I received an email from one of our lovely Pure Jeevan family members. Joanne is subscribed to our mailings and she received the ice cream cake recipe I had created for Jim back in January. Well, take a look at what she did with the recipe! It's LOVEly!

Hi Wendi!

I took Jim's birthday cake recipe to the next level.

Read more: Ice Cream Cake Recipe Alteration!

After leaving the windy area of Prescott Valley, AZ, Wendi and KDcat headed up to Sedona. Today is part one of their Sedona visit, focusing on their visit with raw chocolatier, Kelly Johnson. We'll pick up with Wendi's travelogue, where we last left off:

It was great driving to Sedona, since I have a fond place in my heart for this magical spot. I'll talk more about that later, though. When we arrived, went directly to a raw restaurant I remembered visiting a few years ago. The name had changed, and there was a lot more going on there.

KDcat and I placed an order for some food to go (we wanted to have a picnic, rather than be inside when there was so much beauty around), and then met the lovely Kelly Johnson. Kelly is one of the owners of the raw restaurant and he agreed to do a quick interview to tell us about the restaurant and what had changed since the last time I was in Sedona.

Read more: Wendi and KDcat visit ChocolaTree Cafe in Sedona! (Video Interview with Chocolatier Kelly Johnson)

Hi everyone!? Sorry for not posting yesterday. Things got crazy-busy on my end, and Wendi is still out of town on her tour. I know poor Deb Young is eagerly awaiting our next installment, as that's the one from Wendi and KDcat's visit to sunny L.A. (during which they had SO much fun and captured some great footage at a raw restaurant there!). However, I honestly do not have a single free moment this week. So, we'll pick up on Monday, April 5 -- by which time our raw travelers will have returned home!? Upcoming posts include:

• Los Angeles -- vids w/ Deb Young, visits to raw restauranrs
• Las Vegas -- vid interviews @ a raw restaurant there
• Arizona -- some Makin' It Monday stuff & staying w/ raw friends
• New Mexico -- visiting w/ raw friend Terri Mares & all sorts of interesting activity/video
• Oklahoma -- hanging at 105 degrees, & Wendi & Penni's raw event
• St. Louis -- visiting w/ family there & my mom as a guest Makin' It Monday chef!
• Geneseo -- visiting with family!! (Hi Cindy!)
• Chicago -- visiting with Danny & Kathy Living, and a raw event at Whole Foods

Some of those are multi-day posts, too, as we have so many interesting raw food goodies to share!? So, see you soon!

I have a need for hot food in winter to feel warm.

We hear this comment a lot from those trying to lose weight. Some joke that they thought their excess body fat would be keeping them warm, but they're still feeling cold and needing hot food in the winter months.

In the past, we've talked about reasons what's going on in the body when hot foods are consumed. Understanding this will help you realize that hot foods are actually not very good for our bodies. When we consume very hot foods, that heat is then inside our bodies, next to vital organs, while the body needs to maintain a temperature around 98.6 degrees. When we have temperatures higher than that right next to our vital organs, it must quickly work to remove that excess heat. It's the removal of this excess heat that causes us to feel warm. It's our bodies trying to stay in a healthy state. We are actually putting our bodies under stress when we do this (the same holds true for eating overly cold foods, like frozen desserts and icy drinks).

Read more: POST FOR WINTER...Hot Food In Winter

Jim here... Since we posted Wendi's two-part series on pasta-making techniques (part 1, part 2) last week, I thought I'd follow up with an additional novel use for the spiralizer -- super-delicious, blazingly fast, ultra-low-fat sweet potato chips! We've done some really great things with sweet potatoes before. (Anyone signed up as a member of the Pure Jeevan family has likely already received our prized sweet potato pancake recipe.) But, these chips are amazing because they satisfy that unmistakable urge for crunchy, healthy snacks -- and in record time. Friends, if you have a dehydrator and sweet potato on hand, you could literally be enjoying these things in under three hours. So let's get going!

As Wendi demonstrated in the videos last week, you can easily make "rounds" using the spiralizer by simply making a vertical slice throughout your vegetable prior to placing it on the spiralizer. So, if we were looking down at the sweet potato, the cut (which goes all the way down the length of the vegetable) would look like this:

Read more: Super-Delicious, Blazingly Fast, Ultra-Low-Fat Sweet Potato Chips!

