So, each season we meticulously collect all our kitchen scraps and turn it into compost. To give you some idea of how much compost 2 vegans can produce from their own kitchen waste - since this past spring, we have created about 5 three gallon bucketfuls of our own compost. Because of impatience and a desire to see at least some vegetables grow each season, we do amend the soil with organic gardening soil and compost/manure from our local hardware store or garden center.

Three weeks ago (8/15/09) I started seeds for Fall garden vegetables: Blue Hopi flour corn, butternut  squash, sugar baby watermelon, rhubarb chard, Pearson tomatoes, New Zealand spinach, eggplants, peppermint, and lemon balm. All seeds are open pollinated/organic seeds purchased from the Bountiful Gardens website. In one week most of the seeds had sprouted with a few exceptions:  The eggplant, peppermint and New Zealand spinach were slower to germinate.

At the end of week one (8/22/09), I carefully transplanted the sprouted seeds from the starter trays to small and medium size pots using Rockledge garden’s signature seed starter soil and my pricking tool from Bountiful Gardens website (this stainless steel pricking tool is very handy for easily lifting fragile seedlings out of their birth place and into a roomier pot where their life sustaining roots can spread out.) After only one week some of the roots on these tiny seedlings, like corn, were already 12 inches long. How amazing is that!

The following week (8/29/09), the end of week 2, the fall gardening beds were prepared with our own compost and amended with additional organic garden soil and compost from our local gardening center.   Corn was planted in stages. Some as seed sown directly into the ground and others from the seedlings started 2 weeks ago. Butternut squash and watermelon were planted together. The chard, tomatoes, New Zealand spinach (a perennial) need time to become more mature and established before they are strong enough to be transplanted into the fall garden bed. Their estimated time of transplanting is the third week in September. September also signals the time to sow other fall garden vegetables from seed: for our family that means lettuce, broccoli and parsley.

Fall gardening in Florida is the prime time for planting your vegetable garden – you still have some time to get your beds or growing containers prepared. So make a plan and get started.

Check back for more fall gardening in Florida updates!

Lately we have gone back to creating a weekly menu plan and it’s amazing what the benefits are. It not only makes shopping a breeze but, mentally it helps us get prepared for the week. With a menu plan made out and all the ingredients handy it takes about an hour in the morning to prepare all our meals for the day.

Since Fridays is shopping day in the LeStourgeon household, Thursday evenings are menu planning time. It’s a task that takes only about 15 minutes. First, I look in the frig and see what fresh produce is left from the week, then I find or create a recipe to utilize that produce first. When making the shopping list it works well to include staple items you already have. That way one doesn’t get to the store and say to themselves, “Now, I can’t remember, do we have any onions in the frig.”

The weekly menu plan for the two of us includes both raw and cooked meals as well as healthy desserts. This week I’m trying a new recipe a friend brought to a recent monthly raw dinner we host with another couple: “Bluto Burgers” by Julie Wandling.  Since we both have a sweet tooth I’ll also be incorporating a “healthy” dessert into the menu each week. This week is decadent raw chocolate cake. In a future blog I’ll let you know how both of these new recipes turn out, so stay tuned.

In the mean time, get working on your own weekly menu plan. It’s quick, simple and will help you bring and maintain order into your life, not to mention your health.

Because the mangoes were so delicious one mango was not enough to satisfy our desire for these exquisite fruits. Thus the easy mango salad recipe was born so we could have multiple helpings of the sweet fruit.

Simply cut up several mangoes in medium size cubes, place in a medium size bowl, and toss with dry, shredded coconut and chopped roasted almonds.  If you desire a dressing, simply mix the juice of one lime with a little honey, pour over mango salad and toss.

This delicious and tasty fruit salad goes great as a side dish to avocado salad recipe or serve chilled for a lovely, satisfying and healthy dessert.

By Rush’s own admission he’s tried just about every diet out there. The difference with the Quick Weight Loss Center diet, Rush says, for the first time he has ever dieted he does not feel deprived. In fact, he says he’s eating more food than he ever has on a diet. Of course the media has not gotten all the facts straight, so this morning, on his show, Rush made some important corrections.

First , and foremost Rush was adamant that he is not using appetite suppressants to achieve his weight loss goal however, he may be using many of the different supplements sold by Quick Weight Loss Centers of Florida. He reported that at the beginning of the diet he was taking a multivitamin of sorts but he was not even sure whether this was helping to suppress his appetite in any way. Next, Rush set the record straight that he is not starving himself; he is eating around 1500 calories a day, feels great and most importantly does not feel deprived at all. Finally, Rush reported that on the Limbaugh diet from QWL centers of Florida, to date, he has lost 80 pounds, not the 90 pounds that some of the media had been reporting.

