Raw Foods Diet & Raw Food Weight Loss Blog

So, what did you think about there being snow in New Mexico? Were many of you thinking it was more of a consistant hot climate like I used to think?

We left New Mexico, renewed, and headed to Oklahoma. Here’s where we left off yesterday:

When I arrived in Oklahoma, KDcat and I were surprised with how windy it was. The wind continued to be as severe as it was when we were in Prescott Valley, AZ. We started off our Oklahoma visit in Oklahoma City, where we met the lovely Penni Shelton, of RealFoodTulsa and RawFoodRehab. When Penni heard we were finally headed out on our tour, she asked if we’d be willing to do a talk for her raw food meetup in Tulsa. We agreed, of course, and from there Penni made other plans for some more fun.

Penni contacted the newly opened 105 Degrees raw food culinary training school, located in Oklahoma City, to see if there was a chance we’d be able to stop in and meet some of the staff and do some interviewing. I knew Russell James, one of the better known raw food chefs in the raw community, was going to be teaching at the school and hoped he’d be around so that we could meet him and ask some questions for our Pure Jeevan family members. Well, not only was Russell going to be there, but we were invited by Dara Prentice, a managing partner of 105 Degrees, to be special guests during the graduation celebration of the level one students. What a treat that was!

When Penni and I arrived at 105 Degrees, we immediately saw Russell sitting at one of the tables, having a meeting. I quickly snapped a picture of him and then we had a light lunch while he was in his meeting. Russell was brought over from the UK to share his culinary genius with students at 105 Degrees. If you don’t already know about Russell, be sure to check out his amazing raw food web site, The Raw Chef, where he shares many of his beautiful raw food recipes (which are like works of art).

The students wouldn’t be ready for us to join them for quite a while, so after our lunch we headed out to an Asian market to see what interesting raw food items we might be able to find. You can see some photos from that visit in the photo set, below. Then we headed back to the school to see what the students were doing on their final day.

I’m sad to say that the wonderful video footage I took of the graduation celebration, interviewing the students and hearing about their creations as they were being assembled, as well as a few separate interviews with Russell to inspire Pure Jeevan family members, didn’t turn out well enough to share here on the blog. The sound quality wasn’t very good because we were all in one big kitchen, everyone talking at the same time, and it was difficult to pick up on the intended sound for each video. The photos of the students’ creations and the celebration that day turned out great, however. So, those are visible in the photo set, below.

The students who were present, Vicki Morrissey, Aimee Dufresne, Austin Cummins, and Andrea Conneely created some incredible recipes. Not only were they beautifully presented to us for tasting, but they were unique and delicious, as well! Each student seemed to have at least one dish that really stood out above their other creations, something that was truly unique and creative, as well as delicious. I was impressed and I could tell that Russell was proud of how much the students had learned during their level one course with him. It was an honor to be invited as a special guest at their graduation celebration. We also met a couple of the Level Two students there that day, Alissa and Helen. If anyone out there is looking to hire a raw food chef, look no further than these incredibly talented students we met.

After the celebration, we headed to the unique apartment Penni rented for us for two nights during our stay in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The apartment building was round, and Penni joked that it was like a building from The Jetsons cartoon. It really did seem quite futuristic looking. Penni showed us around the building, which had a meeting room where I talked with some of the Tulsa Raw Food Meetup group the next day. During the talk, I met a lot of nice people and answered a lot of great questions.

Before leaving, I was able to meet Penni’s charming husband, Gordon, and her sweet dogs. Penni and I talked a lot, catching up on what each other has been doing since we were last together at the 2008 Raw Spirit Festival, and we interviewed each other for our web sites. Here’s the interview I did of Penni, where I asked her to share what she’s been doing with all of you. While I was away from the raw community during most of 2009, dealing with lyme disease, Penni created her own raw community group as well as published a book on cleansing (you can find her “Raw Food Cleanse: Restore Health and Lose Weight by Eating Delicious, All-Natural Foods — Instead of Starving Yourself” book through many popular online bookstores)! You can learn more about Penni and what she’s been doing by watching this interview:

To see the videos in which Penni interviews me, you can click below and be taken to her blog where she shares the videos. It’s a candid two-part video in which Penni asks me to share information about a lot of different things relating to health, diet, healing from lyme disease, and more. I hope you’ll check it out and let me know what you think!

You can also see these videos, commentary by Penni, as well as clips from my talk that day in Tulsa, by following the links, below, that take you to Penni’s Raw Food Rehab membership site:

Wendi Dee & I at 105degrees:

http://rawfoodrehab.ning.com/forum/topics/wendi-dee-i-in-okc-at

Wendi Dee in Tulsa:

http://rawfoodrehab.ning.com/forum/topics/wendi-dee-in-tulsa

Penni Interviews Wendi Dee:

http://rawfoodrehab.ning.com/group/mediaroom/forum/topics/wendi-dee-interview-by-penni

NEXT UP: Family stops in St. Louis, MO, and Geneseo, IL!

We hope you’ll check out our generous snack sponsor for the trip, Natural Zing, who made our travels extra enjoyable! They have the best selection of raw food snacks, supplies, and appliances for a raw food lifestyle!

