Prices at the Preobrazhensky market

July is a wonderful month! It's warm, the daylight is long, and there are so many yummy things at the market. I've been focusing on fruit and berries recently.

1 EUR ~ 44.5 RUR
Cherries: 40-50 RUR a kilo
Sweet cherries: 50-80-100-120-150 RUR dark, pink&yellow. Yellow sweet cherries from Armenia 200RUR (my favourite)
Peaches: from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, the Crimea (Ukraine). 40-70-80-100-150 RUR, my choice is 80 RUR
Nectarines: 40-80-90-120 RUR
Blueberry: from Vladimir, Murom (regions in Russia). 70-80-90-110 RUR a kilo
Raspberry: from different Russian regions. 100-120-150 RUR a box (~700gr)
Melons: Astrakhan, Uzbekistan. torpedo, kolkhoznitsa (varieties). 40-50-80 RUR a kilo
Hazelnuts: South Ossetya. a new harvest, those milky hazelnuts, sold still covered with the green part, love them. 150 RUR a kilo. Sold only at one stall.

Why not Economics any longer

Listen to yourself. What is it what you really want to do in life? Not those goals imposed by the society or even very caring relatives. I'm still struggling with my mum, she has her own vision of my life, she still thinks I belong to her when I can belong to myself only. My university mates are buying flats in Moscow and good Japanese cars, and my mum wants me to make a lot of money as well. But my view of the world is different, I don't want to be striving for money all my life, I am grateful to and for what I have now.
Do I want to be an office rat? Work long hours inside concrete buildings with poor ventilation stare at a PC? Or work for a company that is one of the leaders in doing harm to the Earth? No. The first step is to realise what I don't want. Done. The next step is to realise what I do want. I started to move in this direction. I believe that doing something with languages (translating, teaching) will minimise my own negative impact on the environment.
There're many books by those who realised 1) how beautiful the world is 2)that we human beings are (supposed to be) its co-creators 3) that abundance is here, we must only see it 4) that the power of our thoughts is limitless, and dreams&wishes do come true, with a lag in time 5) that love and gratitude do miracles 6) that giving (love) is better than taking (love) 7) that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience, etc etc etc ........ Many authors are of the late XXth century, still alive and writing more. Many cite Bhagavad Gita, the Torah, the Bible, the Qur'an. Many cite other modern authors, usually healers, naturopats, psychologists. I've read quite a few. Many books are very interesting, well-structured and the ideas are so simple and I've heard them so many times, that it's surprising how come I've never really processed, so to say, those thoughts myself.
It takes time and effort to become aware of the negativism of our thoughts, the many stereotypes we automatically absorb while growing up. But once you start tidying up your mind :) you find it very exciting! You gain that independence in thoughts that many of us really dream of. In my life only the last couple of years brought me this new perception of myself, so I am quite new to this self-improvement field. But those several gleams I've had so far were really amazing! I absolutely agree with somebody who said that if you recall only one prayer a day let it be "thank you". Being grateful not only in words, but really feeling it is a marvellous inner experience which opens doors to abundance in the physical facet of our world as well.
Economics is about decisions on allocation of limited resources. In Microeconomía by Michael Parkin (I have a Spanish edition) I read: "Todas las preguntas de la economía surgen de un hecho sencillo e ineludible: no siempre se puede obtener lo que uno quiere. Vivimos en un mundo de escasez". And this is exactly the idea I don't support any more. The universe has everything a human being might need, and it's a matter of time to receive it (let's not think of what time is for now). How much time is needed depends on the person's qualities, openness to the abundance etc. But beware! Be careful in wishing something! You will get it, and what will you do then? ;)

Fasting and week-day names

Do you speak Irish? Maybe you know several Irish words? I don't know a word in Irish myself but I've just learned one curious thing: the days of the week Wednesday and Friday are called fasting and Thursday is the day between fastings. Wow! In the Orthodox Christian tradition Wednesday and Friday were banian days as well, although in Russian the meaning of the names is different (Wednesday sreda means middle, Friday pyatnitsa means the fifth day of the week).

