Homemade Italian Salad Dressing

Healthy Homemade Italian Salad Dressing


1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup red wine vinegar 
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup cold pressed olive oil
1 tbsp. stone ground mustard
1 tsp. liquid stevia 
1 large clove of garlic
1/8 tsp. oregano 
1/8 tsp. basil
1/8 tsp. thyme


Blend in your blender until completely liquified.  

Can Eating Good Healthy Fat Make Me Slim?

Can Eating Good Healthy Fat Make Me Slim?


Most Americans today live on sugar. Their diets are mainly made up of simple carbs like white bread, chips, milk, cookies..... you get the idea. The average american actually consumes 180 pounds of SUGAR PER YEAR! That is a lot of sugar!


What happens to your body when you put that much sugar into it? It actually starts burning sugar instead of fat! So most peoples bodies today burn sugar, and they wonder why their having trouble loosing weight and why they are constantly craving for sugar!


Even if you don't think you consume that much sugar, you might want to think again! 


If you are having cereal for breakfast, lets just through out Fiber One. You are actually getting 43 GRAMS OF carbs (aka, 10.75 TSP. of sugar) in one serving! Now thats without the pasteurized milk and cup of orange juice! Add those two things between 70-80 GRAMS of carbs (aka, 20 TSP. of sugar). And thats how most americans who think their HEALTHY start there day.


Now you might be thinking right now, "Milk? I thought milk was good for me? Calcium??!!!." Well when you pasteurize the already antibiotic filled milk, you are taking away all of the nutrients. So if there was any calcium in the milk to begin with its long gone now. All you left with is SUGAR and antibiotics.


How you train your body to burn fat is by actually consuming good healthy fats like coconut oil, coconut milk, cold pressed olive oil, organic range free eggs, organic grass fed BEEF and even raw organic milk. Your diet should be made up of around 60% good healthy fat like the ones I just mentioned. 


You should also stop eating all processed grains. Grains are inflammatory, and can cause many health problems! Where you should be getting your carbs is from vegetables, and some fruit. You should load up on good protein and good fat. 


Your day could look something like: 
Breakfast- 3-4 eggs scrambled, REAL sea salt and pepper, cooked in either raw butter or coconut oil (BTW, when you cook with coconut oil it looses its coconut taste). 


Lunch- A piece of WILD caught fish or organic chicken breast, with a bowl of guacamole and raw veggies such as cucumber, red pepper and broccoli. 


Snack: Grainless Granola, raw pecans, raw slivered almonds, raisins, raw sunflower seeds and some cinnamon. 


Dinner- Steak, with a big veggie salad. Organic romaine lettuce, kale or spinach, diced tomato, chopped broccoli, chopped cucumbers and chopped carrots. With homemade salad dressing (I'll post my made up recipe). 


Dessert- My homemade made up raw vanilla ice cream (I have posted this recipe).      

What oils are good and what oils are bad?

With there being so many different oils on the market, its hard to know which ones are healthy are which ones aren't.

Coconut oil is derived from the kernel or meat of the coconut from the coconut palm. Coconut oil has been the primary source of fat for millions of people across the world for thousands of years. This slow to oxidize, therefore resistant to rancidity oil is one of the best oils not just for cooking but for overall body health.

Coconut oil is beneficial in many ways; almost too many to mention. In brief, coconut oil is helpful to the body in the following ways:

• Hair Care

• Skin Care

• Heart Disease Prevention

• Weight Loss Aid (Short and medium fatty acid chains help with weight loss as well as its ability to help balance the thyroid and enzymes in the body.)

• Digestive Aid (The antimicrobial, antifungal, and antibacterial traits of coconut oil fight off bacteria that cause indigestion.)

• Immunity Booster

The main reasons why coconut oil is so healthy is the content of the following components:

• Lauric Acid

• Capric Acid

• Caprylic Acid

These components have vital properties that make coconut oil protect the body by utilizing the following characteristics:

• Antimicrobial

• Antioxidant

• Antifungal

• Antibacterial

Why I don’t cook with Olive Oil??!!!

Most of you have heard about the Mediterranean diet and the much praised use of olive oil. Olive oil is a great, healthy oil to use in its raw form, but you must not use it to cook with. One of the biggest dangers surrounding olive oil is that it begins to decompose at around 200F. Research also shows that olive oil heated repeatedly or to a very high level can oxidize and become hydrogenated. That is why I suggest you use coconut oil to cook with! 

Genetically Modified Cooking Oils are NOT Good For You!

