I wanted to tell you about my favorite machine for making your own natural products at home – a.k.a. being a “kitchen witch.” If you are crafty and like to make your own things, you can save loads of money and create many different herbal remedies and beauty aid products for your own personal use or even to start your own little cottage business. That’s what I did with the help of my Vita-Mix 12 years ago.
I became a Certified Herbalist in 1995 and purchased my first Vita-Mix “Total Nutrition Center” machine then, too. This machine still performs amazingly well for me 14 years later even though I’ve now upgraded to the new Vita-Mix 5200. I formed my company, Magical Botanicals, Inc in 1997 and have sold thousands of handcrafted organic herbal products over the years both wholesale and retail. I’ve made the majority of my products in small batches with my Vita-Mix. I mainly used the dry container for grinding seeds, roots, bark, flowers and leaves to use in many different preparations such as tea blends, incense, bath salts, bath bombs and an organic herbal smoke blend. I used the liquid container for making lotions, creams, massage oils, edible elixirs and to mix tinctures.
A good kitchen witch knows that besides making all of her own herbal beauty aids, you need to eat a healthy diet, too. Beauty comes from the inside. The Vita-Mix 5200 helps you to easily achieve this.
My diet is all plant based and I make many raw vegan recipes. My Vita-Mix has helped me to quickly prepare everything such as green smoothies, salad dressings, sauces, soups, grinding flaxseeds, making nut milks, ice “cream”, frozen fruit sorbets and other delicious items in such a fast, easy way.
Making your meals from scratch is very economical and it’s also much healthier for you and your family. Whether you are grinding your own grain in the dry container for bread making or pizza dough or making a frozen dessert in the liquid container, the Vita-Mix 5200 processes your food in such a complete way that it uses the whole food so you are getting all the vitamins, minerals and fiber in your meals and you are not wasting anything. Its biggest asset to me though is really as a time-saving device! Cooking from scratch can take a while but that’s why I use my Vita-Mix 5200 which does the majority of the work for me!
As much as I loved my original Vita-Mix TNC, upgrading to the 5200 has been great. The hard plastic containers used in the 5200 contains no BPA, a known hormone disruptor. The material is also sound damping which makes the powerful motor sound quieter. The lids are easier to use and have a really nice tab over the container for easy on/off and the removable center lid piece actually gets locked into place much better than before. The handles on the containers are now padded and feel better in your hand, too.
I’ve put it to the test this spring with grinding different roots I wildcrafted to make tinctures, powdered dried leaves for capsules and made several batches of my best selling organic herbal smoke blend, Organic Smooth Smoke. As always, it performed beautifully.
Investing in a piece of equipment that is durable, high performing and long lasting that is able to create hundreds of healthy recipes quickly is a smart move for the do-it-yourself kitchen witch. You really can’t go wrong with owning the Vita-Mix 5200!
Right now I am in the midst of one of the biggest detoxes I’ve ever undertaken. And that’s saying something since I’ve done many different things over the years. Ten years ago, my husband and I followed “The Body Ecology Diet” for several months to clean our bodies from candida and parasites. We didn’t have any major problems but Michael did have pretty bad seasonal and some pet allergies. And some food ones, too. All of that warranted a good internal cleansing and we did that together. This was also our first attempt at making lacto-fermented saurkraut (as recommended by the book) which came out badly and we haven’t tried it again until this summer and we are lacto-fermenting veggies like crazy! We had excellent results from doing this program which really is a good cleansing and very healthy way to live. Michael’s allergies were almost totally gone!
Along with that particular cleanse, we did some colonics as is also recommended in the book. We really didn’t like the “closed circuit” colonics that we did so I’ve never gone back for them even though I am aware of how important it is to keep your colon clean. There is a quote from the Royal Academy of Physicians of Great Britain that says, “90 percent of all disease and discomfort is directly or indirectly related to an unclean colon.” Now that is really saying something. 90 percent. That’s a lot.
