more words of wisdom

Recently I had the opportunity to see the lovely Don Tolman speak in Melbourne. He is a fascinating and funny man and has a lot to say in regard to our current “health care” industry. He is out spoken and pulls no punches… I think I am seriously in ‘like’ with him. Plus he is a cowboy and who doesn’t like a cowboy

His brand of wisdom harks back to an earlier age before we needed to control everything with drugs… when we understood that rubbish in meant rubbish out and we were responsible for our own health. He relates the story of his quest for “pulse” which took 17 years and had him visiting the worlds museums in search of this ancient wisdom in the scrolls of antiquity.

Don is a big advocate of fasting and once fasted for 40 days on water and then ran a marathon- honestly it puts us all to shame thinking we are going to die if we dont get a chocolate bar at 3pm or we skipped lunch… quick call the paramedics. Don has some gentle alternatives to fasting such as mono eating (apples for days) or juice fasting that might suit the beginner. I personally am going to add one days fasting a month to my diet.

He runs bootcamps for people to get back in touch with the simple truths that they just dont seem to be able to connect with in this high tech age- EAT MORE VEGES! No I am waiting for them to bring them out in pill form.

Sometimes we need to hear it from the right source to really get it in our neurology… this is it people… your life… your body and apparently it is YOU that is driving the bus… embrace it and it will give you power, deny it and you will always be looking for something to save you.

Don’s schedule can be found here and I heartily recommend you get off your butt and see him.

Oh and in case you are following my progress I can now swim half a km pretty easily and am working up to 3km, the biking totally rocks and the running has improved no end.

Life is sweet baby!

Green Smoooooothies

On Monday I went to an enlightening workshop given by Victoria and Valya Boutenko all about green smoothies.

Victoria’s family have been “Raw” for 15 years and they really know their stuff, plus they were sweet and charming which goes a long way with me.

The upshot of all of the info that they gave us was that if we were to have a diet that was about 50% fruit and 48% green leafy veges with the remaining 2% made up of seeds nuts etc then that would be ideal.  I know my diet is pretty heavy on seeds and nuts and has little fruit but lots of veges of the cruciferous variety so this is going to be another challenge.

Their suggestion for getting this massive amount of leafy green into you is to make a green smoothie in the morning and aim for 40% green 60% fruit to start with.  I admit I went for 60/40 the other way because I really dont mind the very chlorophyll taste of all that green plus I like my results fast.  So no nuts or fats of any sort in the smoothie… just green and fruit.  Leafy green to be clear is not broccoli or other veges it is LEAFY! The advantage with making a smoothie is you are making the food the right consistency to be absorbed quickly into the body- again quick result.

Things to remember to do as you get in a routine of making this divine green breakfast is don’t eat anything 40 min either side of your drink.  Rotate through at least 7 types of green.  Drink slowly.  Be happy… actually I just added that because I am so very happy aren’t you?

Honestly it takes me 5 minutes to make the whole thing and wash the blender AND the little peeps will drink it happily so bonus!

Recipes:

Apple-Kale-Lemon

4 apples

1/2 lemon juice

5 Kale leaves

2 cups water

Blend!

Strawberry-Banana-romaine

1 cup strawberries

2 bananas

1/2 bunch romaine

2 cups of water

you guessed it… Blend!

My smoothie fave goes like this

1/2 fresh pineapple

1 cup strawberries

150 gms (thats a biggish bag) mixed salad leaves/rocket/spinich

B-L-E-N-D

See ya

This is the end…

Not really! It is the end of my 6 week experiment but the beginning of a whole new phase. So after today I have a plan to replace a great deal of the family’s food with raw options.

Here is where I am starting

Pasta sauces

Healthy kids snacks and biscuits

ice cream

Pie/ cheesecake

soup

humus

pizza

crackers

After I replace a bunch of their usual food with raw food then I am going to introduce some new raw foods and raw ingredients as much as I can.

The kids are already showing an interest in my raw food and tasting bits of it which they usually declare as tasting quite normal so I think the best way to proceed is to get them in the kitchen.

Then I am going to get the little cherubs in the kitchen to do some raw kids recipes and film them and stick ‘em on the site in inspire other kiddies.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

Dinner for tonight is zuchini pasta with a marinara sauce followed by a chocolate avocado pie I do believe- I better go shopping.

