Eat Dance Live

First off, Happy New Year again to everyone! We've spent another wonderful day in Salem, strolling the streets, visiting little shops some more, walking to Pickering Wharf, checking out the House of Seven Gables, and visiting America's oldest commercial candy shop, 'Ye Olde Pepper Companie'. Apparently, the first candy ever commercially sold in the States in 1806 were called Gibralters (because they were rock hard like the rocks in the straight of Gibraltar??) Made of Molasses and flavored either with lemon or peppermint oil, they were a hard candy that never went bad and had a dinner mint-like texture. Though we won't be eating them, we bought some as souvenirs for the people in our lives who still eat candy :) All the other old-style candies they sold there were also pretty much variations on the Gibralter, aka. sugar, molasses, starch, cream of tartar... I guess they didn't have much to work with in the New World. Nowadays, the candy shop makes all sorts of t

Yet another thing I appreciate about the raw diet is the quality of sleep I now get because of it. Before, I used to have to sleep 9-10 (maybe more) hours, had to drag myself out of bed because of the sound of my alarm clock, and not really wake up 'til breakfast or a shower. Now, without any obnoxious beeping and with usually only 7-8 hours, I can get up perfectly fine on my own and feel amazing. So after the rough morning we had yesterday after only about 5 hours of sleep, I got 8 and I'm as good as new. After getting out of our comfy king size bed, we went to the Radisson hotel's gym where I did some warm-up cardio on the treadmill (which I swear was stuck on an incline), an ab routine (4 x4 sets of 12 repetitions to target different ab areas + 2 minutes of plank + 1 minute of side planks), and 3 sets of 12 of chest, shoulders, backs, biceps, and triceps. I had to cram a lot in today only because we probably won't find a gym for the next couple days. Then, w

So as part of my New Year's resolutions (which I'm starting early), I've decided to start blogging more frequently (for real this time!) More specifically, we're currently on our end of 2009 trip to Massachusetts, more specifically to Boston and the awesome town of Salem. The not so great part? Having to wake up at 6am and being on the bus for 8 hours... I don't think my body knows what to do with itself when it sits for that long. Anyhoo, that was lots of time to catch up on some raw food reading, I've been reading up on the amazingly fit and talented Tonya Kay 's diet and workouts, and watched a raw documentary called " Raw for Life: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of the Raw Food Lif estyle " I randomly found online. I think David Wolfe (who was in it) looks like such an awesome guy to know. He just seems so holistically happy and positive. Every time I've seen or heard him interviewed he seems to bouncy and excited and lives life with the wo

So I've gotten totally lazy about posting despite the amazing food I've been eating recently, including my first raw food trip to NY where we spent our life savings at Quintessence and High Vibe (who has the friendlist and awesomest staff). The holidays have been amazing (and presents included a Vitamix from my amazing mom!) I have so much to say, but the laziness lingers. In the meantime, check out this amazing deal offered over at Chocolate-covered Katie's blog . To make Decembers as awesome as mine was, I suggest everyone do something holiday-festive every week. That's what we did and it was so worthwhile this included: 1) Going to see the Nutcracker ballet twice (I felt like a five year old again, it was awesome), once with the Washington Ballet (whose Arabian Dance was literally ballet sex... it was beautiful and amazing) and the one by the Pennsylvania Ballet at the Kennedy Center (whose Pas de Deux , both the choreography and the music practically

Like most raw foodists, I've grown a little wary of family get-togethers because of my diet. They have ranged from going perfectly fine (I love you mom!), to the offensive (the French genes in my family just don't understand anything but their own superior culinary ways and feel very threatened by the very notion of anything outside of the norm), to the plain confused ("so why exactly do you put yourself through this?"). My first raw Thanksgiving is most likely to be of little exception. Thankfully, with a really big family, Thanksgiving dinners bring together anywhere between 15 to 30 people, and the number of vegetarians/vegans/dabblers has always been a small but steady constant. I know for a fact that there will be an abundance of salads and fruits for me to eat, and I'll also be bringing a raw vegan chocolate pecan pie. Apparently, Tofurky will even be making an appearance at this year's Thanksgiving (something I used to love, but now probably w

