Juice of one pomegranate, juice enough oranges to fill a quart jar.

Nectar of the gods.

Both are in season and so they are both sweet and delicious.

Pomegranates and oranges both have lots of vitamin C, folate, calcium, magnesium, potassium, omega 6 and protein. Poms have vitamin K and oranges have lots of vitamin A.

See the way nature works – in season in the winter to help support your immune system – yay!

Nature rocks.

I added a new widget to the right side bar from SkipThePie.org 

Type in any fruit or veggie (or any other food) to find more information about the nutrients in the food. It’s for some quickie info. For a more in depth look at the nutrients you need to check out  NuritionData.com - which also has information for all kinds of prepared food you’d find at your store and restaurant. You can easily find out the nutition data in any of your raw recipes using these sites.

NutritionData.com is where I found the info
for this Papaya Romaine Banana smoothie recipe.

I never buy pineapple because I never can find ripened on the plant pineapples. The pineapples in the store, like many fruit, are picked early, thus unripe. Pineapples picked early and ripened “on the counter” instead of “on the vine” always burn my tongue. The first bite is ok but if I eat more, it burns my tongue.

When I lived in Costa Rica, the pineapple, picked so ripe and served, was like candy. Cotton candy! Unbelievable flavor. Unbelievably smooth and sweet. I guess I’ll have to go back if I ever want a good pineapple again.

But I bought a Del Monte Costa Rican pineapple at Sams Wholesale club the other day. I only bought it because it had a strong sweet scent – a good sign. And I though I’d take a chance. It actually was pretty good. Not as sweet and smooth as picked fresh and ripe, but it was ripe enough not to burn my tongue. I looked at the label and it said “Product of Costa Rica.” I realized it had been living and growing in the Costa Rican sun. And I thought that was nice since I too had lived in the Costa Rican sun.

So I cut it up and juiced almost the entire pineapple, with 1 head of romaine, and about 6 stalks of celery.

Juiced it, strained it in a nut milk bag – it made a whole quart. It was a beautiful bright yellow green and it tasted amazing, smooth and slightly sweet!

Costa Rican Sun Juice

3/4 pineapple with core
1 head romaine
6 stalks of celery
Cut top and sides off pineapple, juice, strain, enjoy.

PS: Masticating juicers like my Omega 8005 (with an auger) don’t do well with apples and pineapples. It gets too think and I have to keep cleaning the screen. But they juice great with a centrifugal juicer like a Breville or Jack LaLanne type juicer.

Do you know how amazing our livers are? It’s the second largest organ of our body – our skin being the first largest organ. It’s on the right side of the body, just below the rib cage. It’s huge!

And it is the only organ that can regenerate itself – as little as 25% of a liver can regenerate into a whole liver. Amazing. (I had a tonsil grow back after removal when I was a kid, what’s up with that?)

It detoxifys our body, everything we eat, every nutrient and every bit of toxic junk we eat passes through the liver. Then the liver changes it into whatever it changes into and moves it onto where ever it needs to go. I’m sure there is a more scientific way to phrase that – but that’s how I see the liver working. It’s like a big bouncer at the door of the fancy nightclub – directing traffic here and there. And it does it all the time without any admiration and love and notice.

So this bouncer helps digest what we consume, it directs the bad stuff away and it makes proteins and stores glucose (and stores iron too). Proteins that help rebuild and grow and heal. It also makes bile – which is sent to the small intestine and the gall bladder – (the gall bladder stores the bile for times when it’s needed in the small intestine to help with the breakdown of  fats.)

So with our SAD (standard american diet) diets, our poor liver is overworked and desperately needs a vacation. If it doesn’t get a vacation soon, it’s going to protest and go on strike. And if it doesn’t go on strike, at the very least it’s not going to doing a very good job. Part of the not doing a good job is what it does with the bile. The liver also uses bile to clean up our blood. Our blood has all kinds of stuff floating around in it most of the time. Undigested food, yeast, parasites (“if you eat meat, you don’t eat alone”), dead red blood cells and such. All this stuff makes the blood thick. That’s why doctors often ask you to “not eat after midnight” before a procedure – they want the blood clean and free of undigested food.

