice (in smaller quantity), ate 2 apples, 1 grapefruit and had salad for dinner. We are chewing everything really well and feeling great! I love having my quart of lemon cayenne water first thing in the morning and making fresh juice daily again...we will continue! My hubby is very lean and had always thought he would wither away on juice only, but he was able to maintain the exact same weight! He drank a gallon of juice daily, took it easy and also got some good fresh air and daily exercise. He has thoroughly enjoyed his 1st cleanse! I drank less juice (2-2.5 quarts daily) and released 9 lbs as of yesterday. That feels good and I feel grounded, rather than ravenously re-entering the solid food world. We are deeply enjoying the solid foods we are taking in like children...savoring and exploring the amazement of various flavors and textures-the saltiness of celery and dulse, the crunchy sweetness of a fresh apple, the amazing burst of energy from a grapefruit!

Juice Feast - Day 5

This is me with bed-head and the apron my hubby made in junior high Home Ec class!

Our bundle of quart jars sprinkled with thawed apple cider from our tree, awaiting celery, cucumber, kale, sprout, beet and ginger juice!

I am curious why I seem to be called to fast right in the middle of winter, especially in a cold climate, but it certainly seems to feel right. I think it the graceful way snow slows everything down...the short length of daylight...and a slower time for me work-wise. In the summer, when it stays light out until 10:30 pm, I can tend to the garden, work a full day and still go wake boarding afterward! It is a fast paced time of year that requires lots of energy for me.


Our Feast is going grand and I have received 2 colonics which I just love compared to enemas. I can really feel energy moving through my body afterward and enemas seem like child's play comparitively, although they are certainly effective. I realized that after my extended JF last Jan/Feb that I felt like I was just all cleansed up and left colonics behind with the juice. Now I am aware that I would like to receive a colonic more regularly, perhaps once a month and fast for atleast a day or 2 in preparation. After my JF last year, I had dedicated so much time to my juicer, that I looked upon it as a task. It is nice to do a shorter juice journey, where I will still be happy to see my juicer the morning after!


Yesterday and today were both inversions on the ski hill, which means that clouds cover the entire valley, but are low enough, that the chair lift carries you above a sea of clouds into the blessed sunshine and the peaks of Glacier Park appear to rising out of an ocean! It is unbelievably gorgeous and blows me away every time. I have never seen a sky so blue! Michael and I pulled over on our last run and full on sunbathed (well, just our faces and forearms!)...check out his skis/chaise lounge! As we were walking to our car, I said hello to my friend Debbie who gives amazing Ayurvedic facials and happened to meet the women whose name has come across my lips several times this week...Cindy of Sunny Slopes farm who is our wheatgrass farmer in the valley! Gotta love those synchronicities. I would love to check out her growing operation sometime and will post pictures if I can! XOXO, Kelly O

Juice Feast-Day 2

Don't get too excited! It's not going to be a monster Feast...we are simply aiming for 7 days. My husband says it's the 1st time he hasn't had solid food in a day since he was breast fed! Needless to say, this is his 1st cleanse and yesterday went well. He drank a full gallon of green juice and I just felt called to drink 2 quarts. It was a busy day and I drank lots of tea. We both started the morning with a quart of lemon cayenne water. Our next door neighbor and ma-in law are both in for a week and 2 more friends are joining soon, so we are going to gather for an evening Juice party instead of a dinner party early next week!
This is short and sweet because we are about to go cross country skiing before I head to work for the day. Juicy Blessings!! XO, Kelly O

Raw Spring Rolls

Mmmm...spring rolls!This is probably my hubby's favorite and I love them too! We grow lots of sprouts in our SproutMaster trays (we have a big stack of 3, so we almost always have a big batch of sprouts available. One of my favorite ways to consume them (besides putting a big handful in our green smoothies) is to make spring rolls. The rice paper to roll them is not raw, but you can use collard greens instead if you prefer.

The way we learned how to make spring rolls was actually a fun stroke of uncoincidental, unaccidental destiny, although it doesn't always appear that way at first! Michael and I were flying to Maine to visit our family, as grandpa was nearing the end of his time in this body. Uncle D rang to let us know a NorEaster? was about to hit and we should probably try to change our flight because we were sure to get stuck en route. After hours on the phone with the airlines, we could not change without huge fines and they had no expected weather delays, so we played the game and got on our plane, until we got stuck in D.C. overnight. Luckily, we had called our amiga to let her know we might get stuck. She picked us up from the airport and we got to spend the entire next day in awe of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and then she made us spring rolls for dinner. It was such a gift to be able to visit and the gift that keeps on giving because we love to make spring rolls now!

