Eating high quality food is important for your health. But if you are on a budget and want to save money, shop smart. Not all conventionally grown produce are harmful. The following is the list of foods you really should buy organic because they are highly contaminated with pesticides. Pesticides are not only harmful to us when we eat it, they are also harmful to farm workers and our environment.

Fruits

• Apples
• Apricots
• Bananas
• Cantaloupe from Mexico
• Cherries
• Grapes
• Kiwis
• Lemons
• Limes
• Nectarines
• Peaches
• Pears
• Pineapples
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Tomatoes

Vegetables

• Carrots
• Celery
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Green Beans
• Green & Red Bell Peppers
• Hot Peppers
• Lettuce
• Potatoes
• Spinach
• Winter or Hard Squash

Others

• Baby Foods
• Milk
• Oats
• Nuts
• Rice
• Farm raised Salmon

This list gathered from the Delicious Organics Website. Visit them for more information about why each of these foods were chosen for the list.

I just turned 34! If we were in China, I would probably have to treat you all to a nice dinner. For that reason I’m glad I grew up with two cultures so I can pick and choose the best of both worlds! That being said, giving is an important practice. Giving is how we express our heart. So today, my birthday gift to all of you is the important lessons I learned from the past year. Some come from personal experiences and others are nuggets of wisdom or sparks of inspiration I thought I’d share. Enjoy.

Go out and get some sun.
Go for a walk in the sun. Go hiking and enjoy nature. I did a lot of that this past year and it’s done wonders for me. It has helped me get back on track with what’s important in my life. It has given me time to reflect and think. Nature is a wonderful teacher and a constant inspiration.

The long term benefits of sunshine are many. First and foremost, you will feel happier and more alive. You will be more active. You’ll look sexier with a tan. It’ll help you stay fit. And your body needs the sun to make vitamin D. The amount of Vitamin D you get from food sources alone is not enough. Depending on the vitamin supplements, absorbency rate can be as low as 10%. So stop wasting money and stop popping pills. Go outside. 15 minutes of mid-day sun is sufficient to make one day’s worth of Vitamin D. Vitamin D in turn promotes optimal health. It’ll reduce your risk of diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Multiple Sclerosis.

If you do plan on being in the sun an extended amount of time, use sunblock instead of sunscreen. Sunblock uses inert ingredients such as zinc and titanium oxide that washes off at the end of the day. Sunscreen contains cancer causing chemicals that are absorbed into your body.

When your car’s check engine light turns on, don’t keep driving
That’s what I did on my camping trip to Joshua Tree. The Check Engine light came on and I decided I could wait to have it checked out when I get back into the city. I kept driving. 15 miles later and my engine started smoking. I blew the gasket and cracked the radiator. It was an expensive $2800 lesson in taking care of my car.

I was very lucky. My car broke down in one of the few areas on a lonely stretch of highway that had cell phone reception. My friend Ian, whom I called for help, happened to be hanging out with his friend Charles, a AAA plus member. Using his membership allowed me to make the 100 mile, $800 towing trip back to LA, for free. Thanks Charles! Thanks Ian! I am now also a AAA plus member.

When you hear a loud humming noise while you’re driving, stop to check it out.
You’d think I would have learned from the check engine incident. I think it’s sinking in now. At the time I thought it was a plane flying overhead or that cranky old truck in the next lane. Or perhaps a UFO hovering nearby getting ready to abduct me. Nope. I drove for about 2 miles on the 10 Freeway with a flat tire before the tire started coming loose. Luckily, no accident and there was a shoulder I could pull off to. The tire was on the side that was away from the freeway so I had no trouble getting the spare in.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
‘Nuff said.

The secret to longevity is to do what makes you happy
The energy that sustains us comes from feeling good, not necessarily from eating well or sleeping well. If you look around, health nuts aren’t exactly the happiest of people. When life is about constraint, limits and “have-to’s” rather than inspiration and possibilities, life simply isn’t fun.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t eat well or sleep well or take care of your health. They are all very important. But being happy should come first. When you’re happy and balanced, eating healthy, sleeping well and taking care of your health will come naturally. When you do it the other way around, it becomes forced and you have to constantly discipline yourself.

