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Favorite Raw Reads

There are books you read, and then there are books that can change your life. When it comes to finding books that will help you make changes to the way you eat, one of the key “ingredients” to being successful with your new effort, is to build a collection of recipes that you enjoy making, eating and sharing. This is especially true if you wanted to start integrating more live and raw foods into your diet.  

Below are a just few books that I find myself turning to over and over for great recipes, new ideas, loads of resources or just for the fun of reading!  

What are some of your favorite raw books?

                   

Name That Green!

When it’s said that “variety is the spice of life,” greens are no exception! 

Plants “allow” humans and animals to eat ALL of their fruits, but only PART of their leaves, because plants need to have leaves for their own use – which is manufacturing chlorophyll. Yet, plants depend on moving creatures for pollination, fertilizing the soil, and helping eat the ripe fruit. For this reason, plants accumulate a lot of highly nutritious elements in their leaves, but mix these nourishing ingredients with either bitterness or very small amounts of alkaloids (poisons) – which is why animals are forced to rotate their menu. They eat a small amount of one thing, then move on to other plants. The body is only capable of detoxifying small amounts of a great many things, but it is much more difficult for the human system to get rid of a large amount of one type of poison. This is why it’s so important for us to learn to rotate the greens in our diet.



Simply eating “lots of salads” is not truly benefiting you if you’re using the same greens over and over.  

It’s important to alternate our variety of greens as much as possible. My hope is that our farmers will actually grow a larger variety of green leafy vegetables to increase our green intake. Many of the greens available in grocery stores are mostly bred from the dandelion and mustard families. Despite their names and appearances, cultivated greens have similar nutritional content. To truly meet our nutritional needs, it’s important we include greens from a number of totally different plant families into our daily diets. 

So, the next time you’re making a salad, consider adding a combination of 4 or 5 greens.  Consider adding a few of these:

Greens:   Arugula (rocket), Asparagus, Beet greens (tops), Bok choy, Celery, Chard, Collard greens, Escarole, Fresee lettuce, Goji leaves (wolfberry), Kale (3 types), Mache, Mitsuna, Mustard greens, Lettuce (all types red and green), Radicchio, Radish tops, Spinach, Romaine lettuce green and red leaf, Turnip greens, Wheatgrass

Herbs:  Basil, Cilantro, Lemon Balm, Mint, Parsley, Peppermint leaves, Spearmint

Ready to experiment a litte more the next time your shopping?  I hope so! If you have a great recipe you’d like me to share, send me an email! news@debifarley.com 

Juice Feasting

As some of you may or may not know I decided to do a 92 day Juice Feast starting on April 1. My reasons for doing the juice feast are varied and I would like to share them with you.

First of all I did my first 92 Day Juice Feast in September 2009 not only because I had always wanted to but to support a friend of mine with bladder cancer. I will talk about her journey in another post. My goal during that feast was to clear my body of toxins and to reset my body both spiritually, mentally, and physically. It was such an amazing journey that I talked about doing another feast all of 2010 but because of my social and work schedule it was very difficult to carve out the time. So I started out 2011 thinking I would do another one either this Spring or Summer and after finding that I could no longer train for the triathlons here I am!!
My biggest reason for being here is very difficult to say but it is the reality of the situation. This past fall I found myself in several social situations in which I chose to eat cooked food rather than be uncomfortable or cause discomfort by speaking up about my Raw Food Lifestyle. I started out with very healthy choices and made conscious decisions about how I was choosing to fuel my body. However, the cooked food did end up triggering something that lead to making not so healthy choices. I even made choices that I knew would affect my health and cause discomfort but I did it anyway.
When January rolled around I decided that it was time for me to take back control and went back to my 100% raw diet. However, I found that I was having cravings and would often go out to dinner and find it very hard to stay raw. I did do better on the unhealthy choices. Therefore, my goals this time around are very similar to what they were in 2009. I want to reset my body so that I can maintain my raw lifestyle as I know that I feel so much better when I am eating like this.
I am also planning on taking this time to dig deep and look at what I truly want over the next few decades, what that looks like, and then laying the ground work for that to happen. To assist in that I’m also taking a media break. I have decided that I will not watch TV unless it is something highly educational, work related, exercise related, or spiritual. Today is my 4th day on this journey and my TV has only been on twice. That was to watch the semifinal NCAA games with VCU and Kentucky and to watch the DVD on how to use my juicer. It has been really kind of amazing how I don’t think about what is happening around me and that I feel more positive and up beat, better about myself and my life because I’m not hearing all the gloom and doom of war, the advertisements that tell us we are not skinny enough, pretty enough, or young enough. Not that any of that ever bothered me anyway but on a subconscious level it does get in there whether we realize it or not. I am also not using my computer unless it is for work purposes.
I will be spending a lot of time over the next few months talking about my journey. I invite you to stay tuned as I provide you with information about juice feasting, what that is, the benefits of a juice feast, and to answer the biggest question of all “why is it a juice feast?” I will also go more in-depth about a couple of things that I mentioned earlier; media influence on our daily lives from an emotional standpoint, food triggers and cravings and the cause of these and many more topics.
Any thoughts, questions, or comments please feel free to post.
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