Try our quick and easy gluten free vegetarian meatballs with marinara sauce. We received this recipe from our inspiring person, Marissa!They are a great option for your leftover rice. The walnuts add just the right amount of protein!Gluten Free | Non-GMO | Organic | Soy Free | Refined Sugar Free

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How to listen to the earth, the voice of a carrot, and following your heart.

I am on a journey. A journey of discovery. Of heart and of food. My journey is quite literally taking me on a cross-country adventure in search of earth inspiration. I have stepped away from the life I know, placed all my belongings in storage, and packed two suitcases to flow through the heart of mama earth. This tour is not sponsored or funded. It is my contribution. I write about people to inspire others.

This article is dedicated to what I know now of the people of the earth. In the coming months, as life is all about the lessons we learn, I envision the “what I know now” to become a new now, with updated lessons. It is my hope that this journey inspires your dreams. Take a step with me on this fabulous food adventure.

My spirituality is food. The carrots and soil speak if we listen. This is what they have told me.

The ground is soil – not dirt. Choose your words and your food lovingly.

I was once told that soil stands for Source of Infinite Life. Even today when I write the words, tears spring to my eyes. How can we use the word dirt despairingly when it is what connects us to infinite abundance? The soil is the home for all life. It is the womb for our trees, our beloved oranges, and the ground we are honored to walk upon.

Sit down on the earth. Grab a handful of soil. Rub it between your fingers and feel yourself smile. It is the magic of reverence.

Real food straight from healthy soil tastes different.

I recall the first time I visited an organic farm. The lovely farmer picked an edible flower and handed it to me. Dirt and all. (Yes, I used to use the “D” word). My polite self said “Oh pretty. Thank you”. She said eat it! My city girl self thought “Whaaaat??? The good news is polite won and when I bit into that flower it was like tasting sunshine, bright colors, and joy. All at once! My life changed in that moment. I felt the energy of all time and giggled child-like from my toes.

No matter where you are in the world. Seek out a farmer and ask for a bite straight from the garden. Your world will be instantly brighter.

Healthy soil has the same microbes as a healthy digestive tract.

Imagine a city full of happy diverse people all working together for the good of each other. Pretty cool, ey? Well this is what healthy soil does everyday. It is full of microorganisms essential for life. The cooperation between those microorganisms, plant roots, insects, and weeds make for a winning team.  (Contrary to popular biotech propaganda, weeds and insects are the rockstars of our community).

Where does our digestive tract fit into this? The root of the plant is essential to its health and ultimately the fruits and vegetables that nourish our bodies. A healthy root houses beneficial microbes just like a healthy human gut. Healthy soil is crucial for healthy humans!

Food heals.

We have been supplied all we need for health. Do you know what garlic, raw honey, and coconut oil all have in common? They are anti-bacterial and anti-viral. Did you know that lemons are not only natural internal cleaning agents, they are happy little mood boosters. How about kale and broccoli? More calcium than milk! Turmeric? Anti-inflammatory. I could go on and on yet you get the idea.

What is the fun way to make all this glory happen in your body? See how many colors you can combine on one plate and eat, eat, eat, and eat some more. Don’t forget to take a picture and send them to us! Why because we love to share the joy… and because food that looks like a rainbow is art for the soul.

We are one with the earth.

What happens to me happens to all life. Really! I will let you think about this one.

See you on the road. I will be the lady hugging a tree, chomping on a healthy ‘weed’ and chatting with the caterpillar.

Do you know an inspiring person? Of course you do!!! Tell us. We would love to share their story.

Originally published by Raw Food Magazine.

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The eight things I learned about wellness that totally changed the way I eat and how to make a date with a cookie.

I love food. And when I say “love,” I mean the earth-shattering, chow-down kind of love.

Because of my excessive adoration, I treat the object of my affection with honor and integrity. Anything else would be less than what real food so lustily deserves.

So why do I tell you this? Because throughout our lengthy courtship, I have learned a lot about what is truly food, and whom is the imposter attempting to take me on a date.

Reinventing your relationship with food? Here are a few lessons that I have learned along the way.

1. Gluten-free isn’t just a trend.

In fact, it may just be necessary! More and more studies are beginning to show that a significant percentage of the population may have sensitivity to today’s wheat.

Gluten allergies are likely becoming more commonplace due to the modification of the modern wheat plant. Our current wheat is no longer the amber waves of grain we once consumed.

In recent decades, hybridization began modifying the wheat plant resulting in less digestible gluten. Coupled with chemicals sprayed, such as Glyphosate, much wheat contains a potentially damaging combination that many bodies just don’t like.

However, just because it is “gluten-free” doesn’t mean it is good for you. Many gluten free items are full of sugar and processed carbohydrates. Read the labels carefully and make wise decisions.