See you later

Recipe

crust:

2 cups almond

6 medjool dates

6 prunes

Blend until crumb texture and then press into pie dish and chill.

Filling:

4 Medjool dates

1/4 cup agave nectar

1/2 cup ground sesame

2 avocados

1/4 cup cacao

1/2 cup coconut

cinnamon

pinch salt

stevia to taste

Blend until smooth and then use a spatula to scrape into pie crust- chill

top with strawberries

Chocolate syrup

1/4 cup agave nectar

1 Tbsp cacao

mix together and drizzle over pie

Chill out and put the pie in the fridge for and hour or so

This pie is really rich and yummy

The Penultimate Day

As I sit here scoffing red capsicum stuffed with sun dried tomato topped with pizza “cheese” and rocket pesto on a very thick experimental cracker I have to say I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn that this 6 week experiment has afforded me.

I am privileged to be able to make decisions about my diet that are based on my personal philosophy rather than necessity- there are people starving to death all over the world at this very moment. There are also people eating themselves to death.

People freaked out when I stopped eating complex carbohydrates 18months ago and were sure I wouldn’t cope as an athlete with my weird diet. Now they are equally sure I cant do it as a raw vegan.

I have learnt more about nutrition in this last 6 weeks than any other time in my life and I feel confident as I near the end of my experiment that I can take this journey a lot further and even begin to intergrate it into my family’s diet.

Tomorrow I will tell you my next 6 week plan… I am getting a little excited.

Recipe for rocket pesto.

2 big handfuls of rocket

3/4 cup sunflower seeds

1/4 cup sesame seeds

2 tble sp olive oil

2 tble sp pinenut ‘cheese’

dash of lemon juice

1 tsp nutritional yeast

1 tsp dried basil

sprinkle of dusle

salt

Blend the hell out of it until it is all smooth and eat on crackers or vege sticks

Yummy!

40

So Victoria continues to be devastated by bush fires and the death toll rises- 126 at the moment but expected to reach 200. The sky where we are has none of the usual haze that we have come to expect with bush fires and the air has a very pleasant temperature about it so it is just the constant stream of news that reminds us of the disaster going on on our doorsteps.

I am reminded of how precious life is and how it is our own responsibility to get the most out of it whether you measure that in health, wealth or happiness.

At a time like this people rally and reach out to those who have lost everything… I wonder can we maintain that compassion and let it permeate all of our endeavors, even the small insignificant ones. We seem to find it easier to make the grand gesture than be compassionate on a moment by moment basis.

I guess that is just the way people are but as we all know it is the little things that make up a life, a collection of kind words, thoughts and deeds.

There are so many places we can walk lightly and speak kindly and yet we often choose not to.

I am enjoying making the conscious decision to embrace a compassionate diet. There are such joys in opting out of the institutionalized violence surrounding the SAD. It feels much more peaceful and although each thing we consume has some impact on our environment there are degrees of impact. I am also a great believer in the power of intent so the intent with which you do something will unconsciously affect the result. It is my intent to do the least amount of harm and the most amount of good…

Love ya, oh and here is my recipe of the day from Brendan Braziers book Thrive:

Apple Cinnamon Energy Bars

1 small apple- cored

1 cup fresh or soaked dried dates

1/2 cup soaked quinoa

1/4 cup almonds

1/4 cup ground flax seed

1/4 cup hemp protein

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

sea salt to taste

Blend all ingredients until a texture that you like then shape into a ball or bar.

As the bars  dry out they are easier to handle.

These also make great and healthy kids snacks

39

I ran this morning at 5am, just 21km as after such a big run last weekend this has been a rest week. I have a hamstring problem in my right leg and it hurt most of the way.  Alas my beloved Feldenkrais wasn’t on because of the St Kilda Festival.  Given 65 people have died in local fires over yesterday and today it seemed a bit shallow… the grey smoky skies are an ever present reminder of the tragedy that is unfolding in Victoria.  A drinking and music festival just seems so trivial.

I went to a seminar in town to check out some work we had done for them and met the lovely Ben.  In a very short time we had made a bet that we would do a Triathlon by Feb 1 next year.  I am up for it.  Ben is a great swimmer and cycling is no problem, it is the running he isn’t keen on.

