The Growing Advantage...

I’ve been absolutely LOVING cucumbers and sprouts the last couple of weeks...this is very curious to me, as I'm usually not that into either of them...my body just says YES though at the moment – cucumbers smell diviiiiiiiiiiiiiine to me right now...I used to take care of large cucumber greenhouses in Iceland as a volunteer (around the time I went raw in fact) and really wasn't into eating them at all...others would be biting into them as snack food at breaks and I just found them tasteless and dull...I liked working with them - not eating them ;) Lately though I find myself happily munching into whole cucs too - how things shift ;)
I’m also really enjoying exploring different kinds of sprouts...if we were settled in one place, I’d love to use one of the EasyGreen Sprouters to be growing masses of young greens, sprouts and wheatgrass...a friend in LA has her EasyGreen constantly on the go and it’s incredible to see the amount of top-quality food she churns out of it for herself, for ‘pennies’ ;)
One of the questions I’m most often asked is ‘how do you eat well as a raw foodie, on a budget’???

SPROUT ;)

Grow your own micro greens and sprouts – year round, indoors, you’ll have a healthy supply of nutrient-dense, top quality nutrition. For clear guidance on growing your own fresh organic micro-greens and sprouts at home, see ‘Sprouts: The Miracle Food’ by Steve ‘Sproutman’ Meyerowitz.

on February the 2nd I had:

1.5 quarts water
1lb cherries
12oz kale/cilantro/celery/cucumber/spinach/carrot juice
bowl of avo mushed with diced tomatoes, SEEEEEAAAAAAAWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED and masses of sprouts – alfalfa, sunflower sprouts, broccoli sprouts, mung beans etc, served with lettuce wraps, cucumber sticks and a few crunchy dehydrated green crackers
1 quart water
little bowl of refreshing fruit salad: banana/apple/blueberries/papaya
12oz kale/cilantro/celery/cucumber/spinach/carrot juice
little bowl of soaked dried figs blended with hemp seeds
2 cups water
little bowl of fruit salad: banana/blueberries/orange/peach
2 cups water

Those working with a ‘budget’ might also look out for reduced organic items in supermarkets, or start a bulk-buying coop with other like-minded people. Buy filling/satiating, nutrient dense things in bulk or when you see offers – like spirulina, nuts or hemp protein powder…learn to forage and gather your own food…Volunteer your time at an organic farm/CSA/coop for a few hours a week, in return for good organic fruit/veg…or help out at a raw restaurant/facility if there’s any nearby…and yes, above all – GROW YOUR OWN ;)

on February the 3rd I had:

1.5 quarts water
4 black plums
3 sips of OUTRAGEOUSLY intense grapefruit juice
24oz spinach/celery/parsley/carrot juice
bowl of avo mushed with diced tomatoes/garlic, muchos sprouts – alfalfa/whero peas/sunflower sprouts/mung bean sprouts/soaked pumpkin seeds, karengo/wakame seaweeds, served with cucumber sticks and lettuce leaf wraps
1.5 quarts water
1 peach
24oz beetroot/cucumber/carrot/watercress juice
bowl of apple flax with 1 mushed banana and a handful of goji berries swirled in to chew
3 cups water

Why is it so key to grow your own produce? Well...many reasons...among them: it’s cheaper, you can pick and use your produce fresher, you know EXACTLY how it was all grown and cared for, you can grow exactly what you love, in quantities that work for you and if you’re using the method for growing outlined in Anastasia, the plants you grow will actually be producing food that is specifically beneficial and healing for YOU – pretty phenomenal ;)
Aside from all that though, I simply think that at this point in the story, it’s wise for all of us to start taking at least a bit more responsibility for our food supply, as things are pretty much undeniably going a bit ‘wobbly’ with the food chain worldwide. Prices for foods are sky-rocketing due to the ‘oil situation’ and the cost of shipping worldwide, mysterious laws are being passed to nuke raw products and we are likely to see many more big shifts in the structure of our societies and food chains in the coming years.
There are SO many humans here on Earth now (over 6 billion of us), that if everything was to collapse today and we all tried to go out and forage from the land, it seems HIGHLY unlikely that many of us would survive – partly from lack of foraging skills, mainly because there simply isn’t enough food OUT there for 6 BILLION people to forage...OVER ¼ of the Earth’s surface is said to be used in the processes of cattle farming alone…that means more than ¼ of the land has already been damaged in such a way that it currently yields little that we would want to eat...add to that deserts, concreted cities, glaciers, levelled forests and so on...and there’s just not much space left for us to feed from...those who grow their OWN food (and know something of foraging) will be the ones to thrive.
Now, I’m not prophesising doom and ‘the end of civilisation’ here ;) I just think it’s a salient point to consider...most people these days seem to ASSUME their food is going to come from SOMEONE else – grown, picked, processed, packaged by SOMEONE else – i.e. - not nature – another human, or many humans in a long chain of production. Most of us seem remarkably dis-attached from our food source... So, I feel now is an ideal time to start being proactive and get planting and growing some yummies of your own...and for those of you in colder climates, I would HIGHLY recommend you check out the books 'Four Season Harvest' and 'Winter Harvest Manual' by Eliot Coleman, who runs INCREDIBLE farms in the States, growing and harvesting ALL year round, in colder climates. You can see those books here: http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/main/books/books_eliot2.html#harvest.
As for me, my biggest desire is to get to a piece of land and start growing my own stuff...in the meantime, I’ll keep on sprouting, foraging and renegade composting my way along this current journey… ;)

ENJOY :)
One love,
Angela. xxx