Nov. 2006

Pineapple Sage Plant   Nasturtium   Reed Avocado   My soon to be Toyota Prius Dirt Tasting

November and Still Sunny

We have been blessed by so many warms days lately here in Sonoma county. Today I took advantage of the warm sun. After work I laid out on my front lawn and just let my body soak up the sun. It felt so good. I ending up taking a few pictures of things growing in the garden. The one to the left is a picture of a pineapple sage plant. One of the flowers fell on the leaf and I thought it was a lovely scene. For those of you that don't know what pineapple sage is, it is a hardy bush that grows like a weed. The leaves are mild in flavor but the flowers are sweet like pineapple and the plant is said to have  a pineapple aroma. They are great on desserts, just make sure to clear off the ants first. The picture below it is of nasturtiums. Another edible flower that is very peppery. Great in salads. I love edible flowers. Some other great ones are pansies, borage, and wild onion flowers.

Pandora Dot Com

Then I went inside and turned up the radio very loud and danced like no one was watching. Well because no one was:) Actually I pretty much dance like no one is watching even when people are! I've been addicted to http://www.pandora.com It's an internet site where you can create your own radio stations according to the music you like. You can enter in an artist's name or a title of a song and they will find similar songs that you might like. It took me awhile to play around with it, but now I absolutely love it. I was telling someone recently that I denied myself the pleasure of music and now I'm discovering it again. I'm fully expressing myself:) Oh the joys of single hood.

Trip to Berkeley

Last week I went to Berkeley for a little mid week adventure. It was wonderful. At Monterey Market on Hopkins http://www.montereymarket.com/
they had California Reed avocados for 99 cents a pound! They are so beautiful I took a picture of mine last night to your right. They are super rich and creamy. 10 times better than a Hass. I think people don't know much about them because no one was buying them when we were there. I wish people knew how cheated we are to only have a few varieties of avocados in our stores. My favorite type of avocado is Gwen, they are so good! If you get a chance try Reeds and Gwens you won't be disappointed I promise.

After Monterey we stopped at the all organic farmer's market in Berkeley. It's so nice knowing that everything is organic, you don't even have to ask. Anyways not to far form there is the new Cafe Gratitude on Shattuck. Of course we had to stop and take a nibble. I got the best green juice called I am healthy and their Cesar salad called I am dazzling! My friend got the nachos. The picture of the Nacho's and the green juice are below. I love the energy at Cafe Gratitude. We sat at a communal table it was nice. The deserts are amazing, my friend ordered a raspberry cacao cake; it was so beautiful that I got distracted and forgot to take a picture!  My only complaint is that the food is a  little salty for my taste, but for the average person it probably tastes just fine.

 

Green Juice Kick

Food as Art   I am healthy green juice   Raw Nachos at Cafe Gratitude   Fall in Wine Country Heirloom Peppers from Crescent Moon Farms

I've been on a green juice kick lately. I'm too lazy to get out the juicer so every morning I've been blending celery, cucumber, kale or parsley, lemon or lime, and a little beet. Then I strain it through my sprout bag and take it too work. I sip on it and I can't believe that it fills me up at least until noon. Love it! Then I take the pulp and add chopped veggies to it and cover it with a dressing and eat it for dinner. I know, I'm hard core. But who likes to waste food?

Only in Sonoma County

Went to the Sonoma museum and they had an exhibit about dirt. See above. Yes that is soil in wine glasses. The point was to taste the soil from local farms and then see if you could taste the dirt in the produce. For me it was heaven, I've always liked the taste and smell of dirt and it gave me permission to eat it and not feel weird. Only in Sonoma county is it fu fu to eat dirt. Can't you see why I love it here? The apple tree to the left was also part of the exhibit.