Being on a raw vegan diet is very deeply cleansing in itself. I thought I was doing enough sufficient exercise to sweat out the toxins that were being dredged up by this cleansing diet but I guess not since I’ve been having weird rashes come out on my skin the past few months. This is basically past prescription meds I’ve taken and heavy metals, solvents, etc that I’ve been exposed to over the years trying to make a quick exit through the largest elimination organ we have – the skin. It all gets stored away in the liver, one of our most important organs in the body that performs over 500 tasks everyday. Most skin problems are related to liver congestion or stagnation and the body trying to rid itself from it. I’ve known this and have done many liver flushes and herbal liver tonic blends over the years to try to keep mine in good working order.
A liver flush is generally a concoction blended in the blender every morning and drank on an empty stomach for 10 days then a 3 day break then do it again. Clearly this was not enough to get at the deep seated stuff for me. I also have been having visions of colonics so I knew it was a message and that I needed to do them again but I just didn’t like the kind I did before and didn’t realize there was another way until I started to read about it in some of my books.
I investigated this other type of colonic that has been recommended by many health experts and this one is called the “gravity feed” method. It is the most gentle way and very effective at cleaning you out. I found a practitioner in my area (that cured herself of liver cancer) and she is highly knowledgeable of many rather unpleasant facts and stories relating to sickness caused by toxed out people that she has treated over the years. I loved her right away and knew she was the person for me!
I’ve been trying out different recipes for my son to eat that are both healthy and tasty for him. He thinks he’s getting a treat and I’m happy that he’s getting more produce.
Since he’s so picky, I’ve kept it pretty simple. Simple seems to work best and then I try to add on if he will allow it.
His favorite treat of all in the summer is a popsicle. We have some popsicle molds that we use and last year, he would only eat it if I put fruit juice or lemonade in it for him but this year, I’ve been buying so much more fresh fruit and he seems more interested in what I’m doing with it that I’ve made popsicles out of just whole fruit and a little raw agave nectar which has a very sweet taste and is low glycemic, i.e. does not raise your blood sugar like regular sugar does.
So here are a few simple but tasty treats for the kiddos:
Strawberry popsicle:
1/3# fresh, organic strawberries, washed
1T raw agave nectar
1/4 cup water
Puree in a high speed blender til smooth. Pour into popsicle molds and freeze.
You may need a bit more agave depending on how sweet the berries are. The first time I made this for him, he wanted it more sweet, of course so I just brushed on a little agave on the outside which made him a happy camper and he ate the whole thing. He asks for popsicles everyday and eats at least one a day especially after he comes home from camp.
His new favorite popsicle flavor is watermelon. We got a huge organic watermelon from the health food store the other day and it was so sweet. I could eat watermelon all the time, I love it! Whatever fruit we are eating he will ask me to make it into a popsicle now. It’s really funny to me.
Watermelon popsicle:
2 cups organic watermelon
1T raw agave nectar
Blend til smooth. Pour into molds and freeze.
If it’s not sweet enough, just brush a little agave onto the outside and that does the trick.
I have tried blending flavors and also adding in diluted supplements but that never goes over well and I end up having to eat it so I just stick to the basics. It’s cheap, nutritious, the whole fruit is eaten not just juice and it’s a fun food for the kiddos.
We have also been making lots of raw lemonade. Super easy and tasty.
Lemonade:
1T freshly juiced lemon juice (this is best, otherwise get unfiltered organic lemon juice)
1T raw agave nectar
Water to fill glass
Ice
1/4 tsp. Sea Salt (or Himalayan crystal salt is better). Add this if it’s really hot out for more electrolytes and water retention
Mix really well and drink. Tastes great like regular lemonade but you are using a low glycemic sweetener so your child won’t bounce off the walls and it’s also an electrolyte balancer to prevent dehydration. It’s really like a healthy Gatorade. Lemons also replenish electrolytes. This too, can be frozen as a popsicle.
