The old standby, V8 juice, can be easily recreated using fresh and lively ingredients. Tomatoes, carrots, celery, chard, green onion, parsley, cucumber, and beet, combine to make a vitalizing, cleansing, and building juice.

The celery adds plenty of natural sodium, so no salt is added (as it is in the canned variety), and the beets bring a rich, deep magenta color.

The fun thing about making our own V8, is that we can vary the amounts of the ingredients to suit our tastes.

Ingredients for Juice (Makes 4 cups)
1 and 1/2 cup pure water
5 medium size carrots
4-5 stalks celery
2 medium large tomatoes
2 stalks parsley (about 1/2 cup)
1 chard leaf
1 green onion
1/3 cucumber
1/2 large beet
Few shakes cayenne for extra heat, optional

Directions
Rinse veggies, and scrub carrots. Remove any bad spots from veggies. Chop, and put into Vitamix with water. Blend on highest speed for 60 seconds. Strain through a nut milk straining bag.
Or juice with a juicer, add water, and mix.
Drink immediately.

When the feeling of inspiration comes we try to take advantage of the extra energy that's leading us on to a better life. For us, the earmark for this energy is a feeling—an urge, a longing, a deeper understanding of what we need to do to carry us higher. Maybe it's a knowingness to get back to a program that worked before. Or perhaps we're ready to break away from the past and try something quite new.

Coming home from the farmers market, laden with amazingly fresh food, Rex and I had an intuitive response that we wanted to make some V8 juice on the spot. The idea had recently come from our friend, Ellie, who had made some herself with great results. I gathered all the ingredients, put them into the Vitamix, and strained the juice. We enjoyed a delicious drink, one that we'll want to make again and again.

For us, the moment when inspiration surges within is where the "juice" is. If we take action, no matter how large or small the act may be, it brings a greater return. The simple act of getting started makes it easier to continue the next day. A new momentum has begun. This seems to hold true for any kind of lifestyle change. The tenacity of the past and its inertia have been broken—even briefly—and this allows for something exciting to take place.

Before going raw we ate what Rex calls the "short list". This was a list of standard foods: pasta, rice, tacos, pizza, stir-fry, tofu, potatoes, salad, and smoothies. After introducing more raw foods into our diet, our short list started to grow with a dramatic influx of new and nutritious meals.

We've mentioned Alissa Cohen's, Living on Live Food DVD in a previous Healing Feast, and want to do so again. It's one of the best DVD's for really getting the feel for how easy it is to prepare and eat raw food—plus it's entertaining, funny, and educational. Once we watched this DVD we really got the hang of the rhythms of making raw food. Had we seen it ten years ago at the onset of our raw food journey the information it contains would have saved us countless hours of wondering what to do.

Rex and I have learned that the only place to begin is right where we are, in this very moment. Breath by breath, thought by thought, day by day. Choice after choice after choice. Taking baby steps or big leaps automatically builds growth and brings change. And before we know it, a new level has emerged where we can look back and marvel at how far we've come.