New Year, New You, New Gut!

Did you know that the key to that new you, lies in the health of your gut? While we’re not huge fans of New Year's Resolutions, as they seem so temporary and often fail, we are HUGE fans of a lifestyle change. After all, that’s pretty much the only way a long lasting positive impact is going to happen.

If you’re like many, you want to get healthier in one way or another for the new year.  Did you know that having a healthy gut is the key to your weight loss, improving your mood, enhancing memory, easing your body aches and pains, eliminating brain fog, treating autoimmune diseases, boosting immunity, and pretty much any other health related New Year's goal you could have?  

In our upcoming course 'Improve Digestive Health with Herbs' we’ll talk about:

• Why a healthy gut matters to your overall health
• How you can get to a happy healthy gut
• Our favorite herbs to enhance the health of your gut
• Along the way, we’ll be sharing gut loving recipes to help you get there

Stay tuned for upcoming posts on this topic, as there's going to be a lot of great information heading your way.  For now, we wanted to share this delicious gut loving recipe to get you started. We all know that we are what we eat, so let's eat well!  

Happy New Year!  Happy New You!  Happy New Gut!

Get on your way to a happy healthy gut flora with this probiotic rich recipe. 

Turmeric, Carrot & Beet Sauerkraut! 

This recipe was adapted from Green Kitchen Stories, click the link to check them out!

Ingredients:

• 2 green Cabbages (Save the outer leaves for later in the recipe)
• 5 cups Carrots 
• 2 cups of Beets
• 1.5 TBL grated ginger
• 2 TBL minced garlic
• 2 TBL fresh grated turmeric
• 3 TBL ground turmeric
• 1 TBL caraway seeds
• 1 TBL fennel seeds
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 2 TBL Himalayan sea salt

Directions:

1. Wash the cabbage, scrub the carrots and the beets.
2. Shred the cabbage  grate the carrots and beets. 
3. Place all ingredients in large mixing bowl. Use your hands to mix and massage the blend until it starts to get soft and juicy. The vegetables should release quite a lot of juice, if not, just add some more salt.  You may want to use some rubber gloves to avoid turmeric and beet stained hands.
4. Transfer the mixture into 2 large clean jars. Pack it really tight to leave out all air, keep packing until the jar is full of veggies they're covered in juice.  It's very important to make sure the juice is covering the veggies.
5. Leave some space at the top to put the reserved outer cabbage leaves on top, this is to prevent any oxidation. Close with an air-tight lid.
6. During the fermentation process the veggies will expand and the liquid will try to come out, we put our jars in a bowl or a plastic bag for any juice that might drip from the sides.
7. Leave the jars to ferment in room temperature for 2-4 weeks, depending on room temperature, 3 weeks is usually perfect.
8. When the kraut is ready, it should be soft  but not too mushy and have a fresh, spicy, acidic flavor. Compost the cabbage leave at the top and store the jars in the fridge. We usually divide the fermented vegetables in smaller jars and hand out to friends and family or keep it in the fridge.

Tips:

• If your veggies are stinky and leaky, then place the jars in a bowl and place everything in a plastic bag and close it. Then place in a cupboard and drain the water after about 3 days.
• If the top is discolored or has a bit mold, don’t be alarmed just remove it and wipe around or just change the jars.
• Use only organic vegetables for fermenting and don’t wash or scrub too much, it can destroy the natural enzymes on the vegetables.

Looking for more help with your digestive health?