• RawforLife website here
• RawforLife Blog(articles)here
• RawforLife monthly e-zine

• Raw Food Preparation Classes £70

• NEW RawforLife Saturday Social £25 (food included)

• RawforLife Support (e-mail) £30-£100

• RawforLife Support (telephone) £25

• Forthcoming Events: A New Kind of Raw Event!
• Feature Article: 30 Days Raw for Weight Loss
• SUPER Food of the Month: Tomato
• Recipe: Easy Nori Rolls
• 'Pick of the Blog': 'But people have always cooked food....'
• 'Raw When Poor': Really ripe figs
• Book of the Month: Essene Gospel of Peace

	Autumn Classes, AND...A New Kind of Raw Event!
	Which RawforLife Event would suit you?
	Thursday 16th October	RawforLife Experience £70
	Saturday 8th November	NEW - RawforLife Saturday Social (food included) £25
	Thursday 20th November	Fruit 'n' Leaves £70

The RawforLife Experience is my conventional raw food prep class. Full of demos and recipes, to provide practical help and inspiration for those new (or newish) to raw transition to a raw food diet. Find full details here.

Fruit 'n' Leaves' is a class for those new to raw, or long-term raw foodists, who are interested in a lighter and simpler raw food diet, with a focus on fruit and leaves. Find full details here.


AND THE RAWFORLIFE SATURDAY SOCIAL IS THE NEWEST OF ALL!


It's a special, low-priced event (£25, including lots of food), designed to be accessible to all. Because, as winter draws nearer, I want everyone to be able to BRING ON THE SUNSHINE by attending a RawforLife raw food event this Autumn.

Here's a rundown:

YOUR £25 WILL INCLUDE:

• A Raw Food Banquet - at least 12 delicious raw food dishes

• Recipes - recipes for dishes served on the day

• Talk - theme: 'Yes, You Can Stay Raw During Winter.'

• Make Raw Friends - with practical help from me (but if you just want to come and eat - that's fine as well!)

• Those who aren't very raw at all and are just interested
• Those new/newish to raw
• Experienced raw foodists
• Those with raw food (or related) businesses
• Non-raw partners, friends
• Children (over 10 only please)

30 Days Raw for Weight Loss

So, ready to try 30 Days Raw for Weight Loss?

(pic is of Chris Carlton AFTER raw)

Daily Eating Plan

I suggest including in your diet each day food from each of the following three groups:

• Sweet fruit
• Green leafy veg
• Fats (eg avocado, raw olives available here , nuts, seeds if you are vegan -raw vegetarians may include raw dairy)

(pic shows the raw non-dairy tzatziki referred to at the foot of the article; enjoy with salads, crudites or flax crackers)

'I've only been on the diet a week and I feel awful!'

It's likely that you are experiencing detox symptoms, which occur when your body thanks you for the rest from the toxic food and takes the opportunity to do a little (further) cleaning-out. For more explanation see 'What is Detox?' in the RawforLife May e-zine
However, for everyone's sake, could I remind you that I am not a doctor, and if you experience anything more severe than cold symptoms, you should consult a health professional.

'But I still feel hungry...'

Do you? Really? Have you ever experienced true hunger? I don't think I have. Yes, when I ate cooked food, I often experienced the 'gnawing' referred to earlier, but I now know that wasn't hunger. The burbling and empty feeling we experience when the stomach empties and the food moves into the small intestines isn't hunger. But we've been brought up to believe it is and that on that signal we must immediately pile in more food. Try thinking of that empty feeling as 'a stomach at rest'. Someone once said to me 'but a car can't run on empty and neither can I!'. Well, we can of course, as our fuel comes from the sugar in our system from the food of the last 24 hours, not just from the last meal, and when that's exhausted, our bodies will still run fine, as they will start munching...our fat! (The body will use fat for fuel long before protein reserves are threatened).

But, if you feel you can't hold out, don't worry - just have some more of any of the food I've mentioned, but...hold the nuts.

Cravings

If you smell cooked food, breathe in and enjoy the smell. Then tell yourself, 'smells good, but that's not food.' And, yes, you can do this even if you have to prepare food for others. Divorce yourself from it psychologically.

Craving saltiness?

Whether or not we should add salt to raw food is much debated. But, if until recently cooked food has been part of your diet, it's fine to add a little organic sea salt to your raw food, say, to a salad dressing, as you're still likely to be ingesting less salt than you did when eating cooked. Or...chop celery into salads, or have sea vegetables. And I find even unsalted olives taste salty, and so do cherry tomatoes.

