Eat With Love

There are more and more young people out there who are starting to make healthy choices about their food and lifestyle. This post is my #1 tip for any young people - or anyone, really, who is working on developing a healthier lifestyle and more specifically, diet.

Hi there! First of all, it is so great that you are so conscious about your diet and health at such a young age. Good for you!

As a young person who has been putting a focus on healthy eating in my life for about 5 years now (that's over a quarter of my life!) My #1 tip for my peers attempting the same thing is, don't be hard on yourself!

When I first got into healthy eating, I was struggling with an eating disorder I'd been dealing with since I was in 7th grade, so I was very strict about following my diet, and I did it out of fear and not love for myself. This lead me to "succeeding" at staying on the diet, but it also lead to a lot of unnecessary stress that blocked me from being able to reap all the benefits of the healthy diet I was following.

I don't know how relevant or not relevant this is, but my biggest suggestion is to identify what is driving you towards the diet that you want to achieve. Is it fear of being unhealthy or fat? Or is it because you DESERVE all the best, healthiest foods, because you DESERVE to feel amazing all the time?

For me, it got a lot easier, and more effortless and enjoyable to eat healthy, when I finally freed myself of the eating disorder mentality and began to look at what I was eating with love rather than fear.

(Here is a post that I made a year ago about how I was able to begin to overcome my eating disorder. I've come a long way since then,, but this is how my recovery began.)

When you know that you deserve the best so that you can feel your best, slipping up and eating shitty food occasionally isn't as stressful - and at the same time, you're very likely to always choose the healthiest option available because hey - you are INCREDIBLE, and you and your body deserve the very best feel to run on, because you deserve to feel awesome.

Peace (:

This has no relevence whatsoever. But its pretty cool, am I right? :D

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Fresh From the Store, or Frozen From the Garden?

Hi all!

I've been a fairly strict raw foodist for quite a while now. However, this summer,, I have found myself going away from that somewhat. Instead of living strictly on raw foods, I've begun to live strictly on foods that make me feel good, and foods that meet my needs well, without necessarily always being raw, or fruit.

For those who don't know me, I am a 17 year old vegan hippie child living smack dab in the middle of Wisconsin. Summer is a wonderful time for me, because summers in WI are gorgeous. Especially this year, we've had a perfect amount of rain and everything is green and lush and beautiful.

We maintain 3 huge, magnificent gardens, plus a blueberry patch, an apple orchard, some grape vines, and 2 raspberry patches.

Here's the first, where we're growing zucchini, spaghetti squash, pumpkins, and a whole lot of canaloupe. Behind it you can see our blueberry and yellow raspberry patch.

Here's garden #1. This guy's the main garden, the star of the show....in it we've got zucchini, cucumber, watermelon, cantaloupe, corn (which the raccoons keep getting to before us), red & yellow potatoes, sweet potatoes, and a million different kinds of peppers and tomatoes. Plus herbs like parsley, basil, and cilantro.

This is garden #2, where we grow most of our green veggies and such, that don't take up quite as much space - lettuce mix, kale, chard, chinese cabbage, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi, onions, carrots, beets, dill, and cilantro. Behind, you can see our cute little apple orchard.

And finally, here's our asparagus, rhubarb, grape vines (they took a pretty serious hit last year,, there was a bad storm, which knocked them over, combined with last years drought - we're lucky we've still got grapes), and our red & black raspberry patch!

Oh, and just for good measure, here's our awesome compost pile that keeps everything in our garden so healthy!

These are BIG gardens, and there are only 4 of us - and nobody else in my family are as big of plant eaters as I. Which leaves us with a lot of extra produce!

In past years I, being the young, over-zealous and dogmatic raw vegan I was, felt that it would be better to eat only fresh produce from the store during the winter, than blanched, pickled, or dehydrated produce from our garden.

However, this summer, I've been starting to feel like I was so wrong. The produce I buy in the winter is conventional, where as what's in our garden is basically uncertified organic. Our produce has life force, and I have been lovingly involved in every step of its maturation. I'm finding I'd much rather get my nutrients from slightly processed, preserved homegrown produce than from questionable store-bought lettuce all winter. I'm kinda thinking low-/salt/-free, prefrably canning-free homesteading is the way to go.

So this summer, we've frozen several bags of kohlrabi and broccoli, and theres still more coming! I have bein dehydrating zucchini with some yummy salt-free Penzey's seasonings every day for the past week now, and I've also made a few dill & chipotle cucumber chips with our plethora of cucumbers (and dill lol). I've been making jar after jar of "freezer pickles" - I'll definitely do a post on that, promise! And we'll be making tomato sauce and salsa when Mom and I get back from the Woodstock Fruit Festival 2013 (you can bet your booty I'll made a post on that, too!), and we we will be roasting and freezing most of our peppers. Finally, potatoes and sweet potatoes will be stored the root cellar for future use - and I plan on eating them. Even though they are not raw. (DUN DUN DUN.....) Only for dinner though. I still love getting my fruit on!

So, thats basically whats been going on with me! Keep tuned for more posts in the future - mom and I have a 20hr car ride ahead of us, so I should have a great plenty of time to type, haha.

