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:

With this video, Pure Jeevan concludes coverage of the 2009 Raw Spirit East festival. We started off two Fridays ago covering raw food chefs, then moved on to raw lifestyle speakers and philosophers. The final piece of the gourmet raw pie would have to be the festival ambience, which is somewhat tougher to capture in a short video. But, I think this video does a reasonable job of conveying a lot of the scene "beyond the food." (But even if it doesn't, how many times do you get to see Charles Balcer hula-hooping on video )

Enjoy the video (and pics, below, too)!

There is a certain irony that takes place when you launch a raw foods web site because, no matter how much you love and believe in what you do, no matter how solid the proof may be that the information you're providing is true and accurate, no matter how clearly it can be demonstrated by analyses of blood tests or tons of "before and after" photos that this lifestyle heals the human body, you're still pretty much bound by legal best practices to include a full disclaimer on your site. And, as much as you just write it once and kind of forget about it, it's always there. For practical reasons, of course we understand all of that. But beyond all of that, there's an implied message that "only a medical doctor" really knows what's best for you.

Well, in fact, we DO recommend working with a competent health professional. But what we do not endorse here is simply accepting whatever that professional has to say without question. So, the operative word would be "competent" in that recommendation.

You thought our "Know Your Food" series was dead ?!!? (Or, if you're a new reader, maybe you don't know what "Know Your Food" is yet!) Well, we've been poking around in the archives this week and discovered THREE lost episodes. This is HUGE... It's like one of those stories you hear every few years about some rare Hollywood film being discovered in a vault somewhere (laughing so hard)!

Over the next week or two, we'll be posting these three episodes. Today's episode is PUMPKIN, starring Wendi and her guest Ella (daughter of Melissa and Dave, who run the FoodUnderFoot blog we linked to recently). Once these missing episodes have been aired, this will usher in the dawn of a never-before seen level of production values for the Know Your Food series. The new stuff will totally win every major award available to YouTubers (continues laughing...).

Sure, we know pumpkins aren't in season right now. However, this video is sweet because of our special guest. So, enjoy the Pumpkin episode:

Back when we ate cooked foods (especially way back when our menu was not exclusively vegan), parmesan cheese seemed to be a staple of our existence (especially for Jim). We'd sprinkle it liberally on pasta dishes, salads, soups, and more.

As is typical for many raw foodies, you often realize after going raw that it was not always necessarily the food itself that you craved (no matter what it was); often it was simply the texture, the spices, the various flavors and tastes, etc. And that realization leads raw chefs to wonder whether the same experience can be recreated using only raw ingredients.

I'm fairly sure that we've covered how to *open* a young coconut (also known as a Thai coconut). It seems like each raw food site has a video and/or article about that. I think it's actually a commandment in the Official Raw Foodism Bylaws somewhere: "Thou shalt show everyone how to open a coconut."

But *selecting* them... that's something that's not often covered in-depth. It's an advanced topic -- super-advanced, even. So, are you ready to learn the secrets?

Ketchup

1 cup sun dried tomatoes, soaked for one hour

3 small fresh tomatoes

As many of you know, Kevin and Annmarie Gianni (of Renegade Health) have now started their RV tour, for which they selected Pittsburgh as their official kick-off location. While here, we at Pure Jeevan took a special ride in "The Kale Whale," their veggie-oil-powered RV. Inside, we enjoyed a comfortable ride (which included hanging out with Johnny 5 -- their cat -- and drinking some hot tea prepared right there in the Kale Whale). Outside, we endured the freezing cold temperatures of Pittsburgh while pumping filtered used veggie oil into special holding tanks in the RV. Here is some video footage from our Kale Whale encounter!

Those consuming a raw food diet sometimes use a dehydrator to prepare raw food dishes. They do this at low temperatures, below the point of actually cooking the foods, to intensify flavors, reduce the amount of moisture in the dish, and sometimes to take the chill off something they'd rather serve a bit warmer than straight out of the refrigerator. There is a practice that we've seen, however, that is actually cooking the very foods were taking such great measures to consume raw! Let me share an experience I had when I first started eating raw foods, that will help explain how some of us may be cooking our foods by mistake.

In the beginning of eating raw foods, my entire family loved the Vegetable Stir-Dont-Fry I used to make (you can find that recipe in the free eBook you downloaded when you first visited our site). One day I created a double recipe so we could eat more the next day, without going through the process of preparing it again fresh. The following day I took the bowl of Stir-Dont-Fry out of the refrigerator and put it into the dehydrator to take the chill off. It wasn't warming up fast enough on such a low temperature, so I thought I'd just cover the dish a little bit to trap in some of the heat that seemed to leave each time I checked the dish and stirred it around. So, I took a plate and placed it on top of the bowl with about an inch, or two, opening.

We all know what "greens" are in general. For example, no one questions whether lettuce, kale, spinach, or chard are greens. But on the other hand, all of those items *are* also clearly green in color. With that in mind, what would you make of the following two questions I (Jim) recently pondered -- tagged as "reader questions" so they're easily found in the future by other equally inquisitive people ;-) -- that seem bizarre, but are really quite interesting?

1. Are non-green greens (e.g., purple kale) still considered greens

2. Are vegetables with green skins (e.g., cukes, zucchini) considered greens? (After all, they're green!)

So, what did you think about there being snow in New Mexico? Were many of you thinking it was more of a consistant hot climate like I used to think?

We left New Mexico, renewed, and headed to Oklahoma. Here's where we left off yesterday:

This is a recipe for the coconut shake that brought my cholesterol levels from very unhealthy down to extremely healthy within the span of one month!

Young Coconut Shake

Flesh and water from one young coconut

  1. The Secrets Raw Foodists Don't Want You to Know
  2. It's *Almost* Fig Harvesting Time!
  3. Acknowledging Changes and Growth: 2008 / 2009, Part 1
  4. Do I Need to Eat a Certain Percentage of Raw Foods to Call Myself a Raw Foodist?
  5. Green Festival Weekend
  6. Fun-Filled Friday
  7. One Step Closer to the Return of Truly Raw Almonds!
  8. Earth Day!
  9. My Raw Story: Melissa Sokulski
  10. Are Raw Foodists "Crazy"? Part 4 of 5
  11. Nadi Balance: Lyme Disease and Asking Questions