Sweet cherries

At least 1/3 of my current diet are sweet cherries, mainly dark-red ones.
Countries of origin: mainly Uzbekistan, but some are from Azerbaijan, Moldova and Armenia
Prices: 80-280 RUR a kilo (1 EUR ~ 44 RUR). 120 RUR is the most common price for dark-red and red sweet cherries at the market I go to (Preobrazhensky). 80 RUR is the evening market price for pink&yellow sweet cherries there. One of my favourite kinds is the yellow sweet cherry from Armenia, they cost 150 RUR a kilo and it's quite hard to find these. Extra large very dark sweet cherries cost 220-280 RUR a kilo.

July

Busy again. From early morning till quite late at night with several free hours at noon. Sleep about 5 hours a night, not enough for me. Move a lot, by mainly short distances in polluted areas (15 minutes on foot to the closest underground station). Spend a lot of time in metro and in concrete buildings, surrounded by crowds of people or working with people (not with a PC).
The cherry period will come to an end soon so I'm eating as much as I can afford every day. The prices are reasonable at the market, but I don't have time to go there often and have to buy fruit next to metro stations.
Bingo, I drink at least two mugs of water every morning.

June

The entire month of June I was very busy, slept less than I needed, spent almost all my time inside, was nervous because of lack of time - not really a healthy way of life. Strangely enough the monorawfoodism aspect was ok. I ate small portions of fruit and vegetables during the day, so the absolute majority of my meals were fine from the mono perspective. But in the evening I couldn't avoid mixing everything. Now that I'm quite free again I eat a lot again and mix even fruit with vegetables, uff. Drinking water is still a big issue, just can't drink it.

I read one monorawfoodist's diary. He's mono since some 8 months ago and he's tried mixing stuff recently. He says he felt the difference in clarity of his mind although the body reacted ok. As my reasons for rawfoodism are related to both physical and non-physical (spiritual, mental) aspects of life I'm even more convinced to switch to a 100% mono now.

It's the season of sweet cherries now. I'm a big fan of those and taking advantage of good prices at the Preobrazhensky market. 3 kilos of dark, pink and yellow sweet cherries a day? Easily! And with pleasure =)

Linden trees are in their full blossom now. They smell so good that I enjoy my morning walk to the metro station as there are a lot of linden trees on my way.
Good olfaction can cause some inconveniences as too many people smell bad and the air quality in many parts of Moscow is really poor.

What do you think about the decision of the court in the case of Daniel Hauser?

Nuts and seeds

Yesterday I tried raw unsalted pistachio nuts and loved them a lot! I know only one place in Moscow where they are sold, and not that cheap (165 RUR per 0.5 kg, 1 EUR ~ 43.5 RUR). We ate the 300 gr too quickly =)
Something is wrong with the white sesame I bought. I put it to soak, but today it smells bad and doesn't start to germinate after enough time for this.
After I started to soak all seeds I don't like them dry anymore. They change their taste after the crucial moment of waking up due to water.

Sesame / Sprouts / Weekend Market

Sesame seeds:
Yes! After 2 days they started to germinate. I am content. So sesame milk is going to be my daily drink for the coming weeks.

Really living food:
More sprouts of all kinds when they are up to 1 cm long and wheat grass up to 10 cm. This, the wheat grass thing, will be my next step. Already know where to order and when.

Weekend market:
Hurray, sweet cherry from the Tashkent region (Uzbekistan)! At affordable prices (350 RUR a kilo, 1 EUR ~ 44 RUR), in comparison with the cherry sold at Azbuka vkusa supermarkets (750-1500 RUR a kilo). And strawberry that smells strawberry, from Krasnodar greenhouses.

Soaps / Sesame / Ekadashi / Mum

Soaps:
I like natural soaps, love to choose them for presents =), but it's not easy to find one without animal fat or glycerin. So I am happy now as a wonderful savon d'argan artisanal came to me as a present from Morocco (soap with argan oil by Coopérative Marjana, à 14 km d'Essaouira sur la route de Marrakech). If you have never tried it you don't know how pleasant a soap can be!

