Vitamin Cocktail for the Skin
Today I woke up feeling refreshed and wanted to do something extra special for my skin. I love the smell of apples as they simmer, they remind me of the holidays so I decided to create a skin refiner (exfoliant) that will leave your skin feeling simply marvelous.

Apple (Green)
Apple’s are a rich source of flavonoids and polyphenol, which are powerful antioxidants. Malic acid an alpha hydroxy acid derived from apples, provides antioxidant actions and assists in skin exfoliation, to gently exfoliate and brighten the skin. Green apple also contains Vitamins A, B and C to brighten and tone the skin as well as Quercetin to calm redness.

Lemon Zest
The zest of the lemon is the outer skin which contains volatile oils and when blended with honey makes an extremely powerful exfoliant for the skin.

Honey
Honey is a by-product of honey bees when they collect the flower nectar in their mouths and the nectar mixes with enzymes and then it is turned into honey. Raw honey is honey that has not been heated for pasteurization, filtered or strained to remove the wax, pollen or propolis. Honey is a natural humectant that attracts and binds water to the upper layers of the skin.

Yogurt (Whole Milk, Plain)
Yogurt is a cultured product made from the natural bacterial fermentation of milk. Fermentation of the milk sugar (lactose) produces lactic acid which is an alpha hydroxy acid. Used in skin care treatments, lactic acid has the ability to digest skin cells and improve the texture of skin making it one of the best alpha hydroxy acids for sensitive skin. Yogurt is an effective ingredient in skin care treatments and allows the outer layers of your skin to release and shed over a few days, stimulating new cell growth in the skin’s deepest layers. With its natural antibacterial and antifungal agents, it assists in getting rid of germs and bacteria that plague the skin.

Recipe
1 Green apple
1 Tbsp lemon zest
1 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp yogurt

Core and slice green apple and place in a blender. Add the lemon zest, honey and yogurt and blend into a creamy smooth mixture. Apply entire mixture to a cleansed face and leave on for 20 minutes, if you have sensitive skin leave mixture on between 5 to 10 minutes. Rinse will cool water and apply your favorite moisturizer.

Enjoy!

by Tracy Neely

Angela’s Sexy Salsa!
by Angela Elliott, author of Alive in 5

1 cup finely chopped tomatoes
1/2-whole cup fresh cilantro
1/4 cup SWEET onion
Jalapeno to taste
1/4-inch slice fresh ginger
Salt to taste
2 teaspoons fresh basil
1 garlic clove, pressed

Place everything in the food processor and pulse chop. Strain and serve!

This recipe was part of an entire teleseminar that Angela hosted with us as part of our Sisterhood Program!! It has a complete Mexican feisty menu with step-by-step instructions for how to put it all together!

If you sign up TODAY for the Sisterhood program for only $9 a month and we’ll give you access to that call, all the recipes and and you’ll continue to other “cooking calls” like this with her every month, plus other exclusive calls for members! SIGN UP HERE!

And whoa, Nellie! I’m so excited about the feedback that we’ve been getting.

Wanna see it? I know you do. Welcome to another pet project of the Diva Dream Team:

We sent out an invitation to participants of our 3 Day Green Smoothie Challenge to come onboard this green train and help us spread the word about Green Smoothies! We’ve been so impressed with the response, that our team is almost complete!

If you, too, are a Green Queen or lover of green smoothies and want to be a bigger part of what we do around here, then just send us an email and let us know. Or leave a comment on the Green Smoothie blog! After all the flood of responses that we got after our International Green Smoothie Day adventure, we knew that it was time to get the green smoothies a home of their own.

And so it is that we proudly present to you another Diva Dream Team production!

Let us know what you think!

Love and hugs,

Tera for us all.

“Mom, do you wish your house was made of celery?”

“Uh… why, Sebastian?”

“Then you could eat your table for your whole, wide supper.”

“You’re cute, Seb. Sure, I’d like a house made of celery.”

“I love you, Mom.”

“Me, too, Seb.”

“You’re the best Mom in the whole, wide university.”

“Thanks, Seb.”

I love my life.

Well, my lovelies!

Here I am at a sunny kitchen table in Calgary at my Dad’s house. If I had patience and time for digital pictures, I’d send you one. I came out to Calgary to visit my family for the weekend because my brother is getting married.

The kids and I just buzzed out here for a few days and then we head back to Montreal on Sunday evening.

I admit. I’m in culture shock.

When I think of my life, and then I see how life is here, I forget sometimes what goes on in the world. Well, I don’t really forget, but I just don’t see it all the time and so I don’t feel as bothered by it.

I don’t cook food anymore for my kids. There’s an occasional rice noodle that they will get away with, but now that Tim shipped me my dehydrator, we’re going to be packing some tasty lunch snacks to school and there’s just no reason in the world why I should prepare them cooked food any more.

They’ve even stopped asking for it. Of course, it helps that they know they can get it when they’re with their dad. But at my house, I don’t cook anymore.

My stove is covered in fruit bowls. I took the elements out and now I have some nice fruit bowls that sit in them, billowing with assorted fruits and counter-top foods.

