Have you tried a Cold Plunge yet? It’s my new bio-hacking tool and I’m hooked. I hop in my plunge for just three minutes a day and the benefits are amazing. I’m seeing a huge increase in my energy and focus, a boost of my immune system, and even a reduction in my inflammation.

I saved $1000’s of dollars by building my cold plunge from a deep freezer. It was so easy to set up and I am so grateful to have it in the comfort of my own backyard!

 

What I Bought:

 

1. Deep Freezer Chest

I bought a 14.8 cubic foot chest freezer. You can use a smaller one, but I splurged on the bigger one so my whole body (including my shoulders) could be submerged.

 

2. Clear Sealant

I used DAP clear advanced sealant and it did the trick.

 

3. Digital Temperature Controller

The Inkbird ITC-308 Digital Controller has been amazing.

 

4. Water Filter for Fish Tanks.

I bought a MarineLand water filter.

 

5. Ozone Machine

I chose the JED 203 Ozone Generator. This is optional to buy, but will guarantee your water is sanitized! It’s so worth the investment. I will rarely have to change the water in my plunge thanks to this machine.

 

How I Made It:

 

First, find the perfect spot for your new cold plunge.

Wipe out and clean the inside of the freezer. I used apple cider vinegar to clean.

Caulk and seal the corners and the drain.

Let dry over night.

Fill with water.

Plug freezer into temperature controller.

Set temp to 44-50 degrees – I’ve set mine to 44 but you can start at 50 degrees and go from there!

Attach your water filter and ozone machine.

My freezer took about 3 days to get to the 44 degrees.

 

John over at chestfreezercoldplunge.com is amazing and will guide you on how to set up the entire plunge with filter and ozone in more detail.

 

I hope you found this helpful! Please reach out if you have any questions.

 

Happy plunging!

The post How to Make a Cold Plunge from a Deep Freezer appeared first on Chef Amber.

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Body Positivity

Today’s episode is a very passionate topic and very close to my heart. It’s about body positivity, and how you can glow from the inside out really loving and accepting your beautiful body. I’m excited to share my mirror practice. It will help you stay connected, accept yourself, love yourself and your beautiful body. Then I will cook a very delicious, sexy, healthy meal afterwards. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been on a journey to really love and accept myself and my body and to have a healthy relationship with food. This has been a journey for sure and I am still on it. Loving and accepting our bodies takes time and is a daily practice. I wrote my book, ‘Hungry, Why I F***ing Eat’ which is about my dynamic emotional relationship with food. I share in-depth how I struggled with disordered eating and hating my body for three decades. I also give many tips and tools on how to form a healthy relationship with food, yourself and your body and how to really start to love and accept your body. I will be reading sections from my book, ‘Hungry’ at the end of the show. 

Being comfortable and confident in your own skin comes down to being in acceptance of the body you have right now today. Today. Not comparing yourselves to your friends or the influencers on social media. It took me years to stop comparing myself and thinking something was wrong with my body because I didn’t look like the models in the magazines. Thank God today there’s more focus on body positivity, and that all bodies are beautiful. And think about it, how boring it would be if we all look the same. And this body positivity message was not around when I was deep in my eating disorder and hating on my body. And y’all listen, like I said, this did not happen overnight for me. And I still have days where I get out of acceptance and want to change something about my body. This is usually when I’m run down, triggered, sleep deprived, or really in an emotional low. So the first thing I do when I’m in a low is to really attack my body because this is an old comfortable strategy of mine. 

How do we Get Back Into Acceptance? 

By my body positivity mirror practice. 

Nakey

This practice is most powerful if you do it naked. This is something that some of us need to work up to, I had to work up to it also. However, once you were there, it is such a beautiful practice. Standing in the mirror naked and having gratitude for every part of your beautiful, amazing body. Then continue thanking your body and honoring and adorning your beautiful body, thanking your body for the strength and power and for how hard it works for you. I know when I’m out of acceptance, and I start to criticize my body, it’s time for me to get naked in front of the mirror. And believe me over time, this will help build acceptance for your beautiful body NOW and gain confidence. 

So now I’m going to head over to my mirror. I have a full length mirror. Best with a full length mirror. I like to stand in front of the mirror naked and no I’m not going to get naked today. I’m going to keep my clothes on. And I really make eye contact with myself. Take some deep breaths, give myself a nice smile. And I love to say, “I love you body!” And really I start to adorn every part of my body. I love you breast. I like to put my hands on I love you stomach. I love you thighs. I love you booty. I love you arms. Like really just like squeeze yourself. Feel yourself. Adorn every part of your body especially if there’s a body part where you’re like, oh, that is not my favorite. That’s when you really need to like show it some love. I love you stomach. I love you stomach and thank your body. Have gratitude for your body for how hard it works for you 24 hours a day. And you know what, like I said before, this is a practice and some days are harder than others. Okay, I might walk by mirror one day and be like, oh, and feel out of acceptance. So you know what I do, I get naked and I get in front of the mirror. And over time, this really becomes addicting. And it really truly builds that confidence and that inner self esteem. I always feel better after my naked mirror practice. I feel more confident, definitely feel more connected to myself. I feel embodied. I feel very powerful and definitely connected to my divine feminine power. 

After my mirror practice, I like to close my eyes and put my hand on my heart and on my stomach and thank myself, thank my body and have so much gratitude for how beautiful I am now. This practice is a practice and like I said, I do it every day. Okay, you have to work up to it. But you know what, after you do this, specially if you do it in the morning and you’re feeling triggered or sad, it immediately shifts your energy and you’ll strut out of the house feeling so confident and amazing in your body. Body positivity is really the key for glowing from the inside out. It’s the truest form of self love. 

Today’s Episode

Okay, we’re about to jump into the kitchen. Okay, I’m feeling so good. I hope you’re feeling confident and amazing and loving yourself. The meal today I’m cooking is a meal most requested by my customers, family and friends. We’re going to be cooking wild salmon with this curry coconut sauce with a fluffy Brazilian rice. And then a guilt free chocolate premium Medino with cacao nibs. All right, join me in the kitchen.

Okay, now that we’re feeling confident in our body and full of self love, from our naked mirror practice, we’re going to get into the sexiest meal. Okay, one of the best ways that I show myself self love is by nourishing my body with the right foods. So this seared salmon with a fluffy Brazilian rice and a creamy carrot curry sauce is the most requested meal by my family and friends. And it brings me so much joy to cook this for them. It’s also one of the famous dishes at my Nine24 Kitchen in Manhattan Beach, my restaurant. Alright, so we’re going to start with that, then we’re gonna finish with a creamy chocolate budino. 

Salmon & Brazilian Rice Recipes

Okay, let’s jump in to our fluffy Brazilian rice. So first thing that I want to talk about is I have rinsed and strained the rice. So let me just talk to you about it for a second. So the rice I want to be really fluffy. I don’t want it to be so sticky and starchy. Like if I was making a risotto, and so I learned this from a Brazilian friend a couple years ago, and I’ve never made rice another way. So what you do is you basically put this in a strainer and you run it under the water for probably two minutes until the water is clear. What we’re doing is we’re rinsing all the starch from the rice. So this is nice and fluffy. Okay, now the secret to this rice is really a ton of extra virgin olive oil. So we’re going to do about a fourth a cup of extra virgin. And then I’m going to add about a fourth of an onion, a white onion, and also some garlic. That’s going to be kind of the secret base. You can’t even tell that it’s going to be in the rice because it’s going to be nice and carmelized in with the rice. 

Okay, that feels really good. We’re basically going to fry the onion and the garlic. Alright, that looks amazing. So let’s get our oil nice and hot. I’m going to add our onion. Okay. And then I’m just going to do a nice chop here of our garlic and can be pretty rough. Yeah, like I said, once I learned how to make rice this way, seriously, I haven’t gone back because I love how fluffy it is. Okay, this is great. I’m going to put the garlic in here. And I’m going to do a little pinch of salt. All right. Now, just give it a little stir. I want this heat on medium, because I really want to get a nice caramelization on our onions and our garlic. All right. I’m going to let that sit and I’m going to let the onion and garlic kind of fry and carmelize in the oil. Right let me check my heat. I want it to carmelize but I don’t want it to burn. 

Coconut Curry Sauce

Alright, so our rice is going I’m going to start on our coconut curry sauce. We’re going to do a couple things here all at once. Okay, we’re gonna multitask. All right. So I’ve got my Vitamix, you definitely need a tamper for this. Okay, whatever high speed blender you’re using. And already I’ve got roasted carrots. So I’ve got about a pound of roasted carrots here that I sliced nice and thin and did a quick little roast. You can also boil sliced carrots. Don’t worry about the shape or the size or the cut because we’re going to blend it. It can be very rustic. Okay, so you can put your carrots in the blender and we give our rice to stir. Oh my gosh, the best smell. Onion and garlic frying and olive oil. I mean there’s really not a better smell. All right, here we go. Perfect. We’re gonna let that go for about one more minute before we add our rice. 

Okay. All right, so we’ve got our carrots in here, I’m going to use a cup of full fat coconut milk. I love the creaminess of the coconut milk. And then for our spices, I’ve got some curry, tumeric, a little salt. And I’ve said in the past couple episodes that when I’m cooking with Tumeric got to add a pinch of black pepper so your body can absorb the Tumeric okay. So I’m going to add this in there. And a little teaspoon little splash of sherry vinegar. That’s a good, that’s good for our acid. To make this extra creamy, we’re going to do a fourth a cup of olive oil. I’m gonna just kind of drizzle this in here. Okay, while I’m waiting for this oil, you can do a little stir over here. Okay, that’s great. All right. Before I start blending, we’re going to finish our rice so we can get this cooking. Let me turn it down I want this low. All right, now that our rice now that our onion and garlic, see how they’re becoming a little bit translucent a little bit see through, you can see a little bit of brown starting to happen around the corners. Okay, I’m going to add our rice that’s been strained. See how it’s a little bit paler. Okay, and add this in. Right. Okay, I’m gonna give this a little stir, just to coat the rice with the oil, the onion, the garlic. All right. 

Rice Tip

Another key to this is that instead of adding cold water, I have some water that’s already been boiling in the kettle. So I’m going to add two cups of water to this. We’re going to cover it and I’m going to set the timer for 15 minutes. The key with rice is don’t monkey with it. Don’t pull the lid off and say oh is my rice ready? Rule of thumb 15 minutes, turn off the heat, you’ll have fluffy perfect rice. Okay, so I’ve got some hot water here and add my two cups of water just like this. Okay, I’m gonna give it one more stir because I want to make sure that I don’t have little pieces of rice stuck up at the top because what will happen they’ll get kind of burnt and crispy. So you want to make sure that all your little pieces of rice are covered in the water. Okay, that looks great. Make sure my heat is good. I’m going to cover this and that’s going to go for 15 minutes. 

Okay, we can kind of like leave that be. All right. Now we can come back over here and we’re going to blend our coconut carrot curry sauce. And it’s mild curry. So I’ve said this to people that are like, Oh, I don’t like curry. It’s too spicy. It’s very very mild. Alright, let’s take a peek.

Oh yeah, you taste that. That’s perfect. I need to turn down my heat here. We are boiling. Okay. All right. So this is done. This looks perfect to me. Do a little look over here. Okay. I’m going to set it to the side. All right, so our rice is going, we’ve got our coconut curry sauce ready. I want to make a note about the salmon before I start on the budino. So anytime I’m searing protein fish or meat, or steaks, I always let my protein sit out for about 30 minutes, let it come to room temperature. 

Why Do You Set Your Protein Out about 30 Minutes Prior to Searing?

You’ll get a better sear so the protein can be a little bit the protein will sear and have a nice crispy skin if it’s not so cold. 

So if you walked into any professional kitchens, including my own, and we’re going through a rush, you’re gonna see lots of steaks and pieces of fish sitting out ready to be seared for service. Okay, so if you’re at home, and you’re ever wondering, gosh, why can’t I get that crispy skin or I can’t get that perfect sear? It’s because your fish is probably too cold. Okay, so I’m gonna let that sit out. And we’ll do that. We’ll do that last. Okay. All right, we’re gonna start on the budino. 

Budino

Now, so all right, so I’m gonna start with a budino and back here. Let me just come up here for a minute. I’ve got two cups of full fat coconut milk. And I want to tell you a little background about budino. So I was trained, southern Italian, I trained actually under a southern Italian Chef in Colorado. And then I got to train in Sorento, Italy, and one of their best desserts is a budino which is basically like a fancy pudding and it’s made usually with heavy whipping cream, and heavy whipping cream and white sugar. And so today, we’re going to make this with coconut milk and a little bit of coconut sugar so we can have a healthy nourishing budino. 

So what did I just add in here? I added a little bit of maca and mesquite. The mesquite gives it that nice malty flavor and the Maca is one of my favorite adaptogens and really great for overall vitality and sexual health. Okay, and I’m just gonna give this a nice whisk. Okay, I’m gonna put this on the burner but one thing about this budino that’s so easy, that’s not very stressful is when we’re cooking with heavy cream and milk. It’s so easy for it to curdle. We don’t have to worry about coconut curdling so it’s like less stress. Okay. All right, our rice is looking good. I’m checking the heat. All right, this is going to boil. Alright, so while that’s boiling, we’re going to do whisk our coconut sugar. So I’ve got coconut sugar here, and I’ve got six egg yolks. I’ve already got the egg yolks in here. All right, and let me grab my whisk. I’m just gonna borrow this whisk here. 

Whisk Away

Okay, and we’re gonna whisk for about two minutes. I really want to whisk this until it gets nice and fluffy. Okay, so we’re going to do this for about two minutes, you’ll see that the clumps will go away, like really go away. Okay, you wouldn’t want to stop here. It looks like it’s ready, but it’s not. You’re going to see how it’s going to change color. And the coconut sugar is going to really lighten up and fluff up the egg yolks. I’m gonna keep going here. Getting my workout today. Okay. And this is such a simple dessert. What I love is when I’m entertaining, you can make these a couple of nights before put them in cute little pretty glasses. You can even put them in martini glasses and pull them out. We’re going to top them with cacao nibs today. And it’s just like such a lovely simple, elegant, sexy dessert. Okay, see how it’s starting to become lighter and a little bit fluffy?

And this is a dessert that will blow when your guest it’s really easy and effortless. Those are the best type of desserts. Alright, see how fluffy it’s getting? This is looking good. Okay. sugar dissolved. It looks creamy. Alright, perfect. 

Let’s check our milk here. Okay. All right. So you think you’ve got a little bit of bubbles coming? Right here. See, we’re almost there. It’s like a light light simmer. Okay, we’re gonna just want this to be a little bit hotter. Because the next step what we’re going to do is we’re going to take the coconut milk, we’re going to whisk it into our egg yolk, coconut sugar. We’re going to do it slowly so we don’t curdle and cook the eggs and make scrambled eggs, and then we’ll put it back into the pan. Okay, let me go ahead and look at our salmon so we can sear the salmon right after this. So what I’m going to do is I’m just going to lightly kind of tap any extra moisture that’s on top so we get a really good sear. And this has already been sitting out for about a half an hour, so I’m not really worried about that. I’m going to salt each side. Okay, so we’ll salt the skin. Definitely salt the skin. Crispy skin is absolutely the best. So we’ll do a nice generous salt on both sides. Hey, I can smell our rice smelling right. Okay. And this is almost ready. Okay, perfect. 

Don’t Make Scrambled Eggs

Okay, now what I’m going to do is I’m going to slowly whisk in our coconut milk mixture. Again, if you were to do this really quickly and not whisk it you’re going to cook your eggs, you’re going to make scrambled eggs. Believe me, in culinary training, I can’t tell you how many scrambled bodinos I made. Okay? It’s not a chef’s favorite. Alright, there we go. That’s perfect. Right. Now I’m going to take our mixture, I’m gonna put it back into our pan. Put it back on the oven. 

Now I have a little thermometer here, it’s actually called a candy thermometer, you can get these off an Amazon, they’re super cheap. I’m going to put this on the edge of the pan here. And we’re going to bring it up to about 175 degrees. That happens really quickly. And I’m actually going to stir this with the spatula. Yeah, it’s already getting hot. And I can show you that the way to do it is I kind of make circles around like this. Constantly scraping the sides. Okay, if you let this sit, you’re gonna make a scrambled egg soup. Okay, a scrambled egg budino soup. So really get the bottoms, really get the edges and keep on stirring. Okay, so it’s gonna take only about two minutes. And I can check with my candy thermometer. You know, like I said before this is so it’s so great because it’s so stressful cooking with heavy cream and milk because this could curdle in like five seconds. So kind of takes the pressure off. Alright, so we’re just going to let this go

for just a couple more minutes. And let’s check our temperature here. Okay, we’re almost there okay, that’s almost ready. I’m going to grab our chocolate. 

Paleo Chips

Okay, in our bowl here, I have one cup of chocolate and now this, this is actually chopped up paleo chocolate chips. And I always use the Paleo chocolate chips because I want this to be free of processed sugar. And so I always remind that the Paleo chocolate chips are made with coconut sugar or maple. I’m going to add a nice pinch of salt because chocolate and sea salts like the best combo, okay. And I’m going to get ready to pour our egg mixture over our chocolate. Okay. Our rice is almost ready, and then we’re gonna start searing our fish. Okay, this is looking amazing. Okay, so this is perfect. All right. We are. All right, great. All right, now I’m going to grab the immersion blender. 

Magic Ingredient

But first, a little magic ingredient for this is I’m going to add I don’t know, like a tablespoon a big tablespoon of olive oil. Olive oil, chocolate sea salt. I mean, that’s like the best situation really. Okay, I’ve got this immersion blender. Immersion blenders. Don’t be intimidated by them. They’re really easy. You can find them off of Amazon also. And they’re like under $20. But it gives it like a nice blend. It’s really gonna froth it up. Okay, hold on okay, do that for a couple seconds. That looks good. And definitely making a little bit of a chocolate mess here. But that’s okay. Chocolate everywhere. All right, let me just get this off. A little chocolate on the salmon. Alright. Okay, so now I’m going to put a little bit of this mixture in here. Okay, oh my gosh, clumsy chef. See, it happens to us too. 

Pretty Glasses

All right, now I’ve got these nice little budino glasses. I’m using little rock glasses from my restaurant. And you can use whatever glasses you want. You can use like I said martini glasses are really nice. And I’m just going to pour a little into there like that. And these are actually going to go in the fridge they need about four hours. I like to do them the night before. So they really firm up. And like I said it’s such an easy prep to do the night before and then you can pull them out for your guests. Alright, so I’m gonna throw these in the frigerator just pull these out and put these in the frigerator okay. All right. 

Hot Pan

Okay, I think our rice is almost done. And we’re going to start searing our fish and we’re going to start to prepare our fish and finish our rice and oh our rice is looking good. Uh, okay, I’m cheating. And I’m showing you guys, but we literally have one more minute. Okay, I’m gonna move this to the back, and we’re gonna start to sear our fish. OK, let’s get our pan nice and hot. The key to searing fish or any protein, you’ve got to have your pan nice and hot. Okay, this is definitely where the heat needs to be high. We’re going to use avocado oil. Avocado oil and coconut oil have a high smoking point so it doesn’t burn. And also, we absorb it better in our body. So cooking with searing with olive oil, olive oil doesn’t have a high smoking point. So sometimes it can burn and it can leave like a little bit of a bitter flavor. So I like to finish with my olive oils. Okay, so we’re doing coconut oil, not coconut oil. We’re gonna do some avocado oil. Right, I’m gonna do a nice amount here of avocado oil. Okay, and I’m gonna let that get nice and hot. I’ve got my heat cranked up. 

Okay, my fish is ready. We’ve salted it. It’s been sitting out for 30 minutes. Okay, feeling good. All right, let’s test it out. See where we’re at. Okay, I want it to be a little bit hotter. The worst is putting your fish into kind of medium warm oil. And it’s really going to stick to the pan. You’re not going to get that crispness, but I can hear it now. Oh, yeah. Okay, we’re ready. I’m going to go skin down first. And I like to take my spatula, and really press it into the oil. Really press it in there. All right, perfect. And I’m going to let this go for about a minute and a half on each side. And the key to searing fish. Don’t touch it. Like don’t move it around and shake the pan because I really want to get some nice carmelize skin. All right. Our rice is done. Let me peek at it.

Look at this. Look at how fluffy it is. Oh, my gosh. Okay, so I’m gonna let this sit for a second before I add the herbs because we’re going to add some dill and thyme and parsley. Okay. All right, this is looking. Great. I’m gonna press do another little press down. I see it getting nice and brown. My heat is hot. The oil is hot. You can hear it right. Okay, I think it’s time to. Oh yeah, I’m gonna do a nice little flip here all right. See how nice and brown the top is. All right. All right, I’m gonna let that go. Now I’m really gonna let this sit but I want that skin to be really crispy. I’m going to finish this in the oven on broil. 

And we’re going to actually add some coconut aminos. Coconut aminos give it like a little bit of a sweetness and is a good substitution for soy sauce. You can also use soy here, but I tend to not cook with soy. So I am using coconut aminos and it’s literally coconut tree sap is the only ingredient. Okay, and it’s going to add like a little bit of a sweetness. Okay, this is going as soon as I see the skin really popping, I can hear it popping. We’re gonna finish it with lemon and with coconut aminos and we’re gonna throw these babies in the oven. Okay, let me get my fresh herbs ready. So we’re going to use some fresh thyme here. And I’m just going to pull it like this. We’ll do a little bit more fresh thyme because I love it. It’s delicious. Okay, so we’ve got some thyme. Definitely some dill, we’re gonna finish our dish with dill okay. And then I’m going to chop up a little bit of parsley. So I’m gonna kind of grab some parsley here. And let’s give that a nice, a nice little chop. And I’m going to add this to our rice. It’s going to be nice and herbaceous. Okay, it’s gonna be perfect with the coconut curry sauce. All right.

Coming back here, I’m going to add it to our rice and I’m gonna fluff this up or it’s going to kind of with a fork is the best to kind of fluff the rice. Add the herbs. Oh my god, it’s smells so good. This is actually one of my favorite comfort foods. This fluffy white rice. Alright. Oh my gosh. Delicious. Okay, perfect. Sit back to the side. Alright, so our salmon is definitely ready to go into the oven. I’m actually going to flip it one more time. Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to show you the skin. Look at that crispy skin because the skin is my favorite. Look at that. You see it? Okay. I want to put it in the oven on broil with the skin up so the skin can even get a little bit more crispy. I’m going to put the juice of half of a lemon right on top of that skin. Okay. And to take our coconut aminos and do a nice kind of drizzle. Yes, baby. I love it. This is going to go into the oven. Okay. Okay, our meals almost ready. How excited are you? Okay? This is such a great meal to that I make for a friend. They need a little extra love. It’s just it’s brings me so much joy to make it because people get so happy and it really showed this. Cooking a nourishing meal for my family and friends is like the best way I show love. Okay, let’s finish this. 

Presentation

Alright, here we go. First, we’re gonna put a nice bed of carrot sauce on the bottom. Like a nice bed of carrot sauce. And how beautiful is it? I mean look at this. Okay. All right, that looks gorgeous. All about presentation. Right. Then we’re going to add some rice let me grab my and put a nice spoon full of rice right here. Okay, gorgeous. Right? Let me check on our salmon. Alright, that skin is crispy. Okay. All right. That skin I like to put the skin up for presentation to show how crispy and sexy it is. And then I’m going to put some fresh dill to finish this off. 

