i return

Oops I’ve been a bit naughty and had a bit of a break from my blog.  Er, excuses? I was away with work last week and Easter has just flown by.  I’ve also been really busy training for the 10k.  I decided to check out the route last week and although it’s the most scenic 10k in the world (according to me), it’s also the toughest!  Lots and lots and lots and lots of hills! Up and down ones!  Only a few weeks to go now and I’m starting to get a bit iffy about it all.  I’ve been feeling a bit run down (excuse the pun) the last few days and haven’t exercised.  Rod thinks I’ve been over-doing it.  I’m a bit of an all or nothing kind of girl.  Hmm. Anyway what else?

I’ve also been vision boarding, kinda like surf boarding but in your head and with pictures instead of a board.  What a lovely predicament I found myself in this week when I discovered that all my vision boards (I had 5) have come to reality and I had to make a new one!  I bloody love vision boarding!  It’s the best fun ever.  For those of you who don’t know, vision boarding is where you create a picture of where you’d like your life to be, or any aspect of your life, and visualise it using cuttings from magazines or drawings which you stick down on card or paper.  It’s so powerful to see your vision of your self there on the wall every day that it keeps you focused to achieving your goals and helps manifest them in to reality!  This is my new one on the kitchen wall 🙂

It’s got plenty on it.  Mostly to do with goals for this year including physical fitness and wellbeing, taking my raw food classes, starting my own business, eating WILD FOOD (more to follow on that), amazing relationships and er, Hawaii for good measure 🙂

So yes WILD FOOD!!  I’m a huge fan of Daniel Vitalis especially his work on spring water (check out my vid).  He also talks about how much of the raw food we eat (or don’t) has actually been genetically modified from wild foods and has had a lot of the medicininal properties (bitterness) bred out of it.  Basically most of the veg we eat all comes from the same family so in reality even though we think we are eating a varied diet we aren’t really getting much of a variety at all.  I think he said most veg can be traced back to only four wild plants.  Scary!  Also, wild foods are so hardy they can exist in the wild (duh) whereas a lot of veg wouldn’t last two minutes without some intervention from us humans.   Like a poodle wouldn’t last in the wild but a wolf would – that’s daniel’s analogy but a good one I think.  So if we’re eating food that can’t exist in nature how natural is it?  This is where wild foods take over.  Not only is there an abundance of wild plants but there’s a massive variety all ready for the picking FOR FREE!

So at the end of last year I started reading up on wild foods and it was always my intention to start eating more wild food this year once Spring had sprung.  I did a bit of wild food eating over the summer of last year and it was lovely although I didn’t really know what to look for.  There’s nothing like picking wild berries or flowers or leaves and eating them.  Dandelion leaves are also amazing and super nutrtious!  It almost makes you feel like stripping off and becoming one with nature…ok not quite but it definitely awakens that wild energy in me! 🙂

You can find a lot of wild edibles in your back garden, even if you live in the middle of the city.  It’s so surprising people have switched off from that ancient knowledge.  Only a hundred years ago people were living off food that grew wild and locally in days when we didn’t have a local Tescos!  I’ve decided to buy some wild plants from a herb nursery which stocks a huge selection and grow them in the garden.  The great thing is that once planted and taking stock these plants will take care of themselves and no doubt grow like wild fire providing lots of yummy medicinal food!  Can’t wait!

Rod’s Mum found some Ground Elder outside our house.  I didn’t know anything about it but apparently it’s a viewed as a nasty weed that’s a bugger to get rid of.  Rod’s mum advised me to get some good weedkiller for it.  However the amazing news is that you can eat it!  It’s full of vitamins and minerals and especially high in iron.  I couldn’t wait to get dug in and made a lovely green smoothie out of it using apple, ginger, lemon and 2 cups ground elder leaves (washed).  YUM!  I’m so excited about eating raw wild foods I might burst all over the place.

Ok I’ll stop harping on about it now.

What else? I’ve got a week of heavy experimenting coming up as I tailor the recipes for my raw food class starting at the end of June at Strathclyde Uni.  I’m really excited about demonstrating simple, tasty raw food recipes and need to make sure they send everyone over the edge taste-wise.  Here’s one I’m definitely including.  Rod is my taste-tester and he thinks this is mmmmmy!

I blogged this one before but it wasn’t 100% raw so here is the tweaked rawified version

Thai Sweet Potato Soup

2 medium sweet potatoes (peeled), 1/2 avocado, 1cm ginger, 1 inch lemongrass, 1 garlic clove, 1 inch red chilli, 1.5 limes juiced, 1/2 medjool date, 1 cup coconut milk (dr martin’s), pinch salt, 1/2 cup water (to desired consistency). Blend and top with lime zest.

So the next few days I’ll be busy in the kitchen!  Will make sure I find time to blog 😉

No rebounding today cos I’m being non-exercisey so here’s a wee tune