Craving sweet things?

Have more fruit, as it is or in smoothies. Try strawberries and banana. Have a Medjool date (the raw fooder's 'toffee') but brush your teeth half an hour afterwards).

Craving stodge?

Buy a dehydrator and make raw crackers, breads, cakes, cookies and even pizza!

Craving creaminess?

Use raw fat foods to make creamy dressings, sauces, dips and spreads. Here are recipes for a raw 'cheese' and 'tzatziki'.

Oh, and exercise will help....if you don't already have an exercise regime, don't want to join a gym, don't have the kit, etc, if you have a pair of trainers you can still get out there running. Three times a week. Wear whatever you like plus trainers. If you haven't run for years, try five minute runs the first week, and each week increase by five minutes. If it feels cold out there now the Autumn's here, I can promise you that you won't feel cold after the first two minutes.


So, here's to you and the most significant weight loss you've ever experienced on a diet where you can eat lots and lots of the most delicious, nutritious food ever! Please let me know how it goes.

According to Wikipedia, the first domesticated tomato was a little yellow fruit, so seems we've come full circle, as my local Waitrose is for the first time carrying yellow cherry tomatoes. It was grown by the Aztecs in Mexico, who called it xitomati, meaning 'plump thing with a navel.'

And look at this - the tomato surely qualifies as a super food, as it's claimed that it has super powers! The Pueblo people believed that those who witnessed the ingestion of tomato seeds were blessed with powers of divination.

Tomatoes weren't grown in the UK until the 1590s. However, one of the earliest cultivators, Gerard, believed they were poisonous, and for many years the tomato was considered unfit for eating. Interesting that this belief has resurfaced in modern times as well; the tomato is part of the 'nightshade' family (along with the potato, pepper and aubergine (eggplant)) and, on my macrobiotic course in the Eighties, tomatoes were very 'non grata'. In fact, although the tomato plant does contain poisonous glycoalkaloids, there to ward off insects, these are only present in the stem, leaves and in green tomatoes.

Nowadays, tomatoes are a staple in most raw fooders' diets, and the pic shows to some extent the variety of colours and shapes available to us (taken when I visited the amazing farmers' market at Hillcrest, San Diego). Add to that red and yellow cherry tomatoes, and the tiny grape tomatoes placed on my raw pizza, also at Hillcrest. Isn't it wonderful that tomatoes nowadays are so often sold on the vine, where the fruits have been ripened or at least harvested still connected to the vine (it took me years to realise that that lovely smell of home-grown tomatoes from childhood came from the vine rather than the tomatoes themselves!).

And of course the tomato is now quite the nutritional star, what with studies showing that the phytonutrient lycopene can help ward off cancer - particularly prostate cancer. By the way, if anyone thinks that tomatoes are better cooked than raw because lycopene increases through cooking, please take a look at my article 'Are Some Foods Better For us Cooked?'(and guess what my answer is).

Tomatoes are also an excellent source of Vitamin C (a cup of fresh tomato providing roughly one-half of the RDA), Vitamin A and Vitamin E. And apparently if tomatoes are eaten along with healthy fats (eg raw fats like avocado) the carotenoid phytochemicals (the Vitamin A, basically) can increase by two to 15 times, according to a study by Ohio State University. Tomatoes are also rich in potassium.

Also, the highest concentration of the carotenoids is in the peel. Remember back in that other life when we used to score round tomatoes, dip them in boiling water and then peel them? And sometimes the recipes would call for the removal of seeds. All those people deprived of the powers of divination..

I usually have a big bowl of tomatoes in the kitchen (don't store them in the fridge - they won't taste so good), and I also use sun-dried tomatoes, because their flavour is strong, and a little different from the fresh tomato. Now, has anyone out there ever felt guilty that they're not sun-drying their own tomatoes, or at least producing dehydrated versions? I know I have. So, in the interests of research, I have just dehydrated four lots of halved tomatoes at 105 F. Tray 1: tomato only, Tray 2: salted, Tray 3: oiled, Tray 4: salted and oiled. After dehydrating for 36 hours (!), the tomatoes were only a little shrivelled and looked and tasted nothing like the sun-dried tomatoes we buy (and there was no significant difference between the trays).

