Thu 21 Oct 2010

How I’m reducing my carbon footprint–with my knife & fork

Posted by Michael under Food
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Have you ever thought, “Global warming? What can I do? Pfft. Nothing.” (mind gives up & moves on)

Yeah, me too. At least until what I discovered from my own research these past 2.5 years…

…that many of my meals were “dirty”, energy production-wise. They required literally thousands of gallons of water, created pollutants, and reinforced a system that was ego created. I was eating unconscious food, unconsciously, selfishly decimating the earth with my knife & fork because I had all these nutritional ideas that I wouldn’t challenge.

When I began to look at the details, I was momentarily scared because I didn’t know what to eat in place of this broken thing. Yet I found alternatives that were:

  1. tastier
  2. gave me more energy
  3. cheaper(!)
  4. more nutrient dense
  5. and slashed my carbon foot print

It was a win-win-win-win situation. It even helped my meditations! As this new food palette was lighter on my body, it healed, and my head became sharper and more naturally alert.

Thus my passion and why I’m sharing this with you. Living lighter on the planet is easy, once you know how.

Taste of Health logo

There’s an organization that was founded by the son of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire called EarthSave. The Vancouver EarthSave was responsible for gently helping me to discover this whole new spectrum of food choices, and a big part of my “awakening to food”. There’s many EarthSave chapters all over the place. I suggest that you call them up and tap their minds–they’ll make it easy and the rewards are returned at every meal with increasing joy.

In Vancouver, there’s this neat event coming up called the Taste of Health which has a lot to see, sample, and play with in a light, positive way, focusing more on what is good, rather than what isn’t. Check it out. I’ll see you there this year, although I won’t be volunteering as before. Invite your friends, too.

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Mon 2 Aug 2010

Planet Yum – My raw food experience

Posted by Michael under Uncategorized
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I keep getting questions about raw food, especially after my latest Facebook update:

I’m in sensual bliss mode!

I just returned from a raw food potluck and the tastes and textures were so suprising and decadent and vibrant that I ate and ate and ate. The pleasure of eating has never been so heightened in my life. I now know I can’t go wrong with “my” cilantro pesto. The cool thing is that it is observed to removed heavy metals from the body. Ridiculously tasty yet functional??? Sounds geeky to me.

When a friend read that, she asked, “Where on earth do you find this food?? Is it really good?”

Is it really good?

I wish you could’ve seen the expression on our faces as we all were enraptured in sampling what everyone brought. Raw food is a completely different way of looking at this otherwise unconscious act of putting things into ones mouth, but it’s one well worth getting over the inertia to seek out.

Where do you find it?

Well, it helps to locate a group who’s already into it so that you can “get it” quickly. They’ll have potlucks and will welcome you with open arms because the benefits are so many and they want to share how wonderful it can be. (To be honest, some of it is bland, but that’s only because they do not yet know how to make it great; that comes soon enough once they’re hooked on what it can be.)

Otherwise, there’s books at your book store and video tutorials, some free, some as part of a course, that teach you what is easy and tasty to put together. Some emphasize the weight loss aspect, some the bodybuilding aspect, some the cellular healing aspect, and some the full-on taste aspect. It depends on what you want to get out of it.

To each his own

I find that it comes as an answer to a personal desire for something more, and is therefore unique to each searcher. For me, it was Brendan Brazier’s book “The Thrive Diet” that won me over because he’s winning vegan triathlete, he’s very clear, and he promised me that it would give me more energy. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that all of his recipes are winners.

Now approaching Planet Yum

If the raw food world seems foreign, it’s because it is. However, there’s a vegan/raw analog to anything you’re used to eating, and chances are that the tastes and textures are more vibrant than what you’re used to. I find the remaining benefits to my body and planet are just the “icing on the cake.”

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Sat 31 Jul 2010

The Raw Coco-Bana Cream Pie

Posted by Michael under Food
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Coo-coo for Coconuts!

What would be your reaction if you were challenged to come up with a coconut-themed recipe and you couldn’t crib someone else? Now self-constrain it further by desiring to keep it raw and it begins to get interesting.

You may be thinking, that’s… unusual. Well, it would be if it wasn’t part of a contest sponsored by one of my new favorite produce shops called The Coconut Hut Grocery.

