THE REAL FOOD MOM

Why the Raw Vegan diet "works" but is not healthy

2011-11-03T01:50:00.000-07:00

I wish I had more time to write a real article about this topic, but I have like 5 minutes so I'm going to do a quick version of my thoughts.

Vegan is super unhealthy. Way too much of a lot of the worst foods like grains and missing all the important nutrients from animals. Oh yeah, and soy! They still, even now, eat soy! oh, Lord.

Raw Vegan. People see every disease reverse when they go Raw Vegan and mistakenly think that raw food has some magical properties. You see this magical mythological thinking EVERYWHERE. I did Raw Vegan for TWO YEARS. Thankfully I came to my senses before going any farther. I would love to go through and collect examples of the ridiculous claims and statements about not cooking food from the Raw Food movement but I don't have time, and anyway that would be pretty negative in nature. But would be interesting. I got fooled for a while, many people do.

So anyway, what do I mean here. All the benefits of going Raw Food happen pretty quickly, lets say between a few days and 30 days. This is NOT due to some magical enzyme-rich food because it hasn't been cooked (and it's amazing the lengths people will go to keep that belief going!). Of course it is simply because the people who do it---if they do it 100%--- are cutting out GLUTEN. And grains, legumes, and for many of them, processed foods, soda, etc. Of course this would make anyone's disease turn around!!

But for longer than 30 days, or even longer than a few days, people are going to run into problems of missing nutrients from animals. Specifically grass fed meat, pastured chicken, pork etc, wild caught fish. Eggs, bone broth, and so on. By the way, ALL of the diseases ESPECIALLY DIABETES would be reversed simply by going on a Paleo protocol. Because it's cutting out the problematic food. (That would be a whole other post, the horribly unhealthy raw food with all its nuts and fruit and all the many health consequences of that!)

Think about it. If people just starting Paleo experience major detox effects--which they do--the exact same detox effects that Raw Food people experience and then attribute raw food to be this magical thing....Then Paleo is doing the EXACT SAME HEALING but doing it much better, because the body actually gets the nutrients it needs without a vegan break from them.

When I was still vegan, I saw the long term vegans and all the stuff they post on facebook and all that. They were beyond silly, it was really scary how their brains slowly deteriorate. The vegans who cling to this have to really make themselves blind in favor of their belief system in order not to see it. Not to mention to not notice that these people are truly unhealhy looking. Because it is just way too unhealthy to do this...the only thing is that the degeneration happens so slowly people can't put their finger on the cause of it, and it's especially problematic that their rigid belief systems won't let them see things that are so obvious anyway.

Well I've exceeded my 5 minutes so I'm going to publish this without any editing...in other words that was a ramble but so be it!

Seeing people go down the vegan road.

2011-10-23T12:29:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been seeing more people saying they are "healthy" by cutting out animal foods. To each their own (but for the record, they are confused), my main problem is when people endorse this lifestyle to parents with young children. From my own experience (of doing that to my daughter and seeing the effects) and my research, I find it to be really irresponsible advice. I don't want to feel victim-y, so I won't, but let me just put it this way: a few years ago, I listened to Will Tuttle's whole spiel and fell for his whole thing, the whole twisted world view he promotes. Now I listen to him--same lectures--and think he is spewing complete mad nonsense. I do need to take responsibility for this, and can't blame him or others for the fact that I fell for this vegan mythology. Going back further, I won't blame Swami Satchidinanda for his propaganda which convinced me to go vegetarian at age 13, causing all the health problems that I am now undoing today. Victim mentality is no bueno.

To put this in perspective, just a few months ago, I wrote this, when I was still feeling totally sympathetic to vegans. Because I was one! Now I am completely not that person. Just totally not that person, at all. I now feel pretty exasperated by vegans regurgitating their same mythologies over and over...with lots of conviction in their voice...as if there were anything to back it up. (i.e., saying children --or anyone-- will get enough of this or that nutrient without animal foods, etc...) It bothers me because I was doing that myself and I just want to go around to everyone I ever said vegan nonsense to and be like "I'm sorry but I really need to TAKE THAT BACK, um yeah, thanks." I wish I could somehow shout it from the rooftops because it's such a cringe thing to look back on.

I'm getting into negativity here (and my last post was on the negative side, too, oops)...so I'll cut this short now. I am also going to go back thru my blog and keep deleting any old silly vegan posts. I just came online to blog today because I'm seeing a bunch of Zumba ZES's (I'm a ZIN) posting on their FB and blogs how they're getting into raw food and watching "forks over knives" and "fat, sick & nearly dead". I recommend the latter movie, but it does feature Joel Fuhrman, who just a few months ago I was raving about, but who I now think is a tool. (I found a really ignorant post on his website about Weston A Price.) He still believes in the whole "saturated fat" thing! Yikes. Basically, I just want to tell these ZES's who are all gung ho about raw food..."Don't go down that path!! It's a total DEAD END!! The only reason it works is because it cuts out processed food and grains!! But it does NOT work long term!!" But you can't tell people that...we're all on our own journeys! We all gotta do what's right for us. Just everyone, please stop pretending that it's okay to feed kids a vegan diet...it's really, really NOT.

Okay back to my Paleo, Primal lifestyle!! Now that's something to get excited about! And my daughter is thriving, growing, and just a little tiny thing... HER CAVITIES ARE REMINERALIZING...yeah, from ANIMAL FOODS. I can watch it happen in front of my eyes, now. I shudder to think about how I had kept her animal food intake low, and I hope that the damage I did can be reversed. I hope parents will not be fooled by vegan propaganda. Our kids are not an experiment. I'm off to eat local sausage, chicken, beef, and make some butter or something....

Alton Brown loses a bunch of weight but is confused about how he did it.

2011-10-09T05:12:00.000-07:00

I was just scoping out some very delish steak recipes at the Food Network website, and saw an interesting sidebar. Alton Brown has made a video about his 50 pound weight loss. It is called "Live and Let Diet," and can be found here.

It's a very stunning weight loss, and actually I had the exact same weight loss (over 40 pounds) by doing the exact same thing that Alton Brown did: Cutting out desserts. Since I've lived this situation, I feel qualified to comment on his Four Lists, which are very misguided, but also understandable in this oh-so-confused day and age when it comes to nutrition.

I was an overweight vegetarian when I cut out desserts. That one simple step (stopping sugar) allowed me to lose the over 40 pounds I had been carrying around (and had been clueless to why exercise didn't make a dent in). Two years after this weight loss, I added meat--slowly at first, and now liberally--back into my daily food. Since this step, I have changed body composition in a more favorable way. Despite eating meat at almost every meal (now that I see how good it makes me feel), I don't gain a pound, I just get healthier and stronger. Every bit of the meat is from a local grassfed, pastured farm, or is wild caught seafood. I'm a complete stickler for that, and don't stray from those parameters.

I bought into that whole anti-meat propaganda for a long time, and I'll leave that for another post, but I want to comment on the pretty glaring flaws in Alton's lists. Here's a really great commentary by Jimmy Moore that covers this whole issue pretty well. I'd like to look at all of Alton Brown's four weight loss lists, one by one:

LIST ONE, EVERY DAY: Fruits, Whole Grains, Leafy Greens, Nuts, Carrots, Green Tea

Hmmm. We don't need to consume any of those every day. Not for health, or weight loss.

Fruits are certainly optional, they do have lots of phytonutrients but are, of course, fructose.

Whole grains. Hmmm. Why?? What? This is a tough one for people to get their mind around. Whole grains are very unhealthy. Of course you can still experience weight loss while eating them, as I did and Alton Brown did. But both of us were probably not too terribly metabolically deranged, and for both of us, the one step of cutting out the desserts was enough. I would like to say to Alton: People are very different. Just because the desserts thing worked for you and me, there are a lot of people for whom that would just not be enough. The hottest book in nutrition right now is Wheat Belly. No one, but no one is unharmed by gluten. Gluten is a very, very big deal...apparently Alton Brown has not heard of this? (talking way beyond just celiacs, here.) Gluten aside (please, please everyone take gluten seriously!!), all whole grains, even non gluten containing, are not a positive factor in health. One of the several antinutrients in grains is phytic acid.

Leafy Greens. Sure, they're great. After spending the last 2 years in the raw food movement...I read Victoria Boutenko's books and all the rest...I think they are slightly overrated, but good to eat. Just not necessary for weight loss in the slightest. Case in point: Someone could go on the GAPS diet, fully heal their gut, lose weight, and eat as much as they want of GAPS delicious food, and not eat leafy greens every day. To me, forcing them in every day would be a bit of overkill & wouldn't make them as enjoyable as, say, eating them when I feel like it...(what a concept!)

Nuts. Totally not necessary. I don't know what to say about this on a list of "what to include every day for weight loss" but WTF. That's all I got. WTF. Nuts are totally hard to digest. Is Alton Brown properly preparing these nuts? And even so, they're really really hard to digest!! Look, I just did raw food vegan for 2 years, and I never want to see a nut again :) I've made crackers out of nuts and seeds, pizza crusts, raw vegan bread, everything. I know nuts. Someone who is healthy can fit in a handful a day, but there are populations for whom the antinutrients in nuts are too problematic. Once we know that the phytic acid in the nuts removes minerals from our body as we digest it (not good for children!), we can seriously question how in the world this is recommended for weight loss? Oh wait, this doesn't even touch on the omega 6 content of nuts! Hello, omega 6 induced inflammation!? Not exactly recommended for weight loss!

Is Brown's motivation for including nuts daily for protein? Nuts provide a third rate protein, which doesn't even compare with meat. (Yes, I have heard the vegan arguments, and they're totally mythological). Another motivation Brown might have for adding them to the list is that they're convenient for snacking, and might help prevent someone from grabbing something less ideal, like a doughnut. That reason is the valid one, but there is definitely no need for someone to eat nuts daily to lose weight. In fact, quite the contrary.

Carrots. Again, WTF? Every day? This seems out of left field. I've never heard of this one. It just seems like he's going into some mythological realm of made up weight loss superstition. Unless, like nuts, they're something to snack on to avoid unhealthy choices. You neither need to avoid carrots for weight loss, nor to eat them every day, LOL, as recommended here.

Green Tea. Not necessary for weight loss.

Whew! Okay, LIST TWO, THREE TIMES A WEEK: Oily Fish, Yogurt, Broccoli, Sweet Potato, Avocado

Yeah, I can get behind this list. I eat all of those at least 3 times a week...if I counted, which I don't. I think it's worth noting that "yogurt" is a little vague. We could be talking pasteurized, factory farmed, GMO corn and soy eating, antibiotic, LOW FAT yogurt with crazy added ingredients, including tons of sugar! Or, raw milk from a local cow, inoculated with cultures, put in a glass jar, and let to sit in the dehydrator or other warm spot until sour. So, yeah, I don't think the first one is going to do much for weight loss. The second would be a weight loss dream come true. Both called "yogurt".

(Here comes the big WTF)

The last list is the Limit to Once a Week list.

LIST THREE: ONCE A WEEK: Red meat, Pasta, Desserts, Alcohol.

Red meat. WTF!!!
I know that there are a lot of people who believe this, as Alton Brown does, based on decades of faulty science and skewed studies. I suppose this could be a matter of debate, although in my nutrition study, the science is in and it's clear that grass fed red meat is not only a healthy food, but a very desirable source of nutrients. It seems obvious to me, so I won't spend any additional time explaining this, but will go on to the big question:

How in the world could limiting grass fed red meat to once a week be recommended for WEIGHT LOSS? Whatever your opinion is on whether we should eat red meat or not (we should), if we're talking weight loss, is there any question that eating it is not desirable? Actually, I guess for people who still believe in "artery-clogging cholesterol" maybe. But anyone can experience it for themselves, or look at others who try it, if they don't want to do that. Eat more red meat---without the bun, without the bread, without any grains with it...EVER...(sorry), and there will be weight loss. It's not even necessary to go into ketosis for this. IT'S NOT THE RED MEAT, EVERYONE!!

If I were making a to-do list for weight loss (and health), I would put "eat red meat" on the "try to eat at least 3 times a week list". No brainer.

Pasta. I see where he's going with this, once a week as a treat. That seems to work for him. I personally find it much easier to just cut it out 100%, but psychologically we all have to do what works for us.

Dessert. Same comment as for pasta.

Alcohol. I've found that craving for alcohol is really a sign showing us that we're deficient in nutrients, as explained by Julia Ross in the book The Diet Cure. (A book that cures us from dieting and gets our neurochemicals restocked!) So, as we heal, at least it's much easier to stick with one drink of alcohol per week. Since I've healed, I buy a bottle of wine about once every few months, and don't think about it otherwise, which is nice! So, yeah, I can get behind this recommendation by Alton Brown, but alcohol is especially hard to limit to one serving, as we basically, um..lose our judgement as a result of drinking it, ya know?

Fourth list...

NEVER! Fast Food, Soda, Processed meals/frozen dinners, Canned soup, “Diet” anything

Good list, I can definitely get behind Alton Brown there.

PLUS: Eat breakfast every day, no exceptions. Nice!! Crucial for weight loss. Wise Traditions Spring 2011 had a great big article on the importance of breakfast. Good stuff. BUT...again. There is a big difference between my breakfast of local eggs, local sausage, baked sweet potato covered in local grassfed butter and homemade sour cream, contrasted with some kind of grain and fruit based breakfast, when it comes to weight loss. You could follow Alton Brown's guidelines and have bread and fruit for breakfast, and that would be a whole different story for both your insulin levels (bread spikes it even higher than fruit!), your energy throughout the morning, and of course, the overall weight loss picture. Not to mention that you'd be hungry again in an hour. There should be a qualification about what kind of breakfast encourages weight loss, such as breakfast including animal protein and/or eggs; a traditional fat such as avocado, full fat dairy, or coconut; and optionally a side of fruit and/or vegetable.

So, how do people lose weight? NOT CUTTING CALORIES is an important start. Besides cutting out the junk (processed food, all grains, and sugar), adding nutrient dense food is key. The Paleo diet, going Primal, for those who like cheese with their Paleo :), or Weston A. Price with its "properly prepared" grains (better to just avoid them) would help just about anyone. However, we're all different. If you look at it from a "gut's-eye perspective" (did I just coin a new phrase? yeahh!!) and get down into the villi, the microvilli, the enterocytes, and the gut lining....really get into what's going on there and see what's happening from that perspective, we can see what needs to be done. For someone who needs gut healing first and foremost, the GAPS protocol would be a great place to start.

I'm tempted to take Alton Brown's ingredients and put them into my own list for weight loss. With a few of my own ingredients. There's a lot of shuffling around to do! Let's see...

DAILY:

- Animal Protein - grass fed beef, pastured chicken, pigs, etc, or wild caught seafood
- Bone Broth
- Traditional Fats- full fat coconut oil, homemade lard, tallow, bacon grease, full fat dairy unless intolerant or weight loss not working, avocado
- Vegetables: Broccoli, Sweet Potato, Carrots, Leafy Greens--can these 4 items from his lists just be combined into "vegetables"? Makes a bit more sense :)

ONCE a week, or try to limit:

- Nuts
- Alcohol
- Beans

NEVER:

- Whole Grains
- Pasta
- Dessert
- Soy
- Fast Food
- Soda
- Processed meals/frozen dinners
- Canned soup
- “Diet” anything

There you go! I guarantee that a large number of people who eat according to Alton Brown's lists would not see weight loss or long term improved health. I feel lucky that weight loss for me was as simple as it was, but I'm not so naive to think that such simplistic changes as cutting refined sugar (but leaving in grains and cutting down meat) would work for most people. Other important factors for weight loss/maintenance are getting more sleep and less stress, and ironically, not really exercise. (Bye, bye "Eat Less, Exercise More!!")

Broth Veggie Soup

2011-09-25T14:58:00.001-07:00

Exploring Paleo

2011-09-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Just came across this page while researching paleo:

http://board.crossfit.com/showthread.php?t=69603

This is very freaking funny. Have been listening to podcasts...am obsessed with Robb Wolf's podcast, but also listening to tons of Healthy Skeptic podcast and Underground Wellness (the latter two also combined with some WAP). All are the best, but I'm totally addicted to Robb Wolf right now! The above thread might not make sense without having heard some Robb Wolf or some familiarity with the lifestyle :)

A Former Vegan's Sunday morning thoughts

2011-09-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Ahh, just had a delicious breakfast of plantains cooked in lard (that I made myself--local Polyface pigs) and covered in Himalayan salt and sour cream (that I made myself-local grass fed cows). This was freaking delicious (duh!) but as I'm getting the hang of all this, I see that if I had had this as a side dish---rather than a main dish--with some meat, I would feel better and much more energy with which to start the day. My only barrier to adding more meat is habit and lack of knowledge about preparation. I still have lots to learn about cooking it, and am just not in the habit of buying enough of it yet. But oh when I eat it, it is SO nice to have energy!! And digestive ease!! This feedback loop of cause and effect will surely cause me to buy and fix more.

