"The other three quarters keeps your doctor alive." When you go into a medical office and ask for nutritional counseling, they sit you down and give you a diet that specifically meets your lifestyle and needs. They talk about counting calories and fat, good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, weighing portions, and so forth. You hear about these things on a day to day basis. Milk grows strong bones, meat builds muscle. What you don't hear about, however, are the nutrients our cells need in order to function properly. Why isn't this information easily accessible as well as good food sources that provide these nutrients?
It makes me so sad that fresh, local, organic produce is extremely hard to find, expensive, and often found places that do not accept EBT cards. I am lucky, however, to have a local grocery store that offers all the foods and organic produce I want. I buy my vegan soaps there, which I LOVE! Kiss My Face Chamomile and olive oil soap and some kind of bar shampoo are my favorites. Both come in a an earth friendly recyclable paper package and the do wonders for my skin and hair.
My parents sent me a wonderful Christmas present, an Amazon gift card. I was able to purchase more soil and organic seeds. I can't wait to plant the whole garden and especially when I can start harvesting the fruits and veggies. I'm going to have a full garden of vine ripened organic fruits and veggies at my disposal. Building this garden is going to be so much fun. I was at Big Lots the other day and found that they had topsy turvey tomato and strawberry growers for $1.50. I picked up three of them. I plan to use one for my blackberries, one for tomatoes, and the other for bell peppers. For everything else, I'm still on the quest to find empty plastic two liter bottles.
Apples are going to be difficult, however. I can't easily grow an organic apple tree in my apartment, but they are the best things to put in juice. They have a great sweet flavor that covers up the yucky veggie taste and can really bulk up the juice. Juices are my favorite means of incorporating fresh produce in my diet because you can get so many essential nutrients and enzymes in so little time. Its like drinking pure life nectar goodness for your body! The only thing that irritates me is that you need to both clean the juicer and drink the juice immediately after juicing. So I have to have a sponge in one hand a my juice in the other which is not very conducive to actually enjoying the juice.
My next step is to research composting and see if its something I can do. I haven't the slightest clue as to where to begin with composting. Can you even do it in the winter? Can you do it indoors? How do you tend to it? How do you deal with pests or the smell while keeping it organic? How is it used and when is it ready to be used? You guys should answer any of these in the comments if you know it.. Otherwise, it's off to google for me! No more produce waste!
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Christmas is Gone, A New Year Comes
The new year is coming and I am set on going vegan as well as organic as possible. I figure the new year ought to be a good place to start, you know, resolutions an all. My ultimate goal is to be able to go on juice fasts with ease. I'm also excited about losing weight an looking and feeling good. I have been far too sick for far too long. I've decided that I'm going to recycle and compost as much as possible and whenever possible. This will help me be able to afford an organic lifestyle and also lessen my carbon footprint while doing so.
Old habits die hard and new, better ones are much harder to learn. I'm addicted to cheese and potatoes. I have literally been living off of refined sugars, flours, fats, and dairy for most of my life. These are all my favorite foods. All my life I've been taught that what goes in your mouth comes off of a shelf and whatever comes off of a shelf is perfectly harmless to put into your mouth. Of course I've been blind all of my life. I lost 60 lbs on the "atkins" diet. I ate nothing but meat and cheese and very little vegetables. I would go to Burger King and order a whopper without the bun for breakfast. I would eat a bowl of meatballs doused in parmesan cheese for lunch. And for dinner? Parmesan cheese crusted chicken breast with a home made five cheese alfredo sauce topping and dip. Yeah, I was destroying my body from the inside out and I still am. I've had fibromyalgia since I was 19 and have been overweight since the age of 12.
I have finally realized that I have been poisoning myself all these years. I finally learned to start questioning everything I know because you never know the truth in a world of lies and corporate control. I learned that Pharmaceutical companies put out ads, pay for the certification of drugs, and pay doctors to prescribe them, and make a huge profit on keeping the customer coming back for more. It's not a cure. Its a life sentence of needing pills and drugs on a daily basis and a life sentence of giving your money to the makers of this drug.
