Happy Lunar New Year: Year of the Goat/Sheep!

Gong Hay Fat Choi!

"In this year of the goat, may you

be proud and exalted in life,

revel in your business success,

have a smooth career path,

and be free from worries.

May you become rich,

and be happy every day!"

(Chinese New Years Greetings)

February 19, 2015 begins the year of the Goat. Goat/Sheep years include: 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003, 2015. The Goat is the 8th of the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac, which go (in order): rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.  There are many legends as to how these animals were chosen and in why in that order. One such story is called Legend of the Chinese Zodiac, and is found in the book Identities, An Anthology, published by Calvert Education. 

Goat people tend to be calm, gentle, creative and thoughtful. They are persevering and honest. Goats tend to have fewer health problems and eliminating meat from their diet, focusing instead on fresh fruits and vegetables is very healthy for them. Fresh air, trees and sunshine suit goats very well.

Recently we read In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, by Bette Bao Lord. In this book, set in 1947 (the year of the Boar and the rookie year of Jackie Robinson), a young Chinese girl leaves China for a new beginning with her parents in America. In January we see her celebrating Chinese New Year with her extended family in China, in February she travels to America by boat, in March she begins public school in Brooklyn New York, as the only Chinese girl in the school, who does not speak any English.

For the best health in the year of the goat:

• Get plenty of fresh air and exercise
• Eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits
• Acupuncture for balancing energy during the change of seasons and when symptoms appear

May the coming new year bring you joy, health and peace.

Good luck, good health and good cheer for a happy and healthy new year!

~ David Sokulski, L.Ac. and Melissa Sokulski, L.Ac.

Healthy Holidays

The holidays are upon us! And while many of us are trying to eat healthier...often cutting out sugar, wheat, dairy, meat, even cooked food (!) for health purposes, sometimes our friends and family, who we love to gather with at this time of year, are not. While it can be difficult to be around for many reasons: we may crave our old foods, or we may have given up something that we feel *everyone* should give up, I find it best to take a non-confrontation and non-judgmental attitude over the holidays, both with ourselves and our friends and family around us. Over the years I have discovered some things that help: 1. Not making a big deal about different ways I eat. I find that even if I don't make a big deal about it, other people usually do. I just (try to) smile. This is not (necessarily) the time to convert others to my lifestyle! 2. Help in food preparation. It is nice to offer to make a vegetarian gravy, for instance, and vegetarian gravies can easily be made gluten-free by subbing potato starch for flour as a thickener. 3. Offer to make or just bring a dish or two that I know I can eat. Squash stuffed with rice and veggies looks beautiful, tastes delicious, and is often a hit with vegetarians and traditional eaters. 4. A big salad is often a healthy addition to a holiday feast, and not so very unusual (though sometimes lacking) so make and bring one! The picture above is of a Raw Food Cranberry Sauce, which is delicious. It is gorgeous served in orange halves (the photo doesn't do it justice, it really is gorgeous!) Cranberries are extremely high in vitamin C and A, and full of phytonutrients. When we do not cook them all their nutrition is preserved. To make the sauce above, I simply: Juiced 3 oranges, saving the juice to add to the sauce and saving the orange halves to put the sauce in. In a high speed blender (I use my vitamix), put

• A package of fresh cranberries (washed)
• Juice from the 3 oranges
• 6-8 dates, pitted
• 1-2 Tbsp raw honey
• 1 tsp cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice

Blend and fill the orange cups. They are topped with Candied Pecans, which is simply chopped raw pecans mixed with maple syrup (not raw) and pumpkin pie spice. You can also use walnuts or even wild black walnuts if you have those around. (Here is a video of how we crack our black walnuts.) I bet everyone at the holiday table will enjoy these!! Happy Holidays! In health, David and Melissa Sokulski, L.Acs. 

Happy Memorial Day

Hope you all had a happy Memorial Day weekend. We'd like to send out our love and appreciation to all the people who have given their lives to defend our way of life, and to their families. We know a lot of our Birch Center family and friends have been touched by war and we extend our love and appreciation to you and your loved ones.

*****

Thank you all who joined us for our Wild Edibles Walk yesterday! In case you haven't seen it, we posted a recap of the walk and all the plants we saw on Food Under Foot. Please make sure you check it out! We'll schedule our next walks soon, so please stay tuned!

