A 'spring' in my step...

Spring has not yet officially begun though it is literally right around the corner - only 11 days until the first day of spring.  Major League Baseball has begun spring training with the Boston Red Sox with a record of 5 wins and 2 losses.  More importantly, the weather has been absolutely amazing  for the last several days and for 3 of the last 5 days I have gone for walks approaching (if not exceeding) 2.5 miles.  I haven't used the Wii Fit Plus since Friday but I intend to spend some time with that tomorrow.  If the weather holds, I will likely take another walk tomorrow as well.

I have been starting every day with VIDACELL, one capsule of Primal Defense Ultra, one capsule of Omega-Zyme Ultra, and a breakfast of two cage free eggs with a slice of Ezekiel 4:9 bread.  Today, knowing that I was going to go for a walk, I decided to have a yogurt smoothie for lunch.  I didn't want to have anything too heavy that would slow me down or cause me to cramp up on the walk.  Today for my smoothie, I used frozen, organic raspberries and blueberries that we bought at Trader Joe's.  I was amazed at the difference in flavor compared to the Stop & Shop brand that I had been using.  As well, I added the usual flax seeds but this time I included a packet of VIDACELL.  I have occasionally taken an extra serving of VIDACELL in the past, but not too often.  Because I am a distributor of VIDACELL, I earned a enough 'life points' to redeem for a free box.  My free box arrived the other day giving me a little freedom to boost my intake and hopefully speed healing.

VIDACELL has been a wonderful benefit for me for the last year and a half.  I really don't know where I would be physically without it.  According to GreatLife International, "VIDACELL is an all natural functional food that provides your body's cells with vital and essential nutrients they can use to fight the "cellular aging process" and promote better health."  By helping the body to regenerate healthy cells, VIDACELL helps us to heal.

Papaya pepper!

Today I am making papaya pepper.  It is a simple recipe that I got from the book Nourishing Traditions using the seeds of a papaya.  Well, the recipe itself is simple, but the preparation is a bit tedious.  Properly prepared, the papaya seeds can be used similarly to black pepper - in fact, the seeds even resemble peppercorns in appearance.

Papaya seeds have numerous health benefits.  According to Eat This!, the benefits include:

• Antibacterial Properties - Research has found that papaya seeds are effective against E. coli, Salmonella, and Staph infections. 
• Kidney Protection - Research has found that papaya seed extract may protect the kidneys from toxin-induced kidney failure. 
• Eliminate Intestinal Parasites - There is evidence that papaya seeds eradicate intestinal parasites. In a study done on Nigerian children with intestinal parasites, 76.7% of the children were parasite-free after seven days of treatment with papaya seeds compared to only 16.7% of the children who received a placebo. 
• Liver Detoxifier - In Chinese medicine, it is believed that a teaspoon of papaya seeds will help detoxify the liver. Papaya seeds are often recommended by natural doctors in the treatment of cirrhosis of the liver.

 The seeds are prepared similarly to other nuts and seeds in that you need to soak them for a period of time followed by drying them in an oven (though I intend to use my food dehydrator for this).  The tedious part comes from the fact that the individual seeds are encased in a sort of pulp that needs to be removed prior to soaking.  I am sure that this could be done with some sort of mechanical process, but I ended up pinching each seed to 'pop' the pulp and remove it.  It took me about an hour for that process.  As I write this entry, the seeds are soaking in filtered water.  Later today, I will transfer them to the dehydrator to dry them out.  The seeds can then be used/eaten as is or ground to be used as a pepper substitute - not that there is anything wrong with pepper.  Supposedly, papaya seeds also make an excellent meat tenderizer.

I recently returned the copy of Nourishing Traditions that I had borrowed from the library.  I was planning on buying my own copy, but I hadn't gotten around to it yet - partially due to the cost.  Yesterday however, I obtained amazon.com's Kindle for PC.  This software, available for free at amazon.com and allows you to read the Kindle version of books on your PC.  Amazon.com also sells Nourishing Traditions in a Kindle version for only $9.99.  The price combined with the instant 'delivery' made the decision to buy the book a lot easier.

I took the dog for a walk!

OK, so the title of this post is not terribly awe-inspiring or exciting for the most part.  For me, however, it is quite a milestone.  It was such a beautiful day today that I decided to see how far I could push myself by taking Ginger for a walk.  We have a really nice walking/bicycle trail right near our home, so I figured that I would take advantage of that.  I don't do too well walking up and down hills and the trail is rather flat.  After spending some time using the Wii Fit Plus, it was time to head out for the walk.  As the trail does not allow motorized vehicles, I don't have any way to measure how far I really walked.  The trail eventually follows a small river and passes underneath a bridge.  Shortly after passing under the bridge I decided to turn around and head home.  By the time I got home, I was exhausted.  Had I not turned around when I did, I might have had trouble getting all the way home.

Using MapQuest, I plugged in some landmarks and got a driving distance close to where I ended up turning around.  The trail meanders a bit more than the roads do so I can only estimate that I walked about 2.5 miles round trip.