-------------- Original message --------------
From: Danny & Kathy Living <[address removed]>
People often ask Kathy and I questions about what we eat.

I think when they come to our house and see the bamboo floors, the colorful walls, the crystals in the water and the subtle neuvo-hippy decor, they automatically assume that our kids, the birds and even the dog must all be raw vegan.

Not true.

Between the two of us, we have a 19-year old college-age son, two 17-year olds in high school and a 14-year old high school freshman.

Sadie, the dog is 11 and Rocky and Buddy birds are about 5.

Only the birds are raw...

My kids (well, they ALL 4 are mine now, but the two I brought into this world) never really had much of a healthy lifestyle. Their mom and I had, shall we say, different views on what was healthy.

I wanted fresh air, exe rcise and vegetables.

She thought switching from Count Chocula cereal to Pop Tarts WITHOUT FROSTING was a positive change. We always had the cheapest milk, hormone rich chicken and budget beef. I'm not saying the hormones in the milk or chicken had an influence on their bodies, but I recall seeing a shadow of a mustache on Andy's kindergarten picture and wondering if maybe there might be a problem. At age 14, he weighed more than I do (okay, that's not hard to do as I am 158 lbs with a full stomach), but still, I didn't break 150 until I was in my 20's, so I thought he'd grow slower. Both my kids have always been rather sedentary and put on weight easily.

Kathy had a better time. Her kid's father put in less appearances than Santa Claus, so during their growing years, she had full reign. Up until Jr. High, both boys were primarily vegetarian, fit (they still are) and made good food choices.

When I arrived, there was no pop in the house and organic chips in the cupboard were the only traces of junk food I could find. Not a Count Chocula decoder ring in sight.

Now, any of you with Jr. High age kids know that there's an insidious little program instituted by the Government in concert with MacDonald's, Coke, Pepsi, Monster and Burger King called The School Lunch Program.

At this stage in their lives, children are sent to school with $4 dollars, a sweet tooth and free reign over their food choices.

Combinations like french fries and a milk shake, pop from the vending machine and 4 candy bars are allowed. The school (and Sodexo, the distributor of evil) only care that the child comes home WITHOUT the $4.

No dollar left behind.

At this age, kids develop a taste for junk food that they may or may not have received at home. That coupled with tables full of other kids making unsupervised bad food choices in the Garden of Evil makes peer pressure and abundant poison a sure formula for sending kids down the Road to Perdition.

No kid wants to pop open their Lost in Space lunchbox and start gnoshing on an organic kale salad and some flax seed crackers in High School.

That'd have to be one secure kid to with stand the cracks from the Twinkie Breakfast Club.

So, needless to say, after all you left last Sunday, the oven was fired up and left over raw food was passed over for two vegetarian (yeah, Victory!) from Trader Joe's.

To further dispel the myth of the Raw Couple with the Raw Children, we thought in the spirit of Angel Stokes, who sends us her wonderful eJournal each day with her whereabouts, daily intake of food and funny anecdotes, inspiring quotes and informative links, we thought we'd create a daily diary from our home.

The Raw Living Journal

October 3

We had...


* 1 quart of green smoothie made with 2 bananas, 4 stalks of celeriac root, 2 cups of water, 4 organic pears and a pinch of cayenne pepper
* a green salad of kale, r ed bell pepper, tomato, macadamia nuts, red onion, white onion, carrot peels and our famous dressing made from green onions, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, agave nectar and sea salt--this will be our house dressing in Borrowed Earth Cafe!
* 5 Medjool dates
* 1/2 water melon
* slice of neopolitan pie (okay, I had 2 slices) for our bad comfort food while watching season 1 of The Dog Whisperer--we know, don't eat and watch tv at the same time--you all probably think we put on classical music and sit on the floor in the lotus posture and chant over the food: Not true!

Do not try this at home! This diet would probably cause David Wolfe to wince, but, it happens. We like to think of it as Raw Reward Day. Further, whenever we Get Our Sweet On, we like to think we're experimenting with recipes for the restaurant.

On the same day, here's what our kids ate. Some of this is conjecture on our part and some of it is strictly for entertainment purposes:

Andy

o 3 unheated Trader Joe's buttermilk pancakes and a half a smoothie with romaine lettuce contraband smuggled in by Kathy (as for the unheated pancakes, the microwave was SO FAR AWAY and pushing those buttons might damage his online gaming mouse finger)
o 1 unorganic sandwich from the school cafeteria and a coke
o 1 triple decker Dagwood sandwich I made as a bribe to get him to take Stuart to the skate park. The sandwich contained organic turkey, tomato, non-organic Kirkwood mayonaise from Costco, organic mustard, romaine lettuce and red onion on whole wheat
o no dinner that we know of, as that would have potentially risked the gamer's finger again--not worth it with the new Halo 3 game out and all