******

Stay tuned for posts later this week! You'll hear about

• powerful medicinal mushrooms growing wild all around us (even right here in Western PA!)
• Ways to greatly increase your vitamin D intake, like by drying shiitake mushrooms gills-up in the sun
• A serious caution about protein powders and drinks: Consumer Reports has found they contain high levels of heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury.

We'll get these and other stories to you soon!

Thanks again.

Peace,

Melissa and David Sokulski

Licensed Acupuncturists
The Birch Center for Health
(412) 381-0116

Please sign up for our monthly newsletter! We have raw recipes, information about Acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and overall wellness information. Sign up today and receive your free gift: 10 Ways to Improve Your Health Right Now. We'd love to stay in touch. Thank you!

Happy New Year! Year of the Tiger

The Chinese New Year was yesterday, February 14, 2010.

Happy New Year!

It's the year of the Tiger!

2010, 1998, 1986, 1974, 1962, 1950, 1938, 1926, 1914, 1902

Tiger years are very exciting! People born in Tiger years are lively, dynamic, compassionate, and passionate. Tigers are fearless. They pursue their dreams with impulsive, reckless abandon. They are not held back by fear or concern for material wealth or security. Tiger people are also compassionate: they love babies and care deeply for endangered, orphaned or sick animals.

The fearless Tiger sign also wards off the three main dangers to the home: fire, thieves and ghosts.

Whether you were born in a Tiger year or not, this is the year to follow your dreams! Tiger energy is in all of us, and will be stirred up this year. Uncover the dreams you had as children, you may have to search deeply and dust them off, but this is the year to recover them. If you need help remembering, I highly recommend acupuncture at The Birch Center, (I'll post an article on this in the next couple days) and the book The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron.

Tigers are also compassionate. Your compassion will also be stirred this year: what do you care deeply about? What causes are closest to your heart? This is worth giving thought to, as this year you may be able to offer time, talent or money to causes that matter most to you.

Welcome Year of the Tiger! It's going to be a great year...enjoy it to the fullest!

(Above images are from Wikimedia commons, a database of freely usable media files.)

Happy New Year!

~ Melissa and David Sokulski

Licensed Acupuncturists
The Birch Center for Health
(412) 381-0116

Please sign up for our monthly newsletter! We have raw recipes, information about Acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and overall wellness information. Sign up today and receive your free gift: 10 Ways to Improve Your Health Right Now. We'd love to stay in touch. Thank you!

Year of the Ox

Happy New Year!

Today is Chinese New Year, and this is the Year of the Ox!

We have a very special mailing due to go out in a couple of days. We love this mailing so much...if you want to be added to our mailing list, just send us an email with your name and mailing address to: BirchCenter@gmail.com and we'll add you.

Some points of interest for the upcoming year:

The Ox is a sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This bodes well for the economy...we need a "bull" market, and President Obama was born in an Ox year (1961.)

Ox people are strong leaders, eloquent speakers. Quoting from Wikipedia: "This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and modest." To read more about the Year of the Ox, visit Wikipedia here.

Happy New Year!!!

Love to all,
~ Melissa and Dave

Please sign up for our monthly email newsletter! We have raw recipes, information about Acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and overall wellness information. Thank you!

www.BirchCenter.com

Happy Chanukah! Happy Solstice!

Happy Chanukah!!! - Chanukah starts tonight at sunset: 4:57 pm.

Today is also solstice - happy winter! The solstice occurred today, Sunday December 21, at 7:04 AM in Pittsburgh

Today (Sunday) we'll be hosting a family knitting group at The Birch Center...so the office will be open from 10:30 am until about 12:30 (Steeler game is at 1!)

If you are in the south side today, please feel free to stop by...for a cup of tea and to say hello, to peruse the books we have for sale to raise money for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, or to buy a gift certificate at 10% off.

We hope you are having a great holiday season!

Love,
Melissa and Dave

Around Pittsburgh this Holiday Season

Holidays are such a great time around Pittsburgh! Here are some fun things to do:

Phipps - the winter flower show is fabulous this year! I just love the displays of animals made from all natural materials. And Santa is at Phipps again this year: Saturdays and Sundays, 11 am - 2 pm.

Holly Trolley - The Holly Trolley is free on Saturdays and Sundays with stops at Station Square, Macy's, and other places downtown. What a great way to see the all the displays of the holiday season.

