Basil Juice

Nothing quite like fresh basil juice on a cold fall day. Just something about it that tastes warm and cosy. I just made 2 quarts with 2 cucumbers, 1 head of celery, 1 red bell pepper, 1 head of lettuce, 4 carrots, 3 apples, and a HUGE bunch of fresh basil. YUM! I have such good memories of harvesting basil, fingers becoming perfumed by basil, and filling my freezer with whole basil leaves to be blended into fresh pestos during the winter, maybe that is why this juice tastes so good to me. Juicy basil memories make for a tasty juice! I just read that warm basil tea is also really good for headaches and increasing blood flow, and cool basil tea is excellent for all kinds of eye problems, both as an eyewash and internal tea.

David and I are off to Houston for a while to visit with Ma and Pa Rainoshek. I'm looking forward to it, I've been to Texas but never to Houston. I think David's mom and dad have some fun things planned for all of us....so if you don't hear from us for a few days, that is where we will be...en route to Texas baby!

Enjoy your juice!

Love Katrina.

Story Of The Year

The day of elopement, about to become Husband and Wife....
...the Elf joyfully picks up the Hobbit...
...for a big smooch!
Katrina, David, Thim and Courtney (our lovely witnesses)
Katrina, David, Thim and Courtney about to go in the Santa Cruz County Courthouse to see David and Katrina bloom into Mr and Mrs Rainoshek!
The next day it was off the the Grand Canyon for a pre-honeymoon!
David on his way down all the switch backs.
We made it all the way to the Colorado River!
Our first hike as husband and wife.
Stopped on the way home in Sedona (Cafe Raw Bliss) for some honeymoon cake.
Honeymoon cake!

Hello Everyone!

How is your Thanksgiving weekend going? Things have really cooled off here in Patagonia, and it is time for cozy sweaters and scarfs while walking outside. We just got in from a brisk, crisp walk and now are warming up with some hot tea. We had a wonderful day on Thursday, and lunch at the Tree was fabulous. I brought little chocolate cups filled with coconut chocolate cream and pomegranate. I didn't even get to try them because they disappeared so fast, but the sweet potato pie that the cafe made was delicious. Even more delish was getting to see all the Tree folk, and we had a good afternoon of visiting and soaking up sunshine. And, we were able to share with everyone our Story Of The Year, which I am about to share with you here....

The Story Of The Year! (for us anyways)

David and Katrina Elope! Yes, we did, and we are now a very happy husband and wife. So, November 15th was our marriage, and in June 2008 we are having a wedding with close family, and then sometime after that we will have a big party to celebrate. It was perfect for me, not wanting anything fancy and flowery and big, to slip down to the romantic (hehe) town of Nogales, AZ with our dear friends Courtney and Thim as witnesses and get married in the Santa Cruz County Court House! We joked that it was faster to get married than it is to go grocery shopping in Nogales!

David and I spent a very sweet, tender day with each other and then off we went to become man and wife with tears of happiness in our eyes. It has been a long journey to find each other for each of us and we both feel blessed every day to know each other....It has been very sweet to discover that many people thought we were already married! I guess that would happen when you both use the same last name!

After the wedding, we came home and Courtney and Thim had made us a beautiful raw wedding cake (you'll have to ask Thim for the recipe, I would recommend that you do!), so we made up about 3/4 of a gallon of orange/grapefruit juice and we all visited and had juice and cake (accept for Courtney who had juice).

Late on Friday afternoon we packed up the leftover wedding cake and piled some things into Pegasus the veggie oil truck and headed South for the Grand Canyon. We made it part way, and stealth camped in a park that was closed for the winter, piled under a mountain of blankets to keep out the chill. I LOVE sleeping outside!

Saturday morning found us up early and chilly, and in an hour we were at the rim of the Grand Canyon. It will never fail to take my breath away.

