Rawpower

by Omid Jaffari, Botanical Cuisine

The weather is getting warmer finally and isn't it time to indulge in some yummy, healthy icecream?



Serves about 4

Equipment:

• Semak Vitacrush or Powermill Blender
• Icecream Maker

1. Place all the ingredients, except for the cardomom pods, in the Blender and blend until smooth.
2. Transfer to a bowl, stir in the cardomom pods and place it in the refridgerator. After about 20 minutes, take the bowl out, remove the pods and pour the mixture into an ice cream maker.
3. Turn it on and let it churn for about 15 minutes.
4. When the ice cream is half frozen, add the cardomom pods, and leave for another 20 minutes (or until you get your ideal consistency). But after that, remove all the visible pods before scooping it out. 

by Anand Wells, Live Food Education

While many people buy gold as security in times of economic turmoil, my number one priority is to have access to high quality food and water. You can’t eat your gold! For that reason we are members of a very exciting project called Organic Farm Share http://www.organicfarmshare.com/

At this time Organic Farm Share is only open to members from Northern NSW and Southern QLD, however, there is still plenty of other things you can do to begin taking charge of your food supply.

In many ways we have lost connection with our food. How it is grown, where it comes from are often a mystery to many people. Up until now we have had the luxury of being able to go to the supermarket and fill up our trolley with cheap food that, according to a study done by Ceres in Melbourne, has travelled on average 70,000 kilometres!  I was amazed to discover that 60 cents in the dollar of food we buy is paying for its transportation. Clearly this is not a sustainable practice and unless we change what we are doing we are going to run into some serious trouble in the not to distant future. 

Why?

According to the 2008 Living Planet Report humankind first exceeded the world’s capacity to regenerate itself in the 1980s. Within one generation (30 years) from that point, our human activities have outpaced the world’s capacity to regenerate itself by 30%.  This means that if we continue at our current pace, within just one more generation, we will exceed what our planet can provide by 100% requiring the equivalent of two planets to maintain our lives. An impossible equation.

To most of us living in the western world the idea of a food shortage is very hard to imagine, however, according to many scientists and leading authorities it is a very real concern.

Australian journalist and science writer Julian Cribb states in his book "The Coming Famine - The global food crisis and what we can do to avoid it" that “Experts predict the crisis will peak by the middle of the twenty-first century; it is arriving even faster than climate change.

Not just peak oil, but peak land, and even peak people, have and will continue to create vast pressures on the food chain, with humanity running through every available resource - nutrients, fish stocks, arable land, usable water, fertilisers - without regard for the future. Yet there is still time to forestall catastrophe,” says Cribb in his introduction.

I know that much of this may sound doomsdayish, however, it is based on good science and I agree with Cribb that we can avoid this disaster through taking action on a personal level.

While I am not advocating that everyone leaves the cities and moves back to the land to grow food, I believe we do need to take action now by learning to grow at least some of our own food and harvest wild edibles for our own food security and for the future of human life on Earth. In addition to this homegrown food and wild edibles are more often than not higher in nutrients that bought food and they are always fresh.

So where does one begin?

The easiest and quickest way to grow your own food is by sprouting. This can be done whether you live on the 100th floor of a skyscraper or in a cave. All you need is seeds, water and some form of container for sprouting.

One of the most affordable and simple options is use 2 litre glass jars with muslin or plastic fly screen and rubber bands. Or if you want to go high tech you can buy self watering sprouting systems live the Easygreen Sprouter for around $350. If you haven’t tried growing sprouts before I would recommend you begin with jars.

Once you have got the hang of it you may like to graduate to an automatic sprouting machine. The main advantage of these automatic sprouters is that there is no manual soaking or rinsing necessary: just fill the sprouter up with water and seeds and you will have sprouts in 3-4 days. This can be very convenient if you are too busy or forgetful to rinse your seeds on a regular basis.

Not only are sprouts incredibly easy to grow they are also some of the most nutrient dense food on the planet and are a truly living food, right up until the moment you eat them.

Our friend Koa the bush food medicine man, carries a sprouting bag (made from muslin) when he goes bush. He harvests wild seeds, soaks them in his sprouting bag and hangs them off his backpack while hiking or from a tree at night. This is an ingenious way to grow sprouts even while on the run!

What is even easier than growing sprouts?

