Look At All That Ethanol

This is footage from Iowa. I was still living in the state during the '93 flood-year. And so this is a familiar site.

Tragic and yet a big whap! upside the head from mother nature: Stop doing what we're doing, in all cases where it just ain't working. And Corn is definitely one tower of US Gov. glory that needs to come down.

My heart goes out to all the farmers who have lost their crops and to those struggling (as we all are) with rising gas and food prices... but this is an opportunity to think how to go about these things differently and better. We all deserve better than this.

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again

in a new way
on the earth!
That's what it said
as it dropped,

smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches

and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing

under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment

my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars

and the soft rain -
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

-Mary Oliver, from What Do We Know

So, question: What has the rain been saying to me (and it rained for two days here, so the poem and theme is justified)?

Answer: My body likes juiciness, it likes rawness much better than cooked-ness.

What has been so interesting is the anger. By Day 4 of juice, my emotional detox had begun... and it continues. For those who don't know, I am one of those few who actually has a thyroid condition. I have blogged about this before ... and so, no matter what I have done for the past year, my weight doesn't really budge much. The juice makes me feel lighter and more flexible but weight is slow to move. And it's very frustrating. Here's why: I eat better than anyone I know. And there is a fury in me that wants to be normal, to eat whatever I want (cooked or not, meat being entirely excluded on all accounts) and be happy and healthy. But my body, which has always been sensitive and spiritually inclined is pushingpushingpushing to raw and the energy of Mother that I am so good at pushing out. And the raw thing, I know is good, I know that raw is good for me, and even Gabriel Cousens' book Conscious Eating, says that being a Kapha/Vata person (which I am and he is himself, actually), do best on 80% raw. And when I read that, I KNOW it's true and correct, but...

it doesn't mean that the addictive emotional turmoil of past food foibles surrenders easily or even willingly. It's hard. And the anger and hurt I am feeling, I KNOW is emotional because all I want to do is just stuff my face like I have in the past to quell emotional pinches that I would rather numb out, than deal with. Well, now I am having to deal with it. It's hard, but I also know that it's good. It's just hard.

As soon as I have some cash, I am booking it to the Tree of Life and get my RAW on.
*sigh.

Here's to dreaming of Patagonia.

Juicy Day #1

Yesterday I did Juicy Day number one. Huzzah!

The first two days, I find are always the hardest. It takes the body (at least, mine) about 3 days before it gets used to using liquid as the energy source. But what's also amazing is that I feel the urge to have some sort of energy boost every 3 hours or so. By day 5 I am feeling wonderful and amazing: body feels light and limber and invincible.

I am what Gabriel Cousens describes as a Fast Oxidizer. I require more protein, less sugars and smaller more frequent meals.

So whenever I feel the hunger urge, I just go make some more juice: and wow! This juice just tastes soooo good! And it's been so warm up here in the Rockies the past few days, in the high 60's and 70's... sunny days and juice feasting, what could be better than that? My last juice feast was in October -- half a year ago: I can't even believe it...

In October I was 100% new to juice feasting and did it for 10 days. This time I am going to at least double that -- maybe triple and maybe longer... We'll see. I am really trying to get out the habit of setting limits for myself. And I am notoriously out of touch with my body. I just need to set my ego straight, and if need be -- put it in the corner with the dunce cap on facing the wall. No, not today Ego, sorry: you need to learn to play nice.

I also know that when juicing you should be simple with your combinations. And last time I started that way -- I started out (since I was a rookie) doing high fruit based combos. And after 4 days my body was dreaming about green things. So I added in the green and the rest took care of itself. This time, I am only doing fruit for 2 of my 5 juices a day; more so I get enough calories than anything else. I am a celery-cucumber juice lover, and they may be full of water, but not enough energy to live on.

But since I have been enviously following the
Global Juice Feasters, I have seen so many wonderful concoctions that I hadn't ever thought of. And so I have been a bit more adventurous and a bit more complex (already) with my combos. But I don't find it unusual that at the beginning, one craves more complex flavors, but gradually simplifies over the course of the entire Feast.

So you must be wondering: What did she have??
Well, I'll tell ya :

JUICE # 1 (8am)

Watermelon
Cucumber
Cilantro
Ginger

very light and refreshing, and no too sweet. The Cucumber diluted the Watermelon nicely.

