Feel Good Guru

There is almost nothing better in the world than a ripe market fresh heirloom tomato and they’re out in their full splendor right now. If ever there’s a time to eat tomatoes, it’s in the next few weeks. We all know in January a tomato just doesn’t taste like a tomato. So get ‘em while you can!

Heirlooms are painstakingly grown by smaller scale farmers for their extra juicy flavor and sweetness. They’re bursting with intense goodness, containing more nutrition than your average everyday tomato.

Tomatoes are rich in Vitamin C, which increases as it ripens on the vine, and they help rid the body of toxins. Lycopene, the antioxidant media darling du jour, present in tomatoes, can help prevent heart disease and certain types of cancer. It seems to be better absorbed by the body when we cook the tomatoes with a little oil. Easy shmeasy! Let’s do it!

Here’s a beautiful Roasted Heirloom Tomato and Basil Soup recipe:

Roasted Heirloom Tomato & Basil Soup

roughly 2 lbs of ripe juicy heirloom tomatoes (or any ripe juicy market fresh organic tomatoes)
8 cloves of garlic, whole
2 tsp Celtic sea salt
1 Tbsp red wine or apple cider vinegar
1 small bunch of fresh basil, chopped
1 cup of water
2 Tbsp olive oil

Preheat oven to 450. Cut tomatoes into quarters and place face up in a lightly oiled roasting pan with garlic. Drizzle the whole thing with olive oil and roast for half an hour or until sizzling and caramelized.

Remove from the oven and blend all ingredients to your desired consistency. Taste and adjust.

Serve hot, garnished with fresh basil.

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What? Veggie Trader dot com

What?? A new site that allows you to buy from or exchange fresh garden produce with your neighbors. It’s a hookup site for wayward surplus veggies. So far just in the US, but it’s newly planted and growing like a late summer zucchini.

How’s it work? Like Craigslist. Sign up, list your excess, post what you’d like to trade it for, search for other home growers within a radius of 1 to 100 miles, hook up, make the trade or purchase, go home happy, no food wasted, community created.

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Surprised to see the medieval city of Kathmandu on the “Green Cities” list? Me too, but Richard Register, author of Ecocities and president of Ecocity Builders in Oakland, California, believes that Kathmandu and its green-receptive population is well on its way to becoming what he calls a “full-out ecocity.”

With its narrow streets, small squares and growing population, the city is becoming increasingly hostile to the car - a reality Register believes could be the catalyst for the paradigm shift necessary to eliminate the city’s congestion and pollution problems. Yes, Kathmandu, famous for its centuries-old architecture, rich history, fascinating culture and stunning views of the Himalayas is taking the stage - if tentatively - as an emerging green city. (more…)

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Sandy Dempsey, founder of The Dreaming Cafe and an enthusiastic participant in Feel Good Fast is offering a 4-week online journaling for self-discovery workshop. She’s a Feel Good Guru with pen and paper, and she’s got a deal for FGG readers! Check it:

Discover the power of positive journaling and journaling for self-discovery ~ Sandy Dempsey

I’ve been journaling for almost thirty years. Journaling has been my constant companion. All of life’s ups downs and everything in between lives in my journals. I have stacks of them. They are wonderful documentaries of my life. (more…)

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…and we’re not talkin’ abs! We’re talkin’ fun & fabulous, super, simple Crunchy Kale Chips the Feel Good Guru way.

Kale gets a bum rap. It’s an under-appreciated cruciferous that needs our help to elevate its status to the clean green lean superfood that it is. I think the reason people don’t like kale is because they’re trying to eat the rough leaves right off the stalk, raw, and that can be a little, er, too healthy-tasting. But there are easy ways to prepare kale to make it delish.

Kale is one of those superfoods available year round, and one that should not be ignored by healthy peeps. It’s incredibly versatile, extremely nutrient-rich and low in calories. Yes! Yes! Yes! Kale contains cancer-fighting phyto-nutrients, tons of vitamins A and C, calcium and iron, and compounds that actually signal our body to produce more detoxification enzymes. So why not use kale at every opportunity we can? Yes? (more…)

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We’re flyin’ the Feel Good Fast flag here at Feel Good Guru cause it’s fall and we’re on day 3 of the autumn edition of “Feel Good Fast” and yes, we’re feelin’ good!

Unfortunately it’s too late to join us this time around, but we’ll be going again on the 2nd of November, just after the indulgences of Canadian Thanksgiving, ending just in time for American feasting.

In between, we’ll have some amazing plant-powered feasting with friends at the LOVE Cafe Underground in Toronto and Venice Beach and we might even be shootin’ an episode or two of “One Meatless Meal”. Stay tuned!

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We’re on day 3 of the Autumn edition of Feel Good Fast and yes, we’re feelin’ good! This is a recipe we’ll be doing on day 5. We make enough so that on day 6 it turns into a whole new thing - Spicy Black Bean Soup. Yes, we’re busy Chuppies and leftovers up-cycled in five minutes is a kitchen concept we can get behind!

If you have a nice big lettuce leaf or chard leaf, you can actually roll your bean mixture and serve it burrito style. You won’t miss the wheat flour tortilla. Otherwise, it makes a nice “open face” burrito on beet greens or spinach leaves. (more…)

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This densely populated island city-state in Southeast Asia was early to the table on environmental policy and has since become an inspiration for other cities (and countries) trying to achieve the difficult goal of sustainable development.

Singapore’s Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources was established in 1972 aiming to achieve environmental sustainability for the long term. In effect since the ’70s, Singapore’s anti-congestion charges have served as a model for cities like London. Proposals for radical new policies include having cars fitted with satellite tracking meters and charging drivers a per-mile fee to slash congestion. Meanwhile, the mass-rail transit is extremely clean, affordable and efficient. (more…)

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Now that labour day’s over and the party days of summer are behind us, it’s time to put away the beer cooler, dig out the running shoes, get our cleanse on, and spend some time reinventing ourselves and planning our brilliant future. Don’t you feel the fresh start groove comin’ on?

There’s no better time in the year to initiate major personal change. Autumn beginnings carry great momentum, which is why we’re so excited at Feel Good Guru to embark on our quarterly 21-day cleanse. But before we begin, I wondered if there might be some feng shui techniques that could give us a little kick start into our fresh start…some good woowoo that would enhance our energy and help propel our cleansing success to even higher levels… (more…)

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