Ginger Moon

There it was, staring me down. It was smaller than my hand, you’d think I wouldn’t have felt so intimidated. But I just couldn’t bring myself to take it from the shelf:  a tiny, flat can of tiny fish that my midwife and just about every expert on nutrition for a healthy pregnancy had told me I must include in my diet: sardines. The very thought of them turned my stomach as I thought, how could everyone rave about these fishy little fish?

Here’s four reasons why:

Sardines are one of the lowest-mercury fish available. They accumulate far less toxins from our polluted ocean waters than larger fish that, because of their size, carry more heavy metals in their meat. Sardines allow us to reap the benefits of fish while consuming little to no mercury.

Sardines = Safe + Oily. Oily fish have fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E and K, needed for a fetuses’ healthy development. The largest ones,  tuna and salmon, have been traditionally saved for pregnant women and couples trying to conceive. (Lox, or smoked salmon, was born out of need to preserve this fish for travel to inland communities, who offered large sums for its nutrition and flavor). But what do we do now that hundreds of years of industrial pollutants have poisoned our oceans, and led many doctors to warn us of the dangers of large fish? Simple: eat smaller oily fish. The good news is that sardines have 272 IU (International Units) of Vitamin D per 100 grams, making them perhaps the safest whole-food source available.

Sardines are Brain-Builders. You know those Omega-3, DHA and EPA supplements you’ve seen advertized in every parent and pregnancy magazine in the doctor’s waiting room? Oily fish like sardines are nature’s most abundant source of these essential fatty acids, which are the building blocks of your brain – and your baby’s. And unlike those supplements, they are fatty acids as nature intended.

Sardines are chock-full of Calcium.  We all know how crucial it is to build our baby’s bones and, as women facing the danger of osteoporosis later in life, to not deplete our own Calcium stores in the process. But for those who don’t love dairy or are lactose-intolerant, there’s only so much you can eat in a day. Enter the mighty sardine! The tiny, undetectable bones in each little fish are incredible whole-food sources of Calcium. Squeamish about those bones? Let this story set you at ease: I will never forget the day I was making a lunch of leftovers, and pulled out a can of sardines to add to the spread. After turning my back for 30 seconds, I returned to the table to find my toddler had used his little fork to pull the can over to himself and was happily eating sardines by the forkful – bones, skin and all. Six years later, he’s survived many a fall that should have led to a fracture with his bones intact.

So, now we know why we should eat sardines. The question is, HOW? Back to me, staring down that can of sardines on the grocery shelf. I’ll tell you how I was inspired to pick it up, and have never gone back.

1) Choose wisely: Get whole sardines, not skinless or boneless. I love the ones in extra virgin olive oil (stay away from canola oil). They also come in tomato sauce and other yummy varieties.

 2) Use as a condiment: Add to a big salad – one of my all-time favorite summer dishes is a salad of raw spinach, avocado, tomato and sardines. My family loves them on bread, tossed into pasta with olive oil, veggies and parmesan cheese, or as a snack right out of the can.

3) Pretend they’re canned tuna: This is where it gets easy to sneak sardines into your diet, and your family’s. Use one can tune and one can sardines in tuna fish salad. (Drain and mash the sardines before adding to the tuna). My friend has a great recipe for “tuna salad”, which her 8 and 2 year old beg for.

Mia’s Sneaky Sardine Salad:

One can whole sardines packed in olive oil

Mayonaise to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

One celery stick and one scallion, diced

A squeeze of lemon juice

Optional: honey to taste

1) In a medium bowl, mash sardines well with a fork

2) In a separate bowl, add mayonaise, salt, pepper, lemon juice and optional honey, blend well with a fork

3) Mix sardines and mayonaise mixture

4) Add celery and scallion

Serve on bread, crackers, tossed with pasta or on top of a salad.

So go grab a few cans of sardines, and try them. Find which ways you love to eat them and welcome them into your diet. Your bones, your brain and your baby will be glad you became friends with these fishy little fish.

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by Alexandra Lopez Reitzes

The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison. – Ann Wigmore

I LOVE to write for Ginger Moon´s weekly blog. I spend all week thinking about it, planning, cooking and writing. I love that it´s a space to celebrate and share knowledge about delicious, nutrient-rich recipes, reclaiming our healthcare, eating for environmental justice, and all the other beautiful things that Ginger Moon is about. I love that its a space to take part in the commons of free information-sharing that the internet has become, and hopefully will remain. But most of all I love that it is a way to celebrate our power: We truly can heal ourselves with food. Yay!

