Know Any Literary Animal Lovers?
Hi there PureJeevan readers! We wanted to let you know that Jim's new novel CHROO is available on Amazon. It's a crazy adventure involving a billionaire heiress, her Chihuahua BFF ("Chroo") and a host of human and animal characters. Find out more on Amazon! Here are some links:
Thanks to everyone who has offered, so far, to help us out with our project (mentioned in yesterday's post). If anyone else thinks they'd like to help, we're looking for as many people as possible! We'll fill you in soon, just be sure to send us your email addresses if you haven't already done so. Thanks!
Here are more pictures of some of the foods we've been eating. Over the past year, we've pretty much been eating simple foods (except for the time I was preparing meals for the Raw Food Retreat). However, recently KDcat has been doing some extreme yo-yo eating between raw foods and packaged/unhealthy cooked foods. The back and forth has been causing her to experience a bit of a tummy upset. So, I've decided to make our meals a bit more exciting for her---so she'll possibly not feel so tempted by all of the colors and artificial flavors of the packaged "foods" she's been eating.
Talk about color...check out this salad I made earlier today:
On this Thankful Thursday I am feeling especially thankful for the Internet. Without the Internet I wouldn't be able to learn as much as I've learned about raw foods in such a short period of time. The Internet has connected me with people from all over the world who are also interested in natural health and raw food living. I am part of a larger community, one that would never exist without the Internet.
So, today I am especially thankful for the Internet. What are you thankful for today?
Wow, I'm having a tough time keeping up with our fearless travelers! I thought I'd break their San Francisco adventures up into FOUR smaller posts made from Wendi's personal travelogue. I'll try to address everything they did chronoligically. There will be a video in this posts, videos in the next post, and a picture set at the end! Here's what she had to say about their first stop in Frisco:
For our San Francisco/Berkeley visit, we first met up with a college friend, Pete Guinosso, at Cafe Gratitude. It was fun catching up, and Pete treated KDcat and I to our meals. While at the table, I labeled Pete as the "Quote Man" because he had a fantastic book of quotes he has been collecting. He periodically read from it as our conversations brought specific quotes to mind. It was a beautiful collection of poems, which Pete said is his second book and is filling up quickly.
Cafe Gratitude lived up to its reputation of having a great vibe with pleasant servers and fantastic raw foods. I wondered, however, why there isn't a dish called "I am Love." (There is a drink called "I am Loved," but I was interested in one that claimed I AM Love. Maybe they'll come up with one for my next visit!) After leaving Cafe Gratitude, I have to admit I wasn't overly grateful to find a $40 parking ticket waiting on the rental car. OUCH! We kept the car parked there (since it was already ticketed), and Pete showed us around the Berkeley shopping area. It was a fun stroll on a beautiful sunny, California day.
As a follow-up to yesterday's McDonald's-bashing post, I thought I'd post another perspective -- namely, that not all chain smoothies are bad. I can't claim to have tried them all, but I can report with confidence that, for raw most foodists, a trip to Jamba Juice can be awesome!
Tomorrow I'll finally be posting about the 3-Day Raw Food Spiritual Ashram Retreat that I organized. I took a few days to myself after the event, and then I needed to catch up on a lot of things (which included formatting an almost 150-page publication). It's hard to believe that two weeks have passed, already, since the retreat ended.
I have a lot of photos from the event! Some of the guests prefer to remain anonymous, however, so I can't share all of them with you. However, there are a lot that I can still post on a public page for you to view! I'm waiting to receive some more images from the ashram's camera. Once I have them, I'll be able to complete the photos pages and share images from that wonderful weekend.
BIG THANKS to one of the guests, Angel, who happily took my camera and captured images that weekend. I am extremely grateful that she did, and I'm also impressed with her creative gift with photography! The image she captured of another guest, Faye, is absolutely beautiful! I'm looking forward to sharing the pics with all of you!
Getting Lyme Disease after regaining my health on the raw foods diet was a tough thing to accept. How could a body cure itself with a raw food diet, yet then fail to even recognize and destroy the Lyme bacteria? So many individuals have recovered from awful diseases, including cancer, by eating a raw food diet. Why, as a raw foodist, has my body been unable to easily eliminate this lyme disease?
I know Jim and I weren't the only ones wondering this. Many of you have voiced concerns, as well. Questions have been asked about how healthy my raw diet has actually been. Have I been cheating and eating cooked foods? Have I been eating too many packaged raw food snacks? Am I drinking alcohol? What have I been doing *wrong* with my diet in order for this to happen in my body? Here are some answers:
Read more: Please Share Immune Building Knowledge with Wendi!
