Hello lovely people!

These past days I've been having a lot of signs pointing me to - joy. Yes, joy. Not productivtiy, success or money, but joy.

I listened to a TED talk by Ingrid Fetell Lee about what things gave us joy, I heard Brendon Burchard (love him!) talk about how you should actually demand joy and I also heard Alexander Heyne, the author of Modern Halth Monk channel talk about manifesting and how things that got him excited (which is akin to joy) also got viral.

Ingrid Fetell Lee talked about how round objects, bright colors and multitude of things/abundance (things like baloons, bubbles, cherry blossoms, confetti) made people feel joyful. Do you agree, do these kind of thing give you joyful feelings?

Around that time I also made small pink pancakes and posted them to my Instagram. I realized they're round, brighly colored and there's a whole stack of them! oh joyful pink pancakes! They're also vegan!

So here is the recipe, in case you want to bring more joy to your table.

Vegan Pink Pancakes (without the famous pitaya powder)

350 ml plant milk of your choice⠀
60 g grated raw beet root⠀
2 tbsp maple syrup⠀
1 tbsp oil of your choice⠀
160 g flour (I used rice+all purpose)⠀
1,2 tsp baking powder⠀
1 tsp psillium husks⠀
pinch of salt⠀
pinch of vanilla powder⠀

to serve:

I mean, it is a smoothie with superfood (or just really pretty) toppings, what's not to like? I urge you to try it if you haven't yet. My oldest daughter even "invented" her own super simple smoothie bowl that she calls smoothie ice cream with oats, not very fancy, I guess, but super delicious and - what makes this mama really happy - nutritious. She just tops her smoothie with rolled oats, that's it.

Smoothie bowl recipe

In my parents’ garden grows a beautiful persimmon tree. Every autumn it is so full of persimmons, the branches almost start to break. My parents pick the persimmons while they are still hard and very bitter, they stack them in crates and gradually bring a few at a time in the kitchen so the persimmons don't all ripen at once. My father makes a green smoothie almost every day, and when there are persimmons in it, no bananas are needed - the green smoothie is creamy and smooth as ever!

Spinach is easy to find even in winter, and it will give you the green boost you need, while also providing tons of vitamin K and A, some iron, magnesium and calcium, lots of fiber, all that in like 7 calories! Crazy, right?

Kiwi, clementine, and persimmon bring in vitamin C and A to boost our immunity. That’s also why superpower barley grass is added in this winter green smoothie. But barley grass does so much more than that: it helps us detox and even fight cravings! “The presence of glutamic acid in barley grass inhibits the craving for harmful materials such as alcohol, coffee, nicotine, drugs and even sugary sweets”, according to Organic Facts.

To enhance the immunity function even further I added some spirulina powder which helps lower cholesterol, increases red blood cell count and is supposed to help control bronchial asthma. And there’s also some ginger, the number one winter ingredient, thrown in for a good measure of anti-inflammatory powers. Authority nutrition also states that “ginger extract can inhibit the growth of many different types of bacteria”, which is really great news, especially in the winter time.