Peace!

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Low Fat Raw Vegan 811 Dinner Ideas

Boobcups Are The Dumbest Thing Ever.

Boobcups in bikinis and swimsuits (I think they're technically called swimsuit inserts, or something politically correct like that) are, in my humble opinion, the dumbest thing ever.

They don't even support your boobs. Their sole purpose is basically to hide your nipples and make your boobs look more uniform.

There are SO many subversive messages to females, making us believe that we and our bodies are something that should be covered up, hidden, or changed, to be acceptable.

It's such bullshit. Keeping us worried about our bodies and image and not about things that matter, ftw.

If nothing else, take out those boobcups ladies! Why on earth should you be ashamed of your nipples poking through the fabric?! They are essentially NO DIFFERENT then those on every topless man around you.

Photo from gotopless.com facebook page

Low Fat Raw Vegan Gourmet Veggie Pizza

I don't do complicated recipes too often, but I just got back from California - a week and a half of camping and living as simply as possible, and it's mother's day and the whole family is going out for pizza!

So just for kicks and giggles, I'm making myself a low fat raw vegan gourmet veggie pizza!

Here's what I'm doing:

Crust
2 - 3 c of young spring greens (I went out to our woods and picked mine own - violets and young dandelion leaves!)
3 stalks celery
A few dried apricots
A splash of orange juice
3 - 4 basil leaves
1 - 2 tbsp flax
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt-free pizza spices
1 - 2c Water

Blend all ingredients and squeeze through cheesecloth, or juice everything.

(Mix the juice you get with fruit juice - I like orange. Tomato would be good too. - and drink.)

Take the pulp and spread out in a circle. Dehydrate until somewhat chewy (or however crip you want it).

Once the crust has dehydrated....

Cheeze
Spread avocado on the crust.

Toppings
Slice up veggies and put on top!

Good options include:
•Cherry (or regular) tomatoes
•Leek greens or green onions
•Sweet pepper
•Fresh Basil
•Mango

...etc!

After all the toppings were assembled, I sprinkled a little more salt-free pizza seasoning on top.

Enjoy!

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Buying Enough Bananas!

Hello! Do you struggle on a raw diet? I have one big tip to share today if you are someone who falls into the large camp of people who want to, but do not know how to accurately execute a raw vegan diet.

A big turning point in my success on a low fat raw vegan diet was when I really learned how to buy fruit like a fruitarian. (Why fruit-based raw veganism is the only way to go!)

These days, we normally try to keep 40+ lbs of fresh bananas in the house, plus maybe 30 (give or take) lbs of frozen bananas in the freezer at all times (we have 2 large chest freezers so this is no problem).

Bananas are very cheap and dense in calories, so they make a pretty obvious staple unless you live in a mango forest or something. (; They are easy to peel and prepare and make the best smoothies - I'm not even a huge fan of plain bananas, but I wouldn't make a smoothie without them! (Here are a few if my favorite smoothie recipes - bad food combining though some may be.)

I normally buy discounted "overripe" nanas Kwiktrip (a gas station in central US). Depending on how many discounted bananas they have - or how few I have at home - we'll buy anywhere from 5 - 40lb at a time. The person at the cash register sometimes doesn't blink an eye. Other times, s/he'll ask if I'm making banana bread....I tell her I make lots of smoothies and she's like, "oh, I see." No big deal. (:

I think a big part of being successful on a low fat raw vegan diet is getting over caring too deeply about what people think. At first, you may feel crazy buying 40lb of bananas at a time. people around you may confirm your feelings either verbally or with shocked looks. But wait!

Ask yourself what's REALLY so crazy about buying loads of bananas? You eat lots of bananas, they make you feel good, etc. You have very good reasons for buying those bananas! What is far more crazy when you think about it, is spending hard earned money on all the junk crap (potato chips, instant meals, little debbies...) you see in every other shopping cart! Who wants to put their resources into stuff that's not doing good things for anyone, and actually makes them feel worse?!

Once you've found a place you like to buy bananas, you can give them your name to a produce manager and suggest they call you if they ever have a large amount of "overripe" bananas. This is good for you and the store! That's a symbiotic relationship! (I think. I had bio last year. We dont talk about symbiosis too much in physics :p).

In conclusion, bananas are awesome and they will make your raw vegan life so much easier! Buy loads of bananas, specifically discounted ones if available. Get to know the people in charge of the fruit. And remember... Going through 4 - 7+lb of bananas per day is not crazy! It's just abnormal. (;

Peace!

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I Do Not Pledge Allegiance

I do not pledge allegiance to the United States of America.

I pledge allegiance to the people of all countries, to every being with consciousness, and to the earth upon which each one of us is ultimately dependant.

Religion, race, species, and country separate us because groups may have different goal.

But every individual has similar needs. We are all brothers and sisters in our need for love and happiness. Our separation is an illusion.

Remember that everything works in a feedback loop. To feel love and happiness and acceptance for others only makes it easier to feel happy emotions in our own life.

Peace out, guys! (:

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