JUICE # 2 (11:15)

3 Carrots
Fennel
Cilantro
Garlic
Basil
Celery
Cucumber
Udo's Omega 3 Flax Oil
Kelp Flakes

This was a nice and savory lunch-y drink. I try not to do more than 3 carrots ever, because of the sugar, and always make sure to dilute them. Plus things like fennel (which also makes a very light flavored juice) garlic or ginger help encourage proper digestion.

JUICE # 3 (1pm)

1 small shallot
1 Large golden and juicy Heirloom Tomato
Cilantro
1/2 sm. r. bell pepper
Lime
Celery
2 garlic cloves
Cucumber
Basil

This was my Homage to Penni Shelton's blog: Real Juice Daily, most specifically her "Italian Day #63" where she made bruschetta juice -- and so I was inspired by the savory fresh idea of really taking something to the next level, and Boy! Was it yummy! Fantastic and filling: I recommend highly. Mine was probably more sympathetic to gazpacho than bruschetta, but ehgn: What're you-gonna do, eh?

JUICE # 4 (5:30p)

2 Valencia oranges
1 handful of raspberries
a small handful of cilantro
16 oz. fresh coconut water

Oh.my.god. By far, my favorite juice of the day!
It was absolutely divine...I recommend high beyond high-highly.

JUICE # 5 (8pm)

Red Leaf Lettuce
Romaine
Cilantro
Baby Kale
Escarole
Lemon
Cucumber

Very light and clean tasting... I think I need something to spike this up though, maybe more lemon or more cilantro, or maybe 1/2 a tomato. Very nice though.

And that was my day. I will say that my theme seemed to be cilantro: it ended up in everything yesterday. Which is wonderful apparently because cilantro is an excellent form of oral chellation therapy; meaning -- it detoxes heavy metals and mercury, in particular, from the brain and spinal cord. Plus, it tastes really good.

Stay tuned for Day 2, already in progress!

Into the Woods

Here I am.

So much has been happening and so little. I am getting married in roughly 90 days and spring is here and we had our first official thunderstorm and downpour, last night! And yet...

Something is amiss.

I feel completely unwound by it all. I can't seem to get my head clear, I feel like I have a lot of repenting to do -- and so I am going to begin my own little Juice Feast beginning today, I will finish up with the March 92 day-ers and may go a bit beyond them. We will see how the body fares, but I really regret not starting the feast; considering the emotional download I was dealing with I didn't know if it (at the time) more detoxing was something I could handle. But I am having non-buyers, no -- coward's remorse. And so I posted this lovely little bit of Art by Alan Lee, mostly because I can't tell where I am in the picture -- am I still in the tower? Am I the tree encircle by the salamander? (Heaven forbid, the Old Man??)

What's that line in the Torah, where God asks the whereabout of Abraham? And he answers: Here Am I. Here, no where else. I want to be Here. Even whern there is fear. And there is fear in me absolutely. I have been told that t age 27, I still don't know who I am. My rabbi says I am on a Spirit Quest... Oh! I almost forgot: I have started taking Hebrew classes. That's new. So is the fact that my doctor told me that my health issues stem from a waaa-aay (!) under-active thyroid and the fact that my adrenal system is taxed out; that I have been surviving basically on adrenaline fumes for the past six years. No wonder I feel stressed out. So I am taking things to remedy that. Other than that -- he says I am in great health; I have a fantastic heart (as in organ)!

But back to Being. I have a problem with being Present. I have heard it as a mantra almost my entire life, and I often espouse the benefits of Being there... But I rarely make time to do so myself. I rarely pay attention to my breath any more -- I call myself a spiritual person and rarely make time for being in Spiritual practice. Oh shame, shame, indeed. What I am learning in Hebrew (besides the alphabet) is the metaphorical complexity of an ancient language and it takes my breath away. It's beautiful. Besides Sanskrit (at least in my opinion) there is no language I have encountered that has anything on Hebrew. The actual relationship to God is powerful and there is a concept within the language that has me reeling... that is HaMakom, which is a title for God (like Hashem, Adonai) but it means The Place. God is a place. A landscape of Being. And for some reason, that has really put me into a perspective I can experience. Its not any place I can go -- but it is somewhere I can arrive. Here Am I.

So today, I am packing my bags; going on a Juice Feast. I start today! Hurray! Thanks in advance to David & Katrina Rainoshek for their bountiful information, check them out here!

What do you all do, to regain your sense of "Here Am I?"

P.S.

I have finally bought a 9-tray Excaliber Dehydrator! I already own an Omega juicer (the good kind) and a Vitamix (all purchases since October of last year). I have also purchased books for recipe ideas, including: Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine, Ani's Raw Food Kitchen, RAWvolution, I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Cafe Gratitude, & Everyday Raw. (I am a very good Amazon customer *wink).

