Lucid Nutrition

Beets Living Foods Cafe. Austin, Texas

Nourish your body and soul. Celebrate Life. Honor the Earth. A new addition to Austin's restaurant scene, Beets Living Foods Cafe features an upscale raw food dining experience. You can enjoy breakfast, lunch, dinner, a snack or dessert, and take pleasure in discovering how delicious healthful cuisine can be.

I am so glad to have another place in town to enjoy raw vegan living foods! We vegans deserve an upscale place to enjoy our meals and not just holes in the walls that reek of patchouli and eighty year old furniture. This place is unique and well designed. The menu is beautiful and it is so hard to choose what to order.



Thanks to our friendly waitress, my partner and I opted to split the daily special. Out came two good sized enchiladas with tex mex cabbage salad (cabbage, tomatoes, green onion, and peas marinated in sundried tomato powder, olive oil, garlic, spices, and crystal salt) It also came with a  small side rainbow salad topped with seasoned seeds and a sweet yet tangy cilantro lime dressing. So fresh!!



We also ordered a cup of curried carrot soup, a velvety blend of carrot juice, orange juice, miso, garlic, lemon, spices, pine nuts, crystal salt. It is hard to believe a cold soup could be so warming! It had just enough kick to make it addicting. To drink we ordered a 'Green On Me' Juice (kale, celery, romaine, parsley, lemon, and ginger) and a Grapefruit Fizzy Lizzy :)

Even though I was satisfied after about three bites (all those nutrients tend to set the hunger switch off) we still decided to have something sweet. Naughty!? ;) For dessert, we ordered the oatmeal cookies. Next time we will try the 'I-Scream!' If I wasn't so full then, I would have went for it. Did I mention they gave us complimentary bites of chocolate cheese cake? It was divine. Totally worth the $6.95 a slice. People don't realize how much work and time goes into preparing raw vegan desserts. It takes practice and is a high form of art!

Overall, it was a wonderful and fulfilling experience having lunch at Beets Cafe.  We even got to meet the owner Sylvia Heisey and the super creative Chef Alicia Ojeda. They were both so approachable, friendly, and informative. They have a great selection of raw vegan books by Victoria Boutenko and dvds by our own local raw foodist informer Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo who I had the pleasure of meeting last year at her Magic in the Kitchen cooking class.

Beets Cafe will have their grand opening on Saturday, November 14, 2009

Time: 2:00pm - 10:00pm

2:00pm--Rip Esselstyn speaks about the benefit of a "plant strong" lifestyle
3:30pm--Cheryl Lynn Van Kirk demonstration Organic Food Grade Cosmetics and Hand Facials Star Flower Essentials
4:30pm--Dr Ritamarie Loscalzo speaks about fresh n fun living
5:30pm--On View "The Meatrix" http://www.themeatrix.com
7:00 pm-- Alicia Ojeda Culinary Demonstration
8:00 pm-- Live Music, Organic Wine, Signature Beet's Treats

I'll be there early. Come say hi!

Hours are Monday- Wednesday 8am to 8pm
Thursday-Friday 8am-9pm
Saturday 10am-9pm
Closed on Sunday

Location: 5th Street Commons
               1611 W 5th St. Suite 165
               Austin, TX 78703
               512-477-BEET (2338)

Go in and experience the vitality of living foods. Your body, soul, and mind will thank you.

Raw Food Cooking Class

Yesterday I attended a raw food cooking class in Austin Texas taught by Dr. RitaMarie Roscalzo. She titled the name of the show "Magic in the Kitchen" and gleefully donned her favorite wizard tee for the occasion. :)

Wait, what do you mean, Raw Foods?!

The raw food diet is a diet based on unprocessed and uncooked plant foods, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, sprouts, seeds, nuts, grains, beans, nuts, dried fruit, and seaweed.

Heating food above 116 degrees F is believed to destroy enzymes in food that can assist in the digestion and absorption of food. Cooking is also thought to diminish the nutritional value and "life force" of food. Typically, at least 75% of the diet must be living or raw. 

Proponents of the raw food diet believe it has numerous health benefits, including:

Increased Energy, Improved Skin Appearance, Better Digestion, Weight Loss, and a Reduced risk of heart disease...

The raw food diet contains fewer trans fats and saturated fats than the typical Western diet. It is also low in sodium and high in potassium, magnesium, folate, fiber and health-promoting plant chemicals called phytochemicals.

