Seems like I just can't shut up today!

Third post today!

First, I'm going to whine about my day, hobbling around like an old lady. I woke up at about 4.30 this morning with a pain in my back, and whatever position I tried to lie in, it hurt. I have had to miss Taekwon-do tonight and have been moving slowly all day, occasionally wincing at the recurring pain. I assume I strained something while trampolining with the boys on Tuesday - and for some reason it took until Thursday to make itself known!

Hopefully, it will be better soon.


I cleaned out the small freezer above the fridge yesterday - THAT job was way overdue. Once I'd emptied it and given it a good scrub, I only put back the stuff I really wanted to keep. Some old tomato soup went into the compost bucket along with some 5 year old habanero peppers and some commercial sweetcorn which we never eat. I put three bags (about 9lbs) of homegrown prune plums into a large bowl to defrost, and this morning I made them into two plum crumbles. Good breakfast food!


And I am delighted to announce that my Sunrise Circle Jacket is 100% finished - not just the knitting, but the buttons too. I found some lovely glass buttons at my LYS the other day and I can now wear the jacket. Yippee!

A pretty lunch

I just had to photograph my lunch today because it was just so damn good-looking! (OK, not as good-looking as Johnny, or Colin, or Alan, but in their absence....you know!)

It is a yellow bell pepper, nested in shredded lettuce, and filled with a pate made from soaked sunflower seeds, carrot, lemon juice, garlic and seasalt, all blitzed together in the food processor. Then I poured some home-made salad dressing over the whole thing.

All raw, and very satisfying.

I like David Wolfe's "food triangle" that he diagrams in the Sunfood Diet Success System. His raw food triangle is divided into three segments - fruits, leafy greens, and fats (such as avocados, coconuts, and cold-pressed oils). Get a balance of these every day and you're doing well. This lunch fits the bill - fruit (pepper), leafy greens, fats (sunflower seeds, olive oil). And I finished it off with a couple of fresh Medjool dates for dessert.

Rejuvelac

Have you heard of Rejuvelac? I first read about it in a raw recipe book a few years ago but never made it until recently.

It's made very simply by soaking half a cup of wheat berries (whole wheat grains) overnight, then draining them and leaving them to sprout for two days. Then you toss them into a blender with 2 cups of water and chop them up a bit, then strain that mixture into a jug with 4 more cups of water, cover it with a tea towel and leave it for 3 days. Stir it twice a day, and at the end you get an interesting fermented liquid which looks cloudy and smells sort of lemony/sauerkrauty. You can keep it for a further few days in the fridge.

You can drink it as is, but we like it with some lemon juice and a little agave. With the slight natural carbonation, it makes a great lemonade that's excellent for your insides!

Here's what they say about it...This slightly fermented wheat berry drink is one of the most important items in the living foods lifestyle. It contains friendly bacteria that are necessary for a healthy colon and assists the body in removing toxins. Rejuvelac is filled with B complex vitamins and vitamins C and E.

Cute stitch markers

I had a nice surprise in the mail today. Some stitch markers arrived from Vicki of Simple Knits. I won these by contributing patterns to her list of "What can I make with 285 yards or less of yarn" patterns. Great idea!

I just love getting fun things in the mail - way better than bills!

I have had my five hours of Taekwondo this week over three evenings, and this morning I fitted in some weight training. My body feels pleasantly tired. I have an interesting array of bruises up my arms from sparring. Because we partner up and then rotate partners every couple of minutes in class, I can be sparring against people of varying ages and sizes. There is one other mum in the class who's a little younger, a lot taller and very strong. There are also a number of teenage boys, and a couple of tall men in their 20s and 30s. Needless to say, I got worked over on Tuesday night! I suppose it's a good thing to learn how to take a few knocks as when I enter tournaments I will need to be able to handle it, though at least in a tournament you are placed with others of your age, sex and rank. (Having said that, I did get a nasty kick to the chin once from a woman from Prince George in a tournament.)

Since I started up the weights again, I'm using a different method. Before I took a break last year, I had a four day rotation. Each day would be a different area of the body - chest and shoulders, back, legs, arms - plus ab work every time. I had four different exercises for each area and aimed for three sets of 10 or so.

