Watch amazing healthy-living documentaries, for free!
Hey peeps! I want to share the low-down on an awesome site I was turned on to by my buddy Glen Colello of Catch a Healthy Habit Cafe. It’s called Top Documentary Films. At Top Documentary Films you can watch amazing documentaries for free!! This amazing resource uses video content that has been shared through other media sharing websites such as Vimeo, YouTube and MegaVideo to bring you an incredible assortment of brilliant documentaries and also provides a place to discuss the documentaries you’re enjoying!! Browsing through their Health category I’ve found ‘Food Matters’, Micheal Moore’s ‘Sicko’, ‘Super Size Me’, ‘McLibel’, and many more! One that caught my eye recently is ‘Simply Raw : Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days’. This film is amazing! Incredibly inspirational and very entertaining to watch! Be sure to check it out and the many other awesome titles this resource has available! So cool to see this great information being spread to an even wider audience!
Much love and happy movie-goin’! ~ Rory :0)
Food Matters!
Hey Peeps! Another awesome documentary is available at NetFlix Instant Play, Food Matters! If you haven’t got a chance to check this film out yet, you gotta get on it!
Food Matter’s is one of my absolutely essential favorite documentaries. Words of wisdom throughout from Charlotte Gerson, David Wolfe, Dr. Andrew Saul and many others! My fave bits are with Dr. Andrew Saul sharing stories of patients experiencing miraculous benefits from simply correcting nutrient deficiencies! David Wolfe pimps the benefits of raw and super foods and Charlotte Gerson shares how organic food, proper nutrition and working the bodies own healing power can bring astounding results! This brilliant group share their perspectives on the deleterious effects of a poor diet, but moreover the astonishing power of nutrition. Often food is underrated as cause and effect of good or bad health, but in this film, food is given its due credit! Awesome accounts of healing stories and a look into the many multiple benefits of healthy eats, Food Matter’s will leave you both inspired and empowered! I highly recommend this film to anyone, no matter where you’re at in your health journey you’ll find something awesome here! Like the title says, Food Matters!
Have an amazing day! ~ Rory :0)
My “chunky style” days
Hello Peeps! Amanda and I recently received a package of photos from her Mom and Amanda was shocked to see some of my photos from back in my early twenties. Why? Because back then I wasn’t just 262 lbs as I was when I began my raw journey… I was about 298 lbs! What a trip it’s been! It made me wonder what I would’ve done if I stumbled upon all the stuff I know now, back then? Would I have dove in head first, 100% raw? Probably not. I would’ve taken the same transition time I did this time around. But, I still would’ve gotten there years ago! I was well overweight throughout my teens, suffering with sinus issues from food allergies and having a bunch of issues with my teeth from soda consumption. I’ve contemplated this before and it’s inspiring me to want to share what I’ve learned with a younger audience. If I had seen examples of people dealing with what I did and turning it around, it would’ve been a big motivator for me. I got a computer back when I was 17 and used it for checking out articles on organic gardening, farming and sustainable living, in between games of Duke Nukem.
Now the internet is booming with raw info, inspirational stories, tons of simple recipe videos and interviews with peeps who’ve radically changed their lives, by making simple changes in their personal menu! Adding in good stuff lil’ by lil’ as the bad stuff eases its way out, is a great way for young peeps(and people of all ages!) to get started. I wanna encourage you to share this info with a young audience. Websites and transformation stories that inspire you and simple healthy recipes. Kid’s rock, and if given positive choices presented in a positive way, they’ll likely give it a shot and at least be aware that change is possible and the journey to where they want to be doesn’t have to suck! It can be as easy as goofing off in the kitchen and enjoying some tasty healthy eats!
Rock on my friends! Keep sharing the love and spreading the raw goodness! :0)
Mom’s progress!
Hey my friends! As you may know my Mom has had some pretty serious health issues lately. She’s suffered from severe water retention, been diagnosed with two cases of Congestive Heart Failure and is now on oxygen 24/7. Now I’m back in Connecticut and assisting her by preparing a combination of raw foods, green smoothies and healthy cooked dishes to get her health back on track!
The cooked meals are vegan, gluten free, salt free and using coconut oil (instead of less stable fats) to avoid trans fat issues. I want her to go at improving her health at her own pace, so by giving her great examples of healthy cooked eats, I hope she’ll be able to utilize them along with raw foods to make her own strategy that will work best for her!
Thanks to our friend Mark’s generous donation of a blender and Magic Bullet, we’re rocking out the green smoothies as they are so beneficial for alkalyzing, remineralizing and oxygenating… getting that chlorophyll goodness flowing! And if that wasn’t cool enough, Penni Shelton of Raw Food Rehab has given us info on requesting a Vita Mix Blender to be donated for her health journey and her Doctor was very happy to fill out his portion of the paperwork! Tommorow we’re sending it off so keep your fingers crossed for her!
I’ve only been back in CT for a week rocking out edible goodness for Mom acting as her personal raw chef and she’s experiencing the benefits already! Im so happy to share that she is 11 pounds down, her leg/foot/ankle swelling drastically reduced, her mobility has increased and her Doctor is having her reduce her medications!! Wooohoooo! Behold the power of healthy eats!
Thank you to everyone for keeping up with her and all the love, prayers and support! More to come of course! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Being Chill is actually a priority!
Hey there my friend! Let’s talk about stress (let’s talk about stress baby, let’s talk about…whoa Salt N Pepa flashback there…ok I’m back) Oh yeah, stress… That annoying, cringe inducing, shoulder tightening, and stomach wrenching response to all those annoying things we face in our day to day lives.. yeah that stuff! Well up until my 20′s I thought it was perfectly normal and rational to live with that stuff. To be stressed out over upsetting thoughts, financial situations and world events seemed like the rational response and although I was a pretty happy go lucky guy, I did let that annoying state of mind dominate me from time to time and I figured those who didn’t appear stressed when confronted by tough situations were kinda like those maniacs in the apocalyptic movies that are giggling uncontrollably as the world falls apart around them! So what changed between now and then?
