South of the Equator!

Hello Dear Friends!

I am writing to you while listening to a beautiful cacophony of highland birds and looking out over big yellow hibiscus flowers to a lush green valley and hills beyond.

Yes, we are in Ecuador in the gorgeous valley of Vilcabamba!

Our decision to come was both a long time coming and very swift. Long time coming as in we've been wanting to come down for a visit ever since a friend of ours told us he was buying land down here in late 2007, and very swift as in deciding to come one week and flying down here the next!

We had everything in storage accept what we needed for daily living, we didn't have a lease or mortgage to maintain, we have very good friends who live here and who just happened to have a guest house where we could stay while we got situated, we were set! All that was left was to buy a ticket, and so we went for it.

Just half a week after arriving here, we moved into a beautiful little house tucked into a garden, right next door to our dear friends and are feeling very blessed to be here.

But, phew, what a ride the past year has been! We have been on a whirlwind tour of free-style daydreaming and the pursuit of so many different possibilities it makes my head spin! Little Sophia, who is not even two yet, has already lived in 5 different houses (if you count our tent-home of last summer as a house!) and David and I have toyed with the idea of at least 10 more. You would think we were out to break a record! Now we are off on yet another adventure.

We are here until mid-September at the earliest, gently exploring and staying open to where life will take us.

Each day it feels easier and easier to be here, the sharpness of so suddenly adjusting to a new place is slowly wearing off as we build community and explore the land surrounding us.

I'll leave you with a few pictures, and for more you can always check out our Flickr site!




Baby Rain Dancing in the Rain.

Oh, and I had the most crazy amazing juice yesterday morning. For the first time in my life I tried Passion Fruit Juice, squeezed by my love David (click on the link for health benefits of this juice!) If you really want to try a high voltage juice, this one is for you, bring on the passionate juice baby!

Sending love that you are all well and juicy,
Katrina Rainoshek
www.JuiceFeasting.com

Raw Food World TV Show

We had a fun chat with the hosts of the Raw Food World TV Show the other day, Mat Monarch and Angela Stokes-Monarch....here it is!

Part One: Attuned Awareness after birth, episode #348 Today we had the pleasure in interviewing David Rainoshek. David discusses how they juicefeasted before conception and how more attuned awareness is experienced after birthing a new child.



Part Two: More on Juicefeasting w/David Rainoshek, Episode #349 Today we've got the second part of this Q & A discussion with the Rainoshek's. We go deeper into discussing Juice Feasting... Enjoy...

Happy Juicey New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR DEAR FRIENDS!!

Greetings from a wet, rainy, and winter-y west-coast island where post-Christmas finds us cozy, happy, well-fed, well-loved, and peaceful.

Our days were light on the gifts, but rich in time with family, good food, walks through the trees, and laughter.

We pulled a Christmas time favorite off the shelves after I experienced some last minute guilt and panic on December 24th about not having done any Christmas shopping! Bill McKibben's Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas is much loved by my family, and this year allowed me to fully reconnect with what is most important after I got swept away by a moment of Christmas flap.

In addition to an invitation to re-think your Christmas traditions, Hundred Dollar Holiday contains a succinct history of how it is that we came to celebrate Christmas the way we do (with a fat man in red coming down the chimney, the feasting, the tree, the gifts, etc.) The history of Christmas may surprise you, and if you already feel that it is over-commercialized, your feelings will be validated when you learn that Christmas was in part "the thin edge of the wedge by which many Americans became enmeshed in the more self-indulgent aspects of consumer spending...a crucial means of legitimizing the penetration of consumerist behavior into American society."

What we really want and need in Christmas is quite simple:

Peace, stillness, and quiet. Time with LOVED ones. An invitation to be outdoors. Community. Relationship with the Divine. Non-consumer activities with children (and adults). An outlet for human creativity in LOVE!!

If this sounds about right to you, do check out this little gem of a book, you'll love it!

As I write, we are drawing to the close of 2009. It has been a quiet evening for me. David is away in California at an event, and Sophia, myself, my mom, and my Oma celebrated the end of 2009 with four generations of women. Delight was on all of our faces as we loved and appreciated the generations before and after us! Needless to say, I was the only one left awake at midnight!

I am so excited and up-lifted about the year to come, may it be a beautiful continuation for all of us! It is coming in on a flood of JUICE in our world, as it seems that everyone is inviting in the new with a clearing of the old, cleansing with that nectar of the gods, fresh fruit and vegetable juice! Here are just a few of the juicy happenings to bring in the New Year....

~Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes-Monarch are currently Juice Feasting at the Tree of Life on all GREEN JUICES!! What a fantastic place to get juicy (Patagonia, AZ is where David and I Juice Feasted in 2008!)

David and I are going to be joining Matt and Angela via Skype on January 7th for an installment of the Raw Food World TV Show all about Juice Feasting, and answering your Juice Feasting questions! If you have a question you would like to send Angela to be asked on the 7th, please email her by January 6th at angela@rawreform.com. We always have fun with these two so do be sure to tune in and send in your questions!

~Shazzie is inspiring as many people as she can to join her on a 10 Day Juice Cleanse We were very excited to see that she Juice Feasted beautifully for 28.5 Days this past summer. "Juice feasting gives you great clarity and single-mindedness. I asked and I received, very quickly indeed." ~Shazzie

~ Sproutman (Steve Meyerowitz) is leading a 7-10 day Juice Feast for the New Year. As Steve says, "You clean your car; you clean your yard; you clean your house. Now it’s time to clean your inner house! Give your liver a break and your immune system a boost."

