Wednesday, June 27, 2012

DELICIOUS Creamy Vegan Superfood Smoothie (aka MacaChia Superfood Smoothie ;)

1 C. Almond Milk
1/8 c. water
2t. Maca Powder
1 scoop of raw vegan chocolate protein powder (Sun Warrior Protein is the best)
1t. Chia Seeds 
1/2 C. Frozen Blueberries

This makes a smoothie for one person or maybe 2.


Blend it up in a high powered VitaMix or BlendTec blender and add more of the blueberries or less for texture and ENJOY!!! 


This smoothie is super delicious and has MANY wonderful health benefits using the superfoods. Maca is good for your metabolism, thyroid, hormone regulation, and so much more!  Also, the Chia seeds have lots of great protein and are wonderful for cardiovascular health.  You can even throw in a little bit of a banana if you want it to be even more creamy.  This is my new FAVORITE smoothie.  You may want to start out with just 1/2 t. of the Maca root powder since it has powerful effects in helping your hormones, especially for women.  When your body adjusts to it, you can get up to 2t. and some people I know take 3t. of the Maca Root powder.  It has a really nice smooth flavor and texture and is very similar to butterscotch.  It makes a wonderful addition to the other ingredients in this delightful superfood smoothie!!  


Enjoy!!
~Tabitha 
Good Soil for Life!

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 and 2/3 C. Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 cup raw turbinado sugar
1/2 cup of organic sugar
1 and 1/2 t. Ground Cinnamon
1/2 t. Sea Salt
1/2 t. Baking Powder
1/4 t. Nutmeg
1/4 t. Cloves (ground)
2 Egg Substitute (EnerG)
1 C. Pumpkin (canned organic is best)
1/2 C. Coconut Oil
1 C. Vegan Chocolate Chips or Carob Chips

Makes 18 mini muffins or about 12 regular muffins
Preheat Oven to 350 degrees

1.  Grease eighteen muffin cups or line them and set aside.
2.  In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking powder, nutmeg, and cloves. Set aside.
3.  In another bowl, combine egg substitute, pumpkin, and coconut oil.
4.  Add pumpkin mixture to flour mixture and stir until just moist, batter will be lumpy and that is ok.
5.  Fold in chocolate chips/carob chips
6.  Spoon batter into muffin cups 2/3 full and sprinkle with raw turbinado sugar.
7.  Bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees or until wooden toothpick inserted comes out clean!

Serve warm and ENJOY!!
~Tabitha L.
Good Soil for Life!

Thursday, January 26, 2012

What to feed the Family?

I have had several people ask me about what to feed your family on the Hallelujah diet and lifestyle!  We are very blessed to have all changed our diets together.  After my husband's diagnosis of cancer in January of 2010, I made the decision to change my diet with him.  It took me a while to get rid of my old habits including coffee and sugar desserts, but after I did, we decided never to look back.  Our children are now thriving on the diet and lifestyle as well!  I can truly say that we have more variety in our diets than ever before!  Amazing, but true!

In the morning, our girls (ages 10 and 2) wake up to a nice bowl of oatmeal with maple syrup and organic raisins and sometimes even a spoonful of earth balance, drizzled on top, which is a great butter substitute.  Some days we make vegan pumpkin muffins or a sprouted grain toast with raw almond butter or honey.  We have found that the raw nut butters are much tastier than the roasted ones.  Our girls love their breakfast choices!  We always have a barley max shake for them in the morning.  Our barley max shakes are very green, and our girls have developed a taste for them.  In fact, they crave them!  Each morning, our two year old asks us for her Barley max shake, and we know just what she wants!  Our shakes usually consist of almond milk, frozen bananas, one apple, kale or parsley (parsley is super yummy), spinach, and barley max.  Sometimes we throw in a few berries to add a bit of tartness too!

For lunch, we always make the girls something like a sandwich on a sprouted grain bread with veganaise (a great substitute for mayo) avocado slices,  sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, spinach and a pinch of celtic sea salt.  They usually eat their sandwich with a piece of fruit for a simple lunch.  My husband and I enjoy a raw salad for lunch, topped with our favorite home-made dressing and some vegan style topping which is much better than parmesan cheese.  Our topping is made with nutritional yeast and nuts with some sea salt and we process these together in our food processor until they resemble parmesan cheese.  It is so yummy!  We use this topping on our soups, salads, and lots of other things.  It is a staple in our house.

Finally, for dinner, we like to make a variety of different lentil soups with vegetables, and sometimes we will eat a home-made spaghetti sauce that I make in our Blend-Tec blender.  My husband and I eat a large salad with our small portion of the cooked food.  Some days we just eat raw, and that is when we feel the best.  We enjoy making our own sauces now, so that we know what is in them.  Sauces that you purchase in a can or jar seem to have lots of preservatives and unnecessary ingredients, and don't taste half as good as the ones we make, so we enjoy making our own dressings and sauces.  We do this ahead of time most days, so that we have enough to last for a few days.  My favorite is a simple cheesy dressing, made with tahini, that we put on top of raw kale for a delicious creamy and tangy kick!