It was in this spirit that I opened my computer to write, and what was the first thing I saw? The breaking news that on Tuesday, March 26th, Congress passed something called the Monsanto Protection Act.

A bit of background

Wait just a minute, you say. Monsanto? The giant corporation that has flooded the world with GMOs, the genetically modified foods that scientists warn are hazardous to our health and the healthy development of our children, in part because there were no tests done (yup, not a single one) to determine their safety before they were introduced into our food supply? Yes, that Monsanto. The same Monsanto whose genetically engineered seeds easily cross-breed with nearby non-GMO plants, which means those farmers cannot grow new plants because of a “terminator gene” that has no purpose except to ensure that farmers can´t save their seed – as they have done for 10,000 years – and instead have no choice but to keep giving Monsanto their money, or abandon their farms. The very same Monsanto GMO seeds that have already forced hundreds of thousands of family farms into bankruptcy, off their land and, in many documented cases, to suicide – including 200,000 in India over just 10 years? Hold on, there’s no way that the US government would pass anything like that… Right?

Wrong. President Barack Obama signed a bill, HR 933, into law. Hidden within its pages was Section 735: the “Farmer Assurance Provision”. Written in collusion with Monsanto lobbyists, the provision makes it illegal for anyone to stop the sale or use of GMO seeds, even with proof that they harm people or the environment.

Why should you care? Kristin Michaelis sums it up well in her book, Beautiful Babies: Nutrition for Fertility, Pregnancy, Breastfeeding, & Baby´s First Foods: “If you live in the United States and you consume corn or soy products that are not explicitly labeled “organic” or “GMO free”, you are almost definitely eating genetically engineered food.” She explains that an estimated 80% of the food available in the average grocery store contains GMOs. The most common genetically modified crops are corn, soybeans, cottonseed, canola (rapeseed), sugar beets (the source of almost all sugar not explicitly labeled “cane sugar”) and papaya. In 2011, 94% of soybeans grown in the U.S. were genetically modified, as was 88% of the corn. So anything at all with soy or soy protein as an ingredient? GMO. Anything with corn or corn syrup? GMO.

Why we care at Ginger Moon

Ginger Moon is a mother owned cooperative, which means that all owners are mothers, and we serve women with the best local foods available during their childbearing year. So when I think about GMOs and their effect on babies’ development it goes way beyond me and my family. We have all eaten GMOs for years now. But I feel fine, you’re saying. Could this reall be such a bad thing? Here´s some of why it should matter to everyone – especially babies and you, if you’re pregnant, nursing or trying to become pregnant:  GMOs have been found in lab mice to produce stomach ulcerations, allergic reactions, liver toxicity, pre-cancerous intestinal growth, stunted growth, kidney, liver, immune-system cell and heart enzyme malfunction and, most disturbingly, infertility. And because despite this, they are already in our food supply: the U.S. government does not regulate them or require foods containing them to be labeled, so we have no way to tell when we are eating them. And because they have been around for such a  short time, no one can say what their long-term effects will be.

To date, GMOs have been banned in over 20 countries including Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, Thailand, the Philippines, Egypt, Paraguay, and Saudi Arabia to name some. Yet while many states and provinces within the U.S. have called for a ban on GMOs, or on a specific GMO crop none have succeeded. The fact that the federal government has now placed itself officially on the side of GMO producers like Monsanto is, to me, truly frightening.

So there I was, all ready to write about how we can reclaim the reproductive health and allergy-free babies of our foremothers through traditional foods, but all I could do was sit there in shock.  How dare anyone endanger the food supply of the entire human race for their own profit? How dare they sneak things into my children´s lunch and my unborn niece´s placenta with no clue of the possible consequences? Instead of celebrating our power, I felt angry and powerless.

But then I remembered that with this like with most things, if you dig a little deeper and ask around, there is hope. What gives me hope in the face of the GMO giants is that there are already many thousands of people and businesses in this country, and all over the world, who are opting out of the industrial food system and creating their own. Ginger Moon is proud to be a part of this movement. Our mission is to provide our clients with the most nutritious prepared foods possible. One way we do this is to make sure that all of our ingredients are certified organic or organic in practice and therefore free of GMOs, and are sourced from local farmers whenever possible – a practice was easy to share with others since we do it in our own homes, for our own families.

What follows are four ways that I have personally found to opt out of the industrial food system.  I’ll save the details of each for future posts, but in the meantime see what resonates for you from what I share below, and click on the links in this article to find out more. Even if you choose to change just one thing about your food choices, that´s one step towards better health and vitality for you, your family, your community and mother earth!