Well after seeing examples of people who contemplated the sorrows of the world, but didn’t let it bog them down was an eye opener for me and soon I found myself wondering “What’s the use of being stressed?” I mean, if I did all that was in my power about a situation, than why should I waste my valauable time worrying about it?? Well after rinsing and repeating this notion through my inner scalp, it finally began to sink in! What does stress do for us anyway?
Well like I said in the begining, stress causes actual physical tension, how about that? A thought, a state of mind twisting us up in knots on the physical plane. Well it actually goes beyond this… Chronically dwelling in a state of stress is annatural. In nature stress was an indicator that the poop has hit the fan and we need to run for it! But, in our modern society that concern is usually not abounding,. but rather a bunch of background concerns, like financial issues, political and world events, job concerns and family issues. Well some of these things can be totally out of our hand, but we feel like holding onto that stressed state of mind is natural. In nature that might’ve been the right response, but when we can’t run away from our threats, we gotta learn that it’s ok and actually a priority to let the stress go and focus on being chill!
When we allow ourselves to be engulfed by chronic stress, our body reacts to it as though there is a constant physical threat, our stomach tightens, our digestion is thrown off, our metabolism slows, cells go into defense mode, our ph balance leans towards acidic (which causes a host of issues), our nervous system becomes taxed, and our muscles become chronically tense and rigid. In other words, stress can be detrimental to our health sometimes waaay more so than the things we were stressing about in the first place!
Stress also has a another nasty side effect. It leaves you feeling distracted and your judgement clouded. When we’re stressed, the key to our slavation can be right under our nose, but we wouldn’t see it unless we relaxed and allowed our focus to look beyond the negative! Let’s take a look at professional athletes for a moment… nice segway eh? I’m not a sports buff myself, but you can learn a lot from people who’re pushing themselves to the limit in their game of choice! For instance, have you ever noticed that the best players looked calm when they scored those last minute goals? Or that they pulled off things with an almost cocky self confidence? Well that appearant arrogance comes from training yourself to be totally relaxed, even under stressful conditions. This is so important because if they weren’t relaxed, they wouldn’t have been able to see that opening, take that shot and score those points…it would’ve been lost in a haze of stress and self doubt! Well we can use this same principle in our daily lives!
By training ourselves to be relaxed in the face of stress we gain so much! We can see oppurtunities and soltuions that may have otherwise eluded us, and we have our wits about us. And if stress can cause bad things physically than imagine what good physical effects being relaxed can have! Our body can release it’s tension, maintain a healthy appetite and metabolism, our heart rate can get back to normal…we can breath again! And our cells in a relaxed comfortable state recieve signals from our brain that say “everything is groovy” (yeah, groovy!) and in this state of being they can continue their amazing work of maintaining our health and creating the best version of ourself! The biggest benefit to realizing that being chill is priority numero uno, is that we can see the many wonderful things in our lives again! All those lil’ things that were obscured and overlooked are all of a sudden back! This includes of course people! How often do we notice, that we have loved ones who may have been missing us while we were spacing out over stress? So be chill… it’s good for you, your internal community and your family, friends and loved ones!
Have a chillin’ day! ~ Rory :0)
Kung-Fu’ing those cravings!
Hey My friends! Are you confronting junk food temptations on your raw path? I’ve been there and it can be a pain in the butt, but there are some ways we can deal with all the tasty, but crappy goodies that surround us!
Wether it’s the baked goodies in the break room at work, the maze of fast food joints we have to drive through, or the sodas and candy at the check out counters of nearly any retail store you hit up (including, twistedly, plus sized clothing outlets!) there are less than ideal eats everywhere we go! At home we’re bombarded by advertisements for pizza and burger joints on tv and many local joints so kindly leave their fliers and magnets in your mailbox. Well here are some strategies that I used to comfortably side step all the junky munchies that abound!
First thing I would do when confronted by a less than ideal option would be to think about why my raw food options rock so much, rather than focusing on why the unhealthy eats suck! This kept the things that I wanted to eat in my mind, leaving lil’ room to think about what I didn’t want to eat! When we waste our time thinking of the negative side of unhealthy eats, it just gives them more air-time on our internal radio and invites our inner rebel to pipe up and defend our former food choices and encourage us to eat them for the sake of being “bad”! So let’s avoid that mental game by thinking of what we want to eat!
Next on the home front I pimped out my kitchen making it a constant reminder of the awesomeness of rawsomeness! Bowls of fresh fruit, a fridge stocked with beautiful greens, my favorite raw and healthy living books decorated a shelf below the food processor and ya remember those pizza place magnets? Well we cut them up and glued them to the back of photos of our favorite raw creations, slapped those on the refrigerator and now we got our own subliminal advertising!
Strawberry Pie with Banana Ice Cream! One of the photos we used for our fridge magnets!
When leaving the house I would be sure to pack some of my favorite raw treats, some fresh fruit and often a chocolate or green smoothie with me. And I always brought more than I thought I would need! This worked out really great because when I would be confronted by something junky, I could fill up on the good stuff and have no room left for cravings! This trick works great for grocery shopping, mall walking and at the movie theatres… I didn’t tell you that! But, seriously, for the price of a medium popcorn and soda you could treat yourself to dinner at a raw restaurant! While I was out I would also scout out places that had healthy options, so that if I forgot to bring my stash, I could pick up something else!
For my work lunches I always put a lot of attention into making them awesome and tasty. because it’s easiest to be raw at home, I would save my awesomest treats for when I would be faced with less than ideal options! Rather than saying things like “Thanks for the cake offer, but I have carrot sticks.” I could say “Thanks for the cake, but I already have some chocolate filled cinnamon rolls!” You should’ve seen the faces when coworkers tried them and realized this is what raw treats can be! I also liked to put a lot of love and positive intentions into my packed lunches because it made me that much more enthused about eating it the next day!
The Chewy Chocolaty Goodness Bars from my Sweet Support E-Book, are a worthy opponent to beat out candy bar cravings!
Lastly, but not leastly, if you find yourself eating something you’d rather not have don’t waste a minute beating yourself up! If you beat yourself up often, you’re going to invite that inner-rebel to pop up again and defend you by bashing your new healthy lifestyle! Rather than beating yourself up, take that time to boost yourself up instead! Some of my favorite raw recipes came from slipping, eating some junky snack, and pondering “How can I make a rawified version of this?”. There’s no need to be hard on yourself, just whip yourself up a green smoothie when ya get home and let the negativity slide!
