"Interview with Gabrielle Chavez"
by Michael Snyder
(c) 2008 TheRawDiet.com
Gabrielle Chavez is the co-founder of the Oregon Raw and Living Spirit Retreat.
She is the author of "The Raw Food Gourmet: Going Raw for Total Well-Being"
available at Amazon.com and North Atlantic Books.
This is an excerpt from my eBook and audio collection 'The Health Evolution:
Getting Started with the Raw and Living Foods Lifestyle'
by Michael Snyder
(c) 2008 TheRawDiet.com
Gabrielle Chavez is the co-founder of the Oregon Raw and Living Spirit Retreat.
She is the author of "The Raw Food Gourmet: Going Raw for Total Well-Being"
available at Amazon.com and North Atlantic Books.
This is an excerpt from my eBook and audio collection 'The Health Evolution:
Getting Started with the Raw and Living Foods Lifestyle'
Question:
What is your definition of a raw foods lifestyle, is it 80% or 100% raw?
Gabrielle: Victoria Boutenko was the one who really gave us the information
that impressed us the most. She said it is actually easier to be 100% raw
than 80%. She convinced us that eating cooked food is kind of like an
addiction and that’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to break that. We kind
of took her word for it and have gone 100% raw. I’m not dogmatic about it.
I think raw food is more of a lifestyle. If you make it your lifestyle, then it’s
how you shop as well as how you eat. It might even be how you vote. It’s
how your organize your life, because when you’re aiming to be a raw fooder,
you make a lot of changes in your life.
If there are raw fooders who make certain exceptions, even though they’re
in a raw food lifestyle, I would consider them raw fooders and not cast them
into the outer darkness of non-raw fooders. That’s not what I’m interested
in. But, it is a lifestyle and I think it’s a lot easier to maintain the lifestyle if
you accept that a lot of things are going to change if you’re this way.
The other thing is if you just want to add more raw foods to your diet that is
great. If I had been less ignorant in my early years, I would have done that
and I’d probably be healthier today. I guess I wouldn’t call that a raw food
lifestyle; I would just call that being intelligent about what you eat, including
more raw foods.
As far as vegan or vegetarian, Thomas and I were cooked food vegetarians
for a couple of decades before we went raw. We jumped to veganism. We
do us bee products. They’re the only non-vegan things that are part of our
life.
We use bee pollen when we feel we need extra protein. I alternate raw
honey with agave nectar mostly because agave nectar is really expensive
and in our catering we use a lot of sweeteners. With raw honey, we know
the beekeeper, so I’m assured with my conscious that he’s not abusing his
bees
How did you come up with the chapter title 'Cake for Breakfast'?
I noticed you picked up on that! It goes back to my deprived childhood. The
one thing I really looked forward to was my birthday, because there were
five kids. Mom would make Duncan Hines cakes every once in a while, but
on your birthday you got to eat all the leftover cake if it was your birthday.
And, you got to have it for breakfast; you didn’t have to wait until dinner to
have it for dessert.
I really loved that. Food gets associated with love, and that was one of my
associations of that. I found out very early in going raw from the Boutenkos
that the cakes we make are pure nutrition. They’re just nuts, dried fruits
and maybe some sweetener.
They taste delicious, and there is absolutely nothing in them that isn’t good
for you. I could just have cake for breakfast any day I wanted! I thought
that was great. That’s a reason to go raw right there if you have a sweet
tooth like me.
I secretly have cake for breakfast if I have catered a cake and it is leftover.
I find if you slice it and put it in the dehydrator overnight, you get sort of a
biscotti and that’s good, too, with a little green drink.
Could you tell us about Green Smoothies?
This is my teacher, Victoria Boutenko’s gift to the world.
Nutritionally the thing about green smoothies is you have to use a lot of
greens, like get up to half and half. If you were able to live on a mono diet,
you probably could. We’re up to where half of the blender might be grapes
and the other half of it is garden weeds. The other thing about the green
smoothies is you have to change your greens. You can’t just decide “I hate
kale,” or “I only like kale and that’s all I’m going to put in my green smoothie
for the rest of my life.”
None of the greens have everything you need. Some of them have
chemicals that are antagonistic to other nutrients. We started off using a lot
of kale in our green smoothies. After months, neither of us could stand to
eat a green smoothie with kale anymore. I think that’s our bodies’ way of
telling us to eat something else.
I have identified probably 30 or 40 different greens that I can put in my
green smoothies. I know I’m getting a fuller level of nutrients because I’m
using more different greens. So, that’s one thing to do. Vary your fruits, too.
Watermelon makes a great green smoothie. You don’t even have to add
water. You can make a green smoothie with apples. I always add a little bit
of organic lemon with the peel to make it tastier.
You might want to look into kefir; that’s the other thing. It’s not only what
we ingest, it’s what we digest. Everybody has different levels of ability to
assimilate the nutrients. You could be eating the best nutrients in the world
and not be assimilating them. That’s one way green smoothies help. It does
your chewing for you.
On the internet, do a search for Dom's Kefir Site. This is a guy in Australia
who lives for kefir. He has about a 400 page website with everything you
want to know about it.
He will sell you some dried kefir grain so you can make your own kefir. Most
of his kefir is cultured in dairy milk. I bought grains from him four or five
years ago and I’ve been growing kefir. The kefir puts probiotics into the nut
milk that weren’t there before that feed your intestinal tract and help you
absorb more nutrients as well as produce nutrients.
A healthy intestinal tract will grow its own B12, for instance, and other B
vitamins, too. If you’re not getting enough nutrition on the raw food diet or
green smoothies, kefir is good.
My husband Thomas and I drink it at least two or three times a week
because we love it. We make a smoothie with a banana and kefirized
almond milk and some berries or whatever fruit we have. That is so tasty
and so sweet and so filling that there have been long periods of time where
that’s all Thomas ate. He wanted a quart of kefir smoothie per day…
The whole audio recording and transcription of this interview can be found in
"The Health Evolution: A Guide to the Raw Foods Diet" by Michael Snyder ->
http://www.therawdiet.com/evolve.html
To continue reading the rest of the interview scroll down the page.
Visit The Raw Diet Health Shop at http://store.TheRawDiet.com
Return to Home Page and sign up for The Raw Diet Newsletter
What is your definition of a raw foods lifestyle, is it 80% or 100% raw?
Gabrielle: Victoria Boutenko was the one who really gave us the information
that impressed us the most. She said it is actually easier to be 100% raw
than 80%. She convinced us that eating cooked food is kind of like an
addiction and that’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to break that. We kind
of took her word for it and have gone 100% raw. I’m not dogmatic about it.
I think raw food is more of a lifestyle. If you make it your lifestyle, then it’s
how you shop as well as how you eat. It might even be how you vote. It’s
how your organize your life, because when you’re aiming to be a raw fooder,
you make a lot of changes in your life.
If there are raw fooders who make certain exceptions, even though they’re
in a raw food lifestyle, I would consider them raw fooders and not cast them
into the outer darkness of non-raw fooders. That’s not what I’m interested
in. But, it is a lifestyle and I think it’s a lot easier to maintain the lifestyle if
you accept that a lot of things are going to change if you’re this way.
The other thing is if you just want to add more raw foods to your diet that is
great. If I had been less ignorant in my early years, I would have done that
and I’d probably be healthier today. I guess I wouldn’t call that a raw food
lifestyle; I would just call that being intelligent about what you eat, including
more raw foods.
As far as vegan or vegetarian, Thomas and I were cooked food vegetarians
for a couple of decades before we went raw. We jumped to veganism. We
do us bee products. They’re the only non-vegan things that are part of our
life.
We use bee pollen when we feel we need extra protein. I alternate raw
honey with agave nectar mostly because agave nectar is really expensive
and in our catering we use a lot of sweeteners. With raw honey, we know
the beekeeper, so I’m assured with my conscious that he’s not abusing his
bees
How did you come up with the chapter title 'Cake for Breakfast'?
I noticed you picked up on that! It goes back to my deprived childhood. The
one thing I really looked forward to was my birthday, because there were
five kids. Mom would make Duncan Hines cakes every once in a while, but
on your birthday you got to eat all the leftover cake if it was your birthday.
And, you got to have it for breakfast; you didn’t have to wait until dinner to
have it for dessert.
I really loved that. Food gets associated with love, and that was one of my
associations of that. I found out very early in going raw from the Boutenkos
that the cakes we make are pure nutrition. They’re just nuts, dried fruits
and maybe some sweetener.
They taste delicious, and there is absolutely nothing in them that isn’t good
for you. I could just have cake for breakfast any day I wanted! I thought
that was great. That’s a reason to go raw right there if you have a sweet
tooth like me.
I secretly have cake for breakfast if I have catered a cake and it is leftover.
I find if you slice it and put it in the dehydrator overnight, you get sort of a
biscotti and that’s good, too, with a little green drink.
Could you tell us about Green Smoothies?
This is my teacher, Victoria Boutenko’s gift to the world.
Nutritionally the thing about green smoothies is you have to use a lot of
greens, like get up to half and half. If you were able to live on a mono diet,
you probably could. We’re up to where half of the blender might be grapes
and the other half of it is garden weeds. The other thing about the green
smoothies is you have to change your greens. You can’t just decide “I hate
kale,” or “I only like kale and that’s all I’m going to put in my green smoothie
for the rest of my life.”
None of the greens have everything you need. Some of them have
chemicals that are antagonistic to other nutrients. We started off using a lot
of kale in our green smoothies. After months, neither of us could stand to
eat a green smoothie with kale anymore. I think that’s our bodies’ way of
telling us to eat something else.
I have identified probably 30 or 40 different greens that I can put in my
green smoothies. I know I’m getting a fuller level of nutrients because I’m
using more different greens. So, that’s one thing to do. Vary your fruits, too.
Watermelon makes a great green smoothie. You don’t even have to add
water. You can make a green smoothie with apples. I always add a little bit
of organic lemon with the peel to make it tastier.
You might want to look into kefir; that’s the other thing. It’s not only what
we ingest, it’s what we digest. Everybody has different levels of ability to
assimilate the nutrients. You could be eating the best nutrients in the world
and not be assimilating them. That’s one way green smoothies help. It does
your chewing for you.
On the internet, do a search for Dom's Kefir Site. This is a guy in Australia
who lives for kefir. He has about a 400 page website with everything you
want to know about it.
He will sell you some dried kefir grain so you can make your own kefir. Most
of his kefir is cultured in dairy milk. I bought grains from him four or five
years ago and I’ve been growing kefir. The kefir puts probiotics into the nut
milk that weren’t there before that feed your intestinal tract and help you
absorb more nutrients as well as produce nutrients.
A healthy intestinal tract will grow its own B12, for instance, and other B
vitamins, too. If you’re not getting enough nutrition on the raw food diet or
green smoothies, kefir is good.
My husband Thomas and I drink it at least two or three times a week
because we love it. We make a smoothie with a banana and kefirized
almond milk and some berries or whatever fruit we have. That is so tasty
and so sweet and so filling that there have been long periods of time where
that’s all Thomas ate. He wanted a quart of kefir smoothie per day…
The whole audio recording and transcription of this interview can be found in
"The Health Evolution: A Guide to the Raw Foods Diet" by Michael Snyder ->
http://www.therawdiet.com/evolve.html
To continue reading the rest of the interview scroll down the page.
Visit The Raw Diet Health Shop at http://store.TheRawDiet.com
Return to Home Page and sign up for The Raw Diet Newsletter
Here is the full transcript of my interview with Gabrielle Chavez. I
have not yet edited out the errors.
Michael: Welcome to the teleseminar. This is your host,
Michael Snyder from www.TheRawDiet.com My special guest
tonight is one of my biggest inspirations. I first met her four years
ago at the Oregon Raw Living Foods Festival. This festival was in
Portland, but Gabrielle and her husband, Thomas, were the only
two people from Portland I met.
Ever since then, I’ve stayed really good friends with them both. We
see each other at least once a week. We’re co-hosts of two local
potlucks in the Portland area. Each month on the second and third
Wednesday, we do potluck together. Gabrielle and Thomas also run
a business called Share the Love Catering that caters special events
and also prepares raw gourmet foods for a farmer’s market.
Last year in November, Gabrielle hosted a weekly raw gourmet
dinner called The Double Dessert Dinners. She served two desserts
with each meal and it was amazing good. It was to test all the
recipes for her book. Her book was published a few months ago
and is titled The Raw Food Gourmet: Going Raw for Total Well-
Being. I’d like to welcome Gabrielle Chavez. Thank you, and I’m
happy you could join us this evening.
Gabrielle: Thank you, Michael and everyone who called in. I
really appreciate you putting out your time and money to offer
these teleseminars and all the things you’re doing to spread the
good word about raw foods. I’m happy to be here.
Michael: Would you like to start out by telling us a little bit
about yourself and how you discovered your passion for raw living
foods?
Gabrielle: It’s interesting how people are from all over the
place listening in. I’m from the East Coast and a city girl. I grew up
in the dietary wasteland of the 1950’s on white bread, every kind of
supplement, chocolate ice milk and parents who didn’t know or didn’
t care anything about nutrition.
So, I had a major sweet tooth and just kind of ate whatever I liked
that was around. There were almost no fresh foods because we
were also poor and getting government surplus. My mother didn’t
know the difference between canned spinach and fresh spinach. She
probably didn’t even know how to prepare it.
When I was old enough to read, I got interested in nutrition and
embarked on my career of improving my diet. I have changed my
diet in many times in steps. I became a vegetarian in my mid-20s.
About 10 or 11 years ago, my new husband, Thomas, got my
attention about enzymes. I knew enzymes were killed when you
cooked food, but I didn’t think they were that important.
He got my attention because we were involved in an energy healing
work called Body Electronics that depended on having highly
enzymized bodies in order to get physical improvement. The energy
worked but it changed the body, so we needed lots of good quality
protein and minerals. That meant lots of good quality enzymes,
too. He started talking about how important raw food was and
stresses that he wasn’t much of a raw fooder.
We ate more, but we started taking food enzymes to make up for it.
Some of the people coming to our group were true raw fooders,
including Jim. He’s a skinny guy, very quiet and very nice. I just
kind of watched him. We started out potlucks there. They weren’t
raw food at the time; they were cooked food potlucks. Jim always
brought such great salads.
I started meeting other raw fooders who talked about the
International Raw Food festivals in Portland. We went to one and
we thought, “This is interesting.” We decided to add more raw
foods. It was the second one we went to about five or six years ago
where Thomas decided he was going to go 100% raw and I
decided, “Let’s just do it and let’s not look back.”
It took us a long time to get to the place where we were ready to
go 100% in a lot of different things, including the chance to see the
food, see the people eating the food, and hearing what they had to
say. When we were ready, we jumped.