Although he will not publish the diet because he says, “that’s not the business I’m in” Rush claims his diet does not involve counting calories, it’s about preparing the recipes QWL provides. That’s interesting because he is pretty adamant about eating 1,500 calories a day. That sounds like counting calories to me.

This diet is supposedly so successful for Rush that he claims he has never lost weight faster than on this diet which he claims is all real food, nothing boxed. Eating real food is a key to losing weight and maintaining your health. The best kind of real food is usually found in the produce section of your local grocer and includes fresh fruits and vegetables.

For a real healthy diet, check out our healthy recipes section on our website and see what real nutrition tastes like.

First is the food we eat. The SAD (standard American Diet) is resulting in astronomical amounts of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer in this country. And secondly, the allopathic medical model that is the standard for healthcare professionals does not seek to cure disease, but primarily  to treat symptoms.

The China Study, the grand prix of nutritional studies revealed the link, once and for all, between food and illness. It provides evidence quite clearly that “we are what we eat.” If we eat primarily a processed food diet with ample animal products thrown in to boot, the result will be the development of all manner of diseases in our bodies.

On the other hand, the China study bears out what the Seventh Day Adventists have been promoting all along. If you want to ensure good health throughout your entire life span, eat simple, plant based whole foods with little to none animal products.

The seventh day Adventists promote a vegetarian diet amongst their members. They are one of the best resources available on the benefits of a largely plant based diet. Their studies have shown numerous health benefits for those who eat a vegetarian diet.

One Seventh Adventist study on the health of vegetarians compared to omnivores found that vegetarians had ½ the high blood pressure, ½ the diabetes, ½ the colon cancer and as well as 2/3 the prostate cancer and 2/3 the rheumatoid arthritis as omnivores.  Additionally, they have found that vegetarians have significantly less gall stones, kidney stones, diverticulitis, osteoporosis and other diseases.

Secondly, the body was created to heal itself. That’s why you’ll get over that cold in about 7 days with or without medication. Given the right nutrition it’s possible to remain healthy, feeling energetic and having few health complaints.

Don’t let the politicians convince you that the problem in this country is healthcare. The problem is nutrition. We could reduce healthcare costs and even the need for healthcare insurance if Americans would change their eating habits and get regular exercise. How about you? What will you do to take charge of your health before the healthcare crisis strikes you?

Unfortunately, the way to good health our politicians and most of the medical community believe is to just throw more money at the problem. Instead of looking at the causes of why people get sick and doing something to prevent that, the answer is to just pop another pill and now ask Uncle Sam to pay for it.

I have a friend that recently went to his doctor for his annual checkup and after blood tests his cholesterol came back a little high. His doctor’s suggestion was to go on a prescription medication, but my friend asked him, what about a change in diet, more exercise, in other words, let’s try to figure out why my cholesterol is high. His doctor had not even though about that. What he wanted to do was put him on medication costing hundreds of dollars per year for the rest of his life and let my friend’s insurance pay for it. That, right there,is the core of the problem with out of control medical expenses today.

If the President or members of congress, or all of us in this nation think that we’re going to solve healthcare by supposedly treating the symptoms for free (actually through billions in new taxes) they are simply wrong. We will continue to spend money and costs will continue to mount. Until we figure out how to take responsibility for our own healthcare by eating a healthier diet we will continue to dig the hole we can’t get out of.

Free medical care, free doctors visits and free prescriptions are not really free. Remember that.

Don’t worry about getting tired of eating healthy because there are lots of simple recipes that are delicious and some you would never know that they are intended to be healthy. Believe me, not all health food has to be boring. In fact once you get used to delicious raw and mostly raw recipes, your desire for cooked, dead food will start to diminish. In fact, when Jean and I used to go on vacation, it was my mission to see if I could find the restaurant that featured the biggest burger in town. Since we’ve been eating mostly raw, I haven’t had a greasy, meat based burger in probably 3 or 4 years because they just simply don’t appeal to me anymore.

But the key is getting the raw food to taste great and not just be a diet of salads morning, noon and night. Well you are in luck because we have a healthy recipes section on our website that features around 50 mostly raw recipes that are far from the usual when it comes to healthy food. On the recipes page you will find an almost raw, meat free chili, energy bar recipes, vegan cookies and other desserts such as chocolate truffles and even ice cream made from frozen fruit, a veggie burger recipe, several smoothie recipes, a tasty hummus recipe, and so much more.

Check out the recipes mentioned above and look around the site to see that there really is an alternative to the unhealthy diet that is so prevalent in today’s society. You can choose to be healthy, it’s up to you.