Okay. All right, so we have some fresh dill than to do just a little sprinkle of molten sea salt on the top. And of course, we’re going to finish it with the drizzle of extra virgin. Look at that. I mean, if this is not sexy food, what is it? What is? Look at this. When you taste it, this is definitely orgasmic. Let’s finish our bodino. Now okay, I’ve got some bodinos that I made earlier today so they could be nice and firm. So the ones I put in the frigerator are very liquidy right? So those will harden up in about four hours or overnight. And then I’m going to top this with some cacao nibs. So we’ve got some cacao nibs here full of antioxidants. This will give you actually a little bit of energy. Okay, I love the nibs. I like the bitterness mixed with the sweetness. Oh my gosh. 

So we’ve got our gorgeous salmon. crispy skin with fluffy Brazilian rice with that creamy carrot curry coconut sauce. And then for dessert, we’ve got these sexy, beautiful little blue bodinos and seriously this is this is the dish okay? This is the dish. This is the meal. You’re gonna love it. I can’t wait for you to try it. 

Book Excerpt

Okay, I’m going to meet you in my spiritual corner where I’m going to read a page out of my book ‘Hungry, Why I F***ing Eat’ and this page is all about body positivity and loving and accepting our beautiful bodies and a little bit of my journey towards that. All right, y’all so I’m getting cozy because I’m about to read you a page out of my book ‘Hungry? Why I F***ing Eat’ and feeling emotional? Because this is the last episode of season one of Wholicious and I think it’s perfect to finish off with this beautiful body positivity episode today with that sexy seared salmon with the coconut curry and the bodino right. So feeling really good. So I want to share this because this is a little page at the end of the book about body positivity. 

Okay, so I thought it’d be perfect to read this to you guys today. “Exercise was always linked in my mind with body image. So I’ve always had to shift my perspective to see exercise as a part of healthy living instead. It doesn’t matter what your body looks like. What matters is if you are healthy And I, for one cannot get enough of the body positivity movement. It really is about time we start this conversation around accepting all body types, and that we are all so beautifully unique and different. Because I always say, how boring would it be if we all look the same? How do I describe what a positive body image means to me? It is all about feeling embodied, radiant, confident, powerful, unstoppable, and free. The happiness of accepting yourself in your own skin is where the freedom truly lies. positive body image is when you look at yourself in the mirror, all naked, and still give yourself a smile, you adore and love every part of yourself with complete gratitude and acceptance. This feeling leads to loving yourself enough to feed your body delicious, healthy, sexy meals. Now, instead of going down a self loathing rabbit hole of self destruction, I can pause, breathe and get out of this negative energy much easily and quickly. When this energy surges up within me, I figure that I’m tired and not an acceptance of something. And this is always a smack in the face from God to look inward and realize that there is nothing to not accept in me, if I don’t accept myself who will.”

So I feel like you know, to end this episode in the show today, remembering that you are perfect the way you are right now. And that learning to love and accept yourself is a journey, but it’s possible. And I’ve shared tips and tools through the whole season of these 10 episodes. Today was a beautiful one of getting in front of the mirror naked. I shared some digitalization exercises, some other mirror affirmation exercises of how you can really start to love and accept yourself because, like I said, if we don’t love and accept ourselves, who will? And I feel like it’s a practice and it’s a it’s a journey, and I’m really really touched a little emotional right now, feeling so blessed and grateful that you’ve joined me on this journey that you’re on this journey with me and I can’t wait for season two y’all. And just thank you again for being here for joining me for witnessing me for being a part of this discussion. You know, take care of yourself, your mind, your body and your soul. And if you love this episode, give it a thumbs up and stay connected with me. If you have any questions or ever any comments please comment below and I will definitely stay connected with you. Subscribe to this channel Chef Amber’s Wholicious so you can be an active part of my vision of a healthy world through food. And remember, healthy as the new sexy!

The post Chef Amber’s Wholicious™ – Episode 10 How To Maintain Body Positivity appeared first on Chef Amber.

Journaling

Today, I will share the practice of journaling with you and how it can help set your day up for success. And then we will dive into the kitchen and have a sexy healthy brunch. Journaling is my ultimate mind clearer. It only has to take a couple of minutes and is a great way to get all the junk and gunk and excess noise out of your head so you can clear any energy that might feel stuck. 

I really recommend getting a beautiful book and a pen that is only for your journaling secrets. You can write freely, whatever comes to mind first. It doesn’t have to make sense and you know what I definitely do not pay any attention to what my spelling and grammar are. I just write and you can just let it all out right as your day has already happened. 

Gratitude Lists

For example, I like to envision my day on how I like to feel, how I feel in my body, how I am nourishing my body and how I’m open to opportunity and connection. I like to write gratitude lists about what I’m proud for and what I’m grateful for. And when is the last time that you’ve acknowledged yourself. 

Sometimes my intention for writing is to work through a situation that’s causing me stress or when I experience a creative block. I have had many beautiful menu changes and business ideas come from journaling. I’ve also had many moments of clarity and light come through. Another thing I love is how it really helps me tap into my intuition and helps me learn to lean in and trust myself. 

Time

Sometimes I write for five minutes. And sometimes I’m working through something and I write for longer. And like I said before, write freely without any judgment. I’ve literally just let a stream of consciousness come out without any judgment and I write and it helps really clear my mind. Get all the gunk out of my head. And like I said before, when I’m working through something really big, I might write for 30 minutes to an hour. 

Newbies

If you’re new to journaling, I highly recommend the book that got me started years ago, ‘The Artists Way’ by Julia Cameron, she’s brilliant. She goes into depth about the importance of morning pages daily. When you need it, you can grab your journal and add it to your own morning routine. 

Morning Routines Are Important

Morning routine is the most important part of my day. And for me, I pick and choose what I want my morning routine to be. I always meditate. I always journal. Sometimes I’ll add in visualization, daily affirmations. I’ve been sharing a lot about slapping, dry brushing, you know you can create your own morning routine. 

The most important thing is find a morning routine and it doesn’t have to take very long. Meditation could be a couple minutes, journaling could be a couple minutes. Most important find that routine. It’s a really great form of self love and care. My morning routine is great for my mind. Now let’s nourish our bodies with a fueling breakfast. 

Today’s Episode

Today in my Wholicious kitchen will be making brunch. The best protein pancakes topped with a creamy almond butter maple, raw raspberry Chia jam. Cinnamon coconut pecans as well as quick mini frittatas with leeks, basil, and sun dried tomatoes. Okay, let’s go make some brunch y’all. Okay, it’s brunch time. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. And honestly, I would eat breakfast for every meal. And who doesn’t love breakfast for dinner? It was one of my favorite childhood traditions. 

So we’re gonna start off today with a frittata. And then we’ll move into our pancakes with a couple different toppings. All right, and then I’m gonna make a huge buffet bar and show you some of my favorite different components that I like to serve for brunch. So these frittatas we’re going to actually mini frittatas instead of a big frittata today. And I love mini frittatas, especially if you’re hosting a brunch, everyone can serve themselves, it makes it a little bit more social. I love frittatas, because one, they’re a great source of protein. And second, they are a great snack. Like I will make many frittatas on meal prep Sunday and take them with me throw one in a little baggie in my purse. So they’re great for pre and post workout. So I have a leak here. 

Mini Frittata Recipe

Okay, and I’m going to do a nice little slice here for my leaks, just like this. You can also sub a half of a red onion, if you can’t find leaks, that’s completely fine. But I love the delicateness of the leak. Okay, perfect. So I’m going to put our leaks right in the bowl. This is a leak, sun dried tomato basil frittata. And the thing about frittatas is as you can switch out these ingredients. Okay, you can get really, really creative with frittatas. I like to use any leftover roasted vegetables from the night before or any vegetables that are kind of getting wilted or going bad. It’s a great way to use your leftover veggies. Okay, so I’ve got leeks. I’ve got a nice handful of chopped sun dried tomatoes. Okay. And then I’m going to do a little dice on my garlic. I’ve got about three cloves here. We’ll just do like a rough, rough dice here. Okay, so to make this creamy, I’m going to put a little bit of olive oil and we’re going to put like a fourth cup of olive oil. I started putting olive oil in my frittata years ago. Instead of like milks or coconut milks, it just makes it super, super fluffy. Okay, I’m going to do about a fourth a cup of olive oil. This is gonna make it really creamy and fluffy. Okay, that’s good. 

This is an eight egg omelet. So we’re gonna get about eight mini frittatas. And I’m going to put a little bit of salt and pepper in here. Yeah, so like I said, breakfast brunch is my favorite meal of the day. And I grew up eating breakfast for dinner. It made me so happy. We used to have pancakes for dinner, and scrambled eggs with cheese. So when we get to the pancakes, I can’t wait to show you because it’s going to be a much healthier version than what I grew up on. All right, now, let’s just give this a little whisk and then I’ll add the basil. I’m gonna do a nice handful of basil here. We’ll do like that feels good. And the basil, leaks, and dried tomato combo is a classic for me. And I love the sweetness of the tomato with the basil. And I actually have some almond ricotta that we’re going to actually top this with to add like the cheesy component to it. 

Okay, and if you eat cheese, y’all, you can definitely add cheese to this. You could add a little feta to this if you wanted. All my recipes are always dairy free because I don’t eat cheese. But I’m not a cheese hater. So if you want to add a little feta, I would add like a half a cup of feta to this and it would be delicious. So you can always do that. Alright, so it was super quick. So sometimes with my frittata batter, especially if I’m hosting or even if you’re cooking for your family, right and you want to make something quick in the morning, you can make this frittata batter the night before and then bake it. Okay, the day of. So I’m gonna use this muffin tin here and give it a little spray. I’m using my coconut oil, I always use coconut oil or avocado oil. Being careful with those vegetable oils, no canola oil. They wreak havoc on our systems. Yeah, I’ll be careful. Okay, though, that should be good. And I have a ladle here. And I’m going to just do some nice little ladles right in to the muffin tin, like this. And then we’re going to bake this I’m going to tell you about how we’re going to bake this. 

Frittata Technique

So a technique that I like to use for frittatas is I like to use a water bath. Let me explain what that is. So in the oven, I’ve got a sheet pan with about a fourth a cup of water. Literally, it’s a pan that this will sit right on top of and there’s about an inch of water in the pan right and it basically what it does is it makes the frittatas super fluffy and they don’t sink in the middle and they won’t dry out. I don’t know if you’ve ever made mini fritattas and you’ve noticed that the end that the center of the frittata sinks all the way down. It just needed a little bit more moisture. Honestly, the water bath creates like a little bit of a steam. And that was perfect. That was a perfect eight right there. Beautiful. Okay, so I’m gonna throw these in the oven for about 27 to 30 minutes and then we’re going to start on our pancake bar. Our frittatas are in the oven for about 27 to 30 minutes so it gives us perfect amount of timing to make our pancake bar. 

Pancake Bar

First we’ll start with our pancakes. Then we’re going to move on to our coconut cinnamon maple pecans. Next I’m going to do a raw chia seed jam. Then I’m going to make an almond butter maple syrup. And then I’ve got a surprise for you. One of my favorite mocktails made with our raw Chia jam. Okay, so let’s get into these pancakes. All right, so these pancakes are gluten free and they are vegan and they’re loaded with protein. Okay, so pancakes growing up, I ate the buttermilk pancake mix with the Aunt Jemima syrup, right the crazy fake maple which I grew up on that. And I love pancakes, pancakes for dinner, the whole thing but it definitely always made my stomach hurt. And one tradition in our family too is we always used to put peanut butter on our pancakes along with the maple. So that’s why we’re going to make the almond butter syrup today. So this is a healthier version by far. And I use this actually yes for breakfast. But I also use these pancakes as a snack also, because they fry up really easily. And because there’s not any egg, I can keep them in the frigerator and grab them on the go. 

Pancake Recipe

So let’s start. So in our bowl here, I’m going to actually add our dry so I’m using a Bob’s gluten free flour today it’s made out of potato and fava beans and pea. So we’re gonna have a lot of protein in there. Okay, we’re also going to add some baking soda, cinnamon, a little pinch of sea salt. Okay, and flaxmeal so the flax meal is going to bind this pancake and thicken it up, it’s going to act as our egg. 

Protein Powder

Okay, then, newzest protein powder, my favorite protein powder. Anytime I’m making anything, I always need extra protein. So this will give it a nice creamy vanilla flavor. So I’ve got about a fourth a cup of protein powder. Now if you don’t like the flavor of protein powder, you really can’t taste this in here. And you can actually use whatever protein powder of choice here. Just make sure your ingredients are clean. 

Okay, so I’m going to give this a little stir. All right. All right, perfect. So for our wet ingredients, we’re actually going to blend and make a creamy milk out of coconut milk and water. So I’ve got whole coconut milk and I also added a cup of water to that. To thicken our pancakes today, I’m going to use two bananas. So I’ve got two bananas here. This is going to basically make a banana coconut cream that we’re going to whisk in. Okay, for that fat, we’re going to use coconut oil, that’s going to be our fat for our pancake, and I’m going to do like a big teaspoon of this delicious Tahitian vanilla. That was a good one. That was a good teaspoon. Alright, I’m gonna give this a quick blend. Okay, so I’m gonna whisk our banana coconut milk, basically that’s what we just made right into our dry. Okay, beautiful. And get this a nice little whisk here. 

And I make this every time I go home. I’m from Atlanta. So anytime I go home to visit my family, one of our favorite things to do is make a pancake bar. I love making pancake bars and brunches. Okay, get it in here. I just want all the clumps to really get out. And this is a thicker batter. Okay, to make a nice fluffy pancake. If you’ve been following the episodes of Wholicious, I always cook gluten free and dairy free. And it’s something on my journey towards health. 

Gluten and Dairy Free

About nine years ago, I stopped eating gluten because I was healing my gut and healing my hormones and my adrenals and with the guidance of a naturopathic doctor, I was urged to cut out gluten and dairy and a couple other ingredients because I just was feeling really fatigued. So I’m not a gluten hater. But for me, it doesn’t work for my diet. So in my cookbook, ‘Sexy, Nourishing Food.’ That book is all gluten free and dairy free. And it just works for my body. Speaking of my cookbook, this actually pancake recipe is in there because it’s so popular. All right, and you have to find what works for you. 

Careful with Additives & Preservatives

Like I said, I’m not a gluten hater, you have to be careful with the quality of gluten in the United States unfortunately, because wheat can be sprayed with glycophyte, which is known to cause cancer. So that is why when people say oh my gosh, I can go to Europe and I can eat all the cheese and all the bread and drink all the wine. It’s because they don’t use I think we can use in the US 175 additives and preservatives that are basically banned and illegal in Europe. Isn’t that wild? So you just have to be careful. 

Cinnamon Coconut Pecan Recipe

Okay, here we go. All right, I’m going to let this sit because the flax is acting as our egg and it’s going to thicken it. Let’s get our pecans in the oven. So I’m gonna make basically a cinnamon coconut pecan crumble. So we’ve got pecans, a little bit of coconut oil here. Cinnamon. Can you tell that I use cinnamon everything. Okay, a little drizzle of maple. And then our coconut. Okay, now, I’m going to add a pinch of sea salt. And toss this together. 

Why Do You Use Cinnamon in Almost Everything? 

Because first of all, it’s really great for helping fight inflammation, but it makes everything so sweet. 

Gift Idea

Now, this is something I love to make for presents, especially during the holidays. You can make a huge batch of this. And put them into nice pretty little mason jars with a little bow and make the best gifts. This is going to be a topping that we’re going to put on our pancakes today. But these cinnamon coconut pecans y’all are delicious on smoothie bowls on yogurt. I mean, you can eat a handful of it for a little bit of a protein snack. So you can put it on your ice cream are nice cream. They’re delicious. It’s a fun little gift idea. All right. Yes. Okay, so we’re gonna toast this in the oven. Get this out of my way here. We’re gonna toast this for about 12 minutes in the oven, okay. And I’m going to put them in there right with those fritattas. Okay, perfect. Love it. 

Chia Jam Recipe

Alright, let’s get into that Chia jam. So this jam, I’m going to use soft raspberries. Now for this jam you can use any berry. Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, I love raspberries right now. And so we’re going to use these. These are actually a little soft. This jam is best made if your fruit isn’t super ripe, because you really want to be able to mash with your fork. So in here, I’m going to actually start to mash and I’m going to add just a teaspoon of maple into this. Like literally the smallest little amount of maple. Okay. And then to thicken our jam, I’m adding some chia seeds. So the chia seeds high in Omega, high and plant protein, but also when the chia seeds sits with the raspberries and the orange, I’m going to do a half of an orange. It’s going to thicken up and kind of make it a little bit like jello like and this is so fast. Look at how fast this jam that’s a raw jam. It’s going to take under five minutes. 

Bellini

Okay. And then I’m going to show you a fun little mocktail to make with this. So one thing that I used to love to drink especially when I went to Italy is a bellini. Do you guys know what a bellini is? I love it. It’s made with Prosecco, and some sort of like fruit puree. But right now I’m not drinking so I’m making this bellini today. It’s going to be a biellini mocktail, and we’re going to use sparkling water, and it’s super fun to make for brunch, and you can sip on it while you’re making brunch and feel festive. And you can use any fruit purée. Okay, sometimes I like blend up puréed mango and pour it in with my sparkling water with a little bit of mint. 

Okay, so I just want to show you how fast and easy this is look at this. All you have to do is use the back of your fork and this is a little runny right now but when we let this sit for about five minutes, the chia seed, it’s going to really thicken this baby up. Okay. And how gorgeous is that? Okay, I’m going to put that to the side. All right. 

Almond Butter Syrup

Okay, now we’re going to make the almond butter syrup. So this was inspired because like I said, I used to love putting peanut butter and butter and maple syrup on my pancakes when I was little. I just prefer almond butter. You can definitely use peanut butter but this is delicious with almond butter. We’re going to loosen this up a little bit with a little bit of water. So it’s just a little bit of water. Then this also is going to get a little bit of maple and let me just get our almond butter in here. And this is delicious also drizzled on smoothie bowls, on granola, on yogurt, on cereal. So I love having multiple uses for my ingredients. So when you make stuff, you can have big batches in the fridge. This is also delicious drizzled on toast with banana. Okay, so I’m going to do a little whisk here.

Okay. Nice and creamy. We’re going to drizzle that on our pancakes. Let me just wipe this up for good presentation. This is going to be part of our pancake bar. Alright, so our frittata is almost ready. I’m gonna pull out the frittata. I’m going to start frying up the pancakes. Our cinnamon pecans are almost finished and I’ve got some backup for us also that are already cooled. And I think we’re ready to start frying up these pancakes. So let’s get our heat on. And I’m going to do medium, medium to high heat here. And I’m going to use a little bit of coconut oil. So we’ll do a little bit of coconut oil here. And I like that our batter has been sitting now for about five minutes. It’s nice and thick. See how thick it is. Okay. And like I said before, this batter is really great to fry them up, leave them in the fridge, you can grab them on the go, but also with this pancake batter, you can leave this batter in the fridge and fry it up whenever you want. It will get a little bit thick, but I like like a thick fluffy pancake. Okay, let me just put this in here. And that’s perfect. It’s about a fourth a cup. That’s great. Okay. All right, we’re gonna let that go. I’m going to actually grab our coconut pecans. So I’ve got the coconut pecans. They’re nice and toasted. I baked these a little bit ago for us so they would be cool. I’m going to put these in here so we can use this as our pancake bar. 

All right. I love these. Okay. All right, perfect. So while that’s going, I’m going to make the bellini really quick. Okay, I want to show you. Alright, so I’m going to take a big dollop of our raspberry jam here. Kind of just like put it down at the bottom. And then I’m going to top it with a little sparkling water. Now you can use Prosecco or champagne for this and it’s the delicious, okay. Okay. All right. I’m gonna make a couple pancakes. I’ll sit that right there. But look at how nice and thick and fluffy and airy it is. I think people sometimes say to me, oh, vegan pancakes are going to be so. You know, thin and flimsy. It’s like, No, this is like so thick. Okay, we’re smoking here. Let’s turn that down a little bit. Okay, so check out this bellini. It’s amazing. Isn’t it look like a cocktail. Okay, that’s perfect. All right, our pan is definitely hot. Ready for another pancake here. All right. Okay, we’re smoking. All right. Perfect. All right, I’m going to turn that down. And while this is cooking, I’m actually going to grab our frittatas out of the oven. Okay, look at these babies. And so what I love about cooking fritattas in a water bath to see how evenly they cooked. And like I said before, a lot of times egg dishes, everything can sink to the bottom and look at how perfect and fluffy they are. Okay. Also they’re fluffy because of that olive oil. I’m gonna set these to the side. Let’s flip this pancake.

Perfect. Okay, pancakes going. Okay, let’s make our brunch bar. Alright, I’m going to set these frittatas right on our platter here. I’m going to top it with a bunch of fresh herbs. I’m also going to make a green salad because I want to have greens with my brunch. And so this is a really great, full balanced meal. Okay, and I always need greens. Okay. All right, perfect. Let me grab this out of the way. Let me check on the pancake here. Okay, that looks nice. 

Add Your Greens

So green salad. I’m going to actually put a bunch of extra herbs in there. I’m a big fan of a very simple green salad. Seriously, all you need are herbs, greens, a little olive oil, a little pinch of salt. That’s it. So I’m gonna use some leftover basil, parsley, cilantro. Okay, give that a nice little toss. I’m going to do a little pinch of salt on there. And this pancake is definitely done. Perfect and we’re going to do a nice little drizzle of olive oil. Okay, gorgeous. And to make these babies nice and sexy, I’m going to put some greens couple little herb, cilantro leaves, parsley leaves, just like this. 

To top this off, we’re going to use the almond ricotta. So the almond ricotta I made in episode six. I stuffed some delicata squash with bison and top this. So you can go back and grab the recipe. But this is made with almond, lemon and a little sea salt and this is going to make this dish real really cheesy. So what I love is I’ll just put like a little dollop right on top. You can also sit the almond ricotta out on the bar for your brunch bar. And you know, it’s also amazing. It’s like fueling your family with nutritious healing food right? So when you’re preparing a beautiful meal like this, like it feels so good to know not only are you fueling your body with nutritious healing food, but you’re also responsible now for your family’s health. All right, so we’ve got our fritattas with almond ricotta, I’m going to set a little bit more out we’ve got our greens, let’s layer our pancakes. 

This is my favorite part. Okay, so I’m going to put a big drizzle of almond butter maple on this. Look at this. So good. Okay. Then, a nice big scoop of this raw berry jam. And then for the crunch because I always need texture. We’re going to do some cinnamon coconut pecans right on top. Oh my gosh. How gorgeous is that? So this is a beautiful brunch. We’ve got our protein pancakes with almond maple butter, cinnamon coconut pecans with a raw berry jam. Our leek basil, sun dried tomato fritattas with creamy almond ricotta, a nice green salad. And then your sparkling water mocktail bellini. Okay, thank you so much for joining me today for brunch. Take care of yourself, your mind your body, and your soul. And if you liked this episode, give it a thumbs up. If you have any questions comment below because I love staying connected with you. Subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can be an active part of my vision of a healthy world through food. I’ll see you on the next episode of Wholicious. And remember, healthy is the new sexy!

The post Chef Amber’s Wholicious™ – Episode 9 How To Have A Balanced Morning Routine appeared first on Chef Amber.

How Does This Go Together? 

The preparation of your body and mind is as important as preparing your meals daily. 

Meal Prep

Meal prepping is a big topic and can be very overwhelming. And it’s one of my favorite topics to teach. Meal prepping can be time consuming, I get it, which can be an issue for many and can lead to grabbing something unhealthy on the go. Which can then again cause anxiety and stress. Unfortunately, in our world today, there are so many sneaky healthy foods with sneaky ingredients. The label looks healthy, but when you turn it over, it’s loaded with vegetable oils, GMO foods, processed sugar, and basically ingredients you can’t pronounce. That is why I like to start with preparing some sexy, healthy snacks. 