For years, I’ve been looking for organic young Thai coconuts and The Coconut Hut has them! I was thrilled when I discovered that they were as passionate as I was! To help understand this obsession, the young Thai coconuts that you can buy in the store (even if you shop at smaller markets), the ones that look like a cylinder shaped into a cone, are supposedly dipped in a sulphate along with a fungicide. The sulphate is used to prevent them from browning and the fungicide is a known probable carcinogen. No thanks, do not want. I’d like to enjoy the sweet coconut water knowing that it hasn’t been poisoned.

On the other hand, the Young Thai coconuts from the Coconut Hut Grocery have the outer cone already stripped away and just the inner pod exposed. It looks like a softball. But the best part is that they’re tangibly fresh! I was driving home the other week after buying a stash and my car actually filled up with the sweet smell of live coconuts! That’s never happened with the other conventional ones. And drinking them? So tasty!

As for the coconut recipe contest that the Coconut Hut Grocery was putting on, I thought that it could work, or it may not, but with raw food, things tend to err on the “work” side of the equation, a huge bonus for a raw newbie like me.

So here’s my first-ever public recipe for one of my food creations. I’ve been craving a banana cream pie, and so I thought, why not coconut-ize it? In this concoction, the fat of the coconut meat gives the cream and the filling some body, and the fibrousness of shredded coconut gives the crust a density. I added some coconut oil to give the filling a bit more of a roundness. All in all, this is quite the treat.

Ingredients

The Coco-Bana Creme Pie has three, count ‘em, three layers: the whipped cream topping, the creamy banana filling, and the “crust.” That’s in quotes because it’s not really crusty, but rather crust-like. We’d have to work in an extra dehydration step to give the crust a crunchy, crispy bite. Maybe that will be in the 2.0 version of this recipe….

This will create one personal-sized 5″ pie, which is enough for two people, assuming you want to share it. For a 9″ pie, this recipe will need to be tripled.

Whipped Cream

½ of one medium young Thai coconut’s “meat”
½ small, ripe banana
2 tblsp maple syrup, raw agave nectar, or powdered sugar (powdered sugar will make it thicker and hold its shape better)
¼ tsp vanilla
flax gel: ½ tblsp ground flax seeds soaked in 1 ½ tblsp water for 4 hours

Filling

½ of one medium young Thai coconut’s “meat”
1 tblsp coconut oil
3 ½ small, ripe bananas
5 soaked Medjool dates

Crust

1/8 cup shredded coconut
1/8 cup almonds, soaked for 8-12 hours
1/8 cup cashews
5 soaked Medjool dates
flax gel: 1 tblsp ground flax seeds soaked in 3 tblsp water for 4 hours

Instructions

This is so easy to put together. You’re basically blending each part separately and then bringing it all together in the end.

Whipped Cream

Puncture your Young Thai coconut, drain the coconut water and have a refreshing drink. (No, the water’s not needed but don’t throw it away!) Scrape out the coconut flesh, the “meat”, and put half in a bowl with the small, ripe banana; the remaining half will be used with the filling. Add your sweetner of choice, vanilla, flax gel, and then blend, blend, blend until it becomes light and fluffy. My hand blender makes this quick, but you can use a food processor. Chill in the fridge.

Filling

Blend all the ingredients, the remaining half of the coconut meat, coconut oil, the bananas, and dates, with a hand blender or food processor until it’s creamy. If you’re not licking the bowl, then adjust the sweetness with more dates, but it should be fine. Chill in the fridge.

Crust

Again, blend all the ingredients, the shredded coconut, almonds, cashews, dates, and flax gel with a hand blender until it’s sticky. The cashews will give it a creamy richness, the shredded coconut will help give it form, and the flax gel will bind it together. Press into a small 5″ pie tin. Chill in the fridge.

1 + 1 + 1 = π

When the crust is firm, add the filling and top with the whipped cream. Viola! Pie!

More photos coming….

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Sun 25 Jul 2010

The transformation of a TV Dinnerist

Posted by Michael under Food
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When was the last time you felt like a whole new world was opening up in front of you? Hmm?

The last time was six years ago when I gulped and went to Mexico to be with my Mexican girlfriend for a year not knowing what I was getting myself into. Before that was learning to meditate 13 years ago. Right around then, I also was introduced to salsa dancing, which excited me because of my comparatively passionless family. And then before that was when I learned the precise mathematical formula to make a 3-D cube appear on my computer screen. That one little formula was the seed for my next business, a computer animation programed called Animasia 3-D.

I remember when I was a monk in training and there was this handsome guy from Switzerland who always raved about how good his homeland’s food was and how much he missed it and how he’d be sneaking bites of Lindt chocolate every day and I how much of an addict I thought he was. I never understood that. But now I do. I’m realizing that I’m having another one of these openings where possibilities seem limitless and I get a prickly excitement on my skin when my mind edges toward… food!

