Stock up on Island Sun Oil and Island Sun Creme with Natural SPF
Safe for babies, kids and adults!
Safe for babies, kids and adults!
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Coconut Cupcakes
These cupcakes are moist, but dense enough to stand up to a nice thick frosting. Great for birthday cakes!
Makes 24 cupcakes
3c flour
1 1/2tsp baking soda
1/2tsp salt
1/2tsp nutmeg
1 3/4c sugar
2/3c oil
1 1/2c coconut milk
1/2c water
2tsp vinegar
1tsp vanilla extract
1tsp almond extract
1c shredded coconut (for tops of cakes)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Prepare muffin pan by lining with cupcake papers
Mix first 4 ingredients together and set aside
Cream together sugar and oil
Mix coconut milk, water, vinegar and extracts together and combine with oil and sugar
Mix into dry ingredients until just combined
Divide evenly into cupcake papers
Bake for about 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out of center clean
Frosting
A number of frostings would be great for this cake, but I just mixed up an impromptu quicky. Sorry, I don't have exact measurements for you.
I used
powdered sugar
coconut oil
coconut milk
vanilla extract
After frosting cakes, top with shredded coconut.
Enjoy!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Placentaphagy for Postpartum Health and Well Being
Placentaphagy is the practice of eating your own placenta.
Placenta is great for many things, but is especially wonderful for postpartum Moms. It is rich in nutrients that aid in postpartum healing and well being. Consuming your placenta after birth can help bring your bodies hormones back into balance, stop postpartum hemorrhage, replenish nutrients, increase milk supply and keep postpartum depression at bay. There are many ways to consume your placenta. Some people choose to cook it first, but I wanted to use it raw, so that all the nutrients remained intact.
When I became pregnant I started researching the benefits of placenta and decided that I would give it a try. My daughter is now 9 weeks old and I am very pleased that I used my placenta. I lost quite a bit of blood during birth, but I had no issues postpartum. I also had much more energy than I or my midwife expected. I had placenta smoothies for a week after birth and then started on my capsules.
You can have someone else prepare the placenta for you or do it yourself. I am DIYer in many other aspect of life, so I figured this should be no different. My midwife offered to help me with it and I gathered all the needed supplies, so that I would have everything ready to go come labor day.
For the smoothies I used mixed berries(masks the color and taste of the placenta) and pineapple. usually I would use a scoop of green protein powder, but placenta is rich in iron and protein, so it wasn't needed.
For the capsules, I used my dehydrator, spice/coffee grinder, capsules and a capsule machine.
I ordered some of my encapsulation supplies from here http://shop.placentabenefits.info/
Directly after birth, the placenta was double bagged and stored in the fridge. I started preparing the placenta the next day. I took my time with it while baby napped and it turned out to be incredibly therapeutic. While prepping it, I thought of all that we had just been through and how just hours ago, that placenta was inside of me nurishing my baby. I studied the different parts of the placenta and really took in just how amazing it was. In these moments I understood why some women choose to make placenta prints to hang on the wall or plant their placenta.
There are several different methods to dehydrating placenta. Here are the basic steps I used.
Cover all surfaces you will be working on with wax paper (remember you are working with a raw organ, so proper hygiene is very important)
Rinse placenta
Remove cord and membrane
Cut into small thin pieces (dehydrates faster)
I lay some out on wax paper and froze for smoothies
I put the rest in my dehydrator on parchment paper and dehydrated on 110 degrees until it was dry
(the pieces should snap when you bend them)
Process in grinder into a smooth powder
Encapsulate (how many capsules you get depends on the size of your placenta. I had approximately 100)
I washed everything that came into contact with my placenta in hot water and then soaked in tea tree oil and grapefruit seed extract.
*Warning*
Some of the pictures below are bloody. If you're easily offended don't go any further.
Pieces frozen for smoothies
Placenta is great for many things, but is especially wonderful for postpartum Moms. It is rich in nutrients that aid in postpartum healing and well being. Consuming your placenta after birth can help bring your bodies hormones back into balance, stop postpartum hemorrhage, replenish nutrients, increase milk supply and keep postpartum depression at bay. There are many ways to consume your placenta. Some people choose to cook it first, but I wanted to use it raw, so that all the nutrients remained intact.