Michael: What was it that inspired you to jump and switch?
Gabrielle: It was a combination of having information that was
really comprehensive about why raw food was good, especially the
enzymes. But, there’s so much more. I didn’t know when you eat
cooked food, your immune system reacts in a negative way. That
was an important piece of information. That means your body
thinks cooked food is toxic even if it’s good food.
I learned stuff like that and then I got to taste raw gourmet
food, all kinds of stuff and especially what the raw family was
sharing with us. That’s what convinced Thomas and I’m not quite a
big of a gourmet as he, so I was going to eat more simply. But,
when he was ready to eat raw, we could do it together because of
raw gourmet.
Michael: Was it raw gourmet that helped you stay on the diet?
Gabrielle: Yes, I know a lot of raw fooders now who eat a
much more restricted diet than us. They are careful about food
combining, if not religious about it. On top of that, we’re talking
about not combining fats and sweets and just a lot of strictures that
I don’t put on myself. I’ve noticed that people who are super strict,
especially when they’re new about going raw, have a real hard time
sticking with it.
I’m kind of patting myself on the back because we went the
gourmet way. It was very simple – I could eat anything I wanted,
as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted as long as it wasn’t
cooked. That left me a lot of things to choose from and a lot of
ways to make myself happy. Because of that, neither of us has gone
back and it’s been nearly five years. We’re very happy and satisfied
with it. I can’t imagine ever eating cooked food again; I really can’t.
I did wait a year before I got rid of all my pans. I’m done with it
and it’s raw gourmet that’s enabled me to do it.
You have to remember that I’m middle aged and I’ve been eating
cooked food for half a century. I have a lot of food memories, a lot
of positive associations with food, and a lot of addictions I had to
overcome to eat raw. Maybe it would be easier for a young person
to go on a pure, solid and simple non-gourmet raw food diet, but I’
m not even going to try. I feel great with what I have.
Michael: What is your definition of a raw food diet? Do you
think 80% raw is okay, or do you think it’s 100%? Also, what
about vegetarian or vegan?
Gabrielle: Those are two questions. Victoria Boutenko was the
one who really gave us the information that impressed us the most.
The only thing she said was it’s actually easier to be 100% raw than
80%. She convinced us that eating cooked food is kind of like an
addiction and that’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to break that.
We kind of took her word for it and have gone 100% raw. I’m not
dogmatic about it.
I think raw food is more of a lifestyle. If you make it your lifestyle,
then it’s how you shop as well as how you eat. It might even be
how you vote. It’s how your organize your life, because when you’
re aiming to be a raw fooder, you make a lot of changes in your
life. If there are raw fooders who make certain exceptions, even
though they’re in a raw food lifestyle, I would consider them raw
fooders and not cast them into the outer darkness of non-raw
fooders. That’s not what I’m interested in. But, it is a lifestyle and I
think it’s a lot easier to maintain the lifestyle if you accept that a lot
of things are going to change if you’re this way.
The other thing is if you just want to add more raw foods to
your diet that is great. If I had been less ignorant in my early years,
I would have done that and I’d probably be healthier today. I guess
I wouldn’t call that a raw food lifestyle; I would just call that being
intelligent about what you eat, including more raw foods.
As far as vegan or vegetarian, Thomas and I were
[indiscernible] vegetarians for a couple of decades before we went
raw. We jumped to veganism. Unless you’re a super vegan and you
would condemn us, we do us bee products. They’re the only non-
vegan things that are part of our life. We use bee pollen when we
feel we need extra protein. I alternate raw honey with agave nectar
mostly because agave nectar is really expensive and in our catering
we use a lot of sweeteners. With raw honey, we know the
beekeeper, so I’m assured with my conscious that he’s not abusing
his bees.
Michael: I love the bee pollen, too. It’s a powerful super food.
In your book, you described your previous diet as a “cheese-
aterian”.
Gabrielle: I made up that word! We used to buy five pound
logs of extra sharp cheddar about twice a month. That’s really
shocking. That’s just for two or three of us and our friends.
Quesadillas were something we had every day as well as macaroni
and cheese. We were very creative with dairy and all kinds of
cheese. It’s fast food if you’re a vegetarian and it’s delicious. That’s
confession time.
Michael: So, you had to get over these cheese cravings. You
came up with a bunch of raw cheese recipes that are delicious.
Gabrielle: I did that, but I was surprised. First of all, raw
cheeses are delicious. They’re not the same as dairy cheeses; you
have to accept that. Not only are they not the same, they don’t form
the same place in my diet as cheese did. I can go weeks without
making a raw cheese.
Michael: We’re talking about nut and seed cheeses.
Gabrielle: Yes, we’re not talking about raw dairy cheeses. I don’
t indulge in them and never have. Basically, if you’re going to make
a good raw cheese, you need something that has the fat and
protein, some kind of nut or seed. Sometimes you can add a little
extra oil to that, too. You need something to give it some flavor
and to make it taste cheesy.
The things that make it taste cheesy are usually fermented things
like meso, Nama Shoyu, raw apple cider vinegar, or Rejuvelac.
Those are the main things. Or, just letting your nut or seed mixture
sit out on the counter and letting the yeast from the air sour it. That
works, too. If you don’t want to use a fermented thing, you can just
use lemon juice, which mimics the sharpness of cheese but won’t
give it quite a cheesy flavor.
The other thing you can do is add some nutrition yeast, which is
not a raw product. It’s a by-product of fermenting. It’s from
brewing and that definitely gives things a cheesy flavor, especially if
you’re in a hurry.
Michael: One of your chapters is titled “Cake for Breakfast”. Is
there a special reason for this title?
Gabrielle: I noticed you picked up on that! It goes back to my
deprived childhood. The one thing I really looked forward to was
my birthday, because there were five kids. Mom would make
Duncan Hines cakes every once in a while, but on your birthday you
got to eat all the leftover cake if it was your birthday. And, you got
to have it for breakfast; you didn’t have to wait until dinner to have
it for dessert.
I really loved that. Food gets associated with love, and that was
one of my associations of that. I found out very early in going raw
from the Boutenkos that the cakes we make are pure nutrition. They’
re just nuts, dried fruits and maybe some sweetener. They taste
delicious, but there is absolutely nothing in them that isn’t good for
you. I could just have cake for breakfast any day I wanted! I
thought that was great. That’s a reason to go raw right there if you
have a sweet tooth like me.
I secretly have cake for breakfast if I’ve catered a cake and it’s
leftover. I find if you slice it and put it in the dehydrator overnight,
you get sort of a biscotti and that’s good, too, with a little green
drink.
Michael: Your cakes are amazing. You do a really great job on
them. I’m amazed how you say you make them in less than 15
minutes.
Gabrielle: I said 15 years or 15 minutes, because if you’re
really on this, you start at the very beginning and you plant the
walnut trees, you’ll have to wait 15 years to have your own harvest.
We should acknowledge that. The food that we just scarf down has
been prepared for us by nature for years and years often. I
appreciate that.
Of course, once we get the nuts, I always presoak my nuts. I’ve
been convinced that it not only improves their flavor, it improves
their digestibility. Because wet nuts don’t make a very good cake, I
dry them again in a refrigerator or dehydrator so they grind up
really well. That obviously takes more than 15 minutes.
But once the nuts are ready and all the ingredients are in my
kitchen, which they almost always are, actually putting it together
takes 15 minutes. I’ve done that in several kitchens besides my
own, so I know you can do it. Assembling the ingredients may take
longer than that.
Michael: Is beneficial to soak all the nuts and seeds before?
Are they more nutritious that way?
Gabrielle: I’ve heard there are several things to consider. First
of all, nuts and seeds come equipped with certain self defense
phyto-chemicals to keep them from spotting prematurely or being
too tasty, and therefore, not performing their function in nature,
which is to produce future plants. Most of these phyto-chemicals
that make them non-digestible are water soluble. Letting those go
down the drain after you soak them overnight enhances the
assimilation of the nuts and seeds. There are people who say they
can’t digest nuts. The first thing I say is, “Why don’t you try soaking
them first and maybe that will make a difference?” I think it will.
The other thing is when you soak a nut or seed, you’re starting
the process of it waking up to grow. The chemical and internal
biology of the nut or seed alters when the vitality is released. So,
you’re getting an enhanced, more alive food. I virtually always soak
my nuts and seeds. The one little exception is I just bought one of
those manual oat flakers where you can put oak groats in, turn the
handle, and out comes rolled oats. That doesn’t work when they’re
soaked.
Michael: Your book discusses many differences between
preparing cooked food recipes versus raw food recipes. They just
don’t work the same way. Could you share one of these differences?
Gabrielle: I really used to love cooking. Now, I love food prep.
I’ve made a lot of observations over the years about cooking and
what happens to food and how it’s altered. One of the simplest
ways to understand the basic difference is when you cook food, you
change its chemistry. You don’t have the same things you had when
you started. When you bake a cake, you don’t have identifiable eggs
any more. Everything becomes a new molecular compound.
When you just prepare it, even with grinding, slicing, drying and
salting, the changes you’re making to the food are either physical or
biological. That really has implications for that end result in how it
tastes, its texture and how good it is for you. That’s the overall
difference between the two that’s worth keeping in mind.
Michael: The raw foods aren’t standardized.
Gabrielle: That’s the other thing. One lemon is different from
another lemon. There are a lot of reasons for that – where they’re
grown, the season, how much water there is, the soil, how long
they’ve been in storage. Even in my garden, the tomatoes of the
same variety could be different in how they taste. I’m pretty aloof
about quantities and proportions in my recipes, as I notice most
raw recipe books are. You don’t always get the same thing when
you use the exact same ingredients because the food is alive. I say
in my book that it has moods. That’s part of the fun of raw
gourmet, discovering that and making things you’ll never make
again quite the same because nature changes.
Michael: They’re all unique. One big thing I had to get used to
was with cooked food recipes you could make the recipe and eat it
that day. But, with raw foods, you have to at least start the
preparation the night before. So, you’re pretty much eating your
dinner that was prepared yesterday and preparing your dinner for
tomorrow.
Gabrielle: Yes, especially if you’re going to do anything with
nuts or seeds. You have to train yourself to soak them before you
go to bed and rinse them in the morning. That’s just become
automatic for me. You can also soak twice as much one night and
put the drained nuts or seeds in the refrigerator. They’ll keep for a
day or two and I’ve done that.
But, it’s definitely one of the things that changes when you go
raw. You have to think about what you want to eat and what’s
involved with getting it ready. Otherwise, you’re doomed to just
eating fruits, salads and things you can make in your blender really
fast that don’t involve soaking or sprouting.
Michael: Do you have a system set up in your kitchen that
makes the process easier? For example, each night you soak the
seeds. Do you make fermented foods at all or sprouts?
Gabrielle: The thing that works the best for me is using a lot of
colanders. I don’t have a sprouter machine. I don’t like having any
more equipment than I already have. All of those things are hard to
clean. A colander is easy. I use jars, bowls and colanders. I will
soak the things on my counter overnight and in the morning when I
go to the sink, I won’t forget them. That’s part of the system – I
can see them there.
I pour them into the colander and rinse them right there in the
sink. I have a double sink, so if I just have one thing, I can let it sit
in the colander in half of the sink. At least one more time, I can
rinse it and watch it growing. That’s really simple and that’s what I
tend to do. I also grow a lot of my food. I grow my own
wheatgrass and I sprout sunflowers seeds. I have several gardens
and I have things on my deck. The deck is at the same level as the
kitchen.
I circulate between the refrigerator, the deck, the kitchen
counter and the sinks quite a bit. But, it helps if you have good
counters, I know not everybody does, where you can just have
everything out so you can see it. Keep your refrigerator clean so
you can see what you have in there, too. Raw foods don’t keep as
long as a lot of cooked foods or dead foods.
Michael: That kind of brings us to the environmental aspects of
raw and how you grow a lot of your own foods and sprouts on the
back deck. You have your own garden. Would you like to talk a
little bit about how growing your own food helps you connect with
it?
Gabrielle: I think it kind of begins and ends with compost. I
always did generate a lot of compost even before I was raw,
because I like to start with whole foods. I easily generate about two
gallons on average of kitchen scraps every day, so I have to have a
compost heap. When you have a compost heap and you tend it,
you start noticing life. It seems like a miracle to me that all these
kitchen scraps can turn into this great soil and all these red worms
that I know enrich the garden.
I just love my compost pile, so I’m kind of in awe of that. I feel
very connected to the cycle because I bring the food in, I cut the
stuff away that goes in the compost. I take it back out and put it on
the soil, the plants and seeds. That right there is great to experience
the whole cycle. It’s also wonderful to have food out there you can
just go pick when you’re ready to eat.
Like tonight, I hadn’t soaked anything, but I went out to the
garden. It’s the end of November, so there’s not much there. But,
there were a couple of tomatoes, a squash, an Indian garlic, the last
of the basil and a little bit of parsley. I just put that in my food
processor with a little bit of olive oil and I had the greatest, tastiest
soup. Of course, I had some crackers with it, too.
I couldn’t do that if I didn’t have a garden. I’d have to make sure I
had all those things in my refrigerator or go shopping. So, it’s really
great to be able to grow even just a few herbs or something like
wheatgrass. Wheatgrass will grow in anybody’s house. It doesn’t
need a lot of light.
Michael: If there is anyone in the audience who would like to
ask a question, feel free to do so.
Listener: I would like to know about your seed cheese you
were talking about. What types of nuts are in your cheese?
Gabrielle: It depends on what I want the cheese to taste.
Ricotta cheese is the one thing I think you can create that tastes
almost exactly, if not better, than the dairy ricotta. The secret of
that is macadamia nuts. You soak them with as little extra fluid as
possible. There is a recipe in my book. It’s basically lemon juice and
salt. You can flavor that with some thyme. You’ll get something
with the texture of ricotta which is a soft cheese. It’s just an
incredible flavor.
Listener: How long does it take to make that? Do you have to
let it sit?
Gabrielle: You don’t have to even let that one ferment because
the lemon juice provides enough flavor. Ricotta is pretty bland. If I’
m making a lasagna, I’ll just make it. If you have a vitamix and
work with it, then you don’t have to add much fluid to it. It comes
out thick and you don’t have to strain it through a jelly bag. If you
have to add so much liquid that it’s runny, then you’ll have to strain
it and that takes a few hours until the whey drips out.
Another cheese I like to make real quickly and is fairly
inexpensive is made with sunflower seeds. You soak them
overnight or for at least a couple of hours and drain them. Then,
you would put in a red pepper which will liquefy that, into a food
processor or blender. That becomes your liquid. Then, add some
Nama Shoyu and lemon juice or a little bit of olive oil and vinegar.