~And of course, David Rainoshek is leading a January Juice Feast, beginning on January 15th! There is still time to sign up for this and I can promise it will be an amazing way to bring in 2010, so be sure to check out the details and see if it calls to you!

Testimonial from one of our Autumn Juice Feasters:

Dear David
Thank you for one of the best experiences I have had to date in juicing (and I have done a great deal!) One of the reasons I decided to invest in your 1 month coached cleanse was because I wasn't sure if I could actually do 30 whole days!!. I found the daily check in calls with you held me accountable and enthusiastic and as a side benefit to weight and toxicity loss I was able to look deeper into my emotional attachments to food with the tools you discussed during the weekly group call ins. It was an truly enjoyable and effortless experience thanks to your expertise and lightheartedness.
Wishing you all the best to you and your new cleansers!

September Death
Founder/Head Chef
www.redcarpetcleanses.com

Oh so juicy! I'm sure that I haven't included NEARLY everyone who plans on getting juicy this season, so if are and would like to be included in this blog post with a link to your blog/website, let me know and I will up-date!

AND!! If a 30 Day Juice Feast sounds a little more involved than you are ready for just yet, don't forget to check out the 2010 Winter Liver/Gallbladder Flush LIVE with David Rainoshek, Elaina Love, and Chris Whitcoe. This interactive cleanse will start on January 10 and run through till January 17!

AND!! Last but not least, in THANKS and GRATITUDE to our on-line community for sharing in such a beautiful year in 2009, we would love to offer 7 memberships to www.JuiceFeasting.com! If you feel it is your time to get juicy and would love a little help along the way, please let me know by posting a comment and sharing your favorite juice recipe. If you have never made a juice in your life, just let me know what your favorite drink is (even if it is beer!) I will be randomly choosing 7 people for 30 Day Memberships, and announcing the winners on January 12!

I look forward to sharing many beautiful adventures, growth, splendor, and much love with each and every one of you in the coming year, be it in person or via blog-land!

Many blessings and oh so much JUICE for a healthy, happy, and inspirational YEAR IN 2010!

xoxoxoxox

Katrina (with David sending his love from California, and Sophia sending hers from dream land, sleeping on her Mommy's tummy in the Ergo!)

Juicers and Blenders and Snow!

Hello!

David, Sophia and I are still enjoying Texas, although it hasn't been sunny for all but about an hour! It even snowed, and Sophia has had her first snow here in Houston.

In other news, our dear friends Angela and Matt were recently in a bad car accident, and to aid themselves in speedy recovery, they both undertook a one week Juice Feast. This is from Angela Stokes-Monarch:

'Tis the season to get juicy, fa la la la la, la la la laaaaaaaa...let's jump in with:

Easy Juice Feasting with the Hurom Juicer

As many of you know, Mr. Monarch and I had a pretty intense car crash two weeks ago, in Pennsylvania. Immediately afterwards, we began a week-long Juice Feast to help expedite our healing process, which definitely seemed to help us enormously in terms of fast regeneration. At the same time as this week-long juicing session, we were travelling back from the east coast to the west coast to be back in time for my next immigration interview. Time was pressed, driving 8-12 hours a day with no real breaks, across the whole country. SO, we were EXTREMELY grateful during this juicy journey to have our new Hurom Juicer with us to handle the juicing duties. Neither of us had ever Juice Feasted with a Hurom before and it was a GREAT experience to try this out for ourselves. We had heard reports of people being able to make a GALLON of green juice in 15 minutes with this amazing new machine and now we got to try it out for ourselves ;)
If you're not familiar yet with the wondrous little Hurom, it is tagged as a 'slow juicer' and even has a picture of a snail on the packaging and YET, the name is kind of ironic, as it is the FASTEST slow-moving juicer we've ever used...Mr. M and I actually recently did a comparison video between the Green Star and the Hurom and the contrast was HUGE - see here below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_blKzX5NFdU

Juice Feasting with the Hurom was indeed FAST - we would wake up in hotel rooms, juice up a few gallons of juice each morning, store it into glass jars, pack them with ice blocks into a bag and get on the road again for the next 8-12 hours. The juicer is quiet, fast, efficient, easy to clean and the juice stays good even through to the next DAY (as we found out one day when we couldn't quite handle all the carrot/fennel/romaine juice we'd produced that day ;) If I was to do another lengthy Juice Feast again, I would definitely want to have a Hurom at my side - we LOVE it :)
We have Hurom juicers for sale HERE (we also have a 220v model that works in the UK now :)

enjoy :))))

SO much love to Angela and Matt both, we are so grateful that they are both OK and still continuing to shine their light!

We are currently using David's first little Samson juicer, the one that he used for his first ever Juice Feast in 2003. It lives here in Houston at his parent's house, and it has been making us some beautiful juices. It is quick to juice and super easy to clean as well!

We also brought our Vitamix with us, and I can tell you, you don't want to be stuck in Texas with out a Vitamix. You don't want to be stuck anywhere without a Vitamix for that matter! Still my absolute number one favorite appliance.

Sophia helping mama make the morning Green Smoothie.

Sophia has been dabbling in Green Smoothies for a few weeks now, and this morning we shared our spinach, strawberry, orange, and banana smoothie with her. She LOVES them and goes "mmmmmmMMMMMmmmmm" while she sucks away on finger-fulls of goodness.

That is all for today! May your days be merry and bright!

With much Love and Blessings,

Katrina, David, and Sophia