When I became pregnant I started researching the benefits of placenta and decided that I would give it a try. My daughter is now 9 weeks old and I am very pleased that I used my placenta. I lost quite a bit of blood during birth, but I had no issues postpartum. I also had much more energy than I or my midwife expected. I had placenta smoothies for a week after birth and then started on my capsules.
You can have someone else prepare the placenta for you or do it yourself. I am DIYer in many other aspect of life, so I figured this should be no different. My midwife offered to help me with it and I gathered all the needed supplies, so that I would have everything ready to go come labor day.
For the smoothies I used mixed berries(masks the color and taste of the placenta) and pineapple. usually I would use a scoop of green protein powder, but placenta is rich in iron and protein, so it wasn't needed.
For the capsules, I used my dehydrator, spice/coffee grinder, capsules and a capsule machine.
I ordered some of my encapsulation supplies from here http://shop.placentabenefits.info/
Directly after birth, the placenta was double bagged and stored in the fridge. I started preparing the placenta the next day. I took my time with it while baby napped and it turned out to be incredibly therapeutic. While prepping it, I thought of all that we had just been through and how just hours ago, that placenta was inside of me nurishing my baby. I studied the different parts of the placenta and really took in just how amazing it was. In these moments I understood why some women choose to make placenta prints to hang on the wall or plant their placenta.
There are several different methods to dehydrating placenta. Here are the basic steps I used.
Cover all surfaces you will be working on with wax paper (remember you are working with a raw organ, so proper hygiene is very important)
Rinse placenta
Remove cord and membrane
Cut into small thin pieces (dehydrates faster)
I lay some out on wax paper and froze for smoothies
I put the rest in my dehydrator on parchment paper and dehydrated on 110 degrees until it was dry
(the pieces should snap when you bend them)
Process in grinder into a smooth powder
Encapsulate (how many capsules you get depends on the size of your placenta. I had approximately 100)
I washed everything that came into contact with my placenta in hot water and then soaked in tea tree oil and grapefruit seed extract.
*Warning*
Some of the pictures below are bloody. If you're easily offended don't go any further.
Pieces frozen for smoothies
Placenta on the deydrator screen. I also dried a piece of my daughters cord for a keepsake.
Dried pieces and pieces in grinder
Powder ready for encapsulation
My husband filled the capsules using a capsule machine. He said it made it much quicker.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Vegan German Chocolate Cake
For my sugar crazed sister, Steph and my sweet friend, Ella...and anyone else who loves a great piece of cake :)
German chocolate cake was one of the things that my Mom would make and it would be gone in a matter of minutes. Seriously, you would have to make sure you got a piece or else you would be out of luck.
What makes this cake so great? It's so moist, with a true chocolate flavor and the added bonus of the candy like frosting. Yum.
I've been trying to crete a vegan version of this for awhile now. It took me quite some time just to get the cake part right and then I was on to recreating the gooey, coconutey frosting.
After using my husband as a guinea pig and bringing this cake to a few events, I beleive I may have gotten pretty darn close to the taste of my Momma's original.
Try it and let me know what you think!
3c all purpose flour
2c sugar
2tsp baking soda
1tsp salt
1/2c cocoa
2/3c vegetable or coconut oil
1tsp vanilla extract
2tsp vinegar
2c almond milk
Mix milk and vinegar and set aside
Sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa.
Mix sugar, oil and vanilla together. Add in almond milk/vinegar mixture.
Mix wet into dry ingredients until just combined.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
It makes 2 9x5 loaf pans or 2 round cake pans.
Let cool.
Filling and Frosting:
1 can coconut milk
2tsp vanilla
1c sugar
3/4c earth balance
1 7oz pack of flake coconut
2c chopped pecans
6tbs corn starch mixed first with enough cold water to make a paste
Mix first 4 ingredients together in a sauce pan. Cook for about 8 minutes until
sugar is melted and mix is light brown.
Add coconut and pecans.
Add in cornstarch paste and remove from heat.
Frosting will continue to thicken as it cools.
Fill and frost cake with it once cooled.
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