You’ll get a nice cheese that tastes a little bit like nacho cheese. You
can add some garlic and that’s fast. It’s ready right away.
Angie: I made a type of raw oatmeal by soaking oat groats.
Have you ever made that?
Gabrielle: Yes, I do. What was your question?
Angie: My question is when you’re soaking the oat groat, do
you soak them at room temperature or in the refrigerator? I find
that soaking them for about five days at room temperature and
changing the water once a day sometimes makes it smell like they’
re spoiled.
Gabrielle: You would drown them in five days and they’d start
to rot. Soak them overnight; that is long enough to soak anything.
Then, they’re ready in the morning. They’re actually pretty fast.
They’re a bit chewy. The thing about oats is you have to make sure
you have the ones that haven’t been irradiated or heated. I only
know one source and it’s Sun Organic Farms. They’re available on
the internet. The way you know you have good ones is they will
actually sprout.
Nothing is going to sprout after it’s soaked for five days. It
doesn’t matter whether the water is cold or warm. Just soak them
not more than 12 hours. Drain them and you can rinse them. They
can keep growing a little bit, or you can put them in the refrigerator
for a day or two. They should taste great.
Angie: They’re pretty good. I got that recipe from a raw food
book.
Gabrielle: I think that’s a typo. It would rot, or someone was
using groats that weren’t alive that don’t sprout and was trying to
soften them.
Angie: I have one other question. I heard you talk about Nama
Shoyu and meso. Can I take it that you use soy? I’ve heard and
read that in some places that soy is not good for human digestion.
Gabrielle: Yes, I’ve read that, too. It’s probably true. Meso and
Nama Shoyu have small amounts of soy. You don’t sit down to a
meal of meso or Nama Shoyu. If you are eating it at all, you’re not
getting very much just at the condiment level. That’s a personal
choice. I do know strict raw fooders who won’t touch it for the
reasons you say and for some other reasons.
Some people think that fermented foods enhance candida and other
yeast conditions. If you find that to be true, then don’t use it. It’s
not so much that I use soy products. Those are the only two things
in my diet that have soy in them. When I’m traveling, I’ll take mung
beans and sprout them, because that’s one thing you can travel with
and turn them into a raw soup. Other than that, soy isn’t a part of
my life.
Angie: Have you ever sprouted broccoli seeds?
Gabrielle: Yes, they’re pretty peppery! But, they’re nice in a mix
with alfalfa seeds.
Listener: How do you sprout your mung beans when you
travel?
Gabrielle: I use the same bag I use to make my nut milk with.
It’s a mesh bag. I’ll soak them overnight in a little plastic cup or
whatever I have with me. This is what I had when I traveled to
Scotland. I just had a little 2-cup plastic cup I took with me. I soak
them overnight and pour them into the soft bag in the morning. I
will put the sprout bag inside the cup and the next day rinse them
again. By then, they’ve already started to sprout.
I didn’t wait until they got long. I would just eat them in a day
or two. I could do that in my hotel room. It’s funny to have things
sprouting on your sink, but it can be done. I did it for a month! I
did that with some broccoli seeds and a little seed mix, too. It’s one
way to have living food anytime of the year anywhere in the world.
Just get one of those sprout bags.
Listener: It’s good to hear that you can have a raw food
lifestyle and still travel a lot, because I have a 23 year old daughter
who has become interested in raw foods. She’s preparing them here
in my home sometimes. She travels so much to different countries
and I was wondering how that would work.
Gabrielle: That’s a very good thing. I applaud your daughter. I
actually have a whole chapter in my book about that, because I’ve
had to figure that out. It has a lot to do with your destination, how
long you’re going to be there and how much you travel and can
carry. When going overseas, you can’t take avocados and lemons
across customs. But, if you’re staying in this country, you can. If
you’re just going to be gone for a week or so, you can take an
avocado or lemon. If you get it at the right ripeness, you don’t even
have to refrigerate it if you have room in your suitcase.
If you have room in your suitcase for a little blender, that makes
a different what you take. Or, maybe you’re just taking a lot of
dried things or some olives. I’ve given that a lot of thought and it
can be done. You can be raw gourmet while you’re traveling. You
don’t just have to rely on salad bars and fruits.
Listener: I have really been struggling with this for a while.
The first time I was raw was in 1971, believe it or not. I was raw
from ’71 to ’73. I did it a little differently than the raw people do
today. I very rarely ate nuts. I had gone to a naturopath who put
me on it. Really, I just ate monofruit during the day and I had a
large raw vegetable salad at night. I also did a lot of fasting. I wasn’
t hungry when I fasted, but I sure was hungry most of the rest of
the time.
I stopped doing it because I really felt deficient in everything in
the known universe. I do want to get back and do raw. I did it for
about a year about four years ago. What really trips me up on it is I
don’t really like food preparation. I’m just not that into it. I’m not
that into food period.
Gabrielle: Well, you’re a good candidate for the green
smoothies. This is my teacher, Victoria Boutenko’s gift to the world.
Listener: I’ve been doing them.
Gabrielle: How are you doing with green smoothies?
Listener: I like them and it’s not enough. I live alone and I
work at home. A lot of my socializing is going out to eat. I’m really
wanting to sort this out because I don’t feel good eating.
Gabrielle: So, green smoothies aren’t enough nutritionally or
they’re not enough to go with your social life, or both?
Listener: Both.
Gabrielle: Nutritionally the thing about green smoothies is you
have to use a lot of greens, like get up to half and half. If you were
able to live on a mono diet, you probably could. We're up to where
half of the blender might be grapes and the other half of it is
garden weeds. The other thing about the green smoothies is you
have to change your greens. You can’t just decide "I hate kale," or
"I only like kale and that’s all I’m going to put in my green
smoothie for the rest of my life."
None of the greens have everything you need. Some of them
have chemicals that are antagonistic to other nutrients. We started
off using a lot of kale in our green smoothies. After months, neither
of us could stand to eat a green smoothie with kale anymore. I
think that’s our bodies' way of telling us to eat something else.
I’ve identified probably 30 or 40 different greens that I can put
in my green smoothies. I know I’m getting a fuller level of nutrients
because I’m using more different greens. So, that’s one thing to do.
Vary your fruits, too. I couldn’t live on green smoothies.
Listener: It’s a little bit difficult in Iowa. Even this summer, we
did not have decent fruits other than apples. I live in a community
that’s pretty health conscious, so we have a nice organic store. A lot
of the fruit that came in was not good. It wasn’t sweet, etc.
Gabrielle: Can you get a watermelon? Watermelon makes a
great green smoothie. You don’t even have to add water. I lived in
Iowa, too, and I didn’t think it was that hard. You can make a green
smoothie with apples. I always add a little bit of organic lemon with
the peel to make it tastier.
Listener: That’s what I’ve been doing. I don’t think I’ve been
doing enough. I haven’t been making myself a whole blender full.
Gabrielle: You might want to look into kefir; that’s the other
thing. It’s not only what we ingest, it’s what we digest. Everybody
has different levels of ability to assimilate the nutrients. You could
be eating the best nutrients in the world and not be assimilating
them. That’s one way green smoothies help. It does your chewing
for you. Do you know what kefir is?
Listener: Is that the dairy product?
Gabrielle: No, I’m talking about the grain that makes the dairy
product turn into the kefir drink.
Listener: No, I’m not aware of that.
Gabrielle: On the internet, do a search for dom (which is short
for Dominique) Kefir Insighte. This is a guy in Australia who lives
for kefir. He has about a 400 page website with everything you
want to know about it. He will sell you some dried kefir grain so
you can make your own kefir. Most of his kefir is cultured in dairy
milk. I bought grains from him four or five years ago and I’ve been
growing kefir. The kefir puts probiotics into the nut milk that weren’
t there before that feed your intestinal tract and help you absorb
more nutrients as well as produce nutrients.
A healthy intestinal tract will grow its own B12, for instance, and
other B vitamins, too. If you’re not getting enough nutrition on the
raw food diet or green smoothies, kefir is good. Thomas and I
drink it at least two or three times a week because we love it. We
make a smoothie with a banana and kefirized almond milk and
some berries or whatever fruit we have. That is so tasty and so
sweet and so filling that there have been long periods of time where
that’s all Thomas ate. He wanted a quart of kefir smoothie per day.
Listener: If you get some good fresh berries, that goes a long
way, too.
Gabrielle: We pick blackberries out here in Oregon and put
them in our freezer. We have them all year round.
Listener: I just have to say your food sources in Oregon are
fabulous.
Gabrielle: We are lucky, but there is the internet. When I was
in Iowa, I was in a buying club. We got herbs from Frontier Herbs,
which was in Iowa when I was there and organic vegetables from I
don’t know where. The other thing is I’m willing to eat non-organic
vegetables if they’re local. Sometimes I think they’re better because
some organic stuff that is out of season or is from faraway and has
been sitting in a warehouse has lost a lot of its value, even if it was
once an optimal food.
So, you can be a little bit flexible on the organic and non-
organic just so you can get variety. We’re designed to eat, I think, a
very varied diet.
Listener: I agree with you. I have to say, though, I used to be
okay with that. In recent years, I can totally taste and feel the
difference.
Gabrielle: So can I! You’re going to have to plant a garden.
Listener: I have to do something.
Gabrielle: It’s good to grow a garden. It will change your life
as much as going raw. If it’s that important to you, and it should
be, I love to buy organic because it’s a vote. I’m voting with my
dollar for better agriculture. I agree with you that it’s the best food.
Listener: I just would like to point out – there is nothing you
can say about it, it’s just sort of a wild complaint. Not everybody in
their lives wants to change their lives to be focused so much on
food prep. I don’t know if your husband would have gone raw if it
meant he had to change his profession and spend a good deal of
his time everyday preparing food.
Gabrielle: That’s true. You have to figure out how to make it
work. If you survived on a mono diet and were willing to eat just
simple foods, if you could get your raw materials like fruits and
nuts, nut milks take five minutes to make. They are really good. If
you have kefir and you throw a banana in it, you’ve got a great
meal. There is also avocado.
Listener: This has been really helpful.
Gabrielle: I want to encourage you. I’m impressed that you’re
one of the pioneers. You can do it.
Listener: I want to ask about the green smoothies. I love the
green smoothies, but I’m having a problem with the pure organic.
It makes me sleepy.
Gabrielle: It makes you sleepy? What are you putting in your
green smoothie?
Listener: I’ve put watermelon, apples, mangoes. I try different
fruits. I can have it in the morning, but in the afternoon it just
makes me too sleepy.
Gabrielle: What kinds of greens are you using?
Listener: I’ve used parsley, kale, romaine lettuce. Sometimes I’
ll use a mixture. I’ll put sunflower sprouts in it.
Gabrielle: That’s good. You can use celery and things like that.
That’s odd. Do fruit drinks in general make you sleepy?
Listener: Yes.
Gabrielle: You might have a Candida overgrowth, an
imbalance of Candida. That would be my guess. Unfortunately, the
best way to handle that is to cut out the sweet things for a while. It
means you’d be making your smoothie without the sweets.
Listener: I’ve done fine on cucumber and that masks the flavor
of the grains to where I can handle it.
Gabrielle: Good for you. Then, you’re having like an energy
soup. Are you less sleepy then?
Listener: Yes, I’m less sleepy. How long should I continue to
do that, because I love my fruit?
Gabrielle: Do it for a couple of weeks and then try it with fruit
and see what happens. Try using less fruit. Try using less glycemic
fruits like just apple with a little lemon. Sometimes we make green
smoothies with oranges. See if you can get away with some fruits
and not others, or berries. If you wanted to work on the other end
with the Candida, you can improve your probiotic by taking some
probiotic supplements or get some kefir. It will help your gut get
ahead of the Candida overgrowth. You can also use, if you are
willing to use herbs to depress the Candida a little bit, olive leaf
extract and grapefruit seed extract.
You can make a tea with it or you can buy the powdered in a
capsule. Grapefruit seed extract is marketed under, I think,
Citracydin. Those are both safe to use internally and they are very
anti-fungal. If you just ingested some of that in small quantities
over time, perhaps six weeks, you have to give the Candida a
chance to go through a growth cycle of a bloom and a die off.
Listener: What was the brand on that?
Gabrielle: It was Citracydin. There might be some other
brands now, but that’s the first brand that came out and the one I
have. Citracydin, grapefruit seed extract and/or olive leaf extract are
strong anti-fungals. They will discourage the Candida. While you’re
discouraging the Candida, you’re encouraging the other good
bacteria with a probiotic. Then, you don’t feed the Candida for a
while by giving it too much sugar. I’ll be you’ll see a difference.
Listener: Do you think it would be a couple of weeks?
Gabrielle: You have to commit to a couple of months. Candida
is like a chronic thing and depends on how severe it is. It’s not
going to go away in a week. It’s a living thing. I have done that for
myself, several friends and my children. I know you can do it.
Listener: So, it would be for a few months then?
Gabrielle: I would stay away from hone and agave nectar for
sure. The first sweets I would add back would be things like apples
and berries. Then, if you notice you’re getting symptoms, then you
have to back off again.
Listener: What about [indiscernible] and coconut? Is that too
sweet?
Gabrielle: I think coconut is okay. Do you have Gabriel Cousins
Rainbow Green?
Listener: Yes, I do. In fact, he recommends not having the
coconut water, and that’s so precious tome. I’d hate to throw it
away.
Gabrielle: See if you take the other sweets out if you can
manage on that. The key to making a raw diet work is really listen
to your body and notice what’s going on. What one author says
might apply to you or it might not. You just begin with my advice
or Cousins’ advice. You’re the expert in what’s going on with your
body. I think you’re on the trail of it.
Listener: How can you be the expert when you’re totally brand
new?
Gabrielle: How new?
Listener: As in decided on my birthday Saturday.
Gabrielle: Good for you! You’re on a fast learning track.
Listener: I need to be because I’m a Type 1 diabetic and I’m
very nervous about this. I’ve been told that I’m in deep trouble and
there’s nothing they can do for me and it’s just too bad (they being
the AMA guys). My acupuncturist, yoga teacher and I think
otherwise, which is how I ended up here. I don’t really know what I’
m doing.
Gabrielle: You need to read some books. Have you run across
The Raw Family book? Their son, Sergei, was a Type 1 diabetic and
that’s how they go into raw food.
Listener: Did you say “was”?
Gabrielle: Yes, they tell their story in their book called The
Raw Family and their website is www.TheRawFamily.com. Actually,
Sergie and Valiya, after being raw for 10 years, wrote their own raw
food book and they go around the country with folks who are just
wonderful people. What motivated Victoria to finally go raw was
hearing one more diagnosis on one of her kids and it was that he
was going to be condemned to insulin, no hope and all of that.