Now what I do is work the whole body each time, every other day if I can. This works better for me as if I miss a few days (or longer, ahem) then one part of the body won't have been neglected more than another. So for each area - shoulders, chest, upper and lower back, abs, biceps, triceps, forearms, quads, hamstrings and calves - I perform one exercise. I start with 10 repetitions of a low weight to warm up the muscles, then move to a medium weight for 10, and finally a weight which is heavy enough that I can't complete 10 reps. The idea is to strengthen the muscles and get them to bulk up. I'm hoping this method will have the desired effect.

Tonight, at the extra class designed to prepare us for our black belt test, we discussed board breaking. We practised the techniques we'll need by hitting and kicking pads. We're going to be chopping a lot of firewood on the day of the test, that's for sure! Knife hand strike, front kick, side kick, back kick, turning kick, 360 degree flying back kick, flying side kick over an obstacle (which will probably be people kneeling on the floor), a double kick where we're supposed to break a board with each foot at the same time in the air....

Hmmm, I hope I'll be able to walk out of the dojang after that lot!

Guess who's coming to town!

My raw percentages for the last few days were 75, 68, 68 and 79%. I want to state publicly that I am going to aim for 80% or better from now on, as that is more likely to keep me on track!

Why is that we can let the pounds creep on for 3 months but we want them off again in 3 days?

To change the subject completely, I had a newsletter in my email inbox today from my local yarn store. In April, Cat Bordhi is going to be leading two all-day classes, one for socks and one for moebius knitting. I have booked myself in for the moebius knitting class - I am treating myself from my "birthday money" (thanks mum).

This lady is an absolute genius in knitting design so I am looking forward to meeting her very much. Now I have to think about what yarn I am going to use for the class project. Decisions, decisions!

Random blather

Cass at Shut Up I'm Counting wrote a great post here about homeschooling her daughters. Her philosophy is very similar to mine (but my boys are still "unschooling" - they don't use any textbooks/workbooks, though that's not to say they won't one day - if they want/need to).

Remember to watch for the lunar eclipse Wednesday night. The moon will turn red, perhaps with a flash of turquoise. Unfortunately it happens between 7 and 8pm in the evening Pacific time, which just happens to be the time I'll be at my Taekwondo class. I'm not sure whether the instructor will approve of me popping outside to take a look! Hopefully one of my fellow bloggers will get a photo and I can enjoy it vicariously.

One of the things keeping me on track with the
high percentage of raw food right now is this ---->

yes, you're seeing that right, and no, I know it's not raw. However it is a little something to sweeten the palate at the end of a meal and a reward to myself for maintaining my willpower during the day.





Natalia Rose, who wrote these two books (which I have borrowed from my local library), says that a little 70% dark chocolate is OK. Her philosophy is that we should choose foods based on their ability to pass quickly through the body. When we eat them, our body should be able to extract the maximum goodness out of them and then get them the hell out! She calls them "quick exit" foods. Dark chocolate is therefore acceptable. Chocolate cake made with white flour and white sugar is NOT!


In fact, for anyone interested in incorporating more living foods in their diet, her guidelines are very reasonable. She says you don't have to eat 100% raw to see the benefits, and you don't have to be vegan if you still want to include a little meat, fish or cheese (of the best possible quality) in your diet. The occasional glass of wine is OK too. She does stress the importance of combining foods for good digestion, and whilst I tend not to follow the "correct" food combining rules, I can understand the reasoning behind them. Starches and proteins require different stomach acidity and enzymes to digest. Fruits, when eaten alone, digest fast and pass quickly through the system. Eat them after a meal and they ferment.

Well, this was going to be just a few sentences and I can see that I have run on, so I will sign off now.

Raw Score:
Tuesday 81%

Eh?

Ever had that feeling that you said the wrong thing? Yeah, me too, and why is it that we always remember those embarrassing or humiliating moments for years but forget all the good times when we said just the right thing? The memory must be burned into our brains at the time of the blush!

Anyway, last knitting night I was talking about something I'd made, and one of the other ladies said something. Now, she has a quiet voice (I think) at the best of times, but sometimes it fades out (for me) completely. It's not just her, it's other people's voices too. Maybe the acoustics in my living room are bad or something, but I can be looking across my coffee table and see someone's mouth moving but I cannot hear them.