Doing what makes you happy comes from knowing your purpose
There are two kinds of happiness: false happiness and true happiness. False happiness is doing stuff that makes you happy for the moment. They are activities that distract and numb you from the daily pain that you feel while you’re avoiding something or uncertain what your life is about. True happiness, on the other hand, comes from knowing your purpose and having it give direction to everything that you do in your life – from waking up and making your way to work to how you plan your day and how you interact with others.

There’s something calling out from deep inside each of us to live whole, inspired and fulfilled lives. We all have a purpose and it is up to each of us to discover what that is. Most of us don’t know what that is because we’re too distracted by the things we feel we “have to do” in our lives. Work. Money. Family. Career. Business. Legacy. Peer/Cultural Pressure. Looking Good. Fear.

Truth is, it doesn’t have to be a mutually antagonistic relationship. When you discover your purpose it doesn’t mean quitting your day job as a corporate executive to become a basket weaver. You may end up doing what you are already doing but now you have a sense of purpose behind it. With purpose, a mundane task like moping the floor becomes moping the floor to create a clean and light environment for others to enjoy and be inspired by. Heading to the check out counter becomes having a great interaction with your cashier, who in turn is going to share that positive energy with all the customers that come through that counter the rest of the day.

Your purpose may change and evolve over time. You may lose focus. Give yourself time for regular silent contemplation to stay connected to what your purpose is.

Acting on your purpose requires execution and planning
Once you know your purpose, you have to breath life into it through action. For example, if your purpose is to make extraordinary movies to inspire the world to end global hunger, it doesn’t just happen on its own or right away. There are steps to get there, a lot of hard work and most likely a lot of struggle and pain along the way. And you may not see the fruits of your labor in your life time. But your purpose is what it is. It is what you have to do. To do otherwise, you’re not living. You’re suffering.

Execution is what differentiates people who make things happen and people who watch things happen or wonder what happened. The world does not lack ideas or ideals. We all have tons of them. What we do lack are people who can stick to something, plan it out and make it into reality. Once you find your purpose, start working on your long term plan. Envision your life and what you want. Then take solid concrete steps, however small, to get there.

Get your love life handled
Love is one of the most beautiful experiences of being human. When we’re in love we feel completely alive and inspired. Yet it is often one of the last things in our lives that we work on. While we take endless classes, seminars and workshops for work, hobbies or self-help, we let our love life stagnate, we put up with the person we’re with or we try to convince ourselves we’re happy being single and independent.

Love is a state of being for creating a deep intimate connection not just on the physical and mental levels but also on the spiritual level. It’s not just about hot physical sex and sharing similar interests. It is about living with an open heart, becoming free from our self-imposed constraints and being inspired to live life fully.

Being love and being open to love is a lifelong practice that requires having a partner who will play with you on this higher level. Make love a priority in your life.

Further Exploration
Words To Live By: Author/physician Shigeaki Hinohara
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Intimate Communion: Awakening Your Sexual Essence by David Deida
Way of the Superior Man by David Deida
AAA Road and Travel Services

Weasel Picked Coffee Truffles
Want to taste one of the most expensive coffee beans in the world but don’t want to pay $200 a pound? Now you can try it in my Coffee and Almond truffle. These coffee truffles were made using the old fashioned Vietnamese style of brewing to give it a nice deep flavor and aroma, plus a tad of grit. Paired with Valrhona Alpaco dark chocolate from Ecuador and organic almond extract. Yum!

