I am sorry for being a pain and I do my best not to confuse anyone. But I exported this blog into my regular blog http://fruchtundgruen.blogspot.com/. If you like what I have to say, I would be happy if you could join this blog and follow me there. Every fruity person I meet, even just online, is a gift. ♥
I had created this blog especially for my poetic side, without being scientific or acurate at all. I just wanted to share my love for fruit. But having two blogs seems unnecessary to me now, especially when they talk about the same thing: fruits. :-)
I am a lover of juicy fruit. I love oranges, lychees and fresh apples. Those organic supermoist dates are perfect for dateorade. And I just fell in love with this baby pineapple which has the sweetest pineapple smell I ever smelled. I let my husband smell it and he was amazed by the sweet and pleasant smell. I cannot help but think that this is what the Universe has thought of as a gift for those who let go of the many earthly pleasures and make their way to fruit paradise. It is not easy to overcome food addictions, but it can be done. Old habits die hard, but they die. Believe me. I remember having the worst cheese cravings which must have been related to some cheese I had had some months prior to that. I didn't give in and after some days they were gone. I remember having coffee cravings. And other cravings for substances you don't want to have in your body. When your body detoxes these substances, they are released back into your system and you might crave them during this time. Just wait and breathe deeply. Deep breathing allows the body to detox at a faster rate. Have faith that these cravings will eventually die off, because they really do!
I have also started fasting one day per week, and boy I do feel the effects. I fasted for one entire day and the following week from dinner to dinner (24 hours). I realized how important it is for me to eat all raw before I fast. When I eat raw the days before my fasting day, fasting is so ridiculously easy. Before my second fast I had eaten cooked veggies the day prior to that, and fasting was not so easy but rather a question of willpower. I only fasted 24 hours. But since I have started to fast, I seem to detox even after I have started eating again.
I also feel I do much better on fruit. I was hoping that fasting would help my assimilation of nutrients, because I have eaten gluten for so long. I feel that it definitely does. I eat more fruit, I enjoy it even more and I feel healthier overall. I sleep better. And I do enjoy fasting while I am doing it. It is a real pleasure. I did some morning fasts until 1pm just because it felt so good. I did not have any particular problem that I am aware of before these short fasts, and so I simply start to feel better and better. I am really looking forward to eating fruit, and often times fruit does replace the cooked veggies I am used to eat every day. I do not want to force myself to stop, so I just wait until the desire stops naturally.
I will keep on fasting for one day every week, and will do so until I no longer feel any benefit. After some more short fasts of one day, I want to fast for three days. I cannot say how excited I am to fast for a little longer! I feel so good after a fast, and this of course motivates me to see if there is any limit to feeling good.
I am grateful so many people chose to write books on fasting, and that they share their knowledge with me. I feel blessed to have discovered fasting and the fruit diet. ♥
For Christmas my dad gave me raspberries next to a lot of other amazing fruit. I still love this pressie! ♥ The raspberries were so good and deliciously sweet that everybody else had more of them than I did. So these last weeks, my husband and I have been buying fresh raspberries twice, just to indulge a little more. I have raspberries standing next to me on my desk right now, and I can't even begin to describe the sweet, flowery and fruity smell that attracts me to eat them.
I have a very special relationship with raspberries. ♥ When I saw my husband for the first time, I knew I was going to marry him. I just knew it was him. I had visualized a man just like him for years before we even met. So when I finally saw him - as you might have guessed, of course in the last place I was expecting to meet somebody - I just knew he was the one. We didn't really talk for three month, but then started to get in contact with each other. About a week after our first date, we spend the day in my place and went out for a walk. It was a beautiful, sunny summer day in August, which I remember vividly. When we came accross a large raspberry field where farmers grow all kinds of berries, the raspberries just looked too good and I picked some. My husband said he needed to say something and he was hoping I wasn't going to be offended, and that I didn't have to reply anything. I thought something was wrong or that he was going to tell me how hard farmers were working and that I shouldn't pick their raspberries. I just wasn't expecting anything positive. I said "Okay, go ahead". And then he just said "I love you". ♥
I remember this day when I see, smell or think about raspberries. ♥ They will always have that special meaning to me.
Saturday morning is always the earliest morning of my week. When I come home on Friday, I have done my job for five days in a row and now can let it all go and just relax. This state of relaxation gives me the deepest and best sleep of my entire week. I have been observing this for years now. On Saturday morning, I will often wake up at 5am and feel wide awake and full of energy. I got up this morning and cleaned our place, read some books and juiced my last blood oranges of the season. When I feel so full of energy, citrus juice will often be all I want. It is one of the lightest foods there is. ♥
I talked about how I received of all these exotic fruit for Christmas. ♥ Today I mono-ed on these physalis. They are mildly acid, and just like their lychee friends, they are very refreshing, too.