I admit it - it's me. It's not anyone else's fault. I need to have the TV louder than anyone else in my family. Sometimes my husband will say, "What's that noise?" and I'll say, "What noise?" It can be useful, because in theory I can avoid being bothered by small noises that would irritate someone with perfect hearing (like my husband). I swear he could hear a mouse sneeze a kilometre away.

Anyway, back to the knitting night. After my friend said something, I said something, and I had a strong suspicion from the expression on the others' faces that what I had said was totally unrelated! The irony of it was that we had just been talking about mothers and mothers-in-law who don't listen, and laughing about asking someone a question and they answer a completely different one. It's funny when you're talking about someone else, but I have to confess....with my hearing, this could be me! Yikes!

I don't think it's that bad. Most of the time I think my hearing is perfectly adequate. Then I hit a snag and I have to say, "Pardon?" and it's really embarrassing (and annoying to the other person) to have to say it more than once.

The funny thing is that noises, especially repetitive ones, really bother me. Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to go deaf so I don't have to hear my kids sniffing, or the neighbour's kid riding his dirt bike, or my teen's music or whatever. Or maybe this is an inherited thing - my mum had the stapes in her ear (one of the tiny bones that vibrates) replaced when she was about my age. (Hope it's not that.)

I have noticed that my mum-in-law's hearing is not perfect either, and what bugs me is when she asks her husband to repeat something he'll do so but AT EXACTLY THE SAME VOLUME (and he has a quiet voice). And you know what? Sometimes my husband does the same thing (and he has a quiet voice too). Gah!

I know my friends are reading this so I apologise in advance if I have to peer at you (so I can partially lip-read while you're talking) and occasionally ask you to repeat yourself so I don't go and open my mouth and put my foot in it again!!!

Better prepared

I am better prepared this week for an increase in my percentage of raw food.

Last week, when I decided I wanted to eat more raw, I had already made my family meal plan, with its nightly cooked dinners, and the accompanying shopping list.

I think I was doing pretty well, averaging about 60% raw, but I knew I could do better. So this week, the shopping list included some extras.

I have made a big container of raw muesli (there’s a recipe in the sidebar) for breakfasts. I mixed up some almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and lots of dried fruit for a raw trail mix for snacking. And of course there’s plenty of produce in the fridge and the fruit bowl, including carrots for juicing.

I don’t have the time or inclination for the gourmet dishes that appear in many raw food books. If you have to soak something for a day, sprout it for 3 days, process it and dehydrate it for another day, that’s too much for me!

I was thinking about some of the advantages of a rawfood diet - there are many, and if you want to read a really good book about it, I recommend Nature’s First Law, because that’s the one that convinced me that it’s the way that humans are meant to eat (just like the rest of the animals in the world).

So here’s my list, though if I gave it more thought it could be twice as long:

Achieve and maintain ideal body weight (I'm talking about YOUR ideal body weight, not the images that surround us of stick-thin models with fake boobs!)
Enjoy better health and more energy
Avoid excess packaging of processed foods
Cheaper fuel bills
Quick meal preparation and easy cleanup
Avoid the “affluence” diseases
Avoid controversy over leaching from tin can linings and other plastics
Avoid acrylamide - raw foods are never heated above 105 degrees Fahrenheit


Raw Score:
Sunday 75%

Raw percentages

I plan to note my percentage of raw food intake each day here on the blog. It is not an exact science. For example, today I ate coleslaw for breakfast (yes, kind of weird, but it was left over from last night's dinner) so I put that down as 90% raw because of the vegan mayonnaise. Lunch was some bananas, mashed with roasted almond butter, so I put that down as 90% too. And dinner was a bean stew with some home-made bread sticks and some green salad, so that was about 25%. Add those three figures together, divide by three, and I get 68%.

Hoping to ease my way up towards 100%.

uuuggghhh!

Woke this morning with discomfort in the tummy - I knew why - ovulation again. Seems to me that this time of the month is worse than period time. It just confirms what I already knew - that it's time to cut back on the stodgy winter foods and eat more raw.

It's interesting that eating raw food should help with "women's" problems, but of course the benefits are not restricted to that.

Jeans have been getting tighter over the last few months and increasing my percentage of raw food always results in weight loss for me.

