Hello Friends!
As each day passes and the status quo remains the same, I find it is easy to get disheartened. But two phrases continuously resonate with me:
1) Let food be thy medicine and 2) A strong body leads to a strong mind.
Both of these mantras inspired me in this recent interview with my former journalism colleague and dear friend, Jamal Dajani. He is a popular journalist that covers middle eastern geopolitics, giving a perspective so badly needed yet missing from mainstream media. We go way back to the days at Link Media, where we worked on an international satellite show called “Mosaic, World News from the Middle East.” If you want to join his community of over 250,000 people you can click here: https://www.facebook.com/JamalDajani2
Hanging out at Jamal’s radio show called Arab Talk in San Francisco
So, back to food as medicine. Middle eastern people never really depended on pharmaceutical drugs to get them through illnesses and long winters, instead focusing on holistic treatments and the tried and true Mediterranean diet. My grandparents emphasized cold pressed olive oil (drinking an ounce a day to keep illnesses away) as well as nigella stativa, or black cumin seeds. In middle eastern medicine, there is a prevalent saying that black cumin “cures everything but death.” While that is a sweeping conclusion, I find there’s no harm in including a teaspoon of this healing black paste a day into my family’s diet. Of course a diet rich in seasonal fruits and vegetables and daily exercise is so important for a sound body and mind.
Some people might think it’s expensive to eat a whole foods based healthy diet, but in fact the opposite is true. In this interview I talk about how economical legumes and grains can form the foundation of a heart healthy diet, and how to make ground meats stretch to feed a family on a budget:
I have formed partnerships with companies I trust to give discounts to the Feast in the Middle East community!
You can get 14% off the whole store at https://ridhanaturals.com/ if you use promo code Blanche14 They sell CBD oils enriched with the Black Cumin Seed paste as well as authentic Palestinian Olive oil.
If you are an olive oil purist, you can use the promo code BlancheTV and get 10% of authentic Palestinian olive oil, which is organic, cold pressed, and harvested from ancient trees! To check it out, just go to: https://www.harvestpeace.com/