2. Pasteurized is not always pleasant.

The pasteurization process is designed to kill potentially dangerous germs. Unfortunately, it is frequently used in excess and also eliminates the healthful properties inherent in the food.

Take, for example, honey. Raw honey has amazing health benefits. Those little bees are brilliant! Their honey, in its natural state, is anti-viral, anti-bacterial, and full of fabulous vitamins and minerals.
Unfortunately, once heated to the recommended pasteurized levels, the nutrients vanish, resulting in a non-nutritious sugary substitute. Eating raw honey is safe, tasty, and full of the nutrition your body loves. I adore raw honey. We have a date later with a cookie.

3. GMO?! Oh no!

GMO stands for genetically modified organisms. The genetic modification results from the transfer of genes between two unrelated species.

GMO’s were first introduced into our food supplies in the mid 90’s by biotech companies and have served the monetary purpose of increased crop herbicide and pesticide tolerance.

The question is, at what price? Genetic modification has been linked to major health issues. In most parts of the world, GMO’s are either banned, or require labeling. In the US, the majority of our processed food are GMO’s, derived from such ingredients, as corn, soy, canola, and cotton.

What are a few things you can you do to avoid GMO’s? Eat organic. Shop at your local farmers market. Stop eating processed food. Have some fun and plant a few veggies of your own.

4. Rule of thumb: if it has more than three syllables, don’t eat it.

This one is pretty simple. If your grandparents would not have recognized the ingredient, you may wish to pass it by.

Grandma knew the word carrot, yet likely wasn’t up to speed on butylated hydroxyanisole, potassium bromate, or ammonium sulfate. Smart grandma!

Added tip…natural flavorings usually equal chemical flavorings. Yep, this would have made grandpa pretty ornery.

5. There are many different words for MSG, and they all mean yuck.

Speaking of multiple syllable words, monosodium glutamate can act as a neurotoxin and is one of those “additives” you may just want to avoid.

MSG is often labeled as autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed protein, and many other tricky labels. MSG is definitely one of those imposter dates, so you may want to block that message and save your favorite dancing shoes for the real thing.

6. Organic just means real food.

Speaking of real, organic is the way to go. Back in the day (ya know, that grandma thing again), organic food was just “food”…meaning chemicals weren’t the norm. Gardens were grown in mineral rich soil and cows wandered around grass fields.

I have an idea! Let’s just start calling organic food “food” and label everything else “food-like substance.” Ta da! Solved.

7. Food is, indeed, medicine.

Remember that saying “you are what you eat”? Well, it’s true. Mama Earth has created the perfect combination of nutrients in all her abundance.

Garlic? A natural antibiotic. Coconut? Anti-viral. Kale? Full of calcium. Fish? High in Omegas. Eggs? Full of vitamin B. You get the idea! Eat, eat, eat, and be well. Remember: food can either heal you or hurt you. Go with the healing route.

8. Healthy is yummy.

This one is my favorite! Imagine plates of brightly colored decadence, tantalizing spices, happy herbs, and sweetly loved cupcakes.

Can you picture it? Does it seem like a heavenly dream? Oh, but it is reality, my friends. We can choose to eat it everyday.

And guess what? This food loves you back!

Originally published by www.inspiyr.com

The post 8 Things I Learned About Wellness That Totally Changed The Way I Eat appeared first on LoveSelf.

Try this amazing raw paleo oatmeal recipe that Amber of The Source Café has created.Gluten Free | Non-GMO | Organic | Paleo | Raw | Vegan | Dairy Free | Sugar Free

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Amber Caudle of The Source Cafe shared the amazing recipe of Yam Cacao Smoothie. Read about her inspiring story and try out this recipe!Gluten Free |Paleo | Vegan| Non-GMO | Organic | Sugar Free | Soy Free | Dairy Free

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The love of gardening and a joy of a salad. A young woman honors her mother and the nurturer in all of us.

Often times, when we create something especially mouthwatering or exquisite in the kitchen, we’re asked to reveal our secret ingredient: a pinch of this, a shake of that. The response my mom always tells us is, “love.” Love is a versatile ingredient; it adds another dimension—a subtle flavor, a comforting consistency, that extra oomph, to any dish we prepare.

To my mother—Laura Carter, a small but mighty woman in her fifties, with whitened hair and a smile sweet as honey—food is more than just a source of sustenance. In her world, food is a checkpoint—preparing dinner the final leg, and serving it the finish line of her daily race; it’s her way of self-expression, a projection of who she really is, a representation of her tastes and preferences, and it’s also a gift to all that enjoy it, including herself, that says, “I love you.”