Keep rockin’ in your healthy living adventures! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Enzymes aren’t the “end all be all”, but that’s cool!
Hey everyone! As you may often discover when getting’ into the world of healthy living, some things aren’t always what they seem to be. When I first got into researching the benefits of a raw diet I kept coming upon the importance of enzymes and how cooking damages and deactivates them, it’s in many of my favorite raw books! I thought it made total sense and have even written a post in the past based on what I’d read up on, but the more I delve into enzymes lately… the more I think they may have been a lil’ overhyped. Let’s check out what’s what … and be not afraid it doesn’t mean raw rocks any less!
The work of Dr. Edward Howell was awesome for his time, but modern science is showing that the active enzymes in raw foods may not play as crucial role in digestion as we thought they did! Enzymes may do some predigesting of our foods when we cut, chop or blend our fresh fruits and veggies and release them, but they don’t appear to have a noticeable impact on digestion.
Anatomy pics are kinda gross, but visuals are fun!
There are others theorizing that enzymes are being transported from our digestive tract and being absorbed into our blood stream, while this may be true in some cases, there isn’t sufficient evidence out there to show that this is helping to assist the work our own metabolic enzymes. Now this doesn’t mean that someday they won’t find out that they actually do, but when talking with other’s about the benefits of a raw diet, we don’t wanna go on theory alone! Check out “Becoming Raw” by Brenda Davis RD, Vesanto Melina MS, RD and Rynn Berry for more info. It’s a great book with loads of scientifically referenced material about raw vegan diets and why they rock! Check out my friend, Bitt’s review of this awesome book!
Thought ya might need a cute animal "palate cleanser" after that previous picture!
Does this mean that eating raw foods is any less awesome? Heck no! I’ve experienced the benefits of raw foods and continue to, it just means that one of the reasons we thought unheated eats rock may be unfounded, which means there is more going on with raw munchies than we thought! Figuring out just what is the most magical thing about our fresh eats is a fascinating adventure on it’s own!
Also there are two plant based enzymes that do something pretty amazing for us (in their raw active state) and they are myrosinase (found in Cruciferous veggies such as broccoli, arugula, cabbage, bok choy, turnips, kale and watercress ) and alliinase (found in Allium veggies such as onions, garlic, chives and leeks). When veggies in these families are chopped, blended, processed, or chewed the enzymes are released and they immediately begin to break down the plant’s phytochemicals into very beneficial bioactive metabolites that have some amazing health benefits for us… such as being antiviral, antiarthritic, antiparasitic, and can also assist our liver in it’s work of detoxifying our blood! But, if we were to neutralize these active enzymes with cooking, this break down process wouldn’t occur and we’d be missing out! So there’s a good case for keeping enzymes in their active unheated state!
Get your myrosinase and alliinase on!
One of the biggest things we may be hearing more and more about is the power of phytochemicals (plant based chemicals that plants use to defend themselves from stress, pests, pathogens and environmental issues) which are usually more available in unheated foods that have been blended, juiced or ran through a food processor than they are in cooked foods! There’s a lot more to the awesomeness of raw eats and I’ll be getting into some of the specifics in even more detail in upcoming posts, so stay tuned!
On an anecdotal note papaya and pineapple based digestive enzyme supplements, have worked wonders for me when I went vegetarian (especially with the increase of beans in my daily menu!)! They’ve also helped me during my raw transitioning, like when I over did it on sulfurous veggies after reading “Eating for Beauty” by David Wolfe. I went on and onion, radish and MSM spree for a week and wound up with gas pains that left me feeling like I was having a heart attack! After eating a whole roll of papaya enzyme discs I felt almost instant relief. So there is definitely something to them!
Keep rockin’ my friends and lemme know what you think about enzymes in raw eats! Much love ~ Rory :0)
We Like It Raw Rocks!
Hey my friends! If you dig raw and healthy foods, fun active lifestyles and havin’ a good time you gotta check out We Like It Raw. Organized by Dhrumil Purohit and Philip McCluskey, We Like It Raw is a community hub and blog that highlights peeps in our extended online community of health and life loving peeps and is also a blog featuring recipes, articles, inspiration and some awesome information!
Dhrumil Purohit is an amazing guy! He’s constantly working guiding people through the wholistic healthy living world and bringing people together in the community. He put together WLIR back in 2005 as a place to achieve these community building goals!
Goofing off with Phil and friends at Raw Spirit Festival East
Philip McCluskey is pretty darn incredible himself! He’s a healthy living motivator and raw food expert. Back in 06′ Philip was 400lbs and decided to take to raw foods, well he lost 215lbs and has become a shining example of what is possible when we take our lives in our own hands and enjoy the bounty of awesome raw eats that are available! Philip can be found online sharing the raw love all over the place and on his site Loving Raw! Be sure to check out his story and tell him Rory says Hi!
These two cool mamajamas and other contributors have created a great place to check out some peeps from all over the world who share common goals and interests, drool over some tasty recipes, and learn something new…so go check it out! While you’re there be sure to check out some of the fun articles I put together for the WLIR crew! Like ~
Gettin’ Ripped on P90X and Raw Foods (lot’s of info on how I got pumped up with raw eats and Tony Horton’s fun workout tutorial!)
Banana Ice Cream Split (fun, easy and tasty raw dessert recipe!)
Banana Ice Cream Split...Oh Yes!
My ‘My Way’ article which gives you a lil’ in depth look at some of my past adventures on our Live My Life NOW Trek ..including my bungee jumping experience!
Keep exploring and reaching out to the awesome community that surrounds us! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Chillin’ with Tim Van Orden!
Hey Peeps! This trek has been chock full of awesome synchronistic events and this was certainly one of them. Through the help of some friends we ended up making it just in time for an amazing presentation by Tim Van Orden!!
Me & Tim!