We have been making sun teas, too. My favorite flavor for the summertime is Mint. Just put a bunch of washed fresh mint leaves in a gallon sun tea container, fill with filtered water and let sit in the sun all day. Refrigerate in the evening and the next day you have really cold mint tea which really cools you off when you drink that on a hot day. You can sweeten it, too but we all like it plain. Even my picky son loves cold mint tea. If you combine that with eating some cold watermelon, you will really cool down pretty quick.
Some cultures drink hot mint tea for cooling down in the heat but I still prefer the cold version best. Mint is a diaphoretic herb so drinking it hot opens the capillaries and helps you sweat which cools you down. It is also very good for the digestion.
The other snack my son Leif is loving is actually going into the garden and picking his own cucumber or greens, etc and we bring it inside and I wash and cut it up and he’s so happy to eat the food he’s watched grow. He will eat large amounts, too. He’s ecstatic that his little yellow pear tomatoes that he planted the seeds in a container himself in May and watered (a lot!) all summer are now bearing fruit and so are the cherry tomatoes growing right next to them. He goes and looks everyday and sees if they are yellow enough and when they are he picks it and pops it into his mouth. He does the same with the red ones, too. I think it’s the cutest thing ever, of course! He’s really into living foods and likes having them around him, just like his parents. The garden is one fascinating place to him.
I thought I’d give a little living foods recap of what’s been going on here lately. First off, I truly love eating this way! It’s been 6 mos (75% raw in Jan. then 90-100% raw since then). I feel better, look better, have more energy and sleep better, too. My vision and hearing are great and my sense of smell is more acute as well. I’m also in a good mood most of the time, too.
I’ve noticed so many things shifting in my body including my tastebuds. Foods I used to not like no matter how many times I’ve tried eating them over the years I suddenly crave. Like olives. I used to pick them off my veggie pizza or out of my greek salads and my husband thought I was nuts – he loves olives. I like olive oil in dressings, to cook with or as a marinade but could not stand eating them or the taste of a whole olive. A few weeks ago, I kept getting this feeling that I wanted to eat olives. You could imagine my surprise over this weird and new craving. There is a store near me (a few, actually) that sell all different kinds of gourmet olives so I went and sampled and was so into it! I bought a whole pound of regular Kalamata and another of oil cured black olives, too. I told my husband – who is astounded by the way – that he has to get his own and not eat mine. It’s almost how I felt when I was pregnant and craving meat – I had to have it and I didn’t want to share it. Now that I know I like them, I am going to buy some "sun cured" olives that raw food online stores carry to try those out.
What is interesting about listening to your body is that when it’s healing as mine is doing, it will tell you what you need for your next step in the healing process. For example, I love mangos. Last year when I was eating an organic,clean omnivore diet, I couldn’t get enough but would limit myself to one a day if I bought some (too much sugar for me I thought then). I have a hormone disorder and insulin resistance and don’t ever want to overdo any types of sugar or else I feel like crap and only want to go to sleep. When I went raw this year, I let myself eat mangos whenever I wanted. Some days that would be 3 throughout the day some days nothing. I felt ok, too. I did some research and there is something in mangos that helps to heal the pancreas and assists the body in getting rid of insulin resistance (and diabetes, too). I don’t ever crave mangos anymore, not for a few months now. I have not been tested but I’m sure my insulin resistance is gone. I still eat mangos or put them in my smoothies if they are on sale and I pick some up. I don’t think about them anymore like the way I did.
I looked up some info on olives and they are high in minerals (but I’ve got that covered with all the greens I eat) and they also help to dissolve mucus in the body. That’s interesting to me – my hormone disorder causes small cysts to form in my reproductive area and cysts are formed out of mucus. Also dairy is very mucus forming and having been off that for 6 months now (and I only ate that in very small amounts anyway), I’m sure I’m still clearing that out, too.