Some recent changes:
The colour of my skin is getting whiter and pinker. I noticed it only today looking at my hands and I really like this change! Since several days ago I have been feeling cold. I know this is usual for many people who just start switching to raw foodism. In my case I felt wonderful in September-October, slept with a fully open window with 13C. But now it's 20C in my apartment, and I am wearing a sweatsuit.

My weight is low but stable (obviously, the BMI shows I am underweight). My mum's weight has changed considerably but gradually and smoothly, minus 10 kg since December (~5 months). She didn't limit the amount of food nor restricted the number of products. Just ate everything she wanted, raw, with a bit of salt, then sea salt, black pepper, some oil; during the last 5 months she had, besides raw food, some thin Armenian pita (лаваш), bread, several times she ate boiled potatoes, braised vegetables, stchi (Russian cabbage soup, щи) and puff pastry patties (слоёные пирожки), some cheese, milk, coffee. It was a drastic change in eating habits for her, but she feels much better with her current food preferences, which makes me happy as well. She perceives it as a temporary diet, but how suitable is the word "temporary" when she is going to keep to it for the coming year for sure? =).

Sesame seeds:
Read they are all treated with some alkalies in order to remove a specific taste of their hull. I don't know if to trust this info, but yesterday I put some seeds to soak to see if they are alive. By now none has started to germinate.

Ekadashi:
Still try to follow it twice a month. Yesterday it was ekadashi, but I did eat, so I am having a dry fasting today, on dvadashi, instead. My mum joined me today.

A post with pics

La-la-la, my mum has just returned from Morocco and brought me 3 types of dates and several oranges. In such countries oranges are usually not treated when they are for the domestic market, and you can see that they are different from what is sold in supermarkets in countries-importers. They are not that clean and the orange-peel colour is not homogeneous. The taste is superb.

Tomatoes:
One of the Azeri tomatoes I bought at the weekend market contained no seeds! I couldn't eat it. The rest were ok and tasted good.

I read a comment (#11) by somebody whose tastes coincide with mine :)

My fridge can look like this sometimes:

Black sesame "milk":
Yesterday I prepared it for the first time and I loved it! Surely I'll buy some raw white sesame seeds and try them this way as well. Sesame is a wonderful source of Ca as Ca from it assimilates best. For me sesame milk is a way to drink more water without making myself do it.

Grocery shopping / Emotions, habits, traits of character

My monodiet development:
Fruits separately. Sprouts (wheat seeds and mung beans in germination) separately. Vegetables and root crops both separately and mixed, but already minimizing the number of ingredients per "salad". Dill, parsley, green onion, coriander and similar both separately and cut into "salads". Cucumbers, cauliflower, marrows, sweet paprika on their own. Tomatoes with garlic or with radish, or guacamole (tomatoes with avocado, garlic, lemon juice - could be without lemon juice). Korean style carrots.

Bananas: I guess the majority of bananas nowadays are GMO, and when I learned this I even avoided them for a while. But as for now I still do love them, and it's not good to suppress one's wants for a long time =) So I've been buying and tasting every brand I came across. Now I find tasty only one type of bananas, those with Gold Sun Ecuador sticker. I hope to enjoy a lot bananas somewhere in southern Europe when I'm there in late August (if I'm there...)

Tomatoes: I remember the pleasure I got from tasting Turkish tomatoes in Istanbul after my long Dutch experience. It was a drastic change then. Turkish tomatoes sold in Russia are really bad, and the tests by Roszdravnadzor (a governmental agency for health and all kinds of safety issues) show in many tomatoes a very high residual chemicals level, above the standards (but still they are on the market - it's Russia...). These are actually the only tomatoes reported to contain a high residual level of fertilizers on the market. I doubt it, as there are tomatoes from Spain and Holland which don't smell or taste like tomatoes. We avoid them. The tomatoes that taste good are imported from Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, and the prices range from 150 to 250 RUR now (1 EUR~44 RUR) while other tomatoes cost 100-120 RUR a kilo.

