Apple – Celeriac and Strawberry Salad

What you’ll need:

• 1 celeriac root
• 1 apple
• 3 medium carrots
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
• 5 strawberries
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 lemon
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• little mint

Put it all together:

1. peel the celeriac root and carrot
2. grate celeriac, carrot and apple in the food processor
3. set it aside
4. in a bowl, mix the orange juice, lemon juice, olive oil together
5. mix the vegetables with the dressing
6. cut the strawberries into slices
7. mince the mint
8. mix the rest of the ingredients
9. you can garnish each serving with more mint leaves, pumpkin seeds or more strawberries

Enjoy!

Stay Healthy!

Monika Baechler

Cert. Nutrition Specialist

Monika’s Wakame Salad – How to make Seaweed Salad at home

If you love Sushi as much as I do and Millions of North Americans as well as Millions around the world, then you must know the bright green colored wakame salad.

My family always ends up fighting over the little wakame salad box because it’s so darn tasty! You probably wondered why you can’t find wakame seaweed in the Asian grocery stores to make your own seaweed salad at home.

What is Wakame?

Sea farmer in Japan and Korea have grown this healthy treat for hundred of years. Wakame is a sea vegetable which is mostly used in soups and salads.

It’s a bit tricky to find things at the Asian markets and grocery stores, everything is written in Japanese or Chinese. There is no sign on the wakame seaweed stating “This is the thing you need to make your own seaweed salad you like out of the sushi case”! And, they don’t tell you, that they mix the wakame with some Agar Agar. The chewy more translucent strand in your wakame salad are agar agar strands. Agar-Agar is a natural vegetable gelatin counterpart. White and semi-translucent, it is sold in packages as washed and dried strips or in powdered form. Agar Agar is made up of 80% fiber so it makes a wonderful intestinal cleanser and regulator. Most Asian gelatin desserts are made with Agar Agar.

Now that you know that seaweed comes in a dehydrated form, you’re ready to find the right kind of product.

You’ll go “Wakame” for this seaweed salad recipe!

What you’ll need:

• 1/2 of the 2oz pack of Wakame (dehydrated sold in bags in the nori section)
• 2 tsp Toasted Sesame Oil
• 1 tbsp and 1 tsp of vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup less 1 tsp Rice Wine Vinegar
• 2 tbsp Toasted Sesame
• little Red Pepper Flakes (optional)
• 1 tbsp Sugar
• 1 tsp or to taste Sea Salt
• Agar Agar (optional)

Prepare your salad:

1. soak your Wakame in some warm water (please use drinking water, not tap)
2. keep the wakame submerged in water for about 5 -6 minutes, the seaweed will expand enormously
3. meanwhile, prepare your dressing
4. mix the rice vinegar, oils, salt, sugar, sesame seeds (red pepper flakes optional) and set aside
5. drain the wakame and press the water out.
6. take the drained wakame and cut into strips with a very sharp knife.
7. mix with the prepared dressing and let it cool in the fridge for at least 30 minutes
8. adjust your dressing to taste, more sugar or more sesame seeds or oil…

Wakame Salad is perfectly fine on its own or with lunch or dinner and sushi of course. It keeps in the fridge for 3-4 days and freezes well too.

Stay Healthy and Enjoy!

Monika Baechler

P.S. Let me know how your wakame salad turned out and what you pared it with, thanks.

Strawberry-Banana-Apple Smoothie

Start your day with a delicious fruit smoothie!

It’s fast, easy and oh so good for you! Children in particular love anything that can be “consumed” with a straw, it’s a fact! Drinking smoothies is also sweet, why would you start your day with a horrible bitter black liquid that turns your stomach acidic? Just wondering sometimes about the choices people make.

Now to our fruity glass of deliciousness. What you will need for this particular recipe is:

• 2 ripe bananas
• 4-7 strawberries
• 1 small cup of organic apple sauce
• some organic soy milk (original, not sweetened)

Put everything in the blender and mix. You can even add raspberries or leave the applesauce and add instead some frozen peaches. It’s all up to you. This recipe is just a suggestion because everybody has their own favorite fruits, milks and juices they like to add. No matter what you put in your smoothie it’s going to be a delight every time you drink it.

Now go and make yourself a nice fruity smoothie! Enjoy.

Monika Baechler

Here is a Method That is Helping the Swiss to stay Slim

Salad, comes from the Latin word herba salata and literally means salted vegetables. The Greek and Romans enjoyed salad often and ate the raw greens and vegetables with salt and herbs, hence the name salad – salted vegetables.

Growing up in Switzerland I never got the concept of eating your salad before your meal. It was just something my Hungarian family didn’t do. As a teen I started to understand why one should eat the salad first and follow it with soup and main course. You can cut calories by about 500. Another reason is, the vinegar in the salad dressing will get your stomach acid going so it can be ready to digest the main dish you are about to eat. Smart eh?

Raw salads should consist of:

• leafy greens
• raw root vegetables
• the fruit of the vegetable like tomato, zucchini and peppers
• as well as nuts and seeds

Switching your vegetables everyday is your best bet. You can switch also the colors and spices from spicy to sweet dressing and so forth.

Can you imagine how easy it would be for everybody to loose weight with eating a plate of raw veg salad everyday. Salads don’t have to be rabbit food. Salads are colorful, exciting, tasty, juicy and most importantly healthy and delicious. The crunch will satisfy your cravings and make your jaws work, the more you chew the more vitamins and minerals you get out of your food. It will also take you longer to eat your salad, since chewing raw vegetables is really hard work. Longer meals means less calories consumed and less calories consumed mean less pounds on the scale. Let me explain the last sentence, taking your time with eating means your stomach has the time it takes – about 20-30 min – to signal your brain that you are in fact full. Eating slowly also means that when your brain tells you that you are full you can actually stop eating before emptying the whole plate or bag of chips.