What you can do!

1. Check out all of Ginger Moon’s services at www.ginger-moon.com.  Email us at info@ginger-moon.com to find out more about what we offer. Take advantage of our free phone consultation or informational meeting to find out how we can help you reach your goal of a healthy, vibrant pregnancy and childbearing year.

2. Take your Great-Grandmother shopping. There are over 100 common processed food ingredients that are made from GMOs unless they are explicitly listed as organic or non-GMO. They include caramel color, xanthan gum, tocopherols (Vitamin E), soy lecithin, modified food starch, maltodextrin, ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), citric acid, corn syrup, triglycerides, glucose and fructose. Michael Pollan said, in his book The Omnivore´s Dilemma, to imagine you are with your great-grandmother any time you are going to buy or eat something. If she wouldn´t recognize it, or the unpronounceable ingredients in it, then it is not what your body is meant to eat. If you’re eating for two, choosing something processed over real food fills you up with empty calories and robs your baby of nutrients. So if you’re craving baked goods get them from a bakery, not a plastic-wrapped package made to sit without spoiling for months on a supermarket shelf. Choose real, fresh, unprocessed food for your baby, and for yourself.

3. Find a farmer. Small family farms are far more likely to use traditional farming methods that are safe for you and your baby. Through a farmer´s market or a CSA (community supported agriculture program, or “farm share”), you can find produce and dairy that is organic in practice if not in certification, grown by farmers who work diligently to protect their crops and you, the consumer, from GMOs. CSAs are great because they cut down on costs since you’re buying directly from the farmer. Both farmers markets and CSAs, or “farm shares”, can be found in towns and cities all over the world. Urban areas often have strong networks of community gardens, some of which are functioning small farms that sell to their neighbors. If none of these are options, choose produce with a five digit number beginning with the number 9 or clearly labeled organic. Not only will you avoid GMOs, but because organic farming nourishes the soil instead of stripping it, you’ll be giving your baby many more times the nutrients, and none of the synthetic chemicals sprayed on industrially farmed fruits and vegetables.

4. Have a cow. Or a lamb. Or a pig. Or a fish. Buy meat from animals that ate grass and bugs instead of GMOs and antibiotics (or, in the case of fish, are wild-caught instead of farmed), and not only will you avoid passing GMOs onto your baby, but you´ll give her the protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Omega-3 and 6 fatty acids and linoleic acid present in large amounts in pastured animals, that she needs to develop and thrive. The problem, of course, is that it costs farmers more per animal to treat them humanely, so it costs us more to buy their meat if we do so cut by cut at a butcher or supermarket. The good news is that there are small family farms raising animals this way all over the U.S., and most are thrilled to sell directly to groups of consumers. Get some friends together who want to purchase great quality, nutrient-rich meat, and use the internet and farmers markets to search in your area for a farm you like. Ask the farmer if you can purchase an animal as a group, and soon you’ll have 5-15 cuts of traditionally and humanely raised, highly nutritious meat in your freezer for a far lower cost than if you had bought it as-needed off the shelves.

I hope that some of this has been helpful to you. I hope that you are equal parts horrified and hopeful by the state of food in the U.S. today, and that you find some of the strategies I have shared to avoid GMOs and increase your family’s

health through food to be helpful. If you do just one, just once, you will have already reclaimed your right to the food you deserve!

I have cited sources for this article by inserting hyperlinks directly into the text. Any fact that seems like it should be cited is from Kristin Michaelis´ thoroughly researched book, Beautiful Babies.Today it reminded that we CAN create the changes in we need in both our family´s nutrition and our world´s food system, one baby step at a time. Thanks Kristin!

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by Alexandra Lopez Reitzes

I have a secret ingredient. I use it whenever a recipe calls for water, but unlike water it brings tons of flavor and nutrients to all my dishes.  Any guesses?

Stock!

Stock, or broth, is like magic. Put it in soups and your meal is rich, full of complex flavors, and satisfying like only a super-nutritious food can be. Add to sauces or sautées for amazing texture and taste. Use instead of water when making grains or beans, and they soak up all the nutritional goodness (so you can smile to yourself when your child declares they only want the rice, knowing there’s a hidden rainbow of vitamins, minerals, gelatin and healthy fats inside that bowl). Add a pinch of sea salt and drink it warm for healing from Winter colds and flu or digestive upset, or as a daily immune support: stock is one of the easiest ways of getting nutrients to the body.