I tell ya, the body is one amazing machine and you never really know the depths of it’s intelligence until you feed it what it truly wants – real living foods. It’s so simple but we’ve adulterated our food and our tastebuds for so long, generations, really that getting back to the basics of pure, simple foods is a very eye-opening experience for me especially with healing my body naturally with the plant world. Sure herbs work but only to a certain extent for some health issues (and I really know this from my own experience and from other people’s experiences working with them as an Herbalist). The changing of one’s diet is the real cornerstone for true, complete healing. Everything else is secondary, IMO.
Besides that, I’ve been (un)cooking up a storm! I love to cook so I knew I was going to commit to doing this and bought a couple additional pieces of kitchen equipment that I didn’t have back in January to make this process go smoothly and I’m so glad I did. It was money well spent because I use all of my equipment if not everyday then every week.
I also got myself 2 new cookbooks recently – each one written by a raw chef that owns a successful restaurant in their cities. Oh my God is all I can say over these recipes. They are gorgeous. I’ve been having so much fun whipping new creations up from the books and because it’s hot out I’ve been craving mostly salad type of recipes – even just fresh, green salads straight from my garden with different, amazing dressings I’ve been making (I made a fresh ginger-miso dressing yesterday, so delish). And incredible desserts, can’t forget the desserts! Yum!
Raw, living foods are not only delicious and good for you – even the rich desserts – they are pretty to look at. I want to buy all new plates to show off the food more because many dishes are so pretty and vibrant looking. I think I’m addicted – I want to be a raw chef now!
These recipe books I just bought are a bit more advanced and do require at least some of the equipment used every day. If you want to start out on adding more living foods dishes to your diet, I really recommend getting a good food processor and if possible, a high speed blender. Makes a world of difference and I use them everyday. A great temperature controlled dehydrator is key for so many other recipes including crackers, pizza crusts, warming food up out of the fridge, making cookies, granola, etc. I find it invaluable but if you are just starting out, you can focus on the quick, no dehydrating recipes first. Even sprouting seeds or grains is pretty easy and fun to add to things. A juicer that can juice not only veggies and fruits but also wheatgrass and have the homogenizing plate to make nut butters and ice creams, etc is also used a lot in my house.
We used to go out to dinner more but since I’ve gone raw, I’d rather make gourmet living food at home and go out and do other things (like see live music!). My local city does have a couple of restaurants that feature raw food entrees on their menu but I figure the money we saved by not going out to eat has more than paid for the equipment I bought back in January and use all the time.
I’d love to hear from anyone with any questions or even topics of interest you’d like me to write about regarding raw, living foods. I certainly love to talk about it and love cooking this way so feel free to ask away!
Over the years, from having my own herbal products company and being a Certified Herbalist that loves to create, I have made so many different facial cleansing products and healing, detoxifying masks. As one of my side effects of a hormone disorder, I tend to break out if I’m stressed, eat anything wrong – or doing a deep cleanse. Eating a raw vegan diet is initially like doing a deep cleanse which is great but not so great for my skin. I have to up my exercise and water intake to keep my skin looking better since the skin is the biggest pathway of elimination that we have.
Several months ago, I read a post on Allie’s Answers about using good ole’ baking soda to wash your face with everyday. I thought, well, I’ve never actually tried that one and I have like 2 enormous boxes of the stuff from Costco because I love baking soda and the plethora of things you can do with it.
I can honestly say, it’s been a few months now of daily use and I love washing my face with baking soda! The first week or so I felt a bit dry after doing it so I moisturized right after and it felt great – so smooth and clear. I think it helped my breakouts from my deep cleansing of stored toxins coming out. It just buffs my face nicely like a daily gentle exfoliant. I especially like to do this before bed at night and then apply a gentle, non-clogging moisturizer. I wake up with such soft skin. I’ve also noticed that after I exfoliate with the baking soda, my skin doesn’t feel dry or tight at all anymore like it did in the beginning.
I read up a bit on how others use it on their skin and you can soak psoriasis plaques in a baking soda bath or apply a paste of baking soda and water directly onto the plaques and it helps them to fall off. Good for excema, too. Some people may feel a tingle at first using baking soda on their skin but it is not harmful and that tingle goes away quickly, too. It was also recommended to drink some baking soda in a glass of water to help alkalinize the body and reduce the symptoms of the skin disorder. Eating a raw vegan diet is alkalinizing to the body, too – just sayin’.
