One Week Into The Transition

It has already been a week since I started my transition. And I must say I'm feeling good, no real detox syndromes what so ever! So what have I been up to during this first week?

First of all I discovered – to my great satisfaction – that there is a gym-person hidden deep down inside me, which is pretty amusing. Yes, I went to the gym, did some dancing and even went to my first-ever meditational yoga class. I really need to start working on that one and hopefully I'll be able to concentrate a lot better in no time.

I won't hide that there were also some difficult moments throughout the week. For example ignoring the bad old habit of eating bread when I'm at work. It's not easy just because it's right there under my nose and I always used to nibble on it a bit. Freshly baked baguette still smells good and tempting, plus my hand is so used to reaching out for it. So I thought about the fact that all the ingredients in that bread are quite useless to my body anyway and had some nuts and fruit in stead. Plus I read an interesting article on how we tend to crave more of the aliments that are already fermenting in our system. For example the yeast that we consume from bread needs to feed off yeast and quick sugars in order to sustain itself inside our body. That is why the more you eat it the more you "need" it. Have you ever noticed that you can not stop after just a tiny bit of bread, that you want one more slice and then one more? So we are no longer in charge of our needs, it's the yeast inside us. Same thing for coffee and many other things. (source) Sounds a good enough reason for me to stop craving!

The second difficulty sometimes comes up in the evenings when I find myself all alone and deprived of communication. I do have many internet sites to read from and many podcasts to listen to on the raw subjects, as well as countless recipes to try out... But no (vegan) friends who could even remotely relate to the subject and with whom I could share my little joys and rants. In stead I feel that I'll have to justify my choices or that I'll annoy my omnivorous friends with my incomprehensible raw stories. I now realize how important it really is to have a community of raw people for support.

This lonely feeling obviously makes me grab for food and crave for something sweet. So one evening I improvised this really quick and easy desert by taking some ground almonds and a bit of walnuts and mixing them with about the same volume of soaked soft dates (the recipes usually advise using date paste, but I added a couple of prunes in stead), then rolling the dough-like mixture in almond powder in order to avoid stickiness. That makes a pretty nice sugar- and fat-free desert.

During this week I've seen, heard and read a lot of new and interesting things. For example I watched the documentary "Crazy Sexy Cancer" where the young and beautiful Kris Carr fights cancer with raw food.

I also heard a very interesting interview with Philip Mcluskey on the We Like it Raw podcast about how he lost over 60kg, avoiding a gastric bypass surgery, by switching to a raw food diet. Check out the before and after photos on his website, he's rather a hotty.

Right now I'm reading a book called "The Raw Foods Bible" by Dr Craig B Sommers and it is fascinating – filled with interesting and useful material that I would like to share on this blog. So coming up soon...

Raw Vegan 3-Week Transition

It has been nine months since I decided to go vegan. And already then I got a bit familiar with the idea of raw foodism and was persuaded that this was the way to go - the very best way of eating and living. But at that time it had still seemed a faraway goal, quite complicated and frightening. Which is all very normal since the first steps of going vegan also seemed a bit intimidating and very exciting. It was a lot to handle for a beginner, especially being the only vegan I know in this town (and in this country actually), I simply wasn't ready to take on the raw adventure.

By now the whole vegan thing has become just so natural that I'm only rarely reminded of it, for example when friends ask me to go eat French food in a restaurant with them (which basically means that the only vegan option on the menu will be the wine and even that is doubtful). Or when I see people eating their jambon-fromage sandwiches and wearing fur and leather coats in the streets... Most of the time I completely forget about it so that it starts seeming unnatural to me that I can not get non-dairy latté or milkshakes or vegan pizza when I'm out on town. How is it possible, I catch myself thinking, that no-one provides it when it is all so easy to make and all the substitutes are completely available?!

So lately I've been listening to a lot of podcasts and reading things on the internet that have made me think about raw foodism again. But let me explain a bit about what raw foodism is:

Vegan raw foodism is a lifestyle promoting the consumption of un-cooked, un-processed, and often organic foods as a large percentage of the diet (I'd say at least 75%). Typical foods include fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and sprouted grains and legumes that have not been heated over 40°C. Heating food destroys the enzymes, which assist in the digestion of foods and are known to be the "life force" of food. Researches prove that cooking not only destroys nutrition and enzymes, but chemically changes foods from the substances needed for health into free-radicals and poisons that render food unrecognisable to the organism and therefore toxic. Living and raw foods have enormously higher nutrient values than the foods that have been cooked. There are several different subcategories of raw foodists like fruitarians, sproutarians,  juicearians, but I prefer regarding the subject in a general manner for now.
As raw foodists claim all over the web, after an initial detox where the body ejects all the toxins that had been stored during all the years of eating cooked, follow the great benefits like weight loss, higher energy levels, clearer skin, overall improved health and many more. Soon the body will require much less food than before because everything it gets is alive and thus much fuller of energy. Eventually the organism starts regulating its needs a lot more efficiently by craving only the foods that contain the nutrients it is running low on.