One of the most misunderstood and most talked about cooking oil is canola oil. The name was originally LEAR (Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed) but for marketing purposes was changed to canola oil. This word was derived from the combination of the phrase, “Canadian oil.” Canola oil is a much more appealing name than LEAR oil or rape oil. But is the oil appealing for you and should you be using it in your foods?

Canola oil was developed as the food industry began to search for healthy and cost effective alternatives to saturated fats in oils. These saturated fats had come to the mainstream attention as a result of the American Heart Association and other government agencies spreading reports of saturated fats, often found in commonly used cooking oils, being bad for your heart health. Many of these reports were particularly aimed at corn oil and soybean oil. As food manufacturers searched and experimented they discovered rapeseed oil. Rapeseed oil is monounsaturated oil. The problem with this original type of rapeseed oil is that it was very high in erucic acid. Erucic acid is a fatty acid found in rapeseed and mustard oils that is linked to heart damage in particular Keshan’s Disease, a disease characterized by fibrotic lesions of the heart. Food manufacturers continued their journey into refining rapeseed and canola oils until they came up with a formula in the late 1970’s to genetically manipulate the rapeseed plant by seed splitting. This seed split oil produced canola oil with less erucic acid and higher amounts of oleic acid. This was the oil referred to at the time as LEAR as in Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed. Although there are not the previously high levels of erucic acid in canola oil there are still reasons for serious concern if you use canola oil.

Problems with Canola Oil

Canola oil has still been linked to Keshan’s disease (characterized by heart lesion,) as well as a host of other health concerns.

Canola Oil Health Concerns:

• Heart health problems

• Vitamin E Deficiencies

• Blood platelet abnormalities

• Retarding normal growth (for this reason canola oil is banned from infant formulas)

• Increased cancer risks from hydrogenation process and created trans fats

• Free radical damage

During this hydrogenation and processing Trans fatty acids are created. You want to avoid consuming these dangerous by products of processing oils at all costs. In fact, this is one of the biggest reasons to avoid cooking with the following oils:

• Corn

• Soy

• Safflower

But that’s not all you have to be concerned about when it comes to canola oil. Monsanto has recently been using genetically modified organisms or GMO’s in its canola oil seeds. In fact, Monsanto is selling genetically modified seeds for the following plants:

• Canola

• Alfalfa

• Corn

• Cotton

• Sorghum

• Soybeans

• Sugarbeets

• Wheat

Sources: www.draxe.com

Healthy Chocolate Fondu

Healthy Chocolate Fondu

I was playing around in the kitchen and decided to make some sort of chocolate sauce. Well it turned into this. Healthy Chocolate Fondu.

1/2 can of full fat unsweetened coconut milk
2 heaping tbsp. cacao or cocoa powder
2 tsp. clear liquid stevia
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Pour coconut milk into little sauce pan, turn on stove to a low heat. Let coconut milk warm up and start adding ingredients and whisking. You might want to add more coconut milk depending on how thick you like it.

Grainless Crepe

I made up this recipe, for my mom one morning. She wasn't able to eat any starches or sugars so I decided to create a grainless crepe.  

Grainless Crepe

1/4 cup ground almonds (almond flour)

1 tbsp. ground flax seeds

1 organic egg

1 tbsp coconut milk

5-8 drops stevia

1/2 tsp pure vanilla

Combine all ingredients in bowl. Pure into a pan, like you would make pancakes. 

Sauce 

1/2 cup coconut milk

1 heaping tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp. stevia extract

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients in little sauce pan and whisk while letting it simmer. When its smooth and warm pour over crepes and put fresh organic strawberries and banana on top.

Grainless Blueberry Pie

I made this up for my dad, who LOVES blueberry pie.

Crust
2 cups almond flour
2 organic eggs
2 tbsp. coconut oil or raw butter
1/2 tsp. sea salt
2 tbsp. raw honey

Filling
2 cups organic wild blueberries (frozen)
1/2 cup raw blue agave
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Combine all crust ingredients in bowl, and mix until well combined. Lay a little more then half the crust in a pie pan, then fill the crust with filling and lay the rest of the crust on top! Place in oven and set the timer for 15 minutes. If you think it needs to be backed more then put it in for 5 more minutes!

Almond Crackers with Homemade Hummus

These almond crackers are a great grainless snack, I didn't make them up but I did make up the hummus recipe! The crackers are from Dr Axe's cookbook, which you are able to order at www.draxe.com

1 can garbanzo beans

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 large clove of garlic 

1 tsp. sea salt

1/4 olive oil

2 tsp. braggs liquid aminos