Greetings to everyone - I am so grateful that you are with me today for the very first installment of The Healing Feast, which has been seven years in the making!
We used to think we had to do a lot to make changes in our lives, until one day we started to appreciate the cumulative effects that seemingly small actions can make. (Read more about simple
changes following the recipes.) Here's an easy change to switch from dairy products to plant based protein - Sunflower Seed
Cheese. Sunflower seeds have 35 grams of protein per cup! This recipe is made by soaking sunflower seeds (or a mix of
sunflower, and pumpkin seeds), and blended in the blender with garlic, your favorite salt (ours is pink Himalayan), lemon
juice, and apple cider vinegar. Seed cheese can be used in place of sour cream, cottage cheese, ricotta, or yoghurt, with any
of your favorite recipes. My friend, Joanie, says, "Just finished my first batch of seed cheese. I am in heaven. I LOVE ricotta and cottage cheese and I like this better! I am thrilled. What flavor...yum!"
Recipe for Sprouted Sunflower Seed Cheese
Ingredients:
1 cup sunflower seeds, soaked for 6-8 hours
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon unpasteurized apple cider vinegar
juice of 1 (or 2) lemons
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt - Celtic, Himalayan, etc.
Additional water to blend
Directions: Preparation time: 5-10 minutes (not counting soaking time)
Place dry, hulled sunflower seeds in a one quart bowl, and cover with about two inches of filtered
water. Soak for 6 - 8 hours. (If you start to soak in the morning the seeds will be ready for dinner.
Or if you start the night before, the seeds will be ready for breakfast the following day.)
Drain seeds by pouring the water off through a strainer. Re-cover the seeds with several inches water.
Rub seeds together between palms of hands to remove seed skins. (These will float a bit.) Pour water
and skins through a strainer, holding back the seeds as best you can. Repeat several times. This will
remove most of the skins. Doing so improves the texture and color of the seed cheese. (Without taking
the skins off, the seed cheese can turn a greyish color.)
Drain all water from seeds. They are ready to use, or to store, covered, in the fridge for later use.
They will keep for about 2 days if they are rinsed and drained each day.
Place seeds in a blender. Just cover with filtered water - about 1/4 inch higher than the seeds. Add
garlic, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, and salt. Begin to blend. (In my blender, lowest speeds seem to
work best at first.) Increase speed of blending as soon as possible. Add water, if necessary, a tablespoon
at a time. Blend until mixture is as creamy as possible. Using a spatula, scrape seed cheese into a bowl.
That's it! Seed cheese is delicious in the following recipe:
Tomatoes with Sunflower Seed Cheese
Serves 2
Ingredients:
2 large ripe tomatoes
1 green onion
1 cup seed cheese
Celtic, or Himalayan salt
Freshly ground pepper
Dash of basalmic, or favorite vinegar
Directions: Preparation time: 3-5 minutes
Rinse two large ripe tomatoes. Cut in half, and then cut the halves into 1/4 inch slices. Arrange around the
outside of each plate. Place 1/2+ cup per person of sunflower seed cheese inside of the tomatoes. Finely
chop the green onion, and sprinkle over seed cheese. Add a little salt and freshly ground pepper over the
top. Splash a dash of your favorite vinegar over the seed cheese.
Voilà, you have a delicious, filling meal or side dish.
More on Simple Changes....
As I started to think more about the effects of simple changes, I imagined taking a walk one day a week, thinking at first,
That's not much - but suddenly realized that it would add up to fifty-two walks a year. Not bad! Now my interest was piqued.
If I stopped to bless and thank my food before eating, that would be one thousand ninety five blessings or moments of
gratitude a year... or more, if I blessed each snack! If I spent ten minutes doing deep breathing one time a week, then for
five hundred and twenty minutes each year I would nourish my body with oxygen, clear the lungs, bring peace of mind
into my being. One thirty minute bath a week added up to one thousand, five hundred and sixty minutes of deep relaxation
in soothing, warm water, releasing toxins and excess salts!
Then I added in one meal a day that was raw, and realized that over the year it would increase my raw food intake by three
hundred and sixty five meals! These healing foods would bring extra enzymes, minerals and vitamins into my body, helping
to lighten the load, and aid in loosing weight. Multiply this times two, and the total would come to seven hundred and thirty
raw food meals a year! And this became easy to do by having fruits for a meal, or smoothies for breakfast, and a substantial
salad for lunch or dinner.
I was getting excited to see how so much goodness could come into my life through simple practices. So I added everything
up: 52 walks, plus 1,095 blessings, plus 52 deep breathing sessions, plus 52 cleansing baths, plus 365 raw meals, equaled
one thousand six hundred and sixteen healthy choices I could bring into my life over the course of one year - just by making
simple changes! Suddenly, the road to transformation looked a whole lot easier.
See you next week!
