Vegan smoothies are the best, but they are even better homemade!

I’ve had a lot more energy than normal since drinking these, maybe it’s related, maybe not, regardless, they are delicious!

Here’s my recipe:

frozen organic blackberries (price per serving = $1.50-$1.65)

fresh organic spinach (price per serving = $.50-$1.00)

organic raspberry juice/syrup (price per serving = $.20-$.50)

fresh coconut milk/cold coffee (depending on time of day or how awake you want to be) (price per serving for either option = $1.00)

(Total average cost per smoothie = $3.20-$4.15)

Sometimes I add my daily vitamins to this, but not often.

I’ve been trying to replace a meal a day with these, it’s actually been easier than it sounds.

I tried this recently, it is STUNNING. I’m not a raw-vegan but I really wish I was!

I tried both this and the brand’s kale, cucumber, romaine, etc. blend. It is raw, vegan, some 6 pounds of cool pressed fresh, organic plants per bottle, all kinds of good bacteria, vitamins, and flora, and so delicious that it is ACTUALLY worth the $8-10 per bottle. It’s heavenly, it really is, to the extent that I made the little cashew milk bottle last 2 days. Luckily I had a buy-one-get-one-free coupon, and it was on sale.

Also, if you live in NYC, you can save money and pick it up locally.

This stuff is so good you should ask for it for your birthday!

A few days before my current period I started taking organic raspberry leaf extract (not the tea) because my cramps are terrible and I’ve only heard good things about it, and nothing else has worked for me. Well, keep in mind, I only use natural cures. The 3-4 days before my period I took the extract 3 times a day, once it started I stopped taking the extract.

The extract tasted terrible, but if you’re used to liquid herbal extracts, it’s tolerable.

It didn’t make my cramps entirely go away, but it helped incredibly, they were not even noticeable compared to normal, I just had to lay on a heating pad briefly, but it didn’t derail my whole day, like usual.

I’m sticking to this.

For me, I get pretty bad, regular depression that exists even when nothing triggers it. The things I take for it are liquid extracts by Herb Pharm. I take American Ginseng and St. John’s Wort, and I also keep that brand’s ‘Stress Manager’ compound around, it is a combination of eleuthero, reishi fruit, holy basil leaf, rhodiola root, and schisandra berry. Also, make sure you’re always getting enough magnesium and vitamin D, from natural sources or raw vitamins. In the winter I rely on a raw, powdered multi-vitamin, since I can’t get them from fresh veggies and sunlight as much as I would in the summer, and while you store vitamins, lack of those two specifically can add to mild depression (i.e., “winter blues”) I take Garden of Life raw, organic multi-vitamins, year round - I personally about 1 a day in the summer, and up to 4 a day in the winter. Also, little habits like daily exercise, even a little, and keeping drinking alcohol to a minimum, avoiding OTC pills with side effects, and drinking a small amount of caffeine per day, small amounts can improve moods, large amounts can add to depression. And yes, stress relief tea is also a good thing to have on hand. Chamomile tea can help, but it can also lead to mild fatigue, Yogi tea has a ‘Stress Relief lavender tea’ option that I’ve had good results with. I hope that all helps! :)

ozzylot:

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In a recent TIME Mag­a­zine arti­cle, I addressed ways to afford nutri­tious food on a bud­get and the good choic­es found in the aver­age gro­cery store. In case you missed it, my stance was, and always has been, that while organ­ic foods are…

Yeah, Dr. Oz is now on my shit list.

I wanted this issue until I saw Dr. Oz’s name. He can really go fuck himself, he broadly lies, even makes shit up, and states his opinions as facts, no citations, he’s even been publicly called out on it, and blew it off like it never happened. He’s going even further now to say that organic food is totally pointless and no different than non-organic. Well, it is different. At least all the food on the cover is vegan, but other than that, don’t believe him if he tells you the sky is blue. He reeks of “slyly” defending America’s huge flaws when it comes to food, and he’s steadily fooling less people. I have a feeling this TIME cover is his last huge break if anyone else has half a brain. Let’s hope so.

To me, it’s just as important to be vegan as eating only organic, and as it is to avoid non-biodegradable trash. My new goal, is to keep items that are contained in plastic off my grocery list. For years now I’ve been mostly doing that, but if I can completely do that, I need to. To me, it’s not about being flawless or having unrealistic standards, it’s all about having the least impact possible in my situation.