Young garlic: just wonderful. Smells nice, contains much more water than late summer garlic. Yes, it's possible to eat several cloves in a monodiet way =) But usually I squeeze it on tomatoes.

Weekend market: summer is coming and the choice is bigger and bigger, and finally there is radish (it's not common to have radish in winter here, only at some supermarkets, looked at as very "artificial"). They all claim on their price-tags it's from Krasnodar (the most southern region of the RF), and I believed them. The second time I came to buy radish I saw some small Israeli packets with radish beyond the counter lying in the same place where the very big packet with what they called Krasnodar radish. They just opened the small packets and put the radish into the big packets from which they eventually took it to weight for the customers. I don't have anything against produce from Israel (I am not very familiar with it, usually it's not bad, their sun gives it all its love). But I try to minimize my chemicals intake =) so my first choice is produce from the countries of the ex-USSR. When I commented my finding to the seller, she just asked me with a sigh if I was taking that or not. I felt offended and went away. A women at a stall nearby was honest with me and said her radish was from Poland. At another stall radish looked different and I was told that that one yes was from Krasnodar.

Changing the character and my reactions: everything is changing automatically, with all I've been reading and watching. But many of my traits of character and reactions need intentional and deliberate efforts to change, and it's hard. By now I have found the most important issues, not through a meditation, but through a systematic deep contemplation, have written them down and realized that I had never seen them so pronounced in me before nor has my mom. I believe learning oneself is the most interesting thing on Earth (the second interesting thing is exploring Nature). The most destructive emotions and habits are as follows: feeling shame (испытывать чувство стыда), censure (осуждение), envy (зависть), pity/compassion (жалеть, жалость). I know that according to the standard modern paradigm it's good to feel compassion and shame. According to many healers it's not as it is self-destruction on the energetic level which passes on to the physical level (physical health, life in the material world), so the way to improve the energetic level is to change the habit from feeling pity etc. to shedding love to everyone. I believe the healers. Their words are in line with Hinduism and Christianity. But although I understand what to do many of my reactions are changing extremely slow.
I have also started to realize what my fears are. An enormous amount of work is ahead. Every time I learn something new about the world and about me I am happy for a while but then realize that there is even more to know. And the world is getting bigger and bigger! A wonderful sensation!

Impressed / Babies

My good friend from Krasnoyarsk is going to become a father in September! And most of my classmates have already married or are getting married this year. 24-26 is the age by which the majority have their first child. Incredible. I am not ready yet even if I had a fiancé. I was brought up in a culture where a good wife is supposed to cook well and I had been learning and was considered to be good at it. And in my dreams I was planning to open a restaurant. Now, with my raw foodism, it turns out that it's been in vain. I will be searching for a husband among raw foodists and even if he is not a raw foodist but a vegan, I won't kill food =)

I was so impressed by the news from my friend that went to take a look at the shelves with baby stuff at a supermarket and the prices. Poor things! They are fed with tinned soup with beef since 12 months! sold under "борщик с говядинкой" where bold letters are diminutive-hypocoristic suffixes as if everything related to babies should be "small" (in every sense).

It's really a pity that nowadays babies are not put to nurse if mother doesn't have enough milk but are fed with artificial milk formula. It's a pity many young mothers choose not to breastfeed even if they have enough milk. And more and more young mothers lose milk because their own food is too artificial (like coke and potato chips) and lacks uncooked ingredients.

O tempora! o mores!