People love, and I mean LOVE, to pin the cause of their problems on someone else. If the kids aren't getting good grades, it's because the teacher isn't spending enough one on one time with their child. If a kid gets autism or diabetes or asthma, it's caused by vaccines. Why do we blame the doctor for the illness and not what we choose to shovel into our children's mouth on a daily basis? Our bodies are made to eat and digest plant foods. We salivate at the sight of plant foods. Everything we need, every vitamin and mineral vital to our survival, we can get from plant foods. Our bodies can virtually never have too much plant foods, they do not link to cancer, obesity, or disease. Yet the average american diet consists of about 15% or less of fresh fruit and veggies. Mine certainly does. But for me, it's all about cost. I literally cant afford more than a few dollars a day to eat and to survive on plant food, we need about 15 to 20 pounds a day. That can cost up to $30 a day. It's much easier to justify the box of refined white flour pasta and corn syrup infested jar of tomato sauce when the meal for a whole family costs about two bucks, tastes good, and fills you up.
My plan, as a broke 23 year old in the middle of winter, is to build a vast indoor verticle organic vegetable and herb garden. I have one hanging piece right now. I used four 2 liter bottles, hung them upside down over each other in front of the window. They are full of organic soil and seeds. I planted cherry tomatoes, green onions, and I think carrots. We have been buying and juicing as much fresh produce as we can afford right now. We no longer go out to eat, we spend that money on fresh fruit and veggies. I plan to add as many fruits and veggies into my diet as possible until i get to about 90%. I hope to one day be 100% plant based and animal free. I guess that's what the point is about this blog. I also hope to inspire people to be more conscious about the choices that make, the things they spend their money on and put into their body, as well as myself.
Old habits die hard and new, better ones are much harder to learn. I'm addicted to cheese and potatoes. I have literally been living off of refined sugars, flours, fats, and dairy for most of my life. These are all my favorite foods. All my life I've been taught that what goes in your mouth comes off of a shelf and whatever comes off of a shelf is perfectly harmless to put into your mouth. Of course I've been blind all of my life. I lost 60 lbs on the "atkins" diet. I ate nothing but meat and cheese and very little vegetables. I would go to Burger King and order a whopper without the bun for breakfast. I would eat a bowl of meatballs doused in parmesan cheese for lunch. And for dinner? Parmesan cheese crusted chicken breast with a home made five cheese alfredo sauce topping and dip. Yeah, I was destroying my body from the inside out and I still am. I've had fibromyalgia since I was 19 and have been overweight since the age of 12.
I have finally realized that I have been poisoning myself all these years. I finally learned to start questioning everything I know because you never know the truth in a world of lies and corporate control. I learned that Pharmaceutical companies put out ads, pay for the certification of drugs, and pay doctors to prescribe them, and make a huge profit on keeping the customer coming back for more. It's not a cure. Its a life sentence of needing pills and drugs on a daily basis and a life sentence of giving your money to the makers of this drug.
People love, and I mean LOVE, to pin the cause of their problems on someone else. If the kids aren't getting good grades, it's because the teacher isn't spending enough one on one time with their child. If a kid gets autism or diabetes or asthma, it's caused by vaccines. Why do we blame the doctor for the illness and not what we choose to shovel into our children's mouth on a daily basis? Our bodies are made to eat and digest plant foods. We salivate at the sight of plant foods. Everything we need, every vitamin and mineral vital to our survival, we can get from plant foods. Our bodies can virtually never have too much plant foods, they do not link to cancer, obesity, or disease. Yet the average american diet consists of about 15% or less of fresh fruit and veggies. Mine certainly does. But for me, it's all about cost. I literally cant afford more than a few dollars a day to eat and to survive on plant food, we need about 15 to 20 pounds a day. That can cost up to $30 a day. It's much easier to justify the box of refined white flour pasta and corn syrup infested jar of tomato sauce when the meal for a whole family costs about two bucks, tastes good, and fills you up.
My plan, as a broke 23 year old in the middle of winter, is to build a vast indoor verticle organic vegetable and herb garden. I have one hanging piece right now. I used four 2 liter bottles, hung them upside down over each other in front of the window. They are full of organic soil and seeds. I planted cherry tomatoes, green onions, and I think carrots. We have been buying and juicing as much fresh produce as we can afford right now. We no longer go out to eat, we spend that money on fresh fruit and veggies. I plan to add as many fruits and veggies into my diet as possible until i get to about 90%. I hope to one day be 100% plant based and animal free. I guess that's what the point is about this blog. I also hope to inspire people to be more conscious about the choices that make, the things they spend their money on and put into their body, as well as myself.
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