As a vegan, especially one who considers the condition of the people involved at the farms my food comes from, which is why I buy organic, and local, or at least regional, and not from big, industrial brand names. I even keep some types of vegan foods off my grocery list, like palm oil, hearts of palm, corn, potatoes, maple syrup, maple sugar, any form of white sugar, agave nectar, non-fair trade coffee, and other vegan foods that are typically very bad for nature, people, or health, for various reasons.

In the summer, as well as late spring and early fall, this is very easy, because I can go to the farmers markets and buy directly from the families who grow it, where I live that is vastly Hmong families when it comes to who sells vegetables, while the majority of specialty items, homemade jams, ciders, regional fruit, pickled veggies, wild rice, spices, raw left-over organic wildflower honey, etc. comes from the non-immigrant (or at least not first generation immigrant) family farm owners in the area.

In the winter this can become tricky, to keep the food I’m buying considerate of everyone to the best of my abilities. Recently the farmers markets closed (this past weekend was their last where I live) and the local organic grocery stores switched from the Iowa grown tomatoes to the California grown tomatoes. I hesitantly bought them and kept the sticker, only to type the name of the farm into an internet search engine when I got home. I wanted to make sure it was safe to keep buying from this farm, here’s what I got; http://www.tdwilleyfarms.com/employees/fremp.html

And the result reminded me why I’m vegan, I want to have the least negative impact I can on everyone, plant, animal or person. Organic food can be done properly and help the community, industrial brand name food, even if it’s vegan, can not, not in the same way, and non-veganism never can, no matter how local or ‘considerate’, it is unnecessary for everyone involved. It’s not just about being vegan, it’s about being synergetic.

I hope the following helps. I know everyone is different, however, I have extremely bad depression as well, it’s constant, and nothing even triggers it, but I have no flare ups of random depression despite being on zero medication of any form.

I take natural herbs for anti-depressants daily, specifically I take the Herb Pharm brand organic liquid herbal extracts. I take American Ginseng, alcohol-free version of St. John’s Wort, and their ‘Stress Manager’ herbal compound - a combination of eleuthero root, reishi fruit, holy basil leaf, rhodiola root, and schisandra berry. I take all 3 of these every morning as soon as I wake up. They work like a dream as long as I take them daily, you can take any one, or all of the 3 I mentioned above, since everyone is different you might need to experiment with them a little. They take between one week and one month of daily use to fully kick in (yet I’ve had them work as quickly as 2-3 days, again, depends on the person). I would also suggest keeping caffeine minimal, or if you do drink it, combine it with a tea meant to reduce stress (I take Yogi tea’s brand of Lavender ‘stress relief’ tea). I also keep all chemicals out of my system, it’s a good thing to keep chemicals with possible varying side effects out of your system just to be on the safe side when it comes to depression problems. I don’t take allergy pills, or even birth control pills, I feel as though they could contribute to other problems in odd ways and are just not worth it, personally. Also, sometimes women who have a lack of magnesium can get depression symptoms from that, so make sure you are getting all your vitamins, a good multi-vitamin for women is the RAW/Garden of Life brand vegan vitamins. Tiredness can also cause depression, so get your B12 vitamins, too. If absolutely none of these things help your depression, yes, they do make medications that were not tested on animals, but even then, the chemicals it has been made up of may have been initially tested on animals. No one should be able to force you to take OTC meds, honestly, even if your parents invest in them despite what you tell them, you can always throw the daily pills away when your parents aren’t looking, that’s what I used to do in middle school. :/ Again, synthetic is still just that, try to detox and keep it all natural and organic and see how you feel, then maybe try the herbal anti-depressants I mentioned above if that doesn’t work. :) Good luck!

I have had problems with depression since before I was a teen. But I refuse to take chemicals for it that will only give me side effects. I don’t use any medicine as the average person knows it to be. I only take natural, organic, herbal extracts to solve it, because I refuse to solve a problem with a problem.

The following is a list of all-natural herbal anti-depressants. I take all of the following in small amounts regularly:

St. John’s wort

American ginseng

Eleuthero root*

Reishi fruit*

Holy basil leaf*

Rhodiola root*

Schisandra berry*

Rooibos leaf+

Chamomile flower+

Sage+

*found together in Herb Pharm liquid herbal extract.

+(and other ingredients) found together in Yogi ‘honey lavender stress relief’ tea.