"It seems a gigantic statement for even nature to make..."
~John Muir

It is truly one of the most richly layered visual and spiritual places I have spent time in, allowing you to feel as though you are touching time, watching evolution, and rubbing your nerves of awe with firecrackers! And then once you descend below the rim it only gets better...

We did so on Sunday. It was my first time below the rim, and gave me a whole new respect for the canyon. Looking into and upon are very different than feeling the enormity of it with your body. We walked the Bright Angel Trail, first down to Indian Gardens. David did this hike when he was just seven years old! Then, we decided, against all warnings, to go all the way down to the Colorado River. Down, down, down we went on a trail packed with switch backs and epic views every direction you turned, as we passed through many different layers of rock and different colors of trail dust. We were elated when we reached the swift Colorado, and sat with it for a brief time and ate and took in the canyon from the very bottom. Then, up, up, up! Now, there is a reason there are warning signs the whole way down that say "Do not attempt to hike from the rim to the river and back to the rim in one day," going up on the second half of your day is a whole different story than going down, the way you would after climbing a mountain. Canyon hiking really beats you at the end of the day! I can say raw food rocks for this kind of thing though. David and I hiked for 10 hours that day, 15.4 miles, and first went down for 4,500 feet, and then hiked up 4,500 feet! All this on six oranges, four bananas, four Lara Bars, and a bag of cashews and raisins, and of course three gallons of water, EACH! I would highly recommend doing this hike at the time of year that we did, the crowds were small to none, the mule traffic was light, and the temperature was perfect. I could not have walked that in the heat of the summer, no way!

We had forgotten our MSM, so I did get a little limpy for the next two days. On previous all-day hikes I have taken loads (such as 5TBS in water) of MSM at the end of the hike, before bed, and find that this works like magic for keeping my muscles from stiffening up. Ah but stiff muscles were SO worth it, I got to sit beside the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with my husband!

We would love to share just one more little thought with you...about love. This is for those of you that are looking for the love of your life, or if you have found the love of your life, you can do this too. That is, if you haven't meet your love yet, you can begin sending love to your love RIGHT NOW! She or He is out there RIGHT NOW, breathing, sleeping, eating, dreaming, and you don't have to wait to meet that person in order to start loving them! You don't need to know what he or she looks like, or smells like, or how they laugh, you can send your love love! Send them love today, and then when you do met them, you can look them in the eye and say with all honesty, "I have been thinking of you and sending you love every day." This is very powerful.

Imagine if someone special told you that they had been thinking of you and sending you love, even before they knew who you were? I'm sure you would be very moved. This will also help to draw your love to you, and it will help him or her find you because they will be pulled towards your love. And, if you have found your love, be sure to send them love every day, and then when you look them in the eye you can say "I am sending you love all day, every day, you are my love" and this is very special to hear.

On that note, David and Katrina send you all love everyday and hope that things are glorious and juicy!

Love,

The Happily Married David and Katrina Rain (officially)

Nori Roll Lunch

David and Nori Lunch (notice his cute little table of a stack of books)

Katrina and Nori Lunch at the True Home Cafe.

Most afternoons find David and I sharing a big, giant salad, but on this day we made some very special nori rolls with David's brazil nut pate. YUM! They also had avocado, carrot, red pepper and baby greens.

I keep wanting to write about the story of the year for David and I, but I'm waiting for the accompanying photos to be put onto our computers so I can add those to the story too! Check back in a few days for our exciting news and photos.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving...ah, it is so nice to live a life where I feel a deep sense of thanks every single day. My wish tonight is for everyone to realize the power of gratitude, and to indulge in it no matter what their life holds right now. I know that even in my darkest, saddest moments, as long as I could keep a spark of thanks alive for my life, joy will always flood back in. A dear friend of ours is going through a rough patch right now that is similar to a rough patch I went through as a teenager, I have been re-tracing a bit today. All I can feel despite all of it is an amazing sense of wholeness, synchronicity, and flow. Despite, or because of, our hurts we are still so amazingly ALIVE! Gratitude is powerful. You can even say thank you for this bummer of a time! By being thankful for everything, you allow much grace into your life, and with grace comes beauty.

