Raw Juice Popsicles

Here’s a favorite summer recipe from Hohm:

Cleanse Pops

Juice 4 apples,

1/2 lime

1 inch ginger

1 med cucumber

3 stalks celery

10 mint leaves

pour into molds freeze and CLEANSE cool!

Just another day at hohm :)

I just had to share how beautiful the kayaking it is here. See how calm the water is? It’s almost ALWAYS like this on the North Fork or Long Long Island’s East End. I had to spend two days in the city to work with Steve Goodman, my business partner, and meet some truly wonderful people making some truly exciting and wonderful products ( hint: GORGEOUS eco yoga clothing!) So while I was doing my city thing, Liv ( our newest staff member: you’ll be reading some great blogs from her in upcoming weeks) and, Annette, a regular juice faster,   and raw foodist in training– discovered this great spot to drop the kayaks and bliss out with nature. Charles was on hand to snap these beautiful pictures. Maybe soon we will take videos to share wtih you while on these beautiful and fun moments. Annette thought this was a very good way to spend an afternoon in between juices!  Hope you can come hohm soon and float along with us sometime this summer!

:)mary

Breaking the Fast Beautifully

Breaking the Fast Beautifully

The sacredness of breaking your fast and the realization of the blessed gift of food are incredibly beneficial parts of the juice fasting process. While I was preparing the morning break-fast fruit plates  for our wonderful guests, I was contemplating the beauty and sacredness of the first meal after a fast. After days of not eating, we can come to our food as though we are infants, as though we have been reborn to the sumptuous experience of eating. The fresh watermelon, crisp and airy, floats in the mouth like a full, pink cloud. The grapes are sweet and striking on the tongue. As I cut the watermelon into pyramids and arranged the plate into a blossom of color, the sun came through the window like a gentle flame and shone upon my fingers.

The world paused. When we are present to the aliveness of our food, we can discover the aliveness of ourselves. When we are present for the life cycle of our food, we are more present in the cycles of our own lives. This is why keeping a garden can be such a grounding, transformative experience. As we dig our hands though the soft soil and place our seedlings into the ground, our bodies become a part of the birthing of our food. We are a part of the growth process from start to finish, and when we finally taste the “fruit” (or lettuce, or zucchini) of our labor, we intrinsically understand that we are provided with everything we could ever need. And when we keep present during our food preparation, our food is truly blessed.
If keeping a garden is impossible for you, support your local growers. Stay close to your sweet feet.  Here at Hohm, we keep our own garden, and buy from our local farmers. Next time you have a meal, try taking a deep breath before you eat. Smell your food. Admire it’s color and richness. Enjoy!

Namaste,
Liv

Semi-Raw, Local, and Heritage way of food. Mushroom stew and parsley salad tonight

Hey Mary,

Any new recipes for me on my first day semi-raw again?:)

from Babita in Trinidad

Hi Babita

What a cute name! Like, “cute little baby” in spanglish.

I live in New York, in a rural farm area where most of the food we eat is grown within a few miles of our bodies. We ( Charles Wildbank my partner and myself) also of Irish and Italian heritage so the foods that grow around us here are very much the same as the foods grown and available in Ireland and Italy. Perhaps you are from India? And living in Clalifornia? So here is what we are cooking today:

mushrooms, leeks, carrots, local onions and just picked butternut squash and garlick and water, a splash of wine, in the crock pot ( we get too busy to cook during the day but when the cold night comes we find we are very hungry and look forward to this hot stew from the slow cooking crock pot). I also tossed a hand full of wheat berries into the pot. 

So when we enjoy this tonight, we will have a glass of local wine–literally ONE glass of wine between the two of us ( we have the best vinyards small family ones a short walk away) and a large serving ( just as much as the cooked mushroom stew) of parsley, thyme, shallot salad. 

Chop the herbs ( we STILL have super green abundant parsley and thyme and rosemary growning like crazy) finely together with the shallot, a pinch of sea salt ( Celtic for us Irish, Himalayan for those of you from the East), some mustard/wine vinagrette dressing. 

We will put a pile of the raw herb salad atop the bowl of cooked mushroom/squash stew. 

Enjoy, remember “love” is the equation. Love your heritage, love your world, love you food. love your self.

Bon appetite.

mary

What juicer is best?

Lots of our guests and many of you writing in ask about how to buy the best juicer. The bottom line is to buy one that you will USE, and that means look for a simple juicer. One that you can use, disassemble, wash and reassemble in less than 5 minutes. We use a Norwalk Press for our home delivered juice cleanses, but here at hohm it’s a Breville all the way. We once used ( in our video we still used) a Jack la Lane, but the Breville has surpassed it in simplicity to disassemble wash and reassemble. It has the fewest parts of any home juicer and it works better than anything. Every time you take a machine apart and wash it you risk losing some little part, and then of course that puts a major speed bump in the juice making plan! Keep it simple. Found this blog post that gives a really good run down of quite a few models. It should help.