Tim Van Orden is an amazing guy, he got into raw foods about 5+1/2 years ago and with his Running Raw Project, he has made himself a human guinea pig for the performance enhancing effects of a raw foods diet, but his story goes waaaaay beyond that! Tim was battling with severe depression when he started out and found some serious relief through his new lifestyle which focuses on well being, not just diet, not just movement or excercise, but philosophy. A philosophy that I can totally relate to and that is choosing the moment you’re living in …and embracing it!! Accepting it as a gift and using it for all it’s worth!
His incredible talk touched on so many things, but one subject stuck out immediately to me. Tim talked about something that can easily get left out when people get their minds set on taking on a raw lifestyle: the importance of community and socialization. If we don’t take the time to connect with and relate to others and let the dogma of a raw diet (that many of us may stumble into from time to time) seperate us from friends, we may miss out on something that impacts our health greatly and that is embracing our fellow human beings!! It can be done, we can be raw and have friends, we can reach out to people and we can relate to people even in their lifestyle aproach isn’t our own.
Amanda and Kim Willard of Rawkin' Lane County!
One sure fire way to make it work is to lose the focus on food in our conversations! I’ve been there in the begining, so psyched about my raw lifestyle and it’s benefits that I bored a few friends to near death talking about it! We just have to focus on the reasons we love our friends and family and shoot the raw breeze with fellow fanatics! We all may notice that we chat about different things with different friends as we share some common interests with different peeps…so it’s easy to use that rule of thumb when it comes to our diet and lifestyle choices! I hear from a lot of people who feel alienated by their new interest in raw foods and I wanted to share it here because I believe that we can bridge these gaps, have our friends and eat our raw cake too!
After Tim’s talk we were about to head off when Kim Willard of Rawking Lane County offered for us to crash at her and her friend Roy’s place…where they were also hosting Tim for the the night! We headed off with them and had the most surreal night ever, talking, goofing off (especially Tim, he’s quite a character!), rebounding and whipping together raw pizzas at 2am!! We all prepared different portions that would make up the finished pizza’s so each lil’ raw pie was infused with a lil’ bit of love from everyone! Awesome idea Kim!! We chatted til waaay late before heading to bed and I gotta tell you surreal and wonderful are the only words I can find to describe it! It’s a night that I won’t forget and to be sure I wrote it down..right here!
Raw Pesto Pizza with marinated veggies and topped with lot's of love!
Keep rockin’ my friends, maintain those relationships, make new ones and trust me there are plenty of peeps out there that love talking about raw foods and the raw lifestyle so we don’t gotta torture our friends who may be wanting to chat about other stuff! Much love ~ Rory :0)
Don’t Forget to Add the Love!
All of us getting into healthier eating have probably heard the phrase “You are what you eat.” about a million times by now and it is an important thing to consider, but beyond all the nutrients, phytochemicals, minerals and macronutrients there is something that we should never leave out of our eats… love!
Think about it. Why are you going through the extra work of preparing your own food? Why are you looking for healthier options? Whether it’s for you or your family it all comes back to love! We make our health a priority because we care about ourselves anough to make sure we’re eating the good stuff and we do the same for our family… we can say it’s because a health guru said we should, but the real underlying reason is because we care! We want to enjoy life, feel good and realize our true potential! So we should contemplate that while we rock out our tasty healthy goodies!
When we focus on the loving reasons we prepare our eats we infuse that energy right into our food and I’m not just talking in some intangible new agey kinda way… I’m talking literally! I mean just check into emotions effects on water crystal formation! And we’ve all heard how plants respond to loving intentions! There’s some awesome info out there and it makes sense on so many levels to put that emotion and gratitude into the meals we create for ourselves and our family.
We all know that a sweater woven by us for someone who cares for us always feels warmer, produce grown by farmers who are passionate about their work always tastes best, and Mom and Grandma’s food always makes us feel good because it was made with love! We can create that same effect by pausing, taking a deep breath and remembering all the loving reasons we’re concocting our own foods. When we do that we enjoy the whole process so much more and we end up with a creation that contains that special ingredient!
Here’s a Vid I did for the Geeked Fu Challenge about adding that special ingredient!
Cheffin’ it up for friends on the trek!
Hangin' with our friend Misty from Raw Food Rehab! :0)
Hey Everyone! The Live My Life Now Trek is going awesomely! I’ve gotta say the awesomest thing about the trek so far is all the wonderful people we’ve been meeting along the way! We’ve met up with people from our vast online community from Raw-Fu to Raw Food Rehab and many Peeps who’ve found me through youtube! It’s been so amazing hanging out, getting to know them and their families and learning more about the areas they live in. There are so many things about a place you visit that you’d never know unless you talked to someone who lives there! We’ve been geocacheing with Misty and her family, we hit up the Saturday Market in Portland with Mallory and her family and I actually assembled the recipes and Amanda took the photos for Sweet Support in Mallory’s kitchen! We’ve played board games, hit up parks and went health food store hunting with so many fun people since the trek has begun!
The Infamously Delicious Horchata Cake (recipe in Sweet Support!)
One of the things that I really love to do when were staying with someone is to whip them up some awesome raw goodness! It’s such a joy for me to be able to do something nice for the amazing people that let us crash with them and take a break from the van! Many of our hosts will pick up some awesome ingredients and I whip us all up something good! So far on the trek I’ve rocked out raw ice creams, cinnamon rolls, cakes, cheezecake, cookies, pies, and savory dishes such as salad with hemp ranch dressing and full blown raw tacos with the works! I love concocting stuff in the kitchen and especially enjoy sharing my creations with friends and loved ones, so it is such a win, win, win situation!!
Random pretty flower from a trail in Oregon
If you host us along our adventures please don’t be shy to ask me to create some raw goodness, it’s a fun way for me to give back and I get to play in the kitchen! Much love everyone and keep an eye on our route to see when we might be near you.. and your kitchen! Dun dun dun! :0)
Let’s Get Playin’ In the Kitchen!
Remember when you were a kid and playing in the kitchen was a blast? Many of us had fake plastic foods and toy ovens. Sometimes Mom or Dad would have us help out when making a special treat and around the holidays? Time spent in the kitchen was fun and full of wonder… let’s keep that goin’!