Here is a link to the Arm and Hammer site with a list of how you can use baking soda on your body. It’s really an amazing safe and gentle product that costs you just pennies per any job that you use it for. It’s not just for cooking, scrubbing your tub or using it as an antacid.
I’d love to hear from anyone that uses baking soda on their skin and your results and opinions about it. Or, if you are going to give it a try, please let me know what you think of it after you try it!
This is a new documentary film brought to you by Producer-Directors James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch.
Here is the synopsis:
With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what’s wrong with our malnourished bodies, it’s no wonder that modern society is getting sicker. Food Matters sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide “Sickness Industry” and gives people some scientifically verifiable solutions for curing disease naturally.
Great trailer – check it out above. On their website, you can order the movie or download it for just $4.95. I recommend anyone suffering from any kind of illness, even cancer, should spend the 5 bucks and really learn some important info from the many experts interviewed that can potentially change their world in 80 minutes.
“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food” -Hippocrates
I came across this blog post recently on greenlivingbuilding.com that is something I’ve been thinking a lot about myself since I’ve gone raw. This person said it so well, I thought I would list some of their facts from the post in italics with my comments on this thrown in as well.
Raising food for human consumption creates 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than 130 times the total of human generated greenhouse gas emissions. The amount of pollution created just to grow and deliver animal food to our tables is extraordinarily high.
And water used to raise animals for human food is equally high. Here are some of the worst offenders:
4500 liters of water for one steak.
1000 liters of water for one liter of milk.
1170 liters of water for one chicken breast.
1440 liters of water for one serving of pork.
840 liters of water for one pot of coffee.
2500 liters of water for one piece of cheese.
Compare that to 70 liters of water used to deliver one apple.
These stats are so shocking when you read that in black and white. 4,500 liters of water for one steak? That’s not even 1% of the cow! It’s crazy, really. Plus, all of the grain to feed the cows stuck on those cruel, barbaric factory farmed feedlots. It gets expensive so the feedlot owners went the cannibalism route – it gets the cows weight up faster so more money for them. You do know that they feed cows, who are herbivores, rendered dead cows and other animals including cats and dogs, don’t you? Mad cow, anyone? I wonder how much water is wasted on that heinous act. If you eat red meat, at least buy pasture raised (grass-fed) beef from companies you can trust!
Reducing the percentage of animal foods in your diet is one of the most effective ways to help our environment. It’s also one of the best things you can do for your health at the same time. Two benefits in one!
Since I’ve gone raw, even when I was only 80% raw in January, I realized that I make so much more compost everyday and that I myself hardly throw away anything and only have to recycle a few things. I make very little garbage now. It feels so good to know that whatever I’m eating, if there is any waste it can go feed the squirrels outside or go on the compost pile. My little Bio Bag compost bin and bags we have been using the past several years is way too small for what our needs are now. I need a trash can sized compost bin nowadays!
Another benefit (to me, anyway) is that my child sees me eating all these different veggies, fruits, nuts and sprouts prepared in different ways and is very intrigued. He calls me “the cooking guy” since I’m always whipping up some new recipe and oohing and ahhing over it to him. Even though he is very picky about eating combination foods, his intake of simple fruit and veggies and raw nuts and seeds has gone up so much everyday now. This is huge for me. I can put a pile of spinach leaves in front of him and he will eat it. An entire apple or pear, he eats all of it and bananas, forget it. He can eat 3 or 4 in a day (and no, they are not constipating). Tonight, he tried some raw asparagus we got from the farmer’s market (which was so delicious!). He even drank some of a green juice I made last night which consisted of: collard greens, cucumbers, celery, wheatgrass and an entire lemon and he drank at least 2 ounces of it. That’s so amazing!! He’s really trying out new foods in the plant world and I couldn’t be happier.
