Not another Natto post...

Yup I'm afraid so ;) but this time I made it!! Yeaaaay! Found some natto at the Japanese Food and Kitchen shop here in Stockholm so of course I couldn't wait to make what I had eaten in Amsterdam! And here is my version:

I basically just mixed together some chopped spring onion, cucumber, tomatoes and avocado. Drizzled on a sauce made of ACV, mustard and tamari then put it all on a bed of baby spinach and brown rice! Was so delicious! 

Ideally, I would like to make my own natto purely because the ones I bought do not say non-gmo and also they came in styrofoam packaging which I definitely am not a fan of. I know that in London they sell the same kind of thing so I guess I better get cooking or should I say fermenting!! hehe
If you would like to find out why Natto is so good for you check out this awesomely informative post by the wonderful Liana Shanti HERE :)

A more recent photo of my yummy natto dish :) yum!

Juicer info :)

I am very blessed to own a Green Star Elite juicer! It is an amaaaazing juicer and I just love it! It may be on the pricey end of the scale compared to other juicers out there but really it works out to be the best investment in the long run. I got mine from UKJUICERS. If you are going to be doing regular juice fasts or adding more juices to your diet I highly recommend this juicer. You will end up saving so much money on produce!
Liana Shanti has posted some great info on the different types of juicers on her FACEBOOK page take a read HERE and decide for yourself :)

Here are some videos to watch too :)

Summer tiiiiime!!

It has been very warm in London for over a week now with temperatures around 24-30 degrees Celsius which is really warm for a city like London, well I think it is :)  So, to cool down, I have been making lots of fresh juice ice lollies with my newly acquired rocket moulds! They are so quick and easy to make and are a great treat! I've made some with watermelon-lime-mint juice, orange juice and raspberries, grapefruit juice and blueberries, apple and ginger and one where I used leftover smoothie and sliced strawberries! Soooo gooood and the possibilities are endless! :)

Yumminess!!

Awesomely yummy and super quick snack! I don't often measure things so I'm not sure exactly how much of everything I put in:

Frozen bananas, spinach, vanilla hemp protein powder and a date (which for my tastes buds made it too sweet but Fredrik loved it!) Then I just topped with some yummy fruits and a chocolate sauce I made out raw cacao powder and maple syrup :) Ah I love all the colors! :D

Natto love!!

My lovely boyfriend and I just got back from spending the weekend in beautiful Amsterdam visiting a close friend. I love Amsterdam and am so grateful we got the chance to visit. This was Fredriks first time there and we will definitely be going back again in the future. Naturally, before we left for Amsterdam, I googled where to find vegan restaurants and where we could buy organic fruits and veggies to prepare meals at home. I found a few places and on Saturday we went to one of the restaurants I found online called TerraZen. TerraZen is a lovely family run restaurant serving Japanese-Carribean food really close to Amsterdam Centraal.  I was super excited to see that on their menu they had something I had been wanting to try for some time...NATTO and oh my was it yummy!! I could have easily eaten seconds :) Natto is super good for you! The lovely RawganicVegan has posted heaps about the awesome health benefits of Natto and I must admit I will definitely be adding it to my diet from now on. You can read up on the amazingness of Natto HERE :)

Avocado Natto yumminess.

Vegan boyfriend yumminess outside TerraZen :)

Made a little raw dessert tonight :)

Have been wanting to make this wonderful recipe for a Cacao Ganache Raspberry Tart for some time. You can find the recipe at this lovely website called Rawmazing :) I didn't have any ring molds so just used a small glass dish. And I substituted the agave with maple syrup cos that's all I had.

Haven't actually tried it yet but will update in a few hours :) waiting for the boy to get home so we can share :) sharing is caring :) 

Here's a photo:

And here I am today :)

Thank you for reading my first two blogs posts( obviously a rookie here ;) ) <3 They were quite long and I still don't think I got everything down. All I can say is that I am eternally grateful to be here. The possibilities for today are endless. Everything is possible providing I make it so :)
There are a few more things I want to make possible in my life and this is to improve my physical strength and fitness. So, my next extremely important goal is to start yoga. I keep saying this and have yet to get going though. We have been looking at online lessons and we will hopefully start soon :) I am very lucky blessed to have a rebounder and have started using that a lot more in the last two weeks. It is great for exercising and detoxing and all I have to do is bounce :) Well, ok, maybe more than bounce but if that's all I can manage then that's ok too :) I know the more I try the easier it will get. And on that note I will leave this post here..yeap much shorter than the first two..phew ;)

and so it continues :)