As I embrace Paleo, Weston A Price, and hopefully GAPS soon for some good healing...It seems like the whole world is going vegan/vegetarian en masse. It seems inescapable in a way I didn't notice while vegan/veg. Which is great, to each their own journey, live it up. This blog used to be called "RAW FOOD TRANSITIONS: Always Vegan, Always Sugar Free". Like until 5 minutes ago! Oh, and did I mention in this post that I was vegetarian for TWENTY FIVE YEARS!?? This actually used to be my vision board...to go to Tree Of Life raw vegan retreat center in Arizona!

This is a vision board, still sitting in the middle of my living room. In fact, today, Tree of Life just put out a facebook post "Dr. Cousens' free lecture starts NOW! Why Organic, Local Eggs and Dairy are Not a Health Food"! I would have listened, but couldn't due to the time, but no matter what his reasoning, I'm really not interested anyway. Especially as a mom, I am definitely feeding my child eggs and always did, even when I was vegan. And although dairy is questionable....egg yolks are most DEFINITELY a health food. (Although LOL you would think I would learn by now not to attach strongly to anything when it comes to nutrition. Actually, it seems from my studying, that people with autoimmune conditions, which result from a leaky, or permeable gut lining, do need to cut out eggs until that is healed.)

Being a former vegan is way different than living the life of most people who have never gone veg. I do everything differently; that is plain to me any time I go out & see people eating, anywhere. (example--I would never eat in a restaurant..I wouldn't know the farm the animals came from OR what kind of cooking oil was used!) I think vegans initially have great reasons, well actually-- let me change that to "motivations", for their choice. But Lierre Keith pretty well explains why although purely motivated, the reasons are so faulty that the entire paradigm is not at all "reasonable". So, although going vegan makes sense at the time, the quicker one can move out and through it, the better for their health (and the environment, provided their choices are local & sustainable after stopping).

first time making lard

2011-09-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

Now that it's all done (whew)... I can say that making lard is the easiest thing in the world, and so worth it! But it was intimidating the first time. Actually the first time I totally messed it up. Tried it again, and the second time I figured it out! Learning curve :)

I bought the pork fat from Polyface, and my only instructions were from here on their website. It started out just fine:

The problem I ran into was that these instructions said to continue cooking until the cracklings sink(by the way my husband calls them chicharrones and is very happy about them!) My cracklings never sank. So the first time, I turned up the heat (too much!) and ended up with a burnt situation, like this:

I realized it was wrong, no matter how dark & burned they got, they just never sank. Hmmm.. So I tried again, & it turned out beautifully. Low heat all along, lots of stirring, and stopped before they burned. Here's the first attempt (left) next to the good second batch (right):

I've been using it to cook with...morning eggs, apples with cinnamon, sausages...and it's beautiful. Love it!

BEST thing about home made lard, besides it being super healthy: this is WAY CHEAPER than coconut oil! Oh yeah, and way local-er. :)

Speaking of pigs, we went to a pig farm yesterday, actually the coolest pig farm of all time (too bad I didn't take pictures). Like 150 pigs on 75 acres, mostly woods. What an incredible tour. Thanks to Meet Yer Eats farm tour for that opportunity, here's their promo. The pig farmer gave an amazing tour all around the place. WOW, worth the drive. I think it was the farthest away farm in Meet Yer Eats, but I HAD to see the pigs!

The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure

2011-08-13T17:43:00.000-07:00

First, here are some pancakes I'm experimenting on this week...sugar free of COURSE, and gluten free. They have coconut flour, egg yolks, ripe bananas, buttermilk, cinnamon, and nutmeg. And coconut oil for the pan. They're a project in progress, but they're edible. Unfortunately they don't really taste good, but they're edible. Working on it. And they do smell rather of Christmas, here in August. Maybe by the time Christmas comes around I can make my daughter a Little House-inspired pancake man, like Ma.

I'm taking a break from all my nonfiction study to read The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure...well, I guess it's nonfiction, too, but it's just so much FUN compared to my usual nutrition books. Nutrition is my passion, it does feed my soul and all, but it's nice to read a funny-as-hell page turner for a break. This book is AWESOME. Little House fans: Go on amazon and view the first page of the book. Anyone who is connected to the Little House (abbreviated LHOP, I've learned) books has just got to be hooked from that first page! This Wendy McClure made me laugh through the whole book, and I love what a crazy obsessed fan she is! I love the way she researched and read up on every angle of the history of Laura. I mean every angle. It actually made me jealous, being a mom, of someone who could actually have the time to do that...we moms usually have less than 2 minutes to follow a train of thought before getting interrupted...in fact this simple blog post will likely take me hours to get done! That's the beauty of it though, McClure did all the research for us, and delivers it all to us, from the 19th century land dispute legal mess, to the whole life story of Rose Wilder, to the last TV episode of Little House where the whole town gets blown up. And she is soooo funny, granted she does have some excellent material that she's working with.

McClure visits all the historical Laura sites, sprinkled all over the map, with her boyfriend, who comes up with as many funny one-liners as she does. It totally makes me want to travel with them both :)

Somewhere in the beginning, page 17 actually, McClure talks about my favorite part of Big Woods, the "now is now" ending. I don't know why, but every time I get to that last page, while reading aloud with my daughter, I get choked up, and get a lump in my throat, but try to play it off and read that part through my croaking voice. I never can put my finger on what it is that gets me about that last page, but I loved that McClure went into detail about her feelings about it, too. I knew straight away that I would love this book.

My daughter is four. We have read mostly the little Little House books, which are great.

And we've read Little House in the Big Woods , but that's the only book of the series I've read. After reading McClure's review of Little House on the Prairie, I think we'll skip that one for now and try Farmer Boy next. Here's our copy of Big Woods, getting some wear and tear; my daughter does LOVE it. Next to the brand new copy of Little House on the Prairie, which will have to wait a while.

Even though The Wilder Life is my light summer reading, I can't help but compare everything in the book to nutrition. It's really inevitable, nutrition involves not only science, but anthropology (look at Weston A Price!!), history, spirituality (look at the raw food movement!), western medicine, holistic medicine, politics! oh so much politics...on and on...so that whatever I see or read resonates in the context of my health-studying mind.

For starters, early on in Chapter 3, McClure starts churning butter and making sourdough. For anyone who follows the Weston A Price foundation, this is pretty basic stuff for us. When I started making butter, I was happy to find that you can make butter without buying any fancy equipment. I use a jar. Wendy McClure, though, was actually not coming from a practical nutrition standpoint, but rather from a "Laura World" standpoint, so she ordered a real wooden churn. Further proof that McClure isn't coming from a nutrition standpoint is that she buys regular supermarket cream to make her butter...pasteurized, and imagine what those cows were eating, what they were injected with, and what their lives are like! whew...anyway, at the end she starts to realize that the reason her butter didn't taste especially different was this:

"Maybe it had something to do with the cream, which was supermarket cream, after all, but for the most part, butter was butter."

AHHHH (scream!!) Butter is most definitely NOT butter! The butter I make is from local, GRASS FED cows. My butter has ridiculous nutrients in it, like CLA, D, A and K2. These are, like, the MOST IMPORTANT nutrients we all need!! Her pasteurized, pesticide, antibiotic, GMO-corn-and-soy-eating cream didn't have ANY of these nutrients, of course! But then again, The Wilder Life is not a nutrition book. Just an example of how my mind is in my studies, even while I'm on break :) By the way, I will clarify that I'm not in any nutrition program, I just study nutrition. That's what I do for fun. At least I'm nourished :)

Next example, Chapter 7: The "end of days" people she runs into and camps next to at a local farm homestead open house weekend. She and her boyfriend thought these people were totally wacky. That's when I realized that author Wendy McClure would probably not like me too much, and would think I was wayyy too wacky too LOL. What she didn't realize is that there's a huuuuge group of people who are in the exact same preparedness-mode as the Wisconsin church group she ran into, but not in a religious way like them. They're called raw foodists :) ...we all know exactly what the church people meant when they say "what with all that's happening"...Monsanto, GMOs, the pharmaceutical industry, Fukushima, chemtrails, underground natural gas drilling, on and on...we know exactly what's happening and are prepared. We don't call it "end times" or think there is burning hellfire involved, though. But probably, we're just as foreign to McClure as the members of the New Life Testimony Revelation Ministry.  And, I wouldn't have minded a bit hanging out with the church people...they had so much in common with raw foodists! They were out foraging for wild salad greens and making nettle tea, of which I have a pot on the stove right now! McClure thought the foraging and herbalism was odd...but foraging is everywhere! It's hugely popular among secular people, too.  So it's all a great example of why Law of Allowing is a great thing.  Sometimes there's more than meets the eye. I'm the hugest fan of Daniel Vitalis, whose company is "Surthrival"...because the way to face the future is to thrive in our survival, no matter what happens.

Next up, another little health example. One of the nonfiction books I'm taking a break from for my light-reading-break is Melatonin.

This is another awesome book, but all science, not much of a party. One of those books that would help all who read it though, because melatonin is the only hormone that is also an antioxidant. Get it? That is HUGE. That is how we prevent cancer. But, you have to know how to make sure you don't mess up your melatonin production, or else you will miss your antioxidant activity each night! People who are in artificial light or near EMFs are missing their antioxidant activity, and melatonin is POWERFUL. People whose internal clock is off are missing their melatonin. There are a lot of ways to mess up one's melatonin production. Long story, and there's a lot to it, but this is super important for staying healthy and preventing serious disease. Imagine if a person was sleeping near a high EMF source, could be anything, but like within a few feet of a computer or dishwasher (EMFs go thru walls too)...that means that night after night, they would have no melatonin production. Over time, without the body's antioxidant, imagine the amount of cancer or other diseases which could develop.

Anyway, in my fabulous book, in one scene McClure and her boyfriend are camping out in a covered wagon in De Smet, South Dakota, and have to go to bed early because their lanterns don't give enough light to do anything. McClure says to her boyfriend, "I think this is what people did in the old days anyway...because there wasn't enough light to do anything else."  But she's on to something way bigger than she realizes with this observation. Melatonin proponents hypothesize that most of our western diseases are highly influenced by, if not caused by, the invention of the good old electric light, allowing us to be in an endless artificial daytime. Back to The Wilder Life, though, the night continues with an epic storm that interrupts what could have been a very restorative sleep.

That's enough of my nutrition mind...it's just that nutrition is involved in EVERYTHING! Only someone familiar with Weston A. Price would pick up on the full significance of Laura's daughter's dental decay (mentioned in this book), and all that it meant for the family's generational degeneration.  Humanity, aside from small but nourished happy groups such as the ones I frequently mention, is generally in a downward spiral of physical degeneration, which explains way more than meets the eye, once someone becomes aware of it.

breakfast thoughts

2011-08-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a breakfast recipe I threw together today from leftovers in the fridge.

I had some black eyed peas left over from the Baked Beans recipe from Vegan Soul Kitchen (I still love my vegan recipes, but read on below for more on that topic...) So here's my thrown together, but delicious energy-producing breakfast:

coconut oil
red onions
egg, mostly yolks, beaten
cooked black eyed peas

Heat the coconut oil, saute the onions, add the eggs and peas...done!

As I completely abandon veganism, I am questioning whether I should write about my criticisms of veganism, especially since it was pretty much a mess for my health and led me to complete fatigue. As of now, I'm deciding to honestly talk about it, because that's what's going on with me. Even though it could get pretty critical.

About the idea of breakfast:

I have been reading the great big article about the importance of breakfast in the latest journal of the WAPF. (Wise Traditions Spring 2011). I've even been reading the article to my daughter as if it were a bedtime story. She's only 4, but I think it's great foundational knowledge for a lifetime of happy nutrition, and information I want her to know and build her habits on early on.

Many raw food teachers say that we should eat only fruit in the morning, for two reasons...(1) that the body is in a cleansing mode all morning, and fruit is cleansing; and (2) based on food combining, basically that fruit should be eaten on an empty stomach because otherwise it will get backed up behind slower-digesting food in the gut, and ferment and putrify.

But unfortunately, that didn't work out very well for me. Even though I'm at an ideal weight, I've been dealing with pretty bad daily fatigue (and sugar cravings for dates) that have led me to totally abandon veganism. I have figured out some potential causes of why fruit breakfast didn't work for me: (1) lack of adequate protein in the morning, and (2) hypoglycemia reactions triggered by only eating fruit in the morning. For whatever reason, that whole mornnig-fruit-thing didn't work for me at all. Overall, I have totally had it with the fatigue, and therefore with veganism, and even vegetarianism.

(side note, and it's about to get messy....: People will hold on to their beliefs so tenaciously. There is recently a prominent raw foodist for whom the diet has clearly not been working. Instead of questioning whether people should eat vegan long term, she recently put out a series of emails that she is going all-fruit (ultra low fat) and follow D------ and F------, despite the fact that they are completely WACKY nutcases and their brains are obviously deteriorating from lack of nutrients. She will find out eventually when her nutritional deficiencies get worse and worse. Holding on to the death to belief systems that don't work is all part of the process of lots of groups of people. I try to see this in myself when I do it, too...there's a lot of human nature in this.)

So I look for answers to the Weston A Price Foundation, and even begining to look to Paleo for some answers on getting my damn energy back. I'm determined! I've been eating properly prepared oatmeal with loads of butter for breakfast, but I do have concerns about gluten, and am still researching. I feel a little more confident with some kind of egg dish, goat kefir, and sauerkraut as an energy-producing breakfast. This leads to lots of variations...and I am really lucky to have access to Polyface eggs that I can really trust to be omega 3, ethical, etc.

A couple of notes on this breakfast: I learned from Edgar Cayce about eating the yolks and not the whites...I tell you that man brought so much information to us that helped us all propel forward, what would we have done without that gift!?

The other piece of information is that I always eat eggs with sauerkraut, a digestion tip I picked up from Body Ecology.

what is going on in nutrition today!?!?

2011-07-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

I plan to soon write a blog entry called something like "A Vegan Endorses Sally Fallon". That's where I'm at right now. It will take some time to write, but once I do, it will definitely get found quite a bit thru google searches :) LOL (actually I'm not even vegan any more, but still, it would be a catchy title..)

In listening to Sally Fallon with an open mind, I am very impressed. ESPECIALLY as a parent. She has many, many positive points. I am in the process of making a list of where Sally Fallon and Raw Vegans AGREE, and converge...and there are MANY points of agreement. Surprised? That brings me to the 2 main criticisms of Fallon that come to mind in my research so far.

(1) Insulting vegans. In Wise Traditions Spring 2011, there is a really offputting page of jokes about vegans. If you have this issue, I am talking about page 76. Guess what, WAPF. It's not funny. This is an unfortunate piece of non-humor, because the same author, Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD CCN had just written a brilliant piece on soy and Whole Foods in the previous pages.

For example, the piece included many not-funny, failed-jokes such as "GOING COLD TOFURKY=The action of a vegan who gives up a habit or addiction at a single moment, rather than gradually. "I'm addicted to Facebook. Gonna have to go cold tofurky."

Dear Kaayla T. Daniel,

Your piece was not funny. Humor is a great tool, I love humor and all, but this was just not funny. Making fun of vegans is not a productive way for the WAPF to use its media. We are ALL working together to undo generations of nutritional degeneration. To spend time on petty name calling to the other group that is basically ON THE SAME SIDE as you, if both sides would just step back and see so, is low-energy, wasteful, and taking all the focus away from where it should be. We all know where that is by now...the soy industry being a great example.

You fail to realize that a huge faction of vegans are just as hip to soy as you, and reject it as well. We need to focus on getting the children healthy. I believe that means that vegans should include many ethically raised animal foods in their children's diets in order to not only be healthy, but on top of that, reverse nutritional degeneration. These animal foods need to meet WAPF standards. We parents need to be ON IT here. There's lots to do! Your attitude and that of the WAPF on this issue is not going to bring this any closer to a reality. Acting like this is just not going to make many friends outside of your group. And that is not best for the children. If vegans are put off to your message, that's not going to be productive for HUMANITY. And, we are now in a situation where it is humanity's job to rise above money-driven corporations. Brilliantly, Sally Fallon herself references it so well as the forces of AHRIMAN. Humans are so powerful, easily powerful enough to rise far above Ahriman if and when we realize our human potential. But your petty little piece on page 76 is playing right into the hands of the current illuminati, keeping us split into factions, just as they would want.

I'm not suggesting to change WAPF content and message in order to appeal to vegans. (duh)What children need will become clearer to all people who care about the food supply, and that will take care of itself. I'm suggesting that you put your energy into positive messages, and leave the negative lower energies alone. Check into a little Law of Attraction and get your focus straight. Why couldn't you have made the target of your piece on page 76 the actual target here, the SOY INDUSTRY, hello!? Stereotyping a vast group of people into soy eaters is kindof ignorant. Vegan and soy are just simply not synonymous. And, importantly, I also hope that anyone who feeds soy to children, stops doing so!!