The Law of Attraction

I know I mentioned the movie The Secret in my last post and I am still continually inspired by the movie. I bought two books by Ester and Jerry Hicks (They were in the Secret) and have been learning about what they call the law of attraction. Basically it states that any thing you think and feel you attract into your life. After learning about this I just have been so much more positive lately. If what I think and feel is being manifested into my life I might as well think about great things right? If you are interested in the books one of them is called The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham and the other is called Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires I also listed them on my recommendations page. Anyways the picture of the green Toyota Prius is part of the exercises about manifesting. It's my latest manifesting project!

Bye for now, promise I'll write more than once this month:)

As Promised

So here I am again as promised. Never did get to explain to you the pictures on the bottom. One is of me as a make shift gypsy. I didn't have a costume so I just put on a lot of make-up and put a scarf around my head. I went to a Halloween dance party at a co housing community. They didn't have any hard liquor there just wine, very Sonoma county. I didn't drink any of course.

The picture below my shining face :) is of a Jerusalem artichoke. They are also related to the sunflower. It's a root vegetable that when you dig up it kind of looks like you are excavating for dinosaur bones. Anyways they are super delicious kind of sweet and nutty. You can slice them into chips and then dip them in guacamole. I'm sure they are great dehydrated as well.

Fruit Picking

Today I went Persimmon picking on an abandoned Hachiya Persimmon Tree. I like how the persimmon trees are kinda spooky looking with twisting black braches and bright orange fruit on them that look like pumpkins from a distance.
 

Happy Halloween!   Jerusalem artichoke   Jerusalem artichoke   Persimmon Tree   Pear Tree Branch I call this picture Brazil and butterflies. Taken in Sebastopol last weekend.

I also found a pear tree in on the property and picked a few. I plan on dehydrating the persimmons and pears and give them out as Christmas presents. By the way you'll need a fruit picker to pick persimmons, you can get one at your local hardware store.

Surprise

Picking fruit was fun but the best part of my day was that a friend that I haven't talked to in 1 year 11 months called me from out of the blue. I was so surprised! Especially since well he pretended to be the library saying that I had a raw food book overdue. He had me for second. I'm a sucker for practical jokes. Anyways it made my day and I'm so glad to have him back in my life!

It Works

I'll have to write more later but I must say that The Secret  really works! I've manifested some really cool things out of mid air. I guess that is where everything comes from anyway. A quick example is that I cut out a pair jeans from a magazine and put it into my magical creation box (It's an exercise from the book, Ask and It Is Given because I was thinking that I needed some new jeans. Well the next day I go over my friend's house and her daughter was giving away some clothes that didn't fit her and of course there was a beautiful pair of jeans that fit me really well! Don't you love it when things like that happen?

Thank You

Thank You again http://www.welikitraw.com for mentioning my journal. I really only assumed my friends read my collage of thoughts. Knowing that some raw foodies out there glance here once in while I'm motivated to put up some more recipes. If there is anything in particular you want in the journal let me know.

Bye for Now.

~C

Back Again so Soon

It has occurred to me I should write dates with my journal entries, but then again this journal reflects how I think about space and time. I barely know what day it is most of the time:) Anyways like I promised I wanted to talk more about the The Secret and the positive results that I've had with it. And well a few people have told me lately that I am source of inspiration and well that only eggs me on! What a little encouragement can do!

Anyways back to the The Secret I watched it about a a month and a half ago and my whole outlook on life has changed. Before I go on rambling about the virtues of positive thinking I want to be real for a second. From someone who has been struggling with depression since a teenager, I of all people understand the frustration with someone telling you to "Just Think Positive." People have tried in the past and well I just about bit their head off. In my life I have realized that there are many people that have not gone to that dark deep hopeless place. I, however, am not one of them. That place used to be my permanent residence. Watching the person I loved most of all self destruct in front of my eyes and finally taking their life not only made me feel hopeless and powerless, but left me questioning the purpose of life if there was so much pain in the world. If you are reading this from a place of hopelessness, it is from a place of deep compassion that I share with you what I have learned.

