Raw Food Equipment #2

The cherry stoner: it’s an innocuous little thing. It doesn’t look like much at all. However, if you’re faced with pounds (and I do mean pounds) of cherries, it will transform your life. No more slips of the knife, no more rooting around for the cherry stone with your finger and thumb losing valuable flesh in the process. Just pop the cherry in, press the lever and out pops the cherry stone sans excess flesh. It’s not just for cherries either. It worked beautifully with the small and oh so fragrant yellow plums from the other day too.

Sissy Spacek: fasting, meditation, tough girls, the state of ‘adagio’ and no regrets...

Everything that I touch at the moment doesn’t turn to gold, but it does seem to have a ‘raw’ message. This is from a 1977 issue of the fashion magazine 19 that I picked up in a junk shop ...

'A year ago, Sissy never even got a second glance from anyone, but now Sissy has definitely hit the big time ... So what does she do? Does she buy a purple Rolls Royce? A San Simeon mansion in Beverly Hills? No ... she goes on a fast! “It’s true,” she said. “I felt I had to remove myself from the pressures which built up with the sudden success. I didn’t know a better way of doing it than going on a fast ...

Fasting is great because it allows you to eliminate all the physical impurities from your body. But, as far as I’m concerned, the mental cleansing is far more important. After several days of fasting, your mind becomes so clear and clean. In the process, your senses are heightened too ...

The most interesting aspect of the fast is the insight which develops. It allows you to examine yourself and your problems. Amazingly, you’re able to recall incidents from your childhood which you thought long since forgotten ... The confrontation of past with present gives you a new understanding in dealing with your daily life ...

I often went on fasts for several days during the shooting of Carrie ... When the rest of the cast ate, I meditated. I never studied under a guru or anyone like that. I picked it all up from books. Like exercise, meditation helps me a lot during a fast. But I also meditate whether I am fasting or not. Forty minutes a day ... meditation has a very soothing effect upon my nervous system and combats the strains and stresses which seem to accompany this sort of profession ...

There are a lot of tough girls out there in the world fighting to make a name for themselves and to get recognised. They’re trying very hard to escape from the crowd of anonymity. Sure, some are actresses, but they are in other professions too. These girls are in an emotional rage, but they don’t always know why ... Thankfully, I was never so completely consumed by my career that I couldn’t see other choices, other exits ...

I believe that life is a sort of game where you may succeed or again you may not. But you have to live it in a state of ‘adagio’ – complete relaxation which allows you full communication to better achieve your goals. I never pushed as hard as I might and not for a moment do I regret it”’.

Summer Bounty

Recipes soon ...

I want ...

... a rooftop garden.

Photos (c) of the architect(s): Hiroshi Nakamura and Nap.

Jewels of the Currant World #2

This frozen batch of last year’s redcurrants was consumed by moi today to celebrate my first blogging anniversary (admittedly a little late, but my first post was on these very redcurrants). There are also fresh gooseberries, strawberries and rhubarb galore at the moment, and the other various berries and currants (raspberries, blueberries, blackcurrants and whitecurrants) are starting to form fruit ...

Easter Present

Easter Present is literally that, a present to you. The weekend papers on Saturday featured an article on the New York vegan bakery Babycakes, who will be publishing a cookbook come early May. The recipes strike me as easy to adapt to a raw food world, and you all know by now how seduced I can be by pretty vegan cookbooks ...

Easter Past

I haven’t written much recently, and suddenly Easter is upon us. As you all know, I’m a Buddhist. What you might not know is that I always give something up for Lent (and yes, I celebrate Christmas too). In the past I used to abstain from sugar and chocolate, but as I do that as a matter of course now, it was raw cacao on my hit list this year. It was fine, I had very few cravings, but it was nice to indulge again come Easter Sunday! In full confessional mode I should admit to a teeny tiny taster of the Raw Chocolate Company’s new Minted bar last w/end at Olympia’s Natural and Organic Products Show – very yummmm.

I’ve always found the Lent season a very reflective one . A post by Jeanette Winterson and the stories on The Forgiveness Project have literally moved me to tears. There’s something about looking back during this season that literally ‘springs’ you into the present in the most intense way.

The pictures are both from about a decade ago but seem equally suited to Easter present. The blossom trees framed my walk to work in Edinburgh, and the cat-flap (Easter for me is about the d-e-t-a-i-l) was in New York when I was in NoLita (no doubt on my way to the now sadly deceased Mayle) . I loved the fact that the cat-flap had its own mailbox!