Let's put this into perspective, Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD CCN. Maybe less than 1% of the population is vegan. On the other hand, at least 95% of the population eats the STANDARD AMERICAN DIET. (combining vegetarian SAD and carnivore SAD). Do you go to every social setting and family gathering with the same snarky animosity toward mainstream carnivores that you show to vegans? Because people on the SAD are just as nutrient deficient as you think vegans are...think about it...pasteurized, homogenized, factory farmed dairy and meat from horrendous conditions, horrible oils and processed foods. Why is it okay for you to make fun of vegans, but I'm just guessing that you don't go down the street taunting and ridiculing the general (SAD) public? Is it because "vegans" have a name attached, an easy label? Making it easy to fall into mindless, counterproductive, waste of energy like page 76?

Here's the thing you really don't understand. Vegans are miles closer to you than the SAD eaters. Vegans care about the food supply. I'm reading Wise Traditions and feeding my child WAPF meals...butter, milk, cheese, chicken, beef, all local, and the WAPF-recommended Cod Liver Oil and Butter Oil as well. Get it? And, I was a VEGAN. I'm on your team. You're trying to alienate the people who are much closer to your own philosophy than you realize. The people from the vegan community who will first come to WAPF are parents, and rapidly so, because feeding children is a great reason to join WAPF. Other vegans who may join are those who ran into deficiencies like Lierre Keith. In the future, WAPF will be effortlessly gaining new membership from those who are currently exploring vegan food. These people will not enjoy finding vegan-bashing in Wise Traditions. I still love my vegan cookbooks and vegan recipes, (even though I always substitute coconut oil for whatever weird oil they use like canola). Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD CCN, we are on the SAME TEAM.

Sincerely,
Non-soy eater

(2) The second point about Sally Fallon that I see differently is her complete rejection of cleansing. More on that later, but I've seen some people who listen to these authorities outright reject cleansing, just repeating other people's lines. Cleansing is awesome, and I'll go into some of my cleansing experiences that I wouldn't trade for the world. It's just an amazing tool, especially for those of us who grew up on toxic waste as food.

My First Soup from Nourishing Traditions: French Onion

2011-06-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

I turned vegetarian at age 13. I just made that decision. Just like that. Sine then, I have always thought I must have been Indian in a past life, because, in Richmond, Virginia in 1985, there were really no other vegetarians, at least that I knew of. Certainly none in my middle school :) I don't even know how I found out about it in the first place. I think because my parents used to watch Swami Satchidananda on public access TV every weekend. That was before cable TV.

Anyway...the point is...that before going vegetarian, I LOVED French onion soup. And after going vegetarian, I continued to love it for years to come. Because I had no idea there was meat in it! My mom wasn't much of a cook, and she definitely never made anything as complex as soup from scratch...that's what cans were for, right? So it must have been something I just ate out at restaurants, and therefore I had no idea how to make it or what was in it. I remember finding out --was it in high school or college?-- that French onion soup had beef broth in it while sitting in a restaurant with my friends eating it. I vaguely remember the awkward moment of wondering if I should stop eating mid-bowl, or if I could put off the knowledge entering my brain until the bowl was finished.

So, now that I have this beef stock, my first recipe choice was to go back to my old favorite soup. Sally Fallon's recipe calls for 5 red onions. I'm following her recipe exactly this time, but my husband has told me something that sounds good...He says that on the menu of Morton's Steakhouse there is a five-onion French onion soup, with shallots, leeks, yellow onion, red onion, and garlic. Incidentally, I can't remember where I read this, but I saw recently that shallots are the most nutritious onions of all, packing the highest nutrient density than any onion. Maybe it was Joel Fuhrman, don't know.

I made the soup according to the Nourishing Traditions recipe. Now, as a vegan-minded person, my intuition was jumping all over the place. Serving my daughter bone broth is a decision I have made based on the information available at this point in time. But in order to serve it to her, first I had to prepare it. The whole thing just felt so... wrong a lot of the time. For two hours I had to gently cook onions. That was fine, onions I'm happy with! Yay onions! But then I had to pull out the beef stock, and it's so weird to hear intuition screaming so loud and choose to ignore it. I mean, that's dead animal flesh. Right there! In my kitchen! In my pot! And then, if I can bring myself to eat it...in my body?!?! At least it doesn't smell as bad as it did before, now that it's in the soup. This is what a vegan freaking out looks like. (Actually my husband does cook his meat in my, I mean our, kitchen for his consumption, but I have been able to ignore it; there's something about doing it myself that is so unnerving.)

My daughter and I ate the French onion soup for dinner. The familiar taste came back to me, but I realized when I had eaten it in restaurants ages ago, it had always had a giant layer of cheese at the top...accounting for most of the reason I liked the dish. And I think I remember some croutons involved too. So this bowl was a little bare compared to my memory. I was able to eat some spoonfuls...little tiny, bird sized, hesitant spoonfuls. I bet if any Traditional Fooder reads this they will be thinking I'm ungrateful and not understanding the value of what was right in front of me, rejecting what they feel is the best food on earth. I remember that feeling...When I watched the amazing movie Simply Raw there was a visitor at Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona who had a whole vast buffet of gourmet raw food in front of him, and all he could say was, "gross". It was infuriating! That was the best food on the planet, does he know how many people would give anything to be there at Gabriel Cousens' healing center eating that food!?

So, I know what it sounds like, but it was just, okay...sortof edible. My daughter, who usually eats up my soups like there's no tomorrow, said.."I know it's from scratch, but it just doesn't taste very good. It's weird tasting."

This is where we're at. I am going to try the rest of the recipes in Nourishing Traditions and it's going to work out. Next up, the minestrone...

A Vegan's first recipe from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions

2011-06-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, former vegan, I guess, at this point. I now understand the points of view of both vegans and traditional food-ists, and can hold each point of view in my mind at the same time.

My first recipe from Nourishing Traditions is the Decidedly-Not-Vegan Beef Stock. I realized that the large numbers of people spreading the word that bone broth is an absolute must for growing, healthy children are probably right. Once this idea dawned on me, I quickly set events in motion to get a bone broth cooking in my kitchen.

I didn't know how to obtain ethical bones except to drive to Polyface Farm, which has store hours daily from 9 a.m. to noon, and get ethical, beyond-organic bones. I'm so thankful to Omnivore's Dilemma for giving me this knowledge about where to go. Some vegans, like me, just don't naturally know how to procure or cook this stuff (I don't want to speak for all vegans, but this was definitely foreign territory to me.)

Went to Polyface Farm on a lovely June day. My daughter did not want to ever leave their porch swing. Rocking there, she could have stayed there, looking at the beautiful cumulus clouds all day.

By the way, I may not be vegan any more, but any, I mean 100%, of animal products I consume are from animals I can either see in person and know their owners, or from Polyface. I guess you could go see the animals at Polyface, too, even...but I didn't. You can have environmental vegans, health vegans, or like me, purely ethical vegans. I am at peace with the ethics of the animal foods I have found recently for my daughter's health.

Returning to the kitchen, now with a bag of various bones on ice, I needed to wait for my husband to get home in order to help me decipher this recipe. Why? Well, I had to figure out which of these bones (which looked pretty gross to me) were marrow bones, knuckle bones, foot bones, meaty rib bones, and neck bones. Who knew this was going to be so freaking complicated!? Thank goodness for husbands. Husbands who are experts at cooking are very helpful if you are a vegan trying to figure out Sally Fallon's book. He held my hand through the recipe, thankfully. Twelve hours later, again with my husband's expert help, removed the bones and strained the soup into a large bowl. And that's where I'm at now. With this bowl full of what is apparently invaluable minerals for my daughter's health and growth, in the fridge, that smells....repulsive. Sitting there among all those vegetables, waiting for the next step. Waiting to be turned into one of the recipes from the Soup section of Nourishing Traditions.

I will also try to make these soups edible to myself. Which means, I will no longer be vegan, and I will, after 25 years, no longer be vegetarian. (!!!) I guess. Or does it count if I don't eat meat, only bone broth? Or even more tellingly, is it perhaps time to throw away our self imposed labels and ALL join together in the Real Food Movement in ALL its forms? :) :)

HEALTHY Broccoli Linguine Pesto!

2011-06-16T16:53:00.000-07:00

Ohhmigooshh I just made up the most delicious recipe...hey perhaps I'm turning into a real food blogger? orginial recipes and all! This recipe is 50% raw and 50% cooked...good for people who aren't feeling they need 100% raw recipes. Plus, let's be honest, not many of us are excited by the idea of raw broccoli, right..? The healthy parts of this dish are ... NO pasta!!, but rather spiralized zucchini (you can't even tell the difference!); walnuts (great for kids!); and fresh basil (get the greens in to us all!).

Oh yeah, and the broccoli--there's another healthy veg in here! In fact, I'd propose that steamed broccoli is HEALTHIER than raw, especially if the raw broccoli has been put through a dehydrator coated in oil which has by the end of it become rancid. Also there's that thing about it being cruciferous and therefore goitrogenic when raw...unless cultured or cooked.

This recipe is soo simple and sooooooooo delish.

To make this pesto, I threw in the Vitamix (1) a lemon (took the seeds out), (2) a cup of walnuts, (3) a clove of garlic, (4) 3/4 cup nutritional yeast. I blended it, and here's the vitamix after half had been removed...

In the food processor I pulsed up some just-picked basil and olive oil, and then added the walnut mixture (which on its own was spoonlicking GOOD)

Food processed into a quick quick pesto!

Meanwhile I had been steaming some broccoli, cut into small florets. Here it is cooling off a bit

And I had spiralized one zucchini, --can you believe just one is enough for two people! Added the pesto, divided between the two plates. Here is half the zucchini and half the pesto

Add broccoli

Mix it up...I was making this up as I went along so maybe it would have been more efficient to mix in a bowl. Finished plate at the top of this post. My four year old ate it up and I was so internally THRILLED to see her getting all that walnut, greens, & veggies into her :) Seriously, she was devouring it...it was really really really good if I may say so!

My plate (on left) pretty much totally was inhaled by me, this is a very filling and satisfying recipe. If I may, I will give myself 10 stars for this one :)

Quick & Easy Kid School Lunch

2011-06-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

Little sandwiches, hold the bread! There are so many alternatives to bread based lunches. Lettuce leaves, collard leaves, chard...so many things to wrap the "sandwich" in, and DITCH the bread. Here is a sandwich my 4 year old loves-- simply cucumber and chevre. (It's best if you know what the animal giving you the chevre eats--there's no point serving your child cheese if the animal was fed GMO soy and corn and given antibiotics!) I sliced some other raw veggies in another container on the side, and she was very happy with these fun little sandwiches today!

Remember--our children learn from us what is normal. If we feed them healthy food from the beginning, that IS normal to them, and it doesn't matter what the mainstream is doing, or what the mainstream thinks of it!

Nature Game for 4 year old-- The Poison Ivy Game

2011-06-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

I wish someone had played this game with me in my childhood! What always happened to me --all through my life!-- was that after spending time outside, that night I'd break out in poison ivy. Somehow I just never learned what it looked like, actually all leaves just looked alike to me anyway...so I was left essentially powerless to protect myself from what was a mysterious unknown foe. At age 38, like a month ago, I finally decided it was time to turn the tables and empower myself! I realized I needed to teach my daughter that which I never learned...what the heck poison ivy is!!

If you make it a game, it's not only Extremely Uselful Information (empowering!) for kids, but also FUN :) :) At least for a four year old :) My child has a great attention span for this game and can play for a very long time. The adult simply points to plants and the child guesses "yes" or "no". It's okay if the adult doesn't know what the plant in question is, but if known, the name of the plant can be shared with the child.

Here's an example round from today, June 2. Play this sample round here with your child if you want! Then take it outside and play for real :) Game is one simple question...."Is this Poison Ivy?..."

YES!

NO, It's the ubiquitous Virginia Creeper

NO, Tricky since it has 3 leaves, but they're too toothed...some kind of wild berry or something...

NO, Just some Greenbriar.

NO, Tricky! It's appearing in three leaves, but it's a beech tree seedling...notice the one tooth per vein.

YES!

NO, it's oxalis...yum...tangy lemony YUM!

NO, here is an oak tree seedling

NO, maple tree seedling

NO, holly...

YES!

NO,...chickweed...YUM!!!

So, that's it...as you can see there are a million plants you can play the game with. I hope that wherever you are there isn't a lot of poison ivy, but if there is, at least it's a learning situation. (Unfortunately) we've definitely had a lot of learning opportunities lately!

Great Waldorf/Nature Children's Book...

2011-05-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

The milkweed has been coming up everywhere for a month or two, and it's starting to get big...

I found this great children's book, Monarch and Milkweed...

...which passes all my "Waldorf" tests and filters. If you know Waldorf (and Simplicity Parenting), you know what I'm talking about, right? It's beautiful visually, and the story is simple enough to give just the right amount and type of information for any child who is still at the age to enjoy children's books. I found that for us, age four was a perfect age to introduce this book, and we will surely be enjoying it for years to come.

(if you're wondering, that is a freaking LOT of milkweed in the background...)

There is a certain lyrical, beautiful quality to this story of the relationship between plant and insect, as they both grow, beginning with the story of mother (and mate) Monarch, and then the transition of egg to caterpillar to chrysalis, and finally, new Monarch, and the plant going to seed. A really beautifully written and illustrated cycle.

To prove the lyrical beauty of the writing, I will pick a random page from the book...all are excellent...

"Twelve days, the monarch chrysalis shines in the noontime shadows. Twelve nights, it waits under the moon and stars.
It grows darker--gray, then black and orange, and new monarch wings shine through."

Another great companion book for the young naturalist, also is this classic, great for identifying what we see out there...

Baked BBQ Black Eyed Peas

2011-05-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

This is my version of the recipe from Vegan Soul Kitchen

I've been making this recipe for years, since it appeared in Yoga Journal a while back. By now, my version has totally morphed from the original. But of all the changes I've made to it, I would recommend to anyone NOT to use agave!! Just leave it out! Tastes fine without! Whyyyy do people put agave in vegetable recipes?? People shouldn't even be using it for DESSERTS!! It's so bad for the body...seriously....plus this recipe is already really delightfully sweet from the onions, red bell pepper, and tomato. Adding sugar (agave) to it would be like dipping your strawberries in white sugar. (I've seen it!)

I don't know how to link to it, but this recipe can be seen online by searching google books for this book, and then going to page 143.

Putting it in the oven...

All done...family about to eat it up quick

I don't own this cookbook, but I do love the way the author has a song, piece of artwork, and book to go with each recipe. Nice touch :)

Sauteed Greens with Leeks and Garlic

2011-05-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

from Clean Start

I am really really into this cookbook right now. I'm so greatful for the beautiful abundance of local kale available around here. Recipe can be found here.

I actually, somewhat accidentally, created a Body Ecology plate. 80% vegetables, 20% millet, and including cultured veggies, follows the BED guidelines.

Top right is the sauerkraut. The big fluffy thing on the bottom of the plate is the most delicious recipe from the Body Ecology book...Millet "mashed potatoes", which is made up of lots of cauliflower also, so the plate can still be considered 80% veggies. That millet/cauliflower dish is so simple, but to "live" for...so great.

Four-year old approved!

Asparagus with Miso Lemon Dressing and Almonds

2011-05-19T04:12:00.000-07:00

from Clean Start

Another winning recipe from Clean Start! I love it when asparagus is finally in season. The great thing about this recipe is that its delicious, well-balanced flavor is achieved with a small ingredient list and simple preparation. These, to me, are the best recipes of all...alchemy created from simple, and few ingredients. Water & oil aside, this recipe has five ingredients: asparagus, garlic, lemon, miso, and almonds. That's my kind of recipe!

As usual, I substituted coconut oil when sauteeing the garlic. I substituted steaming for boiling the asparagus. Asparagus is such a treat! This may be a side dish for most people, but for me, I filled my plate with this dish plus sauerkraut and had dinner...quick & easy, too...it was main-dish worthy to me.

Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup...

2011-05-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

from Clean Start

You know when you make a recipe, and see it and taste it, and the thought comes over and over while eating..."oh my GOD I can't believe I made THIS!" Unless you're a professional chef, in which case you'd be used to making works of art/magic like this. This recipe is SO decadent for a vegan soup! A total stroke of genius --and something I've never tried before---to roast a whole head of garlic and then add into soup before pureeing. The white pepper adds a small kick, and the creamy, hearty, garlic-rich soup is full of flavor. Love the thyme. This is one of those simple recipes (well, if you don't count roasting a head of garlic in preparation) that has the look and taste of gourmet. Fabulous cookbook.

As always, I substituted coconut oil for the olive oil in this recipe--including for roasting the garlic and cauliflower.

What's unhealthy about this raw food snack?