We will be going to the Tree of Life for a big Thanksgiving feast at lunch time. They are planning on serving 300 people! We'll see how many arrive, I'll let you know. It is a potluck and we were going to bring David's Nori Crackers, but we don't have any Brazil nuts and no where in Patagonia sells them, so we will have to come up with something else tomorrow morning. I am really looking forward to seeing everyone and to eating at the TOL cafe again, it has been awhile. David and I keep meaning to go up there for brunch, but then we always seem to get too busy on the weekends and end up eating here at the True Home Cafe.

Thanks for YOU!!

With Gratitude and Love,

Katrina.

E3Live Kitty

This is our beautiful cat Seneca lounging in the bathroom sink. We love him. And he loves E3Live! He is smart, cuddly, active, agile, cute, has amazing huge blue eyes, and yes he likes blue green algae. Ok, enough about the cat. He deserves a whole book I'm sure, but maybe later.

Love Katrina and David and Seneca.

The Secret of Juice Feasting

Mike Adams and David Rain point out The Secret of Juice Feasting and show a day's worth of juice before it has been juiced!


David waxes poetic about the magic of juice.

Mike studies one of the Junk Food Face Off contestants while David explains why Twinkies are so bad.

David and Katrina and baskets of pre-juice produce. How could you not experience health if you are drinking that much fresh produce daily?!

Hello!

Well, it has been a beautiful, busy few days since I last wrote.

The event on Sunday was a big hit, and the Health Ranger not only runs an amazing website, but puts on a fantastically informative, entertaining show too! The seminar, Stop the Poison Start the Healing, began at one o'clock with Mike Adams' Junk Food Hall of Shame. This was an in-depth look at just how many crazy, toxic things are being added to our food and how important it is to eliminate them from our lives. Mike makes it clear that when you are shifting your diet towards health, you can begin with something as simple as reading labels! Just start paying attention to what you are taking into your body. Check out Mike's Honest Food Guide for more information.

This was followed by the Junk Food Face Off, a crazy competition between Mike and David to see who could come up with the worst processed food. Sadly, they both came up with infant formula as one of the top offenders. How could this be? How is it that one of the worst, unhealthy foods is being sold to us by corporations to feed our babies? The formula that they both choose was 54% straight, processed sugar, with soy protein isolates to boot, soy being one of the top ten known allergens! Now I don't hold any judgement against any mother trying to feed her baby, but I do feel a strong aversion towards any company profiting from the unethical sale of corn syrup solids masquerading as baby food. Go to Baby Milk Action for more information, and learn why 4,000 babies die every day from bottle feeding. Breast is best!

Mike generously named David the winner of the Fast Food Face Off for his Burger King mash up, in which he took a Burger King meal with a burger, fries, coke, and milkshake and dumped it all in a big, clear bowl to be mashed up. Seeing it this way makes it impossible to imagine putting all that into your poor stomach and digestive system, horrible mix of horrible food! We followed it up with a splash of Maalox, just in case the bowl got heart burn. I have to add that when David and I went to get the Burger King meal, the smell in the truck made us both feel sick! And the poor audience, I think they may have felt a little sick too, and when David asked if he should pass the mash up around for closer inspection there was a resounding NO!

After these antics, David did a presentation on Juice Feasting, which was followed up by Mike Adams sharing his favorite healing supplements. By the time Q&A was over, it was after six o'clock. I think every one left feeling very motivated to become a Health Food Super Star, and indeed the audience was filled with people with amazing transformation stories.

The Health Ranger Mike Adams also released the newly recorded Secret of Juice Feasting: A step by step guide to eliminating disease in 92 Days with nature's most powerful healing juices. This is a beautiful, 6 CD audio course in which Mike Adams and David Rain reveal the secret of Juice Feasting: What it is, how to do it, and the many ways in which this simple lifestyle change causes the body to heal itself from the inside out. It will be available to the public within a few weeks, watch for it!