Adam & Stuart

+ 3 heated pancakes and a half a smoothie with romaine lettuce contraband
+ 1 Sodexo hamburger, carcinogenic french fries and a high fructose corn syrup beverage, our tax dollars hard at work!
+ Dorito's and Monster after school, procured fr om the local corner drug dealer, Uncle Sam's Pantry (the corner of Saratoga and Naper / Plainfield Road)
+ pasta from Trader Joe's with cottage cheese for dinner

If you're wondering why we don't duct tape our kids to the kitchen chairs, pry their mouths open and insert a funnel and pour in green smoothies, if any of you have children, you know that the most powerful thing you can do is lead a quiet lifestyle that exemplifies the behavior and choices you make.

I remember my mom and dad's hand pointing at me letting me know the dangers of smoking, the trail of smoke from the Winston cigarette trailing into the air for emphasis.

When I was older and pointed out the contradiction, I got, "Well, we DIDN'T KNOW the dangers when we were 9 when we started.

You cannot force a child to chose raw food. Nor should you try. Any child that is forced to do something will usually go so far the other way when allowed the freedom (at school or out with their friends). Storm and his wife in the raw family had to isolate their children, probably knowing that it would nearly impossible in the mainstream in an urban area.

We hope that the few years that our kids make their own choices without our criticism, judgmental comments, healthier-than-thou attitudes or anything like that will help them eventually find themselves in a place where our healthy model and quiet behavior and example overrides their need for junk food.

We try to prepare even their meat meals with love and hope that one day they choose raw, or at least, healthy.

As for the pets...

Sadie
+ 2 cups of dry lamb and rice dog food
+ 2 cups of water, with some drooling out in front of her dish

Rocky & Buddy
+ 1/4 cup of nuts and seeds (Yay! Raw Reform! Raw Reform!).

Thank God Sadie, Rocky & Buddy don't go to school in Naperville!

I wrote about what I eat in my book, Yoga: The Secret in a Chapter called, cryptically enough, " What I Eat." I've included the chapter here, if you'd like to read it.

Excerpt from, Yoga: The Secret.

What I Eat

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival
of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
?ALBERT EINSTEIN
Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.
?ANTHELME BRILLAT-SAVARIN
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food:
frequently there must be a beverage.
?WOODY ALLEN, Without Feathers
Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let
the food fight it out inside.
?MARK TWAIN

I think the reason that we are on the Planet is to experience joy.
In order to experience joy, you need to feel good. Feeling good
happens when you are thinking positive thoughts. It is also a product
of the company you keep, the books you read, the things you
watch (or do not watch) on television, where you live, and, this is a
big on e, what you eat.
You are what you eat. I am what I eat.
You?re okay. I?m okay.
Conscious Eating
I think food is experienced on several levels:
Decision?I?m hungry, so what do I want to put in my body? This
decision can be either conscious or unconscious. Unconscious
decisions may result in you eating what?s cheap and/or convenient.
Conscious decisions about what to eat might be more thoughtful:
What food makes me feel good and is good for me, based on my
experience? What food choices are the best for the Planet? What
food choices support local businesses? What food choices available
to me are in their natural, most organic state?
Acquisition?The process you undertake to get your food. This
can be as simple as going outside and picking some herbs from a
pot outside your front door or some berries growing on a bush in a
field. On the other end of the spectrum, it can be as complex as
driving an hour to the grocery store to buy a bunc h of bananas that
have traveled thousands of miles in airplanes, trucks, and finally,
were stickered and arranged on a display by someone who wishes
they?d never abandoned their dream of becoming a pop singer. If
you are going the more complex acquisition route, consider who
has handled your food? Did happy hands powered by a joyful
heart handle your food? Or are you eating the energy of resentment
and anger along with your soup, slammed down hurriedly on the
counter by an over-worked soul who isn?t thinking about what
you?re putting in your body for nourishment at all, but really wishes
they were home hugging their children?

Preparation?Do you prepare your own food or does someone
else prepare it? I think that preparing food for yourself and others is
a wonderful expression of love, not a chore or a hassle. Watch
someone perform the tea ceremony then watch someone put a cup
of water in a microwave with a string dangling over the sid e of the
cup with a tag on it. I promise, each tea will taste different.
Consumption?How does the food smell? How does it taste?
How does it feel in your stomach?
Digestion?How do you feel a half an hour after you eat ? an
hour later ? two hours later? The next day?
Assimilation?Does the food convert to quality energy that
makes you feel good? Does it make you feel bad? Tired? Energetic?
Elimination?When your plumbing is working well, anything
you eat should pass through within 24 hours. Want to test your
plumbing? Eat some corn and notice how long before you see it
pass out the other end. If you have it for dinner, does it appear the
next morning? The next afternoon or three days later or does it go
into some kind of digestive Bermuda Triangle, like Amelia Earhart,
never to be heard from again?
Going Raw
People are curious about what other people eat. When people go
to the grocery store, they often look at what other people are pu tting
in their carts. Then, I have observed that they give the person
the once over. I guess they want to see how the people?s food
choices are working out for them. Consciously or unconsciously,
we are always evaluating our food choices and we are interested in
what other people eat.
So, after all that, what do I eat? Christine asked me to narrate my
practice, sure, but my yoga is much more than the poses that I
practice. Yoga means union, connecting or re-connecting to Spirit,
the part of everyone, everything and me that is underneath the
forms we inhabit temporarily, that Great Unseen Energy Field that
projects itself on to the big Movie Screen that all of it plays itself
out upon. Therefore, my practice also includes the food I eat.
Food-wise, I have been everything ?