Before I got into raw food, I had a live blood cell analysis done. This is where they stick your finger and put a drop of blood on a glass slide and put it under a microscope which is projected on a monitor (dark-field microscope). At the time, the lady had to jab my finger several times before it would bleed and then the blood was so sticky it barely came out. SO, on the screen, my blood cells were stacked up like checkers. She showed me parasites and undigested food. This was even after fasting since the night before, showing that I was not digesting effectively or efficiently.

She sent me away to spend a week eating lots of salad, drinking lots of water, taking lots of digestive enzymes.

I returned to do the procedure once again. What a difference the week made. She only had to jab me once and the blood flowed freely out. The red blood cells were floating freely around instead of being stacked up. There were no undigested food particles. I don’t recall about the parasites. I had not done a parasite cleanse, so chances were I still had them. The live visual evidence is a powerful tool.

There are many ways to aid and support the body for optimum health. Eating simply, more natural food. Fasting and cleansing when you can. Colonics and enemas when needed. And there is also the coffee enema – one of the cornerstones of the Gerson Institutes Cancer Healing program (coffee helps to open the bile ducts so that the liver may dump its toxins, in case you wondered.) And going the extra mile by supporting our bouncer with a much needed vacation – do a Liver and Gallbladder Cleanse.

My cousin died of breast cancer recently – she had a SAD diet (standard american diet) – she microwaved her food, drank instant tea and instant coffees, drank lots of cows milk, ate meat, ate packaged, processed foods-just pop ‘em in the microwave and rarely ever a live fresh raw fruit or vegetable.  My best friend just died of breast cancer in January. She ate meat, drank wine, cooked food and rarely fresh raw fruits and vegies. And when she began fighting her cancer she only used accupuncture, massage and other natural alternative methods – but didn’t change her diet. When the doctor gave her 2 weeks to live, then she asked about the Gerson Institute Therapy. It was too late.

Get some nutrition in you! It’s easy to add a raw green smoothie to your daily diet for a month  - see how you feel! It seems to be easier for people to be cut on, to take a pill, to get a shot. I’ve heard that people would change their religion and anything else before they change their diet. Be courageous, get emotional support. Just try.

If you would like to learn more about the facinating Gerson Institute and their program, here are some videos featuring the vibrant Charlotte Gerson, daughter of Dr. Max Gerson. I have put the time length of each of the videos as well as a little description of the content.

“The Gerson Therapy is a safe, natural treatment developed by Dr. Max Gerson in the 1920’s that uses organic foods, juicing, coffee enemas, detoxification and natural supplements to activate the body’s ability to heal itself. Over the past 60 years, thousands of people have used the Gerson Therapy to recover from so-called “incurable” diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and arthritis.”

This site has some interesting pages and here is a link to a page on the  Gerson Protocol that gives an overview of the program.

TAPE ONE

Tape 1
1 hour 55 min.
Healing and Preventing Incurable Diseases

TAPE TWO

Tape 2
1 hour 45 min.

Workshop: Doing the Gerson Therapy at Home Part 1
- not drinking water on the program
- pure water for enemas, soups and other external uses
- thyroid function, immune system and cancer
- thyroid function, cholesterol and heart disease
- fats, oils and tumor growth
- the importance of flax seed oil (not flax seed)
- organic food and composting
- forbidden items on therapy
- seeds, legumes and enzyme inhibitors
- spices, juicing and cooked foods on the program

TAPE THREE

Tape 3

1 hour 57 min.

Doing the Gerson Therapy at Home Part 2

- Why do the coffee enemas
- chemotherapy and Gerson therapy
- info on a diabetes, gout, obesity treatment success
- why you can feel bad while detoxing (the healing crisis is a good thing!)
- medications, vitamins Gerson treatment uses
- prevention
- what radiation does
- detoxify and rebuild (toxins in the home, personal products, fluoride, makeup etc)
- stress, addictions
- helping the body heal itself

TAPE FOUR

Tape 4

1 hour 40 min.

Charlotte Gerson demonstrates food preparation
_________________________________________

_________________________________________

Here are 1 more inspiring videos about Gerson, the medical community, nutrition, our health etc.

THE GERSON MIRACLE – View “The Gerson Miracle” on Hulu.com!