Citrus

A couple of months ago I came across several blogs on fruitarianism and orange juice diet. The info there is both personal experience and overview of existing literature. And yesterday I learnt about a small-scale wholesale fruit&veg market not far from my place. I was in my Dad's car then and we decided to try and find that market. We found it easily, no traffic problems, very nice for Moscow =) This is what I have in my kitchen now:

So this week I'm eating mainly oranges and drinking orange juice.

Mimi Kirk

~11.01.10 Ekadashi. I drank 3l of water! And I didn't make myself do it, I was thirsty =)

~ Meet a 70+ y.o. vegan raw foodist Mimi Kirk.

In this interview she doesn't talk about eating raw, only about being vegan:

Here she talks about her raw diet:

Music/ Dreams / Fast / Diet

I've been to a concert where my classmate Tatyana Kolesova was a soloist. She played the famous Tchaikovsky's Concerto no.1. The other hour it was Dvorak's cello Concerto, and it's the first time I've heard a cello solo not recorded. At first I didn't like it, but after some 5 minutes I felt something in the stomach area - the area which I perceive as the solar plexus chakra and which is the part of my body that gives me signals when I visit a sacred place. And there was a moment when I felt tears in my eyes... Who could tell me a couple of years ago I would enjoy classical music??? Well, I liked several pieces of music like Grieg's Morning mood but I wouldn't digest a classical music concert. "For the times they're a-changing", and I'm changing, too. (btw, I love this version of Bob Dylan's song)

I haven't learnt to meditate, not yet, can't organise, can't concentrate. But the images I already receive/see when I close my eyes while listening to some quiet and/or harmonious music or thinking good positive thoughts, - these images are great. Sometimes I can direct the stories, but usually I'm just passively watching and enjoying them. Sometimes they are full of colours, sometimes there are only a few colours, very seldom I see it in brownish&greyish&whitish. Usually the speed of actions is the same as I'm used to, ie not very high, but once in a while I receive images that alternate extremely quickly. Sometimes a new understanding of familiar ideas comes to me during this cartoon-watching experience.

My dreams are a bit different now. Sometimes when I wake up I physically, with my skin, feel what I was doing in the dream, for example hugging. It kind of surprises and puzzles me but for now I like it. =)

I can't fast more than one day :( The second day I feel too bad in the morning and a classical remedy glass of water doesn't help. But drinking 2-3 litres of schungite water a day is no longer a problem!

I tried eating a lot of nuts in the evening (mainly cashews that I ordered from London and pistachios, a bit of hazelnuts and walnuts) and yes, you can gain weight eating raw!!! (the question is Do you want to?)

99% of what I've been eating recently is:

-different sorts of apples (!!!)

-grapes (!!!)

-dried apricot halves (!!) (finally found a good supplier, untreated apricots)

-cabbage (!)

-carrots

-dill (!)

-parsley (!!!)

-green onion (!)

-melons (!)

-pomegranates (!)

-tomatoes

-cucumbers

-nuts

-lettuce

-persimmon (last year this month I was eating tonnes of persimmons, this year I've had maybe 5 pieces...)

Buckwheat, wheat, chickpea are bought for sprouting in winter.

October

This month I've decided to do some cleansing, for about 30-35 days. So I eat garlic, home-made tripharmacon (tansy, absinthe and cloves powder), pumpkin purée and seeds, lots of leafy greens (parsley, coriander, spinach, dill, lettuce, Iceberg lettuce, estragon), drink beet&carrot&apple juice every morning. In general this month I'm trying to focus on red food like red paprika or dark grapes but am not avoiding any other product whatsoever. And drinking water, yes, about a litre a day of schungite or silicon (Si) water already - a big progress for me.
Some people, including Victoria Boutenko, recommend drinking 'green cocktails'. They realised the importance of leafy greens in the human diet (their share "must" be about 45% (!) of the daily food intake) but didn't really enjoy eating them as they are, so they decided to use a blender. It's a nice idea for a raw green soup and I tried it once or twice but both my mum and I find it easy to eat leafy greens without any sorcery. 'Green cocktails' seem tasty, so we'll try them for sure =)

I think this book could be quite useful to me now :), it's in line with my own way of thinking.

One of my favourite countries

*I'm about to finish the book by Kapten, it's very good, with good overview and practical advice.

*Tried Turkish bananas, they are very good, sweet, but not mawkish.


Ate watermelon, figs, nectarines and peaches.


Not raw: ate Haydari (yoghurt with garlic dip) with warm Turkish bread right from the oven and felt really bad afterwards - no, not for me.

*Drank a lot of fresh orange juice, tried a mix watermelon-melon-apple-orange (or smth like this, tastes strange), tried melon juice (didn't like it)


*Enjoyed very warm waters of the east-Mediterranean and the wonderful air. Visited the Damlataş cave with the idea to breathe that special air (they say it's good for the lungs).

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.

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).

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.

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.
=)

Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt

After some traveling and relaxing in the sunshine in Egypt and Israel I am back home.
My diet wasn't 100% raw. I could eat a small pita-like bread, a spoonful of rice or some spaghetti for dinner. My tongue felt all the ingredients of the tomato spaghetti sauce or the pepper in that bread. A nice sensation.

Egyptian mango is great! Its colour is orange, it's sweet and juicy. Today I ate the last mango brought from the trip. After that I don't enjoy South-American mangoes sold in Moscow anymore...

Egyptian pomegranate is very sweet. I recall the pomegranates I ate 13 years ago when I went to Egypt for the first time; I couldn't stop eating pomegranates, so good they seemed to me then. Now the impression is the same, and I still have several pieces on my kitchen table.

Many Russians are not familiar with custard apples, called ['eshta] in Egyptian Arabic or chirimoya in Spanish. I know it from my Spanish experience and quite like it. As far as I can tell, Egyptian eshtas don't differ from Spanish chirimoyas.

In Sharm El Sheikh there is only one supermarket with fixed prices, called Metro. Everywhere else they will try to get maximum from each client. In Metro there is a small stall with nuts and seeds where I found natural shelled almonds, and freshly squeezed orange juice. Moreover, they sell organic dates (filled with almonds).

My hotel wasn't 5 stars, but the restaurant offered a lot of fruit and vegetables. No mangoes or eshtas, of course (these are expensive there), but tasty melons, fresh (!) dates, very juicy cucumbers and very good tomatoes, cabbage, red cabbage, leek, lettuce, iceberg lettuce, carrots... No problem for a vegetarian or raw foodist.

I tried to make myself drink water, but it was really hard for me. Tangerines or cucumbers seemed enough.

Water and plastic

Yesterday I read an article (RU) about water in plastic bottles. The main idea of the article is the following. In the production process of plastic they use antimony. In time plastic releases antimony into the contents of the bottle. According to some comparative studies, the amount of antimony in plastic bottles is 30 times higher than in glass bottles of water.
So buy water in glass bottles!

Temperature and food today

35.8C late at night.
I am glad I have drunk a lot of water today, because I didn't drink water for many days and almost started to make myself do it. Today I drank water with pleasure.
3 melons (yup), 2 small kakis, 3 figs, salad, tangerines.

PS: What I call kaki (in Dutch) is persimmon in English.