Food is Spiritual

There are certain things in life you wish you could wish upon those you love; like the day you found/understood/accepted the love of Christ, or how much different you feel being vegan, or happiness or peace of mind. But like political and social views one cannot do such things. Certain things can only be experienced and we are all at different points in this journey of life.

Nina and Savi

You wish you could recommend wonderful experiences like you recommend a favorite restaurant or a shoe or a dress because you know them and kinda' know they might enjoy it too. But food like most things is a spiritual thing and spiritual things are emotional things and emotional things are personal. At the end of the day you have to face yourself and hope you sleep well at night with the decisions you've made. You may be asking what this has to do with food but it has everything to do with food.

Our great dinner

We are our belief system. Our belief system controls how we act and react. What we eat, who we date and how we behave are all based on what we believe to be true. Your belief system can either make or break you because it determines your thoughts and your thoughts determine your words and action. Am I getting very philosophical? I hope so. If we want to be a well balanced people and stay Forever Young, all aspects of our lives have to be in harmony.

My beautiful friend Wanneh, her daughter Savi and our Nina

Sometimes starting a new lifestyle can be very scary and isolating but thank God for friends and family who understand and for great support from communities of people who are practicing the same lifestyle. Don't be surprised if you feel a little sad, almost like a separation anxiety, it is normal and it will pass. Nothing beats eating consciously, healthy and mostly raw; more greens,more nutrient dense and high water content foods--our bodies are made of over 70% of water. I was talking to my friend Alexa and we both agreed that the reason why people over-eat is because they are feeding their bodies empty, nutrient-deficient foods.


I remember back when I used to eat like a pig. I would find myself going to the fridge almost every hour to find something to eat. I felt like I was possessed, I couldn't stop eating and I couldn't feel satisfied with anything I ate, now I know why. When you eat mostly raw your body gets satisfied with even a single stuffed bell pepper and this is because you are giving your body the right nutrients it needs to function. If you looked at a SAD (oh, I love this so much. My favorite Acronym so far) person's plate, most of the times the only veggie is maybe a sprig of kale or parsley that was used to garnish the food.

Alexa's delicious Miso dressing

3 tsp white mellow miso

1 tsp Tahini

1 Tbsp freshly grated ginger

dash of black pepper

1.5 cup of olive oil

Then may be a little fruit bowl to have after the improperly combined food. To add fruit to this is a practice most of us learned from when we were little. Fruits should always be eaten on an empty stomach for proper digestion or 30 to 60 minutes after a meal (depending on what kind of meal it was, a flesh meal usually takes over 48 hours to digest at which time it has already begun o putrefy). When fruits get in contact with a meal it ferments (fermentation is an anaerobic conversion of sugar to carbon dioxide and alcohol by yeast)

My Rick, Wanneh, Savi & our Nina
One thing that ties all men: Love.

My husband once said to me "Never change who you are. Never compromise who you are for anyone not even for me." At the core of each one of us there is a shinny person waiting to emerge. Somethings are very logical, some things are very true, some things are very basic and uncomplicated like eating right and eating to live. Live foods make for live people, dead foods make for dead or dying people. Let your food be as alive as you can have it be. There is a vast difference in the way you feel and view the world when you eat a more natural/raw diet. Spiritually there is also a vast difference. You cannot be at a certain level of spirituality with your body still haboring tons of toxins, we are all connected and I think what separates us--if we have to get down to the nitty-gritty-- has everything to do with they way we view food.

My Yummy Salad with Alexa's Miso Dressing

I still say one of my worst foods on the SAD list is milk. There are quite a few others on the list but Milk has been so glamorized--as long as a celebrity has a milk mustache it must be good for you--and popularized by all the big shots who control the money in the government. What difference is there from drinking a rat or a horse's milk? or even worse how controversial would it be to have lactating mums fill out gallons of their milk for sale by inducing them way past their lactating period? what is the difference from doing that to cows? I don't know about you but I love the green mustaches from my green smoothies better, plus it is environmentally friendly :-)

Raise your carrot juice and let's make a toast...CHEERS!