On a fruit diet, it's wise to take the advice from long-term fruit eaters and eat until you are totally satisfied. If I don't meet my caloric needs with fruit, it will be with something cooked later in the day. After all, you need energy. Another observation is that the longer you eat raw, the better you absorb nutrients and the less food you need. But given that most of us come from a cooked food background, it seems smart to eat more in the beginning to help you stay raw. I guess nutrient absorbtion keeps on getting better and better and your body gets healthier and cleaner, until you feel that raw food is the only food you want.
I am still happy to have a break from my usual diet consisting of bananas, dates, apples and oranges and veggies, both raw and cooked. I normally don't buy lychees or physalis because they seem too small to make a meal out of them. The easiest way to get your energy in is probably eating bananas. There is a reason the biggest community chose the name "30 bananas a day" and not "4000 lychees a day". ;-)
Happy New Year 2011. ♥ May we all find joy, happiness and fulfillment everyday. ♥
Some days ago, I learned about Amy who lives in Costa Rica. She seems to touch everyone deeply. Her lifestyle is like a dream. More information on Amy is included in the article below. Michele also blogged about Amy. And so did Erthmum. What an inspiration!
From the Cement Jungle of Manhattan to the Tropics of Costa Rica A Transformational Journey to Natural Living
by Amy Schrift
What inspired a dedicated New York City jazz trumpeter and music teacher to put her horn in its case and set up a homestead in the rugged jungles of Costa Rica? Perhaps it was the one decisive evening when, after observing the ill-effects of eating typical restaurant food on a gig, I decided to switch to a healthy simple diet of foods from nature in their unprocessed and uncooked state. I felt deep within that this was my path and I haven’t looked back since.
As my body began to cleanse and purify, so did my thoughts. I soon began to max out my New York City library card with books on spirituality, nature, permaculture, and, gardening. Through my investigations, I began the practice of sun-gazing at sunrise or sunset with bare feet on the earth. I then took a natural vision course and let go of 25 years of corrective vision by “embracing the blur” and allowing my natural vision to determine what I needed and didn’t need to see.
Combine that with barefoot walking and foraging for wild foods through New York City parks and it wasn’t long before I realized that I truly desired only three things which I considered to be my natural birthrights: fresh air, pure water and fertile land. Fast-forward to the beginning of my fourth year living solo in a lush starry-skied oasis I now call home; a 17–acre piece of land in southern pacific Costa Rica, nestled in the mountains between the city of San Isidro del General and the surfers’ town of Dominical, four hours south by car from the capital, San Jose.
Here where everything is so vibrant and alive that linear time seems to all but vanish in the unending ebb and flow of life cycles that surround me, I have assumed a lifestyle that is simple, rustic and free of such modern conveniences as a car, (one can only enter the land by foot) refrigerator, oven, stove, furniture, lights, flush-toilet, washing machine, hot water heater, television, radio, and even a bed (I sleep on a mat on the floor). I thrive on the newfound creativity and resourcefulness inspired by the concept of “less is more.” I feel empowered by no longer giving my life-force over to machines that eagerly do our work for us while our bodies deteriorate from disuse.
I live amongst two simple structures made of nature’s provisions: a wooden storage shed with a dirt floor for my personal belongings and a round thatched-roof structure with no walls and a wooden floor called a rancho, also known as a palapa in Mexico, where I sleep during the rainy months. During the dry season, I sleep on a small yoga platform under the open sky, allowing cosmic radiation to freely penetrate my body while enjoying some of my most peaceful and deep nights of sleep. Not to mention the delicious feeling of waking up with morning dew in my hair!
I grow, harvest and recycle my own food, consisting of tropical fruits, citrus, low-sweet vine fruits, heart of palm and some wild greens. By returning them to the earth in their digested state, I joyfully complete the food cycle, as all other life forms do. I generate almost no trash—as there is no trash collection here, one is painfully aware of what can’t be reused or recycled. I often bathe in the cold, flowing waters of the creek that runs through the property and always feel deeply cleansed and recharged afterwards. I live chemical-free: sans shampoo, soap, detergents, toothpaste, crèmes or lotions. If I can’t swallow it, then I won’t put it on my semi-permeable skin! All that is natural can be cleansed by nature. And pure living water, the ultimate cleanser, is abundant in this part of the earth.
A typical day on the land looks like this. In the morning, I am awoken by the “surround-sound” of howler monkeys greeting the first light of dawn, as I begin a daily practice of meditation, yoga, air and sunbathing—my true breakfast of the day.