Salads as appetizers should always be on a vinaigrette base and not a cream, mayo or cheese base. Calories from the vinaigrette dressing is less than the mayo base and less will stick to your salad and vegetables as well to your thighs. Keep mayo and cream sauces to a minimum and replace them with a natural yogurt base.

How to put it all in action:

• eat fruit salads or fruit smoothies for breakfast
• serve freshly prepared salads as a appetizer
• introduce children to raw vegetables with hummus dips
• have a leaf and vegetable salad as dinner

Are you aware that raw vegetables are really inexpensive? Yes, I’m not kidding. In season vegetables and fruits are inexpensive and available in you grocery store as very fresh and delicious produce. Fresh and local produce is very high in vitamins and minerals. Always choose the local produce vs the imported ones, it’s healthier and the price is better. Buying a cart full of vegetables is less expensive than buying all the junk food and manufactured empty calories. Your body does not get any satisfaction from eating manufactured foods, so pile up your cart with lots of local veg and fruits the next time you go to the local market.

These days we love to start our main meals with some salad or have a raw salad as dinner. Even as a snack it’s great. Children particularly love the crunchy stuff with dips and sauces.

Stay Healthy!

Monika Baechler

The Potato conspiracy?

Why do we always hear only the bad side of the potato. Everything “they” tell you is, it makes you fat, high glycemic index, to much sugar…! What happened with all the healing properties and vitamins and minerals of the potato?

Potatoes help you to keep your acidic body in check. The Potato is a very low calorie food, high in nutrients and starch. What do you think how the potato measures up compared with fresh soft cheese, eggs and cheese if it come to vegetarian protein? Actually, the potato has more vegetarian protein than any of these choices. Only meat exceeds the potato in their bio availability of protein, but it does not attack your arteries!

Most of the vitamins and minerals are right under the skin, so if possible, get young organic potatoes and do not peel them. The best way is to bake or steam the potatoes to keep most of the vitamin C and minerals inside.

Warning about the green spots on Potatoes, they contain solanin, which is not good for our bodies. You can get head aches, sore throat, stomach aches and diarrhea. Please make sure to cut around green spots and discard it.

Monika

If this or an other article helped you and you enjoyed it, please donate to monikabaechler.com, thank you!

Welcome to the Baechler Health and Nutrition Blog

Do you care about living a long healthy life, getting degenerative diseases, saving your children and grandchildren from obesity and illnesses, getting cancer and paying healthcare? Because if you don’t, then this blog is not for you! Thanks for visiting.

If you do care about those things – then read on:

Sadly and ironically in a land of plenty, on a continent of excess, many people are so highly deficient in vitamins and vital minerals as a horrific result of our food productions and processing methods. These deficiencies will lead to all sorts of horrible degenerative diseases, because dead food leads to dead cells. The question is not if – the question is when.

So you are telling me that you eat whole grains and organic foods and make sure you only buy whole wheat bread and so forth. Now consider this, most maufacturers make exceptionally poor-quality organic foods available, for example the organic white sugar and various organic cane juices and cane juice powders, which are simply refined sugar – unless it specifically says “unrefined”. Most of the time the word “organic” is used to mask an unwholesome food. Only because it says “organic” that doesn’t mean it’s good for you or your children. Manufacturers use the highly obsessed over big “O” to lure consumers to buy bad foods and it nearly fools everyone and it is one of the most deceiving and sickest marketing games today.

Even harder to metabolize and worse for your health than white sugar are the refined oils. If the product is not labeled with “unrefined,” then they are refined and these commonly used canola and other oils are the worst foods that can be eaten.

There is no Right- for- all- Diet, and with diet we always refer to the daily foods you eat not a calorie or fat reduced way of eating. Some people need to be vegetarians because of the love for animals or are even vegens.  Others prefere to eat raw-vegens or just raw. Not every body is suited for one kind of diet and every body has to figure out for themselves which diet is right for them. You can also be in between raw and whole foods, for example if you eat 60-80% raw but sometimes like to eat some broiled fish with steamed vegetables or some organic broken bone and vegetable soup.

All you really have to remember is this: 100% Whole Foods or at least 95%.

1. Eat a varied and abundant organic vegetables and fruits (organic most of the times or all the times)
2. Eat organic, range-fed animals without antibiotics added and grain fed animal products, about 4 ounces daily (animal protein is optional)
3. Choose a variety of plant seeds like roasted pumpkin seeds, ground or soaked flax meal and legumes
4. supplement with sea vegetables and micro-algae, including chlorella, wild blue-green algae, and spirulina
5. add healthy exercise every day

The perfect balance in your body is one of the most important things, the balance between acidity and alkalinity. Let me give you an example: Meat, fish, sausage, eggs, noodles, white bread, processed foods and sugar are very acidic to our bodies, but most veg, salads, tofu, fresh herbs, fruits and many more things are very alkaline (acid neutralizing) to our bodies.

Many people don’t pay attention if they have heartburn or a sour stomach, but they really should. That is a very specific sign that you are in deed acidic and need to change your diet and lifestyle. Yes I now, I’m preaching about the healthy lifestyle again and eating right blah, blah, blah…

But listen, do you want to end up like older friends and relatives, sick with all kinds of industrialized illnesses like, gout, arthritis, migraines, type 2 diabetes, cancer, obesity…? No? I didn’t think so. If you’re experiencing some or more of these symptoms you can reverse them with a whole food diet.

If this or an other article helped you and you enjoyed it, please share this with your family and friends.

Stay Healthy!

Monika Baechler