GREEN Life

This blog post is for anyone, but especially vegetarians and raw foodists. We seem to get so caught up in all of the different foods available. So many different types of fruit and vegetable, supplements, powders, and herbs. And now we have superfoods. Wow! How much there is to choose!

BUT

I MUST emphasize the importance of the basics. If you don't provide constant cleansing for your body, you will get all clogged up NO MATTER WHAT YOU'RE EATING. If you are on a raw food diet, or any kind of diet, you must get these two basics every day...

1. CHARGED WATER

2. GREEN LEAFY VEGETABLES

You can throw all of your superfoods and herbs down the toilet if you do not incorporate these two massively important elements for any healthy lifestyle.

Human beings are identical to plants, and plants need water. When I say charged water, I mean water with structure or electrolytes. Your body cannot do much with water that does not contain electrolytes, and the water will end up taking from you rather than giving. There are many ways to charge water and I'm certainly no expert, but what I usually do is add a pinch of sea salt and/or a squeeze of lemon.

BEFORE I DO ANYTHING IN THE MORNING (and especially eat anything) I have a nice, big glass of clean water with a pinch of sea salt and about a teaspoon of MSM powder. If you're new to MSM, you can work your way up by starting with a small pinch. It's quite bitter so if you've passed the taste threshold with it just know that you can use a little less and still get great results. At least every other day I'll squeeze a lemon into the water. Lemon water is great for providing a burst of vitamins and it's very alkalizing. Helps keep you alkaline for the rest of the day.

It's best to drink water on an empty stomach and not within 30 minutes of eating. I believe the general rule about how much water to drink is the number of ounces of your body weight divided by 2. So, someone who weighs 100 lbs should drink about 50 ounces of water a day. The more raw food a person eats, the less water one can drink. David Wolfe says that a raw foodist can divide their body weight by 4 to determine the number of ounces of water to drink each day.

(Daniel Vitalis can tell you much more about water. And trust me, you want to know.)

Now, the GREENS.

Perhaps we're hearing the word "green" so much that people are beginning to block it out. But I have to say that if you never eat maca, chocolate, or hemp seeds again you'll be right as rain as long as you get your greens.

Victoria Boutenko breaks it down in this interview for Supreme Master TV. (Watch parts 1 and 2)



The first 4 letters of the word HEALTH is HEAL. Health is the process of continuous healing. CHLOROPHYLL IS ESSENTIAL for healing. We are constantly bombarded with destructive free radicals and toxins, so we need chlorophyll to repair the damage and flush these toxins out.

Greens can be hard to eat, so liquify them. I do have a juicer which I use a few times a week. I'll use it for a burst of nutrition when I don't want my body to have to work through the fiber (after a workout or in the morning). Unless I'm fasting, I use the juicer sparingly. It's also great to blend your greens. A wonderful standard recipe for a green smoothie is...

1 cup of seed milk or water

Sweeten with fruit like apple or tropical fruits like durian or mamey. A banana works great if it is an organic, farm fresh banana (I do not recommend giant bananas like Chiquita). You could also add agave nectar or raw honey.

2 cups of greens (dandelion, kale, chard, collards, broccoli, etc.)

It's great to add tumeric root, ginger root, and cinnamon to any juice or blended green drink. And always remember to chew everything that goes into your mouth. Chew each sip until you taste the sweetness. The act of chewing stimulates your body systems for proper digestion.

You will notice proper bowel regularity, enhanced mood, and a sweet little figure if you eat/drink your greens. Get at least two servings of greens a day. If you're on the the run, try a green powder like Pure Synergy for one of your servings.

Once your body is working properly at the basic level, then you can really start having fun with superfoods.

Life is Simple

What is life?

This word has been defined so many ways. I often hear people define it by their identity or who they appear to be within society. "I do this job, wear this brand, have this boyfriend who does this, watch this television show... that's my life."

Let's take a breath and state what "life" really is. Maybe this will make it easier... what is not life? The most obvious answer is death. And what is death? Take a person who breathes, thinks, moves. This person is alive, or they exhibit life. Now consider that body not doing any of those things, or anything at all. That is death.

So, a simple definition of "life" is that it is consciousness. That's it. There's nothing else to it.


This blog is called World Redress. To many it appears to be a blog about raw and vegan food. I primarily choose to approach the issue of eating because this is where we are generally the least conscious. "You gotta eat" has been sandblasted into our thinking, and it stops there, without much consideration about what we're eating or the means of production. As a result, much of what people eat destroys their bodies and the environment and ultimately leads to cruel and painful death. This is death for the person who eats unconsciously, but also for animals, and for people who live on the lands that we either pollute or neglect.