I have plenty of motivation, apart from the fact I want to feel comfortable in my clothes (I don't know what I weigh, don't own bathroom scales, I go by how I feel).

I have three months to prepare for my Taekwondo black belt test. K and I have increased our attendance from 2 to 3 times a week and I have drawn up a study schedule for extra practice at home. The more strength and stamina I have, the better, especially for those flying kicks!

In four months we are going to Britain to visit our close family and I certainly want to look my best for that! The parents will be happy to see that we are healthy.

Now if I could just add in a little weight-training - but I HAVE to find time for knitting too! Maybe heavier knitting needles?

Aflatoxin

Today's health news is brought to you by Aflatoxin! The definition of this follows, thanks to medterms.com....

Aflatoxin: A toxin produced by mould that can damage the liver and may lead to liver cancer. Aflatoxins cause cancer in some animals.

The fungi that produce aflatoxin grow on crops such as peanuts (especially) and wheat, corn, beans and rice. Aflatoxin is a problem particularly in undeveloped and developing countries.

Aflatoxin is a naturally occurring mycotoxin produced by two types of mould: Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Aspergillus flavus is common and widespread in nature and is most often found when certain grains are grown under stressful conditions such as drought. The mould occurs in soil, decaying vegetation, hay, and grains undergoing microbiological deterioration and invades all types of organic substrates whenever and wherever the conditions are favorable for its growth. Favorable conditions include high moisture content and high temperature. At least 13 different types of aflatoxin are produced in nature with aflatoxin B1 considered as the most toxic. While the presence of Aspergillus flavus does not always indicate harmful levels of aflatoxin it does mean that the potential for aflatoxin production is present.

I have a couple of links for you if you wish to read more about this lovely toxin -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aflatoxin and
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~mow/chap41.html

I had heard about peanuts growing this mould when stockpiled waiting for processing. Seems like it's in many of our foods - nuts, grains, beans - that have been harvested and left in storage. What's the answer? Again, know the source of our food, know how fresh it is, preferably grow our own.

Dr Hulda Clark, in her book The Cure for all Cancers, says that she found aflatoxin in ALL commercial breads, but in no home-made bread.

So many people, when you talk about modern food production and distribution, or any "modern technology", say, "You can't go back". I say, we have to! Back to the days when food production was local, when each community was self-sustaining, when people ate fresh whole food that hadn't been denatured, processed and packaged in plastic.

This information could save your life

I want to tackle a serious subject today because it has been weighing heavily on my mind for a while. What I have to say is based on my own reading and my introspection and I feel I have to write about it here because I want to share some amazing information that I have learned.

The subject is cancer - the very word strikes fear into one’s heart - it’s probably one of the things that people fear the most.

A dear friend was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. After the initial shock, I wanted to find out more about the cancer and the treatment and what she was likely to go through, expected side effects and all. I borrowed a book from the library written by a woman who’d been through the standard chemotherapy/radiation treatment and was in remission. The book was good in one way - she explained the side effects that are possible as a result of the drugs/radiation, and that information may help me support my friend. However, I was disturbed by one chapter in the book in which she totally dismissed “alternative medicine” as unproven quackery. That didn’t sit well with me.

I have long been a cynic when it comes to standard medicine. Many people who go to their doctors with a list of symptoms are prescribed a pill to get rid of the symptoms, with no attempt to discover or treat the underlying cause.

When a person is diagnosed with cancer, we may think we know why they have it - maybe they smoke, maybe they drink a lot of alcohol. But there are many people who do these things for years and never develop cancer. Why not?

I think that if we want to heal ourselves, we need to know the reason we got sick in the first place. Otherwise, any treatment will surely only be a temporary measure. With many cancers, there seems to be nothing obvious to blame it on. What could cause breast cancer? I had lots of theories. Plastics? Pollution? Tight bras? Pesticides? I didn’t know, it just seemed so unfair that cancer could strike indiscriminately.

I am reading a book right now that I think should be required reading for anyone who has cancer or wants to avoid it. This book has completely changed the way I see cancer and its treatment. It is called The Cure for all Cancers by Dr Hulda Regehr Clark. Picture me on my knees, in all seriousness, begging you to read this book and recommend it to your friends, especially if they have cancer.

