Pure Jeevan Blog - Pure Jeevan Raw Foods

Well, Wendi and our daughter, KDcat, are headed out this evening on a train for their cross-country tour. They didn't seem so sad to leave ... maybe it's because of the bounty they're taking with them! Check it out in the banner above as well as the snapshots below! (I've included a list at the end of many of the products.)

Natural Zing has been Pure Jeevan's favorite online source for all of our raw food supplies. They have been very supportive of Pure Jeevan for over a year, and they continue to amaze us with their love and generosity. You'll be hearing more about Natural Zing during the tour, because they're Wendi and KDcat's official snack sponsors for the trip!

Read more: Fun-Filled Friday: Laughter

Following up on yesterday's post, today we're going to take a look at the "Clean 15." These are the 15 produce items that, according to research done by the Environmental Working Group, contain the least amount of residual pesticides (even though they're still grown using pesticides).

What this boils down to is: IF you're going to eat conventionally grown produce, these items will harm you much less than those we covered yesterday. So, here's the list, and then we'll try to come up with a sentence to help you (and us) remember everything:

: The Lovely Rhio

Within just a few days of posting our year-end summaries and plans for the future, we were contacted by a few different individuals who asked to interview us. How exciting, right ! We've been diligently working on helping others learn about raw foods, while also helping our raw food community grow in different ways. It's wonderful to be recognized for all that we've done in the past and are currently working on!

Our first interview was thrilling. We were contacted by Rhio, who was overjoyed to have found out about the All Raw Directory that we created for the raw and living foods community. She and her partner, Leigh, were down-to-Earth and easy to talk with. Jim and I both liked them very much. If you've never heard about Rhio (that's hard to believe), she's the author of "Hooked on Raw" and the host of an online radio show called "Hooked on Raw with Rhio," which airs on NY Talk Radio (formerly known as Tribeca Radio).Rhio's radio show is about healthy living, primarily through a raw/living foods diet and lifestyle.

During the interview we talked about the All Raw Directory, our successes with the raw and living foods diet, our projects for the upcoming year, and so much more. The interview is currently available this week on the NY Talk Radio site, during the following hours: Monday, 4 & 8 pm; Tuesday, 9 am; Wednesday, 3 & 8 pm; and Friday, 4 & 8 pm. After this week, the interview will be available as a podcast on a special podcasts page. If you have some time, we'd love for you to check out the interview and let us know what you think. It was our first professional interview, so we'd love to hear your opinions on it! Please also visit Rhio's site if you've never been there before.She is a lovely woman and has a wealth of information available for you on her site.

Original Comments

Below, we have included the original comments from this blog post. Additional comments may be made via Facebook, below.

On January 21, 2009, Paulina wrote:

Can't wait to hear your interview on iTunes!

I hear the question all the time: "Don't you miss eating out at restaurants " My answer is always, "No. I prefer the fresher organic foods I can create for myself in my own home. I can pay the same amount for better food if I stay at home to eat." It's true, too. I don't miss eating out at restaurants. Sometimes I miss the convenience of someone else doing my food prep and cleaning up afterward, but as far as the actual food that I consume, I prefer the foods we eat at home. Besides, when you eat out as a raw foodist, your choices are limited to only a salad if you live in an area with no raw food restaurants.

Sometime last year, as a treat for Jim, we went to a restaurant. I got a huge salad that I used to love when I ate cooked foods at that particular restaurant. I remembered the greens were always dark, the onions were nice and flavorful, and the dressing was a simple oil and vinegar with salt. Well, after consuming only fresh foods in our home for quite some time, the salad that I used to think tasted so great now seemed to be lifeless and limp. It wasn't enjoyable to eat, and I sure didn't like paying so much for a nonorganic salad that didn't even taste good to me. So, we didn't eat out again after that.

Today's post isn't specifically about raw foods. But, we wanted to post a few videos highlighting some interesting research by an Italian doctor named Tullio Simoncini, who just might be onto something HUGE! Dr. Simoncini treats certain cancer patients with ordinary sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), based on his premise that cancer is a fungal problem and that a solution of baking soda is anti-fungal. Naturally, he's been vilified by the medical establishment for making such a seemingly simplistic claim. But, what if he's right?

Here at Pure Jeevan, we're very much into health research -- not so much with an aim to cure any specific disease or ailment, but rather to understand ways in which our bodies can become what we like to call unbalanced, as well as the ways in which we might return our bodies to proper balance, when necessary. In this way, I suppose that we, like many in the natural health world, feel that the body is amazingly capable of healing itself (in many circumstances) as long as the body is able to find a favorable state from which it can properly do what it naturally wants to -- which is to return the body to an optimal state of health.

Medical doctors don't buy into this theory very much. ?However, it's certainly ironic how, where certain areas of standard medical practice are concerned, what I described above is exactly what doctors do. Take something like a broken bone, for example. A doctor does not normally attempt to surgically repair the bone itself. Rather, the standard and time-honored practice is to set the bone (say, with a cast), and then to let your body heal the break naturally, on its own, making those skeletal connections as only the imponderably complex, ever-evolving wisdom of the human body can facilitate. (True, doctors do often intervene these days with surgery for broken bones. But, their aim there is mainly to position the bones for proper healing, and/or to do things like insert pins in an attempt to improve functionality after healing. Either way, the procedure here still relies on the body's ability to eventually heal the problem.) Standard medical knowledge in this area is without question outstanding -- and this is why most people in the natural health world have little problem with going to see a medical doctor for emergency treatment.

Today, for Thankful Thursday, I want to focus on a raw food related subject: Raw Recipe Books! Without the many mouthwatering, visually appetizing recipes that have been created and published, I don't know if I'd still be living a raw food lifestyle at this time.

About two years ago, when I made the decision to transition into a raw food diet, there were some fantastic raw food recipe books available. A few years before that, when I tried raw for the first time with a dear friend of mine, there were books available but none of them were truly gourmet meals. It's amazing how much things change in just a few years! The newer books are filled with colorful pictures of the most visually stimulating foods, which never looked like simple chopped up veggies arranged nicely on a plate. We have a page with many raw recipe books listed, if you'd like to see some of the ones that are available.

I've been back from the Raw Spirit Festival for about five days, now. The first few days I couldn't stop crying. I have a lot to share with all of you, maybe more than you'll want me to share. While away some pretty amazing healing took place. I found myself lifted out of the past and delivered to the future, in a way. I am here, whole, and aligned with who I am on all levels.

Pure Jeevan means Pure Life (or Total Life). Raw food is only part of my life, part of who I am, part of my journey. So, I'll be openly sharing who I am here in this blog; raw food isn't going to be the main focus---it's just part of my story and part of what I want to share.

Until I can sit down to begin sharing everything that transpired while I was away and over this past five days, I'll share some pictures with all of you!