These properties are associated with a reduced risk of diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. For example, a study published in the Journal of Nutrition found that consumption of a raw food diet lowered plasma total cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations. Source: Cathy Wong

I believe eating more raw foods will help you live as lucid as you can live. The ingredients are fresh & alive, not burned or on fire. But what the hell is a raw foodist supposed to eat then? No bread. No pasta. No tofu chicken. No nothing? No.

BACK TO CLASS

Before the event Dr.Ritamarie asked us to clean out our refrigerators and bring in items (still fresh) that might typically be found in our homes. I brought in rainbow chard, fresh spinach, a yellow bell pepper, a large juicy mango, cilantro, fresh ginger, and lemons. Her mission was to take our grocery bags full of.....whatever we stuffed inside of them, and show us how to turn them into a quick healthy "raw" meal. What followed was the tastiest Thai "Soup" ever.

If you have a food processor or high speed blender this can work for you to. Try it.

Chop one large mango and lemons and add to blender to form a juicy base. The lemon juice counteracts the bitterness of some greens. Chop or tear pieces of rainbow chard, spinach, cilantro and add to blender. Add chopped yellow bellpepper and a good size chunk of fresh ginger. In come the secret ingredients: Add about 2 tsp of coconut butter, 3/4 tsp tumeric, and 1/2 tsp dulse (optional). You can also add a kefir lime leaf or lemongrass for the ultimate thai flavor. Now all you do is Blend It until you reach a desired consistency and enjoy. It is so savory and deliciously Green! As Green and Simple as it gets actually.

With what was left of  the greens I brought in, she made a simple salad. She chopped the rest of the rainbow chard and spinach, added lemon, and then massaged the greens with her hands. Finally she added olive oil and a lil sesame oil to give that Asian flavor, tossed on some sesame seeds and passed the salad around for us all to partake. A few women suggested adding ground nuts or ginger juice to top it off. It thought it was great as is. I never realized how easy it was to make a soft Asian salad.

Did I mention we also learned how to make the most delicious chocolate frosting in the world AND also witnessed a fabulous recipe redo: lemon fluff delight. Yeah, you can have it all raw. It is amazing how much creativity goes into this way of preparing food and the joy you get when eating it. With all the right equipment, and information abut what ingredients you will need to have in your kitchen, you will be all set.

If you are at all interested in learning more about raw foods, I highly recommend a visit to Dr. Ritamarie's website and blog. It contains an awesome collection of FREE articles, e-books, green cleanse videos, and all the inspiration you need to transition to living a healthier lifestyle. Also, if you are in Austin, consider attending a raw food POTLUCK. 

One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.  ~Henry David Thoreau

World Peace Diet Lecture, Friday Night

If you are in Austin Texas on Friday December 5th you should stop by Casa de Luz, Center for Integral Studies to hear Dr. Will Tuttle give his lecture and presentation on The World Peace Diet from 7:00 - 9:00 pm.

And if you are unfamiliar with the Casa de Luz, you are in a special time. The vision is this:

The philosophy of how to live a great life (Macrobiotics) is the founding idea for Casa de Luz. This is an all encompassing philosophy, which includes all methods of supporting health and freedom. Our mission is to offer a sacred space for those that want to bring their disciplines to share with the community. Casa de Luz is open to all. Our reason for being is to practice and live in integrity. We believe that living with integrity includes practicing, learning, teaching, and sharing actions and philosophies to develop conscious living and cognition. It also takes commitment, authenticity, appreciation and openness to being wrong. The search of improvement is necessary, least we become arrogant and dogmatic. This is a place that is ever changing and colored by the practices that people bring to share.

In order to fulfill its complete destiny, Casa de Luz will create a full spectrum village which will be designed to include smart living modalities. Humanity's recent industrialized development has created conveniences that have proven to be detrimental to the overall health of all things on earth. The automobile, while wonderful, has proven to destroy well being. Industrialized foods have been made tasty, attractive and cheap, yet not only do they lack nourishment, but they also cause illness. By design, a village can support well being for all.

Besides being the gathering place for various forms of study including yoga, cooking classes, tai chi etc... the Casa de Luz kitchen prepares the most delicious foods all based on the macrobiotic regimen served buffet style in a communal style of seating. Every time I go there, I meet someone so interesting and on the brightest path of lucid living. It's wonderful. I will be meeting with Will before the event to capture some new video footage for his website and getting some details about his experience on th 13 month full time book tour in his solar powered RV across the country which is nearing completion. As you can tell,  he is one hard working, compassionate man planting peace daily and it has been great working with he and his wife Madeleine to help grow their online presence.

