Biodynamic Gardening

I was in Oxford yesterday. I studied for my doctorate there and the Botanic Garden was always a welcome respite when my poor brain couldn’t take looking at a dusty document for a second longer. According to my trusty moon planting/gardening guide, yesterday, and today, are fruit days (for planting out and pruning fruit trees), and work was underway in this vein at Oxford.

I love gardens at this time of year. Everything appears sleepy and lazy, but a lot is going on despite the drowsy exterior. It’s not a bad description of Oxford itself. It appears unchanging but behind the panelled doors, brains are hard at work...

Secret Messaging

I love the fact that people write me little ‘secret’ messages via this blog. I completely understand. I used to read various blogs avidly but felt too shy to even leave a message. I have gradually progressed over the last few years from leaving messages on favourite blogs to eventually writing an admittedly very non-personal and sporadic blog.

One of the recent ‘secret messages’ to me referred to the fact that many of the ‘juicy fruit’ I have listed on my side-bar no longer post or post very sporadically. I understand, being a sporadic blogger myself. Sometimes, indeed often, there is ‘life’ outside the blog that takes precedence, sometimes the blog is written to outline a specific experience, or sometimes a blog just feels too public. Much as I miss regular updates from some of my favourite bloggers – Shell and Neeta this means you – I love the fact that they’re clearly living their lives away from a computer screen.

Many of my ‘juicy fruit’ links wrote vividly about juice feasting at the beginning of the year. Once that experience finished, the blogging stopped. Are you like me though and miss their regular musings? Are you curious about whether the intense juice feasting aided a steady raw/high raw path, or did it lead to dietary fluctuations over the year? I miss the musings of Jack/Jill and Poppy particularly. How was the rest of 2008 for them? I’m so curious that I’m just about to leave messages on their blogs to say how much I miss their updates.

Another matter of curiosity: Nigel Slater’s Thirst. Such a great book on juicing combinations, but so little mention in the juice feasting world...

P.S. Poppy – this link is dedicated to you – I’m a fellow Levan fan ...

First Slice Your Cookbook ...

One of my resolutions before the end of the year was to somehow organise a huge pile of magazine/newspaper cuttings. Anything interesting or inspiring I rip out. One particular pile is of adult human height (I kid you not). In my attempt at reorganisation I stumbled across a cutting on the re-launch of Arabella Boxer’s First Slice Your Cookbook (I grew up with a parental cooking bookshelf overflowing with authors such as Boxer, Jane Grigson, Margaret Costa and Elizabeth David).

I’m not someone who makes a big deal about eating a raw/high-raw diet, I just get on and quietly do it. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been interrogated by family/friends about where I get my protein, or how much my daily calcium intake is (or perhaps I’m just lucky)?! Oddly enough though, from time to time, I interrogate myself. I know it’s ridiculous, these questions never occurred to me when I ate a ‘standard’ diet ‘fortified’ with crisps and sweets, yet despite an unequivocally improved food intake, they continue to cross my mind from time to time. Has this happened to anyone else? When it happens to me, I always turn to Plant Based Nutrition and Health. Written by a scientist and former Chair of the Vegan Society it calmly guides you through everything you need to know about vegan food intake – chapters on calcium, fats, minerals and vitamins, even raw food. Even better, if you’re rushed for time, each chapter has a one-page summary, so you can make instant and simple dietary tweakings. Turning the pages makes me feel better every single time my mind starts its bizarre chattering about minerals, calcium, protein and the like.

Hoisting my own copy of First Slice Your Cookbook off the bookshelf I was inspired to take some of my own advice re. having favourite recipes to hand, link it to my sometimes questioning nutritional path, and present it in First Slice Your Cookbook mode. That way, I can not only plan daily menus and come up with new combinations of favourite food (the book is split into three which allows you to mix and match), but also see at a glance my intake ratios of fat/fruit/greens etc. It’s my first resolution for 2009...

December!

