Pure Jeevan Blog - Pure Jeevan Raw Foods

Know Any Literary Animal Lovers?

Hi there PureJeevan readers! We wanted to let you know that Jim's new novel CHROO is available on Amazon. It's a crazy adventure involving a billionaire heiress, her Chihuahua BFF ("Chroo") and a host of human and animal characters. Find out more on Amazon! Here are some links:

Ahh, yes... Ginkgo Biloba. What a distinctive tree, don't you think? So easy to identify, and so many reported health benefits. This one belongs to a neighbor that seems to have an affinity with Asian landscaping motifs. They also have gorgeous bamboo growing in their yard, and other Asian elements. I would have liked to have harvested some leaves to dry for some Ginkgo tea, but the owner wasn't around to ask. Perhaps some other time.

Read more: Ginkgo Biloba!

We're still busy researching cities in order to find our future home town!? Our original list of potentials is now more of less narrowed down to a few select areas. That's not to say that we're not still open to further suggestions. (See here for our desires in a new home town.)? At the moment, of the cities/regions remaining on our "active" list, the Ashland, Oregon area is looking fairly attractive. So, we thought we'd take a moment to ask a few questions about Ashland. But first, here's why...

Originally, we felt highly drawn to Corvallis, Oregon. It seemed like the absolute perfect place for us -- a phenomenal homeschooling / unschooling community (which is what first caught our attention), a progressive / artsy atmosphere, affordable land, and super-clean air. Great, right ! ?But then we looked at the amount of sunshine the city received ... hmmm, no improvement whatsoever over Pittsburgh (in fact, Corvallis is, unfortunately, equally as gloomy -- at 44% of the days having sun).

As we promised yesterday, we're featuring a wonderful (and LONG!) video interview today with the incredible John Kohler of Santa Rosa, CA. You may be familiar with John from some of his popular web sites, most notably his "Living and Raw Foods" community site at www.RawFoods.com. Below are parts one, two, and three of Wendi's interview. They're roughly 10 minutes each. (That's a lot of time, I realize, but at least check out Part 1 if you're short on time, as it offers an amazing look at John's front yard.)

Wendi said she was at a loss for words when interviewing John at his home (and you'll soon see why!), because what he has done on his 1/10th of an acre lot is *phenomenal*. He told Wendi off the video that it's all a matter of trial and error--finding what grows easily and well, and working with those plants the most. If something takes a lot of effort, or is difficult to easily grown, he skips it and focuses on what can give the most yield for the least work. Almost everything grown on John's land is edible!

PART TWO:

PART THREE:

The video of John's garden and the pictures (see yesterday's post) are enough to inspire ANYONE to plant even a small garden for themselves! WOW!

John has a lot going on, including a monthly potluck. Wendi and KDcat happened to be in town on the night of the March potluck, so Wendi was invited to speak at the event. It was a nice, laid-back group of people, Wendi said, and they sat at a long table talking about the raw lifestyle, health issues / concerns, what children are fed in school, and so much more -- a really nice group of people, Wendi said, noting she'd love to visit them all again. To connect with John Kohler is pretty easy. He's on the internet at:

RawFoods.com -- John's main community site
GrowingYourGreens.com -- John's YouTube channel
BeRaw.com -- Santa Rosa Meetup Group
RawHealthExpo.com -- Annual Raw Foods Conference

Once again, we d love to thank our generous trip snack sponsor, Natural Zing, for helping us to make this possible on our budget!

Original Comments

Below, we have included the original comments from this blog post. Additional comments may be made via Facebook, below.

On March 19, 2010, anasha wrote:

fantastic, thank you so much Wendi, very informative, what a guy and energy bomb he is, hope you are well again, you seem so
love to you

I thought I'd share some recent pictures with all of you. Let me know what you think!?

Carob Peppermint Hearts

This is a recipe I created to take the place of a packaged raw cacao dessert that Jim loves. I don't like to eat cacao, because it disturbs my heart, so I use carob. A new raw friend asked for a recipe for this dessert, because she loved it so much, but I don't have one. I dump walnuts, coconut, agave, and peppermint oil into the food processor and mix until it's a consistency that can stick together. For Valentine's Day I shaped the mixture into hearts. Sweet!?

Well, we've finally done it -- made the move westward to our new hometown, Portland, Oregon! It's been nothing but the kind of high adventure befitting such a move, not the least of which was a wheel literally flying off of our car while driving (don't worry, no one was hurt) just days before we were scheduled to leave. And, of course, everything during the past few weeks wound up costing about 10x what we'd planned. ?But, we're here! ?And, we're beginning to get settled.

As always, we've got some great things on deck for this blog in the coming near term, including many interesting articles and some fun video experiments we did involving live blood and electrical grounding. We also have some new exciting web site features to roll out, one completely new raw food site to unleash upon the raw foods community, and a whole new Pure Jeevan web site design to launch. For now, though, we'll probably remain off-line for a bit longer, as we organize and unpack things.

Our Pittsburgh home remains for sale. Naturally, we'd hoped to have sold it before making this move. But, we realized that we didn't necessarily have to wait for it to sell in order to move to Portland. So, we took the great leap of faith and moved here without that step completed. (It'll certainly be a happy day when that lovely home finds its new owners and caretakers!).

Jim here... Recently, a commenter on this blog, Lannette, mentioned being a cardiac rehab nurse. For some reason, reading this set my wheels spinning in various directions, among them onto the topic of meat consumption in the world. To begin, I'd like to recap something I'd said in response to her:

... it *astounds* me how people joke about heart health where I work. People around here routinely return from medical exams and actually adopt rather mischievous grins when they reveal how high their bad cholesterol levels are. It's like they're saying, "I know meat and dairy are bad for me, but I'm going to keep on eating it anyway. Isn't that funny ??!!!" Ummm, no. It's sad. They laugh it off as though there could be no possible future reckoning for them. It's reminiscent, IMHO, of Dr. Viktor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning," in which he describes a psychological phenomenon he termed the "delusion of reprieve." For anyone unfamiliar w/ that, the term describes the phenomenon via which those faced with certain death (or near certain death) mentally construct some way out of it. They are deluded into believing that they'll have a reprieve from the inevitable. So, it's exactly the same to me -- these people see the heart attacks coming. They simply refuse to do anything about it, refuse to change their habits, deny what their blood work says to them. Why? Because they think "I'll be okay. Sure, this leads to heart disease in most people, but not in *me* because I'm a strong guy, I'm macho, I'm not as fat as some other person here, etc." Mostly, it's the meat, I think. It's got a powerful hold on our society...

So, today I wanted to write a little bit on the topic of meat consumption. This is an enormous issue, in my opinion. If you're reading this, it likely means you're already at least a vegetarian, so I do not need to quote you any saddening statistics on the horrors of the meat industry. In fact, before writing this, I decided to visit the PETA web site quickly in order to glean a few slaughterhouse facts. But, in no time, I became markedly depressed, so I'll largely avoid focusing on specific negative imagery here.