How Can I Add More Nourishing Foods into Me and My Family’s Diet?” 

I believe that one of the fastest ways to take control of our health is by preparing our own food and being in control of what we put into our bodies. These recipes are quick and easy and you can make them at the beginning of the week. 

Not planning our food is where we get ourselves into trouble. Then we were out wandering around starving and grabbing whatever we can find. Believe me, I know because I did this for years and my body paid for it. I walked around bloated and flamed, tired because I wasn’t fueling my body with the right foods. 

“How Can I Start to Feel Better in My Body and Make Better Choices with Food?” 

Starting to feel better in our bodies is all about being prepared and putting your health first. You’re going to love the snacks. 

Breath Work

But before we start cooking, I want to show you a profound tool that also can help you free yourself from anxieties, physical and emotional discomfort and let go of stress. Sounds good? Huh? Stress has an overall negative impact on the body. And breath work can help you anytime during the day when stress or anxiety arises. For more insights on breathwork check out Wholicious Episode Four with breathwork expert Sandy Abrams. Now it’s time for Breath of Fire, which is the foundational breath technique of Kundalini yoga. It is a rapid rhythmic and continuous breath. It is practiced with the eyes closed. And I’ll show you in a minute as you breathe in and out of your nostrils. 

Breath of Fire

But let me first before I demo give you the benefits of Breath of Fire and why I like it. It releases toxins from your lungs and cells. It strengthens the nervous system to release stress and anxiety. It helps to reduce addictive impulses for unhealthy foods, alcohol or drugs and sugar and it balances your oxygen and carbon dioxide level in the body and can help with a clear mind and better focus. Sounds amazing, right? You might feel dizzy in the beginning, but with some practice, it dissolves and you boost your immune system. Okay, so let’s get into it. You can join me if you want. I’m going to explain the practice first and then we’re going to do it for about 30 seconds. 

Demo

So I’m sitting in like a small chair here. You can sit on the floor cross legged if you prefer, I like to put my hands on top of my knees. Now the way that this is practiced is as you exhale, out of your nose, you’re going to take your belly button and you’re going to pull your belly button up into your spine. Okay, so exhaling, your belly button is going up into your spine. As you inhale, you’re going to allow your upper abdominal muscles relax and let your diaphragm really extend downward. 

Okay, I want to show you what people usually do for breath the fire is usually as they’re inhaling their stomach goes in, and when they’re exhaling, their stomach goes out. That’s the opposite and that’s what makes you really dizzy. So the really mindful practice here is as you exhale, really be conscious of your stomach, navel coming up into your spine. Okay, so now that I’ve explained join me, we’re going to do it for about 20 seconds. I like to put my hands on my knees, sit up straight, close your eyes. I like to take my eyes and roll it up into the back of my head staring at my third eye. Okay, really sit up straight and tighten all the muscles in your pelvic floor because we’re going to really breathe up and pull up the energy. We’re going to take a deep breath in to start.

Ah okay, now let’s begin. That’s about 20 seconds. Hold your breath, really pull the breath in, take a deep, deep breath up, sip in the air, tighten your muscles in the pelvic floor, pull all the energy up, keep breathing in, hold it, sipping a little bit more air, hold it a little bit more ah, and then really exhale and release it, I like to do a couple breaths. Ah, and then I’d like to take the palms of my hand facing upward on my knees to really allow any sort of insight, clarity, or focus to come in, can sit here quietly for a minute, it’s a really great time to take a couple seconds to really connect and find your center. Ah, you can take another nice breath, letting out that air. 

Okay, now you can open up your eyes. Ah, what I really love about Breath of Fire, and that it grounds me, it helps me find my center, helps me feel really present and embodied but at the same time gives me so much energy. Sometimes I’ll do this in the car, I’ll step into the bathroom at my restaurant, you can do this anywhere. And like I said, at the beginning, you can start with 20-30 seconds until you get comfortable with the practice and then work yourself up to 1-2-3 even 5 minutes. 

Today’s Episode

I think we’re well prepared to jump into my Wholicous kitchen and get cooking. Today we’re cooking three snacks. Oat blueberry balls, a paleo chocolate chip granola bar, and then a purple smoothie bowl. Okay, join me in the kitchen. So I always get asked from my clients and customers. 

What’s the Best Way that I can Add More Nourishment into my Family’s Diet? 

By meal prepping. I believe that the fastest way to take control of your health is to prepare your own food. 

Inspiring Your Meal Prep

So meal prepping is a big big topic. I love talking about it. I love teaching it. I love inspiring to really start to get confident in the kitchen preparing your own food. It can be very overwhelming and I know time can be an issue. So I like to start with snacks. Snacks are not as intimidating. And I find with snacking, for me snacking, I can always get into trouble because if I’m not prepared, and I don’t have a snack with me, I will be wandering around my kitchens at all three of my restaurants, just putting whatever in my mouth and that hasn’t worked for me. So it’s all about being prepared. 

3 Snacks

So today we’re going to make three snacks. And also they’re really easy. Okay, so we’re going to start really simple. We’re going to make oat blueberry balls. Okay, we love our balls at The Source Cafe, my restaurant in Hermosa Beach and Manhattan. And then we’re going to do a paleo granola bar and I’m going to give you two options and then we’re going to end with a smoothie bowl packed with veggies. 

Blueberry Oat Bar Recipe

Okay. So I’ve got gluten free oats. Okay, got two cups of gluten free oats we’re going to use today and then I’m going to use some hemp seeds. So the hemp seeds here is going to pack this with a ton of protein, give it some creaminess and texture and loaded with some healthy omegas also really high in fiber. So I don’t have kids, so I like to use my nephew’s as an example because they’re so impossible to get nourishing healthy food into their bodies. And so the best way is by sneaking healthy ingredients into their snacks and so I love these balls because I can hide these hemp seeds right in the oats with the almond butter. 

So I’ve got hemp seeds, oats, then we’re going to add some organic raw almond butter. You can sub here. Definitely can sub tahini, you can sub any nut butter of choice if you actually are a peanut butter family instead of an almond butter family. Go ahead. These are delicious with peanut butter. You know if you’ve been following me on past episodes of Wholicious, I love giving substitutions. I find that giving substitutions really helps build your confidence in the kitchen and helps you be creative with your own cooking. I always say you have to have fun in the kitchen. Don’t take cooking too seriously. 

Alright, so we’ve got our almond butter of course packed with so much protein. I’m using dried blueberries today. Now here’s another thing if you you know if you don’t want to put any dried fruit in here you can leave these out, but this is going to add more fiber and a ton of antioxidants. You also can sub chopped up dried apricot, dried mangoes. I love dried strawberries in here so you can do any dried fruit of choice. If you want to make this decadent and more of like a treat, you can take out the dried fruit and you can add some healthy chocolate chips. I’ve done that before. That’s actully a really easy sell. 

Okay, So I just added our protein powder, and I always talk about the protein powder. I’ll talk about it a little bit more when we’re making the smoothie bowl, but this is loaded with protein from peas, it’s sustainable, really clean. Alright, then I’m going to add our chia seeds. The chia seeds, adding more plant protein, and more omegas and fiber. 

Maca Root

Now I’m adding maca root today. And I love maca, because for me, it’s one of my favorite adaptogens that really gives me energy and helps with hormone balancing. You can definitely leave this out if you’re breastfeeding or if you’re pregnant. It is safe for kids. In Peru, the Peruvians, the whole family, they eat maca root all the time. So it’s not just for adults. Then I’m going to add our cinnamon and sea salt. And then I’m going to add about two thirds cups of maple. Let me just kind of eye that. I’m not a big measurer, if you’ve been following me. It constricts me too much. Okay, now I’m just gonna give this a nice stir here. 

Get the Kids Involved

Now, one thing I always like to teach to In the kitchen is getting your kids involved. So it’s really fun. I find like when kids can be more involved in making and preparing their own food that they’re more able to taste it, right. So this is really fun to actually get in here and do with your hands. So you can get your kids, my nephew’s will get in here and roll this and like it kind of is like fun, like playdough and roll different shapes of balls. And then they’re like, so proud. And they’re like, Oh my God, look at what I made. 

So let’s eat it right. And it’s awesome, right, because all those omega from the seeds are actually hidden underneath the almond butter and the oats. Okay, I’m actually gonna get in here with my hands, because it’s just easier to really incorporate all the ingredients. So snacking. So like I said before, really starting to prepare your own food. And really planning out snacks for the week can really help add that extra nutrition to you and your family’s diet. 

Tips for Easy Meal Prepping

And so I like to say okay, so let me give a couple quick tips about meal prepping, I like to make my grocery list and my prep list. So say you’re going to make these three snacks, right. So you get all your ingredients together. And you make your list. I like to go to the store on Saturday, because that works for my schedule. And then I prep on Sunday and I have my recipes printed and my veggies are washed and everything’s ready to go. It’s very overwhelming to shop and cook on the same day. That’s where people kind of give up and they’ll say chef, it’s too much work, I can’t do it. So just pick a day, go to the store, have your recipes ready. And then you can prep on the next day. 

So this is good to go. What I’m going to do is I’m actually going to roll this and a little bit of coconut and you can omit the coconut because sometimes if I’m making this for picky eaters, they don’t want the coconut. So you do not have to roll this in coconut but it’s kind of pretty and adds a little texture. So you can just make like a little medium sized ball. And then like to just roll it like this right here. And these freeze really well. They freeze really well. They’re really great for lunchboxes, and I mean they’re amazing for a pre post workout. Okay, so here are oat blueberry, almond butter balls with a little bit of coconut. Next, we’re going to make a paleo granola bar with chocolate chips.

Granola Bar Recipe

So granola bars. I love granola bars, I grew up eating the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip think they were like the Quaker brand and not clean at all but delicious. So I wanted to show a version of a really healthy granola bar and I am going to make them with chocolate chips today because why not and it shows kind of a version of a play off of a Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip granola bar, but we can also leave the chocolate chips out. 

So this is going to be made in the food processor. And this is loaded with plant protein from all the nuts and seeds. So we’re going to start with some pecans. Okay, and then some sunflower seeds. And this literally is has so much protein and so much fiber because of all the seeds and the nuts. All right here I’ve got some sliced almonds and some dates that are already chopped up. It makes the blending a little bit easier. And the dates add a little bit of sweetness along with the maple. So I’m going to add those in. Okay, perfect. Okay, almond flour is our base. So I’ve got two cups of almond flour here. And then I’ve got coconut flakes. I love the coconut it adds a little bit more texture and sweetness. Okay, we’re getting a little packed in here. And I’m going to add about a fourth a cup of maple. There’s really not that much sweetness in this. The sweetness is coming from the dates combined with the maple, but also the pecans and the almonds and the coconut actually have quite a bit of sweetness. Okay, so I’m going to do like a fourth a cup. That looks good. And definitely needs a little bit of sea salt in here. 

Use Clean Ingredients

So already do you see how clean this granola bar is? And I want to talk a little bit more about really looking at the labels. I think the granola bars industry is one of the sneakiest industries in terms of they sell you a healthy granola bar. And then you turn it over and it’s like, wait, what is this? So there’s a couple granola bars, I’m not going to name bash any bar names, but they’ll sell it with egg whites or blueberries and almonds and blueberries if they’re non organic or sprayed with 12 different pesticides. Okay? Almonds are actually a highly highly sprayed crop unfortunately, in California. Dates are another one. And egg whites mean for me when I eat eggs, I want to make sure my eggs are organic, that they’re pasture raised. And they’re happy, happy, happy chickens. So you just don’t even know where the eggs are coming from. They could be you know, injected with hormones and antibiotics. So, you know, taking control of our health seriously, the best way is starting to prepare our own food. I’ll repeat that 100 times. 

Okay, what else do we have? Oh, we’re just have a little bit of water. Just a little splash of water here. Okay, we’re going to add in the chocolate chips at the end, and then a little bit of coconut oil. Okay, just to kind of bring it all together. All right, perfect. Okay, I’m gonna give this a nice little blend here until it’s thick and creamy. Okay, I’m going to scrape this down. Just kind of scrape the sides down. Okay, that looks good. That looks great. So now I’m going to add these chocolate chips. These are paleo chocolate chips. I’ve been using these and all of my desserts this, these episodes, and they’re made with coconut sugar. So there’s no sugar in these and they’re actually not very sweet. 

Chocolate Optional

Okay, and again, if you want to leave the chocolate chips out and have this be a plain granola bar, that’s usually how I eat it. Or I’ll add a cup of dried blueberries to it. That’s it. Okay, perfect. I’m just gonna give our pan here a little bit of a spray with some coconut oil. A nice spray here. Perfect. And then I’m going to flatten this out. Let me take this out. Okay, and what I love about these granola bars is that you can cut them up pre portion them and you can put them into little baggies and put them right in the fridge or the freezer, they actually freeze really well. And with freezing, you can just pop one out and take it on the go. 

These are great for breakfast. They’re great for snack, pre post workout, I mean these are loaded with so it has all your protein and all your omegas and fiber. And when I make the smoothie bowl, I’m going to show you how amazing it is dipped right in the smoothie bowl or crumble it up as a topping. So I’m going to use my hands because it’s easier to get a straight flat surface and I like to spray a little oil on my hands so the dough doesn’t stick. We can just do it just like this. Okay. It’s not the prettiest dough, but it’s delicious. Okay, perfect. Okay, I’m going to put this baby in the oven for about 20-25 minutes at 350.

Smoothie Bowl Recipe

Okay, it’s smoothie bowl time. So this is one of the most popular demos I’ve probably done in the last 9-10 years. I love a smoothie bowl. I’ve had a long time ongoing obsession with my smoothie bowls. And the reason I love my version of smoothie bowls is because I’m using frozen vegetables combined with some blueberries and I don’t think it’s very common to have cauliflower, zucchini and purple sweet potato in your smoothie bowls. And what I love about this is again, we’re sneaking in healthy ingredients. It’s so creamy. It tastes like ice cream. I can get my nephew’s and picky adults to eat this. The colors gorgeous. It’s bright purple, and they don’t even realize that there’s zucchini and cauliflower and potato at it. So it’s very exciting. I love love teaching this. 

So first off, I want to start by showing that I’ve already steamed my cauliflower. Okay, and it’s chilled so I chop up my cauliflower, steam it, cool it. Then I roasted a purple sweet potato and chopped it into little like half ounce pieces. All right. And then for the zucchini, the zucchini is raw. 

What’s the Best Way to Freeze Your Veggies?

I just have these little baggies at my house. And I stuff the baggies with the vegetable. And then the most important part, the most important part is really make sure that when you freeze, and I know this might be a silly thing to say, but make sure they’re flat. 

Because I can’t tell you how many times you know I’ll get a email or text from a customer. Like gosh I have the hardest time blending my smoothies, well, it’s because they’ve packed the baggie and they’ve done this, right and then throw it in the freezer and then it literally is a big cauliflower ice cube and they’re right, it’s impossible. So if you open up my freezer at home, I’ve got so many baggies stacked with frozen avocado, frozen carrot, different types of yams and sweet potato, raw zucchini. When papaya is in season, I’ll do raw papaya, that actually makes it really really creamy, the smoothies. So I have a ton of recipes on chefamber.com and actually have like a smoothie bowl ebook that you can take a peek at, and you’ll see my love affair of smoothie bowls. It’s a great way to start your day because automatically you’ve got basically all the veggies you need. So see how nice this is. And just stack those and put those straight in the freezer. Okay, takes a little bit of effort, but this is a perfect example of what you would do on meal prep Sundays. 

Okay, I’m going to put this to the side and we’re going to start up here. So I’ve already got my veggies frozen here and kind of do our purple potato. You can also do a white potato, white sweet potato, or orange yam but the color is so pretty if you can find the purple potatoes. Roasted cauliflower, so putting the cauliflower in. Roasted, frozen, all this is frozen. 

Why do I do the Zucchini Raw and the Cauliflower is Steamed?

A lot of people can have some gastric issues from raw cauliflower. Cruciferous veggies in general can add a little bit of bloating and gas for people. So steaming kind of takes the edge off. So that’s why I steam it and freeze it. 

And then we’ve got cauliflower. This bowl, I put on the menu at my restaurant and Hermosa Beach, The Source Cafe about eight years ago and their labor of love my staff actually does not like making them that much because they take so much work, but they’ve become very famous. So it’s exciting to share this with you today. Then we’re going to add for some sweetness, we’re going to add some blueberries. 

Okay, about a half a cup, and then all of our powders. So I’m adding cinnamon because cinnamon really adds sweetness to it, believe it or not. Then I’m adding the protein powder newzest that I’ve been talking about through my episodes made out of peas, sustainable, clean. And since we’re talking about clean ingredients today and the importance of that, make sure when you’re sourcing your protein powder that you’re really checking the back of the label for what type of ingredients and how many are in the back. Okay, and then we’re going to use some chlorella and I love chlorella in this because you can’t taste it and you can sneak that ingredient in. 

What are Some Benefits of Chlorella?

It’s really high in B vitamins. It’s a great, great thing for removing heavy metals from the body. I eat a lot of chlorella when I’m traveling and if I’m flying because it actually helps protect from radiation so. Also really great for the liver. So so many benefits if you can get your chlorella in this is a great way to sneak it in. 

Sneaking in Protein Powder

I’m going to get all of our powders in and then I’m going to use a little bit of full fat coconut milk andI’m going to start with like that because I want my smoothie bowl thick and creamy. Some people do prefer their smoothie bowls a little bit more runny, but I want this to be almost thick like ice cream. 

Okay. Oh my gosh, I almost forgot our avocados. So the avocado because you can tell right now we don’t really have any fat and here’s we do need a fat to help absorb the minerals and the vitamins from the veggies. And also to add to the creaminess. And we got a little bit of full fat coconut milk in there for the fat but not that much. So I’m going to add a big scoop of avocado here. Almost a half. Okay, actually we’ll just do a little more because it’ll be so creamy. Now takes a little bit of some muscle and a little bit of some effort, but I’m going to blend away okay. You have to have a high speed blenders for this. I’m using a Vitamix it’s the only one I I ever use. I’ve owned hundreds of them between all my restaurants over the years and you’d have to have a tamper. You can’t just turn on the blender and blend with this okay, because we’re really going to put some muscle into this. OKAY, Ah yeah, like that. So delicious.

All right. Let’s get this all set up here. I have some cacao nibs but you know what we’re going to top it with? That granola bar. I’m going to crumble that baby up and put it right on the smoothie bowl. Sometimes when the granola bar comes out of the oven, I like to actually use it as a base, and then top it with the smoothie bowl, or my ice cream that was made out of bananas a couple episodes ago and then it’s almost like a like a brownie sundae, healthy brownie sundae. Okay, let’s get this right on in here. Look at how creamy this is. And honestly, sometimes, because of the creaminess of the avocado, and the purple sweet potato, the mouthfeel of this actually kind of feels like yogurt, creamy yogurt and I don’t really eat yogurt. So that’s actually fun too. 

Have Fun with Toppings

You can top this with granola and berries, and a little drizzle of honey, little scoop of almond butter. All right, this looks perfection. And this really when I’m having like a craving for a sweet treat or ice cream at night, hits all the spots. Sometimes I’ll do a smoothie bowl for dinner because it has so much protein and healthy fat in it. Alright, that looks great. Okay, I’m going to top this with a little bit of cacao nibs just like this. Okay, a little bit of energy, a little bit of crunch. I definitely need texture. The creaminess. So look at our smoothie bowl here. So I want to get into this granola bar. 

So I pulled the granola bar out about an hour ago because this one is a little delicate. Okay, meaning if you pull this right out of the oven and cut into it, it’s going to break all over the place. Sometimes I can’t wait and I completely mess up my bar because I get so excited. But this has been cooling for about an hour. Okay. And you can see how the chocolate kind of melted throughout. Which makes it really beautiful. Okay, so I’m gonna make a little slices here. Some bars. And again, you can pre portion this and put these into baggies right in the fridge or freezer. But look at this. Look at this nice little bar here. How good is this? Now let me make a pretty plate for us to show you. Okay, our guilt free, healthy, completely delicious paleo granola bar. Okay. And let me show you what I love to do. First of all, you can crumble this a little bit like this. It’s almost like we’re putting a little bit of granola on top. Okay, and you can take this granola bar, and you can do like a little dipper, like that. Oh god, oh my god. 

Hey, so let’s remember all of our fun snacks for today. And you know what’s exciting. All these are in my cookbook, ‘Sexy, Nourishing Food to Fuel Your Mind, Body and Soul.’ We’ve got the balls in there. There’s a couple smoothie bowls in there, and the paleo granola bars. Thank you so much for joining me today. Take care of yourself, your mind, your body, and your soul. And give this episode a thumbs up if you loved it. If you have any questions, please comment below because I love staying connected with you. Subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can be an active part of my vision of a healthy world through food. I’ll see you on the next episode of Wholicious and remember healthy is the new sexy!

The post Chef Amber’s Wholicious™ – Episode 8 Sexy, Nourishing Foods appeared first on Chef Amber.

We often label desserts as bad and feel guilty after eating sweets. Sugar stimulates your nervous system and hunger hormones, and it can actually cause some people to eat more and create a vicious cycle of addiction. I know this cycle very well. And for years, I love the high and sugar because I got when eating processed sugar and sweets. And yes, it can take a lot of work to get out of this cycle. My inspiration to make delicious sugar-free recipes came from my journey over these last couple of years as I have been healing my relationship with food and my body. Cutting out refined sugar is when we really start to feel energized and clear minded again. And there are so many amazing ways to enjoy sweets and desserts without feeling deprived and guilty. I’ll show you three of my favorite treats that I love to make when I want to dessert or a little sweet treat that will not make your body crash or wreak havoc on your system. 

Dance! Baby!

But before we go into my Wholicious kitchen, I want to show you a practice that lights me up, gives me a ton of energy, and you know what it’s totally for free. Dancing baby! I love dancing as a tool to help me shift my energy, get back into my body, let go of any emotion, and also I’ll use it as my exercise for the day. If I’m not dealing with my feelings and not allowing myself to emotionally express, I crave to escape with food and especially sugar. So dancing, first thing in the morning really can help you let go of all those energies that don’t belong to you and really open up your body to connect with yourself and your divine energy. It helps you to step into your power and love and accept your beautiful body. 

Okay, so feel free to dance with me. I’m going to show you my goddess dance. This is a practice I started about four years ago. The only rules for dancing, there’s no rules. There’s no guidelines. Really it’s about dancing without restrictions without any judgments. This is a great time to really connect with your inner self and allow yourself to let go and surrender to the moment. Okay, when do I dance? I dance when I’m sad. I dance when I’m happy, when I’m angry, when I’m frustrated. Or I just need to move my body and shift some energy. I never regret dancing and you know what, always remember to have fun. I really love to dance when I need to release some emotion. So sometimes I’ll catch myself having a good cry when I dance or I need to laugh or have a good scream. Whatever goes goes and the biggest thing y’all is don’t judge yourself. Really let go and surrender. 

Okay, feel free to join me as we dance. Okay, so, what I like to do before I start, is like to close my eyes. So I invite you to close your eyes. Put your hand on your heart, hand on your belly. Take some deep breaths in. Really letting that breath out. Start to move your body. Feel your body tune into yourself. Get present with yourself. Two feet on the ground can feel the energy moving up your feet back of your legs at the back of your spine and start to sway move your arms really feel it. Really feel every part of your body. Be so grateful that your body can move like this. Closing your eyes and really just tune in and let yourself go and have fun!