If like me, you’ve decided to take charge of what you’re eating (whether we’re talking raw foods, whole foods or healthier cooked options) you may find yourself spending more time in the kitchen as you’re working with the raw ingredients to create dishes that are not only healthy, but freakin’ delicious! Now I’m a hardcore foodie and love goofing off in the kitchen, but I know that most people aren’t as fond of the kitchen as I am so let’s take a look at some ways we can make our time in the kitchen more enjoyable!
First thing we can do is to pimp out our lil’ culinary creation stations! Best way to start is to do some de-cluttering. I like to empty out the kitchen drawers, cabinets and closet so I can see what I got to work with! You may find you have ten of the same wooden spatula or enough pots and pans to cover five stove tops. In this case gather up your essentials and favorites and donate the rest to your local goodwill! My rule of thumb is if I haven’t used the item in the last five months…its fair game for giving away! Now we got some breathing room and we know where everything is so putting together our favorite recipes is going to be a lot easier and more fun!
Let’s bring in some things that really make the kitchen our own. Artwork and photos of things that inspire us, scenes of nature, colorful abstracts or breathtaking pictures of people doing things we’re working towards are great reminders of why we are so passionate about being healthy! I also like to have a centerpiece of beautiful produce that doesn’t require refrigeration and have fresh flowers around whenever possible! Set yourself up with a warm friendly atmosphere and you’ll find your kitchen a more inviting place to not only whip up tasty eats, but to chill in and enjoy them!
Owl City.. one of my fave bands to groove to in and out of the kitchen!
Another thing that can’t be overestimated is the power of music! Listening to music carries me through even the most tedious of kitchen tasks… like dishes! Whatever you love rock it out! I feel a boom box is an essential piece of kitchen equipment, but if your neighbors disapprove, an mp3 player loaded with your favorite stuff can be a great alternative! Speaking of mp3’s there are so many amazing educational podcasts and audio learning programs available out there that you can be learning more about healthy living, raw foods, meditation or even a new language all while goofing off making food! And in the name of really goofing off don’t forget comedy albums. George Carlin, Eddie Izzard and Tommy Tiernan are some of my favorite comedians. Nothing makes any job go faster than some good laughs!
Let’s all get rockin’ in our kitchens and take away that stigma of the kitchen being a place of work and start transforming them into our own lil’ creative culinary art studios and alchemical nutrition laboratories where we concoct delicious, artful and ridiculously healthy eats for ourselves and our loved ones!
Keep playin’ in your kitchen my friends! ~ Rory :0)
Our Awesome Inner-Potential!
Hey you awesome person you! Yeah I’m talking to you! Just thought I’d remind you that you rock! Sometimes we let that lil’ annoying internal critic (Haha If only it had the voice of Jay Sherman (Jon Lovitz’s cartoon alter-ego in “The Critic”) it’d be easier to blow off!) and those nagging doubts get the best of us. This especially happens when we start to push past the boundaries of our comfort zones as we change our diets, our lifestyles, or decide to live in a van for almost 2 years…ok that’s me talking. :0) Those internal voices start to pipe up and spook us back into the old familiar ways… that’s when we need to pause, breathe and inform them kindly, but firmly that we aren’t interested in what they’re selling!
All the health gurus, celebrities, professional athletes and other people we are often amazed by are people…like us! Heck some of them even started out in worse situations then we are in right now! As I write this and you read it, there are people with disabilities doing things we couldn’t possibly imagine doing, there are elderly people doing complex yogic moves and ordinary peeps pushing the boundaries of what is considered “humanly possible”! We have such amazing potential lurking within us it just needs us to realize it, get excited, have a lil’ faith and take those first steps in the direction we want to go!
While your inner annoyers are mulling over your stance (and trust me it may take them sometime to accept it so you may have to remind them from time to time!) you can also let them know that you’re also not going to be wasting any time beating yourself up when you stumble because you’d rather spend that time picking yourself back up! You got the potential, you have access to the most amazing information ever, and you can connect with thousands of like-minded people 24 hours a day online so go for it baby!! :0)
Keep rockin’ your awesome potential, because You can do iiiiiiiiittttttt!!! :0)
Check out the video I did on realizing your potential for the Geeked Fu Challenge ~
No-Mess Massaged Kale Salad
Helloooooo there! Do you love kale? Well even if you don’t this salad may just change your mind…it sure impressed Isabel, who is not a fan of salad, let alone kale!
When we began our trek I did a shout out to my friends at Raw Fu who are participating in my Geeked Fu Challenge. I asked them “How do you travel raw” (I swear I wasn’t eliciting stories of indecent exposure on the motorway!) and they had some awesome tips and tricks for rockin’ raw eats while on the go! Angie’s kale salad recipe sounded really good and easy so we gave it a shot while hanging out at Mount Hood in Oregon.
No-Mess Massaged Kale Salad ~ Super easy, tasty and mess free…perfect raw road food! Let’s get started!
Large zip close bag (gallon size)
1-2 Heads of kale
1 Large avocado
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
1/2 teaspoon of onion granules (or powder)
1/2 teaspoon of cumin
Pinch of cayenne (or more if you like it hot, hot hot!)
Tear kale leaves from the stems and rip into bite size pieces tossing them in the bag as you go. Cut the avo in half, pop out the pit, and squish out of the skin directly into the bag. Juice the lemon into the bag, using your hand or other straining device to catch the seeds. Sprinkle in salt and spices. Now Squish!! Once the salad appears evenly coated and massaged to your liking it’s ready!
The salad was so tasty that Isabel rated it up there with my vitamix made ice creams! So if likening a salad to a dessert is any indicator of awesomeness…this salad is BOMB! Enjoy my friends and eat more kale!! :0)
Heading to California and beyond!
Hey my friends!! If you’ve been followng our Trek across the United States so far then I have some news for you….
The Live My Life Now Trek is heading in a new direction! Rather than going through the upper middle portion of the country. we’re going to be heading south! Ths new course will take us through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Lousiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia before finally ending in Hampton Pennsylvania!
This is a rough estimate of our new route. A more specific route will be announced in a few days.
