Cucumber health tips and beauty secrets

With the summer here, nothing is more refreshing than cool cucumbers. Cucumbers are amazingly versatile, and in addition to delicious summer-salads, they have many unique health and beauty benefits. Here are a few of my favorites:

Glowing Skin
Add cucumber, a few drops of rose water and lime juice in a bowl and sprinkle over your face. Leave on for a few minutes, spreading it evenly. This will help clear a dull complexion and give your skin a youthful summer glow!

Health Drink
Cucumbers have so many amazing healing properties - they contain ascorbic acid which helps to reduce water retention. They also act as a cleansing agent to remove accumulated waste and toxins from our body. Many people use cucumber as a natural laxative. They and are also a great source of silica, a trace mineral that helps build our connective tissue. If you have bloating, constipation or arthritis, give cucumber juice a try.

Cleanser
Cucumbers are great for clearing the pores and reviving the skin. When combined with yogurt, it acts to gently exfoliate while removing blemishes and blocked pores. Try this natural home-made face mask :
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cucumber
• 1 tablespoon yogurt 
  

Instructions:
Puree cucumber and yogurt in a blender, apply to your face gently. Leave it on for 15-20 minutes. Rinse off with cool water or soft wash cloth.  Add a 1tbs. of honey or aloe vera juice to moisturize and soften your skin.


Hair Growth
Drinking a mixture of cucumber and carrot juice will help stimulate hair growth. Cucumbers have high levels of silicon and sulphur, which helps nourish hair, skin and nails.

Anti-inflammatory
If you have bags under your eyes, put cold cucumber slices over your closed eyes to reduce puffiness, and dark spots. Works every time!

Refresher
Add cucumber and oranges slices to a pitcher of water for a delicious and refreshing summer drink! Water has never tasted so good.

OVERALL RATING:  

Cafe Green

I first went to Cafe Green near Dupont Circle just weeks after they opened in April and immediately fell in love! This cozy new place is a cafe downstairs and sit-down restaurant upstairs. They have one of the most extensive menus of vegan and raw food in D.C. including an amazing raw chocolate cheesecake (see pic below) that is simply divine! My favorite dishes are the avocado salad, steak and cheese sandwich (which is with bbq seitan and mock meat) and their vegan sweet potato gnocchi, which is creamy, with a lemony twist. They also have tons of raw salads, fresh smoothies, coconut water and a slew of desserts. While it is a bit expensive for a cafe, the restaurant is much cheaper than other comparable raw restaurants. I was pleasantly pleased to find that raw salads and desserts at Cafe Green are in the $6-$8 range, while desserts are in the $16-$18 at Pure Food and Wine in Manhattan. The restaurant is new  and still in the process of finding its feet. In the mean time, give it a try! It's centrally located at 1513 17th St. NW. Washington, D.C.

OVERALL RATING: A

Raw Food

When I first heard about raw-food - the movement to eat more organic, uncooked unprocessed food -  I was still struggling to get fully adjusted to life as a vegan. It felt like I'd climbed a mountain only to look up, see another peak in front of me, and realize I had only reached the top of a small hill. There's an inside joke with foodies about how the world's diets keep getting more radical and strict. One day we'll all just be eating fruit!

Raw food, as I later learned, is really about getting more nutrients by eating more foods in their pure, uncooked state. Simple as that! Whether you're 20% raw of 80% raw, we eat raw foods all the time - fresh squeezed fruit juice for breakfast, a salad with lunch, sushi for dinner, an apple and nuts as a snack... With this new definition in hand, raw foodism doesn't seem nearly as daunting, and it can actually be quite fun.

© Veneka Photography, 07.23.2010. All Rights Reserved.

Imagine a a lasagna made out of mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and zucchini pasta sheets. Or  heavenly chocolate cheesecake - made out of blended organic cashews, cacao and dates.

Raw food is simply some of the most inventive and multi-layered food you'll ever taste. Restaurants are popping up everywhere, from Pure Food and Wine in NYC to Cafe Green in D.C. Until it becomes more mainstream and organic fruits and vegetables are widely available, raw food is still an expensive lifestyle.

OVERALL RATING:  A

P.S. If you'd like to buy some fresh ingredients and try out some recipes on your own, this book is amazing: Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow.






.