Speaking of juice, I just had to brag a little bit that I made 3 1/2 quarts of green juice this morning in 30 minutes! Including clean up! So if you are in your first days of juicing and feeling like it takes an exorbitant amount of time, don't worry, you will refine your technique and get much, much faster at it. I used kale, lettuce, parsley, cucumber, celery, carrot, apple and ginger for an extra yummy juice.

Enjoy your juice and your moments!

With love and blessings,

Katrina.

Staying, Walking, Writing, Playing.

David on an afternoon walk

David on an afternoon walk along Emily Lane.

Katrina on an afternoon walk along Emily Lane.

Katrina on an afternoon walk above Native Seed Search Fields.

David doing push ups in front of our little palace on the hill.

Well, I wanted to tell you all that after much debate, David and I have decided to stay here in Patagonia. There are many reasons behind our decision, including walking, writing, and playing.

The first reason, walking, is that we live out in the country here, and we love our morning and afternoon walks.

The second reason, writing, is that we work very well here in our quiet little house on the hill. Which, by the way, is now ours and ours alone! For 8 months we shared this little house with two lovely friends, and we had the front room, they had the back room. So we have now gone from living in one room with a sheet in the doorway to having two rooms! We felt that living in a small space was very good practice for living on a boat, which we both want to do one day soon. We managed quite well, if I may say so myself, living and working and sleeping and eating all in one room! Of course, we had the wide open Arizona sky to stretch out under, and we happen to be soul mates, so living in small quarters was really cute and lovely. And very easy to keep clean!

The third reason, playing, is that we are near to all of our dear friends at the Tree of Life here, and we like that. And, well, it is great to live in a sweet little town where you can have social hour every time you hit the post office or health food store, bumping into familiar faces at every turn. Being a small island girl, I really like that.

So what does that mean for the Global Juice Feast, headquarters in San Fransisco? Well, we are working on that one. We will live there one day, I promise myself (I love that city and the ocean calls me), but for the moment we are planning on spending the first ten days of our 92-Day Global Juice Feast in SF holding juicy workshops, and then coming back to AZ. With the Internet at our fingertips, we could really be anywhere, and so can you! We are planning on doing daily vlogging, so that we can all stay in touch. It is going to be so much fun, I can't wait!

I recently read on the blog of a young woman who is Juice Feasting up in Canada right now how she felt that she was Feasting in part as a way of cleansing her body for growing babies! AHA! David and I were both really excited to read that, because it is one of the main reasons that I want to JF, as a gift to our babies. We want them to enter the world through a door with the most life force possible, to be welcomed into the most nutrient dense embrace, and to be nourished by magically high vibrations. It really is a blessing, to be able to begin looking after my children before they have even been conceived, to be loving them with everything I eat, and everything I do. Yes, David tells me that everything I eat is an act of love for our children, and this is true. It is something we can all be doing, regardless of age, gender, status, and wealth, is to eat for the love of our world's babies. Your life affects so much more than just yourself, and it is such an expansive, healthy feeling to realize this. It also makes it much easier and more joyful to engage in something that can be challenging at times, such as eating a live food diet, or as Juice Feasting. You take it out of the personal, and engage yourself with the massive community that we are a part of, you are eating not just to feed yourself but to feed the human race. You are choosing to not eat dairy not just for yourself but for the whole world.

There is a lovely book called Me to We by two brothers who have made it their life's work to remind people that our greatest joy comes from being loved and being free to love. From their site: "The book that’s showing the world that one person can make a difference is now a New York Times Best Seller! Me to We is a philosophy, a manual, a manifesto and a movement. It's about finding meaning in our lives and our world by reaching out to others.

Authors Marc Kielburger and Craig Kielburger, founders of Free The Children, uncovered this philosophy through their work in more than 50 of the world's richest and poorest countries and with some of the greatest spiritual, political and social leaders of our time. And in this best-selling book, they make it relevant in today's modern world."