2011-05-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

Looks good, right? Well, I know you can't see the actual chips, since I ate them all already...but you can imagine what dried and spiced zucchini chips look like. I had to try them once, even though part of me was wide eyed at paying $6 or $7 for 1.5 ounces of food. (can't remember exactly how much)

They were totally delicious, of course, and vastly more healthy than junk food. But, junk food comparisons aside, what is unhealthy about them? Sounds like a trick question...chips made out of all totally healthy and raw, organic ingredients..."zucchini, olive oil, cider vinegar, Italian seasoning, garlic, cayenne, chipotle, paprika, and Himalayan salt".

Figured it out yet?

It's the RANCID olive oil. Even though the other ingredients are still raw after going through the dehydrator, the raw, cold pressed, EVOO is no longer raw after dehydrating. That's enough heat to make the delicate oil oxidize and form toxic free radicals! So, in many many raw food recipe books that call for dehydrated "burgers" or all kinds of other yummy-sounding vegan dishes, there still remains that problem. A great step to take to to focus on reducing or eliminating destructive free radicals from the oils you include in your diet, both in which oils you choose, how they are stored, and how the food is prepared.

Herbed White Bean Hummus from Dr. Fuhrman

2011-04-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge fan of Dr. Fuhrman from listening to his many lectures, and from his appearance in the PHENOMENAL movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.

Unbelievable movie. I'm also watching Fuhrman's DVD Eating Like a Nutritarian and reading his book Eat to Live.

Totally loving it. Here is his white bean hummus from Eat to Live. It's delicious and I have just eaten it wrapped in greens. It's very much like a raw food recipe, but just with beans. The green color is from fresh basil blended in.

changing the title of my blog

2011-04-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

Right now my blog is titled "Transitioning to Raw: Always Vegan, Always Sugar Free". I'm not sure what I want to change it to, but..

(1) "VEGAN"---I'm going to add a bit more animal products to my diet than the krill I (try to remember to) take daily. I realized through Body Ecology that some goat milk kefir would probably be very strengthening to me, and learning to make it would be great for my daughter, so she can get those nutrients. I would recommend the Body Ecology chapter on goat kefir really highly to everyone. Goat kefir still would be raw.

I heard Sally Fallon talk on Kevin Gianni's great health debate. I usually like to keep my blog positive and stay away from too much negativity (I don't always succeed). So I won't say what I think of her too explicitly. The full expressive truth of what I think of her talk is pretty sassy, and not fit for print. Toned down...she's full of it, and a very biased spokesperson for eating way way WAY too much meat. Just listen to the talk! Who knows, some people might agree with her, not me though! And her attitude and demeanor said it ALL for me, totally YUCK. HOWEVER--there is a good point made that there are nutrient deficiencies in a strictly vegan diet. That's why I've never had my daughter eat vegan. Sally Fallon's attitude about different lifestyles was totally crappy, and so self righteous, considering that her recommended amount of animal products is ridiculously excessive. (and though consistent with WAP "FOUNDATION", not necessarily consistent with the actual Weston A Price.) Which brings me to my critique of SOME raw vegans...

(2) "RAW"--Some raw vegans have lost their -&$#*-- minds. It's the same as Sally Fallon. If the diet is too deficient either way---for her she has way too much animal products and it makes her a totally aggro jerk, and physically/mentally unhealthy I believe...and then there are SOME raw vegans who are also coming across as total aggro jerks, due to nutritional deficiencies from the other side.

I can't really get into what I've seen from SOME raw vegans on facebook and all, just for lack of time, and then also I guess privacy issues (ethically--can't really cut and paste from people's pages)...but there is a real negativity by some, mostly not understanding Law of Allowing. And in my opinion, not understanding that they're probably hitting nutritional deficiencies themselves. Raw vegan is a great frequent cleanse, but not necessary for 100% of the time. I could write for days about the aggro negative bull--- I've seen recently.

SO, who do I like, who inspires me? Lots of people still do....right now! Gabriel Cousens. DAVID WOLFE and everyone involved in the Longevity Now Conference. Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes, who, while 100% raw vegan, have very positive attitudes about just getting information out there for everyone to make their OWN CHOICES with! I also like Brother Echo "Raw Sangha"..check him out of facebook he's awesome. Donna Gates because she's so amazing. And Joel Fuhrman right now. Because I'm busy these days, and I don't want to give up beans, mushrooms, and a long list of foods in order to fully go on to Body Ecology right now. Dr. Fuhrman has a more do-able "nutritarian" menu plan for me....plus extra supplements and animal foods for my daughter. Dr. Fuhrman's ultra simple equation of H=N/C Health equals nutrients divided by calories-- is actually pure genius.

That still doesn't help me know what to change my blog title to, but soon the RAW and VEGAN will be shifted to something else...

Jewelweed

2011-04-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

Jewelweed growing next to a Blue Ridge Mountain spring

Avoid toxic chemicals--Give YOURSELF a pedicure!

2011-04-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

At age 38, I have now morphed into a child of mother earth ..barefoot on the grass, crystal wearing, health food eating, the whole thing...I literally would even not shave under my arms if it weren't for ZUMBA. A long lonnnng time ago I acutally used to do things like buy (and wear) high heels and get pedicures. (who WAS that person!?!) Now I have really no interest in wearing heels (donated them all from my closet to Goodwill) and I'm not attracted to nail polish at all! If I need a spa experience, I can go get a massage, or better yet, colon hydrotherapy!! Or even a yoga class...something that's GOOD for the body! I get an energetic repulsion feeling when I see a nail salon now, and I know it's mostly due to the toxic chemical soup that's going on in there.

BUT.....I started noticing that the blisters on my feet (from working out a couple of hours a day) were getting bigger, and that my toenails were getting a little too gnarly for even hippie me. My feet needed some TLC, but no longer the type in a toxic nail salon. I went to get my OLD old pedicure bag from the old days of being a salsa performer. Found a bunch of nail polish in there, which of course went in the trash. With the tools I found in there I was able to give myself an "organic" pedicure right at home! My daughter was intrigued with the foot bath and came in to do it with me, turned into a lot of fun! We sooo can still pamper ourselves without chemicals. After soaking in the nice warm water for a long while, I buffed the blisters down and pushed off the cuticles till I had soft, sparkling, organic! feet again...Followed by massaging my (and my daughter's) feet with raw cold pressed olive oil :) That's a trick I learned from 109 year old Bernando LaPallo who massages his feet with olive oil every night! I bet his 109 year old feet look better than most people's feet half his age :) :) :)

This was all I needed for my home pedicure...

My new feet, earthing!

Stuff that most everyone does....

2011-04-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

After spending the weekend in an incredibly lovely Bed and Breakfast, I want to title this blog post "Stuff that almost everyone does that I don't do, that I then forget even exists, and then when I see people do it I'm totally shocked that people in our day and age still do":

#1 COOKING ON TEFLON!
Holy ----! People still do this!?!

Look at all those scratches, too :(

#2 Use a MICROWAVE!! O Lordy. Put simply, the "food" that comes out of these boxes is no longer recognizable to the human body, which then has to deal with an alien substance. Better not to eat anything than this poison.

#3 Spraying pure chemicals into the air. These don't eliminate odors. They poison us and destroy the ability of our nose senses to work properly, and of course cause CANCER! This is like a huge DUH, look at this bottle of pure poisonous chemical (by the way perfume is just as bad and carcinogenic, unless it's a true essential oil).

They don't tell you what's in it, but there sure are a lot of "cautions"...

These are all pictures from the (really incredibly lovely and enjoyable) B and B. It's too bad. The breakfasts here would have been great for my daughter...they involved local egg omelettes with vegetables. I would have been willing to let it slide that some of the ingredients weren't organic, and that there was heated olive oil (toxic)...but I seriously am not going to let my daughter eat food cooked in teflon, and parts of the breakfast were microwaved also. I just slipped out with her to the local health food store for yogurt, fruit, and chia for her instead. It's too bad!!! Teflon pans and microwaves should seriously not be around in 2011 what is going on that people don't know this!?!?

Law of Attraction licence plates

2011-04-12T16:59:00.000-07:00

I've seen so many LOA licence plates over the past year...usually I don't have my camera on me. Today for example, I saw URCRE8R or something like that....but didn't have my camera! Here are some I have managed to catch...

"MINDFUL"...

BE JOY...

Speaking of Law Of Attraction, there are so many people who use the Law of Attraction information consistently, and then there are, of course, those who have never heard of it or just don't use it. Today, while drinking tea in a certain cafe, I was reading a psychology book whose author had never left his discipline and explored other current (multidisciplinary) forms of looking at the same information (about achieving happiness). Chapter after chapter, the author covered topics related to Law of Attraction, but without LOA familiarity, the topics were all really incomplete and unable to be taken to their full conclusions, based on information from psychology alone. Also, without LOA, a lot of topics are stabs in the dark without certainty of how life works. I then walked around a bit, and saw a woman who I found very "cool" looking, talking to a friend. As I walked by the two, I heard the "cool" gal saying, "See, that's the universe!" to her friend, and I felt happy to be back in Law Of Attraction land. Of course I thought she was "cool" looking...we were on similar vibrational resonance!

March Media part one--The Continuum Concept

2011-04-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

Here was the media I had around in March...

The Continuum Concept --unbelievable book.

I really wish this book had wide exposure to everyone, especially parents. I will definitely give it as a gift to any expecting friend of mine in the future. It really blew my mind, and I love the anthropological slant of the book.

I received the Continuum Concept from Amazon on the same day-- about an hour after-- I found out that Jean Liedloff had passed away. (about 4 days after she died.) I devoured the book in a few days. At the same time that I agree with her point of view absolutely and completely (and am SO grateful for her work), I want to point out how, 30 years later, the book is relevant to ME personally. In no way diminishing the importance of the book is my opinion that for ME, the conclusions implied in the book are incomplete. But the basis of the conclusions is valid--ie, I don't doubt that the Yequana babies did not cry.

Most obvious to me is, that my baby cried a lot, yet she was completely in-arms. I discovered attachment parenting while pregnant. There was no moment where my baby was, or has ever been, alone while awake (if she's asleep, I'll go do housework). My daughter had total access to breastfeeding, and I was with her for the first year at all times (and since then, most of the time). Yet, not a Yequana experience here. Why? Parts of the answer are pretty obvious to me...but I again do not mean to minimize the importance of carrying the baby in-arms! There is just MORE to my story.

First missing piece: NUTRITION. I come from several generations of degeneration (which I didn't realize while pregnant). The Yequana would have been living without processed foods, while I had lived for 33 years on totally processed, western foods by the time I got pregnant. Even in my 20s when I got somewhat healthier than the atrocious food I received since birth, I still included decades of drinking bottled water in plastic, tofu from health food buffets, constant refined sugar and grains, and countless other factors that drastically threw my body's systems out of balance. Nutritional degeneration affects us all across the board, but I will focus on the gut. My gut had no chance...At the age of 33, I had not ever had the practice of eating any fermented foods (besides wine and chocolate, not the best choices). On the other hand, I did eat tons of sugar. At the time of pregnancy, I, like just about every other western woman, had a congested liver and complete gut imbalance. Which, as does every other western woman, I THEN PASSED ON TO MY BABY. Jean Liedloff's book not only is absent in recognizing any nutritional factors in baby's behavior, but....BUT....she mentions casually, in passing, that she was down there in South America giving the Yequana....ANTIBIOTICS! In other words, destroying THEIR precious gut flora. Thereby opening the door to their inevitable degeneration as well. This is ironic to me, as I intuitively know that one factor in my baby's intense, frequent crying and temperment was gut flora. My baby's (and most other western women's babies') gut flora could not have possibly been correct. Now, unlike most western children, my daughter's gut flora is balanced, as I give her a variety of fermented foods and no sugar except fruit. She especially loves sauerkraut and goat milk kefir. By the way, Donna Gates' Body Ecology program actually can reverse (cure!) autism by systematically reversing gut flora imbalance alone (candidaisis).

The next factor is much more....esoteric. A little bit way out there. In a nutshell, according to Edgar Cayce's channeled information, the child who is born through the mother must match her vibrationally.

"According to the (Edgar Cacye) readings, the thoughts, the feelings, and the activities of expectant parents create a type of vibration or energy field which make it possible only for certain souls to come into the earth through them. Essentially parents provide a physical channel through which a soul can manifest; however, that channel has to be "in tune" with the spiritual development (and resulting needs and lessons) of the incoming soul. When Cayce was giving readings, parents, especially expectant mothers, were constantly advised to maintain a cheerful, hopeful, spiritual outlook, to fill their minds with uplifting materials, thoughts , and activities, and to make certain they didn't neglect their own spiritual life throughout the entire pregnancy."

(from--Chapter 9 "Conception and Soul Attraction" in the book Edgar Cayce on Soul Mates)

Therefore, I propose that a Yequana baby's soul is at a completely different vibrational resonance, and therefore a Yequana is baby who is capable of being calm and not crying. It's my current opinion that my baby was quite different, because she matched where I was vibrationally when I was pregnant.

A western woman like me is just not resonating in the same place psychologically as a Yequana woman. There is a total difference in our emotional balance and pscyhological programming. I worked in a massively giant office while pregnant, all the while engaging in stressful thoughts and negative gossip, not working much on maintaining high spiritual resonance. My resonance now is much higher, in the 2 years since quitting sugar. Although there is a wide variation in western women's happiness levels and emotional stability, as a whole I am going to compare westerners to Yequana as the difference between being chronically stressed out to being mentally balanced. Based on the Edgar Cayce information, of course I wish I knew when I was pregnant what I know now! Why did I let so much stress take over!? I can see it so clearly now.

Back to that massively giant office I worked in while pregnant...the level of EMFs that I was surrounded by there was unfathomable...and in many western pregnant people's homes alone it is the same story. There are factors like EMFs that we're dealing with today that of course Jean Liedloff wasn't considering at the time of writing the Continuum Concept (1975). Although there were definitely pesticides in use then, western mothers then weren't dealing with pervasive GMOs either. Our western world is getting even more complicated, and my solution to keeping up with staying healthy is still the Longevity Now Conference DVDs. There was just another LNC last weekend in Southern California...maybe some day I can actually attend one in person. One lesson from the LNC is that even though there are many many steps we can implement for our health, sometimes the answer is super obvious. For example, grounding. How much time was a Yequana woman connected to mother earth? How much time was I while pregnant? Probably ZERO. (Please see the book Earthing for an explanation)

Factors such as not being connected to the earth and the ensuing electron deficiency could have just as much impact on how much our babies cry as any other factors. This stuff may sound unbelievable, but I do find these as some of the answers to the question...Why was my baby so agitated all the time, and yet I was (and am) the most attachment parent ever?

None of these ideas above are meant to criticise the book The Continuum Concept. It was an unbelievably amazing read. I recommend it soooo strongly to anyone!!

Simple Thai Basil Eggplant -only 6 ingredients!

2011-02-16T17:12:00.000-08:00

I got it in my head recently that I wanted Thai Basil Eggplant like I used to eat in restaurants in California. I thought, I betcha I can figure out how to make this at home now that I have a little cooking experience. However, eggplant is intimidating to me...seems hard to cook it right! I remember many past failed kitchen eggplant attempts. The texture is such a mystery to me! I realized I needed to bring the professional into this. So I printed out this picture from here and gave it to my husband with these ingredients:

I gave him 1 eggplant, coconut oil, chili flakes, tamari, basil and garlic. Ignore the dates in the picture...I decided I didn't need to add a sweet component after all.

With these ingredients I watched very carefully as he cooked it. Let me just say HECK YEAH!! Just like in the Thai restaurants!!

Recipe:
1 eggplant, cut into 1 inch by 2 inch chunks
4 cloves garlic, chopped
coconut oil
1 1/2 TB tamari
large handful basil
red chili to taste

Steam eggplant for 3 minutes or until it turns soft. Meanwhile heat 1 big spoonful coconut oil in (glass) cooking pot. Begin to saute garlic and chili, stirring constantly for approx 3 minutes. Add eggplant (tongs are great for removing from steamer basket and placing in pot). Stir. Add tamari. Stir until ingredients are combined and eggplant is thoroughly cooked. Add basil at the last minute. Remove and serve. Eggplant should be soft and no longer tough to bite through.

Elegant Valentine's Day Salad

2011-02-13T06:40:00.000-08:00

Best Salad Ever! I have simplified a salad from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen. Not that there was anything wrong with the salad, it was totally awesome. It was the "Arugula with Golden Beets and Walnuts in Orange Miso Dressing".

I don't know about other people, but I don't want to come home after a long day and peel up & julienne golden beets. Maybe for a special occasion, but not as my everyday salad. As always, if I'm making everything from scratch, I want to make it as simple and quick as possible. So instead of walnuts (which should be soaked and dehydrated ahead of time) and golden beets, I replaced with ripe avocado and brought it down to three simple ingredients:

fennel (1/3 bulb)

one ripe avocado

arugula

Also, it would be quick and easy to keep the green onion from the original recipe; can just chop up one green onion and sprinkle on top of salad.