Harvesting wild edibles some of which are also known as weeds. That’s right; we are often surrounded by food and don’t even know it! For a start there are over 400 varieties of grass all of which are edible. While the fibre in grass is difficult for humans to digest we can still chew grass or even better, juice it. I often let the grass in my back yard grow long so I can harvest it and add it to juices. Grass is highly nutritious packed full of chlorophyll and phytonutrients. It also has the ability to draw more minerals from the earth than any other plant.  So you don’t have to go to the trouble of growing trays of wheatgrass when you can juice your back lawn. If you do harvest grass or any other wild edible, make sure it is clean and not sprayed with pesticides of any other toxic chemicals.  For this reason it is never a good idea to harvest wild edibles close to any roads.

Apart from grass there are an enormous amount of highly nutritious wild  edible weeds bushes and trees from dandelions to farmers friends, from Hibiscus flowers to bulrush roots. There is no need to ever starve to death if you are stranded in the wilderness and know how to identify wild edible plants.

Education is a key to successfully harvesting wild edibles because some plants are highly toxic. In Australia I recommend Tim Low's book, "Wild food Plants Of Australia" and Isabel Shippard's “How can I use herbs in my daily life?”  If you are based in North America you can’t go past "The Encyclopedia of Edible Wild Plants of North America", by Steve Brill.

In addition to reading books, I have found it very helpful to have someone help me identify wild edibles. See if you can find someone locally who can take you on a wild edible walk. In Byron Bay you can go on a walk with wild edible expert Cockatoo Paul.

Koa Windsong also offers workshops when he is living in Northern NSW. And Sergei Boutenko holds regular wild edible walks in the USA and in also in the countries he tours. Members of the Live Food Challenge have access to Sergei Boutenko’s video presentation on greens and wild edibles – he lists some of the more common wild edible plants and offers some great advice on foraging and plant identification. Members also have access an amazing interview with Koa. Koa can go bush and survive without a bought supplies indefinitely when he chooses to and is an inspirational character.

Another more traditional way to improve your food security is to grow your own veggie or permaculture patch. This can be done even if you live on a suburban block. It is truly amazing to see how much food can be grown in a small space. If you don’t have time there are now businesses who will come to your house and convert your garden to an edible permaculture food forest! In some areas they will even look after it for you for a fee.

Live Food Challenge members also have access to the video Home Grown Revolution. It is a short documentary about how a family grows over 6,000 pounds (2,720kg) of food per year on a small suburban block (1 tenth of an acre) in Pasadena USA, just 3 minutes from LA. Very Inspiring!

It is time to ditch the lawn and begin growing food producing plants.

There are so many different ways to grow your own food – if interested I recommend doing a permaculture course and getting your hands dirty. Permaculture is about creating natural habitat and ecosystems which more or less maintain themselves.  It is a much more natural and lower maintenance method than growing veggies traditionally in rows.

So now you have some great strategies for maximising the quality and security of your food.

By taking responsibility for your food supply, instead of relying on multinational organisations to feed your family, not only will you have created food security; you will have become a part of the solution needed for the very survival of our over-taxed planet.

Grow for it!

Anand

P.S. If you are interested in seeing how one country survived and then thrived a “Peak Oil” experience I highly recommend the wonderful documentary - Power Of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, it is a very inspiring example of what can be done when the traditional food supply goes down.

EJUVA TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK - Please indicate interest

We sold out of our limited Ejuva Body Cleansing Program stock in three days ... that's how popular it was. We have some more on the way and if you are interested in purchasing it, please email us indicating your interest so we can place a more accurate order with the manufacturer. We wouldn't want you to miss out.

RAW FOOD KITCHEN PRICE COMMITMENT UNTIL XMAS

If you can find any product in our Raw Food Kitchen catalogs (Appliances, Dehydrators,Juicers, Water Purifiers) cheaper (including GST & shipping) at any other legitimate online store then we will match that price up until Xmas as long as we're not losing money on the deal. Just call us on 07 3715 7620 to place your order. Laybys do not apply.

LAYBY FOR CHRISTMAS

We are offering a layby service for any purchase of $500 or more. Just place your order using our Direct Deposit (EFT) payment option and clearly specify "LAYBY ORDER" in the Shipping Instructions field. A minimum $100 initial payment is required to secure the shopping basket. Final payment of the balance is required by December 16, 2011. Cancellations will incur a $50 re-stocking fee. Please indicate the invoice number clearly in all bank transfers.