And, my husband, a determined omnivore, well his increase in vegan meals and raw vegan foods (he’s so into juicing now) has gone up greatly and the cooking of flesh foods has dropped tremendously. All his choice, I don’t push my food on him but I do ask for him to taste the recipes I make and give me his opinion because my taste buds have definitely changed from detoxing these past 5 months. I have sampled some bites of cooked vegan foods recently when I was cooking for them and I thought, “yuck”. It felt heavy and dense and slow. I know that sounds weird but that’s how it felt and it was some of my favorite cooked foods like couscous and quinoa. I can just imagine what I would think if I ate some chicken or red meat now.
I am so into the high frequency I feel off the living foods. It’s kind of hard to describe but it feels like this total connection to the plants and the earth and to being part of the cycle of life itself. Raw, living foods took the blinders off my eyes and my mind and I feel re-awakened, balanced and more clear again.
And do you know what is the original raw food we mammals get to eat? Breastmilk!
I just love spring and am so happy it’s finally here! I have crocus flowers coming out all over and tulip, daffodil, daylily and iris leaves are coming up. There are new hollyhock leaves (self seeded) coming out in bunches and green leaf buds on my mini rose bushes. I already can’t wait to plant some annuals in the flower beds.
Today, I saw my first dandelion leaves on my grass and got so excited for them to come up. I know that sounds strange but I love the Dandelion plant. I think it grows where it’s needed and it’s not a noxious weed. It is a wild food and good medicine for everyone. We humans need the Dandelion.
Even though we have to have the useless patch of grass in front of our house because we will be selling our home in a few years (otherwise it would be outta there), my husband, the lawn caretaker, knows not to kill my dandelions or else. He does mow them down when he mows the lawn (but that will be after they flower and seed usually) and he doesn’t weed them out or put the nasty chemicals to kill them on it. I don’t eat the ones in front of the house but I like to have them there as a sort of totem plant. Plus, the flowers are just so happy looking to me.
If they show up in my garden, we surely eat them and once they get older, I do try to get as much of the root out to make medicine with it. It is a very nourishing, healing tonic for our livers. We all need that. The young leaves are eaten in salads and smoothies as a wild food rich in minerals and vitamins and can also be made into a tea which is great for water retention. The flowers (the yellow head is actually many individual flowers) can be made into dandelion wine or eaten in salad.
When we lived in the mountains, we would go to this meadow that was near a friend of ours’ cabin (that I could never find on my own, unfortunately, it was very remote) and it would be filled with dandelions. She would keep track of the peak time to come harvest the young leaves for eating and then we would go back again after they went to seed and harvest the roots to make medicine together (she is also an herbalist, like me).
It is so much fun foraging for wild foods and this year I would like to take my son foraging for the wild greens, flowers, berries and roots. He is really into plants and I think he will love this. Besides, it’s part of our ancestry to forage for plants to eat so he should know this, anyway.
Edible wild foods are such energetically strong plants, sometimes having to grow in harsh conditions that in eating them they give you their strength and fortitude as well as their nutrients. Also their free, wild energy, too and who can’t use more of that in their lives? I can’t wait to have a fresh wild food salad again!
Here are some important tips for ethically wildcrafting plants: If you ever go wildcrafting for food or herbs, always be sure to say thank you to the Devas of that plant. When harvesting, especially roots or taking the whole plant for medicine making, leave an offering to the plants (traditionally it’s loose tobacco) and never harvest the mother plant or take the whole stand of plants (especially if digging roots). If you are taking roots, spring or fall are the times to do it when the plant’s energy is still in the roots and in the fall, be sure to put the seeds back in the ground so it may come back again for next year. Don’t harvest near a road (bec. of car fumes) or anyplace that may spray pesticides. You want your wild foods to be wild and organic- i.e. free of any crap that nature did not provide. A book on how to identify the edible wild plants is important because there are some poisonous plants that look similar to the edible ones. Other than that, happy harvesting!
