Tag Archives: goji berries

Femininiteea

Raw Living's new tea blend, Feminini-tea is a beautiful blend of nourishing and tonic herbs specifically designed to support women's wellbeing.

The taste is smooth, nurturing and refreshing with rose buds adding a fragrant note which blends beautifully with the greener taste of raspberry leaf, the sweetness of gojis and the earthiness of shatavari.

Medicinally this is also a well balanced formula with more astringent, tonifying herbs like raspberry and rose mixed with moister ones like the berries and roots.

It is designed to support women's health and all the herbs included have a long history of use for women in the folk medicines of the world. They can all can be safely used for men too however so you can happily share your teapot with your male friend or beloved, unless you would rather keep it all to yourself that is! Goji and damiana especially have been used for male health and damiana and shatavari are thought to boost libido in both men and women.

In Ayurvedic medicine Shatavari is considered probably the best all round tonic for women which can help balance hormones and improve energy levels. Raspberry leaf meanwhile has a long history of use in Western herbal medicine for helping to tonify the female organs as well as being rich in vitamins and minerals. And what praise we could heap upon rose! Wonderful for everyone this cooling, refreshing and heart opening herb has many gifts to offer us.

All in all I enjoy this tea immensely and it can be drunk regularly for its supportive and balancing properties though it is probably best avoided in the first months of pregnancy. Make sure you leave it to infuse in a tea pot or cafetiere for about 15 mins before drinking to ensure the benefits of the herbs are extracted. This is especially important as the formula contains roots which are tougher to extract and you can top up the pot several times before discarding the herbs to ensure you have utilised all the goodies.

Now, time to put the kettle on I think.

Femininiteea

Femininiteea is a beautiful blend of shatavari root, rasberry leaf, damiana, goji berries and whole rosebuds.

It's such a pretty combination that part of me just wanted to keep looking at it!

Being a medicinal blend, all of these herbs are included specifically to support and nurture women's health.

It's recommended that you use about a fifth of the packet for a teapot (I actually use a Cafetiere), and you can top up with water at least three times. This means that this magical mixture is very economical - always a bonus!

What I like to do with any leftover tea is to leave it cool, and then use it as the base for nut and seed milks - it super charges them!

It has a totally gorgeous, very gentle taste; you can practically feel it nourishing you as you sip away!

There's something ever so comforting about this blend...I think that teas such as this one will be incredibly helpful in the colder months.

Oh, and it goes pretty amazingly with a piece of raw chocolate cake! ;)

Heaven Mountain Goji Berries

Mmmm, goji berries. I love them.

We all know by now that they're little gems of nutrition: very high in vitamin C, and have all of the essential amino acids. They are also anti-inflammatory and immune-system boosting. Brilliant!

What's great about them is that they are equally at home in a sweet or savoury context, and are yummy enough to eat by the handful.

I didn't think that my adoration of these beauties could get any bigger...until I tried these Heaven Mountain goji berries.

Heaven indeed! Exceptionally soft, ridiculously moreish, utterly delicious. You know ho gojis tend to be quite hard and chewy, usually needing to be soaked for a bit to make them perfect? These are nothing like that! Dragon Herbs have found a way to keep the berries so juicy and plump, PLUS they are grown in pretty pristine conditions.

What I really really really love is that, to me, they seem to have so much more life in them that any other goji berry that I’ve tried. Positively bursting with goodness.

Basically, these take gojis to a whole new level! Totally different to all the ones that I have tried before. Problem is, I'm not sure how I'll be able to settle for any others!

Hi-Bath

Last night I tried and tested the sumptuous hi bath bar, cos it was hi time for a hi bath!

The website says: You are beautiful. You are loved. You are pampered…Our bath bar contains all the finest ingredients for a bath straight from heaven.

When I opened the packet I immediately wanted to eat the bath melt.  That’s not anything to be alarmed about as the main ingredient in the bar is cacao butter – for it’s antioxident rich nature and Vitamin E.  The bar also contains clary sage essential oil to promote feelings of euphoria, and geranium for a floral scent.

Pampered is certainly how I felt as I floated around (as much as you can float around in a medium-sized bath) immersed in rose petals and goji berries.  Kate’s idea to put gojis in this bath melt is ingenious!  The last ingredient is the purple corn which gives the water a lovely purple tinge for colour therapy!

It does have a lovely scent and left my body lovely and soft – the way skin should feel!  The hi bath bar is very moisturising once fully melted, so much so I was able to shave my legs just with the luxurious oils in the water – too much information eh?

For that reason I’d probably only use half the bar next time which is good because then you’re getting twice the value for your money!  The bar is very reasonably priced at £3.95 for 40g which is what you’d pay in somewhere like Lush for one of their bars but this one has all the benefits of raw, 100% natural ingredients and NO nasties!!

A word of warning though: be very careful to make sure you clean the bath properly after using it.  The last thing you’d want is your husband getting in for a shower and falling arse over tit…or maybe you would like that

Soak Bath Salts

Well not literally a broken back, and it was a few days ago now, but I had been doing back-breaking work lifting heavy loads and pushing a fully laden sack barrow up hills all day and had four more days to go of slogging.  It was also nearly that time of the lunar month for me. When my back (which I had sustained an injury to five years) ago started to ache, I thought I wouldn’t be able to carry on with the job. I thought I would give it another day and see how I felt.

When I got home, I looked at my bruised legs, filled the bath up and poured in a cup full of Soak bath salts.  They contain Epsom salts plus essential oil of orange and geranium and Abund Essence (nice touch) as well as goji berries (which you have to catch when you pull the plug hole so they don’t block up the pipes!) Also Camu Camu powder for a shot of vitamin C to the skin, and flax oil.  All in all I felt soft and smelt delectable after my bath, but the real magic came the next morning, my bad back was just a memory. I did some pilates and yoga stretches before work. I repeated the bathing in the evening and stretching in the morning routine for the full five days of work and by the last day of work felt like I could have carried on forever.  Lesson learned; I will never underestimate the power of the bath salt again.