I am finding it hard to transition slowly in Raw. I find that I keep backsliding and am notoriously hard on myself -- any tips for someone looking forward to high-100% raw?

Myth of Protein

I know, I know: I have been a very bad blogger. It's been 11 days or so since my last little post. I haven't even written regularly since creating my new blog, and this is shameful. And I'm sorry. It stems from a lot of things; one being that I feel I do not know what to write. I haven't been feeling particularly insightful and had backslid into cooked food oblivion for a few months. I was all set to do the juice feast in March, and didn't juice the whole month (guilt, guilt).

So what do I have too offer now? A new and clearer perspective. I have been feeling that my life too date has been a series of reactionary efforts and rarely (I realized) did I make choices based with any kind of authenticity of intention. This time off from school -- as I withdrew for the spring semester, been a whirl-wind of emotions and discoveries: I really had to throw wide the closet doors and clean out the stuff that's been causing the distress, the stuff rotting in the corner since age nine or ten or eleven. (I started having memories of abuse...which have been) The single throttled event that I had conveniently misplaced into some back alley of the brain and yet still the stage I performed from ever since. I will not go into ANY of that here... but it has led me to a realization of how and why I act the way that I do. And remembering, is healing. Even if it feels like you're going to die first.

So, that is my excuse for not writing. *smiles. It has made me more inward and less apt to share or express for fear that it would all come tumbling out. Whew. So that being done. Onward me beauties, onward!

I have really been falling in love with Raw all over again, its like this amazing love affair; the most uncomplicated and freeing relationship, because it suspends you in blissful certainty and unravels decades of pain and sore muscles. I have been enjoying an abundance of coconut water, which I usually charge with a pinch of Celtic sea salt -- I don't know why I am compelled to do this, as coconut water is like the top top for electrolytes, but it tastes good, so I do it. Lovely. It's so hydrating. If you haven't wacked your way into a young coconut yet, and I will admit it was daunting at first, trying to predict the fell of the knife into hard shell (Thank god I have good knives that won't chip of dent), but please try it. It is different than dried or sweet coconut, or coconut milk even-- so unravel expectations: they only work to deminish joy.

However, what I wanted really to share with you today was this short video about the myth of Protein. And I don't know why I never thought of this before, but he is absolutely correct. Even taking a college nutrition course (where they are grossly misled anyway) they tell you that the reason you need protein is the construction of amino acids... so you can build body tissue, what Tim is describing: "taking out the middle man" -- This video is speaking an exceptional truth. Enjoy.

I'm Back, Baby!

I'll explain that title later, but I do feel that I must pass on what We Like it Raw has already posted this morning -- the Truth. Now in a new documentary called FOOD MATTERS.



On the We Like it Raw site, they write (and thank you for doing the work for us about this):

What is Food Matters?
Food Matters is a documentary film informing you on the best choices you can make for you and your family's health. Helping you save time, money and effort.

In this day and age with so many companies interested in profiting from our misfortune and ill health this film will help keep your money in your pocket and your health in your hands

In a mission to uncover the truth we have tracked down several of the world’s leaders in nutrition and natural healing from around the globe in order to provide you with the most up to date information on curing disease naturally.

When can you watch it? The film is coming soon and will initially only be available through foodmatters.tv so make sure you’re the first to know by registering your name and email address here

The Last Bite (From the Body-Life)

I have become very annoyed by seeing that every cookbook on health begins with Hippocrates. “Let Food Be thy Medicine and Medicine, Thy Food…” It always appears somewhere, usually in the first twenty pages, if it wasn’t the opening quote. This concept attributed to Hippocrates, was what drew me into food and nutrition long before I knew who spoke the words. This goes to show how true and natural concepts become pervasive, especially when one is looking for it. And I know that this is a truth. That food heals. But so do our thoughts… and it has gotten to the point that no matter what I put into my mouth, I am in judgment about it. I rationalize, polarize, and vacillate into extremes out of the need to control something! Let me have control over one tiny part of something… let me get out of this fear that unravels and twitters behind every thought, every action: nothing is sincere anymore, or at least, sometimes, it feels this way.

Food has become so many things for so many people. It is not merely what provides sustenance, for many it is comfort, love, acceptance, a drug, an obsession, another means of control, another way to abstain from any sense of being, a numbing shot against pain or grief, pornographic gastronomy... of which, all I am guilty of, I'm sure. And then there it was, on the top of page 30 in Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions: my ultimate issue.

