Fifteen-Minute Fix #9: Carrot-Orange Power Gel-oh!

What a wonderful holiday season I just had – full of friends and family and way too much fun!  And while I did a better than usual job of making healthy choices for my body this past season, I’m still feeling a little on the sluggish side.  Luckily, I’m also feeling optimistic about changing that with a few fixes – starting with this one.

Carrot Love by Anne LaBrie

Did you know that eating carrots is a great way to help your liver? Carrot juice is a rich source of Vitamin A and will help cleanse the liver and improve the quality of the blood.  The orange juice contains Vitamin C, the ginger protects the liver and adds a little zing.  In addition, gelatin has been shown to break down into collagen which lubricates and assists your joints!

INGREDIENTS:

2.5 c fresh carrot juice (I used Odwalla)

1.5 c fresh orange juice

1 small box Knox gelatin (containing 4 envelopes – use all of them)

2 tea fresh ginger root (about 1 inch of root)

1 medium carrot

Measure the cold carrot juice and pour into an 8 x 8” glass Pyrex baking dish. Empty all packages of Knox gelatin into the dish and mix to dissolve the gelatin. Place orange juice in a quart saucepan and begin to heat.  While you are waiting, grate the carrot and the fresh ginger root and mix into the cold juice right in the dish. When the orange juice comes to a full boil, turn off the heat and pour into the cold juice. Mix gently.  Place the dish into the refrigerator until set, at least 4 hours.  Cut into cubes and serve.

Next time you make it, experiment by adjusting the amounts of each type of juice for your own personal taste.  The trick is to have great taste while keeping the added sugar content down – your liver doesn’t really like much sugar.  For your next party, you can double the recipe and use a large 13x9” pan.

Before you know it, you and your liver will be smiling!

Fifteen-Minute Fix #8: Happy New Year!

Hats Off! by Anne LaBrie

By the time each new year comes around, I find myself feeling glad the old year is leaving.  After all, it has been quite a journey ­– the ups, the downs, the transitions in-between.  There have been things that I am glad happened, and things that I regret happening.  For me, I love to hang out on New Year’s Day and use the cosmic energy of the new year to set my intentions for the new year. This feels like I’m sort of calibrating my intentions with the energy that will help me realize my goals.  If that concept doesn’t resonate with you, just know that after trying this experience for yourself, you’ll feel better about moving forward into the new year.

Ingredients:         Journal and/or 5x7 mat card, colored pens/pencils/markers

For the first five minutes, think about your favorite moments of the past year.  The times that made you smile, or gave you a feeling of accomplishment.  You can either write a few down – the big ones – or just use your pens and doodle your good feelings in your journal or on your mat card.

In the next five minutes, thing about the things that didn’t go quite the way you would have wanted.  The things that didn’t get done or that you were hoping you would have had more time for.  Using your pens, draw a doodle that expresses that disappointment. Don’t think about what you’re doodling, just let the pen take you for a little walk. What is great about the doodle is that you don’t need to spend much time in the regret part, but can just get the energy of the disappointment down quickly.  After all, we’re trying to do this in only five minutes.

Take another minute and feel compassion for yourself and your experiences for the year.  Know that you did your best with what you had for the time and the knowledge you had!

The last four minutes for this experience are for what you’re looking forward to.  How would you like to feel in the next year? What do you think would help you get there? Write or doodle those few things down and as you do, imagine the feeling of relief you will have as these few things get accomplished.  Let your body take a nice big sigh of it. Whew!

As you can probably imagine, this process can easily be expanded into taking much longer than fifteen minutes.  And you know what?  That’s okay.  The important thing is that you can measurably feel differently about your year and your Self in only fifteen minutes.  Anything longer is a bonus!