Habits/Affirmations

It's so hard to change habits. For example, I want not to feel anger anymore, but the society has been showing me that a right reaction to certain circumstances is anger. So all my life I have reacted accordingly. Now I want to stop being influenced that much and want to think myself. It's such a new idea to me =)

While wandering in youtube I came across a nice interpretation of positive affirmations. Check this out:

Korean carrots recipe

It's been a while now that I stopped using salt or pepper, or oil. But today I saw a wonderful almost raw version of "Korean carrots" salad and understood how much I missed it. Ssso. This is the post which seduced me =) (in RU). They say this salad integrated into Russian cuisine when many Koreans were moved by force within the USSR during the Stalin era.
I want to share it with you, because it is easy and quick to prepare, tasty, a bit spicy, wonderful as an appetizer. Your dear ones will appreciate it.
My version:
-Good fresh carrots, washed and peeled: slice (better grate) them into spaghetti-like strands, some 5 cm long and 1-2 mm wide.
-Black and red (cayenne) pepper: cayenne pepper, together with garlic, is what gives the whole thing such a special taste.
-Several cloves of (young) garlic: cut in small pieces or squeeze.
-Oil: sesame, or olive, or sunflower. Just a bit.
-Freshly squeezed lemon juice: just a bit, 1 lemon for a medium bowl.
-Sea salt.

I added black sesame seeds and used a spoonful of olive oil.
Mix everything very well! And place into the fridge for 30 min - 1 hour.
I couldn't wait that long and 10 minutes were enough to marinade. I ate the whole bowl with pleasure and am feeling fine now :)

Bon appetit!
PS: this is not my pic, I found it on the web

My mango experience %)

Wow! I already eat much less than a month ago! For example, today I had 2 apples for late breakfast, 2 apples for lunch, 3 ripe bananas when I was in the centre in the afternoon, "super intense salad" (tomatoes, dill, red onion, green onion, a lot of squeezed out garlic, a bit of lemon juice - what a mix! just wanted something bitter) for dinner, a small Thai mango for late dinner, a glass of water during the day. Yesterday it was just several big apples and about 1 litre of water and "infusions" during the day. This is a change, the next step =)

I got a small sum of money quite unexpectedly and, to pamper ourselves, I went to the most expensive supermarket (can't help but mention that their website is so badly translated into English) and bought 3 small Thai mangoes. They are sold only at one chain (to my knowledge) and are expensive (~200 RUR each, 1 EUR ~ 44 RUR). I'd been wishing to taste the Thai variety since I first saw it in a supermarket in winter, but the price ... Now, done! It's delicious! very soft and exquisite, with almost no fibres. The colour is nice, entirely yellow, with no green or red parts. The next variety to taste on a special occasion is Australian (there are not many Australian varieties on the Moscow market, so I am generalizing). I saw it the first time today, in the same supermarket. It is ssso big! and it is even more expensive than the Thai one (850 RUR a kilo, so 1 item would cost ~500 RUR). Mmm

Music Therapy / Water / Thought

When did you use a cassette the last time? Me, yesterday. In the last years of the USSR the borders opened for commerce, trade of consumer goods (before it was largely restricted to metal, oil, wheat and similar). This cassette of mine is of 1991. It is called "The Way of Life" and is based on the Chinese theory of the 5 elements Yi-Ching. The traditional Chinese music you hear in their restaurants is based on the same principles, always combining yin and yang in their striving for harmony. A cassette is not practical nowadays, so I decided to download some Yi-Ching music, in lossless, of course - this is the type of music where no moment should be lost while recording and converting, so the best quality available for the moment. I found out that there is one prominent Chinese music therapist who produced, compiled and arranged a series of albums. His name is Wang Xu-dong.

Modern American music therapists, unlike ancient Indian and later Chinese healers, believe that "All styles of music can be useful in effecting change in a client or patient's life". In the orient only calm and harmonious music is considered suitable for healing purposes (actually, they recommend to avoid all other styles, as these have a negative impact on the cells). Well, the notorious experiments of Dr. Masaru Emoto showed that water exposed to the music of Argentine tango also produces beautiful crystals, so it's not only Tchaikovsky or mantras that influence water positively, while hard rock produces ugly shapes, in accordance with the oriental beliefs. (Emoto's results have not been obtained by other researchers though. I believe in the power of thought so I accept his work with gratitude).

Everything, literally, is vibration, each and every cell vibrates at a certain level, frequency. When this level deviates from its best level it becomes unwanted for the whole organism, and it tries to cure it and then, if it was not successful, to kill it. Good thoughts improve the frequency of an ill cell to its best natural level.
(uf, haven't finished the idea, have to shut down the system)

Hatha Yoga etc.