“The desire to abstain from animal products, found so often in those of a spiritual nature, may reflect a longing to return to a former, more perfect state of consciousness that was ours before our souls took embodiment in a physical material plane […].”

I find myself in this struggle of what I relate to in my spiritual sense and my fear and buffering against the joy and the sorrow of the physical body. The compassion for all living creatures, the love in their eyes and innocence, mixed with my craving for animal protein. Most of the time, meat tastes dead to me. But then I can remember a bacon-wrapped date that dissolved in my mouth with such exquisite sweetness, such tender, melt in your mouth, salty, crispy sublimity, it had a density which made the tongue giggle all on its own. And I don't even like pork. But there was such attention put into that meal, that night, in Marin County, under palm trees and lanterns, sharing wine amongst friends.

It’s not that I think raw food is not of benefit to my body, but I have developed so many food-rules for myself, that I feel like I am just using raw as one more way to control what goes in my mouth. I have a very bizarre eating disorder. I’m not bulimic, although I have made myself throw up …more in the last 2 years than ever in my adolescence. But I definitely have a binge-purge pattern going on, especially when I look at my food journal. I didn’t think I starved myself… but some days, I eat hardly anything at all… and wonder why I am so maniacally famished into downing too much pasta or potatoes the next: my body is screaming for quick glucose. I am realizing that I have royally screwed up my relationship with my body. I stopped seeing it as sacred: it was the enemy.

Whenever it comes to food, thoughts about said bacon-wrapped bounty are always essential (in what way, who knows?) … But I think it is also what thoughts and intentions I use in preparation. One of spiritual my teachers, a small Indian man with a gravelly voice would stand over his pot of rice or sautéing ginger garlic onions, and say: “You are so beautiful. You are the most wonderful onions. Look at you, look at how beautiful you are.” The tomatoes blushed in response. The same man also said that whenever you truly enjoy something… not out of craving-aversion-lust-compulsion: but genuinely enjoy – it all turns to soma. And no matter how healthy something else is, if your body is in judgment or in fear-hate-compulsion about it, it becomes ama … undigested matter = dis-ease.

Somewhere between nineteen and twenty-six years old, I had developed a love-hate relationship with food. A need to stuff myself with the most sublime things, coupled at other moments with anything that would do to make me numb, send me into a carbohydrate induced coma, just anything to not feel. Now, to be clear, this was not fast food or ice cream. I was a health foodie, all-organic everything. Whole grain, (spelt, buckwheat, barley, brown rice, quinoa) what’s-it and every manner of vegetable. I had an adventurous palate, within reason (no chicken feet stew or sweetbreads has made it past my lips, and I’m pretty sure that won’t change). But then again, organic pasta was always enough to send me down that dark spiral, where the fog rolls in on the east coast of consciousness and nothing but the blur and heft of fullness can be felt. Here, I didn’t have to think about school or sex or the unfairness I always associated with be female, I could just disconnect from any sub-sensual method of being alive and slip away into a useless stupor; a drug just as powerful as anything you could inject into the bloodstream, by needle, and almost as fast. I was addicted to not feeling. But like any addiction, it never really makes you feel good for very long, and when the fog cleared, the sun always rises the next morning and the pain (which I had pushed so deeply into my sinews, my feminine parts, places I knew that at least, I would never look, into cavernous brokenhearted hotels, muscles, curvaceous fatty deposits that I had never had before) was still there. I am a self-admitted food snob Spiritual egoist, South beach (tried it), Zone (tried it), Macrobiotics (tried it), Ayuveda, Vegetarian, Vegan(tried it), Raw food(tried it): glutton(tired of it). And am so sick of all the labels.

Someone recently asked me, have I ever tried just letting my body have whatever it actually wants? No judgments no second-guessing and after really thinking about it… no I haven’t. I have never actually let my body, not my neuroses, pre-programmed food-abridged rule induced conceptualized intellectualized rationalization, make a single decision in my life. I am beginning to suspect (har) that my issues with food will not go away with being thin or healthy, because they are 100% of the mind.

M has been on this wonderful kick of picking “intention” cards for the week – one of these for me was : I Love My Body.

…maybe I should just try that for awhile. And talking to my mom, she says: wow. I think you think too much. And she says, whenever I start to think too much, I should just breathe. Whenever you see yourself spiral into old thoughts, trying to find someplace in the head where its safe... just breathe. Ok. I will. I'll breathe. Love and Breathe.