Healing Foods: Honeybell Orange Juice and Candied Orange Rind

January marks the month for Honeybell Oranges. These delicious, juicy oranges are only available at the first of the year for a very short time. We ordered a few cases of them for our office to give everyone some much needed vitamin C and a delicious treat during a long, post-holiday month.

I brought some of these beauties home to make freshly squeezed orange juice for part of my two week juice fast (more on that later) and to give the girls a glass of vitamin packed goodness in the morning. I also zested the skin of the orange to use in salad dressings. Even the zest was delicious, so I decided to candy some of the rind in a sugar syrup (a very English thing to do--my mother loves candied citrus) and--once cooked--dip the candied orange rind into a semisweet chocolate. It makes for a heavenly, bitter/sweet treat that provides additional vitamin C and dietary fiber along with a bit of vitamin A and calcium.

Easy to make and an elegant, delicious sweet to eat--these are great to serve as a light, sweet treat with tea or coffee.

Candied Orange Peel

Cut and quarter 4-5 oranges, removing the fruit. Thinly slice the skin quarters lengthwise. Bring 21/2 cups of sugar and 2 cups of water to a boil, add orange peel and reduce heat to medium/low. Let orange rinds simmer in the sugar syrup, stirring occasionally, for about 1.5 hours. With a slotted spoon, remove orange rinds from the syrup and place on a rack to cool. Let sit for 24 hours. Melt 2 cups semisweet chocolate morsels. Holding the rind at one end, dip the rind and cover one half of the length of the rind with melted chocolate. Place on a sheet of tin foil or wax paper to cool. Refrigerate 5 minutes to allow chocolate to harden, then peel from paper and place in an airtight container. Refrigerate until ready to eat.

Healing Foods: Carrot Ginger Soup and Carrot Ginger Juice and Remembering Glenn

A year ago at this time, my friends and I were in the full throes of cooking for our dear friend Glenn. Diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer in early March, Glenn hoped to beat the 3-15 month time left given by his doctors and stay here as long as possible to be with his partner and children.

I offered to be Glenn’s personal chef and nutritional coach, and assembled a team of our friends to help with research, cooking, shopping and food delivery. I bought a Breville juicer, and started making him freshly squeezed juices, soups and teas that would be comforting and nutrient dense during his first chemo treatments.

Glenn never lost his wicked and wonderful sense of humor during his illness. In an email to us on April 2, when three girlfriends got together to make him carrot and ginger soup and some other treats, he wrote “I cannot thank you all enough! I have an image of the three of you over a pot, chanting, circling, chanting, circling, spitting on the pot, burning sage and chanting up the boil in the pot, toss in left ear of a dead man, POOF! and then y'all toss heads back and cackle and howl with delight! All to make the perfect Carrot and Ginger soup! Well, that's the image I have, and I like it.” We loved that image, too, and when he took to calling us Catherine’s Coven after that, the name stuck.

The carrot ginger soup was a puree of carrots, a bit of sautéed onion, and some chopped ginger simmered in a rich chicken stock and pureed. The beta-carotene and vitamins in the carrots were fortifying, and the ginger helped to soothe digestion and stave off nausea. In the early days of cooking for Glenn, both the soup and carrot ginger juice were staples in his fridge, ready anytime he had a bit of an appetite or needed some soothing food. More than the food, Glenn enjoyed the love and community that came with our nutritional gift, and was bowled over by all the love, care and concern coming his way.

Sadly, Glenn lost his battle with cancer, but we all still think of him daily as we remember our journey together last year, and the amazing father, partner, friend and man that he was. To carry out his wish that I write a cookbook, I started a food blog, and continue to cook for others and share healing recipes for people going through illness.

I have also continued my food research, and continue to learn more about the healing and nutritional power of food. I have begun juicing in earnest, and love the energy packed shots of juice in various fruit and vegetable combinations throughout the day. The recipes for carrot ginger soup, and carrot ginger juice have become regular menu items in my family--both the soup and the juice are delicious, healthy, and comforting.

Carrot Ginger Soup

2 teaspoons olive oil

½ chopped onion

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

5-7 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped

2 cups chicken stock

salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a skillet, sauté onion and ginger. In a saucepan, put carrots and stock and simmer for 20 minutes until carrots are tender. Add onion/ginger mixture. Puree in batches in a food processor until smooth. Return to saucepan and season with salt and pepper. Serve.

Carrot Ginger Juice

4-5 carrots

1 inch piece ginger

½ granny smith apple

Juice all ingredients together and serve!

Healing Foods: Beet Celery Orange Juice and Another Believer!

I have been telling my sister and brother-in-law how much I love the fresh vegetable and fruit juices I have been making to give the family a much needed vitamin boost for breakfast. This morning, I made a beet, orange and celery juice that was a big hit. The juice is part sweet from the beets, part zingy with fresh squeezed orange and calming with the celery juice, and it is a nutrient packed glass of deliciousness.

I have been experimenting with this one for a bit, trying to find good, healthy combinations using beets that are tasty enough for two picky daughters. All of my waxing about the power of green vegetable juice and fresh juicing even made my brother-in-law John go out and get his own Breville super juicer. He has been making his own green juices for about a week now. I told him about this juice combo, and he asked for the recipe.

According to www.whfoods.org, beets have been shown to provide anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, and detoxification support, and help to promote eye health. Beets also include enzymes that aid in the prevention and treatment of certain cancer types. 1 orange provides 100% of our daily dose of vitamin C, and is a good source of A and B vitamins, beta-carotene and potassium. Celery is a powerful anti-inflammatory, and is a good source of iron, folic acid, potassium and calcium.