So, he tells his story and that should inspire you and give you
lots of information. You can cure diabetes, Type 1 and Type 2, with
a raw food diet. Get their books to encourage you and believe that
you can do it. Are you monitoring your blood sugar?
Listener: All of the time.
Gabrielle: That’s really good because you can look at what
happens after you have a raw meal. My friend’s husband is Type 2
diabetic and he was really amazed how quickly the raw food
lowered his blood sugar.
Listener: I’m on an insulin pump and I don’t really understand
how to apply the glycemic index to things like you’re talking about
with gourmet meals. I understand if it’s carrots and tomatoes and
grapes. But, putting it all together, I don’t want to get too low too
quickly.
Gabrielle: The glycemic index is a ballpark and it’s based on
cooked foods. We don’t really know what the glycemic index might
be in an uncooked version of the same fruit or vegetable, so that’s a
little caution. The best thing is to go by your own self monitoring;
that’s your authority. You’ll be writing your own glycemic index
before very long, and going slow and realizing that with that pump
you may have to be making regular adjustments as you succeed.
But, that‘s really exciting. I know you can do it. It’s obvious that
some fruits are high sugar, especially a lot of the hybridized fruits
we have now. I can’t believe how sweet grapefruit are not
compared to what they were like when I was a kid. We had to
dump brown sugar on them to make the edible. Now, they’re
perfectly sweet. Agriculture has been selecting for sweet things and
altering the food. To me now, pineapples are too sweet, so you
have to watch that. One fruit is different from another. If you look
for the simpler gourmet recipes while you’re still monitoring what
you’re doing…
Listener: Are yours simple?
Gabrielle: Well, it’s a combination of simple and not too
simple. Raw gourmet is in its second generation now. When I first
went raw, there were six or eight really good raw food cookbooks
out there, but they were by the pioneers of raw gourmet. Raw
gourmet is really fairly new; it’s less than 20 years old. Going raw,
like this nice lady who did it in 1971, those people didn’t have the
benefit of the culinary art that has come.
There are hundreds of raw gourmet books out now. The newer
ones finish it from the lessons of the first generation. A lot of the
first generation recipes were really complicated, a lot of steps, a lot
of different ingredients, a lot of strange combinations. So, I like to
think that I have improved and simplified a lot of the things from
what they were 10 years ago. They can still be improved and
simplified.
Listener: Are there any besides yours that are really good to
look at? I have The Raw Family and yours. What else?
Gabrielle: I would say for a diabetic a basic good text is to look
at Gabriel Cousins’ Rainbow Green Life Food Cuisine. That’s
especially good if you’re doing the Candida thing, but he addressed
the glycemic issue, too. What he says in there may not apply to you.
One thing you do have to be careful of is there is a whole school of
raw fooders and Doug Graham and Roselyn Googen are the head of
that. They were having enormous success in their own lives by
basically eating a diet that’s most fruit. If I were a diabetic, I would
really pause before I jumped onto their bandwagon. I just don’t
know.
I heard him talk this summer and he said it’s not the sugar that’s
the problem. It’s when you combine the sugar with the fat. He
might be right. In which case, my gourmet recipes where I combine
sugar and fat might not be what you want. That’s what you’re going
to have to check.
I know you can improve your health, and it’s great that you have
the incentive. How old are you?
Listener: I just turned 47 on Saturday.
Gabrielle: You’re not that old. You can really enhance yourself.
You’re not condemned to this. I’m glad you’re looking. You’ll see
the results. Once a person is pretty old and they try to make these
changes, they might not be able to roll back so many chronic
illnesses. But, it’s still the best way to eat, I think. Good for you and
I wish you well.
Jill: I have to comment on this one. I survived a liver
transplant by going raw. It is so wonderful. I was going down for
the third time and was finally rejecting the liver I got. Finally, I
went raw and in two weeks there was a complete turnaround. It’s
four years now. I wish everybody who has the diagnoses of failure
to know it’s just not true. I’m so healthy today. I’m going to be
getting off of my anti-rejection drug. I’ve lowered it so low without
rejecting. It takes a long time. It’s taken me three years.
Gabrielle: That’s amazing because it’s probably unheard of.
Jill: I only know of 23 people who have successfully done it in
the whole world. Nobody even knows what I’m talking about
usually.
Gabrielle: That brings up another point about how counter-
cultural this diet is and how hard it is to be a pioneer even today.
We have teleseminars and lots of books, but we still live with
people who go to doctors that maybe think it’s a problem or aren’t
convinced it’s good.
Jill: I live in a tiny town in Florida. I have discovered just by
searching some support groups. These are people who want to be
healthy. I’ve formed a few of them here. I have classes. It just takes
opening up. It encourages me to keep raw by giving it away. That’s
the way to do it. Every day there is someone on the phone or
somebody interested in another way. Their counters are filled with
pharmaceutical drugs and they’re so scared.
I don’t tell anybody to do anything but eat well and they will see
something. You’ll see an energy that day. I’d walk by and forget to
take the pills. That’s when I finally decided to go down with my
doctor. Fortunately, my doctor was willing to do that with me.
There was a point where I became aware of what foods gave me
the energy and what foods didn’t. It becomes like brushing my
teeth in the morning. I don’t have to think.
But, like everything you do, you really do have to apply learning
to be an ace at anything. I was sitting at home and wondering how
I was going to eat. All of a sudden, I was eating.
Gabrielle: Congratulations. That’s a good story.
Michael: For diabetes, in Spiritual Nutrition, there are a bunch
of recommendations for some specific foods and minerals that
might help.
Gabrielle: Have you heard about cinnamon? It’s an herb that
even in the mainstream medicine is being recognized as kind of an
anti-diabetic herb. So, I always use lots of cinnamon in everything.
Listener: What about turmeric?
Gabrielle: Cinnamon is the one and another one is mint.
Cinnamon is the one I’ve heard the most about. Turmeric is good
for a lot of things. Maybe it’s good for diabetes, too.
Susan: Most of the literature I’ve ready sights turmeric. I
wanted to ask you if you recommend supplements.
Gabrielle: If I needed them, I guess I would recommend them.
I make a different distinction between what’s called super foods and
supplements. For me, a supplement is something you have to pay
for because it comes in a package or bottle, and it’s an extract or
has been altered in some way.
Super foods are usually just something like bee pollen or
spirulina where you get the whole thing. They’re both supplements
because they’re not really diet things.
Listener: Have you tried [indiscernible]?
Gabrielle: Yes, that’s another thing. There are people especially
like Dr. Graham and some of the natural hygienists who are
absolutely against all supplements. They say if you’re raw you don’t
need them. I think that might have been true 10,000 years ago or
even 5,000 years ago when human beings were more at one with
nature and we hadn’t altered the biosphere and didn’t have such
industrial agriculture. Even the best raw food, and even the stuff
out of my garden which is grown with love and my own compost. I
supplement it with rock dust and I re-mineralize it. I doubt if I
could get everything I needed all the time out of what I could grow
or buy living a modern life.
So, nutritional supplementation is something to look at. My first
choice would be whole foods like the algaes, seaweeds and bee
pollen. I was an herbalist before I was a raw fooder, and I had lot
of success using herbs as teas and also to treat specific conditions. I’
m very open to that for a short-time therapeutic use and I suppose
people could call them supplements.
The only other supplement I take is a spectrum trace mineral
because I’ve been convinced that it’s a lifetime of eating American
food in American soil from depleted agriculture has stripped me of
trace minerals. When I use that, I just feel better. I saved a lot of
money when I went raw. I was taking a multivitamin that was in a
liquid form and I just didn’t need it within a few months of being
raw.
I don’t have those pill bottles all over my cupboard that I used to
have when I was a cheese-aterian. Mostly, the supplements aren’t
there, but I’m not against them.
Listener: What trace minerals do you take?
Gabrielle: They’re from a company called Coenzyme Minerals.
Michael: It’s Enzymes International.
Gabrielle: That’s right, it’s Enzymes International and they’re
called coenzyme minerals. They are a special kind of trace minerals
that are chelated and colloidal. Chelated means the minerals are in
the organic form that your body doesn’t have to chelate in order to
assimilate. If you just took calcium from a rock, your body really
can’t do much with that even though it says you’re getting 60mg of
calcium in that pill, because your body has to rob from its own
stores of protein to make that assumable. But, if you eat a plant
source of calcium where the plant can take the rock mineral and
turn it into a biological form of chelated mineral, we’re designed to
digest that.
Enzymes International minerals are made from kelp that has
been fossilized. Then, they make some kind of slurry with it and
introduce some kind of algae so it goes twice through the plant
cycle before they dry it. It’s very absorbable, very potent and it’s
broad spectrum. Those are the best ones we’ve found and Enzymes
International is where we get them.
Michael: Can you briefly explain why you put rock dust on
your garden?
Gabrielle: Besides rock dust, I’m experimenting with some
other volcanic ash products. One is called azomite and I forget what
the other one is called. If I need minerals, I think my plants need
minerals, too. I do it first of all because I read about how depleted
our soils are. Even organic farmers who add back compost or
manure don’t always add back the minerals. So, if I’m trying to get
all my nutrition from plants, I want them to have everything they
need.
The other thing is they just grow better. The wheatgrass I
sprout from organic wheat, if I sprinkle a little rock dust on the
potting soil, is richer, thicker, tastier and more vibrant than the
times when I forget to do that. It’s really cheap and easy to get
some rock dust somewhere and spread it on your garden.
Listener: Where do you get rock dust?
Gabrielle: I go to an agricultural supply place. There is a
warehouse here that actually sells feed and everything from what
you would feed your animals to what you would put on your
garden. There’s another product called azomite. You can do an
internet search and find out where the nearest azomite distributor is
and that comes in 40-pound bags if you’re not near an agricultural
store or feed supply store.
Listener: Where can we buy your book?
Gabrielle: On Amazon.com and type in Gabrielle Chavez.
North Atlantic books is the publisher. It was first published by
Findhorn Press and then North Atlantic bought the American rights.
Our local Borders and Barnes and Noble have it, but I don’t know if
yours does. You should ask them!
I want to say a word about our Raw Spirit camp that Mike
mentioned at the beginning. Some of you might be able to help us
with that. Portland doesn’t have the raw food festivals anymore. It’s
been a year or two since they’ve been on. We’re not trying to bring
back a festival, but we’re trying to design an event that people can
come to that will equip them to sustain a raw food lifestyle.
So, we’re going to have an overnight camp in a nice place for a
couple of days and nights and serve people great food. Then, we’re
going to have an all-day raw food exposition and open that to the
public. We’ll have raw chefs showcased and a lot of fun events. For
the camp, we want to bring in speakers and have topics that really
meet the needs of people and the questions they have on how to do
it.
I know it really helped me to hear the great chefs, see them prepare
food, and hear the people who have done the research, to have
them all there. Victoria Boutenko has already agreed to come. We’re
in the process, Mike and I and the rest of the committee, on
deciding who to invite.
We’re also asking people who are new to raw, have been raw for a
while, or who have tried it and it didn’t work what do you need to
succeed? What would you like to hear, learn or experience. If
anyone wants to make some suggestions, it’s going to be on Labor
Day weekend in the Portland, Oregon area. Put it on your
calendars. It’s going to start Wednesday, August 30th in the
evening. We’re going to start on Friday for the camp and all day
Saturday.
Listener: So, it would be August 30th, 31st and September 1st?
Gabrielle: Yes, it sounds like you’re putting it on your calendar.
Listener: I’m doing that right now. Will you be sending out
emails?
Gabrielle: Michael will be posting it to his website. If you stay
with Mike, you won’t fail to hear about it. We really want this to be
useful to people who have been raw and who are new to raw. So, I’
m getting some ideas from your questions. But, if anyone wants to
say “I really wish I could hear so-and-so,” or have this experience…
Listener: How to introduce your non-raw food family members.
Gabrielle: That’s a good one. With Thanksgiving coming up,
we’re catering a raw Thanksgiving meal here in Portland. It’s also a
fund raiser for the Raw Spirit camp. We have a fabulous menu. It
makes me lick my lips just to think about it.
Listener: There is a challenge I’m having to deal with now
because of my family. I happen to be from the South and I’m
African American. So, the diet has been so filled with all kinds of
craziness like pork and everything. But, I’ve been away from pork
for about 25 or 26 years now, and away from meats almost as long.
Trying to have family gatherings when everybody else still eats
all that crap is hard. My son is 17 now, but at the age of 3 he
contracted encephalitis and had brain damage. He was in a coma
for a month. I make sure he eats well. I can’t take him anywhere
hardly. I have to prepare it all myself, which I don’t mind; I love
preparing food. That’s one of the challenges. If you could deal with
that in that camp on how to have family gatherings.
Gabrielle: Someone has already suggested that we do kind of a
round table conversation with folks like you who have been trying
to figure this out – “This is what I tried.” We bring in not only the
experts but the real people who have had to figure it out on the
ground, and particularly people who are in an ethnic group where
the diet is like part of your identity. For me to change my diet, I’m
not kind of betraying my ethnic group. I can imagine for you to
say, “I’m not going to eat this,” is even harder.
Listener: Yes, it is!
Gabrielle: I would love to have you come and share your
experiences so we can all appreciate that and sort of problem solve
all together. For instance, I don’t know if collard greens are a big
food in your former diet or your family’s diet.
Listener: Yes, definitely they are.
Gabrielle: I never ate collard greens until I went raw. Raw
collard greens are probably nothing like those that have been boiled
and fried. There might be some ways that maybe your people
would try your collard greens.
Listener: They actually did try the marinated greens and they
loved it.
Gabrielle: Well, that may be one of the secrets. The other is
there are some African American leaders now who are saying, “We
have to take care of our health because no one else is looking after
us.” Part of the exploitation is just bad food. I don’t know any of
them who are raw except for Dick Gregory. Maybe letting them do
some of the talking for you if you can find out who they are,
because you’re not alone. But, it’s important. I sure wish you well.
Listener: It would be great if I could get Oprah to do this!
Gabrielle: She actually had a raw fooder on her show about six
or eight years ago, an African American woman who ran a
restaurant in Chicago. That is a good idea; that’s going to change a
lot of minds.
Listener: [indiscernible] was on the Oprah show.
Gabrielle: That’s who it was.
Listener: Donna Karan was on with her friend who had a
double mastectomy.
Gabrielle: God bless Oprah. She ought to have me on and talk
to me about my book!
Listener: You should write or email her and tell her.
Gabrielle: She’s certainly struggled a lot with food. You learn a
lot when you struggle and she’s very open minded.
Michael: Spirituality and theology play a big role in your life
with living foods being here for the spiritual aspirant. How has that
affected your spiritual life?
Gabrielle: Mike, thank you for asking that, because it is true. I
am very much a spiritual person. I’m an ordained Christian minister
with the United Church of Christ. My spiritual community, Christ the
Healer, is where I learned about raw foods. One of the members
started talking about that because we’re very interested in healing.