I have heard of raw fooders successfully 'sun-drying' tomatoes with a dehydrator, but I'd like to know how they did it (if you have, at 118F or less, do let me know). As, after 36 hours, I felt far more guilty at the cost and energy expended from 36 hours dehydrating than I ever did buying them ready-dried, and aborted the experiment. So I'll continue buying them (in bulk at the local weekly organic co-op) and hope I've removed any guilt burden some of you have been carrying! Always keep a few soaking in the fridge to avoid those occasions when you want to use them in a recipe, and the only ones on hand are tough as boots.

The main RawforLife website, at www.rawforlife.co.uk is the 'base' - full of information about raw food, 'before and after's', and details of classes. The RawforLife Blog, at www.debbietookrawforlife.blogspot.com, is the 'newsy' site - updated 2-3+ times a month with news, articles and occasional recipes. As the e-zine and Blog subscriber lists are not identical, I do hope those who do subscribe to both will not mind my reprinting one Blog article here each month. If you would like to see all past Blog articles and receive articles by e-mail as soon as they are published, do visit the Blog site, enter your details in the Feedblitz panel on the Blog site, then follow very carefully the instructions for subscribing.

But people have always cooked food...

Packets of 'superfood' costing £15-30 can be fun additions to the raw food diet, but none of them are essential. Each month I will be reminding everyone about delicious, whole foods, available locally, that cost very little. To many of you this information may seem obvious, but, equally, many of us can get a bit carried away at the start of the raw food diet (I did!) and spend vast quantities on expensive foods - and I don't want anyone saying it's too expensive to be raw!

As not everyone is fortunate enough to have an organic co-op near them, or be able to get to a market, I've based my prices on Waitrose (so many of you will be able to obtain the foods far cheaper!).

Really ripe figs

Not the figs in packets that are 'almost ripe' (if you're lucky), but the really black SQUIDGY ones, sold loose - that in 24 hours will have little mouldy spots on them, but until that point are so gorgeously sweet that the flesh tastes like jam.

49p each.

Essene Gospel of Peace Pt 1

The Essene Gospel of Peace was my biggest inspiration for going raw (although can't say I took much notice the first time I read it - took a while for it to sink in...). I still read a little bit at the start of each day.

Here's the background:

'Another amazing discovery was made in 1923. Edmond Bordeaux Szekely was able to discover Essene documents in the secret archives of the Vatican. In his book The Discovery of the Essene Gospel of Peace, he tells the story of how two chess players helped him meet the renowned Msgr Angelo Mercati, Prefect of the Vatican Archives. He told the Prefect of his desire to learn all he could of the Saint called Francis. He was allowed to research the vast 25 miles of bookshelves containing scrolls, parchments, paper manuscripts and codices. Within the labyrinth he found an Aramaic translation of The Essene Gospel of Peace as well as The Essene Book of Revelation. His research led him to seek out the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. He was allowed, because of a letter Msgr had written granting access to the large vitrines in the Scriptorium. There he found the original Hebrew codices of The Essene Gospel of Peace, the source for the Aramaic version found at the secret Vatican Archives.' (Source: www.reluctant-messenger.com)

The Vatican now denies that there was ever any such translation in their archives. Some do believe that the EGOP is not authentic. Some dispute the attribution of the words to Jesus. Some believe the dietary teachings are relevant only to that time and place (Israel over 2000 years ago). The reader must make up their own mind.

The Essene Gospel of Peace contains words that, according to Szekeley, were spoken by Jesus, and are in original form, ie before 'revisions'. These include a description of love similar to that written by Paul in the New Testament, and instructions for health. Amongst other things, we learn that Jesus taught a vegetarian, rather than vegan, diet. Although of course the methods of obtaining milk in those days would not have been those of modern dairy farming; also, milk would have been unpasteurised, ie unheated, raw. Interestingly, the EGOP also says that Satan loves the smell of 'hot, steaming' milk!

Most pertinent to raw fooders is the instruction 'cook not'. Many other things in the book will be familiar to health-seekers today, eg the stress put on the importance of fresh air, water, sunlight and fasting. A process involving a gourd that sounds rather like a modern-day colonic is, in conjunction with fasting, recommended for those who are ill.

Interestingly, Szekely himself did not follow the instruction 'cook not'. Although in the EGOP the instruction is unequivocal - no exceptions are identified - Szekeley told his own followers that they should cook between 10 and 25% of their food.

The Essene Gospel of Peace is available from amazon.co.uk 'Used and New' for 65p, and from amazon.com 'Used and New' for 39 cents. The book reviewed here is Essene Gospel of Peace Part 1 and is complete in itself. It was written in 1928 when Szekeley was a young man. Later parts were written some 50 years later, shortly before his death at 79.