The dressing was already quick and easy:
Blend...
2 TB white miso
1 orange, juiced freshly
1/3 cup olive oil
1 TB grated ginger
1 clove garlic

The finished salad is perfection

I don't own any fancy plates, but this could be really elegant plated up on, say, a square plate...get the whole fine dining experience. The flavor of the fennel in this...divine! Also, though...this is a great salad just to make for the family dinner. Why not make something special an everyday thing? Especially when it's so simple and easy. It can be served with a soup, such as my new favorite butternut squash soup, or a lentil dish for a tasty, satistfying dinner.

Tuscan White Bean Soup from Vegan Fire and Spice

2011-02-12T04:02:00.000-08:00

As always, with cooked recipes from books, I changed this. Most obviously, fresh tomatoes instead of canned, homemade broth, and soaked beans. Also, as always I used coconut oil for heating instead of olive oil. In a minestrone type dish, the coconut oil used in the beginning of the recipe can be minimal. Once the soup is finished and cooled to eat, some olive oil can be stirred in to taste. The Italian flavor is still there, the overall taste of the dish is unharmed.

As I made this Tuscan White Bean Soup, it pretty much just turned into my usual minestrone with white beans added. My version did make an awesome soup recipe. Here it is:

coconut oil for heating
olive oil for flavor
onion, chopped
carrot, sliced
celery, sliced
(optional & not in original recipe--I also like zucchini in my minestrone)
garlic, minced
large bowl of fresh tomatoes, washed & seeded
vegetable broth
dried white beans, soaked overnight and cooked halfway
pepper
fresh basil, cut in ribbons
bay leaf

How I make minestrone with white beans:

Puree the tomatoes in food processor.

Heat coconut oil, saute onion, then garlic, stirring constantly, for a few minutes, and then add the pureed tomatoes. Cook for 20 minutes.

Add the precooked beans, 1 or 2 cups vegetable broth, and bay leaf. Cook 20 additional minutes.

Stir in carrot, pepper, and the ribboned basil. Cook 10 additional minutes.

Stir in the celery and zucchini for a final 15 minutes. Remove bay leaf. Let cool to serving temperature. Stir in a bit of olive oil and serve.

Chana Masala - Indian spiced chick pea recipe

2011-02-11T03:52:00.000-08:00

This is probably the most insanely delicious recipe in my recipe box. It's from here. As with every recipe I find, I change it significantly. Here's my version of this...I took out the chili in order to please my daughter's palate (I would add seeded/chopped red chilis along with the garlic and ginger if it were just me). I also took out the cilantro, just to make it simpler. When making food from scratch--not just opening cans of beans and tomatoes like most recipes call for-- I do find ways to cut down on the cook time, such as cutting out this cilantro garnish.

Ingredients
coconut oil
chopped yellow onion
minced garlic
minced ginger
about 15 roma tomatoes, seeded
1 cup dried chickpeas
spices unchanged from original recipe:
1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
celtic or himalayan salt to taste

How I make this:
1. soak chickpeas overnight, then cook them halfway

2. run the tomatoes thru food processor to puree them

3. In a large (not teflon!) cooking pot, over medium-low heat, heat oil and add onion. Sauté briefly and add garlic and ginger. Saute briefly again. Add the pureed tomatoes. Cook, stirring frequently, for 20 minutes.

4. Add the partially-cooked chick peas and spices (paprika, coriander, garam masala, turmeric and lemon juice). Stir and heat for about 30 minutes more. Serve!

The smell that fills the house during the last 30 minutes of cooking, as the spices infuse the dish, is the most incredible-Indian-deliciousness.

my basic salad dressing

2011-02-10T04:12:00.000-08:00

My standard salad dressing has morphed into this:
a huge bunch of basil
a handful of parsley
a handful of cilantro
olive oil
pure water
lemon
one green onion
kelp (shown on top in the vitamix) :

I eat this dressing very often. It's almost like a light pesto variation. I've gotten a habit of this simple salad with this dressing: greens, chopped red pepper, hemp and/or pumpkin seeds.

Butternut Squash Soup (cooked recipe)

2011-02-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

I love butternut squash soup, and it was driving me crazy that I didn't have any recipes for it, never having made it before. I had to get over that initial hump of doing something new...finding the recipe, taking time to experiment with it. The fantastic Richmond food blogger Katharina of Katharina's Food Adventures helped me out with a great lead...She sent me here for a recipe.

Whenever I do a cooked food recipe, I always change it around. The main things I changed here were (1) homemade broth instead of canned (2) roasting the squash/sweet potato/carrots in 1/4" of water instead of oil, and (3)using coconut oil instead of olive oil in step two, so as not to be heating olive oil.

Most of my alterations to this and any recipe involve changing the recipe so as not to heat any oil except coconut oil. I'll skip the "why" for now...just trust me, what heated oil does to the body is not pretty, once you really look into it!

I just want to guarantee that none of these alterations make the final product any less tasty...at the end it doesn't make a difference! So we might as well get away from the cooked oils. This soup is absolutely incredible!

Let's start with the veg stock. I have a very simple recipe from Vegan Fire & Spice. However, I change the oil from canola oil (canola oil!?!?!--which the intro to the book says is healthiest -LOL and yikes) to coconut oil. I like this recipe because the ingredients are super simple and make a very tasty veg stock, which by the way smells delicious. Here's all that's involved:

onion, potato, carrot, celery, garlic, peppercorn, parsley, salt, bay leaf

Extra bonus...this entire recipe was made with water I harvested wild myself instead of Reverse Osmosis water...I'm changing over to spring water!! :)

Now that I had my stock, I could start my butternut squash soup recipe. Just through experimentation I have realized that it is totally unneccesary to heat oil when roasting vegetables. Instead I add 1/4" water to the dish.
before...

after...voila, roasted vegetables with no heated oil!

Here's the soup before pureeing...looks and smells so yum!

Just to recap: This soup was made with personally collected spring water, no heated oil except coconut oil, and completely whole ingredients...nothing canned. That is how this raw foodist makes a cooked recipe!!

Here is a great thing to do with homemade veg stock...cook kids' lentils in the stock instead of in water. My daughter LOVES this!

Every Mom should have a coloring book

2011-02-04T09:59:00.000-08:00

"One of the things I believe wholeheartedly is that moms should have a coloring book. It's easy, it's simple, and no matter where they are, that they can use for stress relief...so that they sit down and color for ten minutes, and that focus will bring down their blood pressure." ~Rae Luskin

Here's the thing...this is great for moms, but really...think of anyone who needs a moment to unwind and decide what course of action is best to take next...what a great way to slow down, focus, and get in touch with intuition. It's a great tool.

I personally use the Coloring Mandalas series of books, which I believe helps me focus my intentions while in a calm relaxed state. I colored this one (pictured above) while listening to the Daniel Vitalis interview on the Raw Food World Radio Show. Previously, I had been on the fence about Daniel Vitalis. However, after watching his presentations on DVD at the Longevity Now Conference (Sept 2010), I am now thoroughly, completely a fan of Daniel Vitalis and his visionary work.

What was up in January

2011-01-31T13:55:00.000-08:00

The books I read this month...

I so so love this Steiner biography...It's a MUST for anyone like me, who has a burning desire to know who exactly was this man Rudolf Steiner. Now I know!! And I'm much the better for it.

The Magic of Thinking Big...Right in line with the Law Of Attraction. I love this one because it's so readable, has lots of stories, and is totally spot on. I found it inspirational.

What we've been listening to nonstop around the house...

I love this Uncle Dave Macon

CD because it's awesome bluegrass folk music without any of that country-music sound. Perfect for hanging around the house & doing January crafting projects with the little one.

Pete Seeger...Here's my stand on Pete Seeger: Basically there can never be enough Pete Seeger music in our house. I never get sick of it, I love everything about it.

Here is my stack of books to be read next...I have to start the first 2 chapters of Creating Money this week for book club, so the others will have to wait...

There were two superfun raw food potlucks this month, but my pictures of the raw food from the Richmond Meetup have mysteriously disappeared -?- so here are the pictures from the Charlottesville Area Raw Food Potluck :)

This sushi was my favorite

Cookies- totally nice flavor

Supercrackers-- these had a lot of ingredients!

I brought guacamole this month...it feels good to eat it in the wintertime. Pictured behind one of the salads.

Three part dish..."rice" with spicy thai sauce and vegetables, thanks to the fabulous Lisa & Bill :)

Sprouting Pumpkin Seeds

2011-01-24T07:15:00.000-08:00

Eating For BeautyThese are the pumpkin seeds from the health food store bulk bin, soaked & sprouted and going in to the dehydrator to dry

When these are done I'm going to switch over to these gorgeous, dark pumpkin seeds from Raw Food World

I never ate pumpkin seeds until I got healthy. Once my body got a taste of them, I began to crave them in my salad daily.

In David Wolfe's book Eating For Beauty, there is a chapter breaking down highly nutrient dense foods such as nettle, burdock, arugula, turmeric, radishes and on and on... TOTALLY fascinating stuff. He devotes a section to pumpkin seeds. According to the chapter, they contain B vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, essential fatty acids, tryptophan (an amino acid), myosin. The mineral list in the seeds is super long, of course the first one we think of with pumpkin seeds is zinc, which I learn from the book is also an aphrodisiac.

David Wolfe cleared up a mystery that I had been wondering about-- which is-- why, when fall comes around and we open up pumpkins, do the seeds look so different than the ones in the health food store? According to Eating For Beauty, all pumpkin shells were encased in those thin shells until the early 1970s, when the US Department of Agriculture cultivated a pumpkin called Lady Godiva with hulless seeds.

Eating For Beauty...highly recommend as an intro to raw food lifestyle

Metaphor Monday-- "Throw it on the ground" and Law Of Attraction

2011-01-17T10:24:00.000-08:00

I also could have called this "Manifest Monday" because I think this video, besides just pure entertainment, is a great illustration of how we manifest. (Isn't everything, actually!)

You know how, in this video, he just does the same thing...over and over and over, and we're laughing at it haha...but that's how manifesting works, too! If we're on 'autopilot', we're going to manifest the same thing over and over, and then use that as proof that things are too 'difficult' to change. Or even forget that we CAN change, that we can create what we want in our human experience. It can go either way...(1) we can get on negative, angry autopilot --of course, not "Happy Birthday To THE GROUND" level-- but still, it can get to the point where some people think wayyy more negatively than they even realize (I used to)....or (2) we can get on a positive, intentional manifesting roll...an upward spiral if you will.

Just as an exercise...we can look at a pattern that we keep re-creating over & over, good or bad. We all have a little of both. The bad ones, I like to look at and then change/get rid of the thinking behind them. The good ones, I enhance and make even better & more fruitful. Instead of manifesting like "Throw It On The Ground" guy, let's all start manifesting like Andy Samberg...there couldn't be a happier, more positive guy who's living his creative passion and manifesting exactly what he wants in life! And that striking difference is what makes it sooo funny when he plays the role of the negative, angry, crazy guy :)

What !!!?!?! No more Sunfood!?!

2011-01-14T05:51:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to a To Do list a mile long, ready to start getting to work, when....I was stopped in my tracks. To Do list gonna have to wait, I need to investigate this one further. David Wolfe posted on Facebook a "for the record" reminder that Sunfood is not his company. Not any more, anyway. What!?!? Not only that, but it is owned indirectly by .... MONSANTO. That was a shocking Facebook update to say the least. Judging by some of the other shocked responses there were lots of others who didn't know/realize this yet either. I've been buying a lot of my pantry staples from Sunfood for the past year, including bee pollen, marine phytoplankton, goji berries, and ALL my almonds!! I make (now past tense, "made") an order from Sunfood every couple of months! I thought it was David Wolfe's company!!! I thought I was in the David Wolfe loop, but I guess not enough. I listen to a lot of his audio...interviews with him and all...and I've been reading his books, after which I always became an even more loyal customer. Well at least I found out now. I still love David Wolfe of course...just recently finished the book Eating For Beauty, man that is a GOOD ONE.

Here is some additional information from Raw Chef Dan with some more explanation.

Easy Waldorf School Kid Lunch

2011-01-12T12:06:00.000-08:00

When I find myself at a loss for what to pack in my daughter's school lunch, this is always a great, easy solution. It may not seem like a huge amount of food, but, like many Waldorf schools, my daughter's lunch is not long after a big mid-morning snack of things like grains and seeds, homemade applesauce, stone soup, or of course--the bread (sigh). So she doesn't tend to eat much at lunch, and if I pack too much, it just comes back home uneaten.

This is veggie sticks--carrots, red peppers, and celery. Bee pollen-- a COMPLETE PROTEIN full of nutrients, and she LOVES it. It's a true superfood. I feel comfortable ordering mine from Sunfood. There is a bit of raw tahini on the side for dipping. I'm not being stingy with the small amount of tahini in the picture...it's just that she usually doesn't eat much/any of it.

Super quick & simple--ready to go in the bag with just a cloth napkin and spoon...

Children's Book

2011-01-04T09:39:00.000-08:00

I discovered this fantastic children's book based on a John Denver song. I went to itunes and listened to all the different versions of it---in my opinion John Denver's was by far the best, we're sticking with that one. It makes me remember that I love John Denver and that kind of music! The Peter Paul & Mary version was a respectable version, I do love them too.

It's a MUST for me that the illustrations in children's books be beautiful.

What could be BAD about eating green peppers?

2010-12-21T09:29:00.001-08:00

They're green, they're a vegetable...BUT, I have heard that we should avoid eating green bell peppers. Why?

Because if they're green, they're not ripe. They were picked before turning red, yellow, or orange. Besides the obvious--not getting enough nutrients, they're ACIDIC.

Of course, unfortunately a lot of the food I get was picked unripe and shipped here...I just bought some pretty hard pears and tomatoes :( but with those, at least you can wait until they get ripe, right? Not that it's ideal, but the ACIDITY of the unripe food can be avoided.

So, generally I avoid green peppers.

I was just cutting into these ripe red peppers to put in my salad, and to make cheeze dip also, and as soon as I sliced into them I smelled their most delicious fragrance... it's true green peppers, if you really think about it, taste weirdly unripe.

Yule Craft

2010-12-16T15:48:00.000-08:00

Everything was cancelled today for snow...school, Zumba, everything. I tried to get a picture of it snowing, but I don't pretend to have any idea how to work a camera :) -- can't really tell but it was coming down pretty hard.

Yesterday I happened to find organic cranberries at the grocery store and picked them up for us to do a Yule project...

This is such great sewing practice for a 4 year old, plus at that age, they're getting to the point where they like the repetitive motor activity.

This was our soundtrack for the whole day...you can not lose with any of the "Naturally You Can Sing" Songbooks. I can't get enough of them!! They are so exquisitely perfect to have on in the home...they set the perfect mood. Besides that, all the CDs in the series are just beautiful music to listen to/songs to learn. We've been listening to the different songbooks for about 2 or 3 years, and my lil one has always loved them, from the get go.

Cranberries almost all strung

And finally the blocks got played with :) on a cozy, snowy day...

Waldorf Birthday Cake

2010-12-16T10:11:00.000-08:00

Today I have been playing experimenting around with different sugar-free kid (or adult!!) birthday cake ideas. What resulted was a totally delicious success. For a kid's birthday, this option is completely delicious and has nutrients...not only has them, but is totally nutrient dense. Off the top of my head I know brazil nuts have selenium, a mineral that's so important...coconut has a million good things, and especially for kids, coconut has some kind of growth factor that helps them grow...and of course blueberries have a bunch of phytonutrients and antioxidants, none of which I really remember right now, but, they're awesome.

You can make individual tartlets, which I'm playing around with today...

Or make one big cake (or tart)...This is what I did for my child's 4th birthday...

I think the individual cakes have the advantage of being easier to eat & easier to make. This is my recommendation.

This is so simple, so quick and easy. I lived in San Francisco for about 10 years...and so I've seen my fair share of fancy pastries. This could hold its own visually next to any expensive tartlet from any pastry shop. Did I mention it takes like 5 minutes to make????

I recommend making a trial run of the recipe a month to two weeks before the birthday party, so that there are no surprises when the event comes.

The Instructions :) :) The only necessary equipment is a food processor.

Ingredients:
dried coconut
brazil nuts
dates, soaked for about 20 minutes
any one berry or combination of available fresh organic berries

(1) Take dried coconut and process it into small chunks or powder.

(2) Take Brazil Nuts and process them to a fine grind. Brazil nuts are so easy, because they don't need to be soaked in advance...just rinse them first.

After processing, it should look like this...