The Nutcracker - at the Benedum. Wow! We saw it for the first time today and loved it! Ella could not help but dance in the aisle (luckily we went to the school matinee, and no one seemed to mind.) Our friend Erin must have had the day off today (sadly for us!) but she will be in future performances as Marie, The Snow Queen and The Sugar Plum Fairy, depending on the performance. I just loved how they made it local to Pittsburgh in so many ways (the mansion was from Shadyside, the carriage was Heinz....)

So so many other things, too. A Christmas Carol at the Byham...Chanukah begins December 21 - which is also the winter solstice - this year. There is a Raw Food Holiday Meet Up at Maggie's Mercantilein Oakland on December 14. Just so many festivities.

Please feel free to share your favorite thing to do this season in the comments! I don't want to miss anything! Thank you, and happy holidays!

The Book List

Here it is!

10+ of my favorite books. May they lead you to enlightenment, well being, and joy!

1. Meditation, An Eight Point Program by Eknath Easwaran. I had been looking for this book ever since I read another book by Easwaran: Gandhi the Man.I love this author and the Meditation book did not disappoint. And now I am reading The Bhagavad Gita (on Easwaran's recommendation.) I'm reading Eliot Deutsch's translation...but Easwaran also has a translation of the The Bhagavad Gita and his three volume The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living.
   
   
2. No Death, No Fearby Thich Nhat Hanh. Here is another author I can't get enough of.
   
   
3. Green for Lifeby Victoria Boutenko. Green Smoothies! She also wrote Raw Family: A True Story of Awakening,which is a definite page-turner about how she and her family regained their health (the four family members had: mom - obesity and heart disease, dad - crippling arthritis, sister - asthma and brother - type 1 Diabetes). After research and soul searching she threw away all the cooked food and filled the house with fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds and it is incredible how they all healed!
   
   
4. The Simple Living Guideby Janet Luhrs. This is such an inspiring book, and turned me on to Cob building, money saving principles from the book Your Money or Your Lifeby Joe Dominguez, as well as many other things.
   
   
5. The Power of Nowand A New Earthby Eckhart Tolle. Did you see the 10 part interview Oprah did with Tolle (online) about the book A New Earth? It was amazing. You can download it for free at Oprah.com.
   
   
6. The Anastasia books. These are a nine book series, written by a Russian author about a young recluse from the Siberian wilderness who lives off the earth and has amazing innate abilities - to see, heal, understand.
   
   
7. Healing With Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutritionby Paul Pitchford. Still my favorite go to handbook on all things nutrition, especially in that it has an Asian medicine perspective.
   
   
8. The Web That Has No Weaver : Understanding Chinese Medicineby Ted Kaptchuk. If you are interested in Chinese Medicine, I still think this is the first place to turn.
   
   
9. For raw food preparation, my favorites are Ani's Raw Food Kitchenby Ani Phyo and RAWvolution: Gourmet Living Cuisineby Matt Amsden.
   
   
10. Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guideby Thomas Elias and Peter Dykeman is my favorite book when I'm out foraging.
    
    
11. I need to add just one more. The Contrary Farmerby Gene Logsdon. And while I'm on the topic of back-to-the-land and grow-your-own-food, check out Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Lifeby Barbara Kingsolver. I loved both these books.
    

No-Sew Dream Pillows

In our last newsletter, I wrote an article about making dream pillows. (You can sign up to receive our monthly newsletter here.) Recently I got some feedback by my good friend (and very inspiring young woman) Bethany, about making them without sewing!

She put the herbs into a sock and tied it up - how easy!

Here are some herb mix ideas:

• Pleasant dreams (keep nightmares away) Rosemary and mint (or rosemary and lavender...lavender is more relaxing.)
  
• Remembering your dreams: Rosemary and Mugwort
  
• Creative Dreaming (kick your dreams up to the next level!) Mugwort alone, or with lavender
  
• To help sleep: lavender alone or with chamomile and/or hops
  

Another great sock (or bag) idea: to make an eye rest. Along with the herbs add some uncooked rice to the sock (or bag) and tie it.

These would make such great homemade gifts! A special touch: with the dream pillow give a blank journal for recording dreams. You could also decorate the cover of a blank journal to make it a dream journal (I did that one year.)

The eye pillow idea came from Bunny Berry of Raw Fu fame, and she just opens bags of Celestial Seasoning herb tea to fill her sock (along with the rice.) I believe she said that some kind of Orange Spice tea was her favorite.

I love all these creative ideas...just in time for the holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope you are having a wonderful day.
Enjoy the weekend...we'll be back in the office on Monday.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Love,
Dave and Melissa

Raw Thanksgiving Recipes

Thanks everyone for all your feedback and suggestions to our newsletter and blogs!