I read bits and pieces of this book about a year ago, just before I moved to AZ, and it made a big impression on me, gave me courage to act as though the whole world depended on my success (because the world depends on every single one of us), and reminded me to act as though I was a very important part of the human race. When we all position ourselves as members of the planet, wonderful, wonderful things start to happen, and we are not alone. Your failures are not yours alone, and your achievements are shared by all. I don't know about you, but I find this helps me enormously whenever something not so positive is nagging at my sub-conscious, even something as small as say, oh, a piece of pizza. We can all access a vast amount of support to make wonderful decisions for ourselves when we pause to remember that the whole world is there at our side, affected by every last little thing that we do. Oh, and also remember that the whole world is there loving you when you are doing those things that are not the best, as long as you are doing your best and making movement towards excellence. We all start walking from where we stand.

"You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are!"

-Eckhart Tolle

OK, we are getting ready for David's talk in Tucson tomorrow with Health Ranger Mike Adams! Looking forward to it, should be TOF (tons of fun, an acronym from childhood). I'll let you know how it goes. Time for me to make lunch, will be a salad, but we did have juice for breakfast just to feel connected to all you Juice Feasters out there, yes we got nice and sticky this morning and tuned into the Juicy High!

All my love,
Katrina.

What The World Eats

My dear sister Hezi is in Toronto right now with her man Zev. That big, grey, concrete, Canadian city where I spent a summer working on costumes for a Shakespearean Festival. A Midsummer Night's Dream was what I worked on, lots of sparkling fairy dresses, donkey ears, red coats with silver buttons, it was a high quality (Katrina's words), low budget production (a fact) so I spent lots of time re-constructing precious finds from TO thrift shops. Toronto has amazing thrift shops, and amazing fabric shops. I also got to spend lots of time in fabric shops. I got lost (on purpose) more than once in the stacks and piles of lush, colorful, soft and stiff, rolls and bolts, bins full of odds and ends, textured, plain weaves or corduroys, velvets and denims, fabric warehouses along Queen Street.

It's the weave I love so much. I get so excited about fabric sometimes I feel sick! But it's not just the fabric, it is what it represents. Sure I love the texture, the possibility, the color, the sensuality of cloth, but really it is because there in the cloth I can see in a very real and tangible metaphor: LIFE!

We are all very closely knit folks, each of us a thread, each event a yarn.

Think very closely about what kind of tapestry you are creating with everything you do, because everything you do adds to the tapestry of life baby!

So, my sister also sent me an attachment to a essay of wonderful photos of What The World Eats, from the book Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel. I've spent quite a bit of time with this book in a bookstore on 4th Street, it is on the wish list, but it was fun to get these pictures in my sister's email, reminding me of what an incredible tapestry we are.

Oh, and we are very excited to tell you that Oprah has been drinking green juice on National TV! (we don't watch TV but we do read Heidi and Justin S's blog!) Yay Oprah for bringing green juice to the tube and to the masses!

Enjoy being a juicy, green, fruity, yummy thread in the weave of it all!

Love Katrina.

Red Mountain

The Hike Of The Day Off

Today we decided that it was a day off (sort of). So we went for a hike up Red Mountain. Now the sun has set, and no we couldn't stay away from to computer ALL day so here we are. We are trying to take at least one day a week off...it is much healthier than not having a day off ever!

David is talking to Blair right now, who is now in Spring, Texas. We got to visit with him as he was on his way across from L.A.,and he is doing great. Go say hi to him here!

It feels so good to have spent most of the day outside. I love the feeling of sunshine in my cheeks. We didn't get out of the house until around noon, and so walked for the most part in the hottest time of the day. It being November, that was OK, and we were in the shade of Red Mountain scrubby trees for much of the way too. We had a gorgeous picnic up at the top of oranges, raisins and cashews, looking out over the sea of Arizona hills.

When David and I first did that hike, we had just fallen in love... so it was really sweet to re-hike it even more in love than before!

Enjoy your juicy moments,

love Katrina.