I heard before that you create your own reality and I knew about visualizing but it wasn't until I watched The Secret that I learned that there are fundamental laws to how the universe works. One of them is called The Law of Attraction and basically it states that anything you think or feel about you invite into your reality. Your thoughts and feelings become things in your life. For example: if you start your day off in a bad mood the day continually will get worse if you stay in the same frame of mind. The opposite could be said as well. I think it is important to point out that what you feel is just as important as what you think. I always had trouble in the past trying to monitor my thoughts. I tried affirmations and they always felt fake to me. What I learned is that instead of trying control your thoughts, all you have to do is pay attention to how the thoughts you think make you feel. When you are in a really dark place it's not always easy to switch from sad to happy. All you have to do is reach for the next best feeling thought. Even if it is only a minor improvement it will start a momentum and one positive thought/feeling will lead to another.

The importance of this is that whatever you are focusing on, good or bad, your are creating in your life. Your feelings are there to guide you to what you want to create in your life. You don't have to stop thinking negative thoughts, all you have to do is focus on what you want and what makes you feel good. The more you think about what you want (and feel good about it when you are thinking about it) you will create it. The more joy you feel, the more joy you create. The more abundance you feel, the more abundance you create. Kinda ironic but I can see how it makes sense in my life and others.

So anyways, after I watched The Secret I began focusing more and more of my thoughts on the things I want, thoughts that make me feel good. Of course at the beginning, I would slip to my negative thoughts patterns but I kept with it. Slowly but surely I would get signs or little validations from the universe that it was working. These signs would then encourage me to think more positive thoughts and now I'm amazed at how my thinking and my perspective on the world has changed. Considering where I started, I feel like I've come such a long way in such a short period of time. I can't wait to see where this is going to take me. It seems like the possibilities are endless. . . I'm starting to become a positive person! I can't believe it.

I'm not sure I explained everything clearly, it makes sense in my head. If any of this interests you please see the movie or buy one of the books I mentioned above by Esther and Jerry Hicks.

One last thing. The best way to get out of a dark place is to notice all the things that are working in your life and then to be grateful for those things. Appreciation is such a beautiful and powerful emotion. It's one of the reasons I take so many pictures. Taking pictures reminds me to notice all the beauty in the world. If you haven't seen the movie American Beauty in awhile I recommend renting it. I saw it again the other day and I forgot how it good it was. It is about appreciating all the beauty in the world and, well, having a hilarious mid life crisis:)

So to sum everything up: FEEL GOOD:) "There is not one shred of evidence that the Universe is Serious."

Saint Cecilia

November 22 is my saint's day. I was named after the saint patron of music because my grandma said I had beautiful long fingers even as a baby. I guess they thought I'd play the piano one day but I don't. I love music and dancing though. Well this was a quickie cause now I'm going to see fast Food Nation! I'll tell you about later~C

So I did see fast Food Nation, it was a very realistic yet depressing view of the meat and cattle industry. I saw it so I could educate other other but I admit that I closed my eyes during some parts. So as a warning if you don't like seeing animals butchered (who does) just be prepared to cover your face. I would especially recommend the hamburger eating members of your family to go. It might change the way they see hamburgers.

Happy Late Thanksgiving

Hope everyone had a Great Thanksgiving! While everyone was stuffing their faces I had an unusual holiday. I decided to do a short 3 day water fast. I tend to a water fast at least once a year just to give my system a break and rejuvenate. I can't say I like doing it though. It's always been tough for me but a week after breaking the fast I am always glad I did to it because I feel lighter. Anyways today is my first day eating food and I still don't have my energy reserves up yet. I did make it to the farmer's market though and it was cool because they had different types of kumquats. It was the first time I had a limequat! I didn't have a camera but I'll try to take pictures of them later. Well, I better go rest now and please don't try water fasting for more than three days unless you are supervised by someone who knows about fasting for therapeutic purposes like at a fasting center. I recommend www.truenorth.ca/ And If you want to learn more about fasting please read: Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor's Program for Conquering Disease, Forward by Neal D. Barnard It is the best book I've ever encountered on the subject. I myself have not encountered any fasting miracles but other people as told in the book have been really helped by fasting, especially those with diabetes and high cholesterol. See you in Dec!