The running joke amongst my friends is that every meal my mom makes will contain something “from the garden,” as she’s fond of saying. We come from a family of Norwegian farmers—people with a fair complexion, of short and sturdy in build, with strong calves made for hours spent crouching in the earth. Most of our traditional comfort food centers around the vegetables grown in my mother’s garden.

Taking care of a garden is like taking care of a child; it’s dirty work, and requires patience and love: first the planting, then the endless watering and weeding, ending finally with the harvest. I’ve helped out many times before, picking peas and strawberries, but my few hours spent harvesting are nothing compared to how many my mother spends every summer turning a handful of seeds into a fresh meal. Her dedication and hard work never ceases to amaze or inspire me.

Vegetable soup, potato salad, and strawberry shortcake are all fine examples of her best dishes, but her specialty, and my favorite, is her Spring Gardeners Salad. My mother can turn simple produce into a work of art. Her salads are beautifully crafted, colorful and bursting with flavor. When dinner is served, and the salads are dished out, my mother always eats hers at the end of the meal. It’s her treat, and she wants to savor it. Other salads can’t compare to my mother’s—not even in the fanciest restaurants—because every leaf of lettuce, strip of pepper, bright strawberry, and bit of carrot was given life by her own hands.

To my mother, preparing a salad is showing someone how much you love them. Her work in the garden gives her personal satisfaction, but her pleasure working in the kitchen depends on the reaction her meal brings. It took me a long time to realize this, but I finally did, and through soups and salads my mother and I developed a stronger bond that we still share today. We love preparing meals together and we’re always looking for a new recipe to experiment with, but we’ll never forget the recipes that brought us together in the first place, or that one special ingredient that makes every meal taste like home.

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Emma and her mom, The Love of A Mother and the Joy of a Salad, suggest an easy and tasty Spring Gardener's salad. Straight from Laura’s garden. What can you find in your garden or at the local farmer’s market?Gluten Free | Raw| Paleo | Sugar Free | Vegan| Dairy Free | Non-GMO | Organic | Soy Free

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How our food system has depleted over the last fifty years and the organic seed you can save.

On an organic farm in the Midwest resides a little twenty-something lady with a huge heart and mind. She is proof that intellect can indeed reside in the cutest of feminine faces. Introducing Betsy Goodman, organic farmer, seed saver, passionate historian, and environmentalist.

I arrived to interview Betsy well into a dark starry evening. After driving down winding gravel roads, I could see little except the shadows of hills and a cold clear night sky. I pulled into what appeared to be the correct farmhouse and out came Betsy. Is this where I confess that I still couldn’t see this hospitable stranger that had been so lovingly nominated for a feature? Only after walking inside am I greeted with a smiling young lady surrounded by hundreds of baby plants. Ascending to the second floor I found myself surrounded by soaring ceilings and endless windows. The moon greeted us as if to say welcome to the start of an amazing evening.

Betsy describes herself as a preacher. Food is Ms. Betsy’s religion and she “preaches the organic gospel”. She also preaches hard work. Her little frame farms three acres without the assistance of a tractor or machinery. Her tools are a shovel and her hands. “Everything needs personal attention”, she tells me. On the farm Betsy cares for, veggies are saved through the hard Midwest winters in a cold storage room. Yes, even the most frozen tundra can have root crops all season. I asked her what is easiest to save and her answer was quite a list! To start with imagine eating garlic, onion, cabbage, beets, and carrots. Not because you made a trip to the nearest grocery store because you walked to your cellar and chose from the bounty of your labor.

I asked Betsy how the urban granddaughter of a United States Senator became so interested in loving mother earth. Her story begins as a small child that admits to being afraid of nature. Until one day at the age of six, she discovered a creek and a tree. She sat next to the tree and listened to message of the water. She also heard her internal calling and had found her peace. Many years later, her beautiful sanctuary was destroyed and she knew that her life must be devoted to protecting the harmony she had found a decade before.

Betsy attended college at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, majoring in environment studies. Her second year in college she began working at an organic grocery and learned about herbs and eating well from the earth she so adored. During her senior year she met the man that would become her mentor. Like all things unexpected, her first introduction to the brilliant hippy that spoke of a Fairy Congress and becoming Friends with the Trees, was to wonder what twilight zone she had stepped into. And because as I always say life gives us messages, Betsy was offered her spirit guidance. One evening while walking home contemplating her future, she crossed paths with a fox. Rather than either of them departing, she describes the fox gently staying with her and “walking her home”. She felt compelled to look up the spiritual symbolism of her companion animal and learned they represent the entrance to the fairy realms. She needed no other coaxing. She completed school, turned down a corporate job and began to learn the art of organic farming and living in harmony with nature.

