Liver Love

    A week ago I was doing a bit of research about the liver (sounds exciting,right?) and discovered that it is an incredibly important organ! I mean, I knew it was good for something, but never cared to find out what. Basically the liver dictates your health and weight (pretty important, huh?). After your food travels through your digestive system, the nutrients from your food will enter the blood steam and travel into the liver. From here, the liver processes the nutrients in different ways-some of it will be stored to use as quick energy and the rest of it will be used for making chemicals that the body needs.
   The liver is our fat burning organ. If you want to lose weight or improve energy-make sure your liver and gallbladder are healthy! The gallbladder stores and secretes bile (produced by the liver) to aid in the digesting of fats. Gallbladder attacks (and liver irritations) are caused by caffeine, processed chocolate, eggs, dairy, and greasy/fried/fatty foods.When the liver and gallbladder are clean your metabolism and energy will improve and start burning fat- which will result in a healthy weight.
    Then there is the issue of toxins. Toxins are created when we are putting too much stress on our liver by forcing it to dry to digest too much dairy, sugar,fat,salt,alcohol, hormones,preservatives,ect.. Then on top of that, we take painkillers to cover up little aches and pains, but what we don't realize is that these are actually poisonous to our body and it's the livers job to get rid of the toxins. However, when the liver is already working over time it can't keep up and do it's job so it turns into chronic degenerative disease and weight gain.
    This is just a little glimpse of the importance of the liver, but there is so much more! Liver problems can be the cause of cellulite, "estrogen belly" (that bit of flab around your middle), sluggish metabolism, ect.. Want to learn more? I got my information here.
    Ok, I know that was a really long chunk of information to throw out you as an introduction for what I wanted to share,but it's so interesting and important! Anyway, after doing all this research I decided I wanted to clean up my liver and cuddle with it. Ok, maybe not cuddle...but I really want to learn to love it better. So I decided to try something that would make my liver smile if it could-try a vegetarian diet!
    Steven and I pretty much already ate a mostly vegetarian diet, eating meat maybe once or twice a week. So I decided to take it a step further and cut out dairy (I've been drinking almond milk myself for quite a while now) and cooked foods. That's right, I dabbled in the world of raw vegetarianism (scary).
    I learned some very cool raw vegetarian secrets, such as: nuts make just about anything you want them to,dates are very versatile, and tofu makes great pudding. Here are three of the recipes that we really enjoyed:

Power Balls
Ingredients:
-3/4 cup nuts (what you want I just used mixed nuts)
1 1/2 tsp sesame seeds
1/4 cup cocoa powder
6-8 pitted dates (depends on size)

Directions:
The beauty of this recipe is that the blender does most of the work. Just put all the ingredients in the blender and blend till its pasty and then form balls. My batch made about 13 balls.

Pudding Pie
I got this recipe here.

Ingredients:
Crust:
She suggests using 1 cup peanuts and 1 cup walnuts, but I just used 2 cups of mixed nuts.
1 cup dates
1 tablespoon peanut butter

Filling:
1 package firm tofu
2 tbs honey/maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
2 tbs cocoa
11/2 cups dark chocolate chips or broken bars

Directions:
Blend the crust ingredients together and then press into a pie pan. Then blend the filling ingredients together and pour into the crust. I put mine in the freezer for a yummy frozen pie.

Giant Peanut Butter Cups
I also got this recipe here.
Ingredients:
Crust:
1/4 cup nuts
2-3 soaked dates (soak them for several ours until they are re-hydrated)
1 tbs cocoa

Chocolate Layer:
1/2 avocado
she uses 4 soaked dates here, but I decided to use the other half of my avocado
2 tbs cocoa
2 tbs coconut oil
2 tbs cashew butter (i used peanut butter)
she uses 2 tbs agave, but according to research the stuff isn't good for you so I use maple syrup
pinch of salt

Peanut Butter Layer:
3 tbs peanut butter
she uses 2 tbs cashew butter, but i just used more peanut butter
1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
Again, super easy. Blend crust ingredients and place in the bottom of a cupcake tin. Blend chocolate layer and place on top of the crust (reserve some for the tops). Blend peanut butter layer and put it on top of the chocolate layer. Finally top it off with the rest of the chocolate layer. You can set them in the fridge for an our to set or you can freeze them for a nice frozen treat!

    Love your liver! Make some of these recipes and smile knowing that your body is applauding your choices...or...not.