We don't always announce birthdays of friends and family here. But this particular individual is an integral part of the raw food community and we want you all to meet her!

Today is the birthday of the radiantly beautiful Penni Shelton! For those of you who don't know Penni, she's an incredible woman; she's got a heart of gold and is filled with love and compassion. She has been a loving friend of Wendi and member of the Pure Jeevan family for a very long time.

Read more: Penni Shelton: Raw Food Community Builder and Supporter!

To help keep all of you inspired, we ve asked some

remarkable individuals to share their raw food stories with you. Enjoy!

Read more: My Raw Story: Pamela Reilly

I thought I'd share some recent pictures with all of you. Let me know what you think!?

Carob Peppermint Hearts

This is a recipe I created to take the place of a packaged raw cacao dessert that Jim loves. I don't like to eat cacao, because it disturbs my heart, so I use carob. A new raw friend asked for a recipe for this dessert, because she loved it so much, but I don't have one. I dump walnuts, coconut, agave, and peppermint oil into the food processor and mix until it's a consistency that can stick together. For Valentine's Day I shaped the mixture into hearts. Sweet!?

Read more: Hearts, beets, and a painting

Jim here... Recently, a commenter on this blog, Lannette, mentioned being a cardiac rehab nurse. For some reason, reading this set my wheels spinning in various directions, among them onto the topic of meat consumption in the world. To begin, I'd like to recap something I'd said in response to her:

... it *astounds* me how people joke about heart health where I work. People around here routinely return from medical exams and actually adopt rather mischievous grins when they reveal how high their bad cholesterol levels are. It's like they're saying, "I know meat and dairy are bad for me, but I'm going to keep on eating it anyway. Isn't that funny ??!!!" Ummm, no. It's sad. They laugh it off as though there could be no possible future reckoning for them. It's reminiscent, IMHO, of Dr. Viktor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning," in which he describes a psychological phenomenon he termed the "delusion of reprieve." For anyone unfamiliar w/ that, the term describes the phenomenon via which those faced with certain death (or near certain death) mentally construct some way out of it. They are deluded into believing that they'll have a reprieve from the inevitable. So, it's exactly the same to me -- these people see the heart attacks coming. They simply refuse to do anything about it, refuse to change their habits, deny what their blood work says to them. Why? Because they think "I'll be okay. Sure, this leads to heart disease in most people, but not in *me* because I'm a strong guy, I'm macho, I'm not as fat as some other person here, etc." Mostly, it's the meat, I think. It's got a powerful hold on our society...

So, today I wanted to write a little bit on the topic of meat consumption. This is an enormous issue, in my opinion. If you're reading this, it likely means you're already at least a vegetarian, so I do not need to quote you any saddening statistics on the horrors of the meat industry. In fact, before writing this, I decided to visit the PETA web site quickly in order to glean a few slaughterhouse facts. But, in no time, I became markedly depressed, so I'll largely avoid focusing on specific negative imagery here.

Read more: Thoughts on Meat

I wrote on Monday that today (Thursday), we would be discussing mint here -- specifically, harvesting some late-remaining mint from our mint bed (shown above in all its glory) and making something with it. I failed, however, to take into account that it's been getting darker earlier and earlier these days. By the time I was able to get outside and talk about mint, it was just too dark.

So, I thought I'd forego the video, and just write up some minty facts to freshen up your Thursday. To begin, I would highly encourage anyone who is new to gardening, and wants some early success, to experiment with mint (including spearmint, peppermint, and the various varietals available here and there). I can almost guarantee that you'll have some wild (and I do mean wild!) success, and will soon enjoy more mint than the law allows. It's so easily grown, and spreads around so easily (via its root system), that it would almost be considered invasive if it weren't so darned desirable and fragrant. (It's tough to walk past a mint bed without snatching up a leaf, rolling it between your fingers, and inhaling the scent deeply.)

Read more: Pure Jeevan's Minty Fresh Blog Content

A Pure Jeevan family members asks:

How do I eat dandelions? I heard they are good for me, but I tasted one and they are so bitter. I don't know how I could ever eat them, even if they are supposed to be so good for me. Can you help

First, congratulations on being so open-minded when it comes to trying new things! Too many people never move far away from their comfort zones, especially when it comes to diet, and they miss out on a lot. So, good for you to at least consider and then try dandelion greens!

Read more: Wondering Wednesday: How Do I Eat Dandelions?