Since reading this book, my fear has left me. I am relieved beyond measure because I have learned that THE CURE FOR CANCER HAS BEEN FOUND. Dr Clark gives complete and comprehensive information in her book which anyone can use to cure themselves completely, quickly and inexpensively.

Her years of research and treating patients have resulted in her incredible depth of knowledge of human physiology. She says that in every cancer case that she has treated, she has found a certain parasite in the body along with high levels of isopropyl alcohol. The full information is in her book, but to summarise, this parasite can live harmlessly in our intestines for many years without causing us problems BUT if isopropyl alcohol builds up in our bodies the parasite’s entire life cycle can then be completed within our bodies and THAT’s when the cancer can develop.

Her treatment is simple - de-parasitize your body - with a combination of wormwood, black walnut and ground cloves plus painless use of a “zapper”, a simple electronic machine which painlessly executes the parasites in your body, you CAN cure your cancer in three weeks. The combination is important, as you need to kill the eggs, larvae and adults. Once the cancer is gone, she goes on to explain how to ensure that tumours disappear and you regain complete health by cleaning up your body, your home, your environment.

I know there are many people who will not believe that it can be that simple. Why, if it’s that easy and inexpensive, aren’t more people following Dr Clark’s regime? Her books are available at the library for anyone to read. Why wouldn’t doctors be suggesting this course of treatment first, before the radical step of toxic drugs, radiation and surgery? Dr Clark’s treatment has no dangerous side effects and could result in many people avoiding losing parts of their body to the surgeon’s knife. I want those questions answered myself.

Again, my cynical side is stepping in, reminding me that there is a lot of money to be made in the cancer “business”. I have read that it costs $300,000 to treat ONE cancer patient. That money is going to the oncologists, the drug companies, the companies that make special machinery. Then there are the cancer charities - I refuse to give money to them. I have a number of concerns: that they may well be testing on animals; they may be spending so much money on administration and excessive salaries that little of the money received may actually be going to “research”; and that the money would be better spent on preventing cancer, by cleaning up our air, water, food and soil.

Now that I know that de-parasitizing the body can result in such a dramatic cure, I feel that there is something I can do for myself that will keep ME healthy. By regularly de-parasitizing my own body, surely that will improve my chances in staying healthy. This empowers me.

Amen to that!

Acrylamide

What's acrylamide? Well, it's not something I can knit with, even though it sounds like acrylic.

Acrylamide is a toxin that has been found in certain foods. It seems that animal studies (and I will save my strong opinions against animal testing for another day) found that acrylamide is a carcinogen.

I just googled it and found articles about it from Health Canada and the FDA - link 1 here and link 2 here.

It seems that when a starchy plant food, like potatoes for example, is heated to a very high heat, this toxin is created. Foods like potato chips and french fries are at the top of the charts for this substance.

Those who watched SuperSize Me, the movie about a guy who ate exclusively at MacDonald's for a month and made himself really sick, I'm not just talking vomiting sick but dangerously ill, will have seen a man who claimed he'd eaten thousands of MacDonald's burgers and was quite thin and seemed healthy. BUT he never ate the fries. Maybe this was the secret to him not keeling over dead at the counter of his local MacDonald's. Maybe by avoiding the fries he was doing himself a big favour.

Anyway, back to acrylamide. There are varying amounts of it in many foods, baked or fried (oh look, another positive vote for the benefits of a raw food diet) and I have decided that I will not be buying any french fries, potato chips or tortilla (corn) chips from now on and will in fact avoid anything deep-fried.

Another consideration, if I needed reinforcement for this decision, is that we can't possibly know the state of the oil in which these things are fried. Just think of how many times it may have been used, reused, reused again.

I feel that if there was one thing we could all do to improve our chances for a long, healthful life, it would be to prepare our own meals from scratch. We cannot trust companies to keep out harmful additives and to care about the quality of what goes into our meals as much as we do. We may be able to read labels, but there are many things that get into our packaged food that isn't on that label, whether it's animal feces, oil from machinery, hair from a factory worker's head, or a million other things that can cause harm but don't have to be disclosed on the label.

Slow food rocks!