All this sounds super great to me, although this is only the very surface of raw foodism. It is far from being just a diet; it is a whole lifestyle and a way of thinking. For example, as I see it, it also includes a more conscious and spiritual way of regarding life, the universe and everything: being more aware of myself and my surroundings, living in greater harmony with nature...

I will be posting updates and thoughts as I go through my transition, as well as links and further information on raw food during the next three weeks. Hoping that the detox period will pass quickly and that my addiction to cooked foods (it might sound like I'm over-dramatizing it but believe me, we really are addicted to cooked food just as we can be to nicotine, alcohol, sugar, cheese etc.) will pass without huge withdrawal cravings.

I've survived the fist two days pretty well, making myself a yummy eggplant lasagne, listening to Raw Vegan Radio podcasts (if you are interested in this subject I really advise you to listen to this episode) and being encouraged by Jenna Norwood's experience (hey, if she did it, why can't I)...

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Raw Vegan Eggplant Lasagne

• 1 medium to large eggplant (aubergine)
  
• 2 cups of water
  
• 1/4 cup nama shoyu, or tamari sauce
  
• 1 tsp. sea salt

Peel the eggplant and cut it thinly lengthwise. Marinate in water, nama shoyu, or tamari sauce and sea salt for at least 3 hours, and up to 12 hours - the longer the better. Dry the eggplant slices with a paper towel. 

Tomato sauce:

• 1 cup (cherry) tomatoes
• 1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes (soaked for 1-2 hrs)
• 1 tsp. tomato concentrate
• 2 dates (soaked for 2 hrs), or some agave syrup
• 3 tbs. olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3 tbs. fresh parsley, 1 pinch fresh oregano,
1 handful fresh basil,
1 tsp. Italian seasoning
• 1 tsp. sea salt 
  

Blend everything together, add the soaking water from tomatoes for better consistancy if necessary.

Cheese sauce:

• 1/3 cup tahini (sesame purée), or chickpea purée
  
• 1/3 cup olive oil (I used half of it and half of water)
  
• 2 Tbs. nama shoyu, or tamari sauce (unless the tahini is already well salted)
  
• a pinch of tumeric powder (curcuma) or light curry powder for the extra zing

Mix together in a bowl until smooth.

You'll also need about 2 cups of shredded zucchini (courgette). Create different layers, alternating: tomato sauce, eggplant, cheese sauce, shredded zucchini, tomato sauce, etc. Finish with shredded zucchini, and decorate with a few thin slices of red onion. (source)

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For more information check out also:

Steve Pavlina's 30-day raw food diet trial

The Living and Raw Foods F.A.Q.s

Raw foods educator Angela Stokes talks about how to survive food cravings

The Easiest And Healthiest Homemade Ice Cream

This is just so good that I must share. We all have had times when we have too many bananas lying around at home and they start getting all mushy and black and not tasty. Well, from now on I always buy more bananas than I can eat without worrying about having to throw them away. Why? It's very simple: as soon as your bananas start getting too ripe and ugly, just peel them, put inside a tupperware and into your freezer. After only a couple of hours they will make a nice popstickle that melts in your mouth. But to make even better use of the frozen goodness just blend them together with some non-dairy milk. I used one banana and about half a cup of soymilk for one portion and added some agave syrup for the extra sweetness. But you can also add a tiny bit of vanilla extract or a spoonfull of cacao powder for that chocolate ice cream effect. It's quick, dairy-free, sugar-free and absolutely delicious raw ice cream. Enjoy!

Male Violence Against Women: some numbers

Worldwide, male violence against women is the cause of more deaths and disability around the world in 15 to 44 year-olds than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war, COMBINED.

In Europe, more women are killed or injured by domestic violence than by cancer or road accidents. The council of Europe has stated that domestic violence is the biggest cause of disability for all women aged 16 to 44.