It was now time for ME to take my life in to my own hands. At the time I was having weekly sessions with an energy healer. One of the many things I learnt from him is that we are all part of the universe. We are all one. And it is a beautiful and amazing source that we all have at our core. This was where I aimed to be and function from as much as I can. At my core. The way I am when you take away all the experiences/labels of life.  He told me that I am part of the universe and the universe can't have a disease so that means that neither can I! This was the beginning of a deeper understanding of holsitic healing and my place here in the universe. There were so many positive changes happening to me at this time. To my body and soul I mean. My senses had become a lot more sensitive and I was suddenly aware that my body saying something else to me. As if it were nudging me to make one more change. It occurred to me that I should look at what I was putting in to my body too. Although, I strongly believe that our mind has the ability to heal our bodies it felt like my body was telling me there was something else that greatly helps with that too. And so I turned to look at what I could put inside my body to assist with my healing.  I had learnt about wheatgrass juicing and its healing powers and after trying some shots at the local juice bar I knew it was something I wanted to continue doing and that meant I would need to be able to juice at home. So, I researched juicers, mainly on sites that specifically were aimed at juice/wheatgrass juicing, and I came across the extremely highly recommended GreenStar juicer and that was it! I knew I had to get my own! I was lucky enough after a few months to be able to afford to buy my own!! And oh boy do I love my GreenStar juicer! And so, in January 2012, I bought quite a few trays of pregrown wheatgrass and with the guidance of Ann Wigmore's  'The Wheatgrass Book' I went on to do my own 'mini' wheatgrass fast, enemas and all. Weeelll, not quite 'all'. I was basically just doing wheatgrass enemas and drinking water, no extra green juices or anything else. I didn't follow what the book said you should do. I would like to say here that I definitely do not recommend doing it my way. I cannot stress this enough: a juice fast must be undertaken with guidance from a qualified nutritionist (I will tell you which wonderful lady offers just this further down. For those of you who can't wait check her facebook page out HERE ;) ). After about 10 days, I broke my 'fast' by attempting to eat some fruit. The first few days were really hard on my guts. I wasn't sure whether or not I'd be able to eat. But I kept on with my mantras and told myself 'I can eat, I can eat whatever I like'. And that I did. I pushed myself..some days more some days less. I started adding more solid foods and noticed that I was able to eat them with a little less pain that before. Even the pains when sitting up for longer than 5 minutes had eased off and this was a miracle in my eyes. I guess you could say I took advantage of my new found ability to eat again because I went back to eating a lot of the junk that didn't help me the first time round in my existence. Things like crisps, sweets etc and also some chicken, fish and eggs. The more I ate, the worse the pains got again. This went on for some time until I did another mini wheatgrass fast. I would feel so much better right after but as soon as I started adding certain foods back in things would get bad again. This went on for a while and I realized that maybe I should try and cut out the crisps, sweets, chicken and so on. This is where the universe brought to me another wonderful blessing in my life. That of the lovely, sweet, generous and oh so knowledgeable Liana Shanti <3 I came across her facebook page RawganicVegan through a facebook friend. I was instantly drawn to her posts! The energy this lady gives off is beautiful and the information she shares, not just on nutrition, is amazing! I looked forward (and still do) to getting on facebook purely to see what else she had shared with us. I was learning so much about how bad foods really do affect our health. I think deep down I already knew this, my body was telling me, I just wasn't really listening not until I read and learnt the true impact they have. Mother nature has blessed and provided us with what we need to be truly healthy and to heal and not just with food. Everything was falling in to place. I was becoming hooked on healthy eating and the wonders of the universe! The decision to start eliminating the bad foods from my diet and introduce more good foods i.e more raw vegan foods wasn't a hard one to make. My boyfriend was totally supportive and he too wanted to make changes to his diet. It was then that Liana announced she had created a program called the 66 Day Health Mastery Program . It would start off with a 10day juice fast and then in each module after that provide you with information, recipes and lots more to enable you to live on a high raw vegan diet. WOW! I thought what an amazing opportunity! I signed up and became part of an amazing group who I am grateful to call my family. The program was set to start in the first few days of January 2013. And it was just prior to the start that Fredrik and I watched Earthlings and Vegucated. That was the moment we both knew we would never eat meat again. And we haven't :) From the beginning of this year, after following the amazing 66 day program we have added daily green juices and are on a high raw vegan gluten free diet! We haven't looked back. IT IS AMAZING!! I can't believe I had been missing out on this for most of my life. This is what eating is supposed to be about. To nourish and heal in every way. And the flavors oh how wonderful they are! I love it! I love eating and drinking juices! I am eating so many amazing foods and I love the fact that I am preparing meals for me, and of course my loved ones, again! Meals I have never had before using some new methods of preparation too and they are delicious! I am actually EATING food! Thank you universe <3

And so it begins :)