During the day, we drink our raw vegetable and fruit juices throughout the day for an added pick me up!  The children's taste buds have entirely adapted to this way of eating.  They enjoy the foods we eat now more than ever before!  And they are reaping the benefits of not getting sick when other children all around them are sick at least a few times each year.  Their immune systems are saying THANK YOU as well as their taste buds!

Until Next Time....
~Tabitha L.
Good Soil for Life!

Friday, December 23, 2011

Tampon Troubles?

Ladies, I want to step out here and share about something that many of us need to know about.  I wanted to write something to serve as a warning from my own personal experience of using tampons.

Earlier this year, after one of my cycles, I began having excruciating pain in my lower abdomen on the right side as I was sitting at my desk.  I was wondering if I was having some type of problem related to something I ate, but as the pain became worse, over the next few hours.....I could not ignore it.  I grew from having serious cramping to having pain that was causing me to scream out loud, with NO relief!!  It was the most horrible experience of pain in my life, even worse than child birthing pains since there was no down side, only pain intensifying.  

My husband rushed me to the emergency room which was a ride that seemed like it took forever!  I was crying out to the Lord the whole way there!!  It was horrible!  I waited for a long time before they gave me some pain medication and took me to a room, after finding a hemorrhaging cyst on my ovary.  I was on a morphine pump all night long, and I had to stay awake to pray because that drug was so strong and was causing me to have hallucinations.  I did not want to go to sleep, because I would feel the spiritual darkness of that drug.  It was very intense.  

I had to have an emergency surgery to have the cyst removed, and was sent home the next day with very little instruction on what to do.  After I came home, I had several months of irregular cycles still.  I wore tampons for years, and was never told not to wear them after my surgery, so I continued as soon as I was healed.  I always felt like my cycles were "normal" but were very heavy and I had a lot of cramping.  One day after feeling a very painful cycle, I decided to do a google search about tampons to find out if they are harmful to anyone.  WOW!  I was so surprised at what I found!!

I read the ingredients that are in tampons which include things like bleach to make them white and all sorts of harmful ingredients, some even responsible for producing hemorrhage!  I was astounded!!  Could it be?!!  Could these things be manufactured in a way that causes MORE bleeding?!!  I read things about women who had such heavy cycles, lasting for DAYS longer than a normal cycle of bleeding.  Their testimonies showed that it seemed that much of the bleeding they were experiencing was not menstrual bleeding, but hemorrhage related to wearing tampons!!  I could not help but think that this was possibly causing me problems after the prolonged use of them.

That day, I decided I would never wear them again.  Instead, I switched to natural pads, made out of 100% cotton, and within a couple of cycles, I began to see the INCREDIBLE difference!  With the heavy flow I was having when I wore tampons, I could not have imagined getting by with JUST a pad.  Well, since switching over, I have had such light bleeding that I can not believe how light my periods are now!  It seemed so simple to me.  Just switching from tampons to natural pads (ones without bleach and dye)....helped me incredibly.  I began to see my cycles go back to normal after some cycles being so irregular that I would have 2 cycles in one month many times!!  

Yes, I believe that the tampons were responsible for my female issues, to a point.  And YES, I believe that switching to the natural pads has made all the difference in the world.

DO your own research.  Don't use the products that can cause you harm.  If you want a wake up call, just read the WARNING on the tampon box and make your own judgment whether these are good for your body or not.  Common sense would tell a person that what the Lord has designed to leave our bodies, should not be plugged inside of us, causing us unnecessary problems.  The menstrual cycle is designed by God to cleanse our bodies monthly as women.  We should not thwart that cleansing, by seeking to be clean on the outside, at the expense of our bodies on the inside. 

Herein lies a spiritual picture as well.  We should seek to be clean on the inside, spiritually clean before God before seeking to be clean and beautiful on the outside.  Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.  1 Sam. 16:7

First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Matthew 23:26

Women, lets make sure we are caring for our bodies on the inside first.  The Lord desires for us to be vessels that He can use.  Don't be weighed down with sickness and diseases that you can prevent by living a healthy lifestyle mind, body, soul and spirit!  

God bless you!

~Tabitha L.
Good Soil for Life!

Friday, November 25, 2011

A Hallelujah Thanksgiving!

Just yesterday, as we were driving back from our six mile bike ride in Mammoth Cave National park, on our way to  our vegan Thanksgiving dinner, we remembered that just a year ago, things were not looking so great.  Just last year, Kevin and I were NOT on our way back from a bike ride, but on our way back from the hospital after he had a heart attack and then the following diagnosis of cancer that they discovered on this same hospital trip.  We always thought we were healthy before this happened, but never realized the impact that our food choices were making on our health until now.  Thankfully, we are doing much better now and Kevin is healing all naturally with a plant based diet and lifestyle changes through Hallelujah Acres www.hacres.com without any radiation or chemotherapy.  Praise GOD for this incredible wisdom.  We certainly are having more and more reason to shout, "Hallelujah" than ever before!!