Whether you use vegetable or meat stock, these elixirs are the essence of their ingredients: Animal stocks have minerals, gelatin and healthy fats from the marrow of the bones, which can only be extracted by a very long, slow simmer. Vegetable stocks have the essential minerals like selenium that are found in healthy soil, and are most present in the part of the veggies that – you guessed it – are in contact with the soil: the skins, tops and roots that most of us peel, chop off and throw away or put in the compost.

But stock is expensive. In my local  supermarket, a box of chicken or beef broth is about $4.25. Vegetable stock is almost impossible to find unless you choose organic, which brings your food budget up even higher.

But my secret ingredient has its own secret: Its free. I make it myself.

I consider myself somewhat of an urban homesteader. Homesteading means growing and making all that you need. Rurally, this looks like building your own house, growing your own food in a big kitchen garden, and bartering for things that you don’t make or grow on your own. Urban homesteading looks a lot different at first glance, but there are so many ways that we can be self-sustaining, even in the heart of the city. The simplest way that anyone – seriously, anyone – can be an urban homesteader is to make your own stock. My partner and I have been making a weekly pot of stock for years. Here’s how:

Recipe: Weekly Vegetable Stock

1. While cooking during the week, put all of your vegetable skins, peelings, tops and roots in an open container in the refrigerator. Any vegetable will do! In the photo above, my daughter is stirring up onion skins, garlic skins, parsley and dill stems, carrot and parsnip tops, and potato and squash peelings. Make sure scraps are not wet (instead of peeling into the sink, do it on to the counter or directly into the container).
2. When the container is full, dump it all into a large pot. Fill the container twice with cold, preferably filtered water, and add to the pot.
3. Cover, bring to a boil. Let boil for a few minutes, then reduce heat to a low simmer.
4. Simmer for as long as possible (if you’re home all day, simmer all day) or use the “slow cooker” method: bring pot to the counter, make sure the lid is nice and tight, and cover with a small blanket or towel. The stock will keep cooking itself for hours with the heat contained inside without raising your energy bill one cent.
5. Allow to cool, then strain the stock into a mason jar or container. I often use one big container and a few smaller ones, so I can use just a cup of stock without defrosting the whole thing. You can use plastic or glass, but I prefer glass for lots of reasons (that’s a whole other blog post). You can freeze for up to three months or refrigerate for up to 7 days. Make sure to leave at least a full inch of empty space in the jar if you plan on freezing.
   

Meat stocks are also a whole other blog post, with their own amazing nutritional benefits and their own secret ingredients that pull the marrow and gelatin from the bones. Stay tuned!

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by Janvieve Williams Comrie
Mother Owner at Ginger Moon Cooperative

Last week, during a routine monthly visit by my amazing midwife, she asked me how did I keep my iron level so high.  At 29 weeks pregnant, her question took me by surprise, because it is not something that I think about in regards to my own nutrition.  But she did mention that she would love to give advice to her clients about how to increase and maintain their iron levels.

It got me thinking: I do eat well, very well if I say so myself, so I never really thought of iron as part of my diet.  But I do know that it is of extreme importance during pregnancy, both for me as a woman, and for my baby’s development.  According to the website livestrong.com, ‘iron is essential for the creation of hemoglobin, the key protein in red blood cells. Red blood cells carry oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body’.  And because during pregnancy, a mother’s blood augments substantially and the baby is developing, she needs more iron that she would normally need.

So the question remained, how do I do it?