A Swanson TV DinnerRaw food in particular, which I’m finding I can make some intensely tasty foods in ways that I never thought about before. I get so excited planning my next meal. This is significant. Why? Because growing up on TV Dinners created a condition in my mind where I wished there was an equivalent to rabbit pellets (“Human Pellet Food”) that you could just pop into your mouth to get the ordeal over with. Food was a chore, not a delight.

My new favorite kitchen gadget is my $10 dehydrator that I bought off Craigslist. I never realized that 85% of fruits and vegetables are water and if you dehydrate them, their true taste comes out in bold letters upon your tongue. Even better is that the nutrients aren’t destroyed when the heat is kept below 118°F. The food is still alive even though it’s taste and texture have been transformed into something new.

Experiment #1: blueberry bliss

My first recipe out of my dehydrator came from a YouTube video of this strange girl demonstrating how to make raw blueberry pancakes in her dehydrator. When I tried it, I couldn’t believe how every bite was exquisite–the flavors were so intense, and as a bonus, I got energy from it, unlike the up/down energy spike from a traditional pancake.

From an engineering perspective, what was more thrilling to me was that the ingredients and the process were simple to understand. It all just made sense. Nothing about the food’s nutritional profile was being destroyed, only preserved. The geek in me loved that.

Apple pie eureka!

Lately, I’ve been having some smashing successes in the kitchen. The first was figuring out on my own how to make raw apple pie. The trick was to dehydrate two sliced apples, sprinkled generously with cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg. This reduces the apples, giving them a nice solid bite, and also brings out their natural sweetness too. Then blending them up slightly with a banana to create the filling and adding that to a crust of mashed dates with shredded coconut was all that was left. To firm it up, I chilled it to make it stand at attention, and man oh man, was it bright and tasty. I thought of photographing it, but… uh… it didn’t last that long. (I didn’t mind that it didn’t have a flaky crust. That wasn’t my goal. I could always bake one with vegan butter some other time.)

Edible air

The next hit was kale chips. These were simplicity itself to make and yet the payoff was big fun. I just tossed in some ripped-up bits of kale into my $10 dehydrator, sprinkled in some salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Several hours later, I had a killer treat. Imagine that you are eating air that had magically become crispy, and at the same time taste like the thinnest, lightest potato chips you’ve ever had, except for being exceptionally nutrient dense. Incredible. And to think I’d have to pay a premium for something so trivial to make.

Best transformation of a watermelon, ever

The last creation I have to mention is not raw, but it is unique. Google could only find a few mentions of it, which says something. Awhile back, I read that eating nothing but watermelon for one day is an excellent natural cleanser for the kidneys. So I tried it. But after trying to chow through just a quarter of a watermelon, I thought I would never finish my formidable green and pink opponent before me in one day. So I juiced ‘er, and thought to save the pulp. Yet for the next few months, every time I’d open the freezer door, I’d see that pulp and think, “what the bleep am I gonna do with watermelon pulp?” And then I’d close the door and forget about it.

But now with berry season upon us, and me needing more freezer space, I pulled it out and plopped the pink ice cube into a nearby pot and slowly started to simmer it. Many hours later, I had this bright red, thick, sweet-but-not-cloyingly decadent goo. This time I took a photo (yay, me!), but gobbled it up while trying to think of where it fit on the sweet/sticky spectrum and what kinds of neat things I could do with it. Maybe use it as a unique vegan cupcake frosting? I knew I’d have to try this watermelon reduction (or watermelon molasses) again, as it was simple and yet so rewarding.

What’s next?

As you can tell, I’m super fired up about experimenting with food, especially raw, finding how tasty it is, and how much energy it gives me. There’s more discoveries I could share, but when was the last time you felt like a whole new world was opening up for you?

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Wed 23 Jun 2010

Geekiness to the Rescue!

Posted by Michael under Body Experiment
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There’s a geeky joy I get learning the underlying truth about scary things. This movie called “Healing Cancer From the Inside Out” gets double geek points for shining a brilliant light on a serious subject, and making it not-so-scary using the twin razors of clarity and precision. Brilliant!

For instance, I didn’t realize that “untreated patients live longer than treated patients”(!) Yep, that’s what the numbers show.

Or that mammographies aren’t necessary(!) Really? Yep, there’s a misconception there.