The journey of Betsy’s heart has brought her to a deeper knowledge of farming than she ever expected. The knowledge of history and the seed. Our seeds are our “right to real food”. They are also dying with conventional mono-cropping and GMO’s. So much of what has been passed down for generations, in the last 50 years, has become the sad sterile version of what was once bounty and beauty. Betsy has started a seed saving program at the Omaha Public Library and has become a proponent of our rights to save the abundance so willingly offered by nature. She is testifying in front of the state legislature to ensure our rights, and those of Mother Nature are protected. “It is our responsibility to uphold our food system”. Her emotion and intellect clearly shine through when she speaks of Thomas Jefferson handing out seeds to our ancestors and telling them that with the seed, community and health are always available. For more information on the different types of seed check out our Differences in Seeds Article.

When I asked about the modern practices of farming with chemicals she became sad. Our “bodies don’t want that”, she told me. The chemicals and GMO’s create autoimmune disease. This is something she knows first hand. Each time the neighboring farmers spray, her immune system shuts down, and her body reacts with what she tells me is “gut collapse and horrible headaches”. And in perfect LoveSelf fashion, Betsy reverts to her beautiful story of health and tells me “Loving life is loving yourself”.

Betsy and I have a question for you. What can you do today to support yourself and the small organic farmer that is only trying to save our health and the earth?

During our time together Betsy and I meditated with the earth and looked to the heavens. In her words we both know that it is time to live with “your feet in the mud and your head in the sky”.

Betsy in her organic health and abundance has given us her three ingredient green smoothie Enjoy!

The post A Tiny Organic Farmer, Fairies, and the Art of Saving a Seed. appeared first on LoveSelf.

Faith’s fiancé, Kevin, provided us his favorite recipe using kale from Faith’s garden. Curly kale is their favorite. What’s yours? Read more about Faith and her inspiring story.Gluten Free | Dairy Free | Paleo| Raw| Non-GMO | Organic | Sugar Free | Vegan | Soy Free

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Faith. A soil scientist. And plant research goddess.

On a quest for the love of mama earth, a journey of faith has taken place. And because we are so often our physical name and our spirit, I am honored to introduce a living embodiment of such faith, in both her practice and namesake.

Introducing Faith Reeves of the Sustainability Research Institute in Fairfield, IA.

Faith is an earth scientist meets plant research goddess. Or as she so humbly states “soil geek”. She transitioned from her southern roots to a tiny town in Iowa in 2009, yet her quest began much earlier. Faith describes a greater seeking at age 14. As her path unfolded she found herself working in the food service industry. Over the years her love for her chosen career had become bittersweet. How could she feel such kindness towards her guests yet also serve them the unhealthy standard American diet, knowing that neither the food nor alcohol being consumed served their body or soul? As a result of her realizations, she found herself on a new journey and began studying holistic medicine practices such as herbology and homeopathy.

As life is made of the turns we so often take, her new perspective led her to Iowa and the study of Sustainable Living at Maharishi University of Management. Her eyes light up as she describes the home she found in her new spiritual community. And because the path of joy is always supported, the story just gets better. Her “dream mission” came knocking and when the dream knocks, what can we do but answer.

Faith was offered a role at the Sustainability Research Institute (SRI), a non-profit arm of the Sky Factory in Fairfield, Iowa. The genesis of SRI is to research and develop sustainable practices in food system wellness.

The three acres Faith is bringing back to life were previously conventionally farmed. And yet you wouldn’t know it. Stepping on to her beautiful land you find yourself first greeted by a chivalrous rooster named Beaky (yes, he has a personality). Looking around you see happy chickens, naturally blue and green eggs, an incredible variety of vegetable ranging from Jerusalem artichokes to horseradish. The butterflies and bees have returned. Even a stunning fig tree has flourished in the middle of the Midwest!

Faith is the designer and co-creator of such abundance. Permaculture is her training and strong influence. Permaculture is a system of working with nature. For now know that every plant has multiple functions and is carefully chosen to enliven the soil and reinvigorate the earth to its optimal state. She is both farmer and researcher. In addition to tending her beloved farm, she spends several hours a week analyzing the soil. Complete with a microscope on her desk at home, Faith is nature’s true soil scientist. She speaks of a “conversation between plants and microbes”… and listening to the “energetic request ”. Faith and I spoke about the immune system of plants, minerals that need to be resurrected in starving soil that have resulted in nutritionally starving bodies, and living the work that you love.

I asked Ms. Faith what is her advice to us? She summed it up in one perfect sentence. “Look at the land as an extension of yourself’.

Well said and with total faith.

LoveSelf food for thought-  Did you know that healthy soil has the same microbes as a healthy digestive system? How does this resonate with you?

Faith and her fiance love to make kale chips from her garden. Learn how with this creative and healthy recipe of Spicy Kale Chips.

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