If you are unable to attend this event make sure you join the World Peace Diet Network, Read the Book, or follow Will's blog. Getting to know his mission and understanding his life work will definitely strike some harmonious chords in you and make you healthier too. Inside and Out. Really.

Oh and when you come to town call me or DM me on Twitter and we will visit Casa de Luz together :) 

Changing the World from the Inside Out

SAVE THE DATE: May 31, 2008 — 11am–5pm EDT

Dear Friend,

Please join Ken Wilber, Deepak Chopra, and Andrew Cohen on May 31 for an unprecedented 6-hour internet broadcast, entitled, “Changing the World from the Inside Out.”Your hosts, Jeff Carreira, Director of Education for EnlightenNext, and Elizabeth Debold, Senior Editor of What Is Enlightenment? magazine, will guide you through 6 continuous hours of fascinating dialogues and discussion with leading visionaries in the field of conscious evolution.

The only way to participate in this event is by signing up as an Evolutionary. Signing up is free and takes less than a minute. You will be joining 5,000 (and growing) like-minded individuals from around the world, all inspired by the perspective of Evolutionary Enlightenment and other cutting-edge approaches to spiritual development and cultural transformation. I sincerely hope you'll join me and our international network of evolutionaries for this exciting and rare opportunity. 

Thank you for your time and passion for change.

  Sincerely,

Jeff Carreira

"Man's creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story." Iris Murdoch

MEATOUT 2008

Meatout is an international observance helping individuals evolve to a wholesome, nonviolent diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains. The purpose is to expose the public to the joys and benefits of a plant-based diet, while promoting the availability and selection of meat and dairy alternatives in mainstream grocery stores, restaurants, and catering operations.

On (or around) March 20 — the first day of spring — thousands of caring people in all 50 US states and two dozen other countries will host informative and educational Meatout Events. Activities will include colorful 'lifestivals,' street theater,  lectures, public dinners, cooking demos, food samplings, leafleting, information tables called 'steakouts'. Visitors will be asked to "kick the meat habit on March 20 (first day of spring) and explore a wholesome, nonviolent diet of fruits, vegetables and whole grains." 

This occasion known as The Great American Meatout, is the world's largest and oldest annual grassroots diet education campaign. Every spring, thousands of Meatout supporters educate their communities and ask their friends, families, and neighbors to pledge to "kick the meat habit (at least for a day) and explore a wholesome, nonviolent diet of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains."                        
Why MeatOut?

"Kicking the meat habit" holds lasting benefits for consumer health, world hunger, resource conservation, environmental quality and animal welfare.

Kicking the meat habit reduces our risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other chronic diseases that cripple and kill nearly 1.4 million Americans annually.

Kicking the meat habit decreases our exposure to infectious pathogens like Salmonella, E. coli, and Campylobacter, which kill several thousand Americans annually and sicken millions more.

Kicking the meat habit raises our energy level, lowers our food budget, and simplifies food preparation and cleanup.

Kicking the meat habit frees up grains and other foods that can be used to feed the world's hungry. Animals are extremely inefficient "protein converters;" it can take up to 16 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef.

Kicking the meat habit preserves our topsoil, water, and other food production resources vital to the survival of our children and their children.

Kicking the meat habit protects our forests, grasslands, and other wildlife habitats from encroachment by cattle ranchers while reducing the polluting effects of methane, soil particles, manure, and pesticides on our air and water.

Kicking the meat habit saves animals from caging, crowding, deprivation, drugging, mutilation, manhandling, and agonizing slaughter. Each person who adopts a plant-based diet saves over 80 innocent, sentient animals each year. Over a lifetime, an individual can save more than 6,000 animals just by going vegan.

Find MeatOut activities in your area or plan on organizing your own event. If nothing else, why not try an animal free recipe? And, if you happen to be in the Houston area, join the Society of Peace, a very kind and active organization for the "Earth, Animals, Compassion, & Enlightenment". Happy Spring!

More: The World Peace Diet

 

"Sicko" Premiere Night

Whether or not you are a fan of Michael Moore's work, you have to admit, his latest film "SiCKO" is doing a pretty darn good job to either enlighten or make those with vested interests sicker. The film will undoubtedly be watched by the majority of the medical community and all the ill people who might afford a movie ticket. It will also be watched by all of it's critics who want to have a voice against the campaign. It is doing an outstanding job of bringing people together regardless of stance to cure the widespread disease of GREED and CORRUPTION and pointing towards the serious need for repair to the current healthcare system.

