Hi y’all! Welcome to Wholicious. Today we are focusing on our powerful immune system. Our immune system only wants to protect us and keep us healthy. But one of the biggest inhibitors is anxiety and fear. Both can lead us to illness and depression, which is why today’s episode is all about how to strengthen your immune systems. I’m Amber Caudle, aka chef Amber and I’m a professional chef, holistic lifestyle advocate and your host of the show Wholicious. When it comes to connection with our body, mind and soul, and we start fueling our bodies with healthy nourishing food, it will automatically affect our whole immune system. And again, healthy is the new sexy baby.

What is Our Biggest Immune Organ?

Our skin.

What is the Main Function of the Skin?

To protect us from outer invasions.

How can we Support our Skin and Give it some Daily Love? 

Dry brushing.

What is Dry Brushing?

Dry brushing is a tool that can actively connect the body, mind and nervous system. It stimulates the lymphatic system which directly affects our immune systems.

What are the Benefits of Dry Brushing and Why do I Love it?

I love it because it removes dead skin, leaves my skin feeling super soft, helps reduce the appearance of cellulite, helps with circulation and promotes detox and helps clean the pores. 

How to Dry Brush

Alright, so I’m going to show you how I dry brush. So to start, I like to use a dry brush mitt. Always start at the feet. And you start at the feet coming up the legs. And basically every body part. I’ll do my calves. I’ll do my thighs, my inner thighs. I’ll go to my back. Don’t forget your booty. Okay, every body part we’re doing 10 strokes. Come up to my arm, get the palm of my hands, really coming up. You’re always moving upward toward the heart center, because the heart is where the lymphatic system drains. So you know we wouldn’t be brushing like that right? We’re brushing up. So really brush up, come up to the neck, get your other side of your body and really feel the dry brush on your skin and take a moment to really feel embodied and get present with yourself. It feels really yummy. 

Okay, so after a dry brush, I then start slapping. So start on my arms, get underneath your armpit, you can do your heart and lung chi. I like to get into my liver and gallbladder and when I was healing my adrenals the adrenals and liver are in your lower back. So I like to take my hands and really slap my lower back for about 30 seconds to 45 seconds. 

What’s in Today’s Episode?

Now that we are fully prepared for the morning, let’s go into my Wholicious kitchen to show you how to start your morning with immune boosting foods. Today we’re going to be making a creamy Turmeric latte, a breakfast salad with sweet potatoes, broccoli sprouts and avocado and a really profound manuka honey elixir.

Okay, so now that we’re feeling energized from dry brushing, we have an amazing immune boosting meal today. So first off, I just want to say that when we connect our mind, body and soul and really start to fuel our body with nourishing healthy foods, it really automatically affects our immune system. Really what we put in our body matters right now. 

Turmeric Latte Recipe

So the first thing that we’re going to start with is a Tumeric latte. And this is going to be made with almond milk and this is one of my favorite hacks to show in the kitchen. Okay, I want to show you a no fuss almond milk. Usually with almond milk. You soak the nuts overnight, strain the nuts, blend and then you use a nut bag. Okay, so check this out here in the VitaMix. I’ve got a little over two cups of water and then I’ve got raw organic almond butter. Okay, so I’m going to add my nut butter here to the water. I’m going to add a pinch of salt and we’re going to blend for quick easy almond milk.

Okay, so I like to have this hot. So I’ve already got some milk steaming behind me. So I’m going to empty this one out. You can also drink this cold. This would be a great place right now if you wanted to go ahead and add your herbs, spices and maple to make a cold latte and put it over ice but I want it hot today. Okay, let me grab my steamed milk here.

Okay, now I’m going to add a little bit of maple because I want just a little bit of sweetness but if you don’t want sugar, you can definitely add a couple drops of Stevia. Now I’m going to add tumeric, cinnamon, and ginger. All great for fighting inflammation. I love cinnamon because it’s really great for cholesterol and blood pressure. And then I have a pinch of black pepper I’m going to add in here. But why am I adding black pepper to this? Well, black pepper is really important because it really helps our bodies absorb the tumeric. So anytime you’re cooking with Tumeric always add a little bit of black pepper. Okay, all right, where’s my lid, we’re going to do a little blend here.