1. Well, for starters, I drink a lot of Ginger Moon’s Iron Mama Tea. I love drinking it hot and cold, and my 2 year old not only drinks it, but now demands it! This tea is specifically designed for iron supplementation. Two active ingredients, Nettle Leaf and Dandelion Leaf, are high not only in iron but a wide spectrum of vitamins and minerals essential for my health and my baby’s, including the hard-to-find Vitamin K. Another active ingredient is Red Raspberry leaf, which in addition to helping to tone the muscles of uterus , provides organic, digestible and quickly absorbable iron that is safe to take every day.
2. Kale is my beef! Before my first pregnancy I was a vegetarian for 20 years. Now I do eat some meat but I am married to a vegetarian, which means that my diet is still predominantly vegetarian. Despite the many myths about vegetarianism, I have never been anemic.  We balance our meals properly so that we are consuming all nutrients as suggested by USDA new food pyramid.  To this end, Ginger Moon designed a salad specifically with iron in mind.  Our signature dish, Marinated Kale Salad is a raw, delicious and iron-rich side, addition or entree.  Aside from being sustainable – it can grow on small spaces of land – kale has more iron per ounce than beef!
3. Beans are my staples.  I stock my cupboards with a wide variety of nuts and beans.  As I write this, I love looking at my  canisters full of chickpeas, mung, pinto, red kidney, fava and black beans, and the very iron-mighty lentil.  Every week I make a batch of beans, which we add to pasta sauces or eat them in a soup, over rice, or use them as a base for veggie burgers.  This way I can be sure  I’m consuming a lot of beans, which equals in increasing my iron levels, while also having a great variety of delicious meals.
4. Pop-away.  During both my pregnancies I have craved salty.  I know better than to buy potato chips, so I indulge in all the freshly homemade popcorn that I want.  It is low calorie and yes healthy.  Popcorn is a source of vitamin A, iron, magnesium and folate among others. Usually popcorn is associated with butter, but in my house we think brewers yeast.  It is high in iron and has a mild, subtle cheesy taste. I add flaked breyers yeast and brewer’s yeast buds to my hot popcorn. Other favorite toppings include curry, rosemary, dill and, yes, a sprinkle of salt.  Other healthy iron-rich snacks in my pantry include raisin, almonds, and pumpkin seeds.
5. Iron + iron = more iron.  Our family cooks primarily in iron skillets.  I did not believe it when I heard that iron is transferred from pot to food, but according to many studies it’s true!  Cooking moist, acidic foods, such as tomato-based spaghetti sauce, in a cast iron pot can increase iron by 100% – Yes, you can double your iron intake by cooking in iron!  In order to increase absorption of iron while cooking, simmer and stir often.
6. It is not rocket science, but it is science.  Food combinations impact how nutrients are absorbed.  It is best to pair iron-rich foods with citrus and other foods high in Vitamin C.  Grapefruit, oranges, tangerines, clementines and other citrus, while low in iron, help to transport iron and help the body to absorb it.  So when making salads, adding mandarin oranges are a huge benefit. Squeeze a bit of lime, lemon or orange in to your water bottle. Keep canned tomatoes in the house to add to sauces, stews and stir-fries. Drinking a glass of orange juice with your meals also helps ensure that you get the highest absorption of iron into your body.

These are the things that have helped me, but there are many other foods – including all types of meat – that are high in iron, which you can include into your healthy diet.  Its all about finding what will work with your needs and your family’s lifestyle.

How have you beat anemia, or prevented it?  Share your iron mama tricks by posting here, or by emailing us at info@ginger-moon.com.

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By Ginger Moon co-owner Alexandra Lopez Reitzes

Picture this: It’s your average weekday morning. On top of getting everyone ready for their day on time, you also have to figure out tonight’s dinner.

What can you possibly make for a hungry family that includes a toddler with the flu, a growth-spurting seven year old and two working parents, that won’t take hours to make or break the bank?

The answer in my house at least twice a week is: Soup!

Soup saves my life for all of these reasons:

• Soup is easy: It’s a one-pot meal, so you have less clean up and fewer dishes to do.
• Soup saves you money: It gives you a way to use up just about any fresh food or leftovers in the fridge, from veggies to meat to rice.
• Soup is a nutritionally complete meal: You can deliciously combine all the healthy fats, hearty proteins and fresh veggies you need in one bowl.
• Soup loves your body:  Its warmth and liquid consistency, whether its a broth-based soup or a thick purée like our Pumpkin, Coconut & Ginger Soup, make it one of the easiest foods to digest and assimilate nutritionally.
• Soup tricks picky kids (and adults): My daughter is one of many toddlers who will gleefully eat anything put in front of them if it is called “soup” – even if the main ingredient is the mushrooms she adamantly refused to eat the night before.
• Soup is an art, not a science: There are no rules! Craving protein? Need to use up that tomato paste? Kids begging for alphabet noodles? Go to town – it is virtually impossible to make a bad soup.

How exactly do you whip up this miracle meal? Here’s my recipe for a super nutritious, made from scratch meal: Easy Supper Soup. I’ve included the times to show you how I integrate cooking into a busy morning. (I like to prep / chop my ingredients the day or night before. If you do it while you’re cooking, tack on an additional 15 minutes).

7:00 am: Coat the bottom of a large, thick-bottomed pot with olive oil. Addsome big chunks of chopped onion and some whole cloves of garlic (skin off or on is fine, both ways are yummy). If you like meat, throw in some humanely raised bacon, a chicken neck or beef marrow bone for flavor and healthy fats. Cover, turn heat to low, and walk away.