Deep breath. Shake. Get it all out. We come to an end, really takes a deep breaths in and out. Oh I like to end with my hands again on my heart and my stomach. Really feeling my body, feeling my feet, putting a smile on your face. Really acknowledging yourself, acknowledging your body to move like this. Feeling your heartbeat underneath your hand. Hmm just tune in for a couple seconds and get still and get quiet with yourself.

Now you can open your eyes. How yummy does that feel? So invigorating and you know what you will never feel upset or sad after you dance. Now that we’re feeling amazing and confident in our body, we definitely deserve some sexy nourishing sweets and treats. 

Today’s Episode

Today we’re gonna make a creamy adaptogen hot chocolate, then some protein chocolate chip cookies, and this orgasmic fried date with tahini honey and pecans. See you in my Wholicious kitchen.

Okay, so these three recipes today are all about enjoying desserts and sweets without the guilt or shame. No deprivation y’all. Okay, I’m starting with an adaptogen hot chocolate. Then I’m going to make this decadent fried dates with tahini, pecans, rosemary and honey, and then finishing with a plant based protein chocolate chip cookie. 

Hot Chocolate Recipe

So first, let’s dive into the adaptogen hot chocolate. And I’ve already got our almond milk warm. And in episode two, I made a Tumeric latte. And you can reference back to that to see how I made homemade almond milk, but I’m going to tell you really quickly, a fast, easy way to make almond milk. Alright, so this is nice and hot and steamed. So a quick way to make almond milk, you can take two tablespoons of almond butter and blend it in the blender with two cups of water. And you’ve got all the milk without the soaking and the straining, none of the nonsense. So that’s like a quick little tip. And again, if you missed the immune boosting episode, with the Tumeric latte, you can go back. Alright, so I’ve got my hot almond milk. And then I’m going to add raw cacao. So the raw cacao was the first adaptogen going in today. And Episode One Dr. G was on, and we really spoke about the healing properties of adaptogen so that you can go back and really hear the whole spiel. But I’ll just remind you guys, what an adaptogen is. Adaptogens really help our bodies adapt to outside stressors. And the reason I love this latte so much, this hot chocolate latte, is because I don’t drink caffeine. And when I was getting off caffeine, I really needed something to boost my energy and the raw cacao gives me so much energy plus it’s full with antioxidants and it helps release the happiness hormone. 

Okay, next we’re going to add all the rest of our adaptogens. Okay, so what I’ve got going on here is I’ve got maca root, which is really great for libido, stamina, sexual health, and hormone balancing. I’ve got some Lion’s Mane amazing for brain health and energy. We’ve also got Tocos. Tocos is a brand soluble, which is high in Vitamin E really great for the skin, really great for collagen production, and I’ve got mesquite that’s multi. And last, we have the lucuma which is and they all kind of look the same, but the lucuma is actually really high in vitamin C and it’s actually a really great natural sweetener. So I’m going to throw all these babies in here. 

And this is why this gives me so much energy you can already see it’s loaded with all these adaptogens raw cacao. I’m going to make this just a little bit sweet. I’m going to do just like I don’t know, one big teaspoon of maple and if you want this to be zero, you know sugar calories low low glycemic, you can definitely put a couple of drops of Stevia. Alright, I’m going to blend this for about 30 seconds. Okay, perfect. Oh my gosh, I always call this an adult hot chocolate. This is really overall great for sexual vitality and health. That’s why I like to call it an adult hot chocolate. Oh my gosh. Okay, I have to have a sip of this. Before we move on to the tahini. Oh my gosh. It’s amazing. So creamy. Okay, so decadent. All right, I’m gonna put that to the side and sip on that because I already have so much energy from dancing earlier but this is like the best combo.

Happy Accidents

I love Halva. Halva is made with dates and tahini has sesame from the tahini and pistachios and this just reminds me of kind of like a deconstructive Halva without all the sugar. So that’s where this kind of came from a lot of my creations, y’all in the kitchen kind of happened by mistake. I know a cookbook, one day is going to be called, “Happy Accidents.” Because I’ll be creating in the kitchen and experimenting and all of a sudden I’m like, oh my god, this is gonna be awful. And then it becomes a favorite one of my restaurants and it sticks. So that’s kind of like where my best creations. This is where this came from. 

So I’m going to put a couple big tablespoons of olive oil on here because we’re going to fry the dates in the olive oil. So you want a really nice quality extra virgin olive oil. 

Everyday Pan

We’re going to get this pan hot. And this is kind of my everyday fit pan I use. I always get asked what pans I use this as my everyday pan from Always brand. I love it so much. It’s really important with pans y’all that you make sure they’re toxic, free. So this is a clean, toxic free nonstick pan. I love it. 

Tahini Dates

Alright, so my oils getting hot. I’ve got these amazing big juicy dates here. I’m going to add the dates, we’re going to want these to sizzle just a little bit. Okay, this dish happens really quickly. So this the heat is medium high. These are pitted, make sure your dates are pitted for this. You don’t want to bite into a big pit, right? All right, just happened many times. Okay. All right. In love, alright, do you hear the sizzle, okay. Really want to fry those dates in the oil. And the best thing to do too, is really take your spatula, I’m using a wooden spoon. I really always cook with wooden spoons and press the date into the oil and let them fry. Okay, and I’m going to flip them and I’ll show you you can kind of see on that guy starting to get a nice kind of golden carmelized skin. Okay, so we’re gonna let this go for a couple minutes. And let me just flip these. Oh, yeah. 

Chefs Make Mistakes Too!

Now be careful because this dish happens really quickly. And it’s very easy to burn these days. Believe me, I’ve done it. Chefs make mistakes too. People always ask me oh my gosh, do you ever burn anything or make mistakes in the kitchen? I’m like, Oh my God. Are you kidding me all the time. Okay, I’m going to turn down our heat because it’s getting pretty hot and I don’t want to burn my dates. And okay, these are looking good. I want to show like see how they’re kind of getting a little bit fried. Kind of dark and carmelized Okay, that’s perfect. 

Alright, so what I’m going to do now is I’m really going to turn down my heat almost as low as it can go because I’m going to add the tahini and the thing with the tahini is we don’t want to burn the tahini. So I’ve got my creamy tahini here. Add the tahini. Okay. And my heat is on pretty low. And I’m gonna give this a nice little stir for only about 20 seconds. I want this to cook down just a little. Just a little let’s really coat the dates in the tahini. Okay, so a couple minutes, you’ll see how it’s starting to kind of stick to the pan. Okay, that’s okay. All right, just a couple more seconds here. Just really keep your eye on this now. I like this really saucy. Alright, this is looking good. Okay, perfect. That’s it. Turning off the heat. Okay. All right. So I just want to show, look at how nice and caramelized see how brown that tahini got but it’s not burned. Okay, you see this?

All right. Now look at this. Oh my gosh. So amazing. The smell is like unbelievable. Like I can’t even smell. Okay, let me clean this because I have to have perfect presentation for y’all. Okay, now I’m gonna put a little couple little sprigs of rosemary. The rosemary really brings out the dates and the nuttiness of the tahini. Going to finish it with malden and sea salt. Just a little bit of malden okay. Then I’m also going to do like a little bit of cinnamon. Okay, the sweetness of the cinnamon with the tahini and the dates. Finish it with some chopped pecans. Okay, a little bit of crunch. I need texture. So you’ve the dates are so smushy and soft. So I want like a crunch. So the crunch of the pecans is perfect. And then I’m adding some raw honey. So I’m just going to drizzle this honey. Right on top here. Look at this. Are you kidding me right now? 

Okay, this dessert makes me so excited and I know I just danced and show you. So do my goddess dance. But this definitely makes me like want to shimmy, like get really excited. Alright, check out this fried dates with the creamy tahini, olive oil with honey, the rosemary, pecans and cinnamon. And this is pretty hot. But I have to get in here and have a bite before we make those cookies. Oh my god. Yeah, so I can’t wait because I’m gonna get in here later. But it’s really like the best balance. It’s amazing. 

And it really hits all the fields for me, because it’s a little bit savory and the sweetness and without the guilt because I spent most of my life not being able to eat dessert or I restricted myself from eating desserts and I labeled them bad because I was afraid that they were going to make me fat, right. And then I would have shame and guilt and all the things. So no more of that as I’ve continued to heal my relationship with food and really learn to love and accept my body. It is possible to love desserts, eat desserts with joy and love and accept your beautiful body. Okay, so that’s a huge big theme of mine very passionate about sharing that message, and helping y’all continue to create a healthy relationship with food. 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Alright, let’s dive into the chocolate chip cookies. So these chocolate chip cookies, I have served at my restaurant, Source Cafe, opened it at about nine years ago, and I’ve been making these protein plant based cookies for about nine years. They are a fan favorite. And they’re actually in my cookbook, ‘Sexy Nourishing Food For Your Mind Body And Soul.’ And also this adaptogen hot chocolate is also in my cookbook. So check that out because that was a labor of love passion project and people have been asking me for years, please chef, can you share your chocolate chip cookie? So here it is. Alright, so this cookie is quick. And it’s no fuss because I think if you’ve been following me on Wholicious, you’re gonna know that I’m not a baker and I don’t like I’m not a fussy baker so it needs to be easy and foolproof. 

Dry Ingredients

Today we’re using a gluten free flour brand, and it’s Bob’s gluten free flour. You can use any gluten free flour blend. This one’s made out of potato fava beans, and peas, and high in protein already. Okay, so I’m going to add that about two cups. 

And then coconut sugar is the sweetener of choice today. And you can sub monkfruit in this if you want this to be like even lower glycemic. It won’t be paleo because of the potato in the flour. Okay, people always ask oh, if I sub monkfruit with the gluten free flower like no. So I’m going to do one cup of coconut sugar, a big scoop here. Okay, just like that. And then I’m going to add a little bit of baking soda and xantham gum. Okay. 

And then flaxmeal. So the flaxmeal is actually going to work as our egg in the dish and it’s really going to thicken our dough and help it rise a little bit. So I have flaxmeal also, I love flax because it’s high in omegas and it’s high in fiber and high in protein. So already, we’ve got a very high protein cookie here. 

And then I’m using some of my favorite protein powder, Nuzest protein powder. It’s made out of peas. Clean ingredients, three ingredients and high in protein and I liked the protein powder because it gives a little bit of a vanilla flavor. And it also doesn’t bloat me out. A lot of protein powders can cause a lot of bloating and gassiness. So I’m gonna give this a whisk. Okay, so we’ve got all of our dry here with this baby around. 

Wet Ingredients

And then we’re going to do our wet to get all the clumps out here. Kind of take my whisk and and smash down the clumps. Okay, that looks good. All right. I’ve got five tablespoons of water, just a little bit of water in here. And then I’ve got our coconut oil. Okay, and obviously the coconut oil you can see I melted. This will not work if you don’t melt it. Okay, and then I’m going to put a big tablespoon of vanilla extract. Oh, looks good. That was a big one. Okay, and let me whisk this. Okay, perfect. And I’m going to add our wet to our dry and give this a little whisk. 

Can You Eat This Cookie Dough Raw?

Okay, getting all the clumps out here and I have to tell you that this is a really great cookie dough if you want to eat it raw. Sometimes I’ll even put it in a jar and keep it in the fridge. Bake it off when I want to or the cookie dough is really great if you’re making like a nice cream or a smoothie bowl and you want to have like a cookie dough ice cream. This cookie dough is delicious. You can pull a couple little pieces out from the fridge, roll them up in the balls and mix it in with your ice cream or an ice cream. If you missed my episode, where I made banana ice cream, that would be perfect with this cookie dough. 

So I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, I used to love some cookie dough. But with all the raw egg and stuff it never worked out well for me. Okay, this looks good. I need to pull all the dough off here. And I need to just kind of shake it out of this whisk. Okay, there we go.

I’m gonna add our chocolate chips. Okay, so these chocolate chips are paleo chocolate chips. They’re made with a really high quality raw cacao. And also, they’re made with coconut sugar. So you can use any chocolate chip here, you can even use chocolate chips with monkfruit. I love a paleo chocolate chip because I know that I’m not getting the process of white sugar, right. Alright, so I’m going to fold this in with my spatula here. 

Soft Cookies

And these only bake for like 8 to 10 minutes. Now for me, I like an undercooked cookie because I want it to be a little bit softer and smushy. And specially because these don’t have a egg you can get away with it. So I like to undercook my cookies and then pull them out of the oven and let them sit. So when they cool, they’re fully baked, but then they’re just a little bit softer. All right, look at this dough. Can you imagine this dough in the fridge and you just can pull out a little one tiny little bite. Look at this. You know what I love about it. It’s loaded with protein. And actually for me if I was going to sit around and I don’t just sit around eat cookie dough all day, but if I wanted to cook you’d have a treat. I might add a little collagen to it because I want more protein. Okay. It’s kind of delicious. And it’s fun to eat cookie dough without the guilt and the shame. Okay, took me years this didn’t happen overnight y’all. It took me years but it’s possible. 

Okay, I’m gonna do a little spray here with our coconut oil. And then I’m using a scoop, you can use your hand or spoon. But these scoops are really easy to buy off of Amazon. And I’m going to do a nice scoop here. Kind of like an ice like a medium sized ice cream scoop you can use. Okay, just kind of pull these in, scoop this baby up. And you can obviously make these smaller. 

Cookie Cake

You can make many cookies with this, you can make a cookie cake meaning if I wanted this to be more of kind of like a brownie cookie, or a cake, I would put all this dough in here and smash it down with my hand and bake it. Man cookie cakes in the south when I was little were so popular. Oh man, those made me feel so awful. Love those things. Alright, this looks good. I’ll bake those a little later. And then what I do with my hands is kind of just pressed down like this. Just kind of pressed down like that. You can obviously make a thinner cookie. You know, everyone’s kind of particular with their chocolate chip cookies. I like a little bit of a fatter cookie.

But if you want this to be nice and thin, you can really press it out and make a nice thin one. I’m going to throw these in the oven for about eight minutes. Okay, I don’t want to overcook them. Okay, let’s check those cookies. I pulled them out of the oven a couple of minutes ago. All right, look at these babies. Okay, cook them for about eight minutes. And I’m going to show you get a nice plate here. I’m gonna show you how soft they are. Okay, let me get this one. So it looks like a good one. And I purposely didn’t use all the cookie dough because you know why I want some of that for my fridge. Look at this. Oh my gosh, see how soft it is. And these have been out for probably five minutes, but I mean they are so soft. Oh my god. This was my adaptogen. I mean, this is the perfect snack, the perfect sweet treat snack. 

So I hope you got inspired today and are excited about some healthy sweet treats without the guilt. Chocolate chip protein cookies. Which by the way, you can eat these as a snack like they’re loaded loaded with protein and healthy fat and fiber and if you have kids, like you don’t have to feel guilty serving your kids a chocolate chip cookie. Right? Look at this. That is a plate full of happiness right there. Look at those cookies. So we have the adaptogen hot chocolate. We have our beautiful protein cookies today chocolate chip protein cookies, and then let’s not forget about our gorgeous fried dates and tahini. Thank you so much for joining me today. Take care of yourself, your mind, your body and your soul. And give it a thumbs up if you love this episode and felt inspired. And if you’ve had any questions, comment below because I love staying connected with you. Subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can be an active part of my vision of a healthy world through food. And remember, healthy is the new sexy!

The post Chef Amber’s Wholicious™ – Episode 7 How To Remove Guilt and Shame From Eating appeared first on Chef Amber.

Trauma

Word trauma can be scary and you might not relate to it so much when it comes to your own story. However, when your body feels overwhelmed from a traumatic experience, it tends to shut down and stress and distortions occur often without you even noticing. Your soul becomes disconnected from your body and mind. As a result, our consciousness is spared and our body suffers. Then with every nerve wracking experience small or large, the stress continues to accumulate. Trauma resides in the nervous system which is constantly trying to give us indicating signals. Our muscles get tense, our heartbeat soars, we start to tremble, feel dizzy, or even start to sweat. This is such a journey for sure. And I am still on it y’all a day at a time, diving deep and discovering different parts of my true self that were asleep and dormant for many decades. It’s a journey where we get to rediscover and gain insights on how to continue to live the best life and feel free in your body every day. And that is what I want to share with the world so we can grow, shine and rise together. 

I’m Amber Caudle, aka Chef Amber, professional chef, holistic lifestyle advocate, and your host of the show Wholicious. I was inspired to create Wholicious, and to dedicate a whole episode to the topic of trauma and self healing as I want to show everyone that it is possible to find a healthy relationship with food and also feel amazing in our bodies. It’s time to embrace all that you are. Open up to all possibilities. And let me assure you, you can live the fulfilled whole life that you are dreaming of. 

What helped me is to see that trauma was not happening to me, but it was really happening through me for my highest good. I had to learn that I can heal stress, anxiety and distortion within this lifetime. My stress and trauma showed up in my body through disordered eating, emotional eating and having an unhealthy very painful relationship with food and my body for many years. To heal my relationship with food and learn to really love myself again, I needed to see why I had been abusing food since the age of eight and what I was escaping from. My book, “Hungry, Why F***ing Eat” is inspired by my self healing journey. And I share my battle over the years with having an emotional relationship with food and abusing food. And I give you all the tools that are very helpful on how to disconnect whenever you feel lost. It’s a major step towards gaining confidence, inner self esteem, peace, acceptance for self, and inner freedom. Freedom around food is freedom around self. So much of my work has been about body, mind, and soul connection. It’s a huge breakthrough to have embrace and to feel life and embody it. 

Today’s Episode

So today I’ve invited my spiritual mentor and coach Christopher Lee Matar later on the show. He is the creator of True Body Intelligence, which is an extremely holistic system. Christopher is one of the most fascinating experts in this field when it comes to addressing our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energetic world. His system helps remove exhaustion, discomfort, anxiety, scarcity, and transforms the limitations that keep you from expressing the fullness of your authentic and abundant nature. I personally have been working with Christopher intensively for over two years and I have had the honor to learn his system too to help my clients. I am still devoted to his work and I practice it daily. Christopher and I will dive deep into this topic and give you some profound takeaways. 

But first, let’s get into my Wholicous kitchen. I have prepared some soul food recipes for you that you’re going to love. Today we’re going to cook stuffed delicata squash with bison swiss chard, little bit of sherry, cumin and paprika topped with this creamy almond ricotta, and then we’re going to finish with a spiced orange cake with a coconut cream a little extra virgin olive oil, lavender and thyme. Join me in the kitchen. 

Stuffed Delicata Bison

So let’s get started. So first what I’m going to do is we’re going to start to sauté our fennel. So I’ve got about a medium size fennel bulb here. I’m going to slice off the end, cut it in half and make some nice slices like this. Hey, and then I’m going to do a nice chop and it can be a rough chop because we’re going to caramelize this so it doesn’t, doesn’t have to be perfect. I’ll just do a quick little chop here to show you. 

Okay, I love cooking with fennel. One, it’s great for digestion, loaded with fiber, but also it adds a little bit of like an a nice flavor. And I know a lot of people kind of stick their nose up to the licorice and nice flavor, but it’s very mild. And when it’s caramelized with the cumin and the paprika, it really just gives it like a nice little sweetness to the dish and it’s a nice substitution for onion. So if you’re someone that cannot eat onion, this fennel is a great substitution. So I’m going to do about high to medium heat because I really want to get this caramelized and I’m going to do some avocado oil right here in the pan a nice drizzle, and I have some more fennel chopped here. So I’m actually going to load us up with the fennel, and I’m going to let that go for a couple minutes before we add the bison. I’m going to add a little bit of pepper to that. And I’m going to add all of our spices so we have paprika, cumin, a little crushed red pepper, and salt. And I really like a little pinch of crushed red pepper to bring up the spice just a little bit. And you can obviously if you’re a spicy person, you can make it a little bit spicier. Alright, so this is going 

Squash

Perfect. Okay, next, let’s get into our delicata of squash. So the delicata squash is one of my probably most used squashes in the kitchen. Why? One reason I love delicata is that you can eat the skin and use the skin. Unlike the butternut squash, you have to really peel it. Acorn squash, you have to peel the skin but I love the delicata skin because it adds so much fiber and texture to the dish. So we’re actually going to roast these in quarters today. And then we’re going to stuff it with the bison. So I’m going to half it, half it again. And then we’re going to just scoop out the seeds here, like this with a spoon. Okay, super easy. 

Easy Entertaining Dish

And I really love this dish for entertaining. And I’ll tell you why you can make the squash the night before. And you can also make yourself a bison the night before, and then stuff your squash the next day and throw it in the oven. I also love this because this is a really great dish served at room temperature also. Like it doesn’t need to be like piping hot. So if you’re having maybe like a dinner party or a taco party, you can let the boat sit out and then guests can serve themselves. Alright, so we’re going to pop these guys in the oven for about a half an hour. But first, let me grab our tray here. And I’m going to put a little bit of salt and a little pinch of pepper. And then we’ll do just a little drizzle of avocado oil. And I’m gonna roast these upside down like this. Okay, let me give this a nice little flip here. Oh, yeah. So yeah, so the fennel are going to become nice and sweet and carmelized. Honestly, for some people that actually don’t like onions, I’ll sub fennel and actually it just gives you the mouthfeel and the texture of of an onion. So it’s great. Alright, so I’m going to throw these guys in the oven. Okay. All right, perfect. 

Bison

So let’s talk about bison. Because it’s my favorite protein. So I want to talk to you about sourcing bison. It’s really really important to find wild bison and there’s a company that I use, and the company is called Wild Idea Buffalo Company, and they ship worldwide, frozen. And let me turn this down a little. And I started eating bison because it’s high and omega is it actually has one serving of bison has as many omegas as a piece of salmon. So you’re getting your omega. It’s also a low cholesterol food. And it’s a great substitute for red meat because our bodies actually digest the bison a little bit easier, almost digest like poultry. And so this is a really great red meat substitute. If you’re someone who eats red meat a lot and you’re trying to cut back on red meat, give bison a try. You can use it in your tacos, burgers, sautés. I love turning people on to bison. I think sometimes people get a little scared of bison because they think it’s going to be gamey, but it’s not at all it’s very delicate. And I love the fact that it’s a low-cholesterol and low-saturated fat food. So I eat all the cuts of bison. I do short rib, I do rib-eyes, plank steaks, roasts. Bisons’ my protein of choice in my house. Alright, so this is sauteing up really nicely. And it just kind of stir this around. All right. Let’s grab this chard. So I’ve got some Swiss chard here, and it’s gonna I’m gonna roughly chop it.  

And you know, I always teach when I’m in the kitchen, it’s about substitutions. So you can sub kale here, you can sub spinach. You can do dandelion greens, I actually have used dandelion greens quite a bit in this recipe because I love the bitterness of it. And the the mouthfeel that it gives. It’s like really amazing like the sweetness of the bison with a little bit of the bitterness of the dandelion greens. 

Swiss Chard

So swiss chard is usually my go to because I love using the stems because it gives it a little bit of crunch and texture because I don’t like my greens, overcooked y’all. Okay, so let me chop this up. Right so you can go ahead and add if you see the bison is about medium, still a little pink. Okay. So we’re going to add the Swiss chard now. Okay. And I’m gonna give this a little stir. And this is such a quick prep. So on Sundays when I meal prep, I always have some sort of veggie sauteed bison in the fridge, and I’ll throw it on salads, I’ll warm it up, I’ll eat it with my cauliflower, rice, broccoli rice, throw and my eggs. I like to eat bison cold. 