It's amazing how many different things are stored in my flat! Recently I've found a copy of somebody's experience with Hatha Yoga physical exercises and breathing techniques typed on an old typing machine with some paragraphs marked with a pen. My granny had a typewriter, and I remember her using it in my childhood. I don't know if she ever followed the advice from that copy telling us about how the life of a 60-year-old Soviet man, chronically ill, changed when he started to practice several simple physical and breathing exercises every morning, in combination with tempering and using the power of intention. This story dates back to the middle of the XXth century. And by now nothing has improved in this field. Vice verse, in general people are much farther from Nature than 60 years ago.

No physical exercises in my life now, tempering is somehow neglected... I am focused on forming my intentions the right way, attempting to work with my subconscious consciously; water&infusion&juice fasting; eating products separately; not overeating; understanding the non-physical roots of my physical ailments; rethinking my life. It occupies me fully.

Closer to the raw mono diet/ On the path to becoming the master of my life

I am starting to move away from making salads and mixing everything. Can eat oranges and tangerines together or avocado with dill and parsley, but already half of the "meals" consists of one type of product.
I am reading the 3rd book out of the 4 on the role of our thoughts and intentions in the creation of our worlds (plural, yes) by Sinelnikov (in RU only). Very similar to transurfing, but less selfish, focused on the idea of the necessity to change oneself in order to change one's world - the same idea as in the Vedic tradition. I think Sinelnikov's books and books on transurfing nicely supplement each other.
Choosing the main goal in life is not easy.
Great changes await.

I, me, mine and OM

I don't know how to produce the right OM (AUM) sound. I have never tried to meditate. I have never tried to fully concentrate on something... and don't know how to start!!!
So as I can't produce that sound, I want to hear it at least. But who makes it the right way??? Ufff. Nevertheless, I listen to what sounds lovely to me. These are several mantras (Well, Christian prayers end with 'AMEN', but Christians lost the understanding of the power, meaning and origin of this word and don't pronounce it correctly).
I love this mantra interpretation and this commercial version. Deva Premal has a sweet voice.

=) First anniversary

Around this time last April I understood I couldn't eat meat any longer. First, I told that I was thinking of becoming a vegetarian to my friends Sergey and Vadim. The reaction was "so you won't cook to us any more?" Lovely... Then I went to my friends Denise and Naira and shared my news. The reaction was something like " wow, are you sure?" Some days later I saw Owen and Heejung. Their reaction was something like "ok, but why?". A month later my mum (a dentist brought up by the Soviet medical school) came to spend a week with me in Holland. Her reaction was a pale face.
About 7 months ago I started to become a raw foodist. I shared this with Owen and Heejung. Never told Denise or Naira. Vadim and Sergey learned later. I talked to my mum only when I came back home.
Now my mum is almost as strict as I am, she eats something cooked maybe once in a month only.
=)

Several links on raw diet and similar

I've been reading everything I can find on natural living (including diets) but it used to be mainly in Russian. It was intended for me, it's easier for me to be persuaded by something in my mother tongue =) But now I want to share my views. So I found something in English. Especially for you =)

Ah, those pots and pans! Or how and why I became a raw foodist
War in vain. Why we get sick and what for
Immunity. Do we really need it?
Cooking for slow death
Where to get protein?
Do vegetarians and raw foodists risk?
Eating bread one gains not just weight

And one last link for now about menstruation. I haven't read the entire blog entry, but I read something similar in Russian several months ago and I was shocked. Well, as a child, when I learned that every girl will start having it regularly one day, I didn't understand why human females have menstruation while animal females don't but I didn't even think about looking for alternative views on the nature of menstruation then. Hm, the fact of having it in the future (and having pain while giving birth) was the reason why I wanted to be a boy then =))) Now I don't need to worry about menstruation and I perceive the ability of giving birth as a heavenly gift.

