A Toast to Health

   Hello all!  It's been a little crazy around the Lipstick and Lemondrops HQ (aka: home!) these past couple of weeks.  To sum it up, my step-dad was in the hospital for over a week and ended up having triple heart bypass surgery.  Yikes!  He's feeling okay and has been home for a week.  Yay!  He's still in a lot of pain and has a ways to go before he's completely healed.  Needless to say, things were pretty stressed around here for a bit.

   I'm hoping this health scare will serve as a wake-up call and motivate him to take better care of himself.  He's not a smoker or a drinker but he does enjoy food - mainly meat, especially the red variety.  He loves sweet things as well, which isn't great as he's also a diabetic.  Unfortunately he pretty much hates vegetables.  Leafy greens?  You can forget it!  Unless it's smothered in creamy dressing of course, and the same goes for coleslaw.  Luckily my mom makes a mean coleslaw with an oil and vinegar dressing which he likes.  But, left to his own devices he'd grab the blue cheese dressing in a heartbeat.   Anyway, you can see how this might bug me especially since I've become completely obsessed with nutrition.  I firmly believe that the body can heal itself if given the chance and the right foods.  I'm doing my best to share my (limited) knowledge but I'm pretty sure it's falling on deaf ears.  Well, maybe not 'deaf' ears since my parents would never ignore me, but certainly 'stubborn' ears!  That's okay though.  I know I'm planting little seeds in the back of his mind and possibly the rest of my families as well.  I'm going to continue to learn and share with them and hopefully he'll start to make small changes in his diet and speed his healing process.  Baby steps! 
   Anyway, I have a bunch of posts planned in the next little bit so stay tuned.  My parents got me a Juicer and Dehydrator as early birthday gifts.  Woohoo, my parents rock!  So I've been having lots of fun in my kitchen this weekend!  For now, I am raising a glass of the red stuff (not that kind) and toasting to my families health.  Here's hoping that we all keep trying a little harder to take better care of ourselves and each other.

Juice from beets, celery and carrots. Yum!

Love,

Ves xxx

 FYI: The Food Matters website is offering a free online screening event.  Click here to watch the movie for free... it's this week only, so I hope you get a chance to watch it and share it with others.