Campfire Cooking with Glorious One-Pot Meals

August 14, 2017

Wally W. of Cornville, Arizona sent me this message about his experience in preparing Glorious One-Pot Meals in a campfire rather than in an oven:

Hello Elizabeth,

I found your book at the library when searching for dutch oven cookbooks. When I go camping it’s fun to cook in a dutch oven (camp oven, with feet) over charcoal. I’ve found that your recipes from “Glorious One-Pot Meals” work just fine in a camp oven. The only trick is using enough coals for a hot oven. Recipes that cook more than 30 minutes will require a new set of hot coals mid way through the cooking. Otherwise, the recipes as given are wonderful in the open air.

Thanks for sharing, Wally! I agree that GOPMs are a great to make when camping!

Face Cleanser for Sensitive Skin

June 12, 2017November 23, 2024

Clear skin can be accomplished simply by have a good skin care routine, and the foundation of your routine should be a nourishing, non-drying, non-abrasive skin cleanser that does a through job of removing make-up, sweat, and daily grime. I’ve found just the one with BeautyCounter’s Nourishing Cream Cleanser.

This cleanser is nice and thick to grip onto the unwanted debris without irritating the tender skin on your face, yet it’s gentle enough to use every day.

Rub a pea-sized amount over a wet face with your hands or a washcloth and it rinses off cleanly without leaving your face tight and dry or reddened.

There are so many reasons to love BeautyCounter products and one of them is because they are free from chemical additives and preservatives that can cause breakouts, itching, or redness for sensitive people.

Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a sensitive person, it’s wise to consider your personal toxic load and always try to reduce exposure to harmful chemicals and toxins whenever possible.

Relieve a Sunburn with Apple Cider Vinegar and Coconut Oil

June 8, 2017November 23, 2024

As hard as I try to help my kids avoid a sunburn, there have been a couple of times over the years when they’ve gotten sunburned regardless of my best efforts. Learning about this surprising use for apple cider vinegar that helped my daughter recover quickly and comfortably from a sunburn after a day spent bike riding in the Colorado sun.

This month my teen and tween are both enrolled in a fantastic bike camp where the kids bike to various parks all over the city while learning bike safety, maintenance, and urban navigation along the way. Being in the sunshine is unavoidable when biking –and of course, good for absorbing vitamin D– and I encourage them to lather on a chemical-free, mineral-based sunscreen in the morning before they leave the house. And mostly they do.

However, sometimes the sun is so strong that they burn anyway. Especially my blue-eyed daughter, who will be nicely tanned by the end of the summer, but now, in early June, is still pretty fair-skinned. Which is why what happened yesterday when she rode fourteen miles with her camp group and came home with reddened arms.

By bedtime, her arms were hot and burning. I suggested she rub aloe vera gel on them, which she did, but it wasn’t enough.

A true child of the computer age, she got online and searched for sunburn remedies and found this one that had been recommended by many people. So we tried it… and lo and behold, it worked! Within just a few minutes her pain diminished, and by the next morning she rejoiced in how significantly the redness had faded.

Here’s what she did.

Apple Cider Vinegar Sunburn Remedy

Soak a small washcloth in a bowl of apple cider vinegar to saturate the cloth.
Place the washcloth on the sunburned area for a one to three minutes. Allow skin to dry.
Slather coconut oil over the sunburned area and allow to soak in. Do not rinse off. The coconut oil will moisturize, nourish, and heal the skin.
Repeat every twelve hours (morning and night) or as desired until redness and pain are gone.

Alleviating the inflammation from a sunburn quickly translates to reducing the cancer risk from a sunburn.

Pure, Clean, and Trusted Vitamins: Back2Health

May 31, 2017November 23, 2024

When I look for clean supplements from a trusted source, I find them at Back2Health.

European Extracts vs. Chinese Ingredients

Unlike many supplements where the ingredients come from murky Chinese sources, Back2Health uses European extracts created using strict extraction methodologies and tests each ingredients for identity, strength, purity, and composition in their FDA-certified in-house laboratory in Southern California

All Back2Health products are completely additive-free, meaning that you’re getting the vitamins rather than extra ingredients like lubricants, flow agents, disintegrants, binders and fillers. Additives like these are highly refined and could potentially trigger inflammation –not what we’re aiming for when we take vitamins!–, so it’s best to avoid them whenever possible.

Why We Should Avoid Stearic Acid

The most common additives in supplements may be stearic acid and magnesium stearate. Although stearic acid is found “naturally” in many foods, the stearic cid that is used in the nutritional supplement world largely comes from cottonseed oil.

What’s wrong with cottonseed oil? Besides knowing that cotton is one of the most heavily sprayed crops with pesticides, most of the conventional cotton grown in the USA is GMO.

If this weren’t enough, the cottonseed oil is hydrogenated in order to bioengineer it into stearic acid, turning it into a trans fat, and we already know that we should be avoiding trans fats to protect our health!

Magnesium stearate is produced using stearic acid, making it an even more highly refined mix of pesticide residue, GMO, and trans fat. Yuck! This isn’t what I want in my vitamins!

Back2Health Supplements are Clean

We can rest easy knowing that Back2Health supplements contain the active ingredients sourced from whole foods and the vegan capsule and nothing else. Most of the products are gluten-free and all contain pure coenzymated methyl folate, making them bioavailable to the 46% of Americans who have the MTHFR genetic variance and don’t assimilate regular B vitamins well.

Daily Multi-Vitamin Supplements for Women and Men

We know that women and men have different nutritional needs, and these multi-vitamins are good sources for the ingredients we need to be healthy.

The Women’s formula is tailored for the specific health needs of women, including antioxidants, extra vitamin B6, extra calcium, coenzymes, and coenzymated L-5 mthyl folate.

The Men’s formula addresses the specific health needs of men, including antioxidants, extra zinc and lycopene plus co-enzymes and coenzymated L-5 methyl folate.

Purchase a single bottle, or save by signing up for regular shipments so that you’ll never run out.

Mitochondria and MS

May 9, 2017May 16, 2017

In the continuing quest to discover the cause of multiple sclerosis, some researchers are looking at a new source: our mitochondria.

Mitochondria are the structures in our cells that create energy for our body. Researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Alberta have noticed that MS patients have a lot of a protein called RAB 32 and, when there is a lot of RAB32, intercellular calcium supplies are pushed too close to the mitochondria, disrupting normal processes and causing toxicity.

Scientists believe this research will lead to treatments that target RAB32 and may lead to discovering that other proteins contribute to MS symptoms.

When I hear that MS patients have an abundance of a protein in their cells the first thing that comes to my mind is the need for plant-based digestive enzymes in our diets.

While Dr. Loomis believes that every adult over age 40 should be supplementing with digestive enzymes due to the wear-and-tear on our digestive tracts from simply living that long, I find that the great majority of my MS patients have dysfunctional guts as well as an autoimmune diagnosis.

I believe that healing the gut, avoiding your personal inflammatory triggers, and supplementing with the right plant-based digestive enzymes is the foundation for managing every autoimmune disease, including the one I’ve been diagnosed with myself, multiple sclerosis.

I’m happy to offer anyone a free 30-minute phone call to discuss whether this approach could help you live a symptom-free life with MS or any other autoimmune disease. Contact me to schedule your free call now and empower yourself to heal without waiting for microcellular science to catch up!