I also visited the Findhorn Community in Scotland on my sabbatical
a year and a half ago. Part of the reason I wanted to go there was
that’s a place that pioneered this idea of gardening in partnership
with nature and living in a co-creative way with nature. The
founders of Findhorn actually communicated with the plants as well
as the animals, and gardened very intelligently by asking the plants,
“What kind of fertilizer? Where do we plant you?” It’s amazing the
stories that have come out of Findhorn.
I had been very much drawn to that even before I was raw. When I
went raw, I noticed that my ability to be sensitive to life energy just
skyrocketed. I already could kind of see auras if I looked or
certainly feel them. I just became much more aware of the vibrancy
of the living world. When I would try to meditate or just be quiet,
for some reason – and I’m not entirely sure why – after I went raw,
it was so much easier.
It was like I was fasting. When you fast, it’s much easier to meditate
or pray. When I went raw, I had that same ease of getting into
altered states or spiritual states without having to starve, deprive
myself and go through all of that. It’s certainly done that and it’s
given me more energy to go out to help, work and serve, which is
very much a part of my faith. In a lot of ways, it really enhances the
spirituality.
Michael: I like how you write in your book in Chapter 12 on
raw spirituality, “I believe that eating raw not only supports spiritual
practice, it is a spiritual practice, One that is available to all
seekers.” You stress how living foods relate to your lifestyle.
Gabrielle: Even just caring for the Earth. Raw fooders eat low
on the food chain. We don’t use as much packaging and
transportation, and we don’t make as much garbage. At a lot of
levels, it’s very satisfying. It’s a spiritual practice, but I want to say
for me it’s not a religion. I would really turn people off and bore
them to death if I were trying to convert them to raw foods as a
religion. I have a very tolerant, open mind about food doctrines, as
well as theological doctrines.
Michael: How do you feel about some of the ecological aspects
of raw foods?
Gabrielle: Those are very important to me. We are on
spaceship Earth and everything circulates. Nature is a big
recirculating, living, breathing lung. What happens in one part of
the planet happens to the rest of us. I want to be a contributing
human being as best as I can. Cornwell West has a phrase. He calls
our Western society “a take, make, waste society”. That really sums
it up how unconsciously we live, drive and consume. Our whole
culture is based on that and it’s really hard to opt out of it.
So, I consider especially going raw to be almost the most
revolutionary counter-cultural thing you can do for the
environment. You’re taking personal responsibility and you’re
threatening the whole agro-business system. When we go to a
supermarket, if we do, we’re out of there in a couple of minutes flat
because there’s only one whole aisle in that big building that we
need.
Imagine what would happen to agriculture, shopping,
transportation and restaurants if raw food really got popular. Even
if 5% or 10% of the population did that, it would be revolutionary
and it would help global warming. It would help pollution. It would
make people more awake and energetic so they would be smarter
in their political choices. It’s quite an amazing revolutionary lifestyle
and I hope it spreads. I don’t underestimate the effect it would
have. It would have a positive effect on society as well as on the
planet.
Michael: That’s a great answer. I’d like to cover one more
topic. Are you self taught, and what do you think is the best way
for a raw gourmet chef to get their start?
Gabrielle: I’m not entirely self taught in raw because I did take
some classes with Victoria Boutenko, and I certainly recommend
those. Going to the raw food expos over the years is a little
education in itself because you’re exposed to a lot of information
and a lot of the chefs. One of my favorite raw chefs is Chad
Sarnow, at www.RawFoodChefs.com. I think you can get a hold of
him that way. He has food demos and he goes around the world.
You can buy his books and tapes.
I purchased and read a lot of the raw food cookbooks and met a
lot of their authors over the years. I can always learn from
everybody. I just learned a great recipe from Bridgett Mars’ new
book. It’s so good that I’ll have to tell people what it is and then go
home and make something. It is not low glycemic or low fat,
however.
You get some nice apples, fresh ones that are in season, and slice
them up. Then, you create a dip in your food processor. You use a
cup of dates, a cup of rinsed pine nuts and a half cup of very find
extra virgin coconut oil, and a little bit of vanilla or vanilla bean.
You just whiz that up in your food processor. It takes about two
minutes and you have this gooey, sweet, over the top tasting apple
dip or icing for one of your cakes.
So, I’m still learning. I recommend, if someone wants to become a
very fancy gourmet chef, they can look into the Living Light
Culinary Arts Institute in California. They’re set up to turn out raw
chefs who are at a level to work at a restaurant. I recommend
reading a lot of books and asking questions. Self taught is not a bad
thing, but you have to love food. Get in the kitchen and try stuff,
and come to our camp!
Go to the events. Get on the websites where you hear about what’s
going on. There are a lot of ways to learn.
Michael: I’ll open up the line for one more question. I’d like to
thank you, Gabrielle, for coming. It’s such a nice treat for you to be
on the line. Her book is The Raw Food Gourmet: Going Raw for
Total Well-Being. I’d like to thank you, Keith Schaffer, for recording
at www.SaveYourSeminars.com. We have time for one more
question. Say your name and where you’re from.
Jenny: Jenny from Dayton View, Ohio. Do you ever have any
seminars or camps in the Ohio area or somewhere not so far away?
Gabrielle: I haven’t been back east except to visit my folks on
Cape Cod. I’d be delighted to make the trip if someone made the
arrangements. Short of that, you’ll have to come to our Raw Spirit
camp and I’ll spend all the time with you that you’d like this
summer.
Michael: We have time for one more question.
Listener: I’d like to say thanks to all of you, Michael, Gabrielle
and the guy who’s recording.
Gabrielle: Thanks to all of you.
Listener: If I could figure out how to clap on the phone, I’d do it!
Keith: Have a good night everyone!
have not yet edited out the errors.
Michael: Welcome to the teleseminar. This is your host,
Michael Snyder from www.TheRawDiet.com My special guest
tonight is one of my biggest inspirations. I first met her four years
ago at the Oregon Raw Living Foods Festival. This festival was in
Portland, but Gabrielle and her husband, Thomas, were the only
two people from Portland I met.
Ever since then, I’ve stayed really good friends with them both. We
see each other at least once a week. We’re co-hosts of two local
potlucks in the Portland area. Each month on the second and third
Wednesday, we do potluck together. Gabrielle and Thomas also run
a business called Share the Love Catering that caters special events
and also prepares raw gourmet foods for a farmer’s market.
Last year in November, Gabrielle hosted a weekly raw gourmet
dinner called The Double Dessert Dinners. She served two desserts
with each meal and it was amazing good. It was to test all the
recipes for her book. Her book was published a few months ago
and is titled The Raw Food Gourmet: Going Raw for Total Well-
Being. I’d like to welcome Gabrielle Chavez. Thank you, and I’m
happy you could join us this evening.
Gabrielle: Thank you, Michael and everyone who called in. I
really appreciate you putting out your time and money to offer
these teleseminars and all the things you’re doing to spread the
good word about raw foods. I’m happy to be here.
Michael: Would you like to start out by telling us a little bit
about yourself and how you discovered your passion for raw living
foods?
Gabrielle: It’s interesting how people are from all over the
place listening in. I’m from the East Coast and a city girl. I grew up
in the dietary wasteland of the 1950’s on white bread, every kind of
supplement, chocolate ice milk and parents who didn’t know or didn’
t care anything about nutrition.
So, I had a major sweet tooth and just kind of ate whatever I liked
that was around. There were almost no fresh foods because we
were also poor and getting government surplus. My mother didn’t
know the difference between canned spinach and fresh spinach. She
probably didn’t even know how to prepare it.
When I was old enough to read, I got interested in nutrition and
embarked on my career of improving my diet. I have changed my
diet in many times in steps. I became a vegetarian in my mid-20s.
About 10 or 11 years ago, my new husband, Thomas, got my
attention about enzymes. I knew enzymes were killed when you
cooked food, but I didn’t think they were that important.
He got my attention because we were involved in an energy healing
work called Body Electronics that depended on having highly
enzymized bodies in order to get physical improvement. The energy
worked but it changed the body, so we needed lots of good quality
protein and minerals. That meant lots of good quality enzymes,
too. He started talking about how important raw food was and
stresses that he wasn’t much of a raw fooder.
We ate more, but we started taking food enzymes to make up for it.
Some of the people coming to our group were true raw fooders,
including Jim. He’s a skinny guy, very quiet and very nice. I just
kind of watched him. We started out potlucks there. They weren’t
raw food at the time; they were cooked food potlucks. Jim always
brought such great salads.
I started meeting other raw fooders who talked about the
International Raw Food festivals in Portland. We went to one and
we thought, “This is interesting.” We decided to add more raw
foods. It was the second one we went to about five or six years ago
where Thomas decided he was going to go 100% raw and I
decided, “Let’s just do it and let’s not look back.”
It took us a long time to get to the place where we were ready to
go 100% in a lot of different things, including the chance to see the
food, see the people eating the food, and hearing what they had to
say. When we were ready, we jumped.
Michael: What was it that inspired you to jump and switch?
Gabrielle: It was a combination of having information that was
really comprehensive about why raw food was good, especially the
enzymes. But, there’s so much more. I didn’t know when you eat
cooked food, your immune system reacts in a negative way. That
was an important piece of information. That means your body
thinks cooked food is toxic even if it’s good food.
I learned stuff like that and then I got to taste raw gourmet
food, all kinds of stuff and especially what the raw family was
sharing with us. That’s what convinced Thomas and I’m not quite a
big of a gourmet as he, so I was going to eat more simply. But,
when he was ready to eat raw, we could do it together because of
raw gourmet.
Michael: Was it raw gourmet that helped you stay on the diet?
Gabrielle: Yes, I know a lot of raw fooders now who eat a
much more restricted diet than us. They are careful about food
combining, if not religious about it. On top of that, we’re talking
about not combining fats and sweets and just a lot of strictures that
I don’t put on myself. I’ve noticed that people who are super strict,
especially when they’re new about going raw, have a real hard time
sticking with it.
I’m kind of patting myself on the back because we went the
gourmet way. It was very simple – I could eat anything I wanted,
as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted as long as it wasn’t
cooked. That left me a lot of things to choose from and a lot of
ways to make myself happy. Because of that, neither of us has gone
back and it’s been nearly five years. We’re very happy and satisfied
with it. I can’t imagine ever eating cooked food again; I really can’t.
I did wait a year before I got rid of all my pans. I’m done with it
and it’s raw gourmet that’s enabled me to do it.
You have to remember that I’m middle aged and I’ve been eating
cooked food for half a century. I have a lot of food memories, a lot
of positive associations with food, and a lot of addictions I had to
overcome to eat raw. Maybe it would be easier for a young person
to go on a pure, solid and simple non-gourmet raw food diet, but I’
m not even going to try. I feel great with what I have.
Michael: What is your definition of a raw food diet? Do you
think 80% raw is okay, or do you think it’s 100%? Also, what
about vegetarian or vegan?
Gabrielle: Those are two questions. Victoria Boutenko was the
one who really gave us the information that impressed us the most.
The only thing she said was it’s actually easier to be 100% raw than
80%. She convinced us that eating cooked food is kind of like an
addiction and that’s one of the reasons why it’s hard to break that.
We kind of took her word for it and have gone 100% raw. I’m not
dogmatic about it.
I think raw food is more of a lifestyle. If you make it your lifestyle,
then it’s how you shop as well as how you eat. It might even be
how you vote. It’s how your organize your life, because when you’
re aiming to be a raw fooder, you make a lot of changes in your
life. If there are raw fooders who make certain exceptions, even
though they’re in a raw food lifestyle, I would consider them raw
fooders and not cast them into the outer darkness of non-raw
fooders. That’s not what I’m interested in. But, it is a lifestyle and I
think it’s a lot easier to maintain the lifestyle if you accept that a lot
of things are going to change if you’re this way.
The other thing is if you just want to add more raw foods to
your diet that is great. If I had been less ignorant in my early years,
I would have done that and I’d probably be healthier today. I guess
I wouldn’t call that a raw food lifestyle; I would just call that being
intelligent about what you eat, including more raw foods.
As far as vegan or vegetarian, Thomas and I were
[indiscernible] vegetarians for a couple of decades before we went
raw. We jumped to veganism. Unless you’re a super vegan and you
would condemn us, we do us bee products. They’re the only non-
vegan things that are part of our life. We use bee pollen when we
feel we need extra protein. I alternate raw honey with agave nectar
mostly because agave nectar is really expensive and in our catering
we use a lot of sweeteners. With raw honey, we know the
beekeeper, so I’m assured with my conscious that he’s not abusing
his bees.
Michael: I love the bee pollen, too. It’s a powerful super food.
In your book, you described your previous diet as a “cheese-
aterian”.
Gabrielle: I made up that word! We used to buy five pound
logs of extra sharp cheddar about twice a month. That’s really
shocking. That’s just for two or three of us and our friends.
Quesadillas were something we had every day as well as macaroni
and cheese. We were very creative with dairy and all kinds of
cheese. It’s fast food if you’re a vegetarian and it’s delicious. That’s
confession time.
Michael: So, you had to get over these cheese cravings. You
came up with a bunch of raw cheese recipes that are delicious.
Gabrielle: I did that, but I was surprised. First of all, raw
cheeses are delicious. They’re not the same as dairy cheeses; you
have to accept that. Not only are they not the same, they don’t form
the same place in my diet as cheese did. I can go weeks without
making a raw cheese.
Michael: We’re talking about nut and seed cheeses.
Gabrielle: Yes, we’re not talking about raw dairy cheeses. I don’
t indulge in them and never have. Basically, if you’re going to make
a good raw cheese, you need something that has the fat and
protein, some kind of nut or seed. Sometimes you can add a little
extra oil to that, too. You need something to give it some flavor
and to make it taste cheesy.
The things that make it taste cheesy are usually fermented things
like meso, Nama Shoyu, raw apple cider vinegar, or Rejuvelac.
Those are the main things. Or, just letting your nut or seed mixture
sit out on the counter and letting the yeast from the air sour it. That
works, too. If you don’t want to use a fermented thing, you can just
use lemon juice, which mimics the sharpness of cheese but won’t
give it quite a cheesy flavor.
The other thing you can do is add some nutrition yeast, which is
not a raw product. It’s a by-product of fermenting. It’s from
brewing and that definitely gives things a cheesy flavor, especially if
you’re in a hurry.
Michael: One of your chapters is titled “Cake for Breakfast”. Is
there a special reason for this title?
Gabrielle: I noticed you picked up on that! It goes back to my
deprived childhood. The one thing I really looked forward to was
my birthday, because there were five kids. Mom would make
Duncan Hines cakes every once in a while, but on your birthday you
got to eat all the leftover cake if it was your birthday. And, you got
to have it for breakfast; you didn’t have to wait until dinner to have
it for dessert.