Here is a popular question we have been getting lately: What are some raw food ideas for Thanksgiving and Holiday meals?

The following are a few recipes we have put together, and are planning on having on Thanksgiving.

Butternut Squash Soup

3 cups peeled, chopped butternut squash
2 peeled chopped apples
5 pitted dates
1 cup apple juice + 1 cup water (or all water)
1 Tbsp cinnamon
ice if using a vitamix, so as not to heat soup while mixing.

Put all ingredients in blender or vitamix and blend. Serve and enjoy.

Raw Mushroom Stuffing

1/2 cup soaked sunflower seeds
1/2 cup soaked pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup soaked walnuts or pecans
2 stalks celery
2 carrots
2 kale leaves, stemmed and chopped
1/4 onion
1 clove garlic
juice of 1/2 lemon (or more to taste)
Tamari, miso or sea salt to taste
1 cup chopped mushrooms, marinated with some tamari and garlic
1 Tbsp sage
1 Tbsp thyme

Put all ingredients except mushrooms and spices in food processor and pulse until mixed. You may want to do the nuts/seeds first, pour into a bowl, and then do veggies next so they don't get overmixed. Taste and adjust seasoning. Pour into bowl and add mushrooms, sage and thyme. Mix, adjust seasoning, serve and enjoy.

Veggie patties

1/2 cup cashews
1/2 cup walnuts
1 cup chopped cauliflower
1/4 onion
1-2 cloves garlic
(Pulse above ingredients in food processor and pour in bowl)
1 carrot
1 stalk celery
2 kale leaves, stemmed and chopped
1/2 red pepper
lemon juice (1/2 lemon)
1 Tbsp miso or tamari
(Pulse these ingredients until well chopped and mixed, and add to top ingredients)

Mix, form into patties and place on dehydrator. Dehydrate at 105 degrees overnight, flipping once after about 6 hours.

Enjoy with your favorite salad, and you have quite a meal!

And for dessert:

Chocolate "Cream" Pie

1 1/2 cup pecans
3/4 cup pitted dates

Mix above in food processor and press into bottom of pie pan. This is the crust.

4 - 5 bananas
1 avocado
1/4 cup honey or agave nectar
1/4 cup cacao powder
bit of vanilla extract
pinch of sea salt

Mix in food processor and pour into the pie pan. Refrigerate until you're ready to serve.

Apple Crumble

4 apples, peeled and chopped into inch cubes
squeeze of lemon

Chop apples and place in serving bowl, squeeze lemon on top.

For crumble:

1/2 cup pecans
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup pitted dates
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch sea salt

Process in food processor, then sprinkle over apples.

Thankful Thursday

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!

Dave and I are both so thankful for such a great week at the office! We saw so many new and returning clients...just lovely! Also thank you to the people who bought their loved ones gift certificates: what a delightful gift they make! And thanks for thinking of us as well.

It was a beautiful week of falling snow here in Pittsburgh, we went skiing and sledding which was so much fun.

I am also so appreciative of friends and family, and everyone's support over the past few months.

Today was the last day of scheduled meals, and we got a yummy stir-not-fry (based on a recipe of the same name in RAWvolution: Gourmet Living Cuisine) from our good friends at pure jeevan, complete with carob-peppermint heart shaped dessert and organic fruit. Delicious.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is the start of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rat. It is also the start of the 12-year cycle, based on the lunar calendar. Here is a blurb from an article by Dr. Maoshing Ni, L.Ac., D.O.M., Ph.D. from www.acupuncture.com

February 7th, 2008 in the Chinese calendar is the first day of the Year of the Rat. The Chinese calendar is an amazingly accurate system, which not only records the time, but is also a tool for forecasting. The energetic relationship between the Five Elements, an ancient symbolic system that expresses the energy transformation in nature, and the calendar system helps one foretell what is to come so that one can be better prepared to take advantage of the opportunities and guard against potential pitfalls and health problems.
...Follow this link for more of the article.

Today is also Thankful Thursday, and we had such a nice day! First we went to a friend's house and made some pysanky eggs
and had a nice lunch. Then we went to Phipps Conservatory and met some other friends and walked around the beautiful gardens, where the plants looked so lush and green. I even had a new appreciation for the Chihuly glass exhibit that is there. It all just looked so gorgeous today. I am thankful for family, and friends, and sharing and Pittsburgh.