This is actually really delicious in the morning. For breakfast, I like to actually eat for myself, I like to eat dinner for breakfast because I need more protein and fat in the morning. So it’s a favorite meal of mine. Okay, so let’s let that go for a minute. I’m gonna add the juice of one orange, kind of get that in there. Orange, paprika, sherry and cumin is one. It’s a really great combo. If you’ve been following me on Wholicious, you’re probably noticing that it’s a go to spice combo of mine. And especially with meat it really adds like a lot of sweetness. Okay. Perfect. Then I want to add just like a little splash of sherry vinegar. Couple teaspoons maybe like one and a half teaspoons. And that will also bring out the sweetness of the bison. Okay. I turned up the heat a little because I really want the sherry to burn off. So it’s not too vinegary. Right, get in there. 

Cooking in Spain

Yeah, so when I was in culinary training, I got to go to Spain and cook in Spain in the Basque region and I fell in love with Topas and all the spices that they use in the Basque region of Spain. So that is probably why I go heavy with the paprika and the Espelette peppers. Okay. Well, when you smell oh my gosh, divine. So good. And this is such a high vibrational dish, we’re using a really great quality bison you can really tell the difference when you source your meat and you’re eating meat that is sustainably-farmed, pasture-raised.

This company actually stages the buffalo. They use all part of the buffalo which I think is really, really rad. Alright, we’re gonna let that go for like, I don’t know one more minute. We’re going to check on our squash and I’m going to add some thyme and rosemary. So I’m just going to pull off a little bit of the rosemary, like this. And you can use oregano here, you can omit the rosemary, you can actually add a little bit of sage if you want. So this is where you can really get creative in the kitchen and put your own twist on it. Especially with something like a sauté. You can really play around. I mean, if you wanted to add tomatoes to this, you had some extra tomatoes that were kind of going bad in the kitchen. I would definitely throw some tomatoes in this dish. Cook those down. Or if I had some extra cilantro that needed to be used. You can throw it in here. This is how you gain your confidence y’all in the kitchen. Okay? I always say like, have fun. Don’t take it too seriously. Okay. That’s how you become a really great cook. All right, this is what Perfect. All right, I’m going to turn this off. 

Almond Ricotta

And I’m going to let that sit and we’re going to start on the almond ricotta. Alright, so the almond ricotta is a staple at both of my restaurants at Hermosa and Manhattan Beach. We put it on everything. And what I love about this almond ricotta is that it seriously three ingredients. Almonds, lemon juice and salt. We’re adding water, but I’m not counting the water. Okay. All right, so I have got some blanched almonds. Blanched means that they’re peeled, so that’s why they look white versus a pealed almond. If you make these with almonds that are not peeled, you’re just going to have a brown ricotta, it’s going to taste delicious. It might be a little bit more grittier, but it’s not going to be white. And what I love about this almond ricotta is that it’s white, and I serve it all the time to regulars that think it’s real ricotta cheese. It’s really fun to layer in lasagna, put with your meatballs. In fact, we have a dish at the restaurant that bison meatballs with almond ricotta, so good. All right, I’m going to add a little bit of lemon juice and a big teaspoon of salt to a couple of big pinches there. And I’m going to add our water, about three fourths of a cup. And don’t worry, I’ll give you guys all the ingredients and recipes. Okay. All right, and then I’m going to go over to the VitaMix and do a big blend, okay.

Okay, oh yeah. All right, let me take a look at this. So creamy. Let me put it in here for you guys. So you can see. I also like when I serve this dish, I like to sit a little bowl out on the table like all top the bison today with it. But you can also put this on the table drawers, a little olive oil and put a pinch of Maldon sea salt on the top. Because then your guests can dip bread in it add more to their district they want to. Okay, that looks perfect. Look how creamy doesn’t it look like real ricotta? I mean, come on. Look at that. Okay, let’s grab our squash and stuff these babies. Okay, so I’ve got some roasted delicata squash. See how nice and carmelized and brown the top got. Okay. So what I’m going to do is, we’re just going to stuffed these babies with a little bit of the bison mixture like this. Hey, and we’re gonna do two of these because I think two is a really nice portion. 

So if you’re having a dinner party, like I said, You can roast the squash the night before. And you can even do your bison mixture the night before, but I’d probably do it the day of but these you can definitely do the night before. Then say I’m prepping during the day and I have my party starting at like six right? I’d go ahead and stuff these guys like this, put them in the frigerator and then I’d put them on a sheet pan and toss them in the oven for about 15-18 minutes. And it’s ready. So it’s really an effortless, easy meal to prepare but it’s so elegant like you’re really will wow your guests. So let’s grab some of this almond ricotta, a big dollop, like get in there. Put that right on top. Like that.Okay.I mean it’s amazing. And let’s put a little bit of tiny leaves on top and we’ll finish it with a drizzle of olive oil. 

Other Ricotta Uses

Another thing I like to do with the almond ricotta is like I like to make it herby so I like to add all different types of fresh herbs, mint, basil, cilantro, and then a little lemon zest and a little sea salt and that is delicious for avocado toast, for your sandwiches. You can put it on the table and dip away put it on a charcuterie board and so there’s so many uses. I like to give lots of uses for everything that we make in the kitchen so it’s not just like well what do I do with this big bowl of almond ricotta now? So many things. Or you can make it sweet right and you could drizzle some honey or maple with banana and make an almond ricotta toast. 

Alright, look at that. Oh my gosh, drizzled a bunch of olive oil on there the almond ricotta, stuffed delicata with bison, Swiss chard, carmelized, fennel. It’s really a beautiful dish. And Christopher’s gonna die. It’s seriously one of his favorite and he really is particular about what he puts in his body. And because he really appreciates high quality, high vibrational food and he knows that this is going to fuel and nourish his body and that brings me so much joy. So next let’s jump into our orange spice cake. 

Easy Baking

Okay, before we jump in to this orange spice cake, I want to give a little backstory, because when I was growing up, I’m from the south, I’m from Atlanta, and I ate my share of poundcake, so much poundcake, but it always made my stomach hurt so bad left me with a headache from all the sugar. And so finally, about a year ago, I created this orange cake that’s made with almond flour and egg. I’m actually putting a little olive oil in it, and some lavender, and it has the best mouthfeel y’all and it reminds me of poundcake, but it’s loaded with protein, healthy fats and fiber and you can actually eat this for breakfast. 

So love it. First of all, I’ve said this before, if you’ve been following me in my past episodes that I’m not a baker, I like to make my baking very easy and minimal, no fuss. Okay, so I’m a blender baker. So I’m going to be using the Vitamix today. This is a like I said, a no fuss cake. You cannot mess this up. This cake takes like you’re gonna see it’s going to take under 10 minutes to make and it’s going to wow your guest. 

Orange Spice Cake

Okay, so what I already have done is the big part of this are our oranges. So I’ve got two oranges here. Organic oranges really important because we’re using the skin. Okay, I’ve boiled these for an hour. So these have been boiled in water for an hour. I strained it, put them in the fridge, let them cool. And now I’m going to put the whole orange the whole thing the skin, the seeds, all of it are going straight into the blender. Okay, the biggest thing here is like I’ve boiled these oranges earlier today, so now my oranges are cold, but I’m about to put eggs in here. So you wouldn’t want to take the oranges out of your boiling water, throw them in here hot and then put the eggs on top because you’ll cook your eggs. Okay, so that’s just like a quick little thing. It’s best if you want to make this cake. Get the oranges boiled like a day ahead, a couple days ahead. Okay, so I’m going to add five eggs here. Right into our blender here. Like I said, this is so easy, right? That’s three. I don’t want to mess this up because this is seriously the best cake ever. And I love the minimal ingredients. Alright, one more.

Paleo

Now, this is technically keto. And paleo. Keto is a high fat diet, no grain and paleo is grain free, no dairy and the reason that this is going to be keto is because we’re using monk fruit today. So if you don’t like monk fruit because I have met people that don’t prefer the flavor of monkfruit you can definitely sub equal amount of coconut sugar here. It would still make it paleo and low glycemic but it wouldn’t be keto. This is keto because this is a very low carb cake. Okay, so because we’re using almond flour. So we’re using almond flour, high in protein, high in fiber, we’ve got our oranges the monkfruit, five eggs. Already you can see how high protein this is. 

Okay, I’m going to add my almond flour and add a little pinch of salt and baking powder. Okay, now for me when I make this I really love to add some lavender. Lavender and orange is such a great combo. And you can leave this out because again, I think people either love or hate the lavender flavor and I’m going to add about six drops. Now just a little note on. Okay, added a couple more because I just like love lavender so much. A couple notes on the quality of lavender oil, I’m using doTERRA. You can use doTERRA you can go to your grocery store and ask for a high quality lavender oil that you can ingest but don’t just buy any cheap lavender oil that you would like put in your diffuser or your bath. Okay. And also another oil that’s really delicious in here is peppermint oil. Okay, you can make a peppermint orange cake, which I’ve done before. 

All right, we’re ready to blend. Okay, yeah, I mean so easy. You have to have a high speed blender for this and you definitely have to have a tamper and to really get it nice and creamy. So oh my gosh, love, love the smell. Okay, so what I’m gonna do, I have a round cake plank pan here. You can also do a lot of a flat like baking sheet too if you want like a thin cake. And you can also make these into muffins. So this is a very versatile cake dough cake batter. I’m going to do a nice spray generous spray here. And I’m using a coconut oil spray. Sometimes I use avocado spray, but definitely we haven’t really talked to out loyals yet, make sure that you refrain from those vegetable oils, y’all those canola oils. Okay, so there’s so many other oil options out there. And coconut and avocado are my favorite to bake with. All right, let me grab a spatula here. And I want everything in this pan. Okay? And the color is gorgeous, isn’t it? You get that. Okay, you get all of it in here. And we’re going to make a coconut cream next and we’re going to drizzle the coconut cream on top along with a little bit of olive oil. Okay, that looks good. I want all of it.

Okay, perfect. Then smooth this out. And like I said, you cannot mess this cake up. Okay, I’m gonna give this just do that because I want to make sure that the air bubbles come to the top. Okay, here we go. Look at this baby. And put this in the oven. Now this is going to bake for almost an hour. So I’ve already baked a cake. Put that in the oven. And voila. Okay, here we are, will be nice and brown on top. Okay, and I’m just going to flip this because I’ve let this cool for us. And all right, perfect. So I’m gonna make a nice slice here for us. And I have to tell you, that this is great for breakfast, especially if you make them into muffins because it’s loaded with protein. It’s really delicious with my tumeric latte or my adaptogen hot chocolate. It’s really great. And I actually will eat this as a snack because it’s loaded with protein and it’s low glycemic and it gives me energy and healthy fat. So it’s like a guilt free cake. Look at this, look at how perfect and easy and it’s so smushy when you try it, you’re gonna, you’re gonna know what I mean when it tastes and like feels like poundcake. 

Coconut Cream

Okay. All right, so let’s do our coconut cream. Let me move this to the side here. Alright, so for the coconut cream, I get an organic coconut cream. And I want to just show you that the top when you buy coconut cream, it’s different than coconut milk, because the whole top is like very thick with the actual cream. Okay, so what you want to do is you want to take your spoon, and really take the top layer of the cream off because there is still going to be a little bit of the coconut water at the bottom. That’s why I left it in the can because if I would have dumped this upside down, we’d have still had a little bit of liquid and water. But look how thick this is do you see all this cream and make sure you do get a nice clean organic coconut cream because there can be so many fillers that are added to the cream. So this one’s a very, very simple clean one minimal ingredients. And if you’ll see in the bottom of the can, that there’s a little bit of liquid, we don’t want that. We want this cream to be really thick. 

Okay, what we’re basically doing is we’re making a whip a whipped cream out of coconut. Okay. Alright, so I’m gonna add a little, just a little bit of vanilla extract. That’s good. That’s like a half a teaspoon. And I’m just going to sweeten this just a teeny bit, barely a teaspoon, big teaspoon of maple. You can leave the maple out if you want this to be very strict keto, you can also sweetness with a little pinch of monkfruit. I like a little bit of the sweetness in the cream, because it balances out the tartness of the cake. So I’m going to do a nice little whisk here. It’s not going to get as fluffy as regular whipped cream, but it’s going to be beautiful. And let me just do a little whisk here. Okay, that’s perfect. That’s delicious. Nothing wrong with that. All right, let’s plate this baby. Okay, so I’m going to put a nice drizzle of this cream right on top here. Nice big dollop. Okay, now I love the texture of the extra virgin olive oil. It’s delicious with the coconut cream and the sponginess of our orange spice cake. 

So I’m going to do a nice look at how sexy this is. I mean this is so sexy. Sexy is my favorite word to describe food. And this is such a healthy, amazing nourishing dessert. And feels so good because when we feel good in our bodies, and we’re nourishing our bodies with the right food for me it makes me feel so alive, vibrant, confident and sexy. And this is such a gorgeous, gorgeous cake. I’m not done yet. I want to add a little bit of Maldon sea salt to bring out the cream, just a pinch of the Malden. And then we’re going to finish it with some thyme leaves. Just a little bit. Okay? Sometimes I’ll put flowers on here. If you can find fresh lavender flowers, you can put a little lavender flower but the thyme goes really well with the lavender. And here is our cake. Okay, look at how gorgeous this is.

Okay, I have to have a bite of this. Okay. And I’m gonna get some of the olive oil with the cream. It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect. It hits all the fields for me. I know Christopher is going to love this. I don’t think that I’ve made this exact cake for him yet, but he also doesn’t eat any sugar and eats a very clean high vibrational diet. So he’s gonna love this. He’s gonna go crazy over the bison. I can’t wait for you guys to meet Christopher. 

Special Guest

We have a really exciting profound talk coming up around really how to live and be the best version of yourself and how important it is to remove trauma, stress and anxiety from the body. Okay, y’all, I am so excited for you guys to meet Christopher Lee Maher, my mentor, spiritual coach and friend, and he is the creator of True Body Intelligence and the author of “Free for Life. A Navy SEALs Guide to Inner Freedom and Outer Peace.” Christopher, thank you so much for being on the show. I’m so excited to have you here.

CLM: I’m so glad. I’m so happy. 

CA: Feeling so happy. This is long overdue. But before we dive in, I’ve got to have you try my bison dish. As I know, I told everyone I told the Wholicious community when I was cooking that you eat high vibrational food you really appreciate and pay attention to what you put into your body. And you’re very particular. And so this area in particular, 

CLM: very particular. 

CA: So I love cooking for you. And this is stuffed delicata squash. It’s got roasted bison, some Swiss chard, a little bit of spice, because I know you like the spice. And it’s got a little creamy almond ricotta on top with some thyme leaf. So you can give it a little taste test.

CLM:  And it looks beautiful.

CA: Sexy, huh? Yeah. This is the test y’all. 

CLM: Yes, perfection. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay, amazing. Oh, it’s always.

CA: So we’ve been trying to have this conversation for a long time, I’ve been wanting to introduce you to the Wholicious community. And I’ve been working with you for two and a half years. And so I’m really passionate about spreading your work because it’s profound. And my life changes that I have have been amazing. So, you know, I could go on forever and ever telling the community like, I mean, first of all, I’ve stepped into the most authentic version of myself, my relationships have changed. I have better boundaries, better communication, and just living a life full of happiness and health. And with your help and guidance and support my relationship with food has changed tremendously. Yeah. So I thank you. Thank you all so much. 

CLM:  I’m happy to be here. This is an amazing opportunity to be able to share. Awesome. 

CA: So let’s talk about first true body intelligence, because it’s kind of hard to explain. So I would love for you to explain what inspired you to create true body intelligence. Let’s start with that.

CLM: Okay, so I wasn’t one of these people who woke up in the morning and thought I want to inspire the world. Right. I was someone who was self focused, I had a lot of my own individual goals. And I continued to keep getting injured all the time. And I kept experiencing more and more pain at the joint level was affecting my sleep, affected me emotionally. And year after year after year, I continue to get worse and worse and worse. And when you start losing massive amounts of sleep, when you start getting you know you’re tired, you’re like a zombie all the time or my digestion wasn’t good. My elimination wasn’t good. I was having all kinds of things. But the biggest problem is I didn’t have the ability to talk to anyone about it. Because I didn’t know that it was okay to talk to people about the things that you’re suffering like so I basically I suffered in silence while on the outside. I looked like Adonis. Yeah, but on the inside, I was a complete mess.

CA: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I so relate to that. Because when I met you, I didn’t realize how much pain I was in. And I think we’re all so used to walking around, feeling bloated, tired, having brain fog, constipated. And when I met you, you said something like alright, So let’s talk about your trauma. You’ve had it I was like, I don’t have trauma, trauma. I was like, I might be a little bit of stress. It’s like, oh, no Amber, you run it like a level 10, probably the last 30 years, the majority of your life, and I didn’t realize that all of my small little bits of like little trauma. And stress accumulates in the body that leads to distortion. So I kind of want you to talk about what you taught me that the body never lies, because that really was like an eye. 

CLM: Yeah,here’s the wonderful things the body always tells the truth, the mind with lie a 1000 lies. Emotionally people have no clue. Now. Most humans are made, their emotional bodies in Detroit, right? Their mental bodies in Alaska. Their physical bodies, somewhere in South America, they’re just so fragmented. So the good thing about the bodies, the bodies will always tell you the truth. So whenever you have pain or discomfort, all you have to do is reverse engineer. If I have pain, if I’m tired, if I’m upset, if I’m angry, it’s always leading me back to find where am I tense? Where am I stressed, where I’m distorted in my physical body. And most people have no idea, all you got to do is look at someone’s posture are their shoulders rotated to forward is their head to forward is their neck to back or their hips rotated? Whatever’s going on in your body is always going on in your life? So if there’s some aspect of your life that you don’t like, what’s the obvious choice, go into your body, take out the tension and the stress and the distortion that’s causing that to happen. And that automatically instantaneously changes that aspect of your life that is operating in a way that’s less functional.

CA: Can we give an example of that? Like, what would be an example like, say we open up somebody’s kidney? Would it be? Can you talk a little bit about how like fear is stored in the kidneys? And how that would? 

CLM: Yeah, so got it. So any position that we would get into when we were opening up the body, it would expose what your level of comfort or discomfort was right. And that level of comfort or discomfort based on the position would let us know if you were had an excessive amount of fear, an excessive amount of anxiety, an excessive amount of anger, or an excessive amount of self righteousness, right? So we deal with really the four worlds. The physical, the mental, the emotional, and spiritual. And the reason why we deal with all of them so we can get them unified. So the person can become an amalgamated being, right, someone who’s physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually intelligent, because when you’re intelligent, you make good decisions. Yeah. And you make good decisions, your life shifts out of struggle and strife, and into ease and grace, 

CA: And who wouldn’t want ease and grace,ease and grace. And I remember when, before I started to work with you finally, the our good friend said, Amber, your life doesn’t have to be so hard. And I was like, Really, I don’t really feel like my life is hard. And then I met you. And we started taking the distortion and stress out of my body. And I was like, Wow, I am working way too hard for this life can be easier. We don’t have to live in pain, mental, physical, emotional pain. So it’s just, it’s brilliant. It’s completely been life changing for me, and I’m still on this journey. I’ve taken you know, I’m in practitioner training with you now, already helping some of my family and co workers and just being able to witness not only my own life change, but other people’s life change. With the smallest bit of effort, it’s amazing to see that change, and then have them put that into their lives and use it in a practical way. So next one I want to talk about because in your book, you talk a lot about stress and trauma, as Strama. And so let’s talk about that a little bit. 

CLM: Okay. Like it’s a new term that I created. Yeah. So it’s stress plus time, eventually turns into trauma. So let’s say a friend of yours got in a car accident, right? That’s blunt force trauma. Yeah. Strama is something that happens a little bit every single day. So let’s say I’m someone that has an office job, I’m sitting down nine to 12 hours a day in the same position. Well, guess what, the next week, by muscles, they’re a little bit tighter. And then the next month, they’re a little bit tighter. Next month, they’re a little bit tighter and a little bit tighter. And then over time, right? One day, I go down to tie my shoes, and I can’t get up. Because yeah, my back is in excruciating pain. And I gotta lay down for a week, and then I gotta go get a bunch of help. So stress, plus time, if you don’t resolve the stress, it eventually turns into trauma, which means that it eventually turns into trauma.

CA: Yeah. Okay. Now, that’s good. And I definitely learned that and felt that and, yeah, it’s just, it’s crazy, because we just don’t know 

CLM: We have no idea like no idea. No, I was in the SEAL teams and I was going through SEAL training and I had no idea that seven or eight years later, I was going to be that guy that bent over to tie a shoe and wasn’t gonna be able to get off the ground. My gosh, I mean, here I am young, healthy. Or I was thinking healthy, right? Because I was fit and that was the difference. I made the assumption that because I was fit, I was healthy. And I had no idea that all the tension that I was putting in from all the excessive exercise that I was doing was actually not only causing me structural issues, it was causing me physiological problems. It was causing me emotional issues. It was causing me sleep issues like it was constant. And it was unrelenting. I started losing my vision, I started losing my hearing. And when you’re a young guy, and you don’t have anyone to talk to or don’t even know, you should be able to talk to someone. Yeah. When you finally get a little bit of relief, you’re so grateful.

CA: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, what a journey. Such a journey. I was, I want to go back to how it’s, the outside world might look like someone’s healthy and fit. And so some of my best clients come in, and they’re like, Chef, I’m desperate to make a change to my health. I’m fit, I have like the perfect body. But inside, I’ve been eating and drinking whatever I’ve wanted my whole life. And I haven’t been paying attention about what I put into my body. Sure. And so a lot of people walk around, gassy, bloated and fatigued. When it comes to food. I always say it matters so much we put into our body. So I definitely relate to that like having, you know, having the physical pain, but having everything inside, you’re just tearing apart and you’re you’re crumbling down. But on the outside, you’ve got this persona, or you’ve got this body that’s like this amazing machine, everyone thinks that you’re the perfect, healthiest person. And so leading into food, let’s talk about because like I said before, you and I definitely believe that it’s so important to fuel and nourish our bodies with the right food, right? What we put in our bodies matters. And really, for me to function and to feel amazing. I have to eat high vibrational food and food that’s prepared with love and organic ingredients and non GMO ingredients. And so I know you talk a lot about in the book, no sugar, no alcohol, no caffeine, no daily drugs. So let’s talk about that and how that affects the body.

CLM: It’s just as easy. So what happens is if we took every person that you know, and we took every person that every watcher, every viewer of this show is. If we took all of their friends, and we lined them up, and we put them on the ground, and we took them through this process called teaching through testing, we will find that every single one of them is locked into fight or flight. Right. So when you’re in the fight or flight response, it means your outer reactive versus inner directed. And so substances that you can immediately start eliminating from your life that put you into a higher state of fight or flight first is refined sugar. Next is caffeine. Next is nicotine. And next is any alcohol and then a pharmaceutical well, any recreational drug. Yeah. Because those things are expressing the stress that you’re in at a higher level. The challenge is, is people are so stressed that if they don’t use those substances, they don’t feel normal. Yeah. And because they’re acceptable by society, they think you can just gorge on them. And there’s no actual effect, but you’re not going to feel the effect right away. But 6,7,8 years from now, it’s going to show up when you don’t want it to show up. Yeah, yeah. It started affecting your sleep, it’s gonna affect your communication, it’s gonna affect your energy. Even affect your temperature. Like when I came out of the SEAL teams, I was so hot. I always had to have a bottle of water with me at all times. Because I was boiling inside.

