Real Food

I had a pancake phase sometime during the last month and I winged some pancakes on various weekends when I was able to have a leisurely morning to take as long as I wanted to make breakfast. These were some vegan coconut banana pancakes and they were so good I'm not ready to share any recipe yet because after I made them, I looked at some actual legit pancake recipes and I realized I didn't put any baking powder/soda in mine. They still seemed to work though! So I don't know. I should probably try it again the proper way before sharing.



I have also taken a huge interest in raw food. I had a week where I challenged myself to stay 100% raw but I failed. It was hard ONLY because of the large volume of food you need to have at hand. When you're eating raw, fruits & vegetables make up such a small part of your required caloric intake so you have to eat lots of it. I had a lot of trouble keeping enough fresh produce in the house for the week while restricted by my weekly grocery budget. Especially if you're buying mostly organic, it adds up to a lot of money, unfortunately.

That realization was infuriating. The fact that it's so much cheaper to eat unhealthy, processed, and packaged food than to eat a big salad where all its contents grow from a tree.



Another thing brought to my realization while learning about raw food was all the corporate bullcrap going on. The food pyramid is bogus, in my opinion. Wilby asked me if I ever noticed how grains are the largest group on the food pyramid released by the Canadian government (or the USDA in the states). Fruits and vegetables are second. Why are we supposed to consume more processed food than natural plant food? You always hear people telling you to eat more fruits and vegetables. Want to fight illness? Eat more veggies. Want to grow up to be big and strong? Eat more veggies. Want to lose weight? Eat more veggies. Your mother, your doctor, everyone says that. They don't tell you to eat more bread. Or sneak more pasta onto your plate at dinner. So why does the government tell you that? Simple reason: money.

The grain industry holds such a huge monopoly over our food. Chips, bread, pastries, pasta, noodles, rice, cookies, crackers, even oats. They've become such staples in our diets & the manufacturers are raking in the dough. The government doesn't make any money (maybe from land taxes or something but not nearly as much) when a local farmer grows up a crop of fresh fruit or veggies and sells it at the farmer's market. None of that food goes through the government or any kind of facility at all. They don't benefit = they don't endorse it.

Another thing about the food pyramid is the dairy & meat part of it. I'm not even going to start arguing about that one but many of you & me all know that vegans & raw foodists have been living fantastic lives without any of those. They're not necessities. They're big business products being pushed on us to buy. And it's even more angering that the food pyramid is something teachers are required to teach us in grade school! Sure, I guess it's not a terrible diet to live off of, many people do and that's great for them, but it's certainly not the only way to eat so I don't think we should be taught that like it's a set of rules that we must live by or else we'll contract some horrible disease and die.


You know you've made a good smoothie when it holds its peak!

Clearly, I'm still eating grains (re: pancakes). But some raw tricks & recipes I've learned have still stayed with me. I eat mostly raw when I'm at home now and avoid cooking my produce, nuts, and seeds as much as possible. Smoothies have been a huge part of my meals. They are amazing, 100% raw, fast, easy, taste soooo good, have pretty colours, and there's virtually no way you can mess them up! This beautiful yellow (I think I seriously squealed after it finished blending because of the colour that resulted) one had:

1 banana
1 apple
1 navel orange
meat of half a young coconut
& watahhhhh

It's probably the simplest one I've made and yet one of the tastiest. Simplify your life! Food shouldn't have to mean a 15-ingredient recipe followed meticulously. Real food is simple. And the most delicious when it is. When's the last time you ate an orange and I mean reaaally ate it? Like peel each segment apart, look at the brilliant colours nature gave it, observed each tiny dome of juice, held it up to the sun and tore it in half and watched the droplets catch the light, savoured each slice in your mouth like a piece of expensive chocolate, or noticed every single flavour it had - spicy, sweet, bitter, sour, all of them at once? Real food is amazing.