On Feb. 9th I started a “30 days raw” challenge to see if eating a 100% raw vegan diet will make a big difference in my body and health issues. Today is day 12 of the challenge and I can say that I feel so much better this week than last week. Detoxing is no fun and my body was fully in detox mode (and still is but not as bad).
I’ve been a vegan before for several years and was macrobiotic at that time, too. I’ve been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for several years as well. And for the past several years, I’ve eaten a very clean (organic, whole foods), mostly locally grown omnivore diet. All of those ways of eating were mostly with cooked foods and some raw fruits and salads everyday. All of it was a cake walk compared to eating everything made by me from scratch and ensuring that nothing is heated over 118 degrees with zero animal products of any kind.
I can tell that I have either a true allergy or am at least very sensitive to cow dairy and gluten. I’ve given up both groups of food before but never at the same time. It’s been one or the other. This has been very eye opening to me in that my areas of feeling swollen in my body are gone. It seems that I’ve been living with some chronic, low grade inflammation steadily now for a few years (or longer, who knows). I’m so glad I did this challenge to really see what’s up and what can change for my health.
Low grade inflammation over time causes a whole host of diseases including heart disease, diabetes and cancer. It also means your body is in more of an acidic state and ideally we should be just slightly alkaline. Viruses, bacteria and cancer cells love to live in acidic states and hate alkaline ones. A raw vegan diet ensures a slightly alkaline one.
I never really thought about what it means to eat a truly raw foods diet. Even with macrobiotics, they cook almost everything and even wilt different salads thereby killing off the enzymes and other fragile nutrients. There are some raw foods with that way of eating but not much.
Knowing some 100% raw foodists personally, I’ve witnessed their transformations over time and kept thinking about how difficult it must be to live like that. Now doing this for 12 days so far, it’s not so bad, you don’t ever have to be hungry and it’s just a different mindset, really. The hard part for me is the emotional, social connections with food I’ve developed over the years. It is, by far, the most bio-available, nutritionally dense and extremely healthy way of eating I’ve ever done and as noted earlier, I’ve done it all. It’s also referred to as “the beauty diet” and “the fountain of youth”.
I have had cravings, big ones, too but only for flesh foods. I was in the supermarket buying some organic produce the other day and right next to the checkout were a whole bunch of rotisserie chickens. I thought I was gonna lose it and tear into the chicken right there. The smell was so driving me crazy! I controlled myself, didn’t buy it (or eat it there) and what I thought about once I got over it was that wow, that is like a hunter-gatherer response. I wasn’t going crazy over bakery stuff or the massive imported cheese display with all the free samples out, etc. Only poultry or meat have been my cravings and I’ve read that means you need to eat more fats (avocado or nuts). I’ve done that but still my meat cravings remain even though I’m not technically hungry.
I’ve come across some information that says we are technically addicted to cooked food just as we would be addicted to anything else. I thought this was ridiculous until I did this raw challenge and now I can see what they mean. I’m not hungry, I’m getting all my nutrients (and then some), I’ve made some really nice gourmet meals from raw foods and my lovely dehydrator so anything that comes up is a craving from my cooked food addiction.
I wonder if at the end of my 30 days eating truly raw foods if I will add back any cooked foods. If I do, I think it would be the flesh foods to be more of an omnivore again but with no cooked grains or dairy. This is how the Native Americans lived before the white man came and destroyed their world.
We truly don’t *need* to eat anything but a raw vegan diet for optimum health. For this I am sure now. It will just be a matter of how far I may fall in terms of social situations. I hope the occasional cravings I get will diminish over time and my resolve will only strengthen.
Since Today is Valentine’s Day, I thought I would write about my new favorite thing, Raw Chocolate, also known as Cacao. I have been learning about the true benefits of this plant and it’s amazing nutrient profile as well as it’s delectable taste when mixed with a raw sweetener (which, by the way is also packed with viable nutrients).