Or that smoking doesn’t correspond with getting cancer(!) Huh? Yep, smoking is many things, but it’s not the real trigger.

What I liked about this movie is that it broke down all these unexamined beliefs and held them up to the light. Just looks at them as if staring at a bug under a microscope, but it backs up everything with research and numbers. I like that. Charts and graphs are geeky.

The movie talked to people who have a different way of looking at cancer, people who look at it and don’t see a bogeyman but just a little, insignificant thing that can be cured without much thought or drama. I like that too. Things aren’t really so complex and scary when you truly understand them. Understanding is geeky.

Here’s a series of clips…

My mom already had chemo, which I now know is far deadlier than the thing it claims to cure. I still hope she sees the full two-part movie which I’m boxing up and sending to her now. I know I don’t have any control over whether she sees it, or even if she wants to accept what she hears, as she’s part of the cancer industry doing mainstream research, but…. one can plant a seed.

For me, this movie falls under the category of, “thank you for recommending that, and thank God I chose to see it instead of ‘aaah… I can’t be bothered’”. There’s too much fear around cancer. Knowledge is definitely power.

This gets my “Eternal Cheesecake Award of Excellence”. Well done! See this movie!

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Tue 1 Jun 2010

How to Magnetize a Baby and Why That Matters

Posted by Michael under Food
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This food researcher is funny! I loved his first story on how to magnetize a baby. And I learned oodles, like why I’ve felt chemical cravings for certain foods, like chocolate and cheese on my vegan diet.

This is a must see! The time just flies by with this guy. Watch it now with a loved one. Go on! … How do his conclusions contradict or flow with your thinking?

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Thu 20 May 2010

What is the truth about tooths?

Posted by Michael under Body Experiment, cleansing
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Why don’t dentists tell the truth about how teeth will heal themselves? If you know exactly why teeth get cavities (it’s not sugar), and you know how to support the remineralization of the tooth structure, then you get to keep your teeth forever. So why, why, why? aren’t they telling us? I think it’s because they don’t want to know. Or it’s too empowering for their clients.

Anyway, this thought stream came out of a short conversation with a friend. She said, ”well, my cavity didn’t heal itself.” And yeah, from what I’m learning, cavities won’t heal themselves if the conditions that created them are still present.

The truth is…. what?

It’s just germs that cause cavities, not sugar, and the specific germs are called Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus acidophilus.

If a dentist doesn’t help you to understand the root issue, help you to minimize the germ colonies, help you to understand how to remineralize the tooth, then yeah, cavities will grow and the dentist will take the easy, expedient way out and fill the cavity. They also make a nice profit from it, so why would they want to change their mental model when doing so would be more work for them? Not to mention have to swim upstream against the common “wisdom” of dentistry?

The truth is is that teeth are living, evolving material and cavities and other bone issues can heal themselves completely if you know how to do it. It’s not hard to learn. Just different.

I want my teeth, dammit!

It’s too bad my young friend had to go through the ordeal of having a cavity filled. I’ve had enough cavities filled and now I’m saying, “enough” and educating myself. But that’s just where I’m at.

I’m learning all this from the life’s work of a forward-looking doctor named Dr. Nara and an e-book I bought at http://mizar5.com/. More people need to find this stuff. It’s clear and conscious and backed by years of research. The website may look like ass, but don’t let that turn you off; the e-books are solid.

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Tue 11 May 2010

Ever wonder what foods are more powerful than others?

Posted by Michael under Food
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My favorite grocery store, Capers in Kitsilano, recently did something that made me take notice: they posted big signs that listed the nutrient density of various foods. So for example, you could see what foods would give you the most powerhouse bang for the buck. The amazing thing is that those foods don’t have the highest profit margins. How odd.

Turns out they took the list from one of my more respected health people, Dr. Fuhrman. You can find that list on this page.

A few things are interesting to me about what’s on it. First is that kale is at the absolute top in terms of nutrients. It ranks at 1,000 out of 1,000 points. This doesn’t surprise me as I’ve intuitively felt to include kale in my daily diet as the main greens in my salads; I just feel good eating them.

The other thing is that the list doesn’t care about arbitrary distinctions like veganism or not–just the nutrient scores. So I can know that eggs are at 27 on a scale of 1,000 points. I was surprised that nuts and beans scored relatively low, like walnuts at 34 out of 1,000. But that’s still double than Swiss Cheese at 15.

The only thing that I’m curious about is what score hemp hearts are because they’re so packed with proteins, essential fatty acids, carbs and fiber.