I?ve eaten fast food, junk food and everything in between.
However, about a year after starting yoga, I found that meat did not
really agree with me any more.
I have experimented with just about every form of eating.
I have always eaten whatever I wanted. Someone told me that
after I started doing yoga I?d eventually become a vegetarian.
Yeah, right.
I?d been a vegetarian before and even a vegan for a year. But not
a serious vegetarian, just a pick-the-sausage-off-the-pizza, holdthe-
baloney kind.
Serveral years ago, I was visiting some family. At dinner, out of
hospitality, they offered me the biggest filet mignon on the platter. I
ate it all and I remember for the next few mornings as I did yoga, I
felt like an anaconda, that 12-ounce ball of meat slowly sliding
along the 30-some-odd feet of plumbing searching for the light.
Go to the light! Go to the light!
That was the last piece of meat I ate.
As my yoga practice deepened, I started giving more and more
thought to the food I ate.
When I met my wife Kathy, she was about three stages beyond my
food evolution. She turned me on to the wonderful world of organic
produce. I remember the first time I ate an organic Fuji apple.
Whoa. Nature?s candy.
She gave me a bunch of books to read from what I loving refer to
as The Metaphysical Library, a four-shelf collection of books in the
corner of our living room that runs the gammet of subjects such as,
Crystals, Reiki, Reflexology, Herbology, Self-Help, Yoga, Mysticism,
and yes, Food.
All the books aside, it was watching Kathy in the kitchen that
awakened me to the importance of preparing meals with love.
There?s a framed picture in our kitchen that I made. It has a rainbow
swirl background and bears the Sanskrit characters and
English translation of one of the Upanishads: ?He who gives food
finds happiness.?
Yes he does.
Eventually, we stopped eating dairy products and became
vegan. About a year later, we started experimenting with raw food

and that is where we are at now. Who knows where the rest of life
will ta ke us?
Do you know about raw food?
A lot of people who haven?t really experienced raw food will,
when you mention raw food, conjure in their mind the image of
skinny people in Birkenstocks eating carrot sticks and organic
apples, peddling their bicycles to their job at the farm co-op and
back home to their off-the-grid Earth home in the commune in
Oregon at the edge of the forest that they saved from clear-cutting
due to a well-publicized 10-day fast during which they chained
themselves naked to the trees in front of the bulldozers singing We
Shall Overcome and This Land is Your Land.
(Not quite, but it is certainly something to picture, is it not?)
So what is raw food? Simply put, it is anything eaten from plant
or animal sources that has not been heated to greater than 118
degrees Fahrenheit. Dry, sprout, blend, chop, grind, dehydrate,
and/or soak.
Anyone who has not tried raw food, would be amazed if they
tried eating raw food f or 30 days.
Get some cook books out of your library. Kathy checked out
every book on raw food from our local library and even bought
some of the keepers.
Check out the end of this book. I?ve included some good books
that?ll help get you started.
Want some inspiration? Search www.youtube.com for ?raw
food? or www.rawfoodmedia.com.
Work it into your meals gradually. You can start with using
organic produce and making smoothies for breakfast. There, you
are 30% raw, more or less.
Add in a healthy organic green salad for lunch and some
organic nuts and you?re half-way there.
You might even like the way raw food makes you feel. Like us,
You might even decide to go 100% raw. An easy way to tell? Your
dog will stop begging for your food.
Eat raw, feel good, live long.



Love, Light & Smiles!

Danny & Kathy Living
The Raw Couple(TM)

"Eat, Sleep & Live Raw!(TM)"





--
Please Note: If you hit "REPLY", your message will be sent to everyone on this mailing list ([address removed])
This message was sent by Danny & Kathy Living ([address removed]) from The Suburban Chicago Raw Food Meetup Group.
To learn more about Danny & Kathy Living, visit his/her member profile
To unsubscribe or to update your mailing list settings, click here

Meetup.com Customer Service: [address removed]
632 Broadway New York NY 10012 USA