So why is weasel picked coffee so good? From Wikipedia:

A popular and intuitive hypothesis to justify this coffee’s reputation proposes that the beans are of superior quality before they are even ingested. At any given point during a harvest, some coffee berries are not quite ripe or overripe, while others are just right. The palm civet (weasel) evolved as an omnivore that naturally eats fruit and passes undigested material as a natural link to disperse seeds in a forest ecosystem. Where coffee plants have been introduced into their habitat, civets only forage on the most ripe berries, digest the fleshy outer layer, and later excrete the seeds eventually used for human consumption. Thus, when the fruit is at its peak, the seeds (or beans) within are equally so, with the expectation that this will come through in the taste of a freshly brewed cup.

Human Picked Yuzu Truffles
Made with Yuzu juice from Japan and dark chocolate from the Caribbean! The fruit was most likely picked by human hands. This fruit is something of a blend between a grapefruit and a mandarin orange. Sour and aromatic, it is used a lot in cooking. Ingredients: Fair-Trade & Pesticide-Free Valrhona Caraibe 66% Dark Chocolate from the Caribbean, organic heavy cream, organic butter, yuzu juice from Japan, unsweetened cocoa powder, and lots of love. Enjoy!

I love to make things. Cooking is one of my favorite ways to do it because food can be creative, spiritual and practical. Cooking is an art form in that you are only limited by your imagination in how you can bring ingredients together to make good food. The final product can inspire and delight the senses. In fact, it is the only art form that can satisfy all 5 senses. The cooking process is like a moving meditation, one that gets you connected to nature and allows your love and energy to flow into your cooking. Your guests will taste and appreciate that difference. Cooking is also practical because, at the end of the day, we all need to eat. And it is always better to eat good healthy food made with love than crap processed by a machine.

Recently I’ve been expanding my cooking into candy making. I have a sweet tooth, especially when it comes to dark chocolate. But I am very picky about quality, flavor and social responsibility. I am also tired of compromising on one of those values as I passively wait to find the right one made by someone else. So what better solution than to make my own?! Read on to learn my recipe.

Great tasting food starts with high quality ingredients. For my truffles, I start with the finest chocolate in the world made by Valrhona. Valrhona is a world renown French chocolate manufacturer founded in 1922. They produce vintage chocolates made from a single year’s harvest from a specific plantation. Valrhona’s chocolate is used by top chefs around the world and their cocoa beans are Fair Trade and, while not organic, they are grown without pesticides. Because they have a wide range of chocolates grown on their plantations in South America, the Caribbean, Oceania and Africa, I recommend you sample and find out the right one for you. For this recipe I will be using their Guanaja 70% dark chocolate, which is a blend of Criollos and Trinitaros cocoa beans from South America. It has a very chocolate taste, exceptional bittersweetness, and stays very long on the palate. It is regarded as one of their best.

Ingredients List:
10 oz Valrhona Guanaja 70% dark chocolate
8 oz Heavy Cream (hormone free or organic)
1.75 oz Organic Butter – room temperature
Unsweetened Valrhona Cocoa Powder
Melon Baller

Directions:
1. Finely chop up the chocolate and put into a large bowl or mixing bowl.
2. Put the butter in the bowl as well.
2. On a medium flame, heat up the heavy cream, stirring occasionally, and bring to a boil.
3. Pour the boiling cream onto the chocolate and butter.
4. Using a whisk, stir the mixture together until smooth. Stir vigorously but you don’t want to beat it because it will introduce unwanted air bubbles into the ganache.
5. Place bowl in the refrigerator to cool for 15 minutes. Then put into freezer for 30 – 40 minutes so the ganache becomes firm. Then remove from freezer.
6. Use your melon baller and scoop out balls of the ganache. Roll them between your hands to make the shapes smooth. Remember these are truffles and imperfections are ok. They don’t have to be perfectly round. Also, the longer you roll them for, the more that melts on your hands. You don’t want that!
7. Roll the balls in a plate of unsweetened cocoa powder (or other toppings such as nuts).
8. Place in freezer for 15 minutes to set.
9. Cover or wrap and then place in refrigerator for extended life. But eat them at room temperature!