7:15 am:  Add chopped veggies, anything you’ve got on hand. (I love throwing in the finely chopped stems of kale left over from making our Marinated Kale Salad). Stir, walk away.

7:20 am:  Add 8 cups (2 quarts) water or, for a more delicious and far more nutritious soup, chicken, beef or vegetable stock. (Check back here in two weeks for our Never Buy Stock Again recipe.) This is the moment to add those canned tomatoes or tomato paste too, if its going in. Turn heat to medium/high. Walk away until it boils.

7:30 am:  Add a cup or two of beans, tofu or meat (I like to shred leftover pieces of chicken, beef or pork) and whatever fresh or dried herbs and spices you like (This morning I used sea salt, black pepper, cumin and a laurel bay leaf, and threw in some fresh parsley that needed to get used). Clean up the counter while it comes to a boil again, then return to very low heat and simmer, stirring occasionally.

8:00 am:  When your shoes are on, the kid’s got his backpack, the baby’s in the stroller and you’ve found your phone and keys, turn off the stove. Taste the soup. If the beans or anything else aren’t done to your liking, this truly amazing trick will keep cooking them all day long without any gas or electricity: Put the pot, tightly covered, on the table or counter and wrap snugly with a towel or small blanket. In my house we call this “the slow cooker”: it prevents the high heat from escaping and literally cooks your soup slowly for hours.

As you close the front door, smell that soup-scented kitchen and smile, knowing that dinner’s just a warm-up away when you get home.

Fast forward ten long and busy hours….

6:00 pm:  You’re home! Ahhhhh. Turn on the fire under that pot, add a cup of water (two, if you plan to add noodles) and bring to a boil. Serve when hot, or add noodles and cook eight minutes. While you wait, pull some frozen peas or peas/corn/carrots out of the fridge: a small handful in my toddler’s bowl instantly cools her soup and gives her added veggies to boot.

6:15 pm:  Voila! Hang your Super Mama cape on the back of your chair and enjoy. You’ve earned it.

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by Janvieve Williams Comrie and Alexandra Lopez Reitzes

We are thrilled to announce that our Ginger Moon co-mother-owner Maricruz has given birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl: Amari Nur!

Amari Nur (which means love and light) was born on Sunday, February 24th at 9:59 am in a loving and woman-centered planned homebirth.  Mother and baby are now resting in the nurturing company of father Daniel Garcia, and brothers DJ, Ricki and Omar Hassan.

Maricruz, who is passionate about delicious, nutrient-rich foods, took very good care of herself and her dietary needs during her pregnancy.  She indulged in delicious Ginger Moon signature dishes like our Raw Marinated Kale Salad, Pumpkin Coconut Ginger Soup, and custom-blended Herbal Mama Teas (view products on Ginger Moon Product Page). She discovered that she loves making smoothies and juicing raw fruits and vegetables, a daily ritual she is excited to sustain long after her pregnancy. Her favorite, a refreshing broccoli smoothie (recipe below), kept her energy high despite a demanding full time job and long commute, while caring for her 9 year old son and going through an intensive business workshop for Ginger Moon at night.

While Maricruz tried lots of new foods over the past nine months, the most unforgettable was one she planned with the help of her Doula, Loretta Jordan. Immediately after giving birth, Maricruz enjoyed a delicious fruit smoothie with a very special ingredient: her own placenta.

Women all over the world have been consuming their placenta for millennia, a practice which science now confirms is rooted in instinctual nutrition.  According to Placentophagia: A Biobehavioral Enigma: Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, by Mark V. Kristal, placenta stimulates the formation of breast milk and contains iron and many vitamins, such as vitamin K which is highly antihemorrhagic and can speed postpartum healing. Unlike any other food available to a new mother, it contains her own hormones, which could offset the large hormonal deficit produced in the mother’s body after birth that has been linked to postpartum depression.

Interested in learning more about homebirth, raw juices and smoothies, or how you can easily prepare and benefit from your own placenta – no matter where you give birth? Email us  at info@ginger-moon.com.

Maricruz’s Green Tropical Smoothie

1 cup broccoli florets
1 banana
1 cup diced pineapple
½ cup orange juice
A few ice cubes (optional)

Blend banana, pineapple, and orange juice until smooth. Add broccoli florets one by one until they are fully blended into smoothie.  Add some ice cubes.  Enjoy!

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