Web resources

The site I found yesterday when searching for some info on Breuss in English is very good! It contains info about all kinds of fasting for newbies. I am not that advanced in fasting but my own experience and the one of the golodanie.su community gives me enough knowledge to say that the site is good. Although it belongs to a doctor who promotes his hospital located in the Philippines, it's not just simple advertising, it's maintained for everyone who is looking for detoxification, fasting for spiritual reasons etc.

Juicer/Anti-cancer diet

Bought a juicer. Finally! My old one had some problems. I had only 4000 RUR (1 EUR ~ 45 RUR), bought one by an absolutely unknown (to me) brand taking into consideration only the parameters (trying to find the best for such a low price). Just tried it with celery, cucumbers and carrots. For this price my choice is ok. I also want a manual so-called wheatgrass juicer, but they are not sold here (or I can't find any info), and I will have to order it from the USA... Expensive it will be, as the cost of shipment might be higher than the price of the manual juicer...
Being in general against breaking what nature gives us I consider juice extraction to be an intermediate stage. Besides, I want to follow Dr. Rudolph Breuss's 42-days scheme. In my case it's for cleaning purposes (I hope), but I have read posts by people whom Breuss's scheme helped in their battle with cancer (together with the no-sugar magnesium diet which consists in beet root, cauliflower, kohlrabi, pumpkin, radish, buckwheat sprouts and rose hips only, everything RAW!. If you know somebody with cancer who is looking for a cure, I really believe I know the answer).

GMO

Watched a programme on GMO on a Russian channel (Осторожно! Ген скорпиона по телеканалу Россия, in RU only). This film touches upon the main issues related to GMO in fruits&vegetables, especially soya&corn, food used at animal farms etc. but it lacks some important information, for instance, about experiments with the second and third generations of mice. As I am against GMO and try to follow the developments, there isn't much new stuff in the film for me. Two new things were information about potatoes and Brazil!!! This country is among the leaders in GMO use, after the USA. Hm... Need to search for trustworthy info.

Dehydration/Water

My condolences to relatives of those who suffered in the earthquakes in central Italy, but here I'd like to comment on just one thing said on tv (Euronews, for example). So I heard some reporters talk about dehydration of those whom the rescue teams helped (are helping and will help) after the first 24 hours. Dehydration after 24-36-48-72 hours? Dios mío, those guys don't know what they are talking about! Now I noticed this disinformation, but just a year ago I would have believed those reporters.
In the modern European society it is uncommon to abstain from food and drink during certain periods. In the Muslim world many people fast in the month of Ramadan abstaining from food, drinks, entertainment etc from dawn to dusk. In the Hindu religion all the manifestations of their divine beings to lay people at a date in the past, all deaths of their holy people etc. are celebrated by a short fasting till midday (not eating, not drinking, no entertainment etc); plus there are 2 ekadashis every month when they don't eat or drink 36 hours (night+day+night). I don't say everybody is following all these traditions, but at least they are familiar with the concept, so everybody knows it's fine not to drink for 36 hours. My personal maximum of abstaining from both food and drink is 3 days (about 72 hours) by now, and I wouldn't use the word dehydration to my condition then. In general it is good to be sure that you can survive several days without food and drink while having enough energy for something apart from staying in bed and it is good to practice this as well.

I haven't drunk water for quite some time. My very old Soviet juicer still works and makes me apple juice every day. Then oranges and cucumbers are very juicy. I believe I must drink water, because making juice is unnatural (no animal can do this), but somehow now I can't make myself drink water. The water I have access to doesn't taste good to me.