Turmeric latte. So amazing. If you’re feeling under the weather, you feel like you’re having an immune challenge. It’s also really great for gut health. This is a perfect way to start the morning. So for me, my morning routine is really important to me. So I get up in the morning. And before I dry brush, like I said I drink a big glass of water and then I go straight into my latte. Delicious. 

Breakfast Salad Recipe

Okay, here we go. Let’s jump into this breakfast salad. A little backstory on this breakfast salad. I put it on the menu at my restaurant in Manhattan Beach, The Source Cafe, about a year ago and it stuck. I love a salad for breakfast because I can get all of my veggies in protein and healthy fats. I tend to eat high protein, high fat and a ton of fiber when I’m not feeling great to give my body a little bit of a break for digesting the food. So the base of this is going to be our sweet potatoes. Okay, so let’s jump into our sweet potatoes here. I’ve already got them all cut. Now you can use white sweet potatoes or orange sweet potatoes does not matter. I’m going to do a nice big drizzle of oil, and then I’m going to add paprika. And let’s do a little bit of salt. Okay, pinch of salt, and pinch of pepper, and do a little whisk.

Definitely needs a little bit of greens. So I’m just going to grab a couple pieces of cilantro and dill. I love dill in my eggs. Obsessed with dill in my eggs, it really adds a nice zing. Okay, and I’m gonna give this rough chop. And I’m going to add a little bit of oil and already have some sweet potatoes roasted, nice and caramelized. And I’m going to do I don’t know a nice handful here. And what my pan pretty hot with the oil and the sweet potatoes. And I’m gonna let this go for just about a minute before I add my eggs. I don’t want to add my eggs to a cold pan because they’ll get really runny. So it’s really important to have your pan hot, the sweet potatoes hot, and then we’ll add our eggs. Okay. All right, while that’s heating up and get my bowl ready. 

Our salad. The thing about breakfast salads too, is it’s a great way to use any of your meal prep that maybe has, I don’t know it was going south or it needs to be used from the night before I like to add roasted vegetables. If you caught episode one I made broccoli rice and I made a buddha bowl. So what’s really delicious in my eggs in the morning is I’ll add a little broccoli rice, I’ll add a little bit of the squash, any vegetables in the fridge basically. You can add in and like what a great way to start your morning off is to get in your greens and your veggies right? All right, here we go. That’s looking great. My pan is hot, the potatoes are looking nice and caramelized and now we’re going to add our eggs. This is going to happen really quickly. I don’t want overcooked eggs. Hey, I’ve got my spatula here. Really I keep stirring my eggs really quickly. 

What’s the Key to Not Over Scrambled/overcooked Eggs?

Turn off the heat when it’s about medium and they’re still runny and your pan is still hot so you can continue to cook your eggs.

Salad Assembly

So that’s perfect. That’s about a medium to medium well egg. And like I said, they’ll continue to cook in the pan. Oh my gosh, that looks. I’m so excited. That looks amazing. Okay, let’s assemble this baby. Alright, so I’m going to put a big handful of baby greens here, and I’m going to add our eggs and potatoes. See how nice these eggs look. They’re a little runny, the worst is having overcooked dry eggs. Okay, so I’ve got my greens. Now I’m going to add a handful of broccoli sprouts. Now broccoli sprouts, I chose to introduce these today. I don’t think they’re a fan favorite of many people. But this is a really easy way to get your sprouts in. We’ll get into more about digestive health and gut health in the next episode. I’m going to add some avocado because I always have to have avocado. I’m going to just slice it like this and scoop my avocado right underneath the skin and make some nice slices here. Perfect! And put it like this. Now to finish this, I’m going to put a little bit of Maldon sea salt and some sumach.

What’s Really Great about Broccoli Sprouts?

They are really great for fighting inflammation, great for immunity. They’re basically a superfood and great for digestive health, which is so important.