I really loved that. Food gets associated with love, and that was
one of my associations of that. I found out very early in going raw
from the Boutenkos that the cakes we make are pure nutrition. They’
re just nuts, dried fruits and maybe some sweetener. They taste
delicious, but there is absolutely nothing in them that isn’t good for
you. I could just have cake for breakfast any day I wanted! I
thought that was great. That’s a reason to go raw right there if you
have a sweet tooth like me.
I secretly have cake for breakfast if I’ve catered a cake and it’s
leftover. I find if you slice it and put it in the dehydrator overnight,
you get sort of a biscotti and that’s good, too, with a little green
drink.
Michael: Your cakes are amazing. You do a really great job on
them. I’m amazed how you say you make them in less than 15
minutes.
Gabrielle: I said 15 years or 15 minutes, because if you’re
really on this, you start at the very beginning and you plant the
walnut trees, you’ll have to wait 15 years to have your own harvest.
We should acknowledge that. The food that we just scarf down has
been prepared for us by nature for years and years often. I
appreciate that.
Of course, once we get the nuts, I always presoak my nuts. I’ve
been convinced that it not only improves their flavor, it improves
their digestibility. Because wet nuts don’t make a very good cake, I
dry them again in a refrigerator or dehydrator so they grind up
really well. That obviously takes more than 15 minutes.
But once the nuts are ready and all the ingredients are in my
kitchen, which they almost always are, actually putting it together
takes 15 minutes. I’ve done that in several kitchens besides my
own, so I know you can do it. Assembling the ingredients may take
longer than that.
Michael: Is beneficial to soak all the nuts and seeds before?
Are they more nutritious that way?
Gabrielle: I’ve heard there are several things to consider. First
of all, nuts and seeds come equipped with certain self defense
phyto-chemicals to keep them from spotting prematurely or being
too tasty, and therefore, not performing their function in nature,
which is to produce future plants. Most of these phyto-chemicals
that make them non-digestible are water soluble. Letting those go
down the drain after you soak them overnight enhances the
assimilation of the nuts and seeds. There are people who say they
can’t digest nuts. The first thing I say is, “Why don’t you try soaking
them first and maybe that will make a difference?” I think it will.
The other thing is when you soak a nut or seed, you’re starting
the process of it waking up to grow. The chemical and internal
biology of the nut or seed alters when the vitality is released. So,
you’re getting an enhanced, more alive food. I virtually always soak
my nuts and seeds. The one little exception is I just bought one of
those manual oat flakers where you can put oak groats in, turn the
handle, and out comes rolled oats. That doesn’t work when they’re
soaked.
Michael: Your book discusses many differences between
preparing cooked food recipes versus raw food recipes. They just
don’t work the same way. Could you share one of these differences?
Gabrielle: I really used to love cooking. Now, I love food prep.
I’ve made a lot of observations over the years about cooking and
what happens to food and how it’s altered. One of the simplest
ways to understand the basic difference is when you cook food, you
change its chemistry. You don’t have the same things you had when
you started. When you bake a cake, you don’t have identifiable eggs
any more. Everything becomes a new molecular compound.
When you just prepare it, even with grinding, slicing, drying and
salting, the changes you’re making to the food are either physical or
biological. That really has implications for that end result in how it
tastes, its texture and how good it is for you. That’s the overall
difference between the two that’s worth keeping in mind.
Michael: The raw foods aren’t standardized.
Gabrielle: That’s the other thing. One lemon is different from
another lemon. There are a lot of reasons for that – where they’re
grown, the season, how much water there is, the soil, how long
they’ve been in storage. Even in my garden, the tomatoes of the
same variety could be different in how they taste. I’m pretty aloof
about quantities and proportions in my recipes, as I notice most
raw recipe books are. You don’t always get the same thing when
you use the exact same ingredients because the food is alive. I say
in my book that it has moods. That’s part of the fun of raw
gourmet, discovering that and making things you’ll never make
again quite the same because nature changes.
Michael: They’re all unique. One big thing I had to get used to
was with cooked food recipes you could make the recipe and eat it
that day. But, with raw foods, you have to at least start the
preparation the night before. So, you’re pretty much eating your
dinner that was prepared yesterday and preparing your dinner for
tomorrow.
Gabrielle: Yes, especially if you’re going to do anything with
nuts or seeds. You have to train yourself to soak them before you
go to bed and rinse them in the morning. That’s just become
automatic for me. You can also soak twice as much one night and
put the drained nuts or seeds in the refrigerator. They’ll keep for a
day or two and I’ve done that.
But, it’s definitely one of the things that changes when you go
raw. You have to think about what you want to eat and what’s
involved with getting it ready. Otherwise, you’re doomed to just
eating fruits, salads and things you can make in your blender really
fast that don’t involve soaking or sprouting.
Michael: Do you have a system set up in your kitchen that
makes the process easier? For example, each night you soak the
seeds. Do you make fermented foods at all or sprouts?
Gabrielle: The thing that works the best for me is using a lot of
colanders. I don’t have a sprouter machine. I don’t like having any
more equipment than I already have. All of those things are hard to
clean. A colander is easy. I use jars, bowls and colanders. I will
soak the things on my counter overnight and in the morning when I
go to the sink, I won’t forget them. That’s part of the system – I
can see them there.
I pour them into the colander and rinse them right there in the
sink. I have a double sink, so if I just have one thing, I can let it sit
in the colander in half of the sink. At least one more time, I can
rinse it and watch it growing. That’s really simple and that’s what I
tend to do. I also grow a lot of my food. I grow my own
wheatgrass and I sprout sunflowers seeds. I have several gardens
and I have things on my deck. The deck is at the same level as the
kitchen.
I circulate between the refrigerator, the deck, the kitchen
counter and the sinks quite a bit. But, it helps if you have good
counters, I know not everybody does, where you can just have
everything out so you can see it. Keep your refrigerator clean so
you can see what you have in there, too. Raw foods don’t keep as
long as a lot of cooked foods or dead foods.
Michael: That kind of brings us to the environmental aspects of
raw and how you grow a lot of your own foods and sprouts on the
back deck. You have your own garden. Would you like to talk a
little bit about how growing your own food helps you connect with
it?
Gabrielle: I think it kind of begins and ends with compost. I
always did generate a lot of compost even before I was raw,
because I like to start with whole foods. I easily generate about two
gallons on average of kitchen scraps every day, so I have to have a
compost heap. When you have a compost heap and you tend it,
you start noticing life. It seems like a miracle to me that all these
kitchen scraps can turn into this great soil and all these red worms
that I know enrich the garden.
I just love my compost pile, so I’m kind of in awe of that. I feel
very connected to the cycle because I bring the food in, I cut the
stuff away that goes in the compost. I take it back out and put it on
the soil, the plants and seeds. That right there is great to experience
the whole cycle. It’s also wonderful to have food out there you can
just go pick when you’re ready to eat.
Like tonight, I hadn’t soaked anything, but I went out to the
garden. It’s the end of November, so there’s not much there. But,
there were a couple of tomatoes, a squash, an Indian garlic, the last
of the basil and a little bit of parsley. I just put that in my food
processor with a little bit of olive oil and I had the greatest, tastiest
soup. Of course, I had some crackers with it, too.
I couldn’t do that if I didn’t have a garden. I’d have to make sure I
had all those things in my refrigerator or go shopping. So, it’s really
great to be able to grow even just a few herbs or something like
wheatgrass. Wheatgrass will grow in anybody’s house. It doesn’t
need a lot of light.
Michael: If there is anyone in the audience who would like to
ask a question, feel free to do so.
Listener: I would like to know about your seed cheese you
were talking about. What types of nuts are in your cheese?
Gabrielle: It depends on what I want the cheese to taste.
Ricotta cheese is the one thing I think you can create that tastes
almost exactly, if not better, than the dairy ricotta. The secret of
that is macadamia nuts. You soak them with as little extra fluid as
possible. There is a recipe in my book. It’s basically lemon juice and
salt. You can flavor that with some thyme. You’ll get something
with the texture of ricotta which is a soft cheese. It’s just an
incredible flavor.
Listener: How long does it take to make that? Do you have to
let it sit?
Gabrielle: You don’t have to even let that one ferment because
the lemon juice provides enough flavor. Ricotta is pretty bland. If I’
m making a lasagna, I’ll just make it. If you have a vitamix and
work with it, then you don’t have to add much fluid to it. It comes
out thick and you don’t have to strain it through a jelly bag. If you
have to add so much liquid that it’s runny, then you’ll have to strain
it and that takes a few hours until the whey drips out.
Another cheese I like to make real quickly and is fairly
inexpensive is made with sunflower seeds. You soak them
overnight or for at least a couple of hours and drain them. Then,
you would put in a red pepper which will liquefy that, into a food
processor or blender. That becomes your liquid. Then, add some
Nama Shoyu and lemon juice or a little bit of olive oil and vinegar.
You’ll get a nice cheese that tastes a little bit like nacho cheese. You
can add some garlic and that’s fast. It’s ready right away.
Angie: I made a type of raw oatmeal by soaking oat groats.
Have you ever made that?
Gabrielle: Yes, I do. What was your question?
Angie: My question is when you’re soaking the oat groat, do
you soak them at room temperature or in the refrigerator? I find
that soaking them for about five days at room temperature and
changing the water once a day sometimes makes it smell like they’
re spoiled.
Gabrielle: You would drown them in five days and they’d start
to rot. Soak them overnight; that is long enough to soak anything.
Then, they’re ready in the morning. They’re actually pretty fast.
They’re a bit chewy. The thing about oats is you have to make sure
you have the ones that haven’t been irradiated or heated. I only
know one source and it’s Sun Organic Farms. They’re available on
the internet. The way you know you have good ones is they will
actually sprout.
Nothing is going to sprout after it’s soaked for five days. It
doesn’t matter whether the water is cold or warm. Just soak them
not more than 12 hours. Drain them and you can rinse them. They
can keep growing a little bit, or you can put them in the refrigerator
for a day or two. They should taste great.
Angie: They’re pretty good. I got that recipe from a raw food
book.
Gabrielle: I think that’s a typo. It would rot, or someone was
using groats that weren’t alive that don’t sprout and was trying to
soften them.
Angie: I have one other question. I heard you talk about Nama
Shoyu and meso. Can I take it that you use soy? I’ve heard and
read that in some places that soy is not good for human digestion.
Gabrielle: Yes, I’ve read that, too. It’s probably true. Meso and
Nama Shoyu have small amounts of soy. You don’t sit down to a
meal of meso or Nama Shoyu. If you are eating it at all, you’re not
getting very much just at the condiment level. That’s a personal
choice. I do know strict raw fooders who won’t touch it for the
reasons you say and for some other reasons.
Some people think that fermented foods enhance candida and other
yeast conditions. If you find that to be true, then don’t use it. It’s
not so much that I use soy products. Those are the only two things
in my diet that have soy in them. When I’m traveling, I’ll take mung
beans and sprout them, because that’s one thing you can travel with
and turn them into a raw soup. Other than that, soy isn’t a part of
my life.
Angie: Have you ever sprouted broccoli seeds?
Gabrielle: Yes, they’re pretty peppery! But, they’re nice in a mix
with alfalfa seeds.
Listener: How do you sprout your mung beans when you
travel?
Gabrielle: I use the same bag I use to make my nut milk with.
It’s a mesh bag. I’ll soak them overnight in a little plastic cup or
whatever I have with me. This is what I had when I traveled to
Scotland. I just had a little 2-cup plastic cup I took with me. I soak
them overnight and pour them into the soft bag in the morning. I
will put the sprout bag inside the cup and the next day rinse them
again. By then, they’ve already started to sprout.
I didn’t wait until they got long. I would just eat them in a day
or two. I could do that in my hotel room. It’s funny to have things
sprouting on your sink, but it can be done. I did it for a month! I
did that with some broccoli seeds and a little seed mix, too. It’s one
way to have living food anytime of the year anywhere in the world.
Just get one of those sprout bags.
Listener: It’s good to hear that you can have a raw food
lifestyle and still travel a lot, because I have a 23 year old daughter
who has become interested in raw foods. She’s preparing them here
in my home sometimes. She travels so much to different countries
and I was wondering how that would work.
Gabrielle: That’s a very good thing. I applaud your daughter. I
actually have a whole chapter in my book about that, because I’ve
had to figure that out. It has a lot to do with your destination, how
long you’re going to be there and how much you travel and can
carry. When going overseas, you can’t take avocados and lemons
across customs. But, if you’re staying in this country, you can. If
you’re just going to be gone for a week or so, you can take an
avocado or lemon. If you get it at the right ripeness, you don’t even
have to refrigerate it if you have room in your suitcase.
If you have room in your suitcase for a little blender, that makes
a different what you take. Or, maybe you’re just taking a lot of
dried things or some olives. I’ve given that a lot of thought and it
can be done. You can be raw gourmet while you’re traveling. You
don’t just have to rely on salad bars and fruits.
Listener: I have really been struggling with this for a while.
The first time I was raw was in 1971, believe it or not. I was raw
from ’71 to ’73. I did it a little differently than the raw people do
today. I very rarely ate nuts. I had gone to a naturopath who put
me on it. Really, I just ate monofruit during the day and I had a
large raw vegetable salad at night. I also did a lot of fasting. I wasn’
t hungry when I fasted, but I sure was hungry most of the rest of
the time.
I stopped doing it because I really felt deficient in everything in
the known universe. I do want to get back and do raw. I did it for
about a year about four years ago. What really trips me up on it is I
don’t really like food preparation. I’m just not that into it. I’m not
that into food period.
Gabrielle: Well, you’re a good candidate for the green
smoothies. This is my teacher, Victoria Boutenko’s gift to the world.
Listener: I’ve been doing them.
Gabrielle: How are you doing with green smoothies?
Listener: I like them and it’s not enough. I live alone and I
work at home. A lot of my socializing is going out to eat. I’m really
wanting to sort this out because I don’t feel good eating.
Gabrielle: So, green smoothies aren’t enough nutritionally or
they’re not enough to go with your social life, or both?
Listener: Both.
Gabrielle: Nutritionally the thing about green smoothies is you
have to use a lot of greens, like get up to half and half. If you were
able to live on a mono diet, you probably could. We're up to where
half of the blender might be grapes and the other half of it is
garden weeds. The other thing about the green smoothies is you
have to change your greens. You can’t just decide "I hate kale," or
"I only like kale and that’s all I’m going to put in my green
smoothie for the rest of my life."