Day 45 Sweet Tahini Dressing

POMEGRANATES

I devoured this pomegranate today with Nina, yummy! Doesn't it amaze you that such a thing exists, look at how well designed and structured it is...I always find such things fascinating, always.

Someone asked me today if I was a dancer :-) you betcha' I took that as a compliment. Sure i was wearing a tiny tank top (Completely decent by the way) my dancer shoes and my spandex double folded around the waist. I sure looked like one, especially as--thanks to my circuit training--some little muscles or should I say lean muscles have started to pop up on my arms and gluts, lol, they still call me J.Lo but again isn't that a compliment too? I figured whatever someone says to me, I will find the positive and use it as a compliment. That is something we can all try to do. We are all beautiful in our own way and that is precious.

Anyway, I had this great salad I made with some baby spring mix, 1/2 red bell pepper, diced, and extra arugula(I like it) I also julienned one yellow squash for the color into the salad bowl. I wanted something different today for a dressing so I came up with this sweet tahini dressing:

4 Tbsp raw tahini paste (or less if you don't particularly like the taste of sesame paste)
1/4 cup agave
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 orange juice, freshly squeezed

You can always save the remainder of the dressing for another salad on another day. It reminds me of peanut butter. I like this and you can add to make your own version.

p/s I made my own coconut butter skin lotion today, do I ever smell and feel yummy, hope no one eats me by accident, lol.

~B~

Day 38 (30-Day Green Smoothie Challenge)

PHOTO FROM: http://www.naturemoms.com

I think finding the book that will become your favorite raw uncooked book is like finding the person you will be with for the rest of your life. Yesterday my wonderful hubby bought me a great pre-Christmas gift; RAW FOOD REAL WORLD by Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis and I must tell you I haven't been able to put this book down since yesterday.

I am in love with everything about this book, the colors, the photographs, the personal stories of the two very beautiful people (who happen to also be a couple) who wrote it and of course the recipes are to die for! For those of you who know me personally or at least know of me through my book Lemonade Street, you must know I am a die-hard romantic, so yes, I am stating (and forsaking all other books to come) that I have found my favorite raw uncooked book and I am only on page 37 out of 367. It is like an album of never ending warm and fuzzy feelings; a love story. And what a wonderful way to be connected with the one you love by sharing something you're both passionate about: that is one of the secrets to a happy and fulfilling marriage. Rick and I talked about this years ago, no wonder we're still together and still so in love with each other.

Anyway I just wanted to share this with you guys and hope you get a copy for you plus what I wouldn't give to get a gift card from her organic beauty site http://www.oneluckyduck.com/

This is a link to their restaurant in NewYork http://www.purefoodandwine.com/

I have to run now, will share some pictures of our dinner tomorrow. We've been invited to dinner by some good friends and I can't wait to see what's to eat. Come back tomorrow for more.

~B.

Day 37 (30-Day Green Smoothie Challenge)

"Life is color."--Bernice Angoh

EAT TO LIVE, NOT LIVE TO EAT. YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT and WHAT YOU EAT BECOMES YOU...GO GREEN. LIFE IS COLOR.

Hello happy people, I hope you're all doing great today. Well, I started my day with a 20 minute walk with my walking-buddy, my six year old daughter, Nina. We got a good dose of Vitamin D and then I did a 20 minute circuit training (cardio and strength training) which left me feeling very high and energized. Breakfast was one of the green smoothies from below and then for lunch I had a hefty plate of my coleslaw. By the way, yesterday I received my order of Lacuma powder, raw cacao butter and some raw/vegan chocolate paste (sweetened). So someday this week I will be making a fantastic raw ice cream...stay tuned :-) you wouldn't want to miss that!