CA: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I definitely relied on sugar for 30 years, you know, it was my drug of choice. And like you said, it’s acceptable. You know, it’s a legal acceptable drug and sugar. That’s why I’m so passionate about the cooking I do now is to create food that’s free of processed sugar. Because, I mean, that’s all I relied on for my energy. And yet it affected my sleep. And it affected my mood. I mean, it affected everything. So once I let this started to let go of that, I mean, my body and my life started to change.

CLM: Yeah, but here’s a really great thing to know. Yeah. The reason why people choose sugar is because sugar is the taste of the spleen in the pancreas and Chinese medicine. Oh, yeah. And so the spleen and the pancreas are all about clear communication. And so when someone’s not communicating or saying what needs to be said to the people in their sphere of influence, instead of saying what needs to be said they go in and grab something sweet to eat. 

CA: Yes. Yes.

CLM: That’s right. So they’re actually using it as a way of avoiding having clear communication with people because they don’t want to get into confrontation. Yes. So if you’re a sweet hound out there, and I don’t mean like the really healthy sugars, I mean, cane sugar and white refined sugar and, and refined brown sugars, those sugars I’m talking about. You’re using that to avoid having communication because you want to avoid confrontation.

CA: It’s brilliant. I’m so glad you said that. Because I finally learned that and I know when you touched my spleen, I was screaming bloody murder because I was shoving my voice shoving my feelings I was self numbing with sugar my whole life and because I did not want to communicate and my book, “Hungry, Why I F***ing Eat” which was inspired by my work with you. I speak a lot about, okay, speak your truth, right? And really lean in and sit in instead of shoving that hole. And for me, my drug of choice was sugar, so, and I’m still healing that relationship. And I’m also still healing my spleen, it’s not as painful now. 

CLM: So yeah, yeah, and the good thing about your body intelligence is there’s positions that you can get into, that will start to remove that excess amount of tension and stress and distortion, that’s in the muscles that are connected to the organ. So every organ in your body is connected to a specific group of muscles, right. So when that organ is overstressed, it’s going to push all of the excessive heat, it’s going to push all the excessive cold down through those muscles, and those muscles are going to get short. And they’re going to get tense, and they’re going to get tight, and they’re going to get toxic. And when you remove that tension and stress, guess what happens, you actually create a pattern interrupt. And when you interrupt that pattern, you suddenly have a reprieve from being addicted to the sugar to now shifting to taking a risk, right? Oh, I’m going to tell my husband, there’s this thing that he does that I don’t like, yeah, instead of swallowing it all the time, instead of crashing, shoving your words. So got the pattern, interrupt is the key. Yeah, once you interrupt that pattern, you get to immediately build a new relationship, not only with your husband, or your boyfriend or your teacher or your students, they also are now getting the example of how to communicate clearly. The love that and whatever’s in your bodies in your life. So why not create a pattern interrupt. And here’s the interesting thing, if you go from just sugar being refined, and then you ferment to sugar, what happens you turn to sugar and alcohol, right? It makes it 10 times more toxic, but it also gets really toxic for the liver, which then causes you to repress your words more. And when you repress your words, you lose access to your ability to authentically self express. So look at how many people are sitting behind closed doors and are watching other people live the life that they want. Yeah. And they know they’re smart. They know what their passions are, but they aren’t able to get out into the world and make their dreams come true. Well, why can’t they? Because their body is full of an excessive amount of tension, stress, and toxicity and distortion that’s actually keeping them from taking that first step. Yeah. Yeah. So why not create a pattern interrupt? Well, obviously, what’s the best way to create a pattern interrupt, get high vibrational food in your body? Yeah, get yourself into a really good sleeping program, and start to remove tension, stress and distortion as often as you possibly can. And the beautiful thing about the true body intelligence process, you only need to spend 10 to 15 to 20 minutes a day. Yeah, I’m not the guy that wants to show up and do something for two hours. Because when I was first found myself unwell, and I decided to reach out, all the different types of practices that are in the holistic community that I went out and used if I needed to go a mile, they took me an inch. But I was happy for that inch. But really, they literally only took me one inch. Yeah. And now looking back, I think about all the time I spent, all the energy, I spent all the money and resources that I spent, but probably of all of those. It was all the time and effort that I had to put in that I couldn’t get that time back. Yeah. So with true body intelligence, and with the holistic lifestyle, yeah, and all the things that you’ve been teaching everyone, they can actually take these strategies, implement them and get an immediate permanent change in their life that they don’t have to go back through and do again, I don’t want to repaint the garage every month. I want to paint the garage. I want it to look good for at least a decade or two. 

CA: Exactly.

Right. So you just mentioned high vibrational foods. So what does that look like in your daily life for you?

CLM: I mean, for me, well, let’s get a definition what my definition for high vibrational food would be food that I wake up in the next morning. There’s no weird taste in my mouth. Yeah, right. Two I don’t get tired. I eat the food and there’s not a drop in my energy. My energy actually lifts. Okay. The other thing the way that I measure it the next day, look, people don’t want to talk about this, but I talked about the same I talked about poop. Yeah, right. I’m talking about your bowel. If your bowel movement doesn’t come out, like point six seconds, right. That means whatever you ate, it created issues for you. Yeah, okay. It’s either too sticky or too hard or, or took too long. Yeah, it’s because the food that you ate was low vibrational foods. Yeah, full of all kinds of chemicals, full of all kinds of rancid oils, excessive amounts of salts just, and they just create problems in your body. And when you eat high vibration foods, you have happy organs and your organs. Yeah, you have a lot of energy. Yeah. When you have a lot of energy, you’re willing to take a risk. And what does that mean? You’re willing to do something you wouldn’t be able to do before, right? And when you take risks, you get reward. Look you take a little bit of risk, you get a little reward. Yeah, you take a medium risk and be ready to take a big risk. You get a big reward. Love it. And high vibrational foods set you up to take big risks.

CA: Amazing. I love that definition. That was a brilliant explanation. Yeah, bravo. That’s awesome. I feel the same way. And I love how we touched on elimination digestion, because you know what? That was the first time for me. When I started to clean up my diet. It was like, Oh, well, I have energy. And I’m not constipated, bloated, and gassy. And, yeah, it’s amazing. 

CLM: It’s consistent energy, right? This is an energy you’re gaining from a substance. Like one of the things I became aware of really quickly is that when I’m taking something from the outside, like caffeine, or something else, some other kind of stimulant, then what’s going to happen is, that’s going to cause my body to produce a massive amount of adrenaline. And then I’m going to be agitated later, or I’m going to get really sleepy. Yeah, I don’t want to be agitated. And I don’t want to sleep. I don’t have to have that one. I have high vibrational foods.

CA: Yeah, Christopher, I want you to share a practical tool or a tip for the Wholicous community that they can implement in their daily lives.

CLM: Okay, this is easy. So obviously, the easiest thing to do is to look at the daily drugs. I mean, everybody has one that they like more, some people like to be some people like to sweets more, some people like the caffeine more, some people like THC. People like THC more, what you would do is you would take your daily consumption, and you would cut it in half. Okay, so let’s say you had four cups of coffee a day, you’d have two. What you would replace those two with a hot herbal tea. So you maintain your ritual. Right? Yeah. And then the next week, you cut that in half. So instead of having two cups of coffee, you have one. Yeah. And then the next week, half a cup, the next week, a quarter cup. Yeah, and you slowly wean yourself away. Because if you try to go gung ho, yeah, you’re gonna end up with a big headache, and you’re gonna be that’s gonna make you feel like the goal is impossible. Exactly, then you’re gonna drop right back into your old strategy. So whichever one you rely on the most is the one that I would break away from first. Yeah. And then another tip, which is really simple, is go to bed the same day, every time, like have a drop dead time. And even if you’re not going to fall asleep, just get in bed, if it’s with your book, it’s with your computer, just do it the same time every single day. And then the last thing is, your breath, right? This is something that’s easy. You don’t have to hire someone to do it. Whenever you’re stressed, walk outside, find a quiet place, and focus on breathing nice and slow for two or three minutes. And I guarantee you that’s going to create an immediate change in your base state, you’re going to feel a lot more comfortable, you’re going to be more grounded. And the last thing and I think the most important of them all is be as honest as you can with those people around you. And fire yourself from rescuing other people from having bad feelings about you. And do everyone a favor and just tell people the truth. 

CA: I love that. Yes, that’s the best tip right there because you really taught me Hey Amber, you’ve got to fire so fire yourself from trying to rescue everyone from their uncomfortable feeling. That’s their journey. And when I finally did fire myself from the happening to stop managing everyone else’s feelings and emotions, oh my gosh, probably lost 10 pounds and finally was able to breathe again. Left anxiety, left my body and you know, back to the caffeine. You know, when I was getting off caffeine. I don’t even know how many cups of coffee I was on probably for easily a couple shots. I was dipping my spoon right in the Macha. I mean it was It was wild. And finally when I was off, I weaned myself off with some of the adaptogens and stuff so the Wholicious community these episodes can go back and they can okay great look at that Tumeric latte or that adaptogen latte those really helped with caffeine withdrawals and coming off because you can really like help balance your nervous system. So that was good and of course sleep at the same time that game changer. So thank you. Those are brilliant. Those are, those are practical. And those are realistic practical tips and tools that you can do by yourself.

CLM: So firing yourself from rescuing other people from having bad feelings about you, once you do that you’re free to speak your mind and to tell the truth, and it actually preserves your relationships. People really appreciate it. Yeah, they hate it when you’re telling them two or three days later, they really start to understand that you’re coming from a caring place, because it’s very difficult. It’s to disappoint people.

CA: Yeah. Yeah, it is. Okay. Right. Yeah. 

CLM: Well, when I’m on that whole Licious lifestyle,

yes. 

CA: The Wholicious lifestyle, baby. I love it. Oh, my God. This has been amazing. I feel like we could seriously chat forever. I hope y’all been inspired, because I sure have. And I feel like we’ve covered a lot, and I just the work works. 

CLM: And the work works. 

CA: Yeah, and I’m living proof if you guys would have seen me, you know, two and a half years ago was a completely different person. I kind of faked it till I make it. I did a good job doing it. But my life is so much easier now. And I’m just happy to continue to spread your work with the world and share it because it’s met. You’ve made such a difference in my life. And I’m just so grateful. And it’s amazing to be on this journey with you thisWholicious journey and yeah, it’s just really amazing. So I want you to tell the Wholicious community where they can find you or, you know, you’ve got your book, you’ve got your body intelligence, maybe the website,

CLM: Okay, the book is called, “Free for Life. A US Navy SEALs Unique Journey to Discovering Inner Freedom and Outer Peace. And you could go to truebodyintelligence.com. I’m not really that big on social media. Yeah, my Instagram is weak. My Facebook is laying you know, I look I have a different philosophy. My philosophy is create one miracle a day. And you’ll always have people who want to be affected by your work.

CA: Beautiful now. Okay, well, thanks so much again.

CLM: Thank you. 

CA: You’re welcome.

Thanks, y’all so much for joining us today. Take care of yourself, your mind your body and your soul. And if you felt inspired and love this episode today, give it a thumbs up. If you have any questions, please comment below because I love staying connected with you guys. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. Chef Amber’s delicious. So you can be an active part of my vision of a healthy world through food. And remember, healthy as the new sexy

The post Chef Amber’s Wholicious™ – Episode 6 Healing From The Effects Of Trauma and Stress appeared first on Chef Amber.

I know this cycle very well, because it was me for three decades. I began my journey from living an unhealthy lifestyle to a holistic lifestyle about 12 years ago. I’m Amber Caudle, aka Chef Amber, professional chef, holistic lifestyle advocate, and your host of the show Wholicious. I will help and coach you on how to have a healthy relationship with food and your body. This Wholicious episode is going to make you feel so good because I’m going to show you some delicious and healthy cozy comfort foods. And you know what, without the guilt.

Accepting Yourself

Before it comes to food, I’ll show you a tool that can help you really love and accept yourself and your body. One of my favorite spiritual practices is my meditation and affirmation practice. You’ll find many more in my new upcoming book ‘Hungry, Why I F***ing Eat.’ I’ll provide you with tons of profound tools, mantras and insights about my journey to a healthy and holistic lifestyle. The meditation and affirmation practice is something I’ve been doing for years. It’s of such great value when you really have had a hard time loving and accepting yourself and your body. I have spent the last decade helping myself and 1000s of others to stop escaping and self-numbing with food and to really start loving and accepting their bodies. 

This meditation and affirmation practice enables you to feel connected again, and know when to pause when you want to turn to food for comfort, stress relief or to reward yourself. And I have to tell you that when I’m in acceptance with my body, I’m able to make better choices to fuel and nourish my body with the right food. Because people always ask well, ‘how did you form this healthy relationship with food and body?’ Well, this is one of the practices that really helped me, right? If I’m walking around pessimistic with a negative attitude, I’m not likely to go choose the healthiest option. Okay, I’m going to choose something so I can continue to numb my feelings. 

So this is a great practice to really shift your energy and really help heal your relationship with food and your body. 

Daily Affirmation

All right, so this is how I do my affirmation practice, I actually like to do it looking in the mirror at myself, bathroom mirrors is fine. So we’ll pick an affirmation. And you can start with two minutes, you can do it for a minute, I think two minutes is a really good window. I have about 50 different mantras that I rotate through. Really tune into your being and really connect with yourself and mean it. You can pick the affirmation that really feels in alignment with you. And my suggestion is take post it notes and I like to post my affirmations on my bathroom mirrors. I have some in my car, in my wallet, and even on my refrigerator. So you can walk by and remember, oh my gosh, I am radiant. 

This will help you whenever you’re feeling sad, triggered, or going through an emotional low. It will immediately shift your energy, it will help you get back into acceptance as your subconscious mind will adjust to your spoken affirmations. And I have to tell you, that the power of thought and the power of words really does matter. I believe that what we put out into the universe, we can really bring back and really attract to us. Meaning I’m definitely not going to say, “I feel fat or I feel ugly.” I’m gonna say, “I feel or I feel poor” right? Or “I don’t have enough money.” “I am abundant. I am prosperous. I am aluminous. I am beautiful, right? I am radiant.” And maybe you’ll have to start with this practice and fake it till you make it. That’s okay, you’re still doing it. 

Once you’ve picked your affirmation, really tune into your body. Like I said, take a bunch of deep breaths if you can really look at yourself in the mirror, relaxing all of your body parts, focusing on your breath. And then repeat your affirmation for one to two minutes and take advantage of your car, the shower, when you’re getting ready, and sometimes I’ll go into the bathroom at work when I need a little energy shift. 

I believe that we can enjoy our favorite foods and feel strong, sexy, powerful, beautiful and aligned in your body. Today our menu is plant based and gluten free of course, and we’re going to make a nacho bar than a creamy mac and cheese and then finish with a banana ice cream. So join me in the kitchen and let’s start cooking.

Vegan Nachos

Okay, are you ready to make some comfort foods? I am. I’m so excited. For years y’all I deprived myself of my favorite foods, my childhood favorite comfort foods because I was so afraid of gaining weight or getting fat, so no more of that, no more deprivation. Food is my life. I love food and food is supposed to be enjoyed. So today we’re going to make some amazing nachos. Then I’m going to make a mac and cheese and then finish with the banana ice cream. And today everything is plant based, which makes me really excited because I love to show my meat eaters and dairy eaters how satiating it can be with a plant based meal especially nachos with cheese and sour cream made out of cashews. 

Nacho Cheese

Okay, let’s get started. This is a Vitamix episode, y’all. I couldn’t live without my Vitamix most days. So we’re going to start with our sour cream. Okay. All right. So right here, I’ve got my two cups of cashews, and I’ve already soaked the cashews overnight. I’ve strained them and I’ve rinsed them. You never want to use the water that you’ve soaked your nuts in overnight and I explain this in every episode when we soak the nuts. 

Why Do You Soak Nuts Overnight?

The reason that I soak nuts is to remove any enzyme inhibitors that are blocking the absorption of any nutrients and minerals that are active in the nuts. Especially if you struggle with a leaky gut or any gastric issues.

Definitely soak your seeds and nuts. Okay. All right, so I’ve got my cashews. Then I’m going to add some lemon juice, and hemp seeds make this so creamy. Plus, we get all of our yummy omegas and tons of plant protein. Okay, now, I’m going to add some nutritional yeast to this. This gives it the cheesy flavor the nacho cheesy flavor. And I just wanted to show you that nutritional yeast it’s really easy to find now. Loaded with B vitamins it’s actually got five grams of protein per tablespoon, so loaded with protein. And also I just want to mention it’s an inactive yeast. Okay, so if you have like a yeast allergy, this is different than like a bread yeast or yeast that they use in beer. Okay, it’s inactive. 

Alright, so we’ve got our yeast, we’ve got cashews, our lemon, I’m going to add our water in here. Okay, we’ll start with that. So I don’t want it to be too runny. I want it to be nice and thick and creamy. And then I’m going to add all of our spices. I’ve got garlic powder, chili powder, a little bit of Tumeric paprika, Okay, I’m going to add a little pinch of salt. And we’re going to blend. 

Nacho Bar

Okay. Oh my gosh. Smells just like nacho cheese y’all. Like just like nacho cheese. Look how creamy that is! It’s so delicious! Oh my god. I can’t wait for you to try this. Okay, I’m gonna add because we’re gonna make a nacho bar. I love making Nacho bars. Every time I go home or I host like a taco party. Having a nacho bar is so fun because then everybody can make their own plate of nachos. Alright, so there’s our nacho cheese. Oh, yeah. Okay, now I’m going to rinse this out really quick so we can make our sour cream.

Sour Cream

Now we’re going to make the sour cream. We just made the nacho cheese. Here we are. And let’s get set for our sour cream. Again, we’re using cashews. Now if you’re allergic to cashews, you can actually sub macadamia nuts. It’s the only nut that I’ve subbed for both of these sauces. Okay, I have not used almonds yet or any other nut just a little side note. Okay, all right. So we’ve got cashews, lemon, and apple cider vinegar for the acid. I’m going to put a little bit of salt in here. And then I’m just going to put a little bit of water. We’ll just do that because I want this to be nice and thick also. And we’re going to give this a blend. Okay, oh my gosh, look at our creamy sour cream. Amazing. Smells just like it. 

Nacho Bar Tips

Now I’m going to make a nacho platter and I’m going to show you how to make a bar at your own house. Okay, so I’m gonna pour our sour cream in here. Okay. Now when I was growing up, I’m from Atlanta, and we would go to our favorite neighborhood Mexican restaurant at least once a week. And I would always come home with the worst stomachache and headache. And just the quality of the ingredients, all the GMO and all the dairy and the gluten. 

So this is just a really fun, substitution, super clean, won’t wreak havoc on your body, but you can still enjoy one of your favorites. I mean, nachos seriously is one of my favorite comfort foods. It makes me so happy. Okay, so we’re gonna make a platter. And I want to show you my favorite tips I use. 

So you can obviously use any corn tortillas, any organic corn tortillas. I’m gonna use the CFA chips. They’re made out of cassava flour. And this also makes a really great paleo meal because it’s a grain free chip, lower glycemic. Right. So let me put my chips here. All right, that’s good. All right, perfect. All right, then. So I just use some organic canned black beans. And we’re gonna put some black beans on here. And so I’m going to make a platter right now. But if you were to do in a bar, you could sit out black beans, ground bison, roasted fish, your dips. And then if you have meat eaters and plant based eaters, you can really, you know, appease both of them. 

So I’ve got this and then if you go back to my bone broth episode where I spoke about gut health, I made a cauliflower rice that cauliflower rice would be amazing with this. Okay, so we’ve got our beans then I’m going to put some tomatoes on here, just like this. Oh my gosh, okay. And I want to put some scallions, lots of scallions and then I’m going to put a ton of fresh cilantro leaves, like this. And let’s get into this nacho cheese. So mix it, get a nacho cheese here. And I’m just going to do a nice drizzle, a big drizzle. And I will leave this bowl out because I always want like a little extra on the side. And this sauce y’all is so great. If you’re making like a charcuterie board, and you want to dip your veggies in it. It’s amazing. Dipping like toast points or pita points in it. Alright, so there’s our nachos and or nacho cheese. 

And then a little bit of sour cream. Okay, I’m just gonna drizzle like a little bit of sour cream right across the top. Look at that. How amazing. Okay, messy is good. Okay, what else are we putting on here? Oh my gosh, we’re putting some of our avocado on here. We’ll put some big dollops of Olive avocado right across the top. Okay, and then I’m going to do a squeeze of lime. All the way around all over, give it a little zing. I’m going to top with more scallions for presentation. And I’m going to put a little pinch of salt. Okay. Oh my gosh. How good does this look? Check out these nachos. I mean, they look like the real deal. Right? You’ve got your cassava tortillas with tomato, black beans, sour cream, nacho cheese, avocado. I mean, it’s everything. This is literally a full complete meal without wrecking havoc on our bodies. 

So the one great thing about these nachos is you can eat them at room temperature. You notice that I didn’t heat anything up. If you want these to be hot, you can totally heat up your nacho cheese. Pour the nacho cheese over the cassava tortillas first, throw them under the broiler for like one minute and then pull them out and then you can top it with all the toppings but I find that this is satiating. I love it. Exactly as is, but I wanted to give you that other option. And I can’t wait to get in here and try this. Oh my god. I can’t wait for you to try this cheese. It tastes exactly like the real deal. Oh my gosh is so delicious. I can’t wait to dive into our mac and cheese next and our banana ice cream.

Mac and Cheese

Okay, are you ready for the creamiest mac and cheese? All right. I’m so excited to do this with you guys. First of all, I grew up on mac and cheese. It was the Kraft mac and cheese that always wreaked havoc on my system. Until finally I realized there’s a different way to enjoy my comfort foods without feeling awful. And like I said before, like I don’t want to feel deprived when it comes to food. Food is my life. Okay, I restrict myself from mac and cheese for almost 30 years y’all. 

Noodles

All right, so I’ve already boiled our pasta and I want to show you the pasta that I’m using today. I’m definitely using a gluten free pasta you can use whatever pasta you want. I’m using this brand that’s actually made out of garbanzo beans. One serving has 20 grams of protein. Okay, so this is a great way to really sneak in that extra protein, specially if you’ve got any picky kids. I can’t seem to get enough protein into my nephew, but he will eat this. Okay, so I’ve got my two boxes of pasta here. 

Cheese

Then I’m going to add in some almond cream cheese. Now, this is Kite Hill is the brand I did not make this. This is why this mac and cheese is really easy. Okay, this dish takes under 10 minutes to make. Kite Hill has a delicious, really clean cream cheese made out of almonds. So I’m adding my cream cheese. I’m also going to add a couple tablespoons of plant based butter. So I’ll just cut off like that. And it’s the Myyoko’s brand. It’s made out of cashews, it’s delicious. Again, you can use any butter of choice here, and I’m going to give this a nice stir. Okay, the cream cheese and the butter is melting, making this nice and creamy and delicious. 

Magic Sauce

Hey, now, we’re going to make a sauce because I want this to be kind of like a version of my childhood favorite, the Kraft mac and cheese. If you want to keep this white, you can totally keep it just like this and add a little bit nutritional yeast. And then you can have more of like a white mac and cheese but I like the yellow mac and cheese. It reminds me of being a kid. Okay, I’m going to sit this behind me. And we’re going to make our mac and cheese sauce. 

What is the Secret Magic Ingredient You Use in Mac n’ Cheese?

Roasted carrots.

