Wild River Wellness partners with, Chef John Schaal to offer our one-of-a-kind Food Is Your Medicine programs. Spots are limited and highly sought after. Chef John specializes in locally sourced, seasonally inspired, healthy and delicious custom weekly meal prep services, dinner parties, classes and intimate catered events. He generously shared his go-to Summer Gazpacho recipe with us so we could share it with you all! 

Summer Gazpacho
Serves 6-8 as an appetizer, starter or snack
Prep time: 15 min; Chill time: 2 hours or more
 
Ingredients
~2 lbs summer tomatoes**
1 sweet red pepper** or Anaheim, seeds removed coarsely chopped
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
½ small, mild or sweet onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic
2 teaspoons sherry vinegar
½ cup mild olive oil (can use a blend of avocado, grapeseed or another neutral tasting oil as well)
Salt to taste
Optional garnish: fresh basil, drizzle of olive oil, sliced cucumber, pumpkin seeds
 
Method
Blanch or broil tomatoes to remove skin. For blanching, place tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove and transfer to an ice bath or allow to cool on a plate. Skin should slide off. To broil, place tomatoes under the broiler for about 1-2 minutes until the skin starts to split. Remove tomatoes from the broiler and remove the skins once cool. Add to a high speed blender with the pepper, cucumber, onion, and garlic. Blend at high speed until very smooth, 1-2 minutes. Add the vinegar and salt. Turn the blender to ½ speed and slowly add the olive oil, allowing to emulsify. If the consistency is thin, add up to a ¼ cup more olive oil until texture is creamy. Chill. Before serving, taste and add more salt or vinegar to your liking.

If you'd like to learn more about Chef John's services or contact him for your next stress free foodie gathering follow this link. 
 
Notes:
**Buy these veggies organic/no-spray when possible as they are higher on the EWG's Dirty Dozen list of produce, meaning they have high levels of pesticide residue when grown conventionally. Many vendors on Freshlist and at our local Farmer's Market are a great source for the produce found in this recipe. Some of our favorites who grow a variety of peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers are Bluebird Farm and A Way of Life Farm. If you can't get them organic, don't fret- soak produce (fully submerge) in a solution of 1 oz baking soda to 100 oz of water (~2 tsp baking soda/quart of water) for 15 minutes and rinse with warm water to reduce surface pesticide residue.  

Valentine's Day brings up different emotions for different people. Do you long to feel more loved and appreciated? Or maybe you're moved to shower those you cherish most with oodles of love? Read on for some of Dr. M's favorite plants, potions and practices to help magnify the love in your life- both the giving and receiving sides of the flow.

Pick #1- Hawthorne (Crataegus spp) is the Queen Of Hearts in the herb world. Her flowers, leaves and berries are all used as a warming heart tonic for physical, emotional and spiritual matters of the heart. From heartache stemming from heartbreak or disconnection from spirit, to an emotionally hardened heart finding forgiveness difficult, to heart disease including high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure and valvular disease, hawthorne has medicine to give. One of Dr. Mottola's favorite ways to take hawthorne is Hawthorne Solid Extract, Wise Woman Herbals, an extract of Hawthorne berries in glycerin and honey. Take it directly off the spoon, added to tea, smoothies, used as a spread or add it to your favorite recipes as a sweetener this season of love. Hawthorn delivers a slow acting, heart-mending medicine, with best results seen when taken long term- for 3 months or more ideally.  Over time, hawthorne can decrease the need for cardiac medications so individuals who consume hawthorne should have heart meds monitored by their prescribing physician. 

Pick #2 & #3- What better way to say I love you than the gift of massage? Whether it be a scalp massage/deep conditioning hair treatment for yourself or your love using NOW's nourishing Tranquil Rose Massage Oil, perhaps after a deliciously decadent rose petal studded, candlelit bath, to booking a massage as a gift to yourself or your love. Taking time out of your week to unplug, close your eyes, let the world fade away and receive the gift of therapeutic touch is sometimes just what the doctor ordered. In this case, that's exactly the case- Dr. Mottola encourages you to treat yourself or your honey to a massage at In Good Hands Bodywork with the fabulous Charlotte Cadieux. Write “self love” in the booking notes to receive $10.00 off your first session. Book here!

Pick #4- Aphrodisiac herbs are plants that can increase our access to pleasure by stimulating, nourishing, or helping sustain our sexual or sensual desires. They do this in a wide variety of ways depending on the herb- from dilating our blood vessels while improving oxygenation/energy flow to our heart and pelvis, to helping us relax so we feel more open to intimacy and receiving pleasure, to actually enhancing our pleasure promoting hormones and neurotransmitters. Did you know that Cacao (Theobroma cacao), the plant that gifts us chocolate and hot cocoa, whose latin name translates to 'Food of the Gods"is an herbal aphrodisiac? It stimulates the release of the neurotransmitter anandamide which takes its name from the Sanskrit word ananda, meaning "joy, bliss, delight," Dr. Mottola's next pick- Host Defense's MycoBrew Cocoa is a chocolatey drink mix that combines the pleasure promoting powers of cocoa with the neuro-protective, stress-relieving powers of Lion's Mane mushroom (Hericium erinaceus) with a touch of coconut sugar to make for a delicious love potion that is a pleasure to consume in and of itself while supporting a relaxed yet vital mind and body which may enhance your access to other pleasures! Incorporate this offering in your next date night or gathering of your beloveds. 