In the UK, one in four women experience domestic violence in their lifetime and between 1 in 8 to 1 in 10 experience it annually.

Less than half of all incidents are reported to the police, but they still receive a domestic violence call every minute in the UK.

Women are ten times more likely to be victimised by an intimate.

In the US, a woman is beaten every 18 minutes. In Peru, 70% of all crimes reported involve women beaten by their husbands. In Russia, one woman in five is regularly beaten by her partner. In India and Bangladesh, women are killed or burned with acid for not bringing enough dowry into their husband's family when they marry.

At least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime, according to a study based on fifty surveys from around the world.

The world health organization has reported that up to 70% of female murder victims are killed by their male partners.

Worldwide in 2006, 70% of the casualties in conflicts were non-combatants, most of them women and children.

Systematic rape is used as a weapon of terror in many of the world's conflicts. It is estimated that between 250 000 to 500 000 women in Rwanda were raped during the 1994 genocide.

30% of the people in the UK think that violence against women is OK and 50% think that domestic violence should be kept behind closed doors.

These statistics were presented in The Angry Hippies Podcast, episode n° 20.

Channa Masala and Veganniversary Despite Everything

Today is a special day. Today I feel good even though I watched "We Feed The World" yesterday and it made me feel desperately small, hopeless and helpless. Even though I listened to another ranty Angry Hippie's podcast, which was about "Bullshitatarians" whom I've myself had to encounter on several occasions lately and who have only had a rather frustrating effect on my optimism. Even though some of my closest friends refuse to even try to understands my reasons for leading a vegan lifestyle, let alone support it. Even though reading the new post on the Peaceful Prairie Blog made me cry again (tears of delight, of hope, of being moved to the bottom of my heart by the simple beauty of life that is of such strong will, but so neglected by us). Even though I am still forced to share my dinner table with sausage-munching and dead-chicken-limb gnawing individuals. Even though my own mother still probably thinks I'm going through somekind of a phase or that I am part of some sinister sect. Even though my temporary flat mates had already cooked something by the time I got home ignoring the fact that I was supposed to make a special meal for them tonight. Even though they first invited me to eat with them and then discovered there was nothing vegan on their menu, so I could not join them unless I wanted to end up chewing on bread and watching them devour dead bodies...

Despite all that I am feeling good today because it is my 6-month veganniversary. A tiny mile-marker in view of many more to come and that I wish to celebrate serenely.

For this occasion I am making the wonderful Channa Masala (a huge shout-out and thank you to Dino here!) even though I'll end up eating it alone (that leaves more for me!). And to all the countless people who have asked me in the past six months and who are yet to ask me in the years to come this perpetual question: "what DO you eat??": this recipe is for you. Trust me, it is easy to make. Try it while listening to the last episode (n° 101) of Vegan Freak Radio or the episode n° 6 of Satisfy The Mind and I assure you that many more of your potential questions shall be answered.

CHANNA MASALA (Annu's style)

Take a large skillet or a saucepan, put it on heat and pour in cooking oil (sunflower, canola, peanut oil or whatever you have lying around. And don't be stingy!) Let it get very hot, then throw in about a teaspoon-full of cumin seeds, let them start popping and then add about as much crushed coriander seeds. As the popping gets crazier, throw in one chopped onion and a head of crushed garlic (or more if you love them as much as I do), add some grated ginger and let them get soft in the oil.

As soon as they're nice and soft, add about 1/2-1 ts of tumeric (curcuma) powder. Then throw in almost-cooked-through potatoes cut into cubes and the pre-cooked chickpeas (in about the same proportions). You can use canned chickpeas or cook them yourself in salty water for about 1,5h after having soaked them overnight. Shortly after that add some finely chopped tomatoes as well as about 2-3 tbs of tomato paste/concentrate (after heating it for a minute or two on a separate little pan). You might also want to keep the tasty liquid of your cooked chickpeas and add it to make everything juicier. Or add some tomato sauce or vegetable broth. Let it simmer on medium to small heat until it looks something like a slightly thick stew. When it's almost done cooking, add the very last bit of taste with garam masala spice-mix. No worries in case you don't have it - you can very well replace it by mixing together a little of cinnamon, clove and ground nutmeg (muscade). Add salt and pepper (or even something hotter!) according to your taste and serve with rice or pita bread or whatever else you want. And don't forget: don't be afraid to improvise!

Bon appetit and happy vegalienation and veganniversation and de-channamasalation!