So I’ve already roasted these carrots, it’s about one cup a little bit over a cup. And what I love about this again, is that you can really sneak in healthy ingredients in this sauce. So like my nephew is six, he would never touch a roasted carrot. But with this sauce, he will definitely eat the sauce. We’re using cashews. So I’ve got my cashews. They’ve already been soaked and rinsed. Okay. And then I’m going to add a little bit of apple cider vinegar for the acid. Some more of nutritional yeast to give it that cheesy flavor. I’m going to put a big pinch of salt, about one and a half teaspoons here. And then I’ve got onion powder and a little bit of nutmeg. Just a little bit of fresh nutmeg really brings out the cheesiness flavor, the onion flavor and gives it that perfect zing that really reminds me of that Kraft mac and cheese sauce. 

Okay. Then I’m going to add a splash of water. I’m going to start with a little bit of water we can always add more. Okay, and now I’m going to give this a blend. Okay, let’s see our sauce. Oh, yeah. Look at this sauce. Oh my gosh, I can’t wait for you to try it. I have to taste it. Oh my god. It’s so sweet. And cheesy. Hmm. So good. 

All right. Now I’m going to grab our pasta. And we’re going to add all of our cheese into here. Okay. Really, this is going to be so decadent. This is guilt-free decadence, y’all. Nothing’s better than that. Okay, let’s do a nice stir. Look at how creamy this is. I have said this to so many cheese eaters and they really are blown away. They cannot believe how much this tastes like real cheese. It’s very exciting. Loaded with so much protein, fiber, healthy fat. Of course, we’ve snuck in our carrots, and we’ve got the protein pasta. 

Protein Hack

If you want to add even more protein, I hack that I do for my family especially my nephew’s is I add a couple tablespoons of collagen and now this would not that would not make this plant-based but I do add collagen to most things for them because it’s really hard to get in enough protein into their diets. Okay, so this is looking absolutely gorgeous. Okay, now, it’s also really delicious. If you want to bake this you can put this in a casserole dish and bake it for about 15 minutes and then top it with the crunchiness of the Brazil nuts. So I’m gonna plate us and make us a little bowl. Okay, look at how creamy this is. Oh my god. That is a nice serving mac and cheese. I am so ready for it. Oh my gosh. Okay. 

Crunchy Topping

Now we’re going to add some Brazil nuts on top. I love the Brazil nuts. It gives us an a nice little crunch. You can also use toasted breadcrumbs, but the Brazil nuts, I really liked the nuttiness and the texture. Alright, so I’m going to chop these up and it adds a little bit more plant protein. It’s all about the protein. Okay, these okay, look at this. If this isn’t a comfort meal right here, y’all, this is the creamiest mac and cheese. I cannot wait for you to try it. 

But before I dive into this, I’m going to make some banana ice cream because it really finishes off my favorite three comfort meals. And if I had one dessert left, and somebody said, “What is your last dessert that you can ever have?  It would be ice cream. I grew up on ice cream. I love ice cream. Okay, I’m gonna make this ice cream that seriously is so guilt-free and delicious. I’m going to rinse my blender really quick because we’re gonna make it in the Vitamix really fast.

Banana Ice Cream

Okay, it’s time to make dessert, the best part. All right, we’re using frozen bananas. So I want to show you what I did. I took about four bananas and sliced them into about inch thick slices. And I freeze them flat in the freezer and then whenever I want to make ice cream, you can just pull out the baggies and it’s ready to go. That’s the easiest way to do. It takes a little bit of prep, but once you get the hang of it, it’s so easy. You can also use frozen bananas obviously for your smoothies. And a couple other episodes. I’ll show you my favorite smoothie bowls. So my whole freezer is literally layered baggies of frozen vegetables and frozen fruit. Make sure when you freeze your bananas that you don’t roll them into a ball. It’ll be one huge big ice cube make sure they’re flat. I know that might seem silly, but I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened at my restaurants and then it takes forever to blend. 

Alright, so I’ve got my four bananas. Okay, then I’m going to add some cinnamon because it seriously makes everything tastes better. So cinnamon then I’m going to add about half a cup of almond butter. And the almond butter really makes this. It makes this so creamy. Okay, I’ve also made this with tahini before banana tahini ice cream. I mean, come on, it’s like the best. And then I’m going to do a small splash of almond milk. Just a little bit like a fourth a cup. We can always add more but I want this to be really thick. And I’m going to do a pinch of salt. Okay. All right. Now I’m gonna blend away this is takes a little bit of some muscle okay. Oh my gosh. So thick. So creamy. Oh my gosh. Okay. This is my favorite part.

Top it Up!

Oh, yeah. Perfect. So thick. So I want to add some of my favorite toppings. So I have some Marcona almonds, which I think are the sexiest nut in the world. So I’ve got some toasted Marcona almonds here. Okay, I’m also going to add some paleo chocolate chips that are made with coconut sugar. I mean, why not? And a little pinch of salt. Okay, oh, check out this creamy banana ice cream. 

It’s really fun to test this out on your real ice cream eaters and see if they like it. Because it really hits all the spots. I have to try this oh my gosh. It’s perfect. It’s really the perfect ending to a night of comfort food. Thank you for joining me today. Take care of yourself, your mind, your body, and your soul. And if you love this episode today, give it a thumbs up. If you have any questions, please comment in the section below so we can stay connected. Subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can be an active part of my vision of a healthy world through food. And remember that healthy is the new sexy and I’ll see you next time. Bye!

The post Chef Amber’s Wholicious™ – Episode 5 What Are Healthy Comfort Foods appeared first on Chef Amber.

Gentle Detoxing & Cleansing

You can make a big life changing move by using gentle detoxing and cleansing methods. There are a lot of misconceptions in this area that can be very confusing. However, many have abused fasting, detoxing and cleansing as a way to diet which is not mindful and I’m speaking from experience. Okay, I’m Amber Caudle, aka chef Amber. And I’ve been a professional chef for over 25 years. A holistic lifestyle advocate, Author of the cookbook ‘Sexy Nourishing Food to Fuel Your Mind, Body and Soul’ and your host of the show Wholicious. I have helped and coached 1000s of people over the past 10 years to balance their lives through healthy delicious food. And I know about all the misconceptions buzzing around when it comes to cleansing and dieting. 

When is a Good Time to do a Detox?

You could do a detox and cleanse when you’re feeling rundown, fighting an immune challenge, or after a big trip where maybe you’ve eaten some foods that your body’s not used to.

What do I really mean by cleansing and detoxing mindfully?

First, we want to set an intention before cleansing. By setting an intention before you start will help connect you to your big WHY which will help you stay grounded. We always intend to heal and strengthen the body and gain mental clarity when we’re cleansing. Gentle detoxing starts in our brain and in the mind. 

Healthy Intentions

So a really great one would be, ‘I intend to let my body let go of any inflammation and pain.’ Find your powerful intention. If you go into a cleanse without a mindful intention, and use it for a quick fix, it will backfire on you. And believe me, I’m speaking from experience because I did it for 30 years. That’s really when a shift begins. What you put into your body matters right now. And you will hear me say that 1000 times. This can be food, your thoughts, your emotions, and all impulses and impressions during the day. So when we cleanse, we’ll use it more of a reset. 

When you constantly worry about your situation, your job, the economy, your health, your family’s health, the list can go on and on. You get it, right? All of your anxiety and worry and the daily stressors can really negatively affect how your body functions, especially the liver, which is our detoxifying organ and the central organ of metabolism. 

What’s an Option for Cleansing?

One healthy option I want to give you for cleansing is pick one day a week to eat plant based. It’s a really great way to start and will give your body a break from digesting so much food.

What’s an example of cleansing meals for a day?

I would start with my smoothie in the morning, eat my salad for lunch, and finish with my soup at dinner. You could do that for one day as a reset. 

Maybe it’s a Friday, maybe every Friday, you eat plant based. For myself, I usually do a whole week a couple times a year focusing on a plant based diet with raw and cooked foods to really give my body and my organs a break from all the digesting. I am not a big fan or promoter of fasting or juice cleanses anymore because it can really trigger disordered eating. And honestly, I really think we need more fat in our diet so our body can absorb the nutrients.

Today’s Episode

Today’s menu is a great intro to cleansing and will give your body a break from digesting so much food. We’re going to make a detox smoothie. Then we’re going to make a raw carrot and beet salad with avocado, cilantro and pumpkin seeds. And then we’ll make a creamy sweet potato cauliflower soup topped with Brazil nuts. All right, let’s get cleansing! Okay, let’s go over our detox menu for today. Like I said before, this is a great menu if you want to do a one day, three day or five day reset. Alright, first I’m going to start on our detox smoothie. Then I’ll move on to our coconut cauliflower sweet potato soup. And then we’ll finish off with our raw carrot beet salad. 

Detox Smoothie Recipe

Okay, let’s go. This smoothie is a favorite. I know I say that about everything. But this smoothie I’ve been drinking for years, it feels so good. And I mentioned earlier that I don’t do juice cleanses anymore. One, I feel like we need more fat when we’re cleansing to be able to absorb the vitamins and the minerals but two, as a person with that struggled with eating disorders and disordered eating. That juicing was a way for me basically to starve myself. So when I’m cleansing and detoxing, I really like to have a little bit more fiber and fat and protein. So this is a great liquid meal to start the day. And the base of this is I’m actually going to use a little bit of water, and we’re going to make our own almond milk. 

If you caught episode two, then you saw that I’ve already showed this hack and it’s my favorite. So instead of using coconut milk or storebought almond milk or making almond milk, right from soaking almonds and straining and all the things. We’re going to add water and a couple tablespoons of nut butter. So it’s going to give this smoothie nice protein and fat. And I always say when I’m cooking, there’s many options for substitutions. 

What are Other Options You Can Substitute for Butter?

So you can do tahini here, cashew butter, pecan butter, nut butter. 

Celery So Good

So this is going to be our quick almond milk, okay? All right, so we’ve got our almond milk, right. I’m going to add some celery. Celery, high end fiber, so many benefits of celery, the celery phase, I don’t think it will ever end it feels so good. So I’m going to add celery. It’s also a great way to get in celery if you don’t like the flavor because it’s going to be hidden under the banana and the blueberries. I’m going to add some wild blueberries. So in this smoothie, there’s a ton of ingredients that help with antioxidants and removing heavy metals from the body. One we’ve got wild organic blueberries. 

What is Duluth?

It’s got a little bit of a seaweed flavor and is high in iodine. I actually started doing duluth when I was healing my thyroid.

Duluth is a hard sell. Not gonna lie, but underneath the banana and the blueberries, you can’t even taste it. So I’m going to do like a big teaspoon here. It’s something that you’ll have to talk to your natural doctor about. But it really helped me because I had very, very low iodine levels. And it really helped me heal my metabolism and my hormones. 

What are Some Benefits of Spirulina?

It’s loaded with B vitamins and helps protect from radiation and also helps from pulling heavy metals from the body. 

So far, you’ve got the blueberries, the duluth and the spirulina. Then to add some more plant protein and some omegas, I’m going to add a couple tablespoons here of chia seeds. Also, it’ll make this nice and thick. I love some chia seeds. Okay, and our banana. I’m going to do like a big half of a banana here. Add that potassium, and for the protein powder today, I’m gonna use new zest as protein powder. 

Careful with Protein Powders

Now the reason that I like this protein is because there’s only three ingredients, it sustainably source, it’s clean, it’s made from peas, it doesn’t bloat me out, give me gas, you know, you’ve got to be really careful these days with protein powders because if you turn around and you look at the ingredients, there could be 10 15 20 ingredients, half of them we can’t pronounce. It’s not necessary. So be really careful with your protein powders, there can be a lot of sneaky ingredients that we don’t need in our bodies. Okay, and also there can be a lot of added sneaky sugars, which I never really understood that either. 

So this is pure protein, we’re gonna get about 20 ish grams of protein even more on top of almond butter and the chia seeds. Okay, so what else are we forgetting? This is it. Let’s blend away. Okay. I’m gonna give this a quick blend. Okay, perfect. Okay, Love it. I mean, seriously, all this really tastes like is banana and blueberries, and then you’ve got all this amazing stuff underneath. 

Sneaking in Healthy Ingredients

I’ve had a lot of parents feed this to their kids, they can actually sneak in the healthy ingredients underneath. It’s all about getting sneaky with nutrition. Y’all. Okay. All right. Now, like I said, I love breaking my intermittent fasting with this in the morning. I drink my lemon water, maybe I’ll have my Tumeric latte. Or I’ll go straight to this. Starting the day off with liquid and ending the day with liquid with our soup really gives our body a chance to really take a break from all the digestion of all the solid foods that we eat. So this is something that I’m gonna be drinking with Sandy a little later, and she’s gonna love it. Delicious. 

Cauliflower Soup Recipe

All right, so next we’re going to jump right into our raw carrot and beet salad and our sweet potato cauliflower soup. Okay, you ready to make soup? I am. I love soup and I literally eat it all year round, not just in the winter. Okay, let’s get in here. So this is a sweet potato cauliflower soup with coconut milk. And right now I’m gonna do a little quick peel and a dice for our sweet potato. Best thing about the way I make soups y’all is you can chop up all your vegetables really roughly, throw them in, boil them, and blend it. That’s it. Okay, we’re not going to saute. And also we are cuts don’t have to be perfect, right? Because we’re going to blend the crap out of this. 

White Potatoe

All right, so now you can also use any sort of sweet potato or yam, but I like to use a white one for this specifically with the coconut milk and the cauliflower. Because it reminds me of a creamy potato soup. And I’m not anti-potato, but when I’m cleansing, I don’t eat potato when I cleanse. Okay, so I do a little bit less starchy lysine, lower glycemic, and this is also a great paleo soup. Okay. So for those of you that are unfamiliar with paleo. Paleo, no grain, no dairy, no gluten, but also they don’t do beans or potato, okay. Alright, so I’m gonna give this a quick little dice here. Rough dice, chop, I guess, more so, and I love a blended soup while I’m cleansing. 

Soup Cleanse

And in fact, I’ve done soup cleanses instead of a juice cleanse, meaning I’ll drink like three or four soups during the day along with my bone broth, because an all liquid day really gives your body a chance to take a break from digesting all the solid food all the time. So soups are a great way to get a liquid meal in without it always having to be a smoothie. And it adds a little extra fat and plant protein and fiber and it’s warm. 

Okay, here we go. So I’m going to do sweet potato. We’re going to add this to our pot here. All right, oh, well, not what that beet. Okay. All right, that is for our carrot and beet salad. All right. Okay, I have about one small onion here, put the onion in. And then I’ve got one small head of cauliflower about five six cups. Now add the cauliflower in. And then I’m going to add some full-fat coconut milk and a little bit of water. 

Creamy Coconut Milk

I love the coconut milk, it makes it super creamy. You can definitely sub any liquid of choice if you want to do almond milk or if there’s another seed or nut milk of your choice. Okay, I’m gonna turn this on. And we’re going to crank this baby to that medium. I’m going to add a couple teaspoons of salt. Okay, a little bit of black pepper. And my three garlic cloves and I don’t need to chop them because we’re going to blend it. So I’m going to add the garlic cloves in. So I’m going to give this a little stir. We’re all set in here. I’m actually going to add a little time sprig. Save a little bit for garnish. Okay, here we are. And we’re going to let that cook for about 35/40 minutes. Okay, I’m going to cover it. And all right, we’re gonna let that go. 

Carrot Beet Salad Recipe

Okay, let’s get into our raw carrot and beet salad. This salad is the ultimate detox salad. It’s loaded with vitamins and minerals that really helps detox the liver. And what I really love about the salad too, is it’s so high in fiber. And it’s really great to help with elimination. 

Elimination

And we haven’t really spoken a lot about elimination. It’s actually one of my favorite topics, but we’re talking about detox and cleansing. And so it’s really important to eat enough fiber while we’re detoxing and cleansing and have really great elimination. 

Beets Help the Liver Detox

Okay, so we are going to shred the carrots and the beets. And we’re going to keep this raw. This is actually a staple in my house. I don’t actually just eat this when I’m detoxing. You know, we really have to take care of our liver on the daily because our liver gets taxed by outside stressors and daily life and our diets and everything. So it’s really great to really have foods that can help detox the liver, and beets are one of them. All right, so and our raw carrot salad, like I said, it will help with constipation and help with regularity. Okay, so I already have some beets and carrots, but you know, you can just peel your beat, and then do a nice little grate here. 

Okay, and I’m making a mess, it is messy. And I’m gonna grate a little bit of carrot also. Okay, so luckily, I was prepared for y’all. And I already graded a bunch of beets and carrots, so we can just put this right in here and add that we just cleaned really amazing. Okay, so we’ve got carrots and beets right here. For our acid. I’ve got a little bit of lemon juice here. And I’m actually going to add a little bit more lemon, because I’m just feeling it. So we’re gonna add a little bit of lemon. And then I’m going to add some sea salt, about a teaspoon, a pinch of black pepper. And to do a nice drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. And really nice to find a really nice organic extra virgin olive oil here. 

Spice & Nuttiness

Hey, we’ll add a lot of spiciness and nuttiness. And then I have a nice big handful of Italian parsley. So what I’ll do is I’m just going to do a rough chop here, don’t need to go crazy and I use the stems. So the stems are loaded with vitamins, they actually also help pull heavy metals from the body. So and really great for the liver. So I’m going to add the parsley. And I like to add pumpkin seeds in and on top for textures. So I’m going to add a little bit of pumpkin seeds there. And then we’re going to add this avocado. So this is going to be I think we’re going to do the whole the whole avocado here. So just gonna put this in big chunks because I’m gonna mix this up, actually with my hands. Okay. And so this avocado does not have to be perfect. So we’re gonna mash it up. Actually, the avocado is going to be kind of part of the creaminess of the dressing along with the lemon and the olive oil. Okay, there’s that. Okay, perfect. 

So I’m gonna get in here with my hands. I love to use my hands in the kitchen. Don’t be scared using your hands in the kitchen. Really get in there can get a little bit a little messy. It’s your salad. Okay, this is going to be creamy. And it’s a little sweet from the carrots and the beets. The acid from the lemon. Okay, perfect. And I don’t like to mash up the avocado all the way. I like to leave a couple pieces kind of big like that. I’m gonna put this to the side. Okay, and I’m gonna wash my hands. 

Finishing up the Soup

Okay, let’s check out our soup. Okay, it looks perfect. Go. Hey, it’s cooked down. Nicely. All right. Now I’m going to finish that with a little bit of orange juice from the juice of one orange and then a little bit more lemon. Okay, so we’ll add a little bit of lemon. And now I’m going to blend this okay, this is the last step here is to blend it. Make this nice and creamy. 

And then we’ll plate our soup and our salad. Alright, so I’ve got a label here. And I love this soup too because soups freeze really easily. So I’ll make a big batch you can freeze these in you know plastic cups in the refrigerator or make a half batch this kind of a big batch but I love a soup. Okay, let’s see. Okay, amazing and it looks like cream of potato. And it actually tastes a little bit like creamy potato. Okay, so let’s finish these babies. Hey. All right, so for the soup. Oh yeah. Okay, for the soup. I like to finish it with some fresh thyme leaves. Okay. 

Why are Brazil Nuts Good for Us?

High in selenium. It really supports cardiovascular health, supports the immune system, great for thyroid health, and it supports the production of glutathione, which is our body’s antioxidant.

And then Brazil nuts. Love some Brazil nuts. Four Brazil nuts a day gives us selenium in our diet. Okay, so I’m going to put a little bit of raw Brazil nuts on top, it’s going to add a nice little crunch, give us some extra fat and some extra protein. And then of course, I can’t do anything without sumach. Give it a nice lemony flavor at the end, a little bit of zing. And I’m going to do one nice drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Okay, look at this soup. Okay, so gorgeous with the crunchiness from the Brazil nuts, this thyme leaves, it really, really, really is going to taste like a creamy potato soup. 

Pumpkin Seeds

Hey, all right, let’s finish our salad. Okay, so we’re going to do a nice big scoop of our salad here, just like this. And how gorgeous is the salad? Come on. Hey, and then I’m going to top it with some of our sprouted raw pumpkin seeds. And pumpkin seeds high in magnesium. Really actually supports heart health and is claimed to help with weight loss. So really great when detoxing and cleansing. 

I mean, this meal right here, y’all, this is, this is a cleansing meal that’s going to make you feel so good, but you’re not going to feel deprived, you’re not going to feel starving. For me, it doesn’t trigger any of my disordered eating. So if you want to use this meal today, we made our smoothie, we have our salad and our soup. 

In fact, every Friday if you want to do a plant-based day, or you could say you know what I want to cleanse for three days, five days, seven days. You can eat this meal for the whole week if you want, okay. You’re getting enough vitamins, fiber, protein. Going to feel so good. You’re going to give your body a chance to really relax and detox and digest the food. And sometimes I’ll drink the smoothie for breakfast, I’ll drink the smoothie for dinner, and have an early dinner and then have a nice window of intermittent fasting. And then maybe have the salad and soup for lunch. So you can kind of play around with this. I can’t wait to share this with Sandy. I know she’s gonna love it. 

Special Guest Sandy Abrams

All right, y’all. I’m so excited to introduce you to my friend, also entrepreneur and Author of the book ‘Breathe to Succeed’ Sandy Abrams. Sandy, thank you so much for being here. 

SA: Thank you for having me. 

CA: Welcome. You’ve always inspired me and always remind me to breathe and how important breath is and breath is our lifeforce. So thank you. 

SA: Thank you, and likewise. You always inspire me to eat well!

CA: Awesome. And so today’s episode is all about cleansing and detoxing the body and really having a reset and feeling good in our bodies. And so I thought it was perfect to have you come on today and talk about how we can cleanse and detox the mind with breath. But before we get started, I made us some detox smoothies, so we can stay fueled during our conversation. And so we’ve got blueberries and duluth and almond butter, banana. We’ve got chia seeds, celery, and of course some spirulina. So this is a really great reset smoothie detox smoothie, it feels so good. So cheers.

SA: Thank you feel so good. So good. So delicous, nourishing.

CA: Alright, well,let’s start by telling me what inspired you to get into breathwork? Like, why did you become so passionate to start spreading the word about breath and writing ‘Breathe to Succeed?’

SA: I’ve been practicing yoga and breath work since 1989. And normally I’m sort of a fast paced type A entrepreneur, and breath really changed my life back in 1989 when I first started with yoga. I used to be known as the girl who would leave yoga class right before savasana because who’s got time to sit still. But then I learned that lying still at the end of class is what yoga is all about. And for the first time in my entire life, when I actually stayed for shavasana. And I took three deep breaths, I actually felt that grounded, centered stillness and the quiet that made me so curious about well, if I can do that here on my yoga mat, I want to take it off the mat and use it in my life. And so I’ve been using it in my life ever since. And the reason why I was inspired to share it was because I started seeing such burnout in with my entrepreneurial friends, but also in the business sector and with parents and in really everything every sector, because technology had revolutionized the way that we work and we live and we’re connected to our devices. It’s just the way that we live.

CA: It’s the way that we live. It’s the truth. I

SA: f that’s the truth, but there are consequences to that. So breath is the antidote. And it’s like nourishment for the mind. It’s hydration for the mind. And it really helps us feel more in control of our emotions and our mindset. And our energy, which is a big part of holistic wellness.

CA: when I finally learned to breathe, it was a game changer. And I was giggling the whole time you were because we’re so much alike. We’re fast moving entrepreneurs. We’re always on the go, right? And so when I finally I was I would be in Shavasana. I was like, Who the heck has time like, I got stuff to do y’all. Right? I would totally, I was like, going over my grocery list. And I wasn’t even taking the breaths. And when I finally started to learn to breathe, it was a game changer for me to be like, Well, I’m now becoming present with myself and my body. This is actually helping my stress, my anxiety. And I became addicted about 10 years ago when I finally learned to breathe. And you know, breathe is our breath is our lifeforce. And it’s free. And it’s such a gift. And it has such an overall impact on our health. So I kind of want to touch on breath and health because yeah.