Well, check out Dr. Fuhrman’s nutrient score list; it’s fascinating!

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Tue 9 Mar 2010

Cleansing the Machinery of Your Body Will Save Your Life

Posted by Michael under Body Experiment, cleansing, Food
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I’m a bit stunned. I’m just finishing the parasite cleanse part of my Blessed Herbs cleanse and I’m taken aback at just how many parasites were formerly taking up residence inside Chez Moi. Once out, these looked like little grains of rice, but the best part is how much more alive I feel.

I feel gooooood. No… I feel excellent.

Unleash Your Inner Ferrari

Before it was like my body was an okay Datsun, just making it down the road. Now it feels like I have an exotic sports car that is firing on all its cylinders, king of the road.

The interesting thing is that I gradually forgot this feeling from my last cleanse and now it’s back again. It’s like I’m remembering what it felt like to be a kid when I had so much energy. Food doesn’t make me tired; instead it gives me a thrilling boost of energy that radiates from my abdomen.

I’m still not finished with the cleanse, as it has several more organs to clean out, and I can’t wait until I get to the lymph because that’s last. The rest of the body will have been scrubbed, and when the lymph is flowing, my God, it feels good to be alive. Like when someone asks, “How are you?”, my response is invariably, “Fantastic!”

You’re a Bit Strange To Do This

If anyone is thinking, “You’ve done a lot of cleanses. Just how many of these cleanses do you have to do?” Once all of the noticeable physical deposits are gone, then it will be a different story. But for now I have come to see this as an absolute necessity.

The first week of my Blessed Herbs cleanse was to pull out the rubbery plaque lining the insides of the intestines. That it pulled out about 3 feet of the stuff tells me that I’m still not done there. (I kept saying “Oh my God! Oh my God!” as it came out–the instant release of this highly toxic mass from my body was cathartic though painless.) My previous liver flush pushed out about 200-300 pea-sized “stones” that were formerly blocking my liver ducts, blocking them from doing their job. That tells me I’m not done there either.

Well, Why Not?

I want everyone to have this clean, physical high of an experience, though few sincerely desire it, and only when their body is in dire straights.

I get that. I didn’t want to take responsibility for my internal hygiene until I was on my death bed. But, damn… I know that once anyone experiences how the body is supposed to feel, then there will be no doubt that this needs to be done.

Maybe if I say:

  • “You will have clear skin” or…
  • “You won’t need coffee to pick you up” or…
  • “You belly will disappear when the pounds of mucoid plaque leave” or…
  • “People will compliment you on how well you look” or…
  • “You will feel lighter in your body” or…
  • “Your cognitive abilities will be faster, clearer” or…
  • “Your brain chemistry will improve and your mood will be brighter”

…would you be interested in cleansing the machinery of your body then???

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Sat 13 Feb 2010

The Cognitive Power of Garlic & Popcorn

Posted by Michael under Body Experiment, Food
[2] Comments

What simple, everyday foods will actually clear your head? And why?

Well, two that I’ve noticed are garlic and popcorn. Yeah, really. I know, I know! It doesn’t make sense, but bear with me!

With garlic, it has the effect of mopping up the gut, re-balancing the good intestinal bacteria, and making digestion quick, snappy, and happy. I am literally jumping out of bed in the morning because my gut and head feel so good.

With popcorn, the roughage acts like a broom moving out the gut crud. That’s a scientific term, by the way. Any mental fatigue just… goes away and I’m naturally alert and quick.

So what does this have to do with cognition? It turns out that there is a direct relationship between the brain’s ability to function clearly and the functioning of the gut. Slow gut, slow mind. Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself. However, I’ll let you in on some tips that I’ve learned that will make the difference more pronounced. If you try it half-assed, then you’ll be more likely to go, “pfft!”, and write me off as a flake.

With garlic, you need to eat it as a raw clove two hours after the last meal. Yes, it tastes something fierce, and it burns, but it is a natural antibiotic, and gets into all the crevices that harbor parasites, fungus, and yeast. It helps to rebalance the good bacteria in the gut. Do this once a night for two weeks and notice how dramatically better you feel every morning. (I am basing this off of Mikhail Tombak’s powerful cleansing work in “Can We Live 150 Years?“)

With popcorn, have it 2 – 3 hours after eating so as to give your digestive system some room. I keep my popcorn simple and light and yet super tasty with just melted coconut oil, nutritional yeast (so tasty!), and some Himalayan salt.

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