“Heaven Sent” Natural-Health Pioneer
Denis Ouellette & Marian Kozlik
March – April 2025 • Vol 4, No 15
A dear friend of ours went to heaven last month. Thank you, Marlenea, for 30 years of partnership and your many excellent contributions to this magazine!
I first met Marlenea when she came with her pre-teen son, now in his forties, to volunteer in erecting hefty Army tents for a big church conference we were having; this was some time in the early 1990s. Her first writing for this magazine was in 2005. Our collaborations grew from there. Many of you know I do breathwork, and she co-facilitated these seminars many times, in many locations around Montana and beyond. For several years, she wrote TWO articles in each issue of Natural Life News. She even distributed up to 25 boxes of the paper magazine around Bozeman for years, before we went full-digital at the end of 2022.
Her love of knowledge for all things natural was insatiable. Just some of her topics included: gardening and foraging, recipes, natural remedies (she became a Naturopathic Doctor), improving vision, Auriculotherapy (“reflexology for the ears”), rebounding for health (Certified Reboundologist), life and love lessons, hormonal and gut health, seasonal eating, minerals, the homeopathic cell salts, composting, fermenting, and even WWOOFing!
Our archives have these article topics (and more) posted, going back to 2017. (My deeper archives have PDFs going back another ten years.) Her own page on Natural Life News, as one of our beloved columnists, can be accessed HERE. (One of her articles is on the next page.) Check them out, and you will surely “Jumpstart Your Health!”
She would come over to my house every two months, with her books and handwritten notes, excited to hammer out her latest articles. Teaching about natural health was one of her many passions. She even did Toastmasters with me for years. Soon, all her butterflies were gone, and she became an excellent lecturer.
Marlenea, we love you, we miss you, and we wish you many happy adventures as you journey on!
—Denis Ouellette
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Marlenea, you’re a precious friend, a soul sister, garden buddy, and playmate. As I walk past our rebounder there you are jumping. In the kitchen we are preparing meals and luscious desserts. Your recipes show up randomly and I smell and taste them. Garden plots you’ve planted rest in stillness yet the moist soil is felt on these hands. My heart swells with joy as I hear your laughter and see your smiling eyes. Our embrace lasts for an eternity, for truly we are one.
—Marian Kozlik
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Sun “Kissed” & Heaven Sent
The Delicious Versatility of Citrus Peels
Feed My Sheep • Recipes for Life
Marlenea La Shomb, ND, LMT • Jumpstart Your Health
All fruits are sun-kissed, yet the citrus family comes in right at the top in terms of the needed hours of sunlight to grow an abundance of juicy fruits. Mostly eaten raw, we juice lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruits, and we zest the peels. Lemon juice is a wonderfully healthy replacement for vinegar in salad dressings. My mom’s and my favorite jam has always been orange marmalade, made from the sour-orange rind.
It wasn’t until I studied the use of food from other countries, in this case citrus, that I realized how much we throw away that other cultures find uses for. Years ago, I learned that the pith (the chewy, white part under the skin) is a main source for rutin.
Rutin is a bioflavonoid that is found in apples, buckwheat, most citrus fruits, figs, and both black and green tea. It has powerful antioxidant properties. It also helps your body produce collagen and utilize vitamin C. It is included in more than 130 therapeutic, medicinal preparations, and by itself, offers a number of health benefits, such as: Helps blood circulation, prevents blood clots, lowers cholesterol, reduces arthritis pain, and even heals bruising. [HEALTHLINE.COM]
Oriental chefs cut the peels in very fine slices, sauté them in garlic and oil, and add them to veggie dishes, and they will quickly deep-fry them until crunchy to use them as chow mein noodles. It’s delicious! Choosing to go without the oil frying, I cut my citrus peels thinly and dehydrate them at 115o, saving the nutrients that are cook/heat-sensitive. They still come out crunchy for a topping on salads.
If you’re out of lemons, you can still take the dried peels and blend them in with salad dressings or in humus for that livened, lemony flavor. Last of all, I powder the thinly sliced, dried peels in my NutriBullet personal blender. This fine powder I then add to smoothies, sauces—anything where I am looking for a hint of lemon zestiness.
Now, for the best part! Use this nutrient-rich, colorful citrus powder as a powdered-sugar substitute. Here’s my recipe: Take some heaven-sent, sun-kissed dates, remove the pits, slide in some nut butter to hold a nut inside. (I use pecans.) Now, roll them in your orange-peel powder. Oh yum!
That hint of bitter from the citrus peels, which is not as familiar to us in the West, actually helps with liver function. However, if you like things sweeter, mix a 3/4 portion of orange powder with 1/4 of coconut sugar. I tried it both ways. Give your friends and family the taste test. Try your citrus powders in raw, energy cookie balls or in baked cookies. Enjoy all the energetic vitality in your citrus peels. Always have the dried peels of lemons, limes, oranges, pink grapefruits, even when they’re out of season, right in your own cupboard—year-round!