My family comes from both an Italian, and Southern background, food is culture for us, food is communication for us. So needless to say, I don’t even try to convince my family members to try veganism, I feel often like it would be a waste of breath. Shit, even I day dream about my families meatball recipe sometimes, despite being vegetarian for over 15 years, and vegan for a couple years. Anyways, my family adores animals though, and has always taught me to be nicer to animals than to people. They took a longer time to learn about factory farms, but they know. I let them learn on their own.

Last night I was randomly talking to my sister on the phone. She started talking about all the new stuff she’d been cooking lately; mushrooms, eggplant, and many other vegan dishes. I was like ‘wait, are you vegetarian/vegan now?’ and she was like ‘No, I’m just trying to eat mainly veggies and stick to organic food only, and fresh food.’ It’s a good start! She said she still eats tuna. I did end up telling her about how bad the fishing for tuna is. She suddenly had a different tone of voice and was like ‘I really need to never do that again’ and I was just like ‘all of it’s mean, even if you eat crab or lobster - animals that are caught in cages that can only catch them, even with the regulations that they have to be full grown, it’s still something you don’t have to do, there is supplements for that, and they are just living there, that’s all they’re doing and we just go and kill them even when we don’t need it. Even the animals we raise for food we’re so mean to, I don’t know why we’re so mean, it doesn’t even have to do with making them into food by default, they can live on organic farms, at least they can live outside.’ And she was like ‘I know, I know how mean people are to them, I hate it’ and sounded like she was crying so I tried to lighten the subject and was just like ‘I can give you some vegan recipes and tell you which supplements for omega3 I use, I’ll message you on facebook.’ I then asked if she planned on going vegan ‘even for half the week every week’ and she said ‘Well, maybe I’ll do it and just have one bad day a week where I eat organic eggs or something.’ That made me happy. I really hope that works out for her. My family doesn’t mean to be mean to animals, they -love- animals, it’s just that not everyone knows the situation sometimes. I think this is hopeful.

I drink organic tea daily, have since 2004. Everyone should. <3

Reblogging my own post, deal with it.

Ever wondered what exactly vegans eat? How much variety, or lack there of, they eat. What brands, what supplements and what meat and dairy imitations.

I’ve had enough questions about this to go finally get around to taking some photos and making a full list of what I keep in my kitchen. As you can see, on top of it being vegan, the vast majority of the food is organic, and almost 100% of it is from the U.S., and all of it is completely free of any and all artificial ingredients and preservatives.

Sorry the images uploaded small, if you are unable to zoom in and read the text just drag the images to your desktop and click them and zoom in on them that way.

I’m an organic-only vegan, I also eat only all-natural foods (no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives) I recently took it a step further and cut out all processed foods. It’s been a little less than 3 weeks now since I’ve cut out processed foods. However, the other day, just to see if it’d really taken effect yet, because if all was going right I not only would have already gotten rid of any extra toxins in my system, but would be repelling any new ones. I had some processed vegan food the other evening, and during the night I was sweating so bad I was almost too warm to sleep, and it was just all kinds of gross. But at least I know I’m healthy and my body has already gotten to the point where it doesn’t even accept anything other than non-processed, organic, all-natural food. That might make it sound like my immune system has gotten weaker, but it hasn’t, it’s gotten stronger. Mind you, I never wash my food, I eat a lot of fresh food, I don’t try to eat clean food, and I don’t take medicine as most people know it, and I never get sick.

Yesterday I ran out of store brand bird food so I switched my pigeons up to organic millet. Sound obsessive? Not really. The store brand bird food is about $8-$11 for as little as two pounds, full of preservatives, artificial colors, flavors, enriched stuff, stuff I’m not sure they can even digest because half the stuff in it they refuse to eat, and in contrast, the organic, all-natural plain millet is about $5.50 for FIVE pounds, so, literally a fraction of the price when I buy it in bulk. It’s way healthier, but my birds aren’t getting as spoiled as you might think.

I was debating adding quinoa into the mix, but, organic quinoa is not as cheap, and I have no clue if they’d eat it, which would be a total waste of money, and I’m not even 100% sure what vitamins they need, they come off as an animal that definitely doesn’t have as much of a demand for a wide variety of nutrients as humans do. Correct me if I’m wrong.

A woman who always criticizes other women is a feminist the same way a person who eats non-organic meat, and or any food shipped into the U.S. from other countries (especially non-fair trade) is a racialist. Having a good idea doesn’t mean you’re going about it correctly, and having an idea alone means nothing if your actions don’t match, or even exist.