Eating better does not have to be something for elitists, either in intellect or economic status. It can be just as simple as life is, if you clear your head of advertising. Food does not come from a box. Food comes from the earth. The stuff that comes from a box is the product of a system based on profit for government-subsidized farms, pharmaceutical companies (as in, those who "enrich" or "fortify"), confectionery labratories (labs that manufacture flavors), advertisers, distributors, trucking companies for transport, etc. This list is not all-inclusive - there are others who profit that I don't know about and I don't want to know about.

So eating better is as simple as supplying your cupboards and refrigerators with different and better food. Instead of marinating a Perdue chicken at night and baking it the next day, you could be using that same set of time to put water in a bowl of nuts for soaking and blend and strain into nutmilk the next day. Actually, making nutmilk takes less time than almost any cooking endeavor.

The other issue is that a vegetarian is not better than an omnivore. Really, we're all equal, it's just that one is part of the solution to a crisis of which we're all aware and one is adding to the crisis. Meat production is terrible for the environment, terrible for our bodies, and a waste of resources including water, land, feed, etc. And if there is an energy crisis, why should we turn on a stove or oven when we can eat raw food?

Profit is ruling our society, the two big industries are pharmaceutical and agriculture (or food). If it is profitable for the pharmaceutical companies to manufacture and sell drugs, why would they want to cure anyone? That's an obvious example, but for a less obvious example... why would bottled water companies want there clean water to be in abundance? Much of what we deserve as guests on this beautiful planet is polluted or destroyed to increase profits for private individuals.

We can all live together as a synergistic unit. Imagine if all of our kitchen waste was compost. Imagine that even our poop is so rich with plant food and nutrients that it can just go right back to the earth. Or our urine so pure from the clean water we drink that we could piss in a river and not worry about polluting it. How far can you take your own ideas for sustainability and how to use technology?

There is No "Other"

vital information for our survival.

This video seems to be pretty popular on YouTube now. Thank goodness.

Raw Birthday Cake

Yes you can have a yummy layer cake with lots of frosting
EVEN IF YOU'RE RAW :) If you have a dehydrator, the basic recipe for the "cake" is 1 part raw pumpkin seeds (Turn the seeds into a meal before adding other ingredients. Feel free to experiment with whatever nuts or seeds you like), 1/2 part irish moss gel, and 1 part soaked dried fruit, blended in a food processor. Sweeten with agave, add about a teaspoon of cinnamon, and whatever other flavors you like (ie. vanilla or lemon extract - find all natural, fair trade sources. These taste the best.)

I made a birthday cake for Brittney at Lifefood Gourmet. The whole crew shared the little cake, and it was plenty for all of us. A raw cake is very nutritious and thus, very filling!



Form discs in whatever diameter you like and about an inch high. The cake I made was about 4 inches in diameter and like I said, it was plenty for 5 adults. Dehydrate for about 24 hours at 110 degrees. Flip each cake once during dehydration so that each cake is firm and chewy all the way through.

Once the "cake" is done, you can frost it with whatever you like. A quick frosting can easily be made with avocado blended with irish moss gel (optional), coconut oil, sweetened with agave, and flavored with raw cacao and vanilla, or lime (which makes sense with the green color). Fruit makes a beautiful and delicious garnish.

The frosting I used was the vanilla cream from Lifefood, which is absolutely delicious. You can get this recipe and many yummy others from the Lifefood Gourmet eBook. The fruit on top is farm fresh mulberries and blueberries. Use whatever you love!


Enjoy!

Want a sandwich? Try a nori roll :)

If eating raw means lots of salad and dessert for you, remember your friendly sea veggies. It's ideal to get some seaweed into your body everyday. Seaweeds provide you with...

MINERALS: this is what you're made of!

POLYSACCHARIDES: highly complex sugars which are essential for longevity. Daniel Vitalis, the superfood elixir guru, calls them "computer chips" for the immune system which "activate the longevity code in cells."

GLYCONUTRIENTS: Recently discovered. David Wolfe describes them as "elastic proteins." These are also a sugar, but a bitter sugar. Seaweed is the only food that contains all 8 glyconutrients. Many health experts see the study of glyconutrients as an integral part of the future of medicine.