We tried it in the past, this most unusual fruit. While in Chicago recently, we decided to give it one more try! You see, the first time we tried it we were ... let's just say "not big fans" of the infamous durian. (Here's an episode of Kevin Gianni's Renegade Health Show, shot in our home, documenting that day.) It's a stinky fruit to most, although some claim to enjoy the bizarre odor (which is sometimes described as dirty sock and propane gas smell). If you can get past the smell to give it a taste, you'll be greeted by a taste as strange as the odor. Wendi describes it as a sweet onion pierogie, but each person seems to have a different opinion about this odd fruit.
In this current video our raw friend Debbie Gedayloo-Bennett, whom we met in Chicago, jumped at the opportunity to hang out for a bit of a durian experience. Debbie is on the pro-durian side of the fence that divides those who love and those who hate the alien-like fruit. Wendi was still sitting on the fence, not making up her mind after the initial taste with Kevin and Annmarie. Jim was adamantly sitting far from the love side of the fence, refusing to even attempt approaching the pro side. Debbie was a pro in opening this spiny fruit, so she agreed to open it while on video so that we could share the experience and knowledge with all of you.
I'm still doing my nine-day mono meals for Navratri. Since it's Makin' It Monday, instead of actually makin' a recipe, I'm dreamin' about it! After talking with my sweet friend Melissa, I thought I wanted to eat spinach pie when I end my mono meals. She was talking about it, shared how she was going to create it, and my mind was filling with the image of spinach pie, the smell and taste of it, and I wanted it right then.But, we don't have any spinach in the house right now. Since I end my mono meals after tomorrow's lunch, and don't have time to buy spinach at the food co-op, I decided to dream some more about what I'll be eating for tomorrow's dinner.
Then it came to me. I want beet pasta! Not just any beet pasta, but beet pasta topped with a creamy alfredo sauce! I picture it in my mind; I can imagine the taste of it, the texture, and it's so delicious. I think I want something green with it, too. Perhaps I'll start with a small salad. Ooh! Yes, that's what I'll do!
Yesterday was a ton of fun, wasn't it? Sam loves all of the comments, so if you haven't viewed her video, please do -- and let her know how much you enjoyed it!? For today, we just wanted to announce the addition of a permanent new button along the right sidebar of our blog. As you can see, it links to this post from a few weeks back when we first announced a call for guest raw chefs. There, you'll find the details on hosting a segment of Makin' It Monday, just like Sam did.
By the way, just last week, we passed a noteworthy milestone that we didn't mention -- our 500th blog post here at Pure Jeevan. That's a lot of raw foods coverage, right ! Well, we're really still getting started when it comes to the level of information and inspiration we're planning for Pure Jeevan -- so it's great to add new features like this now, as we're able to. Of course, once our home sells and we're finally able to move on to the next phase of our lives, we envision Pure Jeevan exploding with more content than ever before. What fun it'll be to be able to devote ourselves full-time to spreading the word about raw foods!
Original Comments
Below, we have included the original comments from this blog post. Additional comments may be made via Facebook, below.
Read more: Be Part of Pure Jeevan's Makin' It Monday Video Series!
Three months ago today, we put up a post called "Is Alcohol Raw " I wanted to post a little follow-up to that today, while I'm thinking of the story. (And, by the way, a great conversation ensued in the comments section of that article. However, if you visit it now, you'll see that the comments have disappeared. We're hoping to have these and many other comments restored once a new version of Disqus is released.)
In that article, I touched on how the body can seemingly store states of consciousness (noting how I dreamed of being drunk and felt authentically drunk in the dream). This sort of phenomenon is well documented anecdotally (e.g., often associated with LSD use), although still not fully understood by medical doctors or psychologists. In any case, the term "flashback" comes to mind:
Read more: Strange Wine Experience & Jim's *Emergency Smoothie*
Day 6: Today is the final day of placing extra focus on the feminine qualities attributed to Goddess Lakshmi. For me, going within, shining light on the things that aren't so clear, the things that I've been avoiding, or the things that have been completely invisible is something I've revisited off and on my entire life. It's something that I often recommend to friends and family, as well. It's what has allowed me to continually improve my life (both physically, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually), and something I'll always consider vital.
The more we search within for answers, the more we'll learn about our true selves. The more we understand ourselves, the more authentic we become in our interactions with others. The more authentic we are with others, the more others can feel comfortable around us. The more others become comfortable around us, the more they can experience their own authentic selves. And the more others experience their true selves, the more we all wake up and truly begin living a life of beauty, grace, vibrancy, and love.