A Letter From Michael Moore
Friday, June 29th, 2007
Today is the Day for "Sicko" 

Friends,
This is it! Two years in the making! The day that our new film, "Sicko," arrives in theaters all across North America! Click here to see where the nearest one is to you. 

After you go, let me know what you think. Oh, and send us a photo or a video from your cell phone to show us what it looked like at your theater. We'd love to post a photo from each of the 440 movie theaters showing "Sicko."

Hope you enjoy the movie!

Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com

Check Out Mike on T.V.
'NOW' on PBS at 8:30 PM EST/9:30 PM PST
  'Larry King Live' TONIGHT at 9:00 PM ET

Watch the trailer if you have not yet:

Read about the 'Scrubs for Sicko' Campaign, and don't be surprised to see one of the 17,000+ nurses co-hosting at tonights premiere:)

Looking forward to the future

Once we all have the privilege of good healthcare, the next step will be to integrate unconventional methods for medicine. The day will come when physicians provide more natural options for healing rather than sticking to the sometimes cold nature of standard medicine. Doctors will persistently teach various and useful PREVENTION METHODS rather than just attacking immune systems, suppressing symptoms with pills, and destroying our machines. Educational health classes in schools will be taken more seriously and the children of the future will be born into healthier homes and lead sound lives. There will be no tolerance for unnecessary and preventable diseases in the coming days. With the aid of technology, old school healers and conventional doctors will continue to come together to work it all out.

There is hope for the 9 million uninsured children in the U.S.

And whether or not we are directly experiencing the impact of the film, Sicko, we must not continue to blindly feed the vein of GREEDiness inherent in so many of the tobacco industries, slaughterhouse corporations, and fast food industries. Eating crap food and poisoning our precious bodies is a major determinant for illness and drives the need for healthcare to begin with. Far too many of us are dying from preventable diseases based on diet and lifestyle.

And sure, not all the people who work in the sectors: fast-food, tobacco,  pharmaceutical, slaughterhouses, insurance companies, and government agencies aim to cause harm anymore than we aim to harm the ants we step on everyday. Yet, the corruption of a few eventually seeps through and in one way or another trickles down the stream to distract, disturb, and ruin the lives---body, heart, mind, and soul of so many. We are all in this together and we all have personal choices to make in every moment which effects the health of the whole Earth. So for starters, keep your body moving, make time for peaceful reflecting, cut the junk out of your lifestyle, and try eating organic nourishment as much as possible.

I'm joining the crowds energy to watch the movie tonight, if it's not sold out yet:)

The World Peace Diet

The World Peace Diet by Dr.Will Tuttle is the first book to make explicit the invisible connections between our culture, our upbringing, our personal food choices, and the source of all humanity's sufferings. Dr. Tuttle offers a plethora of ways to make a positive transformation in our individual and collective lives by first and foremostly following a vegan diet.

On April 16, 2007, I attended a book signing for The World Peace Diet authored by Dr. Will Tuttle. The event which was generously and kindly brought to us by the Society of Peace was certainly a night to remember. Delicious vegan foods such as tofu egg rolls and tamales with pineapple tomato sauce were provided by Banyan Foods. (Please visit The Society of Peace website for further event listings and volunteer opportunities)

Posted below is the video from the book signing of Dr. Tuttle demonstrating an intricate explanation of his book, The World Peace Diet. You will find it evident that Dr. Tuttle is not just trying to sell us another "diet" book; rather he has zealously set out with the honorable mission of bringing compassion into our lives and awareness to our plates.

Support Lucid Nutrition! Buy through Amazon today:)

I dedicate this post to the memory of Tomahawk.

Technorati Tags: World Peace Diet, Will Tuttle, vegan, veganism, vegan food, eating, Society of Peace, animals, compassion, health, living, recipes, social harmony, planetary crisis, solution, compassion, love, intelligence, awareness, compassion, spiritual health, empowering, food choices

Be the Change

The first Be the Change in Healthcare conference will take place May 1 - 3 at Rice University, in Houston, Texas where the Dalai Lama will also be speaking on the meaning of compassion in everyday life in a separate event for the Boniuk Center for Religious Tolerance. The 3 day BE THE CHANGE conference - sponsored by Rice University, the Weill Medical College at Cornell University and the Institute for Religion and Health - brings together world renowned scholars and activists in dialogue around supporting the emergence of a more sustainable, effective and compassionate health care system.