Self Defence/Street Smarts Seminar

My 12 year old son and I spent a few hours yesterday at a seminar learning how to use a kubotan, getting pushed around, and grappling on the floor with a partner. It was great fun!

A Kubotan looks like a fat pen. You attach your keys to it and carry it around with you (but not on a plane, I'm told)! We learned a series of 12 moves and then moved on to practising with a partner. One person would perform an "attack" - for example, grabbing a shoulder - and the other would respond, using the kubotan to make the attacker release their hold or ending with a neckhold, the kubotan pressing nicely into one side of their neck :o)

After a few scenarios, similar to the "attacks" we practise with in Taekwondo classes, we moved on to grappling. Dana Johnson, the instructor at Tempest Taekwondo in Alberta, was our (excellent and humorous) teacher for this seminar. He incorporates Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in his club. We spent a lot of time on the floor, legs wrapped around each other, getting out of holds and applying joint locks to our partners. The woman I was working with was a friend from my usual club and we had a good laugh, though we agreed that it would be a LOT more interesting practising all this grappling with a good-looking man!!!

The kubotan is certainly effective when pressed between the bones on the back of the hand, between the ribs or into the neck. I have a few little round bruises today as well as some really stiff muscles in my neck and shoulders from all the floorwork.

Feels good!

Sniff, sniff

Sniff, sniff...what is that smell? Greek salad, Greek potatoes? No, it's just me. I have been hit with some sort of nasty flu bug and have been ingesting copious amounts of garlic and lemon tea, nettle tea, and oil of oregano. I fear that I am starting to smell like a Greek restaurant, but there are worse things for sure. Today's menu - garlic and onion soup!! with a chaser of oil of oregano.

I thought I would post some pictures of some of the things that have been slowly, slowly happening around here. Not much has been getting done other than a lot of reading, but I have a few things to show. (ladies- after much teasing last week you will be astonished to know that I really did do nothing at all this weekend- just read. So you see, it can be done - or not done, as the case may be)

The boys harvested all our squash before the frost we had the other night. Now I am in need of many more squash recipes.

W harvested some more of our grapes yesterday. I had been putting this off until we had time/energy to make grape jelly but finally decided to just shove them as is into the freezer and deal with them in the winter.

Made a delicious (sort of) curry that went down well with all of us. It is based (loosely) on a recipe from the cookbook Fresh from John Bishop of Bishop's restaurant in Vancouver. I first heard of him when I watched his documentary called Deconstructing Supper. The book and the video are well worth getting from the library.

We also made this blueberry cake with a recipe that I found on Soulemama's blog. It was delicious, not too sweet, not too tart but just right, with a lovely hint of lemon.

Now I know that some of you are not partial to the new natural foods grocery store in town, but I have to tell you that they have won me over. How?

Yes, as you know, my favour can be had for chocolate. Last night, as an alternative to Hallowe'en activities) we went to the big library and then out for a hot drink at the coffee shop. Afterwards we took the boys to choose a treat at the new store( as they did not go trick or treating), and a lovely fellow there gave the boys a treat and then, well then , he gave me these. I wasn't even wearing my "I will love you forever if you feed me chocolate" shirt (I don't have such a shirt but it's a good idea, isn't it?). It's like he just knew that this was my favourite kind of chocolate and that I was having a bad week. How can I not like a store like that?

When we got home E decided that this was a new tradition, and I can tell you thatI quite like having kids who are just as happy to go to the big library as they are to go out getting candy.

No More Bull (edited Sept 28th)

I've just finished this book and being a vegan of course I agree with everything Howard Lyman says! However I do like reading this sort of book, because apart from confirming that I have made a good choice in being vegan, he has given me more ways of supporting a good argument should one arise.

He compares meat-eating with smoking. All the scientific evidence points to smoking being really bad for your health. Some people think that they should be allowed to treat their bodies as they wish and that their choices are not affecting others. With smoking, however, we have the second hand smoke problem - the rest of us don't want to breathe in all those carcinogens or have the stink of smoke in our hair and on our clothes when we go out in public. Most public buildings now ban smoking. I'd just like to add that smoking creates one hell of a litter problem. I was helping to weed around the building that my husband works in at the weekend, and the amount of cigarette butts tossed into the undergrowth was gross. Why do smokers think that cigarette butts are not litter - perhaps they think that they are biodegradable! Not! Factor in all the smoke breaks that employees take throughout the working day, and there's a lot of man-hours (person-hours?) going up in smoke. If by smoking you give yourself lung cancer or whatever, that is also causing pressure on the health-care system that could easily be avoided - more taxes for all.