Woooo! My first post :) aaand I am writing it while on a 3 day juice detox..I can't think of a more appropriate time :) Hi! My name is Nicki, I am 32 years old and currently living in my hometown of London, UK and I also spend heaps of time in the beautiful city of Stockholm, Sweden where my gorgeous and wonderfully talented and supportive boyfriend, Fredrik, is from <3
Ok, so, where do I begin? Well, I suppose anywhere would be a good start really hehe :) So many of my close friends have said to me that I must start a blog and share my experience of healing and love for food with the world and so it seems I have finally found the courage to do just that and here I am :)
I would like to take this moment to thank each and everyone of you who is taking the time to read this. I'll try and keep it short if I can (not  likely though ;) hehe). If there is anything that can be taken away from my story I hope it is a message, or feelings even, of hope, love and gratitude. I wish you all an abundance of love and light, good health and healthy food in your lives :D
So, what is this experience I speak of? Well, it is a journey that I am still on and one that I am so grateful for :) From a very young age I suffered with various illnesses. At the age of one, the doctors found a tumor behind my right eye and I was diagnosed with a childhood cancer known as Retinoblastoma. I had my right eye removed and have lived with a prosthetic eye ever since. At times this can prove challenging but also humorous (dropping it in peoples drinks and then telling them 'I have my eye on you' that sort of thing hehe). I am very lucky to have survived :) A few years after that, from what I remember, came my 'toilet issues'. Hah, toilet issues, sounds funny but it really wasn't. To put it simply, I could have anywhere from 5-20 very painful bowel movements a day! I remember, when I was around 8 or 9, when I'd be in a cold room or stressed out or even after I ate, bam that'd be it straight to the toilet I ran and the pain would have me in tears. This went on for many years. I didn't really see a doctor about it apart from a family friend who told us maybe it was IBS and that I should stay away from tomatoes amongst other things. But the pains would come and go so we just thought 'oh this is just Nicki, this is what is normal for her'. Oh how wrong that was. In my early 20's, I tried to investigate it more and went to my local hospital for a colonoscopy. When we got the results the doctor said 'oh well it looks like mild colitis, we're not entirely sure but here take these (antibiotics) for 3 months and let me know how you get on'. Well, I wasn't entirely happy with that but I tried them, for one night only and I felt extremely weird after taking the first two, so I decided not to take anymore. My sister recommended a homeopath to me and I decided to take a different approach. After a few appointments with the homeopath he came to the conclusion that I should avoid certain foods and presented me with a list of what to eat and what to avoid. I should add here that my diet up to that the time had been pretty terrible, especially since for the year and a half before that I had been working at McDonalds and eating a 'meal' there almost everyday :/ I followed his advice and I guess life went on. I tried to deal with it as best as I could. Sometimes the symptoms would be really bad other times more manageable. I just thought well this is me.
In 2006, I moved to Athens, Greece. It was an emotionally difficult time for me and I was working anywhere from 2-4 different jobs at the same time. My diet wasn't the best either. Then in 2009, my health started to take a turn for the worse in so many ways. I went in to hospital for a week had loads of invasive and horrible tests and was eventually diagnosed with Crohn's disease. The inflammation had created a 30cm stricture in my small bowel (something I would find out later) and a perianal fistula. It was so painful to eat or sit because I was in constant pain. But I kept working for 6 months after that. I say working but I truth is I could barely do it. When the symptoms got even worse and they told me about the stricture and that I would need surgery I had no choice but to leave my life in Greece and return to London to live with my mother and have the operations I needed. And here I am today 3 major operations later.  I was on and off a liquid diet for about 2 and half years (I would eat, things like mashed potato and hummus even though it was dangerous and put me in so much pain). I couldn't stomach the liquid food the doctors were giving me. The pains were so bad I spent most of the time laying down and the days I pushed myself to do something I liked, would leave me wiped out for days or even weeks. So, after my first 2 surgeries, which included a resection of my small intestine and a seton fitted to the fistula, I thought yeaaay I can start slowly eating and I could for about 2 months...then the pains started again. And life had other obstacles that it wanted me to over come at the same time too so major stress was back in my life. The doctors put me on some hardcore immunosupressants. The side effects of which were shocking to say the least! And so was the reaction I was having to them just minutes after taking the first pills. So, they switched me to different ones. And again the same thing. Then more tests. At this point, I was thinking maybe my body is trying to tell me something. It was. It was SCREAMING 'DON'T TAKE THESE MEDS!!!' But I didn't know what else to do. So when they offered me the last medication out there for what they thought might help my sypmptoms I took it..reluctantly. I went for weekely infusions for about 5 months unitl I said NO MORE! The effect they were having on me was making the pains as well as a host of other sypmtoms a million times worse. At this point they told me I was suffering from abdominal adhesions caused from the surgery the only reason I was still doing the infusions was in the hope they might help the fistula.. which of course they didn't. The adhesions meant that my intestines had gone and gotten themselves all twisted after surgery and was causing another blockage that's why I still had pains and couldn't eat. So it was time for another surgery, less than a year after the first one, to try and 'unstick/unpick' the adhesions. I was advised that the surgery guaranteed nothing and that it could make it even worse. I did it though, because I thought well I don't know what else to do. Did things get better? Nope. Worse, much worse.
A few months after that, the surgeons and consultants were at a loss and could offer me nothing else to help the pain or my eating situation. Well apart from more surgery, surgery which wouldn't guarantee anything and which of course I didn't want. When I asked them what do I do about my food situation (I already had my amazing Vitamix blender at this time) well they said 'we maybe should look at tube feeding you' To which I replied 'forever?' and they said 'Yes'. At that moment, I knew this was not going to be my life. I knew that I would never ever be tube fed. I knew this with every fiber of my being. There was another way out of this. A close friend of mine had introduced me to the world of juices and healing the body through cleanisng. He introduced me to wheatgrass and it's healing powers and here my journey began. The journey where through the love and guidance of some amazing people and wonderful food I began to heal myself :)