Here, the convection oven is flashing 350 while a GIGANTIC Butterball turkey is being roasted for tomorrow’s dinner. (Yes, it’s actually a “Butterball”.)

I have been known to walk many kilometers just to avoid throwing away my compostable materials in the garbage.

*sigh*

I looked in the garbage here and saw plastic containers that absolutely could have been rinsed and recycled.

I watched my step-mom grab paper towel to wipe her counter as though she didn’t even realize it was a TREE she was using to wipe her counter!! Isn’t paper towel illegal, yet? Shouldn’t people pay an extra tax for using non renewable resources, or for now renewing the resources they us?

I understand that change takes place on a gradient. I don’t expect everyone to be where I am or live how I live. But I hold my breath and ask myself sometimes, how NOT to say something. And if I am going to say something, how can I say it so it comes out in a loving way?

What does it take to teach a nation the consequences of their choices? I love the Eastern religions and other philosophies that suggest we don’t only live once. Whether it’s “past lives” or “reincarnation” I think the idea that you’d have to come back and live out the consequences of your choices might be enough to cause people to think twice before they stick their margarine container in the trash. Maybe they’d think twice before they bought it in the first place?

If you have ideas, Sunshine, of how we can touch the world with a message of health and environmental responsibility, without putting people off, without causing them to feel like they are “wrong”, then please let me know.

There’s nothing that makes my heart ache more than asking myself those kinds of questions.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve looked out at the faces of people on the streets and asked myself, “What will it take to touch that person’s life? What about that person? In what way can I deliver my message so she hears it?”

I can’t stop the yearning sort of desperation that I have to make the world a better place. I can’t turn a cheek to the creased brows, crippled bodies and overweight children in the world. I can’t pretend I don’t see how wrong things are and when I feel like we’re sitting on the solution, then it’s only natural to want to know, what will it take to get the message out to the world in a way that they can hear it?

I’d love to know what you think about that. Maybe post your suggestions. What’s worked for you? What have you done or seen that’s enabled people to make different choices?

The Truth About Your Food project is a good place to start. We’re just going to be presenting the facts about food and letting people see for themselves, and decide for themselves what’s best. Obviously, we’ll do our best to propose solutions.

Okay, well, I gotta get back to the family.

Hope you’re having a spectacular day and that the sun is shining in through your windows. Let me know what you think, okay. Thanks.

Love and hugs,

Tera

Our very own Cravings Diva, Angela Stokes has been featured on CNN! If you haven’t seen it already, check out the segment here:

I admit to having seen a fair number of shocked expressions and embarrassed smiles while people watch me eat my food in public places. It doesn’t happen all the time, but if I’m REALLY hungry, and the fruit or food is REALLY tasty, then I lose myself in an explosive experience of sensations, perceptions, juicy vibrations and *moan* unavoidable squeaks and expressions of pleasure.

You can see some examples in my old posts from last year up on the blog!

Pornographic Produce? Perhaps!
The perfume of peaches…
I’d rather kiss a persimmon.

One woman actually said, “You sound like you are having an orgasm,” while I was eating a fresh fig.

Naturally, I blushed.

Why am I telling you this?

Have you ever gone into a restaurant, and the people at the table next to you have something that looks so good, and they are so clearly enjoying it, that you just can’t help but order the exact same thing? That’s exactly the principle at work, here.

We know that most people are seduced by the savory aromas, and old memories, that come gushing forth when olfactory triggers are stimulated by cooked food smells wafting through the air.

Far too many people take a disciplinarian approach to the Raw Food Diet—feeling like they must eliminate, ‘avoid’ and generally deprive themselves of certain things, but the raw food diet is a diet of abundance! The flavors, textures, juicy variety, and sweet, seductive, colorful charms of fresh fruit and vegetables are parallel to none.

So, here they are, then, Ladies: My top tips for making your favorite raw food look like something the person next to you simply MUST have!

1. Take your time
Slow and steady wins the race. It’s not sexy to horde and gobble food like a half-starved dog. Take your time. Make each piece feel like it’s the last piece you’ll ever have. Treasure it. Let it linger in your fingers, Girlfriend. Just the way you hold that piece of succulent melon will have their curiosity piqued!

2. Eye contact is everything
While you nibble on that morsel of tasty, perfect food, let the flavors, textures, and delicate aromas be felt through your eyes! Do not underestimate your ability to totally mesmerize and grab a person’s attention with how you move your eyes!

3. Use your body
Hold what you’re eating as if it were a delicate flower you don’t want to squish! If you hold it like an afterthought, you can’t possibly turn someone on with it. You’ve got to hold it like the delicate little jewel of nature that it is! Don’t grab it like a cheap apple, treat it like the seductive, sinfully delicious apple that it is.

I swear to you, one of the sexiest things I ever observed was another woman eating an apple! She totally took the time to hold it and wrap her lips around it before biting and tasting it with porn-star perfection…

4. Squeak! Moan! Let Go!
I mean, honestly, if you’re hungry enough, this will just happen automatically. Get into it, Girl! Enjoy it and let them see and HEAR how tasty that juicy raw food is! Giggle at how delicious it is. They won’t be able to ignore it when you do this!