My routine is: get the goodies ready... fresh sprouts, grated carrot, perhaps sliced red peppers, fresh mint and basil, maybe sliced cucumber. Boil a teapot of water and pour in a bowl wide enough to dunk the rice paper until pliable. The rest is exactly like rolling a mini-burrito...a little sticky and delicate at first, but my 7 year old niece helped me roll them and did a great job! I make a yummy dipping sauce with almond butter, lime juice, sea salt, apple cider vinegar, a little onion and garlic and enough water to stir into dipping consistency. This time, we cut nori sheets into quarters and wrapped the finished roll in nori - yum and beautiful! Give it a try!

A Year in Review...

Irresistible! My niece has a knack for finding heart shaped treasures. She recently found a bee hive and then this lemon leaf from my folks' tree!

Aaaah...a year in review...I am processing this as I write and am grateful for the medium to share and check in with intention and purpose. There are so many beginnings I can roll back to in my journey through nutrition, health and human potential. Up until my sophomore year in college, you could find me at Jack-in-the-Box ordering a collosal burger and milkshake. I was always so active playing soccer and excelling in school, that I never thought much about food and how it affects our body and mind. Then, my Anatomy and Physiology teacher gave me an article on Macrobiotics that instantly opened me up to an exciting world where food was Medicine...Wow! I was up for hours researching in the library and have continued ever since. That 1st discovery was in the era of the no/low-fat craze. I started eliminating meat, eating Gardenburgers and steamed veggies, but also had crap like Dannon non-fat yogurt (before I knew about the dangers of aspartame) and fat-free cookies. My diet has evolved over the years to more whole foods, gardening and wild-harvesting plants for food, teas and tinctures. Near 2000, I did my 1st juice fast, which ended up pretty much being a water fast because the green drinks and powdered barley grass made me want to puke. I have added more greens and raw foods-had even started making dehydrated yummies with the Excalibur, but it had never occurred to me to eat all raw. At the beginning of October 2007, I was drinking a beer while excitedly reading all of my cousin's books from the Hippocrates Health Educator program and knew I had to try it! I realized that every moment that my inner excitement for this knowledge and a desire to give it a try didn't correspond with the outer (ie. drinking a beer), it felt like I was giving my power away...not the greedy, manipulating kind of power, but the being my fullest potential and living Truth kind of Power. On October 14th, 2007, over my favorite eggplant parmesan salad at an Italian restaurant in town, I broke the news to my honey...I wanted to start taking steps in this direction beginning with no meat and no drinking. I wasn't sure how he was going to feel, not sharing a bottle of wine over a beautiful meal we harvested ourselves (ie. venison steak over fresh-picked salad greens), but he was very supportive. Once I admitted to myself and to my hubby out loud that I wanted to dive in, I dove. I was eating mostly raw within the 1st week. On December 29, 2007, I began my Juice Feast, which was such an amazing journey...30 days of all juice and 10 more days of juice, green smoothies and raw, blended green soups. I felt amazing...energetic, meditative and strong! On March 26th, 2008 my Love and I went to Guatemala for our Honeymoon! I knew I might not be able to stay all raw when I was there, but when the moment came 3 days into my trip and I didn't have any raw options I could see, I felt stressed and disappointed (I had been pretty strictly raw since my Juice Feast). I was still able to access lots of yummy raw food and lots of delicious fresh fruit supplemented with fresh made corn tortillas and beans. In May 2008, I went to Bali and savored an amazing Yoga Teacher training with all raw food catered by the radiant Elaina Love! Ooh la la! Over the summer and fall, I slowly became more lax about having a glass of wine, a beer, some cooked food, some snack food like tortilla chips from the health food store. I have continued many great habits that I have adopted this year like so many more fresh foods (salads, green smoothies, sprouts and fresh fruits) and have also relapsed into habits I thought I had released (packaged food, even if it is from the health food store, organic dark chocolate and some drinks, etc.). I have gained weight back and am essential at the same weight I was before I got all gung-ho about raw. I didn't get into it to lose weight-I got into it for optimum health, energy and spiritual clarity. I realized I could probably lose 5, or even 10 lbs, but didn't realize how good I would feel at an ever lighter weight. My clothes that used to fit me just right got baggy and now I am filling them up again! We don't own a scale and I never payed much attention to my weight before the Feast. #'s aside, I know I feel better when I cut out processed foods and best when I drink lots of green juice! I have been sticking mostly to green smoothies, rather than juice because we aren't growing anything besides sprouts right now and we have lots of beautiful frozen fruit harvested from this fall, but I am realizing it's time to order up some veggies (celery, cucumbers and greens) from the health food store because the juice works for me and I deserve it whether I am able to grow it at the moment or not. I'm certainly not growing the corn for the tortilla chips I have bought at the health food store recently! So, the beginning of the New Year is a good time to be an observer, tighten the reins where it feels good, focus with intention on what makes my body and soul sing, and Live with Love!! This year, may I be brave enough to give to myself (consistently, in balance and in the moment), so I can share this radiating full cup of Life with others! My hubby has even inquired about doing a cleanse with me for the 1st time ever...stay tuned!