Sir John Whitmore will be launching the event. Other speakers include Bernard Lietaer, Robert Thurman, John Perkins, Christopher Cooke, Marilyn Schlitz,  Swami Vidhyasidhananda Giri, Jim Fadiman and many others. There will be an event with the Bioneers and a concert with musicians from the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

For further information, visit www.bethechangeusa.net

Technorati Tags: Be the change, Houston Texas, Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, Rice University, Healthcare, event, sustainability, compassion, conference

Lucid Nutrition on Holon News

This post is to thank the staff of Integral Institute over at Holon News for listing Lucid Nutrition in their list of integral blogs.

According to the Integral Institute "Integral" simply means more balanced, comprehensive, interconnected, and whole. By using an Integral approach—whether it's in business, personal development, art, education, or spirituality (or any of dozens of other fields)—we can include more aspects of reality, and more of our humanity, in order to become more fully awake (LUCID) and effective in anything we do.

The feeling of appreciation by fellow bloggers creates a sense of purpose and inspiration to continue my work for Lucid Nutrition. If you have any suggestions for topics, I am happy to do the research. Also, I would like to point you to one of my personal favorites:

A Living Tantra
Living Tantra is a Tantrik resource site offered by Shambhavi Sarasvati. Shambhavi practices, teaches and writes about the Tantrik tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. She is an initiate in the lineage of
Paramahamsa Satyananda Saraswati of Rikhia, India. This blog bears much fruit:)

Thanks again Holon News:)

Technorati Tags: Holon News, holons, Integral Institute, integral, tantra, living

Introduction to LN

Hello! My name is Briana Franco, the author of Lucid Nutrition.

I have taken such a long time to begin this blog for good reason. I have been trying to understand what 'Lucid Nutrition' really means and how the content here will be useful not only for myself, family, and friends, but for any person who happens to come across this page. I have been in a research process for quite some time now, online and in books. I was searching for some sort of definition or explanation for LN when it finally hit me; Lucid Nutrition is just what it is. Simple.

Lets take a look at the definition for the word Lucid:

lucid. an adjective. 1 expressed clearly; easy to understand : a lucid account, written in a clear and lucid style. ˚showing ability to think clearly, esp. in the intervals between periods of confusion or insanity: he has a few lucid moments every now and then. ˚Psychology (of a dream) experienced with the dreamer feeling awake, aware of dreaming, and able to control events consciously. 2 poetic/literary bright or luminous : birds dipped their wings in the lucid flow of air.

and now the definition for the word Nutrition:

nutrition. a noun. the process of providing or obtaining the food necessary for health and growth : a guide to good nutrition. ˚food; nourishment : the substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition.

I plan on explaining more about what it means to become Lucid in our lives throughout the lifeline of this blog. Most importantly, is the notion that nutrition, the substances necessary for growth, are not limited to the physical ingredients which we put down our throats and into the digestive system. It also consist of the thoughts we think, the air we breathe, our daily environment, people surroundings, and how we handle the experiences we meet.

The research done for Lucid Nutrition will strive to help consumers like you and me feel less confused about what to buy, what to eat, and how to find strength and peace for a sound body and mind. Choices we make every day significantly influence our chances of feeling healthy, happy, energetic, and clear-minded.

Sound health is much more than the absence of sickness. It is the conscious pursuit of the highest qualities of the physical, environmental, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social aspects of the human experience.

We will delve deep into the past learning about ancient healing techniques like Ayurveda, Yoga, Dance, Reiki, Chakras and venture into the future where bodies will be healed quicker and easier by the rapid advances in technology.

We will test and try various recipes, opening our minds to new vegetables, fruits, spices, herbs and vitamins. We will sip on various teas, nibble on blueberries, and learn stretching routines and exercises great upon rising in the morning. Together we will discover more and more about complementary and alternative healing techniques; holistic and integrative, art therapy, foods we should avoid and eat, plus so much more.

The ultimate mission of Lucid Nutrition is to share what I am learning with you in the hopes that my findings may enliven your life as they do mine. To produce health, prevent and fight dis-ease and to have a greater awareness of our body/mind/heart/soul is what Lucid Nutrition is all about.

See disclaimer.

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