Pick #5-  The reduction in hormones that comes with late perimenopause and menopause can lead to vaginal changes including increased dryness and irritation that can make sex uncomfortable. What a drag! Topical, intravaginal estrogen creams/suppositories can help combat this. Talk with your doctor about prescription options or consider Dr. Mottola's next pick- Emerita's Estriol Cream which provides a locally acting topical solution that nourishes, hydrates and plumps the vagina leading to more comfortable, pleasurable sex. Best results are seen with daily application for a few weeks and ongoing application a few times a week thereafter. Please talk with your doc before starting this cream so they can advise about safety, efficacy and dosing that best fits your needs. 

We know that with time, intention and presence, this list will support you in fostering a curious, pleasurable and fun connection to your sensual self and greater access to and abundance of love in your life!  Feel free to include the above potions in your supplement order when taking advantage of our upcoming Celebration of Love Sale that starts tomorrow February 13th and runs through Valentine's Day- where we invite you to enjoy 14% off all orders placed!  It is our honor to extend this sensual gift to you!
 
Your presence in and support of our practice in the myriad ways you show it are so very appreciated! Please take advantage of our sale starting TOMORROW by placing orders directly with Colleen in ChARM, with Jessica by phone at 704-504-7901 ext 1, or in our online dispensary.

I've been noticing a pattern in myself and around me of late: to speed past, move hastily, impatiently forward, to get to the good stuff, to get to the outcome I desire, that joy, the pay-off, the thing that I say I want, a voracious Wendigo force tearing through life, like the devastating-for-so-many LA fires or Hurricane Helene floods, destroying all in their path, engulfing, consuming, erasing. But unlike the fires or the floods- products of/consequences of human activity, but distinctly elemental, this Wendigo force has forgotten it's place in the whole, serving nothing but itself, it's own insatiable hunger for more. And so it's never fed, it never "gets to the good stuff". I see the same force in the consumption promoting, self-strangling nature of the overculture. And I see the way it lands in me, in many--the systemic and the individual--the ocean and the fish. Oversized and undernourished- spiritually, physically, emotionally, psychologically.

I see all this in the context of my life, a life that largely, and certainly periodically and enduringly, provides. Even and often when the sick systems at large do not, and  worse, when they squeeze resources so tightly that most of us are pressed beyond an ability to recognize or even have choice at times,  I want to pause and to savor those meals and to create a world where more of us have more choices. There is opportunity for nourishment here. There is a choice that I can make, a choice that requires perspective, focus, intention, resource, relationship, community and a returning- returning power back to my womb, my gut, my heart, my core, my body, my home, my life. I can choose to recognize the moments, events, relationships, gestures, happenings, that are exactly what I want and need and then some. Sometimes a small snack, sometimes a grand buffet. I am being served and I can choose, even in the most unlikely and squeezed circumstances, to let those meals feed me. Through the plate of recognition, of relationship, and at the hands of slowing down, gratitude, and allowing myself to be held in community, I can choose to be nourished.  This feeding, becomes more REAL, FELT, seemingly alchemically, through the act of presencing, visioning and embodying. Feeling my uterus, the sometimes hungry hollow, the generative creator of All Things Human, and through the act of exorcising those voices, patterns, themes, paces, biases, entities, that get in the way of the meal and the nourishment it can provide, I can be fed. The defensive patterns, the critical patterns, the cultural patterns that serve the elite and leave crumbs for the rest of us, the pattern of shame especially, that tries to protect but often, ultimately starves- protecting only from a lived life, a well-fed life, from the goodness being offered, right under my nose, the meal, the elixir, the tea, that could fill my cup.

And as I sit and ponder these things, I am also reminded that a full cup is meant to feed, it's meant to pour back out, or further in when needed, to keep the waters flowing so not too much stagnates. At times the outflow is more like the trickle of an estuary or small creek, at times, more like a rushing river, but the water remains in cycles of flow, either upon the landscape- creek becoming river becoming ocean, or above and below- ocean becoming rain and snow, becoming lake and aquifer. These waters, in flow, keep us hydrated and well. And so, I think endurance naturally comes from enough-ness. Enough is a way to narrow the aperture of the outflow, or contain it for a spell all together, but not close it entirely, or contain it completely, just enough to recognize, for a bit, that the womb is well fed, and naturally ready to give life again- to share, to nourish, and nurture- in richness and gratitude, intention and love, in presencing, embodiment, in long low howls and high pitched cheeps and sultry, slow, enduring sways of the hips, and the babies that movement sometimes makes.

Enough so we may endure. Endure so we may enough.  Which sometimes looks like finding the bank, when caught in a wild current, and looking around at the river and landscape and the world we are burning, and building. A deconstructing and building anew.

It's time, it's time. We're building anew. And what do we want to be building?