Raw Vegan Sushi Rolls

One of my all time favorites! I just perfected the recipe so I thought I'd share:
Pulse the following ingredients until coarsely chopped

• 3 stalks celery
• 1/4 red pepper
• 3 cremini mushrooms
• 1 handful parsley
• 1 handful dulse
• 5 green onions
  

Set aside in a large mixing bowl. Next, blend the following until smooth:

• 1/8 cup sunflower seeds, soaked and sprouted
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 jalapeno pepper
• small thumb of ginger
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 pinch sea salt
• 1 pinch kelp granules (skip this if you can't find it)

Pour over chopped veggies. Next take

• 5 sheets nori
• 1 cup sprouts of your choice (I use clover + radish)

Lay a nori sheet flat on a clean, dry cutting board. Spread a handful of sprouts across it in a horizontal line. Next pour mixture over the sprouts. Now roll it up, repeat, and enjoy!

Glenn Beck: Protecting Your Right to Heart Disease

Looks like Meatless Monday has got the right wing echo chamber up in arms. First they came for our guns, next they'll come for our hamburgers!



Glenn, please! Nobody's trying to take your Big Macs away, but maybe a meatless monday now and then wouldn't be such a bad idea unless you intend to lose your limbs to diabetes.

Pumpkin Cole Slaw

Just in time for Halloween!

Grate the following:

• 1/4 small Sugar Pie Pumpkin, peeled
  
• 1 cabbage
• 2 carrots

Set aside in a large bowl. Next blend:

• 5 macadamias
• 1/8 cup cashews
• 1 tbsp pine nuts
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 tomato
• 1/4 bell pepper
• 3 stalks celery
• 3 colves garlic
• 1 handful fresh parsley
• 1 tsp thyme
• pinch sea salt
• 1 jalapeño
• 1/4 small onion
• enough water to blend smooth
  

Toss together with grated vegetables. Add

• diced wakame

for extra flare. Enjoy!

Raw Silver Needle Pu-erh

I had to share the lovely colour of this tea before I finished drinking it.  It's tea #93 at Remedy Teas. I had thought pu erh was a type of leaf but it turns out that it refers to the process rather than the tea itself, hence the Silver Needle (a white tea) that makes up this cup.

The secret is to rinse your leaves before drinking. Not sure what is washed off in this process but it tastes 1000x better afterwards.  It's a low caffeine tea with a high caffeine taste which is perfect if you're sensitive to caffeine as am i.  

Yummy Green Soup

• 1 English Cucumber
• 3 carrots
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/8-1/4 cup sunflower seeds, soaked and sprouted
• 2 heads of green leafy vegetables (Chard, Kale, Spinach, etc)
• 1 hot pepper (serano, jalapeno, habenero depending on how much spice you want)
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp cumin
• dash cinamon

Blend on high until smooth and creamy. Next dice and add

• 1/8 large onion
• 1/4 red pepper
• 2 stalks celery

Enjoy!

Soylent Soy is Made of People!

Okay, not really but that doesn't mean it belongs on your plate or in your mouth. Much like Lierre Keith when I first went vegan protein was the problem and soy was the solution everyone gave me. The bit of research I did on my own seemed to yield a wide variety of potential sources of protein, from legumes to nuts to green leafy vegetables. When I tried to bring this up to other vegans they poo-poo'd it and handed me a tofurky sandwich. "So this is what vegans eat," I thought.

After a few years I had really developed a taste for all kinds of soy products. I used to go to Little Saigon to buy fried tofu in bulk. I just couldn't get enough of it and if I didn't get enough, I felt hungry. Something started to happen to my digestion, with which I'd never had a problem with. Acid reflux started to appear too.

Desperate for solutions I gave raw food a try. At first I just ate 80-20 and didn't really experience any noticeable results. I wasn't really detoxing, nor was I eating a proper diet. That's when I found out about juice feasting.

I'm sure you've noticed the link to the left to David Rainoshek's Juice Feasting site. This is where I got all the information I needed to start my own 92-day juice feast. I described the process in more detail in a previous post, but basically a juice feast is a modified juice fast, where you drink 3-4 + quarts of juice a day and use the right vegetables to fill your body's nutritional needs. You'll get some detox symptoms, but these will be easier to handle since you're not starving yourself. And the best part is you get cleaner on the inside (and I think you know what I mean by that) than with almost any other cleanse.

My 92 days of juice completely turned my health around. I lost 60 pounds, got rid of all the digestive problems and gained dramatic insights both into diet and into myself. Since then I've been back on raw food, only this time it's raw food done right. There are a lot of aspects to a healthy raw vegan diet, which I'll get to in future posts. The most important component of my diet, and the largest source of protein are green leafy vegetables.

So this is what it took to repair the damage soy did to my system. I'm glad I did it and I've benefited in a lot of other ways, but it's because of my vegan experience that I cannot recommend soy as a health food. Lierre uses this conclusion as a reason to "save" people from the vegan diet.

Although non-raw veganism has it's pitfalls, particularly in it's overemphasis on soy and stored grains, they are far fewer and less severe than those of meat consumption. Besides, are you really going to take health advice from someone who doesn't believe cholesterol contributes to heart disease? Get real Lierre, you bring up some good points about our agricultural system, but large scale free range farming is not the answer. Frankly we don't have 1/4 of the pasture land it would take to feed a planet full of Lierre Keiths.

The Vegetarian Myth - Lierra Keith

I'm really excited about Underground Wellness radio tonight. The guest is Lierre Keith, a former vegan whose critique of veganism The Vegetarian Myth relies on, among other things, an over-emphasis on grains particularly rice corn and wheat. So a good portion of what she's saying does not apply to raw veganism making it the perfect place to push back from. As much as I appreciate her point of view on grains the world needs vegge people more now than ever (a point I'm sure she'll dispute.)

You can check out Dr. Michael R. Eades review of the book on his blog. He comes at it from the other (meat eating climate change denier) side and obviously loves what she says about vegetarianism and its justifications.

For me veganism needs no justification. Your body can do a great job of communicating what it needs if you let it and my body has no need for diseased animal corpses or milk intended for a baby cow. Now honey on the other hand I do have need for...

Perpetually Your Earth

This world is yours, this world is you. You help make it what it is and without you it would be eternally incomplete. It helps make you what you are giving form to your free floating consciousness until you return to it's stony embrace. This world is you.

This is our rock, the only livable planet for parsecs, yet every day it's dying and we're dying with it. Corporations and governments walk around acting like they own the place. But this is a planet for real persons, not artificial ones. This is our rock.

Together we walk. Look at the paths taken and those left unexperienced. Survey the damaged done and plan for a different future. Only those who walk with a light foot can step into this future, only those who tread in compassion and grace will ever see this future. Together we walk.

Whether we're raw, vegan, vegetarian, or just trying to cut down on the impact our lifestyle has on the planet, we share a common path and we hope for a common future.

This world is yours.