I know that one of the widespread misconceptions about raw food is that it's time consuming and takes too long. This could not be further from the truth!I found that while there was a lot of prep, in washing, cutting and mixing, I saved lots of time by not heating, cooking or having to clean the messy pots after.
But what was true-was I had t o s l o w m y s e l f d o w n.
I definitely had to slow myself down to "uncook".
I had to be more prepared, and I had to think ahead.
I had to begin to pace myself into what I would be eating in a few days time, and not just in this immediate moment for alot of the recipes. Soaking nuts and sprouting was a challenge! I had to really focus on those things or I had a mess because I would get busy and forget to drain and rinse, or I wouldn't have soaked nuts to use in a recipe.
I couldn't go thoughtless about food with the backup of running through a drive in. I couldn't NOT think about food.
As a result, not just my eating was changing. I had to change my relationship to time, my schedule and my life, and how I lived it day to day.
What I discovered, and I am only talking for myself here, was that I had become very unconscious about what I was slamming into my mouth. I opened a package that made my life easier, and served it, and there wasn't alot of thought going into it anymore. I was running to Costco and buying lots of convenient packages and my freezer was full. We were all going to the freezer saying "What's for dinner?" We had lost the home cooking that I had raised the boys on. What happened to me?
I used to really cook. I mean REALLY cook. I made fish sticks myself with real fish, I made my own chicken nuggets. I canned, and made jellies back in the day. We had had a vegetable garden. And then they became busy teens and I had lost track of them and me. It was too hard to get a dinner on the table that everyone would eat, and God Forbid I could get them to the table at the same time!
The freezer with it's convenient packages had become the mainstay during those impressive years. Fast food was the cry as we all jumped into the car eating something so we could make it to the next appointment.
Yikes. What were we doing???
Our culture has placed a high premium on "fast", and doing more in less time. That concept has come into the kitchen, and since the 50s, our food styles have sped up. Cooking, preparing, cleaning up after...all those labor saving devices, and all those prepackaged, prepared, foods...I didn't realize how much I had shifted into it until we started thinking raw.Family bonding used to be over doing the dishes. At Thanksgiving my brother and I had a great time doing all the dishes by hand as my mother doesn't have a dishwasher. We chatted side by side and caught up as we did the dishes for 16 people. It was uninterrupted time-no one wanted to help, and what with our hands in water and the rhythmic repetative nature of the work, very relaxing! I miss doing dishes by hand, and have continued the practice since. Raw has much fewere messy dishes-no stuck on stuff that has to be soaked and scraped. No oily messes congealed. Dishes are by far nicer to deal with.
Raw food preparation is meditative. Soaking, cleaning, chopping, spicing. It brought me back to loving food again, and even more, loving being in the kitchen again.
It has been comforting to me. I hum while I do it. I get out my mixing bowls and accouterments. There is a lot of food prep in a raw kitchen. And you have to stay on top of raw food-with no preservatives you can't leave it long. Take a few days off, and you have a fridge full or soggy mushy moldy stuff.
But by and far the benefits have far outweighed the drawbacks. I haven't lost much weight, but I wasn't doing it to lose weight. I feel better and I can tell immediately when I have strayed too far from the rawish quota. I am back in relationship with my body and I easily recognize my own signals, what really really feeds me, and what I want to eat based on what nourishes me. My mind has unhooked from the marketing hypnotic trance of donuts and ice cream, fast food french fries and American burgers. I can feel the difference. I am no longer numb or eating to numb out. I might have something now, but it's not an eating binge, and I don't guilt myself about it. I notice it, notice my physical reactions to it, and move on.
I've also unhooked from alot of the illness/wellness hypno-hype. I don't believe that I am going to die from b12 deficiency because I am doing raw. I proved the opposite to myself-I am way high in b12! When I learned to trust my body, really trust myself, I am just fine. I've learned to listen to myself, and that means I don't consider my emotional body a misguided uninformed willful child that I have to control with my willpower.
But raw, for me, has meant slowing down and listening to myself. It's meant paying attention on a day to day basis to what I am doing, and why. It's meant chop wood, carry water. It's meant be in the now. It's meant love where I am. It's meant connecting.
We can't connect to our lives, to our loved ones to the world if we don't connect to ourselves, and what I see and felt myself is that we are being encouraged to disconnect from what's vital. Vitality and life force energy begins with food, and then moves out in concentric circles from that center.
What feeds you?
What do you allow to feed you?
What sustains you?
What are you willing to invest your time and energy in? And that should be in what feeds you, shouldn't it?
So why has our culture focused LESS on what really feeds us, and MORE about zipping through food times to get out there and search for what feeds us? Hurry hurry or you will be left behind.
We've noticed a return to our creative selves. We've noticed a return to our authentic voices. We've noticed a return to our families, and our loved ones, and ourselves. We've noticed we rejoice in the energies around us, and the color in the leaves and the drops of water on a spider web. The little things that we used to speed by and think "I'll make time later to take a walk" rather than enjoying the now moment of every day. I love that I notice the rich color of the browns of the eggshells as I am cracking them open to add to a smoothie. Wow moments of my every day life. And they are little. And it is the noticing that I most enjoy.
Once I called Jon to come out and sit on the lawn with me-and told him to look at how you could see every blade of grass breathing. Yea-he thought I was stoned. And maybe we are! Maybe eating raw and connecting into the energy of life is exactly like being stoned!
That means we've slowed our lives to a comfortable stroll-connected with each footstep, rather than speeding by things in the fast lane. I prefer it. I've come to value the stroll. I'm built for comfort, not for speed, I've decided!
Raw food isn't just about the food, and heat and prep time. It turns out to be about living. It turns out to be an energy thing.
And when I get away from it, I miss it. When I fall away for a time, it's because my life has gotten busier and I am going too fast again. And coming back to raw reminds me to come back to the stroll.
Years ago I was living in Italy when we had huge gas shortages. Italy went to allowing people to only drive every other day based on your license plate ending in an even or odd number, and then they went to no driving on Sundays. What a difference it made in people's lives-in a good way!
Kids came out and played soccer in the streets. The roads turned into a people festival. Everyone came out and talked and played all day long with no cars on the roads and no where to go. Sundays became people days. We were forced to slow down to a stroll, and life was better.
Does it have to be raw for us to get the benefits? I don't think so. I think when we get the concept, we can add cooked and we can maintain a healthy balance. So far though, when I start adding cooked, I start to speed up again! I am still working at unhooking fast from cooked...
Remember the raw-ish credo- aim at 10, be happy with 7. If you get 5 in...you are way ahead of the pack!