Finally, bringing it in for the power-move, number

5: Drip!
For heaven’s sake! That’s the sexiest part. The little drips that roll down your finger or face mean you get to smile an embarrassed little giggle, then clean up with the most obviously sensual, finger and tongue routine. Definitely drip, Darling!

And, that, dear Diva, is how you get others “turned on” for raw food, and admittedly, have a smashingly good time while you’re at it! Seduce those strawberries!

Ginger Lime Body Polish
Take a mini vacation to the tropics with this exfoliating treatment that will leave your skin feeling smooth to the touch.

Sugar
A sugar scrub is a scrub made with natural sugars for a gentler affect. Sugar scrubs are less dehydrating than salt scrubs and can be used by all skin types. Sugar scrubs promote the growth of healthier skin cells and promote cellular turnover. I like to use white sugar in this recipe because once you zest the lime; the zest is visually stimulating to the eye against the backdrop of the white sugar.

Macadamia Nut Oil
Macadamia Nut Oil (Macadamia integrifolia) is expeller pressed from the nut of the macadamia nut tree and is high in palmitoleic acid, a monounsaturated fatty acid commonly found in other vegetable oils. Palmitoleic acid is also found in sebum, thus macadamia oil has been often recommended for mature skin, which starts to dry as the sebum production diminishes. It is high nourishing and emollient oil recommended for dry and mature skin.

Ginger Essential Oil
Ginger essential oil (Zingiber officinale) Ginger seems to improve the body’s ability to sweat, help circulation and help us get rid of cold symptoms and the flu.

Lime Essential Oil
Lime Essential Oil (Citrus aurantifolia) is steam distilled using the whole fruit and expressed lime oil is cold-pressed from the fruit rind of green limes. Cold-pressed lime oil acts as an astringent, counteracting overproduction of sebum, and is especially useful for oily skin. Its antibacterial property is useful for the treatment of acne.

Lime (fruit)
Lime (Citrus aurantifolia) is smaller in size than the lemon, with a thin smooth skin. It has a sweet smell and contains less juice than the lemon, but packs a powerful punch when used in food and skin care recipes.

Recipe:
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup macadamia nut oil
5 drops ginger essential oil
4 drops lime essential oil
Zest from 1 lime

Directions:
Combine 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup macadamia nut oil in a bowl and mix well. Add zest of 1 lime to sugar and oil mixture and combine well. Add 5 drops of ginger essential oil and 4 drops of lime essential oil to mixture and combine well. Apply mixture to entire body in a circular motion, paying close attention to heels, knees and elbows. Shower off in warm water and notice the soft touch to the skin left behind by the macadamia nut oil and the fragrant aroma of the essential oils. This scrub invigorates and exfoliates the skin, while the macadamia nut oil and essential oil are left to moisturize the body and leave the skin with an intoxicating aroma.

Enjoy!

By Tracy Neely

I’ve been making this little recipe a lot for myself and tonight I mixed it with a whole bunch of sunflower and pea sprouts.

2 organic zucchinis
a pinch of sea salt
a drizzle of olive oil
2-3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
3-4 raw olives

Directions:
With your friendly-neighborhood vegetable peeler, peel the zucchini into thin strips and pile ‘em high. Sprinkle with that little pinch of salt, drizzle with oil, and leave them just long enough to get slippery and for the moisture to start coming out of the zucchinis because of the salt. (10 minutes)

Now, sprinkle nutritional yeast, stir throughout and sprinkle some chopped, olives on the top.

Sit down with a gorgeous little bowl and slim, sexy fork, then dive in, Baby!

A Note About This Recipe:
OH MY GOSH! This particular recipe includes 4 of the things I have been depriving myself of for the last 2 years! Naturally, you can imagine my glee and salivatingly satisfying enjoyment of this little dish.

Since Dr. T has come on board for The Truth About Your Food campaign, I have been making some major adjustments to my diet! Sign up for the Truth About Your Food, and you, too, will have a total-health transformation!!

Today was such a strange day. It was sunny and I was distracted by girlie thoughts. Lost a big chunk of a day to my need to “communicate my feelings” and write another self-expressed monologue from Tera the Compulsive Communicator.

Then I got lost in sappy 80s music on Youtube when I should have been studying.
Does that ever happen to you? Where you have the NEED to communicate something and you want to do it right and you want to do it carefully, and so you just pour yourself into the clarity and articulate details of e v e r y s i n g l e word?

*sigh*

Do you?

I just stumbled upon this song, and it’s so totally reflective of how I have felt countless times in relationship to men.

Maybe it’s the moon…

Maybe it’s hormones…

Maybe I’ve been studying too much…

Maybe it’s just me.

Listen, wherever you are, whoever you are, however you are, whatever the heck you wear and no matter how much pudge you carry around the middle, or how many vericose veins you have or how much that cellulite gets you down just know that I think you are a super, duper, delicious diva exactly the way you ARE!!

Diva, love thyself! Embrace the beautiful art of being! Some days, that’s all you need to put on the to do list.

Love you,

Tera