It's December! Once the 1st of December strikes I always have a rush of inspiration to fulfill all of my determinations that somehow fell by the wayside over the year. I am chanting like crazy (4 hours a day!) yet am still managing to fit everything else in. The bright and crispy weather is an aid to all of this - it revs me up like nothing else. My lunches at the moment are mirroring the weather - light and crispy. I'm working through some favourite recipes from Kate Wood's first book and stumbled across her Spicy Carrot and Apple Salad, which is high raw rather than 'pure' raw. My version is somewhat simplified - a grated apple and carrot tossed alongside a handful of Bombay Mix - perfect early December fare!

Don't Try This at Home!

Reading the fantastic Viktoras Kulvinskas interview in the latest issue of Get Fresh inspired me to re-read some of his publications. One of the 'Seven Secrets of Success' listed in the interview encouraged the making of fermented food '... it nurtures friendly bacteria, and is loaded with enzymes and B-complex vitamins ... Cultures that are long-lived always include at least one form of fermented food on a daily basis'. His Life in the 21st Century had a suggestion from a contributor re. jelly coconut fermentation (and I'd just picked up a stash from a new source). The instructions were easy: simply chop the jelly coconut up finely, put it into a jar and seal it until bubbles appear (around 24-48 hours). Then mash in a ripe banana. The contributor wrote that 'To me it tastes like scrambled eggs. Fruitarian egg substitute'. To me it smelt like very bad eggs, so much so that I couldn't even bring myself to taste it!!! More on Viktoras soon ...

Synchronicity #2

The synchronicity doesn't stop at #1. I was going to post on my love of compact raw booklets, starting with the recipe booklet by the Funky Raw gang (I'm guessing from viewing their website that the booklet has been newly republished with a colour cover). I have 'key moments' in my raw journey and the booklet's 'Real Risotto' (with cauliflower being the chief ingredient) was one of them. As I child, I was never a fan of this particular cruciferous veggie, and I insisted on a heavy cheese sauce to disguise the taste. Reading the recipe for 'Real Risotto' I just thought 'no thanks' and carried on turning the pages, but the word 'cauliflower' kept popping up in my brain. Finally, I succumbed. It's now one of my favourite autumn meals. Lo and behold, when thinking about posting re. this, a picture of a very similar dish 'Curried Cauliflower with Currants and Pine Nuts' (albeit cooked and using florets rather than reducing the cauliflower to rice-size particles) appeared in the aforementioned Great Chefs Cook Vegan in a series of recipes devised by Cat Cora ...

The booklet's introduction quotes one of the Funky Raw contributors, Steve Charter, 'Just like normal eating, most people tend to rely on a relatively small number of standard meals that they rotate and vary. So if you get a good set of basic raw food meals then you are more than half way there'. It sounds so simple and obvious but as we all know sometimes things are easy to read but harder to put into practice. Charter's advice is so worth it though. Keep experimenting until you have about a fortnight's worth of recipes that you adore. Raw became infinitely easier when I worked this out for myself! The booklet itself might be small, but it's crammed with tried and tested recipes for daily use. The cover states that this is Volume I, so I hope Volume II appears soon ...

Synchronicity #1

Isn't it funny when the universe responds to musings? I was lamenting recently to one of my closest friends who is a hot-shot graphic designer of cookbooks (Nigel Slater, Ottolenghi, Angela Hartnett etc.) about vegan and raw books published in the UK. I'd love it if as the raw market grows these books looked like some of the classics she's crafted (not too chef-y, not over-designed, but not too kooky and fall-apart paperbacks that have tiny print runs either!). Lo and behold, through the post arrived the very beautiful Great Chefs Cook Vegan (admittedly US published), a book by chefs (the majority neither raw or vegan - thus no rampant didacticism) who outline their enthusiasm for grain, vegetable and fruit based dishes. A few of the recipes are through and through raw, and because the others are vegan they're very easy to adapt. It's given me some great new ideas ... Thank you to the very generous person who sent it (you know who you are - xxx).