Exotic Fruit

One of the books I am reading is about exotic fruits and vegetables. It's fascinating all the different types and varieties there are.. so many.. I wonder if I will ever get to know all of them. I don't think so, not in one lifetime. Here are few very interesting ones..

The Cherimoya - aka Custard Apple - unusual scaly heart shaped fruits which are pale green and almost impossible to cut when unripe. As it ripens the skin develops brown patches and it looks over-ripe when it is just right with creamy white flesh which has a flavor of pineapple and banana with slight vanilla overtones. At this point they will keep in the fridge for a couple days. (to ripen put in a paper bag in a warm place) They have plenty of seeds, up to 20 in each.

Babaco

Babaco's are from the same family as the papaya, but they dont have the seeds inside like the papaya and the flesh of the babaco is edible. The flavor is not as intense as the papaya and actually quite bland.
They are green when unripe and as they ripen develop yellow/orange patches and when fully ripe they are yellow all over. At thios point they should be used right away or kept in the fridge for a day or 2. The babaco also has the enzyme papain, like the papaya, and are highly beneficial to digestion.

The flesh is good in both fruit salads and in savory salads. It can also be blended into a sauce, like applesauce, with lime.

The Ugli Fruit

The ugli fruit is a member of the citrus family and similar in taste to the grapefruit, sweeter but still slightly tart, delicious.
The peel can be candied.. I have to try this. This fruit sounds amazing.
When ripe it is firm and heavy for its size.
It has huge nutritional benefite, lots of vit & minerals and the juice is noted for healing bruises when applied externally.

The Kiwiano - is a bizarre prehistoric looking fruit with bright orange horny skin on the outside and translucent melon looking green seeds on the inside. The kiwiano is also called a jelly melon, and African horned melon or a cucumber melon, for its slight cucumber flavour. The flavor is actually that of melon-cucumber-banana-lime. The seeds can be spooned over ice cream or deserts or salads with cucumber or tomato or salty cheeses.. they can also be blended with sweeter fruits or agave or other sweetener.

Tamarillo

The Tamarillo looks almost inedible, something like a plum tomato, or painted egg .. it is also called a Java Plum or Tree Tomato as it grows in bushes.

When ripe the fruit gives a little when pressed. The thin skin is inedible and the inside is acidic and bitter and needs to be sweetened. They are more commonly eaten cooked than raw, but I would like to experiment with them!

The Feijoa is native to South America, and is also known as pineapple guava or a guavasteen. It is a distant member of the guava family and the flavor of the feijoa is of an aromatic strawberry.

When unripe it is green and tastes like a banana but when it ripens it turns a mottled redgreen or yellow color and it becomes more aromatic. The creamy white flesh is lightly jelly-like and it contains many hard seeds at its center, which should be scooped out and discarded.

These are best eaten raw!!

Kumquats are tiny fruits about the size of olives. They have a thin skin, like an orange, but the skin is edible. You can pop the whole thing in your mouth and eat it.. but there are seeds inside that you may want to spit out. They taste like orange and orange blossom and leave you with a refreshing zingy energy feeling. These are great with both sweet & savory dishes.

Pithaya, aka yellow dragonfruit, is another pre-historic looking fruit. Like it's cousin the fuschia colored dragonfruit, it is filled with a juicy white flesh and thousands of edible tiny black seeds. They have a mild flavoured watery flesh which is lightly perfumed and similar to unsweet melon.

The Sapodilla looks somewhat like a potato with a buff brown skin & grows on trees which are usually overladen with fruit. When ripe the skin should be slightly wrinkled and give a little when pressed. When unripe they are greenish and hard with a strange grainy texture and mouth puckering flavour. As they ripen they turn yellow-orange in color and have an aromatic flavour of vanilla and bananas. The shiny black seeds in the center should be scooped out and discarded.

They are best eaten raw. The flesh can be scooped out of the inedible skin with a spoon and eaten as is, or with a squirt of lime or added to a smoothie.

The Caruba is known as the banana passion fruit because of its elongated shape. The skin is yellow with a hint of green and inside it is filled with seeds like in a regular passionfruit/The flavour is similar to a passionfruit but even more powerful. It is very popular in it's native Columbia. ..and is best served with a sweetener to overcome the tartness.

Pepino

The Pepino is also known as the tree melon. It is a narive of Peru and has smooth goldn skin with purple-red markings. The flesh is pale yellow with a tart, lemony flavor with hints of melon and pineapple. The seeds are edible and sweetly flavored.

To eat - cut in half, peel away the skin, remove the seeds and eat raw.

The Pepino Flower

Aswad - Shine

Earth Hour and Eating Raw

Sat Eve - Brians Birthday party - We went over to his place to celebrate and spend Earth hour together with friends. It was fun. I love candles.. and we had a fireplace. & music and singing and party games!! I used my cell & texted my daughter and that felt kind of wrong. Is it just lights out or should the breakers go off & everything? I will find out for next year. Regardless we made the most of it & had a great night.