I’m the opposite… I can hardly do 3 lengths of the pool without stopping- the most I have done with rests is 11. My goal is 50, even if I have to rest a little.  Each time I practice I get a little better.

Apparently if I dont do the triathlon the price is taking Ben to a VERY expensive restaurant in Sydney.   Never  going to happen… I am already training Ben.

I wanted to share a recipe with you that I half made up after looking around on the internet.

Pine nut pizza Cheese

1 cup pine nuts ground

1/4 cup sunflower seed ground

1/4 sesame seeds ground

3 tsp nutritional yeast

pinch of macrobiotic salt

Mix together and sprinkle on your raw pizza.

The kids thought it tasted somewhere between Parmesan and peanut butter- thanks guys.

38

I just realised there are only 4 more days in my experiment- time flies when you are having fun.

Today was apparently 46 degrees at some stage so luckily I had the tomatoes , capsicum, apples, mushrooms  and experimental crackers out drying.

I made a lovely pasta sauce out of the semi dries veges with garlic and herbs and put it on Zuchini ‘pasta’.

Sun dried apples are divine, they will be gone in no time.

I am going to run tomorrow- just 21 km as it is a rest week after the 32km. Then I will start building up again but faster 24km, 26km, 28km…

Today I did weights and I swam 11 lengths of the pool. I must check out triathlon distances for training.

see ya

Pasta sauce

1 cup sun dried tomatoes

2 Roma tomatoes

2 red Capsicum fresh or dried

1/2 cup dried mushrooms

1 bunch fresh basil

1 Tblsp lemon juice

1 tsp dried onion

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp agave

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp minced garlic

a bit of water

Whack it in the food processor and blend/ pulse.  Keep it chunky for interest. Put it on vegetable noodles

37

Today was so singularly uneventful I dont know what to write.

Being a raw vegan has become about finding a rhythm in the way I buy, prepare and eat food that allows me to keep up my active lifestyle and have more energy and time rather than less.

It is a bit boring having to cook the family food as well as play with my diet but we are all coping and some raw stuff is slipping on to their plates too.

I look at cooked veges and they seem dead in the way meat started looking dead to me in the months before I made this change. Interesting.

Tonights dinner was capsicum open sandwiches spread with a pate of seed and vegs and the perfect amount of chilli.

see ya

36

Uneventful day as it has been there have been a few nice surprises.

The first was the ebook “30 Days in the Raw” by Victoria Leith courtesy of Sazzies birthday giveaways. I am looking forward to giving the recipes a go and reading about someones elses journey.

The second was that my second day of running intervals didnt suck as much as I thought it would- Bonus! That might not seem all that positive but it is a step in the right direction.

The third was that my swimming has improved over the short period of time I have been doing lengths and I seriously think that a triathlon next season would be a doable thing. Iron girl maybe?

So food wise today it was simply smoothies, salad, dehyrated crackers and tomatoes and a bit of recovery goo stuff for after training.

see ya

A Kindred Spirit

Sometimes you find a kindred spirit right under your nose and today I did.

The lovely Skye who is a paramedic and my favorite person to chat to at Taekwondo and I were discussing the outragously hot weather we have had and I mentioned I have been sundrying tomatoes etc and she said she had thinking of buying an excalibur dehydrator- Only raw foodies seem to know about such things and on further investigation I found out that Skye has made the change to raw vegan too!!! I am so happy to have someone who is also on this journey. Unlike me Skye has been a vegan before and a vegetarian recently- I had been living on meat, cheese and eggs for 18 months. Now I have someone to swap recipes and resources with. YAY!

The rest of my day today was taken up with blogging about a book called “In defense of food” by Michael Pollan which is about how the last 30 years of nutritional information and food industrialization had left the West fat and sick. Interesting book.

I also had a personal training session which was really good and I barely got to failure point by the end which felt better than yesterdays intervals. I have been making little pots of chocolate/pea protein/ agave/maca and almond milk which make a thick mousse to replenish energy at the end of a work out. They are great and just the thing to restore me after I have been working my muscles hard.

Dinner is tomatoes with salt and pepper on experimental crackers- simple and lovely on a warm summer night. We are also having frozen grapes and frozen pineapple rings for dessert. I am thinking I must find a good source of frozen berries- that would be the perfect dessert.

See ya tomorrow

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