The Way to Grace

How cool is this sign? We saw it in Idaho on our drive back home from Arizona.

Happy New Year's Day everyone!! Can you believe it's 2009?! How time does fly and how so many things can manifest in a single year! Change is, indeed, the only constant. Yesterday was a very interesting day. The night before, Michael (my hubby) and I were starting to feel like going over to the east side of the mountains for the new year may not be the best idea. We had been packing...a box full of board games, a big bag of produce in the fridge and a huge pile of warm clothes piling up at our entrance. There were logical reasons and above all, it was a feeling. We figured we would touch base later in the day.

Honey was at work and I was getting ready to go to Yoga class before giving a couple massages. I went to take the compost out (which is quite a trek through knee-high powder!) and take our old doggie out for fresh air and a bathroom break. Our old dog Jaxon just died last month and Hendrix was getting equally old (13!) and unable to get up the stairs and stand up sometimes. It is hard to see someone you love and have climbed mountains with be unable to hold his rear legs under him to stand on our slick laminate flooring. He took a little tumble down the bottom stairs and although he didn't really hurt himself, the fear in his old, cloudy eyes and the desperate cry for help I heard in them began a streaming of tears for the next 5 hours.
I called Michael and tried to gather myself to focus on giving grounded bodywork within the circle of Life and Death and then focus again on what we needed to do for Hendrix. My electric windows wouldn't roll down at the bank, so I used my door. While driving toward work, my window suddenly collapsed into the door. Thank goodness it didn't shatter, but it was 20 degrees and snowing and I had no window. I called our local mechanic, whose # I know by heart and was greeted by a familiar voice (kind of like the show Cheers, but with oil instead of beer). Barely able to talk, I tried to explain I was sad about my dog, rather than my car, but was wondering if he could help. A quick phone call later and he got this "damsel in distress" an appointment and a lift back downtown to work. My husband and I decided it was time to put Hendrix down and allow his Spirit to slide out his withered body into a place of Light. I was able to reschedule my appointments and we were there with him, looking each other in the eyes, gratefully streaming through memories of all the places we have played together. He was happy to let go...ready..and so much easier than holding on to something that isn't working anymore.

My Love had broken through the frost and dug a grave a few days prior, pretty sure Hendrix wasn't going to make it until Spring and aware of the massive snowfall continuing. Wrapped in a beautiful Mexican blanket we lowered first him, then dirt into a resting home for the body that housed his Spirit, lying next to his brother Jaxon by the trees and river...the hillside where they ran, chased squirrels, chased sticks and once got caught in a fox trap (not ours!!)

As I followed my husband (him pulling the orange, plastic sled that carried Hendrix and myself boot packing through very deep snow, with a shovel in each hand, I was so deeply moved by the intense beauty of Life, of our lives and of the lifestyles of Montanans. There is something magical about the depths we go to, to Live and Love in a region where the Winters can be so severe. Something magical about cross country skiing to our neighbors home, who just lost her daughter to shovel snow from her walk and deck. Something magical about seeing fireworks from our window last night as our other neighbors celebrated the New Year. Something magical about the first frost that takes the tomatoes of your dreams and leads you to ripe rosehips in the forest instead and something so magical about fresh buds on trees in Spring...a beauty that is gifted every year, yet seems so new every time!

So, I find myself grateful in a way I didn't expect today and awed by the Mystery of Life. I am leading private Kundalini meditations with a gentleman and he chose Kirtan Kriya as a 40 day personal meditation. The mantra is "Sa Ta Na Ma" which translates as "Infinity, Life, Death, Rebirth"...what an amazing cycle of a beautiful Great Mystery!

(p.s. On the raw food tip, the New Year has begun with an orange, a green smoothie and a yummy salad)