I was researching more on Vitamin B12, you know, the one some people say you can only get from eating meat. Well, it goes that most meat eaters should be the ones who are vitamin B12 deficient more so than vegetarian, vegans or raw/vegans. The reason being most non-vegans lack intrinsic factor which is needed for the absorption of B12 in the ileum and that approximately 80% of consumed B12 is absorbed by humans with healthy digestive systems, plus at higher intakes, absorption of B12 quickly drops down to 3%.

This translates to the fact that those on the Standard American Diet of meats(all flesh including chicken and fish), sugars, dairy, processed foods and high fructose corn syrup are at risk of having unhealthy digestive systems due to poor food combining, highly putrefactive nature of animal proteins and a diet high in processed foods. An unhealthy digestive system causes the inability of the system to produce intrinsic factor which is needed for absorption of B12. Okay, some may argue that their systems are healthy and clean, but if you are a heavy animal flesh eater ( people who eat some kind of animal flesh more than one time a day and many do, they may eat bacon or sausage for breakfast, then eat a fish or chicken or beef dish for lunch and dinner), your absorption rate of vitamin B12 automatically goes down to 3%. So, I think it is safe to say that non-vegans are more prone to B12 deficiency. We can now lay to rest the notion that we (non-meat and dairy eaters) are B12 deficient. A cup of alfalfa sprout a day, mixed with your salad gives, you enough B12 to sustain a healthy body.

I rest my case.
~B

The anatomy of soda

Would you on any day catch yourself sitting at your table with ten teaspoons of sugar ready to eat it all? Well, that's what you do when you drink a can of soda.

Did you know that coca-cola is the biggest buyer of sugar in the world? Have you ever wondered why they would need so much sugar? well it is to mask the acidity in the drink. 10 teaspoons of sugar! that amout of sugar is enough to shut down your immune system for 24 hours. Plus I wonder what can be so strong as to erode your tooth enamel, well the sugar and acids in sodas does. What do you think causes osteoporosis? Did you know that sugar from one soft drink is able to damage the white blood cells' ability to ingest and kill gonococcal bacteria for seven hours? That just one liter of aspartame-sweetened beverage can produce about fifty-six milligrams of methanol? When many of these drinks are are consumed in say, one day, as much as two hundred- fifty milligrams of methanol are dumped into the bloodstream and this throws off the eletrical system of the brain. Saccharin in these products have also shown a high carcinogenic effect especially in female reproductive organs, this is as little as two bottles of diet pops per day. I also know that cops sometimes use coke to clean blood off the street after an auto accident and sometimes use it to replace the acid in thier dead car batteries. Plus many countries in Asia use coke and it's products as pesticides on thier large farms. They actually spray it from helicopters and guess what? it works! So what are you really drinking? All this hype of if you drink a coke you are helping some fund which is providing for some third world country is a whole lot of junk. You can't kill one human being in order to save another. They might as well put a coffin in their commercials, yes you may think that's extreme talk but I ask you and challenge you to do the research before you drink your next soda.

I have often wondered why in a country that has so much food, why more and more peole are getting sicker and sicker. In developing countries it is due to the lack of food (malnutrition) and good health care facilities but here, there are more sick children, in short I think it is safe to say all Americans, including me, are sick in some way. All the years of ignorance and feeding the body with life threatening foods cannot be altered in one day but we can slowly get there by starting now. As they say "Better late than never". We can start a revolution! we can choose to be the examples for our children and neighbours. We can say no to GMO foods(genetically modified foods). Foods that keep us enslaved to prescription drugs, foods than cripple us of our dignity, foods that KILL us.

The first basic human right is the right to live and live a healthy life. Things might be tight financially for you but is it better to start eating right right now or save that money for mediacl use down the years. Think, use your brain, do research, love yourelf, love yourself a little differently as the FYR slogan says. Start a forver young revolution right in your own kitchen, in your backyard, in your churches. What are you waiting for?