(3) Take the already soaked dates, and open them and remove the pit. Add them to the food processor two at a time. Process the first two completely before adding the next two, and so on. (I don't know if this is necessary with big food processors, but I have a small one.) This is two dates:

When it's done, it should look like this, and to check for correct consistency, you should be able to take a spoonful and shape it into a ball which would stick together.
If you are making a pie, this is the crust, just shape it into a crust like this:

Or shape it onto a plate as the base of the cake. Individual serving shown next to an apple to show scale:

(4) Take some fresh blueberries, or other berries, and put them in the food processor. Spoon the puree on the cake base:

(5) Spoon the coconut as the next layer:

(6) Spoon another layer of blueberry puree, and arrange fresh blueberries (or whichever berries you have) on top of the pastry.

Arrange attractively on plates or large platter and serve with fork. In order for the birthday child to be able to blow out the candles, it may be desirable to make one slightly larger cake, maybe 3 to 4 times the size of the individual cakes, for the candles to be placed in. These cakes are very delicious, so if you are having a party, be sure to count on having enough for at least 2 per person, maybe more.

Today we are not having a party, it's just a snowy day and I'm experimenting. We took a break from some winter/holiday crafts for our own little tea party...

She went for seconds and as for me, I lost track after my fifth serving. They are so so delicious, and so easy to make!!

Waldorf 4th Birthday--Presents!

2010-12-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

I should probably one of these days change the name of my blog to "Raw Vegan Waldorf Mom". Raw foodists are TOTALLY into Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf Education, except for the giant problem of the disastrous-gluten-explosion that goes on currently in Waldorf schools. I wrote a blog post about the Waldorf school bread thing a while back. So, I'll move on...

My daughter turned 4! :) Her presents centered aroung a theme that reflects what's going on in our family now: HERBALISM :) :)

I got her this great little tin with wooden tea bags in it (from Three Sisters Toys)...I love these!

But I do think they are a bit big for her old tea set...

All Waldorf moms know that the tea cups from Nova Naturals, while gorgeous, are TEN DOLLARS each!!

So I went out to Goodwill to look for anything that could be a suitable substitution for these. There were lots of mugs, but not many choices in small ones. I ended up finding these for $1.25 each. Whew! That's more affordable! And found the precious little white and blue pot/bowl...very Waldorfy.

These fit!

We already have a play kitchen that her daddy found one time while thrifting...a GREAT find! And we use an old real teapot for her play; it fits perfectly...

I also discovered that (as long as I can go alone--husband watching the kid) I really really love going to Goodwill...so fun! I forgot how much I love thrifting!! I have like 20 craft projects being born in my head using recycled materials now.

I also got her the cooperative boardgame Wildcraft, which, when I first saw it was completely irresistable. And 2 children's herbal books, also the book The Elves Big Adventure, which has nothing to do with the theme, but I did just really want it.

These two books are GREAT...I love them both, but the second one, A Kid's Herb Book, is the COOLEST, most fun, I'm so excited about this one. There's a lot in there.

She also received the greatest doll from Auntie :) :) Now there's someone who knows how to give a Waldorf gift!!!

4 year old Waldorf Birthday Story

2010-12-12T11:21:00.000-08:00

This is my Waldorf Birthday story, which I customized for my family by also adding a Law Of Attraction spin to it. Any unfamiliar terms to Waldorf parents in this story come from LOA.

Most parts of this story are direct quotes or adapted paraphrases from Waldorf books and web pages. I have gathered the elements of this story from YAYCFT and other books, with the whole beginning part quoted from Beyond The Rainbow Bridge. A large section--more than two paragraphs--- is from the blog Ancient Hearth (omg what a fabulous blog!!). The verse is from ECO Child’s Play blog. I have added footnotes for the quotes:

Four Year Old Waldorf Birthday Story

Once upon a time in a land far, yet near, there lived an angel, who was very happy living in heaven, where all is pure positive energy. One day the angel looked out through the golden clouds, and there in the distance below, ‘she saw all the rainbow colors on the earth. She saw the butterflies visiting the flowers and the birds flying in the air. They were beckoning to her as if to say, “Come here where we are.” She saw the fish swimming in the river and the many different kinds of stones and plants that covered the earth. And she saw earthly children climbing trees, running and jumping in the meadows and walking through the crunchy leaves. It was all so beautiful! She saw earthly fathers and mothers doing their work. One was a farmer, another a builder; and still others were bakers, shoemakers and shopkeepers. And she saw mothers and fathers caring for their children.‘ 1

She looked even more closely through the clouds, and saw a beautiful earthly garden, with flowers of every color, trees, and wild edible plants. There, in the garden, was a woman with a welcoming smile, and the angel loved her very much. The angel saw a man with a warm and loving heart full of goodness, and the angel loved him very much. She saw that the couple wanted to have a baby. She chose them to be her earthly parents, and she knew that her home would be with them.

This little angel then found her Guardian Angel, who would help guide her to earth. The Guardian Angel assured her that her wings would be safely kept until her return, and so, the little angel agreed to leave her wings behind. This Little Angel waited through three seasons, spring, summer, and fall, and when winter arrived, it was finally time! Guardian Angel said, “Now you are ready, and I will accompany you on your journey.” The Guardian Angel took Little Angel by the hand and they walked to the Twinkling Stars, who gifted Little Angel with wonder. Then, they walked to Radiant Sun who gifted Little Angel with love, and finally to Silvery Moon, who gave Little Angel the gift of kindness. 2

At last, the Guardian Angel and the Little Angel went to the threshold, where the beautiful Rainbow Bridge stretched from heaven to earth. Guardian Angel wrapped Little Angel in a soft, celestial blanket and cradled her as they slid together down the Rainbow Bridge. They crossed through each of the many colors of the beautiful rainbow bridge, one by one. As she soared down the colorful spectrum through the clouds and sky, she took human form inside her mother’s womb. Little Angel fell asleep to the beautiful sounds of lullabies and awakened as a tiny baby in the arms of her new mother and father, the same couple Little Angel had spotted before. There were the loving woman and the man with the kind heart who were in the dream. They looked in awe at this new life and said, “Our little baby! We shall call her ______.” 2

They joyously sang to her,
“We all came to welcome you, we all came to your birth
We all came to welcome you, to welcome you to Earth
And I was there to love you, I was there to love you,
I was there to love you and lend my body for
Your safe and gentle journey here
Through heaven’s open door.” 3

And so, four years ago today, _____ was born upon the earth. The Guardian Angel returned to Heaven and hung Little Angel's wings on Silvery Moon to await her return one day. 2

This girl has, to help her along, her three gifts here in her life on earth…the wonder given her by the Stars, the love that was given to her by Father Sun, and the kindness she received from Daughter Moon. By tuning in to these three gifts, which live inside her, she can find answers and direction any time she may need. Ever hopeful, ever loving, and ever kind, this angel essence remains strong in the girl every day.
______________
1 Quote from Beyond The Rainbow Bridge
2 Ancient Hearth Blog's review of the beautiful birthday book Little Angel's Journey.
3 Verse From http://ecochildsplay.com/2007/01/24/rainbow-bridge-birthday/

From there we went through our recollections of each year, lighting a candle on her birthday ring for each one, as shown in this youtube video. Notice the rainbow silk under the ring....get it...rainbow bridge...

Which Chlorella to eat or take?

2010-12-06T04:35:00.001-08:00

I have a bowl here of Dr. Mercola's chlorella and some Raw Food World chlorella. There is a huge difference in taste. Dr. Mercola's doesn't taste like anything. RFW's has a very distinctly algae taste. Both have the same texture and stick to the teeth. This is a big difference in taste...I'm going to order RFW only from now on for chlorella, plus I noticed that Dr. Mercola's doesn't say "organic" on it but RFW's does.

A RAW FOOD MONTH IN PICTURES

2010-12-03T17:11:00.000-08:00

I tried to go the entire month of November raw (30 days) as an experiment. I made it 26 days!! I ate a lot of healthy food, but I also ate a lot of cookies & desserts. But that's okay I'm changing. The best news is that halfway thru the month I was able to get off of cacao, and I feel huge results from that. Here's what I ate, not including some times when I just threw something together like some avocado slices on romaine leaves or something. I didn't take pictures of fruit either.

There are no green smoothies here, cause I'm just not really into them; I think I only had one all month.

Green Goddess Dressing--I had a lot of variations on this salad :)

Raw breadsticks and marinara
Spirulina dressing (Kelly Serbonich recipe)--hemp seeds sprinkled on salad

Raw Food World TV Show Cheeze dip YUM
Almond butter!!
Wheatgrass juice

Spicy cheezy cauliflower popcorn - a dehydrated recipe

Elaina Love's Energy Soup

pomegranate grapefruit juice

salad with cayenne tahini dressing (Kristen Suzanne recipe) --I ate this salad a thousand times this month in different variations and never ever got sick of it

pico de gallo with carrot "chips"

Raw Vegan Samosas

Chlorella!!
Green juice! Always one for me, one for the 3 y.o.
Easy Cheeze Spread (Brigitte Mars recipe) on Rawvolution Onion Bread (Matt Amsden recipe)

Nori Rolls with ginger marinated shitaakes, avocados, sprouts, cucumber, parsnip rice

Kale salad with pumpkin seeds (massage kale with salt, lemon)

Reish tea
Buckwheaties - sprouted buckwheat with fruit in almond milk --stays crunchy in milk!

Curried Pumpkin Soup

Flax Crackers
Nori--this is the easiest snack, just rip into chips and get MINERALIZED!!
Raspberry thumbprint cookies

Asian "stir fry", sesame seeds sprinkled on top

Marine Phytoplankton
Ron Obadia's blueberry pancakes, before going in the dehydrator overnight

Bee Pollen - contains complete protein, my kid loves it!
Spinach Soup - Brigitte Mars recipe
Amazing Guacamole
Salad of just picked greens and green goddess dressing
This recipe was my own creation--fettucine alfredo plain...
..and after covering with dried oregano, basil, and hemp seeds...
Lemon Balm, my new favorite
Good ole happy dandelion
Brownies with agave

Kristen Suzanne's Holiday Not-Meat-Loaf at a potluck :)

Onion bread

Ani Phyo's Arugula salad with orange miso dressing

Go Raw Ginger Snaps

Chia Gel

Kale Chips- A LOT of these

Cheezy Crackers

Collard wraps

Frozen bananas

whose raw program do I follow the most

2010-11-25T10:02:00.001-08:00

where my philosophy is at right now with raw foods....these are my opinions on some of the issues in the raw food movement:

high fruit---NO... moderate fruit
fats---YES, BUT with limitations on nuts. keep proper nut food combining
agave--NO NO NO NO
coconut nectar (the new fad)--NO
superfoods--YES
cacao--NO
herbalism--YES
most important aspect of food---GREENS, most important aspect of greens---WILD FOOD
colon hydrotherapy--YES

So the raw food teacher who I study the most and love to hear the most is David Wolfe. I love lots of other teachers too! Even though he is really into cacao, David Wolfe also says stuff like "I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything" and to always listen to YOURSELF first. I'm also getting really into this naturopathic doctor Ariel Policano.

FRIDAY Nov 26 food journal

adya clarity
green juice
chlorella
Vit D3, B12
1/2 apple

Wheatgrass juice
Burdock root juice from David Wolfe book
salad with spirulina dressing (Kelly Serbonich recipe)
red cabbage sauerkraut

spicy, cheezy cauliflower popcorn
Go Raw Ginger Snaps 1 bag

another salad with spirulina dressing
red cabbage sauerkraut

Food pictures

2010-11-21T08:13:00.000-08:00

Day 20 & 21

2010-11-20T10:39:00.000-08:00

Saturday--I was at home so it was easy to fix all these recipes

Adya Clarity, green juice, krill chlorella
an apple

Marine phytoplankton
spinach soup from Rawsome

Celery sticks and cheeze dip

Asian noodle "stir fry"

pumpkin seeds

Giant salad with cayenne tahini dresssing

Sunday--I was traveling out of town so it was a little strange today. But dinner was great, it was a fabulous Thansgiving-themed raw food potluck!

green juice, chlorella
chia

2 1/2 apples and 4 bananas with almond butter (that is a LOT of almond butter but traveling can be unusual)

potluck---
samosas with cilantro/mint chutney
walnut loaf (Kristen Suzanne's holiday not-meat-loaf)-pictured above
salad
red cabbage sauerkraut
italian spice flax crackers
carrot soup
pictured is the sauerkraut, salad, and samosas...I accidentally left the carrot soup out of the picture

Go Raw Ginger Snaps

Raw food guacamole with carrot chips

2010-11-19T12:01:00.000-08:00

so simple, just onion, avocado, cilantro, salt, lime (or lemon), and an optional tomato :) very satisfying!

Raw fettucini alfredo

2010-11-18T12:36:00.000-08:00

before adding hemp seeds and dried oregano/dried basil:
after adding hemp seeds (like a "parmesan") and dried oregano/basil

vegetables: zucchini (use a potato peeler), mushrooms, sun dried tomato
sauce: lemon, nutritional yeast, miso, touch of nama shoyu
top: hemp seeds (taste like parmesan) and oregano

Russell James's Sushi

2010-11-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

I found this video by Russell James. (click here for recipe video).
The video doesn't show how to make the parsnip rice or what to marinate the shiitake in (it's a clip from a longer video), so I made my best guess; I just put parsnip in the food processor, and marinated the shiitake in Nama Shoyu and grated ginger. I simplified this recipe to just 5 ingredients: parsnip, avocado, shiitake, alfalfa sprouts, and cucumber.
And I couldn't find our rolling mat so I just did it messy style.

These nori rolls are GOOD...totally delicious!! Good alternative to rice.

raw buckwheat cereal

2010-11-11T15:39:00.001-08:00

This recipe is from Brigitte Mars' book Rawsome.

It is sprouted and then dried buckwheat cereal ("buckwheaties") with raisins, banana slices and almond milk.--This was tasty.

First Temptation on Day 7

2010-11-07T14:59:00.000-08:00

Came home tonight to find a huge pot of brown rice on the stove for the lil one, made by my dear husband. This man is an unbelievable alchemist with brown rice. I don't know exactly what he does, but there's definitely onions, bay leaves, and olive oil involved. Among various other ingredients and secret techniques (which he assures me are all vegan), there is nothing on earth better and more magical than daddy's brown rice. Success--I resisted! I really do want to go 30 days raw, even though the first 7 days have involved some junk-food-raw. (How hard is it to stay raw when you can go get a bag of ginger snaps and make or buy chocolate brownies) I'm looking at it as the first week of adjustment, and planning to shape up for the rest of it. I've had a lot of healthy raw food so far, too.

Day 7
*Adya Clarity
Krill supplement
Chlorella
Celery sticks

*Collard wraps with veggies, avo, & cilantro
3 TB chia
raw live sauerkraut

*TWO Raw Brownies--there's the 'junk' for the day, oh well. I wanted more when I was done, but that would have been way beyond all reason.

*Salad with green goddess dressing, kelp, and pumpkin seeds

*Celery Soup from Rawsome
*another batch of almond pulp cheeze with onion bread

Random kid craft for today:

Morning routine for adults and kids

2010-11-04T19:00:00.000-07:00

It's so great to give kids their own special cup for green juice (pictured below next to my green juice). It's important to me to convey to my lil one that green juice is part of our normal routine, by just preparing it matter-of-factly as though everyone does this, no big deal, no special woo-this-is-healthy-vibe. I also teach her that juices should always be prepared fresh and drunk immediately.
Another way we make the green juice special is that we sit together and drink the juices in a nice quiet morning routine.

My morning pre-breakfast routine --Adya Clarity, then green juice, then krill, chlorella, then marine phytoplankton, B-12, and Vitamin D-- gives me real energy and nutrients first thing in the morning. This would be one great way to get off coffee, and then to stay off; someone could just replace with herbal teas or Teechino when the craving strikes throughout the rest of the day.

This is my child's portion of morning superfoods and supplements just before breakfast, not including her Vitamin D. Here we have Marine phytoplankton, B-12 spray, krill capsules, and chlorella:

November Four --My All Raw Day #4
*super shot of Adya Clarity
*green juice - celery, parsley, cucumber, lemon
*krill supplement, B-12 and Vitamin D supplements
*15+ chlorella
*little bit of leftover salsa with carrot "chips" (I always need to eat something with the chlorella to get it moving out of my teeth; I prefer to chew the chlorella)
*marine phytoplankton
*large green leaf lettuce salad with Green Goddess Dressing and lots of sprinkled kelp
*random idea- dipped little baby bananas in cacao/maca combo to make "bon bons" (I don't know why I always want chocolate around lunch time!)
mid afternoon snack...
*a bunch of spreadable almond cheeze on Rawvolution onion bread with red peppers and celery sticks
dinner time...
*1/2 tsp of MSM in 1 cup of fresh orange juice
*lots of RAW samosas!! these are fabulous! From Elaina Love's Indian recipes DVD

YUMMMMMM!
*late night snack of onion bread, mustard, romaine & red peppers

Almond Cheeze from Rawsome DVD

2010-11-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

I am SO loving Brigitte Mars's DVD Rawsome. I got it from Sunfood, where I order various superfoods and my almonds. I've tried almonds from various raw sources & like the taste of these best for some reason. I've been heavily into raw food for over a year, and only now did this DVD inspire me to make almond milk for the first time. (I was never a milk drinker so never felt giantly motivated to make it)

With the cup of almonds needed to make the milk, resulted a cup of pulp. Here is her recipe for almond cheeze using that pulp.