I prefer to eat between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., when the sun is at its strongest and my digestive system is correspondingly most alert and active. Meals require no preparation and usually consist of one thing eaten until satiated: a pineapple, a few mangos, a handful of bananas, or the liquid and jelly-like meat of a few baby coconuts. I experience each fruit as a beautifully and uniquely wrapped gift complete in its own dish, containing a perfect balance of sun-charged nutrients that my body needs. In nature, food combining and indigestion are seemingly non-existent and an added advantage of consuming mono-meals is that it is difficult to overeat. Your body will definitely tell you when you’ve had enough.
Spending most of my time outdoors, I find myself following the relative position of the sun throughout the day and relishing its warmth, its aid in healing my wounds, and its limitless capacity to energize my entire being.
After a day’s work, I eat my last meal and retreat to the spiritually charged hours of dusk for repose, reflection and renewed focus on the breath before retiring for the night. As darkness descends, much of Costa Rica’s wildlife comes out to hunt and feed. I am both grateful and awed by their graceful, silent movements. Without the use of artificial lighting, I feel much more attuned to my body’s natural rhythms.
The other days of the week may include a trip to town for supplies, teaching English classes in the nearby village, overseeing farms of friends who are away in the U.S., an occasional social gathering, or a trip to the warm Pacific Ocean.
But perhaps most of all, I value the many hours in silence that I spend here, accompanied only by the sounds of flowing water, birds and insects. It is in these moments of deep undisturbed thought and heightened awareness that I feel my deepest connection to all that is. I am filled with gratitude and the unconditional love that surrounds me. One of my favorite pastimes is to lie on my back and gaze up at the ever-changing sky, a true metaphor for our lives.
As I wander silently amongst the flowers and trees, I feel open and receptive to their needs, as I have watched many of them grow from seedlings. When such a flower blooms in its splendor, you can’t help but feel nature’s loving embrace.
I have surrendered to the mosquitoes and other insects who faithfully bring me back to the present. And yes, I have come within very close range of snakes, scorpions and large spiders who will almost always retreat if given right of way. Most of the snakes here are non-venomous and to avoid those that are dangerous, I stay on clear-cut trails. As I slowly release my ingrained fear of them, I am instead mesmerized by their rapid, slithering, undulating movements, unique to their species.
The only thing to really worry about in nature is our unfamiliarity with it. As members of the animal kingdom, it is designed so that all of our needs can be met here.
On a recent visit to San Diego, CA, I was reminded of how concepts that I have come to take for granted in the tropics could be much more readily applied in an urban setting. For example, we can reduce up to half of our trash volume by installing animal-proof compost bins in every household or apartment complex, recycling food scraps and garden clippings into fertilizer for gardening and landscaping use. We can reduce water use by diverting grey water from sinks and faucets to a collective storage unit where it would be filtered and used for landscaping and gardening needs. Additionally, we can urge our representatives to adopt a system similar to the one used in Germany where trash is paid for by weight. This leads to much more efficient composting, recycling, and the removal of packages at the stores where you buy the products—a signal to manufacturers that they need to share in the burden and provide packaging that is recyclable and/or returnable. If you accumulate plastic bags, reuse them by rinsing them and hanging them on a line to dry. You’d be surprised at how long they last! Lastly, seek out fresh, local organic produce growing on trees in your neighborhood. If you have your own, foster community spirit by sharing your abundance or ask neighbors if they will share theirs. You can offer to pick fruit for both of you, a win-win, especially for the elderly or for those who simply don’t have time. You may even find yourself eating more fruit when you taste the difference between locally sun-ripened vs. store-bought fruit. Ultimately, each of us must create the changes we want to see, one empowering step at a time. May all who yearn to break free from the mold discover a lifestyle that is more in harmony with our natural rhythms, Mother Earth and our higher calling. And as they say in Costa Rica, pura vida!
My daddy gave me all this beautiful fruit for Christmas. Today when I came home, instead of my typical banana smoothie, I had these super fresh, slightly sourish lychees. What a nice change! I realized how important it is to have some variety from time to time.
Bananas, dates, apples and oranges have been my staple fruits during these last weeks. I am grateful to have access to such high quality fruit. We have an awesome organic store just around the corner! The quality is always excellent. I can buy in bulk and get boxes of bananas and oranges at a lower price. It's nice and relaxing to know that an abundant supply of fruit is waiting for you in your home. ♥
Right now I am in love with those fresh little juicy lychees though!
Afterwards, I had one of the star fruits:
Some beings that have been able to develop in nature are just so amazing to look at, aren't they? There are so many animals and plants that are just spectacular. The beautiful star fruit being one of them!