Our new route came about after a lot of thinking. One of our biggest motivations was that the adventure is so amazing that we want to keep it going (the new route will take approx. a year and four months!) and Isabel will get to see even more amazing parts of our country that she’s only read about! The new route will also allow us more chances to meet up with people to spread Amanda’s inspirational story and put together meet-ups, talks and raw recipe demos!! Another plus of this new route is that we will avoid extremes of weather (very helpful considering our interesting living situation!).
We are in the works of locating areas and meet up groups along the new route to share our adventures and some raw recipe demos and talks! If you are along our new route and would like to walk with Amanda, host a meet up, or talk with us or have us crash at your place and whip up some raw goodies, then hit us up! Looking forward to more oppurtunities to spread the inspiration of Amanda’s journey and some raw and healthy living info!
Wishing you the best and hope t0 see you long the way! :0)
Mallory’s Story, awesome inspiration and advice!
Hello everyone! Amanda, Isabel, Shadow and I had the awesome privilege to hang with a friend of ours from our extended online family, Mallory!
Meeting Mallory we felt as if we’d know each other for years. She is funny, smart and has a great way of looking at things! We had such an awesome time getting to know her, her family and pets. Even Shadow had some fun(ny) interactions with one of their cats, Hannibal. Their first meeting Hannibal was not
expecting to see a big black dog in his house upon returining from his daily stroll and made himself a new exit through (yes through!) the screen door! After finally realizing Shadow is prohibited from eating cats he went on the offense to make sure Shadow was truly in her place, by sneaking up and batting at her. It was too funny although Shadow looked a lil’ frustrated, ya can’t blame Hannibal for living out every cat’s fantasy!
Aside from being an all around awesome person to hang with, Mallory also has an amazing story to share, She has learned much about healthy living and after getting into raw foods she has lost 90 pounds so far, experienced many improvements in her overall well being and has gained the empowerment that comes from taking your health into your own hands, she also has some amazing advice to share! So go on and check out our video and you’ll also get to see Hannibal’s 15 minutes of fame!
My Big Jump!
Since we started the Live my Life NOW Trek, Amanda has been receiving emails and messages from people that’ve been inspired to do all sorts of things that they’d been putting off….now it’s my turn!
I’d been pondering things that I always wanted to do, and besides traveling abroad and building a strawbale house, one of the things on my pre-bucket list was to Bungee jump. Well we happened to stop at a hotel recently and notice that one of the best Bungee coordinators in the country is right here in Washington…coincidence or synchronicity…you be the judge! Either way I had to take this oppurtunity!
We headed over to Amboy, WA and walked up a beautiful trail to the bridge. When we got there several people were gearing up and prepping for their jumps. The view from the bridge was fantastic, and while watching a couple of people ahead of us take their turns I was getting amped up! Luckily Shadow was able to be there as a one of the spectators, because you should’ve seen her ”wtf head twists” as she watched the people go flying under the bridge and bouncing up and down before being reeled in! The other jumpers thought it was hysterical as we pondered what she was thinking of this craziness.
Shadow pondering human behavior and wondering if she should've worn her harness instead of the collar!
When it came time to go I got my harness checked, rechecked, and climbed over the railing onto the platform. Lookin’ down to the river below was breathtaking. I won’t give you some bravado macho crap…it was freakin’ scary…in a fun way of course, although you can clearly hear Isabel say “It sounds like a horror movie!” as I descended towards the river below at around 70 miles an hour. Better than any rollercoaster I’d ever experienced, and the repeat bounces after each jump were both jarring and amazing! As I was hanging around waiting for them to drop me the retrieval line the view was freakin’ awesome! If bungee’ing (probably not a real word, but I like the way it sounds!) is one of those things you’d been wanting to do, then ya should go ahead, look up a reputable group like these peeps in Amboy and get your jump on…cause it kicks a$$!
Gettin’ Geeked Up by being thankful! :0)
Hello lovely people! SO many people are always commenting on my ree-gosh~dang-diculously upbeat personality….I’ve heard it all before from…”Man, did you just win the lottery?” …or “What the heck have you been smokin’?” Well for the serious inquiries here’s one of the things that has me smiling very often…
Being thankful….seems like a simple enough thing…and often reserved for “Turkey Day”, but just contemplating all the lil’ things in my life that I’m grateful for totally shifts my perception right to where I want it…on the good stuff! This lil’ trick has been with me since waaaay back in pre-raw days and it always brings a smile to my face. No matter where I was at in life I could always find things to be thankful for…and the more I focused on them…the more grateful I became and it’s an awesome feeling! Not only does contemplating things you’re thankful for make you feel good, but if you’re thinking about people you’re thankful for then who knows…maybe you’ll reach out, let them know and pay the thankfulness forward!
As raw foodies nowadays we have a butt-ton of things to be thankful for! There are so many awesome free resources available online to get you started on the journey, loads of recipe demos, awesome raw communities, meet-up groups and an ever growing community of raw and raw-curious individuals! Suppliers of raw food staples and raw treats are abounding and the ever increasing demand is bringing the prices down! All the peeps with a new-found love of organic produce are supporting the sustainable farmers that are working to keep the world a beatiful place! Raw resteraunts, cafes and pre-packaged raw foods are popping up everywhere! And the stories of raw transformations are becoming more and more common! So if you’re gettin’ raw or just adding more raw eats to your diet….you have a lot of awesome things to be thankful for!
Have a grateful day! :0)
Rockin’ Geeked Fu!
Hey everyone! If you’ve been diggin’ my youtube videos and have an interest in enjoying more tasty raw foods and their awesome benefits, then I suggest you check out what I’ve been up to at Raw Fu….don’t know about Raw Fu?? Well Raw Fu is an awesome online community led by the wonderful Bunny Berry! The site is a great place to connect with others who are getting (or haven been) into eating more raw and living foods! Bunny guides the members of the site through challenges that range from 30 on up to 100 days. These challenges are aimed at various aspects of raw living and are designed so that anyone can get involved and benefit wether they want to go high raw or just get some more salads or green smoothies into their weekly diet. The atmosphere of the group is very welcoming and supportive and I’ve had an awesome time being a member of the community and being a part of Raw Fu’s Vlog Posse….but, now Bunny has asked me to take it to another level and lead a challenge!