1 cup almond pulp
1 Roma tomato
1/8 cup olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 cup nutritional yeast
all blended in food processor

This is one of the many awesome recipes in the DVD, plus she talks about herbs, and answers tons of questions (it's a recorded live class--so cool), and gives all kinds of well rounded information. I so highly recommend this DVD!

The best part about this cheeze is that it's spreadable. It goes perfectly on onion bread...the onion adds this extra, incredibly tasty complement to it. I have celery to dip in it also because the onion bread (made with sunflower seeds) is so filling it's just impossible to eat much of it. Look at this beautiful spreaded cheeze:

I think I added way more nutritional yeast than was called for in the recipe; I always do. This would be pretty great for a party or potluck....

Carmella's Green Raw Goddess Dressing

2010-11-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

Green goddess dressing has always been my favorite, but I always ate out in vegetarian restaurants in the SF bay area, & never knew how to make it or what was in it. I think this is my first attempt at ever making this dressing. My first blender was the vitamix I got a year ago (which I use every day!) but haven't gotten around to trying this favorite until now.

I found the recipe here at Sunny Raw Kitchen, by Carmella Soleil. Carmella refers to her website as SRK, which (from my heavy interest in Bollywood) always gives me a double take --Shahrukh Khan?!-- as I try to figure out which world I'm looking at. The dressing is very tasty, and since eating this first small bowl, I've gone back for thirds & fourths. I love the super simplicity of the ingredients, quick and easy! I'm so thankful to have found another great dressing :) :)

30 day 100% raw detox

2010-11-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

Day TWO

* super shot of Adya Clarity
* green juice, ingredients:
* krill supplement and B12 supplement
* 15+ chlorella
* raw live sauerkraut
* Marine Phytoplankton
* large kale salad with sprouted pumpkin seeds
* 3 TB chia gel
* sliced apple with almond butter
* giant salad (one head of red leaf lettuce) with Kristen Suzanne's Cayenne Tahini Dressing and (more) sprouted pumpkin seeds
* one bag Go Raw ginger snaps
* pico de gallo and carrot 'chips'

* 2 plums with almond butter (I need to cool it on the almond butter...it likely slows down the detox. As soon as this jar is done I'll lay off it. If it's around, I eat it.)

A very yummy day. As always, no limit on food quantity, eat as much as I want, whenever I want!! A very satisfying detox diet :)

30 day raw food challenge

2010-11-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

Day ONE

Super shot of Adya Clarity

Green Juice - 3 stalks celery, 1 cucumber, 2 handfuls parsley, 1/2 lemon

krill supplement

approx (at least) 15 chlorella

raw live sauerkraut

Elaina Love's energy soup - 2 big bowls

apple slices with almond butter

bag of Go Raw ginger snaps

spicy pico de gallo with carrot slices as "chips" --used some great red chilies from the garden, powerful stuff

Feeling great at the end of day one, so happy to be doing this raw food cleanse for 30 days. With this 30 day challenge, as always for me, I eat as much as I want, whenever I want. I have had great success with that philosophy since cutting out sugar and processed food. That philosophy didn't work out too great for me before that :) Not that I recommend weight watchers, though, what torture it would be to still eat all that processed, addicting food but have to have it in small quantities. Eating healthy just makes so much more sense! Plus, all the cravings for that gross toxic sugar and nasty processed "food" totally go away, it's the truth!

In-a-hurry Pico De Gallo salsa
6 tomatoes, seeded and cut into large chunks, I use Roma
1/3 yellow onion, lg chunks
1/2 bunch cilantro
1 lime, cut off ends, cut in half and take peel off with knife by placing on cutting board and slicing down the sides to remove peel
2 chilies, seeded
Throw it all into food processor. Transfer to bowl and stir in Celtic or Himalayan salt, stir and eat with carrot chips for an energy-gain, delicious meal or snack:)

Elaina Love's Energy Soup

2010-11-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

Omigosh Yipee! I had put out to the universe that I wanted a green soup recipe...got quick delivery back on this one. Nice!! Found this, it's SIMPLE and AWESOME. Recipe video can be found here.

(I need to work on learning some photography skillz lol, I'm sure this could have been shown off even better if I had worked on the presentation...just had to take the quick pic so I could eat it!)

When you think of Energy Soup, of course the first thing that comes to mind is....Anne Wigmore. But the word on the street seems to be that those old school energy soups didn't really taste good. And they probably were complicated with sprouts and rejuvelac in them (just a guess, I didn't check). This is just what I was looking for...super simple and quick, with a great taste.

The recipe isn't written out on that link, so here it is:

1 cucumber, chopped (or zucchini)
1 red bell pepper, chopped (or yellow or orange, but not green)
1/2 apple, chopped
1 avocado
1 bunch of cilantro
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp onion powder
cayenne to taste
1/2 tsp salt (himalayan or celtic)
1 TB tamari
1/2 cup water

blend all in blender and top with dulse, chopped green onion, corn, or other fresh topping. I topped with dulse today. Very tasty soup.

Last November, I tried to go 30 days raw and only made it 15 days. I just didn't have enough recipes. Ended up eating tooo many raisins and cashews! Over the year I have gathered as many raw recipes as possible, looking for simple/quick and the least nuts possible. This recipe is going to be so helpful this month!!

The easiest thing ever that you can do for your health...

2010-10-26T15:02:00.001-07:00

...is to go to Target and drop $30 on one of these stools.

(warning this blog post is going to talk about number twos, don't get squeamish! Raw food lifestyle followers tend to talk about poop a LOT because it's so important!!)

I have discovered that this kid stool from Target is actually inadvertently a fabulous invention for easily and comfortably getting into a very ideal position. Simply sit as usual for the number two, but instead of feet on the floor, feet go on this stool. (in other words, feet on the highest part of this stool,which is placed directly in front of toilet.) I discovered the perfect suitability of this particular stool quite by accident, since this is my small daugther's stool for washing hands at the sink. Just on a whim, I tried it and realized it was exactly the right height, without having to build or buy any special platform around the toilet.

After reading Dr. Bernard Jensen's Guide to Better Bowel Care (fabulous!), I tried experimenting with various footstools/squatting. This Target step stool is the best and easiest solution I've found. We are supposed to poop like this:

but of course many of us are usually more like this:

This is a huge difference, believe it or not. Dr. Jensen explains the whole thing in his book...long story short, we don't eliminate properly or entirely unless we are in the right position.**I can SO FEEL the difference! It's like a totally DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE!!** The only reason I don't go into more specific details is that it is a little strange to be talking so much about number twos, but the feeling is NIGHT AND DAY, it's just really so much better. Of course, I have a very healthy, unprocessed food, whole food, very nutrient-dense diet, with resulting very easy eliminations anyway... but I think someone even on a poor diet lacking nutrition could still benefit from this easy-to-implement health tip. Now, if I have to be somewhere else (another bathroom) & have to put my feet on the floor, it feels so bad!

one week of chia

2010-10-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

I've eaten chia every day for a week. I'm feeling especially superhero-y right now & thought I'd post. I went to the gym tonight and taught my hour of cardio. I stayed after to do an hour of weights/abs/pushups/etc. I usually take a break about halfway thru weights and do abs on a ball, I'm not sure for how long, but just until I get so fatigued I can't do any more. Tonight was different. Doing abs on the ball, I could definitely feel it, but if I had waited until I was too fatigued to stop, I would have been there all night. It just kept going. Next time maybe I'll schedule some more time for the ab workout LOL. Awesome. Of course there's no proof that this is from the chia, just an assumption. It could have something to do with the green juice every morning or the large amount of chlorella I've been eating every day. The only other supplements I take at this time are the B12 and krill, until I can add more superfoods to the routine.

Mexican salad dressing

2010-10-03T19:11:00.001-07:00

Great dressing with whole cilantro leaves, ready to be put on a big salad:

Here is a great recipe for Mexican salad dressing. **This recipe is not raw but could be made raw by substituting apple cider vinegar for balsamic vinegar.** This salad is perfect with black beans (again, not raw), chopped red bell pepper, and avocado in it.

In the blender, place 1 peeled lime, 1 jalapeno (seeded!), some ginger, a dab of honey, Celtic sea salt (to taste), some balsamic vinegar and a bunch of olive oil. After removing from blender, stir in whole cilantro leaves to the dressing.

Kristen Suzanne's salad dressing

2010-10-03T15:42:00.001-07:00

I just fixed up a salad with the Cayenne Tahini dressing found here. I knew I'd like it, kind of one of those things where you know that if you like all the ingredients going in to the recipe, it can't possibly turn out bad. Olive oil, lemon, tahini, cayenne & sea salt. These are all my favorite things so it made for an unbelievable salad. I love the spice of cayenne.

This salad really has a ranch dressing consistency. It looks exactly like ranch, but tastes way better. Would be a great ranch substitute for anyone, even if they weren't vegan, just because it's so so much healthier. I sprinkled the salad with lots of nutritional yeast, so it had a really cheesy taste to it. Amazing!!

chia chia chia ......

2010-10-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

Ganesha watching over a bowl of freshly mixed chia

(pictured is enough chia to last several days or a week: 1/3 cup chia and 2 cups pure water)

Eating my chia for day four now. Last night (day 3) I had so much energy that at 10:30 p.m. when I went to bed I felt I could have stayed up doing work (choreography) for another couple of hours. (I don't drink coffee.) But I went ahead & went to bed early, and had no problem getting to sleep (unlike coffee!!). So now I'm a chia fanatic and I'm starting to tell everyone about it. Very soon I will be known all over Richmond as that crazy Zumba instructor who never stops talking about chia :) I want everyone to at least know that this choice is there for them and then they can choose to use that information or not.

Of course I am now getting my husband involved in the chia thing and giving him it to eat. He is quick to point out that chia is nothing new to him, having grown up in Mexico, and that he used to eat it as a kid. Therefore he has known about chia for approximately 35 years longer than I have, and he's being a bit competitive on the issue LOL. Watching him eat it was strange; he didn't need to wash it down with a whole lot of water like I do...interesting.

My young child is not interested in eating the chia, so I am going to attempt to give it to her in oatmeal. Reason: it has great omega 3's, which I already make sure she gets, but more won't hurt. I'd like to start her on the chia habit and give her the knowledge about it early on.

Green Juicing

2010-09-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

I've been making a green juice most mornings for about a week now, and it's getting really addicting...both for the way it feels and now the taste is becoming amazing, more so each day. It makes me feel like a total superhero. I make it first thing in the morning. This is the "I Am Healthy" juice from the Cafe Gratitude menu. Not that I've had the pleasure of experiencing it in the restaurant, so I don't know what theirs tastes like or the proportions of their ingredients, but I put in 2 cucumber stalks, 2 large kale leaves, one lemon and one cucumber. I can also feel a difference in my hair already (from the cucumber).

A couple of months ago, Yoga Journal had a really interesting article about juices that mentioned the Cafe Gratitude juice! It also refers to why I avoid fruit juices.

I love this juice so much I don't want to miss a day of it...that makes it very easy to incorporate into the morning routine. The main thing --organizationally-- is to make sure to have the ingredients stocked. Here is enough for the next four days...I'm just so organized :) :)

After the juice I immediately eat my chlorella. It took a few days to get used to it, but I actually chew it...I figure it will be easier for the body to break down. I started with just 5 per day, because it's weird to eat (even though it's food, not a supplement), but now I'm up to 15 per day. I'll probably up that to 20 per day starting tomorrow.

I have so much because it was cheaper to buy it in packs of 3 during Dr. Mercola's last sale during Labor Day. This should last a long time! Here is an interesting link from Dr. Mercola --video about chlorella.

Virginia Wineries

2010-09-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

I see wineries popping up everywhere I look in Virginia. Very trendy right now. Five years ago when I was a big wine drinker, I would have loved this. I would've been at each one having tastings & tours. Now as a raw foodist who doesn't drink alcohol, I just see how much more pesticides are being dumped into Virginia soils. It's not like any of these wineries are biodynamic or even organic. Just a huge pesticide invasion just so people can continue numbing out more & more.

Strange Cravings

2010-08-28T09:19:00.001-07:00

I woke up with another strange pang this morning, this time for Chocolate Rasperry Coffee from Van Ness Bakery and Cafe. This is a place where even when I was a Standard-American-Diet eater, I still never looked at the food...it looked pretty gross. But the coffee was perfect! San Francisco changes so fast, I'm surprised the place is still there. These pictures from Yelp show what was exactly in my mind when I first woke up today.

Anytime I was remotely near the neighborhood during the 10 years I lived in the SF Bay, I would stop by this cafe for Chocolate Rasperry coffee. I would usually get 2 large cups (like 24 oz each), black as always. If I could have bought and carried 10 cups out to the car, logistically, I would have. I could've just sat & drank it all day long.

I woke up this morning with vivid memory of every detail, down to the dirty alley around to the left where I could usually find parking. I kindof miss those days, years of 'innocence'...not having any idea that my food choices made such an impact on my health. I miss the not knowing. But eventually I had to wake up to it all, and thankfully there is so much innovation going on in the health movements right now. People are pioneering new superfoods that can help replenish the body...

I was blown away this week by the Renegade Health Show episode about a healthy 'coffee'. It's not actually coffee but has a similar taste and we can replace the habit with this. Instead of being acidic and taxing the adrenals, it apparently supports the adrenals. It has just been blowing my mind that we can switch to a 'coffee' that supports our adrenals!! It involves a superfood---chaga mushrooms that I hear David Wolfe talking about a lot. I ordered the ingredients last week and can't wait to try it. I truly believe that future generations who will have these nourishing foods will look back at our generations in complete bafflement that we collectively fed ourselves the way society does now.

The results of my 7 day challenge

2010-08-21T18:55:00.000-07:00

Day 3

This was a tough day because I had on hand a lot of the homemade and really delicious cheesy crackers, and also it was "soup day" (a Waldorf thing) in our house, so I was making a large pot of (cooked) minestrone from scratch. I don't use any food from cans any more. Anyway, I had a lot of really filling food around, so it was hard to fit in the salad and sauerkraut, but I did. This exposed a weakness in the premise of the challenge...I don't want to overeat in a day just to fill my challenge's quota. I guess the way to do it would have been to eat the salad and sauerkraut first, but the food I had around was just really really good.

Day 4

This was an easy day because the Munchkin & I were traveling in a town where I could buy a bag of the sauerkraut. So instead of going to a restaurant for lunch, we went to the store (the amazing Rebecca's Natural Health Food Store in Charlottesville) and I ate "Rhythm" Kale chips in Nacho AND Curry (2 bags--decadent!!) and the kraut. Definitely healthier than eating in most any restaurant! The Munchkin got all manner of yummy sandwiches, fruits, etc from Rebecca's for a picnic in a nearby park. Then at night I had the salad. However, even though I never limit calories, at the end of day #4 I got ravenously hungry. Nothing was working. I finally cooked up some of the Munchkin's pasta from the pantry and put the raw pesto salad dressing on it. And finally got full. That was weird...I definitely don't consider pasta to have any nutritional value, and usually avoid it!

Day 5

There was no day five. I don't know if it had anything to do with the pasta the night before, but I woke up totally unable to continue in the challenge. I had a huge amount of chocolate/date bars that morning, and the next day (which resulted in staying up till 1 a.m.). I knew not to feel bad and just go with the flow, and now a couple of weeks later, things have evened back out. I'm back off the chocolate, and it took me several days to recover and not feel exhausted from it. I'm now healthier as a result of the challenge, and am still eating salads with smaller amounts of sauerkraut almost every day.

Moving too fast

I crashed mid-challenge because it was just too much too fast. Small changes are much more sustainable. Even though it seemed like an easy challenge, I was totally unable to keep it up for 7 days at that point in time. Next time I'll do a 4 day challenge, or even less. Raw food radio host Revvell talks about "upper limits", referring to when we move too fast out of our comfort zone. Then, of course, we fall back down to where we were or worse. Same as why we can't just jump into perfect health and happiness straight from where we are. Instead of trying to quickly jump really high to a new level, it's easier for most--I know it is for me-- to make those small changes. But this challenge was great to jump start me. Little by little the changes end up to be huge. Paramahansa Yogananda, in Autobiography of a Yogi, quotes Buddha: "By the falling of waterdrops a pot is filled; the wise man becomes full of good, even if he gather it little by little."

raw vegan cheesy crackers

2010-08-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

I wanted to recreate as best as I could the Cheesy Quackers from One Lucky duck. The ingredients are flax, almonds, sea salt, nutritional yeast, and spices. I know the crackers were yellow, but I wasn't sure what spices are in them. So I threw in all yellow spices I could find: curry, turmeric, cayenne, chili powder, and mustard powder. The original crackers are amazing, and my re-creation was very tasty too. I used lots and lots of nutritional yeast for the cheese flavor.