What’s a Great Healthy Fat Food?

Avocado has protein, really great brain health and it’s a low inflammatory food.

What is Sumach?

So sumach is a shrub from the Middle East. it will add a nice lemony zing. You can put it on your avocado toast, on your soups, on fish.

We put sumach on everything. It has a lemony flavor, it really adds the best zing. You can put it on your avocado toast on your soups, on fish, and we’re going to put a lot of it. We’re going to put another sprinkle here. People always ask for more. It’s delicious. You’ll see the lemon really brings out the flavor of the egg with the paprika and the sweet potato and the avocado. It’s delicious. 

Okay, so this is our breakfast bowl, but hold on. Let me add some more dill because I have to have extra dill. This really makes it and this is a great way to to get rid of any extra herbs in the fridge. So if you have parsley or basil, whatever mint, you can toss that right on top and then you’re getting all that freshness. Okay. All right, so here’s our breakfast salad. This is a perfect meal for fighting inflammation. It goes beautifully with our Turmeric latte. 

Manuka Honey Elixir Recipe

The next I’m going to show you is one of my favorite immune boosting elixirs made with manuka honey.

What is Manuka Honey?

It actually has the highest antioxidant value and also has great antiviral properties.

All Honey is Not Created Equally

There’s tons of different brands, this is not the brand I’m sold on, can find whatever manuka honey, whatever you do, look at the U M F, the higher the UMF number, the higher quality and the more potent the compounds in the honey are okay. There’s so many benefits of manuka honey, it actually has the highest antioxidant value and also has great antiviral properties. So I’m going to show you what I take when I’m starting to fight a cold and feeling rundown. 

Ginger Hack

First, I want to show you a hack. One of my other favorite hacks in the kitchen is how to clean ginger. So I’m going to cut off the ends here. And with the spoon, instead of using a peeler or a knife, you can kind of just peel the skin like this. It’s so easy. And ginger and garlic are gonna go in this honey and you’re probably like that’s weird. And it is a little weird, but both of these have antiviral antibacterial properties, and it’s hard to get raw garlic in. So the honey is going to hide this. I’m going to cut this into small little pieces because we’re going to actually mix it into the honey, just like this. And I’m actually gonna slice our garlic. Also, I learned this from one of my naturopath years ago and became hooked. So basically what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our garlic and ginger and we’re going to put it in our manuka honey. So I’m going to scrape out our honey here. And it’s really important that you find a high quality honey. If you can’t find manuka, you can also use a raw local honey, that’s really powerful. But I don’t suggest using anything that’s not raw, I would definitely highly recommend using raw raw honey.

Can I Heat up Manuka Honey?

Well, when you heat up the manuka honey, it kills all the yummy properties. So definitely important to keep it raw. 

Okay, so I’m adding the garlic and the ginger right into the honey. Just like this. Look at this you guys. I know this is kind of weird. Might take a minute to get used to, but the honey hides it. So what I do when I’m feeling sick is I will walk by my little bowl here and I’ll take a tablespoon in the morning and at night, and you know what it really the honey really hides the garlic and the ginger flavor. And so you can just take a spoonful like this and get in there. I’m not going to do it right now the whole spoonful, but it is amazing. You will feel so strong and powerful. So this is a really great thing to have on deck when you’re not feeling great. 

You’ve got your creamy Turmeric latte. We’ve got our amazing breakfast salad. And then you’ve got your manuka honey, garlic ginger elixir. 

Garlic Tip

And another little tip for the garlic, ginger and honey is if you want to add this to the blender with a little water, cold water or cold coconut water, you can blend it and take it as a shot. If you can’t stomach chewing the raw garlic. It’s hard for some people. So that is another little tip. 

So I hope you got inspired and learned immune boosting tools today. Take care of yourself, your mind, your body and your soul. And if you have any comments, I love connecting with you guys and subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can be a part of this Wholicious journey with me and part of my vision for a healthy, happier life. And remember, being healthy is the new sexy. I’ll see you next time. Bye!