We have moved so far away from healthcare of years gone by when doctors actually made house calls and it only cost about $20 for a doctors visit. Just imagine you had insurance coverage for your car like we do for our personal health, you could get someone else to pay for your tires, you’d pay only $3 for an oil change, get in an accident and you pay $35 regardless how bad your car is damaged. Fortunately, we still take personal responsibility for our vehicles, so why not for our bodies?

Personal responsibility for your own health care means eating a healthy diet with lots of nutrition, getting rid of the fat, sugar and chemicals in your food by choosing to more nutritious food, stop drinking so much, stop smoking and let’s throw in some exercise for good measure. These are all things we as individuals can do to take care of ourselves and reduce the huge burdens on what we pay for medical care in the United States.

We spend over $1.3 trillion a year in medical related costs in this country every year. No amount of tweaking the system and moving around who has to pay for that care is going to reduce the amount of money we actually spend. The only thing that will do that is not having to visit the doctor so often and reducing the amount of time people have to spend in the hospital, getting radical surgeries and the like. And the only thing that will do that is not to get the government involved, but it is to be healthier by feed our bodies properly.

The current medical model is based on treating symptoms rather that treating causes. The cause of poor health is none other than poor nutrition and until the President, congress and healthcare do-gooders get that into their thinking, the problem will never go away, regardless of how much money we spend.

Take out your own health insurance policy by eating a healthier diet, your body will thank you.

If you haven’t figured it out yet from the tone of this post, those advertisements and landing pages you eventually end up on are nothing but scams. The truth is, the blogs, supposed news sites, reviews, and Oprah Winfrey and Dr Oz endorsements are completely fake. They are designed for one purpose only, and that is to get you to try these weight loss pills for free or only the cost of shipping and handling.

Unfortunately these free trials will end up costing you a lot more than $5.95 for shipping because you just gave these merchants your credit card number and guess what, the very second your credit card was approved, your supposedly free trial began. And if the product ships in a reasonable amount of time you may have 4 or 5 days left in your free trial when you actually receive it. Of course that’s not enough time to fully evaluate the acai berry supplement you just received and that’s exactly the plan these scammers are working.

However, what you may not know since you didn’t see the link at the bottom of the page that led to the terms of service, your credit card is going to be charged $89 per month for a bottle of these acai berry, green tea or resveratrol diet pills. On top of that, these companies make it almost impossible to cancel these shipments. If nothing else you can go through your credit card company, but usually the first month of charges sticks and you are out the $89.

The easiest way to avoid these resveratrol and acai berry diet scams is to not sign up for any free trials, period. If you want to try a product that has either green tea, acai berry, or resveratrol in it, the best thing to do is to is to buy a bottle from an online retailer such as Vitamin Shoppe or just buy it locally from your health food store. This way, if you don’t like what it does, you aren’t stuck with an $89 a month charge on your bank card and hey, if you like what it does then by all means purchase it again.

Just keep your eyes open when looking for any diet supplements that they aren’t rip-offs. Of course, if you eat a plant based diet rich in nutrition, chances are you won’t be tempted to try any of this junk.

The whole approach to weight loss in the dieting industry is wrong because it doesn’t focus on what’s really important when it comes to eating. Eating has been looked at as nothing more that just one of those animal desires that we have to fulfill and then we can go on with life. As long as we are satiated and have a full stomach then we’re perfectly okay. The problem unfortunately, is that we’ve learned to stuff ourselves at every meal with whatever we can find in our cupboards or fridge or even worse, we head to the local fast food restaurant and grab a burger or some other lifeless glob of processed sustenance. With this approach to eating it’s no wonder we are fat.

So what’s the approach to dieting in the weight loss industry? Unfortunately, it just ends up being a way to manage the junk we already eat that passes for food. Count your calories, eat a grapefruit a noon or buy our super expensive frozen, vacuum packed food, throw in a little exercise and poof, you have a diet plan. You end up spending an inordinate amount of time planning your diet, eating the right kind of foods at the right time of the day and religiously following “the plan” only to find that you can’t stick with your diet that long because it’s too complicated. You then yo yo back up to or over your previous weight and it’s even more difficult to lose weight the next time.

But there really is a better approach when you realize that eating is all about nutrition. Instead of only thinking about food being something to satisfy your desire, try looking at food as fuel for your body. You always want to keep your car in working order so you you put the best fuel into it and if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford an expensive sports car you are even more careful about its maintenance. So the question comes up, why would you maintain your body, worth way more than any sports car, with garbage for fuel?

If you put the best fuel possible into your body, your body will more than likely be healthy. It just makes sense that you will run your best when your body gets what it needs. So where are you going to find food with the best fuel in it? The diet industry probably won’t tell you this, but all you have to do is shop in the produce section of your local grocery and buy fruits and vegetables. That’s the big secret.

More on that big secret later, but just remember, a healthy diet is about nutrition, that’s it.