None of the greens have everything you need. Some of them
have chemicals that are antagonistic to other nutrients. We started
off using a lot of kale in our green smoothies. After months, neither
of us could stand to eat a green smoothie with kale anymore. I
think that’s our bodies' way of telling us to eat something else.
I’ve identified probably 30 or 40 different greens that I can put
in my green smoothies. I know I’m getting a fuller level of nutrients
because I’m using more different greens. So, that’s one thing to do.
Vary your fruits, too. I couldn’t live on green smoothies.
Listener: It’s a little bit difficult in Iowa. Even this summer, we
did not have decent fruits other than apples. I live in a community
that’s pretty health conscious, so we have a nice organic store. A lot
of the fruit that came in was not good. It wasn’t sweet, etc.
Gabrielle: Can you get a watermelon? Watermelon makes a
great green smoothie. You don’t even have to add water. I lived in
Iowa, too, and I didn’t think it was that hard. You can make a green
smoothie with apples. I always add a little bit of organic lemon with
the peel to make it tastier.
Listener: That’s what I’ve been doing. I don’t think I’ve been
doing enough. I haven’t been making myself a whole blender full.
Gabrielle: You might want to look into kefir; that’s the other
thing. It’s not only what we ingest, it’s what we digest. Everybody
has different levels of ability to assimilate the nutrients. You could
be eating the best nutrients in the world and not be assimilating
them. That’s one way green smoothies help. It does your chewing
for you. Do you know what kefir is?
Listener: Is that the dairy product?
Gabrielle: No, I’m talking about the grain that makes the dairy
product turn into the kefir drink.
Listener: No, I’m not aware of that.
Gabrielle: On the internet, do a search for dom (which is short
for Dominique) Kefir Insighte. This is a guy in Australia who lives
for kefir. He has about a 400 page website with everything you
want to know about it. He will sell you some dried kefir grain so
you can make your own kefir. Most of his kefir is cultured in dairy
milk. I bought grains from him four or five years ago and I’ve been
growing kefir. The kefir puts probiotics into the nut milk that weren’
t there before that feed your intestinal tract and help you absorb
more nutrients as well as produce nutrients.
A healthy intestinal tract will grow its own B12, for instance, and
other B vitamins, too. If you’re not getting enough nutrition on the
raw food diet or green smoothies, kefir is good. Thomas and I
drink it at least two or three times a week because we love it. We
make a smoothie with a banana and kefirized almond milk and
some berries or whatever fruit we have. That is so tasty and so
sweet and so filling that there have been long periods of time where
that’s all Thomas ate. He wanted a quart of kefir smoothie per day.
Listener: If you get some good fresh berries, that goes a long
way, too.
Gabrielle: We pick blackberries out here in Oregon and put
them in our freezer. We have them all year round.
Listener: I just have to say your food sources in Oregon are
fabulous.
Gabrielle: We are lucky, but there is the internet. When I was
in Iowa, I was in a buying club. We got herbs from Frontier Herbs,
which was in Iowa when I was there and organic vegetables from I
don’t know where. The other thing is I’m willing to eat non-organic
vegetables if they’re local. Sometimes I think they’re better because
some organic stuff that is out of season or is from faraway and has
been sitting in a warehouse has lost a lot of its value, even if it was
once an optimal food.
So, you can be a little bit flexible on the organic and non-
organic just so you can get variety. We’re designed to eat, I think, a
very varied diet.
Listener: I agree with you. I have to say, though, I used to be
okay with that. In recent years, I can totally taste and feel the
difference.
Gabrielle: So can I! You’re going to have to plant a garden.
Listener: I have to do something.
Gabrielle: It’s good to grow a garden. It will change your life
as much as going raw. If it’s that important to you, and it should
be, I love to buy organic because it’s a vote. I’m voting with my
dollar for better agriculture. I agree with you that it’s the best food.
Listener: I just would like to point out – there is nothing you
can say about it, it’s just sort of a wild complaint. Not everybody in
their lives wants to change their lives to be focused so much on
food prep. I don’t know if your husband would have gone raw if it
meant he had to change his profession and spend a good deal of
his time everyday preparing food.
Gabrielle: That’s true. You have to figure out how to make it
work. If you survived on a mono diet and were willing to eat just
simple foods, if you could get your raw materials like fruits and
nuts, nut milks take five minutes to make. They are really good. If
you have kefir and you throw a banana in it, you’ve got a great
meal. There is also avocado.
Listener: This has been really helpful.
Gabrielle: I want to encourage you. I’m impressed that you’re
one of the pioneers. You can do it.
Listener: I want to ask about the green smoothies. I love the
green smoothies, but I’m having a problem with the pure organic.
It makes me sleepy.
Gabrielle: It makes you sleepy? What are you putting in your
green smoothie?
Listener: I’ve put watermelon, apples, mangoes. I try different
fruits. I can have it in the morning, but in the afternoon it just
makes me too sleepy.
Gabrielle: What kinds of greens are you using?
Listener: I’ve used parsley, kale, romaine lettuce. Sometimes I’
ll use a mixture. I’ll put sunflower sprouts in it.
Gabrielle: That’s good. You can use celery and things like that.
That’s odd. Do fruit drinks in general make you sleepy?
Listener: Yes.
Gabrielle: You might have a Candida overgrowth, an
imbalance of Candida. That would be my guess. Unfortunately, the
best way to handle that is to cut out the sweet things for a while. It
means you’d be making your smoothie without the sweets.
Listener: I’ve done fine on cucumber and that masks the flavor
of the grains to where I can handle it.
Gabrielle: Good for you. Then, you’re having like an energy
soup. Are you less sleepy then?
Listener: Yes, I’m less sleepy. How long should I continue to
do that, because I love my fruit?
Gabrielle: Do it for a couple of weeks and then try it with fruit
and see what happens. Try using less fruit. Try using less glycemic
fruits like just apple with a little lemon. Sometimes we make green
smoothies with oranges. See if you can get away with some fruits
and not others, or berries. If you wanted to work on the other end
with the Candida, you can improve your probiotic by taking some
probiotic supplements or get some kefir. It will help your gut get
ahead of the Candida overgrowth. You can also use, if you are
willing to use herbs to depress the Candida a little bit, olive leaf
extract and grapefruit seed extract.
You can make a tea with it or you can buy the powdered in a
capsule. Grapefruit seed extract is marketed under, I think,
Citracydin. Those are both safe to use internally and they are very
anti-fungal. If you just ingested some of that in small quantities
over time, perhaps six weeks, you have to give the Candida a
chance to go through a growth cycle of a bloom and a die off.
Listener: What was the brand on that?
Gabrielle: It was Citracydin. There might be some other
brands now, but that’s the first brand that came out and the one I
have. Citracydin, grapefruit seed extract and/or olive leaf extract are
strong anti-fungals. They will discourage the Candida. While you’re
discouraging the Candida, you’re encouraging the other good
bacteria with a probiotic. Then, you don’t feed the Candida for a
while by giving it too much sugar. I’ll be you’ll see a difference.
Listener: Do you think it would be a couple of weeks?
Gabrielle: You have to commit to a couple of months. Candida
is like a chronic thing and depends on how severe it is. It’s not
going to go away in a week. It’s a living thing. I have done that for
myself, several friends and my children. I know you can do it.
Listener: So, it would be for a few months then?
Gabrielle: I would stay away from hone and agave nectar for
sure. The first sweets I would add back would be things like apples
and berries. Then, if you notice you’re getting symptoms, then you
have to back off again.
Listener: What about [indiscernible] and coconut? Is that too
sweet?
Gabrielle: I think coconut is okay. Do you have Gabriel Cousins
Rainbow Green?
Listener: Yes, I do. In fact, he recommends not having the
coconut water, and that’s so precious tome. I’d hate to throw it
away.
Gabrielle: See if you take the other sweets out if you can
manage on that. The key to making a raw diet work is really listen
to your body and notice what’s going on. What one author says
might apply to you or it might not. You just begin with my advice
or Cousins’ advice. You’re the expert in what’s going on with your
body. I think you’re on the trail of it.
Listener: How can you be the expert when you’re totally brand
new?
Gabrielle: How new?
Listener: As in decided on my birthday Saturday.
Gabrielle: Good for you! You’re on a fast learning track.
Listener: I need to be because I’m a Type 1 diabetic and I’m
very nervous about this. I’ve been told that I’m in deep trouble and
there’s nothing they can do for me and it’s just too bad (they being
the AMA guys). My acupuncturist, yoga teacher and I think
otherwise, which is how I ended up here. I don’t really know what I’
m doing.
Gabrielle: You need to read some books. Have you run across
The Raw Family book? Their son, Sergei, was a Type 1 diabetic and
that’s how they go into raw food.
Listener: Did you say “was”?
Gabrielle: Yes, they tell their story in their book called The
Raw Family and their website is www.TheRawFamily.com. Actually,
Sergie and Valiya, after being raw for 10 years, wrote their own raw
food book and they go around the country with folks who are just
wonderful people. What motivated Victoria to finally go raw was
hearing one more diagnosis on one of her kids and it was that he
was going to be condemned to insulin, no hope and all of that.
So, he tells his story and that should inspire you and give you
lots of information. You can cure diabetes, Type 1 and Type 2, with
a raw food diet. Get their books to encourage you and believe that
you can do it. Are you monitoring your blood sugar?
Listener: All of the time.
Gabrielle: That’s really good because you can look at what
happens after you have a raw meal. My friend’s husband is Type 2
diabetic and he was really amazed how quickly the raw food
lowered his blood sugar.
Listener: I’m on an insulin pump and I don’t really understand
how to apply the glycemic index to things like you’re talking about
with gourmet meals. I understand if it’s carrots and tomatoes and
grapes. But, putting it all together, I don’t want to get too low too
quickly.
Gabrielle: The glycemic index is a ballpark and it’s based on
cooked foods. We don’t really know what the glycemic index might
be in an uncooked version of the same fruit or vegetable, so that’s a
little caution. The best thing is to go by your own self monitoring;
that’s your authority. You’ll be writing your own glycemic index
before very long, and going slow and realizing that with that pump
you may have to be making regular adjustments as you succeed.
But, that‘s really exciting. I know you can do it. It’s obvious that
some fruits are high sugar, especially a lot of the hybridized fruits
we have now. I can’t believe how sweet grapefruit are not
compared to what they were like when I was a kid. We had to
dump brown sugar on them to make the edible. Now, they’re
perfectly sweet. Agriculture has been selecting for sweet things and
altering the food. To me now, pineapples are too sweet, so you
have to watch that. One fruit is different from another. If you look
for the simpler gourmet recipes while you’re still monitoring what
you’re doing…
Listener: Are yours simple?
Gabrielle: Well, it’s a combination of simple and not too
simple. Raw gourmet is in its second generation now. When I first
went raw, there were six or eight really good raw food cookbooks
out there, but they were by the pioneers of raw gourmet. Raw
gourmet is really fairly new; it’s less than 20 years old. Going raw,
like this nice lady who did it in 1971, those people didn’t have the
benefit of the culinary art that has come.
There are hundreds of raw gourmet books out now. The newer
ones finish it from the lessons of the first generation. A lot of the
first generation recipes were really complicated, a lot of steps, a lot
of different ingredients, a lot of strange combinations. So, I like to
think that I have improved and simplified a lot of the things from
what they were 10 years ago. They can still be improved and
simplified.
Listener: Are there any besides yours that are really good to
look at? I have The Raw Family and yours. What else?
Gabrielle: I would say for a diabetic a basic good text is to look
at Gabriel Cousins’ Rainbow Green Life Food Cuisine. That’s
especially good if you’re doing the Candida thing, but he addressed
the glycemic issue, too. What he says in there may not apply to you.
One thing you do have to be careful of is there is a whole school of
raw fooders and Doug Graham and Roselyn Googen are the head of
that. They were having enormous success in their own lives by
basically eating a diet that’s most fruit. If I were a diabetic, I would
really pause before I jumped onto their bandwagon. I just don’t
know.
I heard him talk this summer and he said it’s not the sugar that’s
the problem. It’s when you combine the sugar with the fat. He
might be right. In which case, my gourmet recipes where I combine
sugar and fat might not be what you want. That’s what you’re going
to have to check.
I know you can improve your health, and it’s great that you have
the incentive. How old are you?
Listener: I just turned 47 on Saturday.
Gabrielle: You’re not that old. You can really enhance yourself.
You’re not condemned to this. I’m glad you’re looking. You’ll see
the results. Once a person is pretty old and they try to make these
changes, they might not be able to roll back so many chronic
illnesses. But, it’s still the best way to eat, I think. Good for you and
I wish you well.
Jill: I have to comment on this one. I survived a liver
transplant by going raw. It is so wonderful. I was going down for
the third time and was finally rejecting the liver I got. Finally, I
went raw and in two weeks there was a complete turnaround. It’s
four years now. I wish everybody who has the diagnoses of failure
to know it’s just not true. I’m so healthy today. I’m going to be
getting off of my anti-rejection drug. I’ve lowered it so low without
rejecting. It takes a long time. It’s taken me three years.
Gabrielle: That’s amazing because it’s probably unheard of.
Jill: I only know of 23 people who have successfully done it in
the whole world. Nobody even knows what I’m talking about
usually.
Gabrielle: That brings up another point about how counter-
cultural this diet is and how hard it is to be a pioneer even today.
We have teleseminars and lots of books, but we still live with
people who go to doctors that maybe think it’s a problem or aren’t
convinced it’s good.
Jill: I live in a tiny town in Florida. I have discovered just by
searching some support groups. These are people who want to be
healthy. I’ve formed a few of them here. I have classes. It just takes
opening up. It encourages me to keep raw by giving it away. That’s
the way to do it. Every day there is someone on the phone or
somebody interested in another way. Their counters are filled with
pharmaceutical drugs and they’re so scared.
I don’t tell anybody to do anything but eat well and they will see
something. You’ll see an energy that day. I’d walk by and forget to
take the pills. That’s when I finally decided to go down with my
doctor. Fortunately, my doctor was willing to do that with me.
There was a point where I became aware of what foods gave me
the energy and what foods didn’t. It becomes like brushing my
teeth in the morning. I don’t have to think.
But, like everything you do, you really do have to apply learning
to be an ace at anything. I was sitting at home and wondering how
I was going to eat. All of a sudden, I was eating.
Gabrielle: Congratulations. That’s a good story.
Michael: For diabetes, in Spiritual Nutrition, there are a bunch
of recommendations for some specific foods and minerals that
might help.
Gabrielle: Have you heard about cinnamon? It’s an herb that
even in the mainstream medicine is being recognized as kind of an
anti-diabetic herb. So, I always use lots of cinnamon in everything.
Listener: What about turmeric?
Gabrielle: Cinnamon is the one and another one is mint.
Cinnamon is the one I’ve heard the most about. Turmeric is good
for a lot of things. Maybe it’s good for diabetes, too.