Here's David Wolfe with some powerful information about seaweed:



David mentions 4 seaweeds in particular that will give you all 8 glyconutrients. These are Kelp, Dulse, Nori, and Sea Lettuce. Stock your cupboard with these seaweeds and you always have a nutritious snack or tasty condiment.

Nori is the wrapper for sushi and is readily available. It's generally toasted, so look out for the kind that isn't toasted if you want to stay raw. You can find nori as sheets or as flakes. If you buy the sheets, you can put anything on it that you would normally put on a sandwich, roll it up, and presto! I usually add lettuce or salad greens, tomato, zucchini, and nut/seed pate. You could also add sprouts, or use tofu if you just want to be vegan and not raw.

Here's a simple and delicious way to incorporate the 4 seaweeds into your lifestyle.


Not-Just-Nori Roll




Toss a salad of mixed greens and dress with apple cider vinegar, olive oil, sea salt, and pepper. Add shreds of dulse, and sprinkle with Kelp powder and Sea Lettuce flakes.

Set a piece of nori out on a DRY, clean surface (becomes wilted and hard to work with if it gets wet). Put a nice mound of salad across the middle of the seaweed so that it looks like a green French flag (the salad is the middle stripe).

Lay slices of tomato, zucchini, or whatever other veggies you crave across the top of the salad. The put 4 or 5 tablespoons of nut/seed pate on top of the veggies. Try to make your placement of veggies and pate even across the seaweed so that you get equal amounts of all ingredients in each nori roll that you slice.

Take the bottom of the nori and fold it over the veggies as you tuck all of the filling under with your fingertips. Continue to roll until you have a cylinder of stuffed-nori goodness. You can seal your nori roll with liquid by rubbing a left-over piece of tomato or a lemon wedge at the end of the nori sheet just before you finish rolling. Gently cut 5 or 6 pieces with serrated knife. Keep a wet towel handy for wiping the knife between slices if you want to stay neat and tidy with each slice.

Here's a recipe for a Sunflower Seed Pate. It's great for Nori Rolls, Lettuce Wraps, or with a crudite.

Meaty Sunflower Seed Pate:
1 cup sunflower seeds, soaked and drained
3/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, soaked and drained
1 garlic clove
2 tsp salt
1 tsp each of chili power, ground cumin, and curry powder
1/2 cup of irish moss gel (very easy to make and a recipe is easy to find on the internet)
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp black pepper

Blend until smooth in a food processor.

ENJOY!

There is a Future In Creation

I'm now remembering the fear in letting go. The fear that surrounds the idea of letting the present go so that something new, and potentially better, can replace it. After many difficult experiences with moving forward, I also remember that what I'm feeling now is the same old fear. I really could move forward and create a new and better life for myself.

I want this for you and for every being in this Universe. If you agree with me in any way on any topic, please join myself and others like us. The following video will get you oriented.

I Want My Mamey!

Picked up a beautiful mamey at the farmer's market on Thursday. It was ready to go the moment we bought it, but after a couple more days in the fridge that baby was definitely ready for breakfast this morning. What a beautiful sight!

Mamey is a tropical fruit with a thin, earthy skin and pinkish orange flesh. It should be eaten when it is very ripe. You'll know it's ready if your fingers could go right through it (skin and all) if you squeezed it, but you should be able to tell just by holding it in your hand.

I woke up this morning with the thought of a Mamey Chocolate shake. Messed up and used carob instead of cacao. What a delicious mistake! This shake ended up a lovely tawny color. The carob and mamey really compliment each other. Try it out for yourself and your sweetie tomorrow morning!

(Mamey is also readily available in the freezer section of many grocery stores. Don't know if you can get organic and it is probably pasteurized.)




Tempting Tawny Mamey Shake
(don't worry too much about measurements - just follow your intuition and tastes)
1/4 Mamey fruit (about 3/4 cup)
1 cup of nut/seed milk
1 tbsp agave
1 tbsp raw carob powder (finely ground)
1 tbsp raw minimally processed cacao or cacao nibs
1 tsp green powder or your choice (try chlorella, spirulina, or Pure Synergy - superior green powder)
1/2 tsp vanilla

Blend until smooth. Add ice while blending for a frosty treat.

I'm always using seed milk, which I make regularly. It's easy and fast to make. Anyone can do it! Below is a quick video from Sexy Bitches Like It Raw. If you use hemp seeds, you won't have to strain it. Hemp seeds make a delicious and super nutritious milk for anyone who wants to just blend it and go.