David Wolfe, the world’s leading raw foods nutritionist and co-author of the book, “Naked Chocolate” says about Cacao:
“Every study on chocolate is pointing to the same conclusion: there is something in chocolate that is really good for us. That something is the raw cacao bean, the nut that all chocolate is made from. The cacao bean has always been and will always be Nature’s #1 weight loss and high-energy food. Cacao beans are probably the best kept secret in the entire history of food.”
Studies show raw chocolate as being the number one source of magnesium, as well as the number one source of antioxidants of any whole food. Magnesium is essential for strong bones, good teeth, and few aches and pains. It is also calming and helps with anxiety. Magnesium is the number one mineral deficiency in the west. Deficiencies in magnesium can lead to heart attacks in some people.
Cacao contains phenylethylamine (PEA) — this is what our brains secrete when we fall in love. The cacao nib is also rich in good fat and minerals such as calcium, zinc, iron and potassium. Chocolate also gets the serotonin pumping through your brain. People have talked about the high gained from chocolate for centuries, and this effect is 10 times higher with raw chocolate. David Wolfe calls it “Nature’s Prozac.”
Cacao is higher in vitamin C than any other nut or seed, but 100 percent of cacao’s vitamin C is destroyed in the processing of chocolate.
Processed chocolate is the result of de-fatting and alkalizing the cacao bean. All the oil is squeezed out of the bean, and salts are added to increase the resulting powder’s capability to be mixed. The real problem to Wolfe is when milk is added because powdered milk blocks the antioxidant properties of cacao. Most of the chocolate being sold today is ruined by chemicals, sugar, hydrogenated oil, and a multitude of other harmful toxins.
Wolfe says that the ancient Aztecs founded a financial system based on using cacao as currency. This insured that, “If there are really greedy people, like Wall Street greed, the incentive to get richer is to plant more chocolate trees!”
“Cacao Trees cannot grow in an isolated environment away from other vegetation” says Wolfe. “It must be grown in an intact rainforest. That is an astonishing fact, because cacao is one of the largest commodities traded. It is an economically viable crop for rainforest people to grow to keep the cattle industry and petroleum companies off the land. So it is literally saving the planet with chocolate.”
We can feel good about eating raw chocolate not only for the amazing health, energy and weight maintenance benefits given to us but that our dollars are going to support rainforest farmers that work with and nurture the chocolate fruit trees and the surrounding vegetation they need to grow well in and in turn blocking the clear cutting of these vital forests for our planet’s health.
You can purchase the raw chocolate in nibs (little seeds) or ground up into raw cocoa powder. Add to smoothies, fruits, mix with raw agave or raw honey and dried fruits or nuts, etc. There are literally hundreds of recipes out there for really delicious raw chocolate foods (even raw chocolate bars). It’s an amazing rich, deep chocolate taste and very satisfying with even just a small amount.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I made a batch of Chocolate Turtles to share with my valentine. It is such a simple recipe and so damn good!!
Raw Chocolate Turtles (adapted from Living on Live Foods book)
1/2 cup raw chocolate powder
1 cup raw, unfiltered honey
2 cups raw pecans or raw walnuts
Mix the chocolate and honey in a bowl and then mix in the nuts. Lay spoonfuls of the mix onto solid dehydrator sheets and dehydrate at 105 degrees for 18-24 hours. May feel sticky when done but will harden as they cool down more.
So here are a few simple but tasty treats for the kiddos:
The other snack my son Leif is loving is actually going into the garden and picking his own cucumber or greens, etc and we bring it inside and I wash and cut it up and he’s so happy to eat the food he’s watched grow. He will eat large amounts, too. He’s ecstatic that his little yellow pear tomatoes that he planted the seeds in a container himself in May and watered (a lot!) all summer are now bearing fruit and so are the cherry tomatoes growing right next to them. He goes and looks everyday and sees if they are yellow enough and when they are he picks it and pops it into his mouth. He does the same with the red ones, too. I think it’s the cutest thing ever, of course! He’s really into living foods and likes having them around him, just like his parents. The garden is one fascinating place to him.
