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.

Two articles: on diet (EN) and apples (RU)

Here
key word: unprocessed

And here
healthful apples

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.

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.

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.

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.

Istanbul

Current location: Istanbul, Turkey
It's such a considerable change in veg quality! Fruits travel a long way to Holland, pass all kinds of treatments to be allowed to the internal market; locally veg and fruits are grown with too many chemicals to taste good. I was used to this neutral taste, and now it feels so good to eat more natural raw food!

I am eating tons of Turkish tangerines. They are simply great, and there was no treatment mentioned on the boxes. It's the season of pomegranates as well, and in small kiosks or cafes they offer freshly made pomegranate juice, a completely new experience for me.

Radish and lettuce, nice cucumbers and wonderful tomatoes - finally! After quite some time in the overcivilized EU! Please, Turkey, don't aim at entering the EU with their horrible agricultural standards!

Not raw. A lot. Recently, in Holland, sushi, seaweed salad (with some colour enhancer), in Turkey, black olives, baklava, Turkish bread, boiled potatoes with spices, several types of jam. The worst was that in the plane I ate some cheese included in the food they serve at 11000m, and I am sure it wasn't vegetarian. I feel guilty, it was the first time I ate something non-vegetarian fully understanding it.

Airport. In the shopping area for passengers at Schiphol there is a kiosk where they make smoothies, including with special nuances like addition of green tea and echinacea in powder. But vegetarian sushi were present only in the supermarket before the passport control.

Galata bridge. While passing by a fish restaurant Balik:
Come and see our menu - Thank you, I don't eat fish - Just come, I will show you vegetarian [dishes]. - OK.
Oh, what he showed... every single dish was with this or that kind of fish. In the end they offered me a glass of still water. And one of the waiters came up to me to talk about vegetarianism and how will I act when I get married and have children - how will I cook meat and fish for them... "Fish is very healthy, doctors say." But "I respect your choice" - this is phrase so pleasant to hear.

Spice market. So many spices, nuts, dried fruits, herbs... Amazing. I tasted and bought, among other things, raisins which were dried on the vine, sun-dried apricots and figs. They taste great.

Post-harvest fruit and vegetables treatments

Of course I knew about the waxed apples and washed carrots, but I was negatively surprised by what I have just learned. If you go to this website, you'll see some pictures of the cleaning process of tangerines. "Cleaning and pre-dryng is necessary before final waxing." And for cleaning special detergents are used...
Mamma mia. Waxes are "designed...to reduce the weight losses, heightening gloss, and prolonging effective shelf life". Yes, it's all about prolonging effective shelf life. With citrus it's not that bad. But if I want to bite an apple and eat it with the peel? I don't want to eat wax...
This is a good reason for me to avoid imported fruits and vegetables that have to be treated due to different sanitation zones and requirements. Unfortunately, even within the EU or even in Holland citrus or apples are treated.

Temperature and food today

36.3C in the afternoon

Pineapple, kaki

Temperature and food today

34.9C (!) in the evening, 36.2C at night.

3 melons (it's going to become a habit :) ), several oranges for breakfast; salad (spinach, IJsbergsla, lettuce, dill, parsley, paprika, tomato, cucumber); even a small package of physalis. 

I hadn't eaten citrus for a long while, but last week tasted Moroccan tangerines and liked them a lot; ate some 2 kilos. And then I bought a net of Fair trade oranges from South Africa and I fell in love with them! Today I have been to a small grocery store where they have a machine for making juice from oranges, and the nice thing is that customers do it themselves and can drink the freshly squeezed supertasty sweet juice right away! So did I. Now don't have any oranges left and really want to eat them before going to bed :(, tomorrow will go for the South-African oranges.

Open market day

Last Saturday I found a market stall with dried fruit including apricots. There were both standard and quite dark ones, as the naturally sun-dried apricots should be, and I bought a bit then. Today I had a chance to ask not the girls who sell this but have no idea what they actually sell (they start talking about sugar added when there is no sugar for sure), but a man who seemed to know. My question was if there was sulphur dioxide or similar used to preserve the dried dark apricots. Unfortunately, the answer was positive. He said there were preserving agents added to all their product line (which was considerable).
At a bio stall I saw some organic dates and asked the same question. I was surprised that people who own a bioshop don't know such details important for their, quite particular, customers.
I searched for information on dried fruit and found this. A lot of facts on food and medicines additives with a focus on kids and asthma and allergy, but it is really impressing. And here is a bit on salicylates.

Coconut

They say it is better to eat what grows in your area. I agree but am only in the beginning of my way to the best eating habits =). I love bananas which can't survive in the northern countries, and sometimes I am curious about exotic fruits. Several weeks ago I tried something for what I don't know the name. It has a very bright pink and green cover and tastes neutral (The nasty-looking brown thing is tamarind, produce of Thailand, it's sweet-sour.)


And today I opened a coconut, the first time myself. It took some ten minutes, next time it will be quicker. There are many tips on the web on how to crack a coconut (for example, http://www.wikihow.com/Open-a-Coconut). This is how I did.
First, I made holes in the 3 black spots at one of the ends of the coconut using a screwdriver. Then I poured the juice; I had some 100 ml. Thirdly, I placed the coconut on a flat surface, held it with one hand and hit the central part with the non-sharp end of a big knife several times, but it didn't work out as the knife I had was not heavy enough. So I used a nutcracker - it was the heaviest thing I had, and it opened. Btw, the juice was very tasty and not extremely sweet.



And I am becoming a fan of freshly harvested walnuts.

Open market day

When I asked for raw peanuts the seller said that people buy them for their birds... I found fresh, i.e. yellow, dates. They taste strange, I am used to the dried variant. There was an offer of yellow-and-red pears 1 Eur per bag (more than a kilo there), and my dinner was predetermined :)

Memories:

chestnuts min 2.95 Eur per 1/2 kilo

walnuts min 2 Eur per 1/2 kilo, 3.50 Eur per 1 kilo

raw peanuts 1 Eur per small package

brown dried apricots 3.25 Eur per 250 g

no sodium dates 2 Eur per package (454 g)

chirimoya 2.50 Eur per 2 pieces

coconut 0.50 Eur per piece

Fair trade bananas 1 Eur per kilo

Nuts and similar

Walnuts, pine nuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, sesame - grind everything in a blender, mix with a spoonful of honey! This is the basis. Carrots - grind separately! This is the cover. Cinnamon powder as the final touch. Enjoy!

The second dessert I made was a puree from well ground walnuts, hazelnuts, sesame, sunflower seeds, bananas, with coconut flakes and cinnamon.

I tried a chestnut, the first time not grilled. It is so sweet! Simply delicious.

The season of walnuts has just started. It's the first time in my life I had a chance to buy really freshly harvested walnuts! They are not firm inside, they are almost white. And the shuck is quite wet and oily to the touch.

For future reference: RU/Latin/EN

грецкий орех/Juglans (nux Gallica)/walnuts
пекан/Carya illinoinensis/pecan
фундук/Córylus/hazelnuts
кунжут/Sesamum indicum/sesame
стружка кокосового ореха/fruit from Cocos nucifera/coconut flakes
семечки подсолнуха/Helianthus annuus/sunflower seeds
кешью/Anacardium occidentale/cashew, caju
фисташки/Pistacia/pistachios
миндаль/Prunus dulcis (Prunus amygdalus)/almonds
кедровые орешки/seeds from Pinus/pine nuts
каштаны/Castanea sativa Mill./sweet chestnuts (maybe marrons, not sure )

арахис/peanuts

курага/dried apricots