Mr Lyman says that many meat-eaters would argue that it's up to them what they put into their bodies. However, here again, the scientific evidence is that a plant-based diet is way healthier. Meat (and here I include chicken and fish, people, anything with a face - oh, and dairy and eggs too) provides no worthwhile nutrition. We can get all the protein and carbs and fibre and vitamins and minerals we need from plant foods. Over and over again, it is the SAD (Standard American Diet) that has been proved to cause cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and Mr Lyman also makes a good point about Alzheimer's being a result of our addiction to a meat-based diet (the symptoms being very similar to CJD, that lovely human version of Mad Cow disease).

So back to my point. Yes, people have a choice what they eat. However, there are good reasons for me to continue to publically speak out in support of a vegan diet and not just quietly get on with it. Raising animals intensively for meat is a waste of land. Growing plants to feed direct to people, instead of growing plants to feed to animals to feed to people, is a way better use of the land. Piles of stinking manure - now that's a reason to quit having feedlots. They have made large areas of the US unlivable and there's tonnes of methane polluting our air and piles of this shit are burning right now.

And I haven't even started on animal abuse, cruelty, slaughterhouses, fecal contamination of meat during "processing" (read - killing and mutilation, not necessarily in that order).

I think the world would be a much better place if the killing stopped - maybe if we stopped killing animals and ingesting their fear and sickness, we would all be pacifists who could then create a world without wars.

My hope is that meat-eating will, in the next few years, become something that is viewed like smoking - something that the minority do, despite the health warnings on the packets!

An expensive morning!

Life can be a lot simpler when your kids get older. Now that the oldest is 15, he can be left in charge of his siblings while I do errands, and it's SO much easier than dragging them around with me. When your kids don't go to school, you don't get that free time during the day, so they end up coming everywhere with you, which can be good or it can be hair-raisingly horrible.

I have had a few dental appointments recently where I have been able to leave the children at home while I went into town. Yesterday, I had another filling (I had to pay for it myself, which just goes to prove I've had a lot of work done this year because the insurance plan is maxed out)!

After my appointment (during which my dentist used a laser instead of a drill - so he didn't need to numb my mouth - which is a first for me) I went over to a place called Lensmakers to see if they could replace the lenses in L's glasses. His recent eye test had confirmed his vision has changed a little, enough that he was complaining about his glasses, so rather than buy a whole new pair of glasses we thought we'd just get the lenses changed. His current frames are still good - the strong flexible metal ones - and I didn't want to have to make a special trip back to Costco (I'm not a member so I have to arrange to go with someone who is, and I wasn't sure I could wait for them to make new glasses as we're going on holiday soon).

Lensmakers were able to replace the lenses in an hour, so that gave me an hour around town. First place I visited was Michaels. I bought a couple of balls of yarn to finish filling the box which I will be offering at the weekend as part of our four-box-blog-contest-equinox-giveaway. Did you read that carefully? Yes, you'll need to read the blog this weekend because there'll be lots of chances to win stuff.

I then went into Wal-mart with the intention of phoning the boys at home to make sure everything was OK and to let them know when I'd be back (no, I don't have a cellphone, I think they are creepy, but that's a subject for another day). While I was in there, I thought I'd just wander around the clothing aisles, and whaddya know.......two soft cotton long-sleeved tops and a winter jacket just jumped into my arms. (When I got home, I looked at my fall-winter wardrobe and realised that I am finally getting some sort of a co-ordinated colour scheme going, rather than "it was two bucks at the thrift store so it was cheap so even though it's not perfect it'll do".)

By the time I'd flexed my credit card muscles for the fourth time that morning, it was time to go back, collect L's glasses, and get home for lunch.

So, despite repeating myself, read our blog on Saturday and Sunday because you just might be glad that you did!

Stove as countertop!

This is what happens when you're eating raw - the stove becomes just an extension of your countertop. Sure saves a lot of money on the electricity bill!

