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:




"Should you eat when you're not hungry "

That was a question I asked myself a lot when I was first transitioning to the raw food diet. Just about everything I ever read said that people shouldn't eat if they aren't hungry. We need to listen to what our bodies are telling us in order to be as healthy as possible.

What if your body is telling you it's not hungry, however, while your instinct is telling you that you still need to eat That's what was happening to me in the beginning of my raw journey. My digestion was very slow and food would sit in my stomach for most of the day, especially if the food I ate was processed or heavy. It didn't matter how much I ate, either. My portions were always very small compared to those that my fit-looking friends were eating. I always wondered how I was the obese one when my meals were so minimal in comparison.

Jim here... I'm back from Raw Spirit Festival East with roughly 4 Gigs of pictures and videos to sort through, as well as 17 pages of handwritten notes about my rawsome experiences. So, tomorrow, I'll begin the task of sorting through it all and posting all sorts of fun stuff (photos, videos, and tales of adventures).

For now, all I'll say is that Rawbin Anderson, RSF East Manager, did a spectacular job in orchestrating the whole event. Here's Rawbin:

Is low fat more expensive? When I was eating a lot of nuts and seeds, in the back of my mind I kept saying, "Someday you'll eat less of these nuts and seeds, and you'll save a lot of money." I really believed that to be true because organic, raw nuts and seeds are outrageously expensive.

For one hundred days, I'm transitioning to a lower fat raw diet. I'm down to fats only in the evening, and for the next ten days those fats will only come from avocados, young coconuts, and possibly some hemp seeds. If I'm not hungry for the fat, however, I'll go without it. That hasn't been the case yet, though. By dinner time I'm ravenous and wanting to eat heavy, dense foods to calm the hungry beast in my belly. Even though I've been including some fats in the evening, I'm eating significantly less than I normally would if not doing this challenge. So, I've been eating more fruits and vegetables to get the calories I normally received from nuts and seeds.

Jim here... Allow me to think out loud, philosophically, for a few moments, will you? I have a gut suspicion about something, but need to think it through a bit here. I'll start with a quote:

"There have also been a number of traditions around the world that describe a divine confusion of the one original language into several, albeit without any tower [referring to the well known story of the Tower of Babylon from the Christian Bible]. Aside from the Ancient Greek myth that Hermes confused the languages, causing Zeus to give his throne to Phoroneus, Frazer specifically mentions such accounts among the Wasania of Kenya, the Kacha Naga people of Assam, the inhabitants of Encounter Bay in Australia, the Maidu of California, the Tlingit of Alaska, and the K'iche' of Guatemala. ... The Estonian myth of "the Cooking of Languages" has also been compared."

Many of our visitors go directly to our raw food recipes section of the blog. They must be terribly disappointed to find only a few recipes there. We ll continually add more, but for now there are only a handful. So, it is with extreme pleasure that we introduce you to someone you are going to love!

Take the time to meet...

This isn't one of our normal blog posts. It's more of a journal entry, than anything else.

You see, I'm a bit sad today. The Raw Spirit Festival in Santa Barbara, CA, started today and I'm not there. We've been working really hard on many raw food projects, trying to sell our home, etc. So, spending the time and money to travel to the other side of the country for a weekend event just didn't seem like a good idea.I don't think we made the wrong decision, but I do admit I was hoping that somehow the Universe would conspire in some magical way to arrange for me to attend the festival this weekend.

For those who have never been to a Raw Spirit Festival, you might wish that you could attend something so totally awesome---to be surrounded by raw foodies you've met online, to attend the various speeches and events at the festival, etc.---but you probably aren't feeling completely sad that you aren't there. To have attended a Raw Spirit Festival, had your entire life altered by the experience, and then to not attend the next one is almost heartbreakingly sad.

Here's a fun story, with a fun, inspirational, and at least partially dietary conclusion. As I mentioned yesterday, Wendi is in Portland this week. Can you guess what she's doing there? ... She's attending a very important event -- something that merited getting on an airplane with almost no notice (and, wow, are those last-minute airfares pricey!). Still not sure? That's okay; I'll let the cat out of the bag: We found a new home!!

We've been talking about moving to the west coast for literally years now, so it's about time, right? ?In recent times, we've really begun taking action on things in a much more profound and immediate way than ever, and it's been working out amazingly well. This home purchase was just the latest instance of it. We basically saw an opportunity and immediately went for it, without hesitation, and before we knew it we were sending paperwork back and forth across the internet to our realtor.

Today we thought we'd introduce you to a common wild edible known as Purple Deadnettle (or, more dramatically, the Purple Archangel). Watch the video and let us know if it grows in your area, and if you've tasted it!

On August 31st, my project will be finished enough to present it as a

GIFT TO THE ENTIRE RAW COMMUNITY!?

Wow, with literally years of raw food coverage under our belts here at Pure Jeevan, we don't think we've ever devoted an entire post to fermented foods. Well it's high time we do, don't you think ? Check out the video and then we'll discuss it further...

Mistakes are bad, right Well, not always. Here's an example of a great one, and it's something that demonstrates a conviction I have about raw foods! You see, in all of this talk of moving to Portland, I made a huge gaffe recently in my thinking about finances.

You see, I was pondering the terms of a home loan one afternoon -- percentage rates, down payments, monthly payments, tax escrows, etc. It was all really dry, boring material. Suddenly, I thought to myself, "Wow, here we are about to buy another house, after owning this one for so many years. In less than 10 years, we would have owned this one outright, but now we'll be starting over again with a 30-year mortgage."