This little cookie cutter made the crackers into shapes a little bigger than "Goldfish", so my 3 year old is having fun eating them. This is a tasty, healthy alternative to Goldfish or Cheddar Bunnies.

DAY TWO of 7 day challenge

2010-08-10T18:41:00.000-07:00

Things are going along well, just completed second day. However, I found out yesterday that these bags of sauerkraut are very big...bigger than I realized. I just couldn't finish it yesterday, so I'm changing it to 1/2 bag per day. This comes to a bowl with every meal.

Strange things....two nights ago I had unusual and really bad nightmares. I just googled 'detox and nightmares' & 'cleansing and nightmares' and found that many other people have written about this. I am trying to do an informal candida detox with all this sauerkraut/no fruit. Even though I haven't read the books on candida yet...so I'm not doing it armed with all the info. Will get to Body Ecology soon. It's been sitting on my desk for months.

Another strange thing...I had horrible luck today. A lot of really bad things happened, which I won't dwell on based on Law Of Attraction, but I thought it was strange for such unusually bad events to happen when I'm supposed to be raising my energy frequency higher. We'll see at the end of the week, but I'm baffled about that. Maybe it's some kind of detox funk? Here's to a turnaround tomorrow for day three.....

DAY ONE of 7 day challenge

2010-08-09T12:42:00.001-07:00

Today is actually day one of my own personal 7 day challenge. I was going to start yesterday, but I completely forgot to eat the sauerkraut. My challenge is to eat one package of live sauerkraut per day, and one raw vegan salad (size of a head of greens) per day, both for 7 days. In addition to other meals. I'm finding today that there won't be much room for many other meals, though. Also, the last part of my challenge is: no dried fruit, so far so good.

Today, the challenge is off to a great start. I thought I would start with the salad for breakfast, since that made me feel good yesterday. But, the salad is so big once combined with sauerkraut that I had to split it into breakfast, and then finish it for lunch. This is more food than I realized! I've almost completed my first day, as long as I remember to have the rest of the sauerkraut with dinner, which will be a ripe avocado with millet & tons of cilantro.

I'm also making sure to take my krill supplements and B-12 spray (which I usually forget), so I'm covering all the bases to make sure I feel amazing at the end of this week.

Alissa Cohen's Italian Dressing

2010-07-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

From the book Living on Live Food. With both fresh and dried herbs, it's a thick dressing. Delicious....

The taste--sublime with just that hint of garlic...perfect flavor combination. Recipe can be found here.

What I'm listening to

2010-07-02T12:20:00.001-07:00

This CD is amazing; I'm listening to it nonstop. It's recorded live in LA and the only thing is, that since I'm here in Richmond Virginia I sometimes am feeling frustrated because the CD just makes me want to go attend these monthly sessions at Steve Ross's yoga studio Maha Yoga in Los Angeles. So the question is....Is there ANY kirtan in central Virginia? Somewhere...someone...please!!!??

Other than that frustration, this CD makes me feel very very happy. Om Namah Shivayah!

One Lucky Duck Falafel

2010-06-27T19:27:00.000-07:00

I attempted to recreate the falafel I ate at One Lucky Duck during my trip to New York and met with great success!! Lucky for me the recipe for the entire dish...falafel, tahini sauce, red pepper hot sauce, and tabouli...is in the book Living Raw Food. It was super easy to make, one of those fun ones where you get to roll stuff in little balls. This is another recipe (like Alissa Cohen's pakora) where the raw version tastes way better than the 'original' fried version for sure.

Quinoa Stuffed Avocado Recipe

2010-06-14T17:29:00.000-07:00

Obviously this recipe isn't 100% raw :) This recipe is my new favorite meal, it is so, so good. Quinoa is one of the four Body Ecology Grains.

I got the idea for this recipe from Heritage Cafe in Virginia Beach. However, the dressing they served with it, although vegan, was not healthy. It was made with a Veganaise base. Whatever anyone's philosophy about unprocessed soy, processed soy (garden burgers, soy ice cream, etc) is really, really unhealthy and we should be completely phasing it out of our vegan/vegetarian diets. (I notice the same issue at Ellwood Thompson's in Richmond which uses processed soy --and tofu which I now also believe is unhealthy-- in many of their prepared foods.) I've noticed that many health food cafes are slow to catch on to this, but I feel that it will change.

This recipe can have any dressing drizzled on top...I think a "ranch" type would be ideal. I used what I had made today, a cucumber dill dressing. This recipe is so fabulous it seems any dressing would work with it.

Start with a bed of greens with a bit of dressing and a ripe avocado.

I made some quinoa and after it cooled a little I mixed in some olive oil and chopped carrots. Generously fill the avocado and drizzle a little more with dressing of choice.

This is a perfect post workout "recovery" meal. After working out, it's a good idea to have a piece of fruit to eat right after (maybe in the car on the way home if you're like me and do group exercise at the gym). Then the body is ready for the recovery meal. Besides being delicious--seriously--after working out--two bonuses

*Quinoa is a very high protein food, as are the greens.
*The two fats in this meal are excellent for health, avocado and olive oil. If you follow my blog, you know I've never limited calories, especially not fats. For any people trying to lose weight, eating the right fats is crucial. If fats are limited too much in intake, the body holds on tightly to the fat it has and will not release that weight. (on the other hand, in excess they are hard for the digestive system)

Cucumber Dill Dressing from Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine

Waistland by Deirdre Barrett

2010-06-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

I re-read Waistland after one year. This is truly an amazing book. I was just as blown away by the first paragraph the second time around

"Zoos across America post signs: "DON'T FEED THE ANIMALS." To young children, this looks mean-spirited. If they love the cute otter turning flips, why not share their potato chips or marshmallow cups? Adults quickly explain that what animals need is meat, fish, greens, or chow pellets carefully engineered for a balance of nutrients. This is otter meal...lion food...elephant chow. The children's well-intentioned offerings would make the animals fat, sick, short-lived. Chips and candy are human food.
What's wrong with this picture?"

Feed your children well, people!!

I think, looking back, that what was most helpful of all the fascinating parts of this book was how to successfully change habits. Her advice was, of course, how I was able to lose weight. Not very profitable or marketable for the food industry to have people say, "I lost 35 pounds and kept it off, and got healthy, by eliminating sugar from my food intake." (and, by the way, I have never in the past year counted calories or limited portions at all.)

The only thing that I think is out of date is her several references to soy as a healthy food alternative. I agree with Dr. Mercola's research that soy is not a healthy food, and I personally no longer consume it. As always I highly recommend this book that for me was life changing. It's a great read, full of fascinating studies and stories, woven together perfectly.

Law of Attraction song

2010-06-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

I just turned on the radio to the local top 40 station...I rarely ever turn on the radio...and it happened to be such a great Law Of Attraction song! And I attracted it :) :) Not bad musically either.

A finer point about the lyrics...in Law Of Attraction, usually phrases like "I want --such and such--so bad" aren't exactly the best way to word it, because you get back exactly what you put out...in this case you would get back literally more "wanting" it (not having it), because wanting is focusing on the lack. What deliberate Law Of Attraction creators do is think in terms of already having it. But this is still a great LOA song lyrically anyway because the visualizations are so vivid, so personal and detailed, and so optimistically happy. Good one!

Surprise Dish

2010-05-30T07:16:00.000-07:00

9:30 a.m. Sunday
I casually go to the computer to write down directions to the wedding today, feeling thankful and really happy that we get to go to beautiful Nelson County a second Sunday in a row :) :)

The wedding website's directions say "Park past the barn - Head to the big tent to drop off your food."

FOOD??? What!?! This wedding is a POTLUCK?! Moment of panic. I have no idea what food is in the house right now and I begin a minor freak out. Go to the fridge and find some very good news.

Lots of basil, lots of pine nuts, and also some walnuts that I was soaking to make Alissa Cohen's Walnut Mushroom Loaf later. I have plenty of garlic, olive oil, and salt, and zucchini...deep breath, this is perfect! I love how easy raw food is!

11:30 a.m. Got the dish done in about an hour with plenty of time to spare. I could be some kind of hippie caterer or something :)

Turned out very yummy

Gratitude for a beautiful day

One Year Anniversary

2010-05-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

This is a very special milestone for me, One year without sugar! HOORAY! An amazing experience, not only losing 35 pounds and becoming athletic again, but also the big & totally unexpected surprise outcome...the spiritual changes that slowly bloomed after sugar was eliminated, and which continue to develop in the form of constant spiritual gifts from the universe.

To celebrate, I'm taking a brief break from my current reading about --among other things--colon cleansing, Earthing, Body Ecology, the Power of Infinite Love and Gratitude, the Anastasia series, and of course Law of Attraction--- to go back and read the 5 books that I read last summer that jump started my whole journey to health.

I can't wait to read Waistland again, the book that is so special to me. I will read it this Monday night (May 31), exactly one year after I magically picked it up last year. I'm also really excited to read Anti Cancer again...I remember it to be a fabulous book, although with an unfortunate name (fighting or being "anti" anything makes it stronger).

Chinese Bok Choy Salad

2010-05-29T09:19:00.001-07:00

This is a marinated salad from Raw Foods For Busy People 2: Green Magic. It's totally phenomenal. I like the way you don't have to make the dressing separately in the blender, too. Less to clean. The marinade is awesome, sweet from orange and a little sour from apple cider vinegar. Also includes sesame oil, nama shoyu, and fresh ginger, and honey which I left out---it's sweet enough with just the orange. I will definitely come back to this recipe...great way to eat bok choy. Delicious!

Raw Vegetable Pakora

2010-05-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

This is Alissa Cohen's Pakora recipe from Living on Live Food. It's great, nice spices and texture (and no nuts which makes me happy). I love pakora, I've eaten quite my share of the fried-made-with-flour kind. This is an excellent substitute. With a recipe like this I think it's important not to over-dehydrate so it won't get too dry. At 8 hours of dehydration, mine came out just a touch too dry but still okay.

Sunflower Greens

2010-05-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

I am so happy to have grown and eaten sunflower greens, a real live food! They taste really awesome. Here are the pics over the past week...

This was so cool, I was so excited that it actually worked

Salad with Leaf Organics House Dressing (from Raw Food For Real People)

Sunflower greens are great to share with children...Here is the munchkin harvesting greens with her scissors:

Pesto Stuffed Mushrooms

2010-05-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

These are Alissa Cohen's Pesto Stuffed Mushrooms. Yay for basil being back in season! On the plus side, these are so simple and easy to make, and would be perfect to bring to a potluck or party. On the other hand, they are heavy on the nuts, with both pine nuts and walnuts. I would like to find a recipe for (or just experiment on my own) with a pesto with no nuts or very minimal nuts. I no longer want heavy amounts of nuts in my recipes. I'm starting to pay more attention to food combining, and starting to feel the difference in the digestion.
Here is a pesto spaghetti...

May Richmond Raw Potluck

2010-05-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

I love the Richmond raw foodists, they are so cool! Positive energy, great group. It is so great to go somewhere and talk cookbooks...we all have the same ones, the same gadgets, and have tried similar recipes. That's not to say that people who are new to raw food shouldn't come--just bring some celery and carrot sticks! That's what I did the first time, and now I'm bringing fancy raw dishes too :)
Here are some of the incredible dishes from 5/22.
Asian cole slaw with cashew ginger mayo...

Tuna...

Sun Burgers...

Lasagna...

Zucchini bread...

Nacho cheese dip...

My breadsticks with marinara...

Raw Waldorf Moms can still make bread!

2010-05-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

I don't believe bread to be a healthy food. I used to be overly pro-bread, as a backlash reaction to the Atkins diet craze about a decade ago. The Atkins diet is so ridiculous and unhealthy (It involves intentionally eating unhealthy foods to put oneself into ketosis, AND the ketosis must be maintained for the rest of one's life if the weightloss is to be maintained. Ridiculous.) Because I so strongly associated anti-bread with Atkins, it took me a long while to realize that bread is, indeed, not healthy for humans. I also truly believe that all humans have varying degrees of gluten intolerance, whether they realize it or not. In other words, I very strongly suspect that all people would do well to eliminate gluten and replace with healthier grains.

Waldorf philosophy includes bread baking day. Of course, some Waldorf parents don't eat bread for various reasons...I can think of one high profile Raw Food Waldorf mama, Kate Magic in the UK, who has 3 boys, at least one of which attends Waldorf school.

For me, the Waldorf bread making with children doesn't need to be thrown out...There are SO many fabulous raw breads and crackers. All raw food recipes are so tactile and wonderful to share with children. Not to mention being nutrient dense and energy-giving, and alive! Steiner would surely agree with that!

I believe that the recipes don't need to be put in an oven and baked in order to be valuable learning experiences for children. I also believe that it's time to re-evaluate nutritional habits in light of new health information, and think of updating some of the old recipes currently being used in Waldorf schools. Especially since usually the flour being used has been sitting around for a long time. And especially since there are so, so many healthy recipes that are tasty and just as much fun. Here's the proof.

I have shown this recipe before in the blog. It is so good, I make it all the time. It is Matt Amsden's breadstick recipe (He calls them "cheese sticks" but I don't find them cheesy so I call them bread sticks.) See, we raw foodists have dough too...

On the left is the ground sunflower seeds for rolling the breadsticks in. Here are the breadsticks rolled and ready to go into the dehydrator. So much fun to make these with children, and just as easy as making bread!

The flavor of these is amazing!

Raw Asian Noodle Salad

2010-05-21T13:21:00.000-07:00

This recipe is called "Oriental Pasta Salad" from Raw Foods For Busy People 2: Green Magic. I totally love it. It's always hard to predict the first time I make a recipe if it will become a "staple" but this one is so simple with easy to find ingredients...I'm thinking it will be a frequent recipe for me in the future. I think the first time I made Phil McClusky's lasagna I didn't realize I would make it at least once a week from then on. That's what I'm in search of now...more really good recipes to make life easier but with more variety too.

Here are the vegetables...just spinach, broccoli, red pepper and spiralized zucchini. The recipe called for it to be spiralized into flat noodles but I felt like spaghetti instead.

Below is the picture mixed with the sauce. This sauce is fabulous...tahini, tamari, sesame oil, ginger and garlic. What would we raw foodists do without tahini? And zucchini! The only thing I use more of than zucchini in my raw food prep is lemons.

I wanted to make this a little more spicy, so I added red chili flakes to it...really tasty dish.

Cauliflower Cheese

2010-05-20T18:08:00.000-07:00

I LOVE this recipe! This has a great flavor to it.
This is a new recipe I tried from Get Fresh Magazine, a raw food magazine from the UK, Winter 2009. Here is the cheese and the cauliflower, the two parts of the recipe.

One great thing about this recipe is that it has turmeric and olive oil, but I remember from my reading that we should eat turmeric with oil and pepper, so I added pepper to the recipe. I think this was explained in the book AntiCancer.

Cream of Asparagus Soup

2010-05-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

Here is a soup from Green Magic. It called for marinating some asparagus first,
then blending with other ingredients. It's quite good.

While prepping & eating this I'm listening to a very cool live radio show on Laura Fox's Visionary Culture Radio...interview with Howard Wills...really enjoying and tripping out that all the callers are calling in from Richmond Virginia!! :) Plus I love this guy! He's very Law of Attraction, great stuff.

No matter what, it's important to feel peaceful and postive/happy while preparing your food, especially if it's raw food (full of water molecules). For me, listening to anything about Law of Attraction or meditative music is a big plus while preparing food.

Raw Italian Crackers

2010-05-19T13:40:00.000-07:00

I am so excited about these crackers from Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine. I remember when I first got this book 6 months ago I looked at recipes like this and they were totally foreign to me...I had no idea how to make any of these new foods. It really shows me how far I've come that I was able to easily make these crackers with the Vitamix and dehydrator, it was just like second nature now!

Since these are "Italian Crackers" I probably should have put some tomato slices and basil leaves on them, but I made them more into a Mexican meal with spicy guac and fresh corn. Spicy: one jalapeno for two avocados, plus cilantro, onion, salt & lime.

When I tried this meal I said "Oh My God YUM" I was really really happy with it. The crackers themselves taste good, maybe like Triscuits(sp?). A good snack for kids just plain, much better than processed-and-packaged 'organic'-but-not-'healthy' baked crackers.

Salad with Spicy Asian Dressing

2010-05-18T19:53:00.000-07:00

This is a great salad with dressing recipe found here. It has two parts sesame oil to one part Nama Shoyu (or Braggs), and ginger, garlic, and red pepper flakes. This is a great dressing over bok choy, fennel, red leaf lettuce, and all the vegetables I had sitting around...red pepper, celery, cucumber, etc.