This is an awesome oppurtunity for me to share my aproach to raw living and some of the philosophy that guided me through my raw transformation and that is…to focus on the funness of it all! Many of the influences and inspiration that lead me to wanna eat raw were all about how neat it is to actually enjoy eating healthy, what sort of things could I accomplish with the changes that could come from this change in diet?…what changes could happen? How can I make awesome dishes without cooking them? These thoughts amongst many others (which I will share through upcoming videos on the Fu!), are my own personal inspirations and aspirations that made transitioning to eating raw such a comfortable and fun adventure!
Taking this into consideration…the theme of my challenge is gettin’ geeked up…geeked up about raw foods, their benefits, about changes that may be possible, about benefits that many are having, and other fun things you can play around with that may improve your life and health…and heck..just gettin’ geeked up about LIFE! So since I get to name my challenge I’m calling it Geeked Fu! And how long is this challenge going to be going on for? Well I could’vwe said hey I’ll just knock out a quick 30day challenge (what with us all going on the road and what not) , but I couldn’t pass up the chance to rock it out with Geeked Fu for anything less than 100 days….so if you’re there…you’re stuck with me! The whole experience with Gettin’ Raw for me has been fun and exciting and I wanna spread that vibe to all my friends and all the new members of Raw Fu! If you’re not a member yet then get there and get Geeked Up!!
Here are some of the first weeks vids to catch you up …….
Live My Life NOW Trek!
Hey everyone! This summer is going to freakin’ rock! Starting May 15th Amanda, Isabel and I will be travelin’ across the United Sates……and Amanda’s gonna be walking!!
Amanda has always wanted to be active and travel across the US, but she felt that she had to lose weight to prepare for such a mission…this led to her being discouraged and feeling like “What’s the point?” …until she realized that she doesn’t wanna wait anymore and is gonna live her life NOW! She’s not only going to prove something to herself…she’s hoping to show you that you can do it as well! Get up and live your life NOW!
Along the way we’re gonna be hitting up various venues (details to come!) sharing the story and ya know I’m gonna be doing some raw food demos and some talks!
We will be departing from Seattle, WA and ending the trek in Hampton, PA. The journey will take us through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; and we wanna meet you along the way! If you’d like to walk with Amanda for part of her mission as we pass through your town and to find out where we’re gonna be doing demos and talks check out www.livemylifenowtrek.com.
Also, just released today, we will be having a send off party at Chaco Canyon Organic Cafe in Seattle, WA on May 13th from 7pm-9pm. It’s free at the door, but we will be accepting donations for the trip. For more info on what you can donate go here.
Have a freakin’ awesome day~ Rory :0)
N.O.F.A. summer conference!
One of my all-time favorite events is coming up this August 7-9th, The Northeast Organic Farmers’ Association Summer Conference! Organic farming and gardening has been a passion of mine since I was a teen and this event is Mecca for gardeners, farmers and wannabe farmers as well as anyone interested in sustainable living!
There will be literally hundreds of different workshops with topics ranging from gardening and farming to herbalism and yoga. A lil’ something for everyone! I’ve attended 4 or 5 of these annual conferences myself since I discovered NOFA CT back when I was in high school. It has always left me brimming with new ideas, inspiration, and hope for the state of our planet after being surrounded by and attending workshops presented by such enlightened and motivated people doing hard work in an effort to cultivate not only plants but, peace, community and knowledge!
After attending many of these conferences I’m really freakin’ geeked up to be a workshop presenter at this year’s conference! In my workshop entitled “Getting Into Raw Foods” I’m gonna talk about the transforming effects raw foods have had on me and the potential benefits they can have for you, explain some basics of a healthy raw diet and (of course) gonna crank out some yummy recipes and give out samples!!
There will be a couple of great keynote speakers this year! ~
Will Allen the CEO of the non-profit foundation Growing Power. This awesome organization supports community food systems all over the US and now internationally!! Check out this quick video to hear from the man himself! I can’t wait to hear his talk!
Paul Stamets, a Mycologist on a mission, will be talking about mushrooms, other fungi and their many uses and applications! He is also author of the book Mycellium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World. Here’s a video of him explaining 6 of the ways these awesome fungi can do it!
This fun and educational conference, held at the University of Massachusetts, will also be loaded with activities such as craft workshops, dancing and live music! Vendors selling everything from farm fresh goods to handcrafted natural soaps are gonna be setting up shop! I’ve picked up a good chunk of my sustainable living library at this annual event for great prices! If any of this stuff sounds good to you I strongly encourage you to check out the NOFA Summer Conference website and I hope to see ya there!! :0)
Gotta love enzymes!
Before I got hardcore into raw-foods I thought I knew quite a bit about the health benefits of certain foods, which fruits and veggies had high amounts of antioxidants, polyphenols, vitamins, minerals etc, but, I hadn’t bothered to think about enzymes and knew lil’ if anything about what they do or just HOW important they are to our health and well being. I’d like to share a bit of what I’ve learned about enzymes and how this info got me even more geeked up about eating raw “living” foods.
Un-chicken Salad wrap!
I had understood early on that cooking food can dilute or denature vitamins and minerals as well as changing the molecular structure of the food itself, even creating carcinogenic properties when food is burnt. But when delving into the raw-foods world I learned that one of the biggest things we lose when we cook foods are active enzymes.
Why are enzymes so freakin’ important? Well to put it simply our body couldn’t perform any of it’s vital functions without them. Enzymes aid our body in digesting and assimilating our food, some enzymes alert our immune system to the presence of cancerous cells, and without their assistance our DNA couldn’t replicate itself!
How to they do that voodoo they do so well? Well enzymes are catalysts for every biochemical reaction that takes place in our body! They lower the amount of energy required for a chemical bonding or un-bonding to take place by becoming a lil’ landing platform (of sorts) for the two chemicals about to undergo a change. When these chemicals “land” upon it the enzymes holds them in place and either brings them together or bends them apart causing a physical reaction. These reactions would be impossible for our bodies to perform without the help of enzymes.