We were recalling last year, coming home from the hospital talking about how the Lord put a song on Kevin's heart as we were driving home.  The song he was singing in the car last year was, "Praise the Lord together singing Hallelujah, Hallelujah....Hallelujah!"  It was really incredible because we were remembering last year how when we arrived back home to our house we were living at with another family, their welcome as we walked in the door, home from the hospital was that all the children were waiting for us and singing to us, "Praise the Lord together singing Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!"  This was incredible!!!  We could hardly believe that without any communication with them of the song we were just singing, they decided to sing the exact same song that was on Kevin's heart to us as we walked in the house!!!  This was a shadow of the things to come.  We really felt at that time that the LORD had given us this song as a special gift, but we had no idea just how special it was at that time!

Well, this year as we were driving, the Lord blessed us with the remembrance of that song again as we were driving back from our bike ride to go home to our Hallelujah Thanksgiving feast!  It was incredible to us to remember this song because at that time, we had no idea of Hallelujah Acres, or the lifestyle changes that we would soon be making to adopt the Hallelujah Acres diet and lifestyle.  Who would have known last year that we would be having a Hallelujah Thanksgiving this year!!??  Only the Lord could have such amazing plans in store for us!!!  Wow!  We are seeing more and more that the Lord has led us in this path and we are incredibly thankful to Him for all He has done and will continue to do as we walk in this path of healing that He has for us!  As I sit here writing this blog and drinking my freshly juiced green vegetable and carrot juice, all I can say is HALLELUJAH!!!!

Blessings on your Hallelujah journey and let's all praise the Lord together singing Hallelujah, Hallelujah....Hallelujah!

~Tabitha L.
Good Soil for Life!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Feeling Great after Rebounding!!

I am feeling so great today after spending only 15 minutes on my new rebounder.  WOW!  I have been rebounding steadily for about 2 weeks on my Cellerciser which you can purchase on www.cellercise.com.  This rebounder is one of the best out there.  If you are traveling, you can fold it up and take it with you!  I found mine on www.ebay.com for around $200 dollars brand new.  We just recently took ours with us on an overnight trip and it is SO easy to pack and unpack.  My body has never felt so ALIVE as it does now with rebounding and a plant based diet in combination.  My exercise routine consists of one minute of health bouncing, where I keep my feet on the mat and just lightly bounce, which is a sort of healthy massage for all of the internal organs in the body.  When you exercise on a rebounder, you are exercising your cells!  No other exercise puts G-Forces on your individual cells and causes them to come alive!  It is incredible!!!

After health bouncing, I jog in place for 9 minutes and increase the height of my knees gradually throughout the time I am jogging.  After this, I do kicks with my legs for another minute before I incorporate some 3 pound weights to condition my upper body for about 5 minutes.  Weight training has never been so much fun as it is when I am bouncing up and down on my rebounder!  I think the benefits far outweigh any other weight training program.  My 3 pound weights feel like 20 pounds with all the G-forces on my arms when I bounce and lift at the same time.  I truly thank GOD for this incredible type of exercise, which benefits every cell that He has blessed me with.  What an incredible blessing it is to be rejuvenated from the inside out!

I end my workout with another minute of health bounce to cool down.  I am sitting here after doing this workout and I feel INCREDIBLE!  Exercise is so important for your health.  It really needs to be a priority for each of us.  We make priorities for other things, why don't you try to make rebounding a priority in your exercise routine?  I am excited to see my results after doing this continually.  I will keep you posted.  I have never had more fun working out than I do now!  I am already looking forward to my workout tomorrow!

~Tabitha L.
Good Soil for Life!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Traveling and Staying Healthy on a Vegan Diet

There are many healthy ways to order your foods if you find yourself in an airport and not knowing what you can eat safely on a vegan diet.  I recommend many Mexican restaurants because they seem to have black beans and rice along with salads sometimes with lemon and lime slices and guacamole, which is a good alternative if you are trying to stay vegan while traveling.  Another way of keeping healthy on your journey is to plan ahead and make sure you have lots of fruits and vegetables handy.  We like to pack little ziploc bags filled with grapes or grape tomatoes to snack on when we are on road trips.  However, when you are flying, it is not always easy with all of the regulations to have these same snacks.  I recommend staying hydrated and avoiding the processed and packaged foods as much as possible.

Always ask for water every time they offer drinks on your flight.  This will help you to stay hydrated and avoid some of the cravings for candies and other temptations.  I am a travel agent for international adopting families and missionaries, so I am very accustomed to ordering meals for my customers.  It is fairly easy to stay vegan with all of the options out there.  Most airlines will even allow you to choose a vegan meal if you order at least 24 hours prior to departure.  They will need time to prepare your food for you, so make sure you don't wait too long to place your order online.  If in doubt, make sure you have some handy and super yummy Survivor Bars from Hallelujah Acres in times like these!  There are even some handy little mixing bottles on their website for traveling with your barley max, so that you can continue to have some green juices during your trip!  Please feel free to shop away at www.hacres.com and find those handy treats that will make your vegan traveling a breeze!

OH, and if you ever need help with your international airfare, please visit our website for a free quote!  www.cheapmissionstrips.com.  I will personally serve you and even help you pick your vegan meal when that time comes!!

Have a safe and healthy journey!

~Tabitha L.
Good Soil for Life