Susan: Most of the literature I’ve ready sights turmeric. I
wanted to ask you if you recommend supplements.
Gabrielle: If I needed them, I guess I would recommend them.
I make a different distinction between what’s called super foods and
supplements. For me, a supplement is something you have to pay
for because it comes in a package or bottle, and it’s an extract or
has been altered in some way.
Super foods are usually just something like bee pollen or
spirulina where you get the whole thing. They’re both supplements
because they’re not really diet things.
Listener: Have you tried [indiscernible]?
Gabrielle: Yes, that’s another thing. There are people especially
like Dr. Graham and some of the natural hygienists who are
absolutely against all supplements. They say if you’re raw you don’t
need them. I think that might have been true 10,000 years ago or
even 5,000 years ago when human beings were more at one with
nature and we hadn’t altered the biosphere and didn’t have such
industrial agriculture. Even the best raw food, and even the stuff
out of my garden which is grown with love and my own compost. I
supplement it with rock dust and I re-mineralize it. I doubt if I
could get everything I needed all the time out of what I could grow
or buy living a modern life.
So, nutritional supplementation is something to look at. My first
choice would be whole foods like the algaes, seaweeds and bee
pollen. I was an herbalist before I was a raw fooder, and I had lot
of success using herbs as teas and also to treat specific conditions. I’
m very open to that for a short-time therapeutic use and I suppose
people could call them supplements.
The only other supplement I take is a spectrum trace mineral
because I’ve been convinced that it’s a lifetime of eating American
food in American soil from depleted agriculture has stripped me of
trace minerals. When I use that, I just feel better. I saved a lot of
money when I went raw. I was taking a multivitamin that was in a
liquid form and I just didn’t need it within a few months of being
raw.
I don’t have those pill bottles all over my cupboard that I used to
have when I was a cheese-aterian. Mostly, the supplements aren’t
there, but I’m not against them.
Listener: What trace minerals do you take?
Gabrielle: They’re from a company called Coenzyme Minerals.
Michael: It’s Enzymes International.
Gabrielle: That’s right, it’s Enzymes International and they’re
called coenzyme minerals. They are a special kind of trace minerals
that are chelated and colloidal. Chelated means the minerals are in
the organic form that your body doesn’t have to chelate in order to
assimilate. If you just took calcium from a rock, your body really
can’t do much with that even though it says you’re getting 60mg of
calcium in that pill, because your body has to rob from its own
stores of protein to make that assumable. But, if you eat a plant
source of calcium where the plant can take the rock mineral and
turn it into a biological form of chelated mineral, we’re designed to
digest that.
Enzymes International minerals are made from kelp that has
been fossilized. Then, they make some kind of slurry with it and
introduce some kind of algae so it goes twice through the plant
cycle before they dry it. It’s very absorbable, very potent and it’s
broad spectrum. Those are the best ones we’ve found and Enzymes
International is where we get them.
Michael: Can you briefly explain why you put rock dust on
your garden?
Gabrielle: Besides rock dust, I’m experimenting with some
other volcanic ash products. One is called azomite and I forget what
the other one is called. If I need minerals, I think my plants need
minerals, too. I do it first of all because I read about how depleted
our soils are. Even organic farmers who add back compost or
manure don’t always add back the minerals. So, if I’m trying to get
all my nutrition from plants, I want them to have everything they
need.
The other thing is they just grow better. The wheatgrass I
sprout from organic wheat, if I sprinkle a little rock dust on the
potting soil, is richer, thicker, tastier and more vibrant than the
times when I forget to do that. It’s really cheap and easy to get
some rock dust somewhere and spread it on your garden.
Listener: Where do you get rock dust?
Gabrielle: I go to an agricultural supply place. There is a
warehouse here that actually sells feed and everything from what
you would feed your animals to what you would put on your
garden. There’s another product called azomite. You can do an
internet search and find out where the nearest azomite distributor is
and that comes in 40-pound bags if you’re not near an agricultural
store or feed supply store.
Listener: Where can we buy your book?
Gabrielle: On Amazon.com and type in Gabrielle Chavez.
North Atlantic books is the publisher. It was first published by
Findhorn Press and then North Atlantic bought the American rights.
Our local Borders and Barnes and Noble have it, but I don’t know if
yours does. You should ask them!
I want to say a word about our Raw Spirit camp that Mike
mentioned at the beginning. Some of you might be able to help us
with that. Portland doesn’t have the raw food festivals anymore. It’s
been a year or two since they’ve been on. We’re not trying to bring
back a festival, but we’re trying to design an event that people can
come to that will equip them to sustain a raw food lifestyle.
So, we’re going to have an overnight camp in a nice place for a
couple of days and nights and serve people great food. Then, we’re
going to have an all-day raw food exposition and open that to the
public. We’ll have raw chefs showcased and a lot of fun events. For
the camp, we want to bring in speakers and have topics that really
meet the needs of people and the questions they have on how to do
it.
I know it really helped me to hear the great chefs, see them prepare
food, and hear the people who have done the research, to have
them all there. Victoria Boutenko has already agreed to come. We’re
in the process, Mike and I and the rest of the committee, on
deciding who to invite.
We’re also asking people who are new to raw, have been raw for a
while, or who have tried it and it didn’t work what do you need to
succeed? What would you like to hear, learn or experience. If
anyone wants to make some suggestions, it’s going to be on Labor
Day weekend in the Portland, Oregon area. Put it on your
calendars. It’s going to start Wednesday, August 30th in the
evening. We’re going to start on Friday for the camp and all day
Saturday.
Listener: So, it would be August 30th, 31st and September 1st?
Gabrielle: Yes, it sounds like you’re putting it on your calendar.
Listener: I’m doing that right now. Will you be sending out
emails?
Gabrielle: Michael will be posting it to his website. If you stay
with Mike, you won’t fail to hear about it. We really want this to be
useful to people who have been raw and who are new to raw. So, I’
m getting some ideas from your questions. But, if anyone wants to
say “I really wish I could hear so-and-so,” or have this experience…
Listener: How to introduce your non-raw food family members.
Gabrielle: That’s a good one. With Thanksgiving coming up,
we’re catering a raw Thanksgiving meal here in Portland. It’s also a
fund raiser for the Raw Spirit camp. We have a fabulous menu. It
makes me lick my lips just to think about it.
Listener: There is a challenge I’m having to deal with now
because of my family. I happen to be from the South and I’m
African American. So, the diet has been so filled with all kinds of
craziness like pork and everything. But, I’ve been away from pork
for about 25 or 26 years now, and away from meats almost as long.
Trying to have family gatherings when everybody else still eats
all that crap is hard. My son is 17 now, but at the age of 3 he
contracted encephalitis and had brain damage. He was in a coma
for a month. I make sure he eats well. I can’t take him anywhere
hardly. I have to prepare it all myself, which I don’t mind; I love
preparing food. That’s one of the challenges. If you could deal with
that in that camp on how to have family gatherings.
Gabrielle: Someone has already suggested that we do kind of a
round table conversation with folks like you who have been trying
to figure this out – “This is what I tried.” We bring in not only the
experts but the real people who have had to figure it out on the
ground, and particularly people who are in an ethnic group where
the diet is like part of your identity. For me to change my diet, I’m
not kind of betraying my ethnic group. I can imagine for you to
say, “I’m not going to eat this,” is even harder.
Listener: Yes, it is!
Gabrielle: I would love to have you come and share your
experiences so we can all appreciate that and sort of problem solve
all together. For instance, I don’t know if collard greens are a big
food in your former diet or your family’s diet.
Listener: Yes, definitely they are.
Gabrielle: I never ate collard greens until I went raw. Raw
collard greens are probably nothing like those that have been boiled
and fried. There might be some ways that maybe your people
would try your collard greens.
Listener: They actually did try the marinated greens and they
loved it.
Gabrielle: Well, that may be one of the secrets. The other is
there are some African American leaders now who are saying, “We
have to take care of our health because no one else is looking after
us.” Part of the exploitation is just bad food. I don’t know any of
them who are raw except for Dick Gregory. Maybe letting them do
some of the talking for you if you can find out who they are,
because you’re not alone. But, it’s important. I sure wish you well.
Listener: It would be great if I could get Oprah to do this!
Gabrielle: She actually had a raw fooder on her show about six
or eight years ago, an African American woman who ran a
restaurant in Chicago. That is a good idea; that’s going to change a
lot of minds.
Listener: [indiscernible] was on the Oprah show.
Gabrielle: That’s who it was.
Listener: Donna Karan was on with her friend who had a
double mastectomy.
Gabrielle: God bless Oprah. She ought to have me on and talk
to me about my book!
Listener: You should write or email her and tell her.
Gabrielle: She’s certainly struggled a lot with food. You learn a
lot when you struggle and she’s very open minded.
Michael: Spirituality and theology play a big role in your life
with living foods being here for the spiritual aspirant. How has that
affected your spiritual life?
Gabrielle: Mike, thank you for asking that, because it is true. I
am very much a spiritual person. I’m an ordained Christian minister
with the United Church of Christ. My spiritual community, Christ the
Healer, is where I learned about raw foods. One of the members
started talking about that because we’re very interested in healing.
I also visited the Findhorn Community in Scotland on my sabbatical
a year and a half ago. Part of the reason I wanted to go there was
that’s a place that pioneered this idea of gardening in partnership
with nature and living in a co-creative way with nature. The
founders of Findhorn actually communicated with the plants as well
as the animals, and gardened very intelligently by asking the plants,
“What kind of fertilizer? Where do we plant you?” It’s amazing the
stories that have come out of Findhorn.
I had been very much drawn to that even before I was raw. When I
went raw, I noticed that my ability to be sensitive to life energy just
skyrocketed. I already could kind of see auras if I looked or
certainly feel them. I just became much more aware of the vibrancy
of the living world. When I would try to meditate or just be quiet,
for some reason – and I’m not entirely sure why – after I went raw,
it was so much easier.
It was like I was fasting. When you fast, it’s much easier to meditate
or pray. When I went raw, I had that same ease of getting into
altered states or spiritual states without having to starve, deprive
myself and go through all of that. It’s certainly done that and it’s
given me more energy to go out to help, work and serve, which is
very much a part of my faith. In a lot of ways, it really enhances the
spirituality.
Michael: I like how you write in your book in Chapter 12 on
raw spirituality, “I believe that eating raw not only supports spiritual
practice, it is a spiritual practice, One that is available to all
seekers.” You stress how living foods relate to your lifestyle.
Gabrielle: Even just caring for the Earth. Raw fooders eat low
on the food chain. We don’t use as much packaging and
transportation, and we don’t make as much garbage. At a lot of
levels, it’s very satisfying. It’s a spiritual practice, but I want to say
for me it’s not a religion. I would really turn people off and bore
them to death if I were trying to convert them to raw foods as a
religion. I have a very tolerant, open mind about food doctrines, as
well as theological doctrines.
Michael: How do you feel about some of the ecological aspects
of raw foods?
Gabrielle: Those are very important to me. We are on
spaceship Earth and everything circulates. Nature is a big
recirculating, living, breathing lung. What happens in one part of
the planet happens to the rest of us. I want to be a contributing
human being as best as I can. Cornwell West has a phrase. He calls
our Western society “a take, make, waste society”. That really sums
it up how unconsciously we live, drive and consume. Our whole
culture is based on that and it’s really hard to opt out of it.
So, I consider especially going raw to be almost the most
revolutionary counter-cultural thing you can do for the
environment. You’re taking personal responsibility and you’re
threatening the whole agro-business system. When we go to a
supermarket, if we do, we’re out of there in a couple of minutes flat
because there’s only one whole aisle in that big building that we
need.
Imagine what would happen to agriculture, shopping,
transportation and restaurants if raw food really got popular. Even
if 5% or 10% of the population did that, it would be revolutionary
and it would help global warming. It would help pollution. It would
make people more awake and energetic so they would be smarter
in their political choices. It’s quite an amazing revolutionary lifestyle
and I hope it spreads. I don’t underestimate the effect it would
have. It would have a positive effect on society as well as on the
planet.
Michael: That’s a great answer. I’d like to cover one more
topic. Are you self taught, and what do you think is the best way
for a raw gourmet chef to get their start?
Gabrielle: I’m not entirely self taught in raw because I did take
some classes with Victoria Boutenko, and I certainly recommend
those. Going to the raw food expos over the years is a little
education in itself because you’re exposed to a lot of information
and a lot of the chefs. One of my favorite raw chefs is Chad
Sarnow, at www.RawFoodChefs.com. I think you can get a hold of
him that way. He has food demos and he goes around the world.
You can buy his books and tapes.
I purchased and read a lot of the raw food cookbooks and met a
lot of their authors over the years. I can always learn from
everybody. I just learned a great recipe from Bridgett Mars’ new
book. It’s so good that I’ll have to tell people what it is and then go
home and make something. It is not low glycemic or low fat,
however.
You get some nice apples, fresh ones that are in season, and slice
them up. Then, you create a dip in your food processor. You use a
cup of dates, a cup of rinsed pine nuts and a half cup of very find
extra virgin coconut oil, and a little bit of vanilla or vanilla bean.
You just whiz that up in your food processor. It takes about two
minutes and you have this gooey, sweet, over the top tasting apple
dip or icing for one of your cakes.
So, I’m still learning. I recommend, if someone wants to become a
very fancy gourmet chef, they can look into the Living Light
Culinary Arts Institute in California. They’re set up to turn out raw
chefs who are at a level to work at a restaurant. I recommend
reading a lot of books and asking questions. Self taught is not a bad
thing, but you have to love food. Get in the kitchen and try stuff,
and come to our camp!
Go to the events. Get on the websites where you hear about what’s
going on. There are a lot of ways to learn.
Michael: I’ll open up the line for one more question. I’d like to
thank you, Gabrielle, for coming. It’s such a nice treat for you to be
on the line. Her book is The Raw Food Gourmet: Going Raw for
Total Well-Being. I’d like to thank you, Keith Schaffer, for recording
at www.SaveYourSeminars.com. We have time for one more
question. Say your name and where you’re from.
Jenny: Jenny from Dayton View, Ohio. Do you ever have any
seminars or camps in the Ohio area or somewhere not so far away?
Gabrielle: I haven’t been back east except to visit my folks on
Cape Cod. I’d be delighted to make the trip if someone made the
arrangements. Short of that, you’ll have to come to our Raw Spirit
camp and I’ll spend all the time with you that you’d like this
summer.
Michael: We have time for one more question.
Listener: I’d like to say thanks to all of you, Michael, Gabrielle
and the guy who’s recording.
Gabrielle: Thanks to all of you.
Listener: If I could figure out how to clap on the phone, I’d do it!
Keith: Have a good night everyone!