So, when I let John know how wonderful this juice was, he suggested that I send him the recipe. I am sending this with love to my brother-in-law, and to all looking for delicious fresh squeezed juice recipes to set their day…

Beet, Celery and Orange Juice

2 beets, washed and quartered

2 stalks celery

2 oranges, quartered and skin removed

Add all ingredients to juicer. Makes 2 servings.

Healing Food: Ayurvedic Green Juice and an Inspiring Family

Dana (second from right) and Dan with their cousins and Grandma in 2009

On my recent trip back to Ohio, I was elated at the amazing recovery my niece Dana has made.

She and my nephew Dan met and fell in love in college, and became each other’s biggest fans at soccer matches (hers) and golf matches (his) that they played with their now alma-mater Dennison University’s teams.

Not long after they were married, she was coaching high school soccer and teaching, and the two lovebirds spent time running, hiking, following their dreams and loving their new life together. Then Dana started to experience excruciating back pains that sidelined her active lifestyle, and eventually kept her housebound trying to manage the pain and learn how it could be cured.

Over the course of two years, she visited doctor after doctor with my nephew, traveling from Ohio to Minnesota in search of a specialist who could help her. She grew weary of the pain, and fearful of the pain medication that she needed every day to perform the simplest of tasks. A degenerative disk disease was diagnosed, and surgery followed. She continued to have terrible pain after surgery, and to suffer side effects from the medication. She lost weight and muscle, and much of her appetite.

Her doctor recommended an Ayurvedic healer, who helped her with pain management strategies through meditation and breathing. She also began to follow an Ayurvedic diet, which helped to rid her of the toxins the pain medication had produced. She began to respond to the treatments, and began to wean herself from the medications she depended on for two years. She is now able to sit comfortably, travel on planes, drive, tie her shoes and cut the food on her plate—tasks that were impossible with the pain she felt in her back and limbs. When I saw her at my birthday dinner, she was radiant, healthy, beautiful and smiling—I was thrilled for her.

It inspired me to get out my Ayurvedic cookbooks and do some online research on Ayurvedic diet. One of my happy discoveries was a website called Joyful Belly (www.joyfulbelly.com) . This website, founded by John Immel, is a wealth of food information, and has some wonderful recipes that I have tried over the past week.

One of them, kale ginger lemonade, is a healthy, cleansing and nutritionally dense drink that I would love to make part of my daily breakfast routine.

Rather than post the recipe and photo of this amazing green drink, I invite you to visit the website and get the recipe for yourself, and explore some of John’s wonderful recipes and healthy living tips. I saw first hand how this path helped my niece, and am happy to spread the good word.

www.joyfulbelly.com

Healing Foods: My Juicy New Year

The recent holidays are a blur of great family, friends, fun and food. Lots of rich, delicious, decadent food. I had planned to write about the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Christmas Eve, the poached foie gras and lentils on Christmas day, the oysters, foie gras and lobster on New Year’s eve and all of the sumptuous eating and drinking in between….but was either too busy eating or too sated from all the food and drink to sit down and type. I promised myself that I’d go back to blogging in earnest in January.

And here it is—the first month of the new year—filled with infinite possibilities. I am not much of a resolution maker, but my daughter asked that January be a true “healthy eating” month. I am happy to comply. We made a pact to eat more vegetarian meals, and I pulled out my juicer to give our healthy eating plan a kick-start. January will be filled with lots of great juicing—and I have tapped my Ayurvedic and yogic cookbooks for some great green juice recipes.

According to Lissa Rankin MD, an integrative medicine practitioner in California and green juice enthusiast (www.owningpink.com), organic green juice is a readily assimilated, easily digestible, unbelievably nutritious superfood. 
 Drinking green juice fills your body with living enzymes, vitamins, oxygen, and phytonutrients. Because of this, green juice feeds your cells the necessary nutrients, allowing your cells to uncover the body's innate healing power, thereby boosting your body's ability to fight infection and heal chronic diseases.


Because the juicer eliminates the fiber that keeps you from being able to eat 3 pound of green veggies in one sitting, green juice allows you to consume more veggies and provides your digestive tract with much-needed rest, allowing the body to focus on repair, healing, detoxification, and renewal. Using organic produce, the nutrition you introduce to your body via green juice has very few, if any, of the chemicals and toxins we usually put into our bodies.

I have been making green juices to drink first thing in the morning and as a nightcap before going to bed. In the morning, our potassium filled energy juice is a medley of carrot, celery, spinach and parsley juices for an energy packed breakfast. At night, a juice of celery, cucumber and parsley is both calming and healing. In between, we eat healthy, vegetable rich meals, and drink lots of water. All of these recipes will be shared eventually, but I am including the juice recipes today for both inspiration and suggestion. I feel great….and want this feeling to carry me through all of 2011!

A happy, juicy new year to all….

Morning Green Juice

3 carrots, 3 stocks celery, ½ bunch parsley, 1 bunch spinach.

Juice all veggies together, mix and drink. Makes about two 6 oz servings.

Bedtime Calming Juice

1 large cucumber, 6 celery stalks, ½ bunch parsley.

Juice all veggies together. Makes 2 servings.

Dr. Lissa Rankin’s Green Superjuice (for daytime energy boost)

3-4 large kale leaves, ½ bunch swiss chard, 1 bunch sunflower sprouts, 3 stalks celery, 1 large cucumber, juice of 1 lemon, small piece fresh ginger, and 1 seeded jalapeno.

Juice all veggies together. Makes 2 servings.