Choose These 4 Skin Loving Foods During Your Holiday Festivities

These 4 skin loving foods have a great reputation in supporting healthy vibrant skin. Best part is they taste good too! You can find them anywhere you go so you can incorporate them into your travel and festival meals.

For many of us, we get set into a pattern in life. We get our daily routines in almost every area of our life because predictability and dependability make us feel warm and comfortable.  Our days come and go and change is gradual. We settle ourselves into nice healthy patterns of fitness, food, and skin care with nourishing products for every aspect of our bodies. But there are times in the year that there is anything but predictability! Times when the food is not anything you would have in your everyday well adjusted personal habit. The Holiday’s with friends and family!

Holiday festivities are wonderful times to be with friends and family and even to travel to different locations. But sometimes this throws us completely off our routines which can leave us feeling a little defenseless. Try adding these 4 vegan friendly gluten free foods that support super healthy skin. These are very common at festival gatherings year round so no matter where you roam, you are bound to find these 4 things. Heck, one of them you can take with you!

Chocolate Rich in Cacao Really Is Good For You

1) Chocolate that is at least 70% Cacao
Get your cacao on! This tasty temptation is bound to be plentiful at celebrations of any kind. Go ahead and indulge a little with this skin loving food. Cacao is one of the foods rich in flavinoids. Flavinoids are anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory power houses. If that weren’t enough, it’s also rich in skin protecting Magnesium and vitamin C, Omega 6 which helps to restore cells, enzymes to help with skin luster. The list goes on.

Loving Legumes

2) Beans, all of them! Yes, hand over those Green Bean beauties!

Skin loving foods from the inside out. Sure you know all the benefits of the bean family for a healthy well balanced digestive system (fiber, protein, B vitamins, iron, magnesium, potassium, copper and zinc to name a few) but did you consider  the double bonus phytonutrients offer?  With the bean family you also get a food rich in phytonutrients. These can help prevent disease. If you are traveling to areas far from your normal surroundings, you will be exposed to bacteria and germs you are not normally exposed to. You are going to need anything that helps support your bodies defense system.

Try a more healthy alternative to the traditional Green Bean Casserole  (I like this one since she uses sun dried tomatoes) You can do this one Raw Vegan or bake it for 20 minutes for Vegan

Sweet or Savory, These Roots Are a Delight

3) Carrots. I never met a carrot I didn’t like!

My favorite of the skin loving foods is one of the most versatile foods. Raw, sautéed, steamed, stewed. pureed, sliced, diced, shaved. Served as an appetizer, main course, or even desert. I will never complain about a carrot. One of my favorite veggies if you cannot tell. You can find this lovely root any time any place. Fresh is best when you can but frozen if you can’t. So what can a carrot do for you? Plenty! But most notably it is a rich source of beta-carotene and that converts to vitamin A and that goes to work at repairing tissue.

Seeds Of Life

4) Seeds

Last but not least of the 4 skin loving foods are the seeds of life. I would think this one would be obvious as to why I would recommend them for good skin health since I use just about all of the seed oils in the skin care I create for Très Spa. But in case you missed it… seeds are nutrient rich in essential fatty acids. They contain an alphabet of vitamins. We need fatty acids for digestion as well as healthy supple hydrated skin. My personal favorite seeds are He.mp seeds, Flax seeds, Sunflower seeds (snacking on some now), Pumpkin seeds, and Chia seeds in no particular order. 

Happy travels to you. Enjoy your celebrations with friends and family and exploring new, or rediscovering old familiar places!

P.S. You don’t have to be Vegan to eat these foods. Did you know you can eat like a vegan whenever you want?

Gluten Free Tabbouleh and It’s Raw Vegan Too!

OK I’m gonna share my favorite Raw Vegan food that happens to be gluten free as well. Gluten free Tabbouleh made with hemp seed nut meat (it’s what’s inside the seed shell). This dish is so nutritious and perfectly balanced it’s a meal on it’s own. My favorite salad that is also a condiment. I used it as a dip even. Try spreading it on celery stalks! Yumm!!!!

What Does It Have To With Skincare?

You may be scratching your head and asking “What does Gluten Free Tabbouleh have to do with skincare”. I get it, you wouldn’t think food would play a roll in nutrient rich skin care but it does. The best skincare treatment you can give yourself is in what you choose to eat and drink. How you nourish the inside of your body will have a direct (and even profound) effect on your healthy skin. By eating whole foods that are rich in vitamins and compounds our body needs to function and thrive, we are giving our skin support from the inside out. It also has one of my favorite ingredients I use in formulating skin care for Tres Spa, Hemp seeds. You can find the seeds in some of the soaps and the oil in many of the skin care formulations from face care to body oils to body scrubs all of the organic hand and body lotions and lets not forget the  organic shampoo too!

Here Is What You Need

Here are the ingredients for you to experiment with. I am estimating the measurements since I rarely ever use measuring cups or spoons in the kitchen. I need one creative outlet that allows me to compose with reckless abandon! So when I am in the kitchen, I cook with wild abandon. 🙂

• 1 cup Hemp Seeds – the taste is heady with warm earthy notes. Super rich in nutrients and excellent source of Omega fatty acids.
• 1 bun of Parsley chopped. You can use cilantro if there is no parsley around but the end resulting taste is very different. From what I understand they are both excellent to support the liver. For all your liver does for you, you want to support it any way you can so if you can’t find herbs try some dark kale!
• Onion – Now I like Spring onions ( I know I said yellow in the video but I was holding a bundle of green onions) and I use a bundle of them since they tend to be mild. Red Onion is also an excellent choice but you would only need a tablespoon or three.  Shallots? Okay if you want.
• Tomatoes! I use a cup or two – I love love love tomatoes. I always have and I crave them!! I remember when I was first diagnosed with Psoriasis – they told me not to eat them. It wasn’t until years later when I was reading research that said dig in and eat tomatoes (as well as others). I was so happy! I had cheated all along, but now I didn’t need to hide my obsession. 🙂
• 1 Lemon – fresh squeezed and oh so nice. Did you know Lemon juice is a metabolic booster?
• Pepper to taste – use what pepper you want. There’s a few to choose from out there so feel free to experiment.
• Sherpa Salt – just a little. I like to add a bit of mineral rich salt
• Apple Cider Vinegar or ACV as many of us call it. Okay I use a splash or two – depends. But I love Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar and I try to use it whenever and wherever I can. If you are not used to ACV, then go easy at first.