Home for the Holidays, Alone for the Holidays?

raw stuffed mushrooms for Thanksgiving starter

We had decided two years ago that we would always close for Thanksgiving and Winter holidays, to give ourselves a chance to change our pace to a carefree unscheduled bit of time, possibly to travel to our families and enjoy their company.  We were looking forward to a Thanksgiving break, and then I recieved a few calls from people asking if we would be open. In the past we were normally alone on holidays, no one wanting to go on a juice cleansing retreat during a holiday! But to our surprise we are needed and wanted this year. We are glad to be staying hohm, and glad we are going to be welcoming home our some of our wonderful past clients. Grateful to be of service and be here to provide refuge, retreat, nourishment, and friendship to those who seek it.

My favorite holiday with my favorite people: my guests and students and certain members of my family too will be here. All of us happy to be sharing some gratitude, and bask in the presence of all this benevolence.

So I’m getting the menu settled now, and will let you know how we decide!

Banana Goji ice ‘cream” deserts are in the picture though 🙂

Twee Merrigan Hohmcoming Weekend

 

Twee in front of our pool

Twee Merrigan came hohm as promised and shared a truly refreshing weekend here at American Yogini. We have had a steady stream of juice cleansers here at our American Yogini HOhm, so I rarely have the pleasure of preparing and enjoying vegan food, both cooked and uncooked with my friends. We invited guests into the kitchen to help prepare raw zuchinni blossoms stuffed with parsnip cashew puree, thai spring rolls made by our newest juice fast coach, Shawn Williams ( picture coming soon!), vegan strawberry ice cream parfaits ( local, organic, yummmmm), frozen raw chocolate mouse, corn salad, guacamole, oh my so much more. it was amazing and Charles and I  are still enjoying the leftovers ( when our juice guests are not looking of course!).

 

And then there was….Twee. Well this sweeeeeet yogini master, yoga journal cover girl ( December 2007) and Yoga Journal Calendar model, and world tour teacher graciously and incredibly stopped when passing through New York on her “Soul Connections Tour”. Her two hour classes poolside were so refreshing, and we all basked in her clear benevolent energy. The vibe was so chill, all our guests the kindest souls on the planet. Saturday night, after dinner we sat around the fire outside and guess what????? Oh, we layed our heads back upon the pool lounges and looked up at the starry sky to catch…..a METEOR SHOWER! No kidding! Shooting star’s every where I looked! The weekend could not have been any more magical. Just what we needed. Oh and the new zen garden was completed the day before Twee arrived. That itself was miraculous, the work of Super Man Charles Wildbank, of course!

Gratitude! So much Gratitude! I have some very exciting news to reveal to you soon! Stay tuned!

love and hugs,

Mary 🙂

Juice Fast Coach Certification

I am so THRILLED to be finally offering a program that can guide teachers to introduce and coach others the miraculous process of juice fasting, juice feasting, and yogic cleansing rituals!. I have recieved so many requests for a teacher training program, it has been overwhelming this past year, so I am very happy and proud to be offering this to you with our first group of trainees to complete our program this June here in New York,  with future trainings in California, Chicago and Houston. Stay very tuned in so you can learn how you can become a Certified Juice Fast Coach with American Yogini this year, and start sharing this important practice with others. Stay tuned! Our first tele-conference information session will take place on two occasions this month, and then every week until the start of our program this June. Check the June calendar on the website for more details and dates.

We call Dry Skin Brushing ” Health Insurance”

The lymphatic system runs just under the skin, wherever you have skin surface. If I knew when my babies were little, what I know now, I would have started dry skin brushing them with a soft chamoise brush, the day they were born.  The thing about the lymph system- the network that produces and carries lymph ( that’s the WATER in our bodies and control central for our immunity), is that , unlike our blood that is pumped powerfully along by the heart, the lymph cannot move unless WE move. So if we are not excersising, or if we assume habitual postures that create certain parts of the body not to move, the lymph will stop moving, it will be slow and sluggish and you will FEEL slow and sluggish.  If we really go long stretches of time without moving these body areas ( front of chest and underarms , or front groins that close down when we sit for long periods of time), it might stop moving altogether and the lymph, just like a river that has pooled and stopped moving, will putrify and not do what it is meant to do: MOVE toxins, cancer, and virus’s OUT of the body. Lymph moves TOWARD the heart. Sweet. Lymph is also a greenish color. Sweeter. Green is the color vibration of the heart chakra, it is the color of the sun’s energy. Blood moves out from the heart with our heart beat speeding it along. Lymph moves in toward the heart with our body movement pushing it along.There is nothing better you can do during your juice fast, juice feast, and every day of your life than dry skin brush.  

“Fruition”, new eco-hohm is complete at last

So much so fast so wonderful so perfect! Just got the first great photos of our new place here for American Yogini, and we are calling it HOHM! Trademark in place, organic drapes, zero voc paints, sustainable cork floors….we even did a salt water swimming pool! It was like one of those tv shows where they build a house in a week. Only we did it in 5 months between July and December. Raw juice fast retreats have continued, the online store is still getting polished up, and exciting products ready to roll out.
This kitchen will be the site of many raw food, juicing, and natural yet modern hohm keeping videos.

What is true in your hohm, in your life and your surroundings is true in your body too. That is what and how we teach yoga here at American Yogini Juice Fast retreats, and I am so excited to share all this.  We are just brimming with action here! Our retreats have been full or nearly full every week even as new furniture is delivered and we find optimal places for our fantastic new products. We are so GRATEFUL for all this! In February video production should be well underway.

In the mean time, post a comment in our blog here to let us know what you most would like to learn and see in our vegan and raw kitchen.