We had lots of food, some raw & some not, which is the case at most get togethers. & I had a glass of wine and also champagne. It's rare for me to drink, but this is the time when I will sometimes try something cooked or a drink - at get-togethers. There is something very important and communal about sharing food.. when my kids come over I will sometimes have a few bites of whatever they are eating, which is often cooked. I could be 100% & I was pretty much for a few years..now I have found a comfortable 90-95% place where I eat raw most of the time.. often for long periods of time.. but I will stray from the 100% path for condiments, like maple syrup or balsamic vinegar or things like that and for eating out with others.. where I sometimes want to try what they are eating.. communing is important. Maybe one day everyone will be raw foodists.. that would be best! Anyway, this is my path.. it works for me. I believe in juicing and a diet made up of primarily greens.. and I have found a way to be comfortable living this lifestyle. We all have to come up with our path, how to eat the best we possibly can in our given life situation and with the people we want to be with. Maybe one day I will be a purist again.. but for now I have found the way which works best for me.

& of course, I am always working hard to make the Raw Food World a better place!! Cheers!

Plant Spirits, Silkworms and Projector Art

I have been thinking a lot about plant spirits lately.. something a friend was telling about them, and how they are all connected - I will share the line:
"People who have spent a lot of time in the jungle also talk about plant spirits vs. human spirits, how humans gain experience as separate souls moving through individual bodies, but one plant spirit inhabits all the plant bodies of its species simultaneously. So plants have a very inverted sense of movement and travel than we do, it makes sense that the same logic would apply to being eaten. I ate a mango once at the end of a ceremony and Aya explained how the entire universe is contained in aseed, the co-creative nature of human-plant relations, and it was undescribably powerful."

I know this sounds strange but I was asking about plants being eaten. I felt quite sure that they didn't mind and actually liked it.. and it was confirmed, from various sources - that everything on the planet is here for the highest conscious good.. that is their highest calling.. and that fruits, esp with seeds love to be eaten cause fruits LOVE to travel. : ) I really think I could be a fruitarian!! Love that!

Interesting about the plant spirit being in all that species of plant - I remember reading from the Intention Experimentof a study where plants in different rooms could feel the pain of a plant being harmed far away. So, according to this.. a plant of the same species across the planet may feel the same pain. Interesting.

Silkworms. It has come to my attention that most silk is made very inhumanely. & I have been deciding what to do with my silk, not that I have a lot.. but I have a beautiful silk purse which I love. I have decided that I will keep what I have but just not buy any more.

"The domestic silkworm has undergone such strong artificial selection that it is completely unable to survive in the wild for any length of time.
It is probably the most heavily domesticated animal known apart from domestic hybrids such as mules. Regardless whether the domestic silkworm is derived from a wild species that has since gone extinct, or from a stock of Bombyx orange that was taken into human care some 4,600 years ago (Yoshitake 1968), breeding of silkworms cannot have originated before the Neolithic as the tools necessary to make use of the silk thread on a large scale only have become available since then.
.... It is entirely dependent on humans for its reproduction and no longer occurs naturally in the wild.
.... The cocoon is made of a thread of raw silk from 300 to about 900 meters (1,000 to 3,000feet) long. The fibers are very fine and lustrous, about 10 micrometers (1/2,500th of an inch) in diameter. About 2,000 to 3,000 cocoons arerequired to make a pound of silk.
.... If the animal is allowed to survive after spinning its cocoon, it will release proteolytic enzymes to make a hole in the cocoon so that it can emerge as a moth. This would cut short the threads and ruin the silk. Instead, silkworm cocoons are boiled. The heat kills the silkworms and the water makes the cocoons easier to unravel. Often, the silkworm itself is eaten."

BUT Good news! Peace Silk silkworms are raised and processed differently. The moths are allowed to emerge from their cocoons to live out their full life cycle. The silk is degummed and spun like other fiber, instead of being reeled. The resulting yarn is soft, fluffy, and light like a cloud. This is the best silk for warmth and therapeutic use. It is rare and not readily commercially available.

A friend of mines daughter is studying projector art at OCAD. He was telling me of room installations with projectors creating fascinating spaces and telling interesting stories. Sitting in the middle of art going on all around you. Awesome. small example from Puma:

Puma LIFT

& this ..I love YouTube ; )
Water Projection on a Dancer

The Beautiful Farewell-Sendoff Marketplace Party for 720 Bathurst, location of Toronto Sprouts!! xox!

Rawlicious took over the Toronto Sprouts kitchen for the day. Here is Angus (he andTracy are owners of Rawlicious) with beautiful Erika who worked with me in the kitchen all day.

It was incredibly busy and we sold out.. we almost made it until closing time & had green smoothies at least to last till then. But it was soo busy which was really wonderful.

I have a lot of pictures.. so many special people and vendors in this amazing, vibrant, healthy community of conscious loving souls who have come together and joined here at Toronto Sprouts for the past few years. I felt all day like it was a big send off party.. us all coming together again and seeing people on & off all day coming through who I regularly saw while working at Toronto Sprouts. This is the last event to take place ..after hosting so, so many of them, at 720 Bathurst.

I actually had an emotional day.. I have to tell the story.