Tonight we had an odd mixture of dishes. I went out to the garden and found a cauliflower and some green beans. I marinated the green beans in a flax/lemon dressing and the cauliflower was tossed with a sundried tomato sauce.

There were two tomatoes from the bush outside, plenty of lettuce, and half a cucumber; oh yes, and a couple of avocados too.

Dessert was this ------>
which I call carob fudge. It's a mixture of ground up sunflower, sesame and flax seeds, blitzed in the food processor with tahini, raisins, carob powder, agave and coconut oil. The kids all like this (I invented it a few years ago when first trying the raw thing).



I decided to re-start my weight training today and used the lightest weights for some biceps and triceps lifts. A few situps and a sun salutation and I was done. A far cry from the workout I was doing before the surgery, but I'm hoping it won't take long to build up my strength.

Eating raw

Well, the first day of our rawfood week yesterday (Sunday) went quite well. Considering it was L's idea to be raw this week, he was having a hard time feeling hungry and didn't seem to want the food that was on offer. The rest of us were fine.

We made it through the day on smoothies and fresh fruit and I made a huge mixed salad for dinner. I also made a raw date square recipe that is in my Raw Gourmet book. The "crust" is made from almonds and steelcut oats, ground up in the food processor, with maple (or in this case agave) syrup as a binder. The date filling is Medjool dates soaked in orange juice and processed to a puree in the food processor with a little extra water. It's better than the cooked version!


I also made some tamari almonds....soaked the raw almonds for a few hours, drained them, soaked them in tamari for an hour or so, then dehydrated them on low heat overnight. This sounds like a lot of unnecessary work, but the soaking removes the enzyme inhibitors in the nuts and gets them ready to sprout, so they are living food.

Today, after I'd blitzed the house (it felt so good to feel fit enough to clean the bathrooms, vacuum the house, do the laundry, water the plants and empty the compost buckets that I actually enjoyed it) I spent the rest of my time in the kitchen thinking up a meal that we would all enjoy and that the kids wouldn't complain about. I pulled some beets out of the garden and made a raw soup in the blender and a beet salad dressed with "Notmayo", a mayonnaise type sauce made mostly from cashews. R and I ate both - the soup, thumbs down, the salad, two thumbs up! I also made a tomato salad and a green (lettuce, cucumber and green onion) salad which they liked.

Dessert was, not unpredictably, the most successful part of the meal. I ground up almonds and brazil nuts in the food processor, mixing in a little agave to sweeten it. Sliced banana went on top of that, and on top of THAT was a divine mixture that was "chocolate almond fudge" from this book, made very simply from raw almond butter, agave and cocoa powder. (OK, so the cocoa powder wasn't strictly raw but the kids were getting so much good quality almond protein in there it justified it!)

I could quite easily eat like this all the time. It's much easier when the whole family is doing it - it was way more challenging when I wanted to be raw and I was cooking for the rest of them. The "gourmet" recipes in many of the living and raw food recipe books look fantastic and I have no doubt they taste fantastic too, but they require so much preparation that it is offputting. My choice would be to keep it simple. However, sometimes you have to make a bit more of an effort, especially when catering to various family members who all have their likes and dislikes.

Keeping busy

I went over to Heather's yesterday and relieved her plum tree of a large quantity of its fruit. The plums are so sweet and juicy, I can't get enough of them. I used some of them today in this Asian Plum Sauce.


Last night I spent a couple of hours playing with beads and wire. The result was 27 stitch markers in three different sizes. If you like the look of these and think you might like to actually own them, keep checking back to the blog over the next few weeks because we four are planning something.......

Today was spent doing lots of shopping and errands. We went downtown to get our passport photos taken. We've decided to get Canadian passports for the first time. Two of the boys were born here, but husband, eldest son and I acquired our citizenship about 8 years ago. Our British passports are out of date and we're planning a trip back to Jersey to see the family next year.

We bought lots of fresh fruit and veg today. Eldest son has been feeling a bit blah lately and feels that a week of raw food is what he needs. R and I are quite happy to fall in with that plan and even the two smalls seem OK with it. We'll see how it goes as the week goes by! Dear husband reminded me that it's my birthday this week and I won't be able to have birthday cake, but I don't care about that. I'll wait for the weekend and eat some chocolate then!