Open Sesame!

When walking down the nut butter isle in Whole foods, my eye always seems to spot a peculiar jar with a woman with painted black streaks on her face. Inside the jar is jet black tahini or crushed black sesame seeds. For the past few months I have been very curious about this product, especially because we are all hummus fans in my house and tahini is one of the main ingredients. I finally got to try it and now I am a big fan of this black stuff. Not only does it taste exotic but black sesame seeds are known to be effective in combating premature gray hair-that's impressive! Black sesame seeds have been used in ancient Chinese medicine for kidney, liver, vision, and blood deficiencies. And all this time I have been eating white sesame seeds instead of black...who knew it was this good?

When I asked my daughter what it looked like she said, "the black sand beach we played at." My fabulous husband made some of the "black sand hummus" and served it in a dish that looked like the ocean. Our guests loved it and we are so happy to have found another great, healthy, organic, and raw product.

The company that makes this and other raw and delicious creations are Living Tree Community Foods. They also make organic raw alive cashew butter that is superior in taste and quality. However, it is my daughter's favorite so we don't get much of it. She eats it as a dip on cucumbers, carrots, and sandwiches (see her happy face recipe).

Another Living Tree Community Foods that I like is Pistachio Pesto. It is raw pistachios, sun dried black olives, sun dried tomatoes, herbs, spices and alive unheated, unpressed, unfiltered olive oil. I have to admit, I liked it so much that I ate the whole jar in a matter of days... with a spoon. For more of their raw and unprocessed products visit their website.

With our society eating so much packaged, processed, dead food; it's refreshing to find delicious raw alive alternatives to boost your health and maybe even eliminate some gray hairs!