SA: Yeah, I love the way that you explain that breath is life. And it is I look at it as this human superpower that we all have. And that’s the beauty of it is that breath equalizes well being because every single person around the globe has access to this medicine to this nourishment. Yeah, that we all have. And the great thing is, is that we have the power to override our nervous systems. So a lot of people think about breath that it’s only for calming our nervous system, which is terrific. And I would say most people use it for that. But you can also balance your nervous system with breath. And you can also boost your nervous system with different breath tools. So just like I like to say that a calorie isn’t just a calorie and a breath is just a breath. 

CA: It’s just not! I love that you said that. Because so one of the episodes of Wholicious, I’ll demonstrate Breath of Fire. And so for me, that’s one of my breath, I always go to whether it be in my car, not when I’m driving, or I’ll step into the bathroom at work when I’m so tired. And even here filming Wholicious I’d get really tired. And I start on that breath. So like I love how you mentioned a lot of people think breath is like to calm you down all the time, which like you said is fantastic. But not our each breath is created the same because there’s energizing breath too. So definitely the crew of Wholicious has heard me do my loud, oh, Goddess breath, which really just like I do it before I go on stage and just take a breath that helps me really feel embodied. Calm down, get centered. So breath is everything. And breath is so important right now these last, you know, here as we’re dealing with COVID and really wanting to build our immune system. So do you want to touch on that point a little bit? 

SA: Yeah, breath has been just a saving grace for so many people during COVID. First of all, it made us I’d say one of the silver linings of COVID was that we’ve become more self aware of of our breath, we’ve become more protective of our respiratory system, because we fear losing that. But at the same time, then we want to nourish it, we want to exercise it and we want to get like the optimal gas exchange, the oxygen, the carbon dioxide, when everything is like a well oiled machine, just like your gut when the respiratory system is also working optimally. We feel our best. Yeah. And that’s what’s really important for health. And mindfulness paired with breath makes it exponentially as powerful because like he said, your goddess breath. I love that because you embody that feeling then. The minute you do that breath, you create your best mindset and energy for what you need in that moment. Yes. And that’s what I hope people begin to understand and experiment with because yeah, there’s a breath for everyone and everything and every different mindset and mood and perspective that you need. There’s a way to breathe, to help you embody that and create that within yourself.

CA: I love that it’s so important. And what I want to know is what are a couple breaths that we can go over? Like what are some takeaways that you can give to the Wholicous community, some practical breath tools that they can incorporate into their daily lives for holistic living? Okay, good, because I know you’ve got a bunch of breaths. So what are maybe like three breaths that you want to share with with the Wholicious community.

SA: The first one is to get out of like autopilot chest breathing. The shallow, rapid, quick breath that that we mostly live in. The problem with that is it actually leaves us in a low grade state of chronic stress. Okay, and talk about inflammation and everything. That’s what happens when all we’re doing is breathing rapidly and shallowly. So the first tool you is a balancing breath, also known as coherent breath when you make the inhales and the exhales to a count of five, or six, five or six, so inhale and are we inhaling through the nose through the nose. The reason

we inhale through the nose is because it heats and it filters and it treats the air that’s coming into our lungs. Versus if your mouth is open, and you’re taking it in, you’re not filtering that air at all. Okay, it’s going directly into the lungs. So bacteria, germs, everything is invited in. So inhale through the nose to count of five or six, and then exhaling through the nose or mouth. To five or six. Most of the time when you’re breathing normally, throughout the day, you want to breathe, inhaling and exhaling through the nose. But when I just do those little mini breath practices, I feel more of a sense of release when I exhale through my mouth. 

CA: Yeah, me too. 

SA: Totally fine. Yeah. So that would be the coherent breathing is one to try to do as often as possible.

CA: Okay, as often as possible throughout the day, it doesn’t mean you have to be stressed or anything. It’s more like, it’s just the breath to go to. 

SA: Exactly. And it doesn’t even have to be like hard, like light as a feather.

Oh, it can be light as a feather. 

CA: I’m glad because I want to be over here like, yeah, no,

no, right, like getting in there. So it doesn’t have to be like that, it could just be

really helpful. 

SA: Because otherwise less is more smart. It’s a very common, okay, too, because people feel like if they breathe in really hard like that, okay. And it’s just that’s a common reflux or compromised to it, but like that, really. And then if you picture like a feather under your nose on the exhale, you don’t want to move that further. And it’s gentle, I love that. 

CA: And nobody even needs to know you’re doing it. Nobody needs to know. Okay, this is brilliant. I love that be the default mode. Not this anymore. 

SA: Yeah, not that’s just like suggest you get used to starting it at the belly with your diaphragm. Because if you’re not using your diaphragm is known as your second heart. Yeah. And when you don’t use that, and you’re just starting, breathing like that, it’s yeah, you’re doing your system harm. It’s you’re doing your system, no favors. So if you start the breath down with your diaphragm, and you bring the belly out laterally, light as the feather and for five or six, how light as a feather five to six, that should be your default breath during the day. And if that seems odd, at first, just try it. Try to integrate it every time you refill your water bottle, or walking into your car or in an elevator or whatever, attach it to something that you’re already doing. Make that sort of the new routine of like, Oh, I’m also going to think about how I’m breathing. 

CA: Okay, I love that breath. Okay, so that’s breath. One. I love that one.

SA: Coherent breathing balanced, five, five or six. Okay, the next one I would love to share is alternate nostril breathing. Okay, which is also another balancing breath. But what you do is you gently close one nostril will close the right nostril. Okay, we’ll inhale through the left side to that same count five or six. And then once you take that inhale, you close the left side, you exhale on the right. Okay, and then you inhale on the same side that you exhale. So okay. Inhaling right, close right. Exhale, left, inhale, close, left, exhale, right. And what’s happening is when you inhale through your right nostril, you’re connecting to the left side of your brain, which is your analytical, logical side. When you’re inhaling through the left nostril, you connect to the right side, the more creative side. Also, the left nostril is the calming nostril. So if you really want to calm down, you can also close your right nostril and do both inhale and exhale through the left side. 

CA: I love this. Okay. 

SA: And then if you want a little boost, like in the morning, okay, close your left nostril. Inhale and exhale, both on the right side. 

CA: This is a great tip. 

SA: So that’s both balancing, but it could also just be calming or boosting.

CA: Calming or boosting. Okay, so if I’m feeling stressed or anxious, then I can I can get in there with this alternate nostril technique. Yeah. Okay. 

SA: And we actually our nostrils alternate on their own throughout the day, but this is a way to take charge so that if you can test it during the day, you can like, place your finger under your nose and exhale, and I can see right now my left nostril is dominant. Oh, okay. Um, right now interesting if we wanted to get a boost, which says a lot yeah. Calm. But so if we wanted a little boost, we would close our left nostril and breathe in and out on right sides.

CA: Love this. Okay, this is a great takeaway. Okay, so those were two breaths. Okay, what’s your it’s so simple to so simple and it’s free. I know. It’s so easy. We all have access to it right?

Exactly. Yeah. 

SA: My favorite one for boosting is what you already talked about is Breath of Fire. Okay, the quick I do like around a 15 of them, okay, I’m three times, okay. But I rest in between, okay. And I call it espresso in the form of breath work.

CA: Same. it’s my morning coffee. If I’m feeling exhausted, I always do a little Breath of Fire. And, I mean, I when I was demoing it, you know, I’ll say, Hey, you guys can do this in the car. When it’s parked. You can do it in the bathroom at work. I mean, sometimes I’ll be so tired at work, or I need a little bit of an energy boost and I’m not drinking coffee. So I go in the bathroom and I just I start to breathe. So yeah.

SA: Exactly. And the one thing I would add to breath of fire sometimes in between rounds is posture. So you can do like Power Pose. Okay, so that really boosts your energy. We’re used to texting and our laptop. Okay, you in between rounds of Breath of Fire. You want to do the power pose. Okay, it’s so empowering and does give you a boost. 

CA: Okay. Should we do one round of 15? Yeah. Okay, let’s do one round of 15. Okay.

SA: Okay, so close eyes. Yeah. Both feet on the floor for more grounding, okay, palms face down on your thighs. And we focus on a rapid exhale. And the inhale just happens automatically, you know? Yeah. So it looks like this. Let’s do it together. Ready? And then breathe normally. Maybe power pose. 

CA: Power pose it? Yes!

SA: And you can also on the inhale. And on the exhale, give yourself a hug. 

CA: I love this. 

SA: And then you can do it again.

CA: It’s just already I have energy total me It’s amazing. It I love how you call it your morning Espresso because I always call it my morning coffee. Like I’m like, there’s so many ways to wake yourself up in the morning and I will share in other episodes dry brushing, slapping and Breath of Fire. I mean, there’s so many ways to do it besides going to that sugar or the coffee like we have access to our breath. So yeah, so brilliant. So I love these three breaths. We have the rapid Breath of Fire the espresso morning coffee. We have the alternate nostril breathing, which you can use for energizing or calming. And then we have the coherent breath for balance.

SA: What about one more? Okay, let’s do one more Lion’s Breath. Which you know. 

CA: Okay, love lion’s breath, right? Explain that lion’s breath. Yeah, and the benefits. 

SA: So Lion’s Breath is just the quickest way to immediately exercise to immediately let go of any negative or stagnant energy in your body. It’s great because kids can do it. Older people can do it. It’s never too late to learn Lyons breath. And who doesn’t need that during the day just to immediately get rid of any negative or stagnant and make it your own. And that’s I’m glad you brought that up. Because breath is customizable. And just like food, it’s individualized as people like the Keto, the vegan. Everything that you know, from your restaurants, people are always thinking about exactly what they want in their food. And quality matters. And same with breath though. You can make it your own on lion’s breath, you can shake out your hands, you can shake out your body. You do whatever makes you feel good. So Lion’s Breath looks like this. You close your eyes. Take a long, slow, deep inhale. And exhale. 

CA: I know it’s a goofy thing to do. Right when we started doing it. So basically lions breath, your tongue goes out and your eyes are rolling up.

SA: But and you can’t do it and not

laugh you know. 

CA: Right? You can’t be serious and sad after.

SA: And laughter is breath too. Yeah. So I do that every single morning when I wake up, I just do three lion’s breath, not even necessarily to get rid of any worry or thought. Yeah, just to like clear.

CA: Thank you for reminding me of that. Yeah, thank you for remind me of the Lion’s Breath. Because I used to do Lion’s Breath and it kind of, it’s not my rotation. So now I’m gonna think of you when I get up in the morning. With all the other 100 things I do in the morning for my morning routine, I will definitely do a lion’s breath. Well, I know that we could talk forever and ever and ever. This is so fun. I’m inspired. I actually feel like I learned a lot today. So thank you so much and stepping up. Yes, you’re welcome. And I want you to tell everyone where they can find you.

SA: Sure on Instagram and Twitter at Sandy Abrams and my website is theceom.com.

CA: Okay, excellent. And you guys definitely order her book. I love your book. I think when it came out and gave it to like 10 people for Christmas that year. I love it. So thank you again. I appreciate you. And this was such a joy. I can’t wait to connect again.

SA: Me too. Thank you for sharing me with the Wholicious community. I’m excited to be part of it. 

CA: You’re welcome.

Thanks all so much for joining us. Today take care of yourself, your mind, your body and your soul. And if you felt inspired by the breath today and you love this episode, give it a thumbs up. And if you have any questions or comments please comment below because I love staying connected with you guys.

The post Chef Amber’s Wholicious™ – Episode 4 How To Detox with Special Guest, Sandy Abrams appeared first on Chef Amber.

What’s Our 2nd Brain?

Our gut is considered our second brain? 

Your vagus nerve is the nerve that goes directly from your gut to your brain and is responsible for healthy communication between your gut and brain. But it also controls almost every aspect of digestion. If your gut is unhealthy and suffering from any gastric issues or leaky gut, this can affect your mental health and emotions as it did for me for almost 30 years. Along with gut healing delicious recipes that I’ll show you later on in my Wholicious kitchen, you can also watch my episode with my guests, Dr. G. We talk a lot about gut health and make sure you check my episodes specifically on immune boosters if you haven’t already. 

Visualization Technique

Okay, so today, we’re going to use a fire visualization technique that will activate your self healing powers. The only side effect I’ve experienced visualization is that it will create a new self image and increase your self esteem and inner freedom. Sometimes I do a quick one in the morning for a couple of minutes after my meditation or sometimes I’ll do it before bed. Okay, so before we start, before we pick our intention, I like to clear my space clear the energy. So right here I’ve gotten some sage. 

Sage

Sage is really great to clear any unwanted energy. I like to light my sage sick, and then kind of just clear around me all over my body, any other energies that are kind of like stuck on me that need to be cleared. 

Palo Santo

And then what brings in the energy is Palo Santo. So palo santo ring and some nice beautiful energy. So I like to light this after I light my sage. And as I’m getting ready to pick my intention. 

Select Your Intention

So today, because our episode is all about gut health. My intention today is going to be to have perfect elimination and perfect digestion. And because so many people, including myself have struggled with constipation in the past, I think this is a really great intention. So you’re going to sit in a comfortable position, you can sit in a chair, you can sit on the floor cross legged, you can close your eyes and you’re going to take your hands and you’re going to place your hands right over your belly button. 

Now we’re really going to focus on the solar plexus which is about three inches above the belly button. Okay, so start to take some deep breaths in and out of your nose, exhaling out of your mouth and really start to picture a warm fire a warm light in your solar plexus. Really growing with every breath that you’re taking. 

You can start to visualize feeding and fueling your body with the right foods. You can take a couple seconds really sitting in quiet, having gratitude for your strong beautiful body. After you finish for 2, 10, 30 minutes visualization, I like to sit with my palms face up on my knees. Ah I take a couple deep breaths to finish my meditation visualization, really allowing my mind body and my soul to connect and really allowing any clarity or insight that wants to come in. 

Today’s Episode

Our fire visualization is a good foundation to now jump into my Wholicious kitchen and start on dishes that are going to support a healthy gut. Okay, this is a bone broth episode, which is my favorite thing to talk about. We’re going to start with bone broth. Then we’re going to make a creamy blueberry bone broth jello smoothie. I know it sounds weird, but it’s amazing. And then we’re going to make cauliflower rice with bone broth with a soft cooked egg, peas and a bunch of herbs. Okay, before we get started, the equipment we need today is a crock pot and of course my handy Vitamix. 

What is the #1 Thing I Use for My Gut Health?

Bone broth.

Gut Microbiome

Let’s talk about our gut microbiome. So all of the healthy good bacteria in our gut is responsible for absorbing and storing all the minerals and the nutrients that we need in our body. This means that we have a healthy gut flora, which will help us fight inflammation in the gut. So I drink bone broth every single day. So let’s jump in and get started. And I’ll go over a little bit more of the benefits because I can talk bone broth seriously all day long. 

What Causes an Unhealthy Gut, Unbalanced Flora?

Processed food, lots of sugar, too much alcohol, too much caffeine, not enough fiber.

Bone Broth: Step One

Now, I’m going to use a crock pot today. It’s easier, we’re going to cook this for 24 hours, we’ll put it on low and you can walk away and go. So we’re going to first talk about the bones. Okay, don’t be creeped out, because we’re using some chicken feet today. These little guys are a little creepy, but they’re loaded with collagen. So we’ve got organic chicken feet, and I’m also using some beef Morrow bones, you can also use any cut of beef bones that you can find at your butcher. But it’s really, really important that you find pasture-raised, grass fed, organic beef bones. You don’t want to make a bone broth when your bones are dirty. So really pay attention to where you’re sourcing your bones. That’s a big, big thing. This is so easy. It’s a little bit of a labor of love. But getting started is very easy. 

So what I’m gonna do, so I’m going to put all my chicken feet and all these bones in my crock pot here. Okay. All right, then, the key and the tip is for bone broth, is pour your water where it’s about one inch above the bones. Okay, I’m going to do that nestled even here. Perfect. All right. 

Next, I’m going to use some apple cider vinegar. So the apple cider vinegar helps extract the minerals and the nutrients from the bones. Really important. I’m going to do about two teaspoons. Okay. And then I’m going to do about one teaspoon of sea salt. So I’ll just do that. Alright, so that looks good. Let me show you. See how I have the water just right above the bones. Okay, that’s going to cook on low for 24 hours. Peek at it after about 12 hours and if the water looks like it’s resting right under the bones, just go ahead and add a little bit more water. Depending on the strength of your crock pot and how hot your crock pot is. You don’t want too much of the water to boil down. Okay, so 24 hours, bam. 

Step Two

Okay, this is step one. Step two, after 24 hours, I then take this and I strain the bone. So I’ve already done this. And now here I have my strained hot bone broth. So my bone broth is going to go in the refrigerator for 24 hours. And what’s going to happen is in the morning, you’re going to have this thick layer of fat, which is actually the beginning of making tallow. This is actually really, really healthy fat to cook with and the fat rises. And then what you can do is with your spoon is kind of pull away the fat it’s so easy, just like this. Okay, and I actually like to save this fat and use it for cooking my fish and meat and it’s delicious for cooking eggs. And, you know, cooking with oils is such an important topic too. This is such a healthy oil and fat to cook with because it won’t burn and turn toxic in our body. Okay, so I’m scraping the fat and I’m left with all this jello. Look at this bone broth jello. This makes me so excited. 

So about six months ago at my restaurant at Hermosa Beach, The Source Cafe, I decided, you know what, what is a way that I can get bone broth in to some of my customers that are kind of terrified of bone broth that they don’t like the flavor. So I was like, What about a bone broth jello smoothie? I know it sounds so weird. But it’s become kind of famous and it’s a daily drink of mine. 

Why Do I Drink Bone Broth Y’all?

A happy gut, happy brain. Okay, so there’s one. Two great for hair, skin and nails helps repair the lining of the gut. High in available minerals and nutrients. Loaded of course with protein. It’s high in glycine. And glycine is an amino acid that actually helps with sleep and with depression. And glutathione which is the body’s master antioxidant. Very high in that. So you’re getting all these amino acids instead of taking pills or protein powders.

Bone Broth Jello Recipe

So we’re gonna get right in here, we’re gonna put about a cup of the bone broth jello. And you’ll notice that at the bottom of the bone broth, there’s a bunch of the marrow and stuff. And this is actually really, really amazing. There’s so many amino acids and vitamins and y’all if you’re feeling sick, you’re fighting a cold, get into the bone broth. Then I’m going to do about one cup of blueberries. I’ve done frozen mango. It’s delicious with frozen mango and frozen strawberries, but I really prefer the blueberries. 

Collagen

I’m actually adding a little bit more collagen because I want about 40 grams of protein in this. So this is grass fed Vital Proteins is the brand and I love it and it’s clean and so I like to add a little bit more collagen to it. 

Cinnamon

I’m adding cinnamon. One because it’s my favorite and it tastes amazing. But two, it’s really great for fighting inflammation and great for circulation. And I do have to say that if you’re sensitive to the bone broth flavor that the cinnamon will hide it a little bit. 

Low Sugar

And then we do need just a little bit of either maple, raw honey or stevia. And to keep this low glycemic and no sugar, I’m going to do a little bit of just a couple drops of organic stevia right there. And then for the fat because actually, bone broth is not a high high fat product because we’re scraping all the fat from the top. It’s loaded with protein and minerals and vitamins. And it does have a little fat, but I want this to be really nice and balanced with the fiber, protein and fat and it’s going to make it so creamy. So I’m going to do a big scoop of avocado. And we’re gonna blend, okay, and you’re gonna see how freaking creamy and delicious this is. Okay, let’s see, I’m so excited for you to try this. 

Look at this. And the first time I made this in front of my friends, I thought I was crazy and then tasted it was like, “Oh my gosh, I cannot believe how good this tastes.” And I’m telling you, you can’t even taste the bone broth. Like it really is an amazing way to sneak it in. Look at this. Look how creamy it is. It’s fluffy. It’s like a mousse. Oh my gosh, obsessed. It’s so good. I drink this every day and people comment all the time. Oh my god your skin you’re glowing? Well, you know what glowing from the inside out, nourishing and fueling our bodies with the right food right, but collagen baby bone broth. So super jazzed to share that with you. 

Cauliflower Rice Recipe

Next we’re going to make cauliflower rice and I want to show you how to make cauliflower rice using our bone broth jello. Now first, what we’re going to do is we’re going to actually use some of that fat that I scraped off from the bone broth, might as well and use it to cook our cauliflower in. So I’m going to put a couple tablespoons in there. Yep, that’s great. And then I’m going to add our cauliflower rice. Now I rice this in the food processor, but I usually get lazy myself at home and I just buy it frozen, or you can buy it non frozen. They have both options at the grocery store. If you don’t want to rice it yourself. This is going to take under 15 minutes. I’m gonna give this a little stir. We’re just going to brown the rice cauliflower for about 30 seconds to a minute. 

Seasonings

Okay, and I’m going to add all of our spices. We’ve got cumin, paprika, and add a little crushed red pepper. And put all that in there. Alright, perfect. And now we’re going to use our bone broth jello. So I’ve got about a cup and a half here. We’ll add our jello. I’m going to add some fresh oregano. I’m going to turn this down now to about medium low and add a little squeeze of lemon. Okay, now we’re gonna cover this for about 10 to 12 minutes. Okay, we’re gonna let this baby cup. 

What Does Soft Boil Mean? 

I boil the water, add the eggs and set my timer for six minutes. And then as soon as that timer goes off, it’s really important that you have a small bowl with ice water. And you take your egg and you put it in the ice bath and immediately stop cooking. That way you get a really nice medium yolk.

Sexy Runny Yolk

So let me show you. Oh my gosh, look at that. How it’s a little bit runny. Oh my gosh, so good. This is how I eat all my eggs. Okay, we’re going to finish this cauliflower rice today with a little bit of red wine vinegar, some fresh parsley and some peas. So right here I’ve got about one and a half cups of frozen peas. And the reason I add my peas at the end is because I don’t want them to turn to mush. And I still like to have like a little bit of crunch to the pea, okay? Perfect. That is cooking, baby. Okay, all right. So let’s add our peas here. I’m also going to finish this with a bunch of fresh parsley. Okay, I’m going to finish with a little drizzle about two teaspoons of red wine vinegar. That’s about it. I don’t really measure. This looks amazing. So I’m going to let this go for about 30 more seconds. Okay, great. So I’m going to finish it with a little squeeze of lemon. 

I’m loving it. It smells delicious. And all right, I’m gonna get going a little bit. We Oh yeah. Perfect. I’m going to put our egg right on top. I mean that’s sexy. A runny yolk is so sexy. I’m going to take a little bit of more parsley leaves, and I’m going to put some parsley on top like this. And I’m going to do a nice drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, right across the egg. Oh yeah, pinch of Malden seasalt right here, and then sumach sumach. If you’ve been watching my episodes, I basically put it on everything. It’s a shrub and it will add a nice lemony zing. And I’m going to put that right there across the egg, just like that. And that’s it. Oh my gosh, check out this amazing cauliflower rice with bone broth, peas, fresh oregano, parsley, and that six minute egg. You can eat this warm, you can eat this cold, you can add this to your eggs in the morning. Really delicious. If you want to add any sauteed meat to this, you can serve this with some roasted fish on top if you don’t want the egg. There’s so many options. 

So I hope you got inspired today and learned a ton about gut health and how to take care of your gut. I can’t wait to know how you love the bone broth smoothie. Subscribe to my channel and comment below because I love staying connected with you especially if you have any questions. Okay, I’ll see you next time. Bye!

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