I came in & started prepping veggies and fruit and was busy in the kitchen doing my thing before opening and then close to 10am, when the marketplace opened, I came out and looked to the left and this may sound crazy & overly sentimental, but there was the Mexcan blanket over the counter and the clay pot filled with Tehate & I saw Michael and the chocosol group.. and all of a sudden I was waterfalls. wow, they were set up in the same place where they used to be when we worked together and I didn't expect it & ... I went to the office to pull myself together & wow, I honestly wasn't sure if I could go back out there.. maybe overly sentimental. and maybe just a flashback.

These guys and all you in the raw, healthy, yoga, natural, eco-friendly, you wonderful, wonderful group of people I am sooo blessed to have joined into, you/we have formed the most welcoming and beautiful community.. one that I feel and have felt from the minute I walked into 720 that I have been a part of for eons.. for lifetimes that we have been soul brothers and sisters.

& Thank you everyone who was at 720 and is part of this journey with me for being there on Saturday and for being here and a part of my heart. I am in love with all of you! & Saturday was a beautiful send off to a place that will always be so close to my heart.

..& now, we will just have to find a new place to congregate. xo!!!



& now, the pics.. yikes, so many!!

1st off, sustenance - Pizza!!! We went through sooo many pizzas!

& Wraps!!! (my personal fav; )

The stunningly beautiful Erika who was on day 41 (I think, or close) of a 92 day Juice Feast that she is doing.. she is glowing like crazy!!! magnetizingly radiant! what inspiration!!!

Juice of the Cure - a great cause! This is a great way to donate and feel incredible about where your money is going - spreading information about how juicing and how nutrition plays a huge part in our health and healing. Click on the link to make a donation or to find out more about this great cause!

Full house - all day! It was perfect!

Chocosol !!! - The best community based eco vibes ever! Love, love love!!!

Aum My Goddess - Groovinda designs and makes beautiful hemp clothing. I wore my Aum My Goddess apron (custom-made -yay!) for the occasion! ; )

check out her website!! ..and note the models - beautiful Groovinda herself, David Wolfe, Goji girl, etc.. very special high vibe and conscious clothing!

The Toronto Vegetarian Association

Scott makes the best raw coconut cakes in town - and has a huge following for them!! You can find them at most of the bigger health food stores, just ask for Scotts Coconut Cakes. Vanilla, Lemon and Chocolate - Vanilla is my favorite. Mmm

2 pics of the beautiful rocks, because I love rocks so much!!!

I still have all my paintings hanging up and sitting around all over the space. All the flower paintings and the Yin-Yang meditating diptych are mine. I will have to find a new home for them soon!

This pic above is of Darinka, to the right, and her daughter Saskia, middle. Both are beautiful, multi-talented artists. I bought a very special choker-necklace with a deep Tibetal turquoise bead which Darinka made. I also bought a very special book of poetry that her daughter made.

Mi-San, Marie, owner of Toronto Sprouts, and my wonderful friend, is sitting to the left.

Below - Bob!! E3Live distributor - amazing researcher and into the highest of high-vibe things! No event would be complete without you there!

Bob is here with the new company - I think they are called Two Sisters Cooking.. although I don't think they cook - they had several types of Raw Crackers available, which were very delicious. (My apologies for no contact info - if I find more info for them I will come back & post it here)

The Best Food Ever !!! Love these guys!!! They have some of the best products ever!

Ashley - so great to see you! - here for Living Libations

James from Nujima, superfood products, here with his son, James. I bought some sodium chloride to experiment with from him. Planning to read up on it more tomorrow. James travels the world and fully researches his products to bring us the best and highest quality superfoods available!!

Ruth's Hemp Foods

The Barbers Daughter makes beautiful high conscious works of art for us to wear.

Pieces for Inner Peace. xo Love you Gisele!!

Zoey - The Fairy's Tonic Kombucha - now available in 2 new flavors: Green Tea and Lemon and Ginger. Ah, her website is sparkly, just like Zoey!! )

Yogagurl!!!!!

Zoey and Alex (yogagurl) beautiful, beautiful women!

Annares Natural Health - Let the Revolution begin in your senses!

Monica from Organics on Bloor - Organic and Gourmet foods, open 7 days a week & now with delivery!

James, my partner, with Raw Friendly

This is a website we are just starting which now has some recently republished raw and health books from the early part of the last century. We found many of these books to contain invaluable information and thoughts on health from a raw and nutritional standpoint, but many of these books were photocopied or reproduced poorly, and so we decided to re-typeset them, clean them up, and offer them for sale at a lower price as well.

Michael Moon and Treforlutions

Rosie and Matieu of Chocosol, and Jeremy, in the middle, my soul brother who runs a parallel life with me, (altho from different generations - & we are from the same hometown!)

I am leaving this from a performance by Jeremy from a Chocolatada party, which was one of the best parties ever, with a great number and variety of incredible performers.. just one of the many, many special events which we enjoyed at 720!

~This co-motion happened during one of our New Moon Chocolatada! Jeremy has become an outstanding member of the 720 Experiment since the cacao induced Contagion on this night! ~

ChocoSol Chronicles - Jeremy Francis