Open air market/Dried fruits

Every Friday to Sunday there is a week-end open air market in each part of Moscow. In my area we have one half-way to my mom's workplace and every Friday we buy groceries from one and the same stall with produce from the Oryol region. It is hard to find a farm in Russia that would know how to preserve well agricultural produce the whole winter (November-March) due to low technological level of their storage facilities. And I guess we are lucky to have found some contacts. Their prices are higher than the average prices on that local market, but we noticed we are not the only regular customers of theirs. Thus, good quality (and minimal giving light weight as opposed to the majority) does form loyalty =).
I know that by now apples from this part of the planet don't contain much nutritional value in general, but still it's something juicy and nice. Unfortunately, I noticed that I can eat only Russian, Ukrainian and Moldavian apples, not treated or treated much less than their "colleagues" from Poland (which used to be quite fine before Poland entered the EU), France, Holland, China (uff) or Latin America.
I got hooked on sunflower seeds. Since last week I've been really enjoying some 100 grams of big & tasty sunflower seeds from Uzbekistan a time, some 2-3 times a day. I am really happy we have such good economic relations at the level of vegetables, fruits, dried fruits, seeds and similar with the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia. They are so poor that they don't treat their produce =) and thanks God the sanitation & epidemiological rules and standards for import to the Russian Federation are adequate, not exorbitant as in the EU.

Prices/Exotic Fruits

Almost everywhere in the world today the prices are going down, in several countries including Russia, they are going up, at a high pace I must say. The forecasts are not nice at all. By the end of the year fruits&vegetables&root crops are going to cost the final consumers 150% more than now. As far as I know, at present a raw foodist who economizes well can spend on food 4000 RUR (1 EUR ~ 45 RUR) a month in Moscow, but this means almost no fruits. My expenses when I count well are 5000 RUR for 2 weeks for 2 people, which normally can be extrapolated to 1 month (I have never calculated for a whole month). When I am not on such a strict budget I spend 7500 RUR per month per person. We'll see the surprises of December.
I have started to learn Portuguese on my own, I bought a CD and downloaded a lot of stuff. It's easy for me after Spanish, but many basic vocabulary words are different. As I had done with Spanish, I made a list of food I may want to eat in Portuguese. And after searching for the translations I explored the variety of fruits&vegetables in Wiki. Brasil is one of the countries which can be called a paradise for fruit lovers! I am not familiar with a vast majority of what I have read about. Brasil will certainly be on my list of countries to visit in the Americas =)

My food preferences now

Basic stuff (from the regions nearby or neighbouring countries):
apples from the Lipetsk region (to the south from Moscow)
our own pumpkins (grown in the Moscow region)
white cabbage
carrots
hazelnuts from the Lipetsk region
dill from the Moscow or Kaluga region
sun-dried persimmon from Georgia (incl. Abkhazia)
sun-dried apricot (both with the freestone, урюк, and without, курага)
mung bean (green gram, маш) in germination
wheat seeds in germination
sunflower seeds

Products from faraway regions (need to minimize):
sun-dried dates from the Mediterranean region
citrus from Morocco
pineapple from Costa-Rica
mango from Peru
pears from Argentina

There are some products I would love to consume but they are not seasonal meaning too many fertilizers are used (cucumbers from greenhouses in nearby regions or Central Asia, tomatoes from Central Asia and paprika I don't know where it is from). But sometimes I do eat these.

Winter/Fasting/etc

This winter in the Moscow region and where I have travelled was sometimes what we call "real", -20C, white snow everywhere. After 3 winters in Western Europe I was a bit nervous about how I would survive any temperature below 0, but it turned out to be quite fine. So I don't see any obstacles to be a raw foodist in the cold period of the year as many say.
But I must admit I was not a raw foodist myself because of my very strong psychological dependence on bread. Now I am finally changing this habit.
Being quite thin and slim I would have never thought I would go for a fast longer than a couple of days. But I did. Starting on the 2nd of March, coinciding with the Orthodox Lent (Great Fast), 7 days, finished today with half water-half freshly squeezed apple juice. It was really hard for me, I felt extremely weak in certain moments, the stairs were a nightmare so I didn't go out the last 4 days (I live on the 2nd floor without an elevator). I did it till the acidotic crisis which happened yesterday in the evening and although I then all of a sudden felt strong and thought to continue for several more days today I woke up too weak to move my arms. I guess this is when the real cleansing process starts, but I wasn't ready for this so I crawled to the kitchen to prepare the juice. Still a great experience!
Hopefully I am becoming a real raw foodist today. Understanding the negative issues of bread and having lived without any food for a week I guess now I am able to do this.
=)