Who says raw food ever gets boring? At our m ost recent trip to Mo m's (still the BEST grocery store ever), Andrew and I fell upon one of the strangest fruits we've ever seen. Of course as is his lovable habit, Andrew had to buy it for novelty's sake. Once we took it home, it became something of our pet for the next few days. What was it y ou ask? It was a Monstera Deliciosa aka. the 'Delicious Monster'. Hailing from Glaser Farms in South Florida (not so local, I know...), our little monster is actually a native fruit of Mexico and Guatemala. He's a tropical fruit grown on a very large  leafed philodendron, and likes hot and humid areas. Okay, I know fruits don't have a sex, but really, just look at it. I'll call him a 'he' if I want to. Like most of my raw diet now, I couldn't eat this lovely fruit immediately but had to wait for something to happen to him. Usually, I have to wait a couple days because of dehydrating, s

I've mentioned before that as a thirteen year old, I was one of those girls who dreaded 'that time of the month' because to me that meant a couple days of writhing in pain, barely able to stand, hating every minute of it, and wondering 'why why why wasn't I born a boy' (okay, the last one is a total lie). But ever since I start going to the chiropractor, and then adopting vegan and now a raw diet, those symptoms have gone *poof*... really, sometimes I even forget it's even that time when I'm in the middle of it! It's been life changing. Nevertheless, I still feel some side-effects of the whole moon cycle process usually meaning I have this desire to stay at home and nest... aka. spend more time in the kitchen. However, I also usually totally lose my appetite and revert to just wanting liquids. I understand though, that's it's particularly important right now to get lots of iron, to get my B12, and to keep eating despite how full I alw

After having gone to yesterday's Senate Finance Committee Hearing on the nominations of two new USTR ambassadors (Mr. Siddiqui and Mr. Punke), today's shout out goes to Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon who seems to be one of the only people running the government who understands that "sustainable agriculture" means organic agriculture and not the development of biotechnology. Having spent increasingly more time in the halls of Washington, I've been amazed (and mostly disillusioned) at how many people think "sustainability" means feeding the world and increasing yields through more robust usage of Genetic Modification . And Siddiqui is definitely one of those people. How Siddiqui was nominated to the post of Chief Agricultural Trade Representative at the office of the USTR, I don't even know. Considering his current vice-presidency at Croplife America, the country's biggest agrochemical industry trade group, I don't know how you could e

Thank you Gina for your amazing post today for what I didn't even know was National Love Your Body Day! For those of you who are too busy and/or lazy to click on that link, here are the two main take-aways from that article I think everyone including myself should listen to: 1) "Our bodies are always talking to us and it's up to us to actually stop and listen to what they're saying." I totally agree with this and I think that this is the most important thing of all. We think we know our bodies but half the time we are too busy listening to our egos to figure out what are physical bodies are actually asking for. Most people ask me why I went vegan, and even more people ask me why I went raw... the honest answer is, my body told me to. There's nothing more to it than that. I just woke up one morning and knew that's what I had to do. It was only after I became vegan and more recently raw that I looked into all the additional environmental/health/ethical/phys

We just got back from the DC Green Festival and boy did we have an awesome day! I woke up so giddy to go this morning I felt like a five year old on Christmas or a kid in a candy store (a raw organic candy store that is!) Ready to stock up on food, energy and life awesomeness, we set out early in the morning to get there as early as possible. We got in pretty fast thanks to complimentary tickets I won from a VegNews giveaway (they're awesome because they now have online subscriptions to stop killing trees! Gotta love companies who walk the walk...) First stop was Pangea Organics of course. The mother of all organic care products. If you start a Pangea regime, you will honestly not know what hit you. My mom taught me early on that your skin is your biggest organ so you should take care of it. Moisturize every day and what not, but the other steps (exfoliating, cleansing, weekly masks, etc.) are just as important to keep you radiant and glowing. Plus, if you wear organic b

So I know most of you are probably thinking "bla bla bla, enough with the philosophy and organic brainwashing, where's the food?"... and I totally understand, so here I go shaking off my foodie laziness to blog about food again. It's fall so that means it's time to experiment with yummy pumpkins and squash again! There's something that really excites me about this particular change of season. One thing I've realized about raw 'cooking' is that y ou really don't have to pay attention to measurement as  much as much as when you are doing something as chemically complex as baking. If you have a problem with a raw recipe you  can always tweak it a bit and there is only so wrong you can go. Given my first post , it would seem raw food is perfectly suited to the way I cook anyway! Here's my latest creation and it's unfortunately not 100% raw. I still haven't fully figured out how to manage using squash/pumpkins without steaming the