When we constantly eat foods that have had their naturally occurring enzymes denatured by cooking our body must produce it’s own digestive enzymes to pick up the slack. To make the digestive enzymes (the enzymes that enable digestion) it has to use metabolic enzymes (the ones responsible for all those amazing functions that keep us goin’) at a ratio of 10-1. That means it takes up to 10 metabolic enzymes to create one digestive enzyme!! What a bum deal eh? This is one of the main causes of that energy-drain we feel after eating a heavy cooked meal.
On the flipside if we we’re to consume more foods with their digestive enzymes intact, such as raw-foods, they pretty much digest themselves! This leaves our body not only with much more energy but, think of all those vital roles that were previously tied up by the need for digestion… How many ailments do we face that could have been caused by our body not having enough of its metabolic enzymes free to do such amazing things as healing, regenerating, fueling our cells and being weapons in the arsenal of our immune system? Then imagine what it could do with an abundance of these helpful lil’ protein catalysts!! They can make us stronger and healthier, they can re-build us, they have the technology.
Hope all this science stuff didn’t bore ya too much! Have an awesome weekend. PeAcE! :0)
Health for the sake of health?
A lot of people get caught up in the idea of healthy living and the how’s but, sometimes lose sight of the why’s! Why you choose to maintain and improve your health is just as important as how you do it. Your reasons for taking a healthier path are what’s gonna keep you goin’ when you get frustrated by some of the challenges along the way. There are numerous logical, personal, emotional and spiritual reasons for changing eating and excercise habits, the ones that matter are the ones that matter to you.
I want to take a moment to share some of the reasons that I got so geeked up about gettin’ into raw-foods and improving my health.
More energy!! ~ The coolest thing I’ve heard and read (before experiencing for myself) about raw-foods is the increased energy that comes from eating an easy to digest enzyme loaded diet! I wanted to be eating “rocket fuel” so I would have the energy to do fun stuff!! I used to try and do it with caffeine and sugar but, realized this wasn’t the way to go for long lasting and healthy energy.
Weight-loss! ~ I wanted to get in good shape and drop some excess weight to look good and feel good! I also was daydreaming of gettin’ into some activities that I’d either gotten out of shape to do such as martial arts, skateboarding, hacky-sacking, hiking, yoga, and maybe some of this stuff someday in the future….
Haha! That would be freakin’ awesome!
Avoid getting sick! ~ Being sick is just plain sucky! No fun in that. I wanted to reduce the number of times and the duration of time I’d get sick so I could avoid missing work, being forced to spend my time in bed or being groggy and not feeling up to having a good time. Plus I had suspected (and later found to be true) was that much of my “sickness” was actually either a direct or inderect symptom of wheat and dairy allergies! I realized doin’ the raw-vegan thing was one way to cut those factors out!
And last but, not least~
Avoiding major illnesses later in life~ I know that a lot of the chronic diseases that are plaguing people can be traced back to what they eat. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, osteoporisis and many others can be caused by our diet and/or the lack of nutrition in it. I hear stories all the time of people who are being bankrupted by their medical expenses, bailed on by their insurance companies (check out the movie “Sicko“ for many people’s real life acounts of this), or are just miserable and disabled for a good bit of their later years. I didn’t want to live like that or be a burden on my family financially so I decided to take my health in my own hands by eating healthy!
Other motivation came for me in the positive effects goin’ raw-vegan would have on the world! A vegan diet alone can reduce one’s carbon footprint immensely, conserve water and land as well as spare a lot of the animal cruelty going on in our modern factory farming practices (check out the video and book ’Diet for a new America’ by John Robbins for more info). Goin’ raw-vegan adds the benefits of waaaay less food packaging waste, less energy in preparation, and more self-sufficiency in the form of easily being able to grow a lot of your own food in your own backyard!! (which I cannot wait to begin doing when we settle on our own patch of land ….oh yeah!!)
So those were my personal reasons ..the “whys” of working to improve my health, and they keep me goin’. When the “hows” would get annoying I would daydream of my reasons and I kept on trekking! I’ve come to realize so many of the benefits of my raw-foods diet which I’m so grateful for and I may not have gotten here without those daydreams!
What are your personal reasons for taking on a healthier road in lifes highway? Think of them, write them down, keep a lil’ note-card with them on you as a reminder if you like (a trick I learned from listening to a speech from Victoria Boutenko), and most importantly of all daydream! If you’d like please feel free to share your reasons in the comments section of this post!
Rock on everyone and happy dreams!! :0D
Keepin’ it raw and keepin’ it real!
I’ve been quite caught up in the Rawkathon! There’s so much great info to glean and awesome people to be inspired by! Hope you got a chance to check it out!
Some stuff in particular really caught my attention … all the great advice on advising people on their quest for health! Karen Knowler’s talk on coaching was amazing! It really re-fired my passion and gave me some cool ideas to go forth in my quest! And reminded me of something I always knew internally…that any plan on improving one’s health needs to take into account your emotional and spiritual reasons for embarking on such a journey! Go for your goals with a holistic approach, remind yourself of your reasons and inspiration for going raw and be sure to take care of your heart and spirit while on your quest to improve your health! I loved when she was talking about raw and un-processed foods as being real food and since you are what you eat, the more real you eat the more real you are! Literally!
My goal with my website, recipes videos, and sharing about my raw-transformation is to inspire and educate others about the options available to get the most out of life and feel great through great eating! I’m constantly motivated by all the awesome people out there showin’ love for my videos, recipes and just letting me know I got ‘em to laugh! Thanks to all my raw and non-raw homies out there for the good vibes! To all the cool people at Raw Fu…Keep kickin’ butt and best wishes on your challenges!! For those who haven’t checked out Raw Fu you need to get involved with it! Bunny Berry is freakin’ awesome! A real sweetheart with a passion and talent for getting people together and takin’ on raw-living with each-others support! So if you’re interested in getting more hardcore with raw or meeting some cool peeps go check it out. You’ll find me there quite a bit gettin’ in on all the cool forum topics!
Friday is grocery day here so as I exit I’d like to leave with this picture of our fruit-laden stove!
Peace everyone and have an awesome weekend!