We don’t always announce birthdays of friends and family here. But this particular individual is an integral part of the raw food community and we want you all to meet her!

Today is the birthday of the radiantly beautiful Penni Shelton! For those of you who don’t know Penni, she’s an incredible woman; she’s got a heart of gold and is filled with love and compassion. She has been a loving friend of Wendi and member of the Pure Jeevan family for a very long time.

Penni is an extremely active supporter of the raw food community. Many of you most likely already know this lovely woman from her blog, Real Food Tulsa. She has taken the community of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and transformed it into a Midwestern Raw Foods Mecca! This is one woman you want to get to know if you don’t already. She brings incredible light, love, and laughter into the lives of those she touches.

• Link to Penni’s Blog
• Penni on Twitter  |  Penni on Facebook
• Penni’s “My Raw Story” on Pure Jeevan

Happy Birthday, Penni! We love you so very much and wish you a life filled with love, laughter, health, wealth, and friendship!

p.s. We know we said that we would be posting an update on our kimchi experiment today. However, we have decided to post that on Monday instead since it isn’t cured enough just yet (it’s a bit cold here in Pittsburgh rigth now, so it’s taking a bit longer to ferment).

All this week we’re going to be highlighting different sections of the All Raw Directory (A.R.D.). For those of you who don’t already know about it, Jim and I created an amazing site (AllRawDirectory.com) to house links to every source of raw food information that exists on the Internet. It’s a huge task, but we created the site so that it’s community-run. Housing links to all of the information available within the raw food community is a near-impossible task for one individual, but as a group we can do amazing things!

If you don’t know how the All Raw Directory works, you are going to love the ease and simplicity of it all! Simply become a member (it’s FREE and always will be!) and begin adding any raw food links that aren’t already included (the system checks for duplicates, so don’t worry about that). You can add your personal raw food blog, a raw food business, your social raw food media links (like Twitter, Facebook, GiveItToMeRaw, RawFu, etc.) for others to easily find you, share links to informative pages about the raw food diet/lifestyle, and so much more!

On the All Raw Directory, you are able to flag links that aren’t working (or aren’t appropriate), comment on and rate the various links that are shared, and leave messages for other members of the All Raw Directory. Most importantly, however, you’ll be able to search for and find all kinds of wonderful links to raw food sites! What you can find on the site, what you can add, and how much you can be inspired by the information on the All Raw Directory is endless. The site will continue to grow as the raw community grows! How cool is that?!

Today, I’d like to highlight the RECIPES CATEGORY on the All Raw Directory. As of the time I’m writing this, there are over 650 links to recipes included on the site! I’ve clicked on a lot of them, amazed at the beautiful creations that others have come up with. Below are three recipes I found today on the A.R.D. They are delicious, cooling treats for the warm, sunny days of summer!

Cantaloupe Snow Cone  by Raw Epicurean

MIXED BERRY SORBET  by Penni Shelton of Real Food Tulsa

Luscious Blueberry Lemon Smoothie  by Purely Delicious

Be sure to add links to the A.R.D. for any raw food recipes you have available on the Internet. It’s a nice way to share your love of raw foods, to invite others to visit your site, and to be a part of the wonderful raw food community!

Visit the All Raw Directory today and let us know what you think!

Lots of love to all of you,

Wendi
XOXOXO

ps  Here’s a handy shortcut directly to the ARD Recipe section: tinyurl.com/AllRawRecipes

Welcome to Pure Jeevan’s “Juice-a-Day Jamboree”! You’re probably wondering, “What IS Pure Jeevan’s Juice-a-Day Jamboree, anyway?” Well, it’s simple: It’s an ongoing, informal, loosely organized “event” centered around juicing. Think of it as an interim step between (1) any kind of diet or lifestyle, from SAD to full-on raw, that does not include much regular juice, and (2) an all out juice feast where that’s ALL you’d consume for a period of time. Basically, we’re saying, “Let’s just make this simple and accessible for everyone. Let’s just make a goal to simply drink more fresh juice!”

Wendi and I have been thinking a lot about incorporating more juicing into our lives lately (which is something we’ve done off and on over the years but never stuck with long-term). One thing holding us back from doing it more often is the time requirement. When we juice, it usually takes a half hour or so from start to finish. I know it doesn’t seem that complicated, but I suppose it’s just the whole process of setting up the juicer, washing and peeling the produce, juicing it, setting the juice aside while we clean the juicer, doling out the juice into glasses, cleaning up the mini-mess that makes, and then sitting down to actually enjoy the juice.

However, we both intuitively felt that we needed to be juicing more (we both feel flooded with energy during the day each time we juice). So, we wondered how we could add more juicing into our diets without it becoming a big deal. Then Wendi came up with an idea that seemed like a real winner: Instead of starting from scratch every day, maybe we could pre-wash and pre-sort our fruits & veggies on the weekend so that, during the week, all we need to do is grab a bag of prepared produce and go immediately to the juicing phase. If we decided to do this once a day, we could make it part of our daily routine.

We didn’t take action with that idea for a while, and almost forgot about it. But then Wendi was reading Penni’s blog and was reinspired to get our own juicing regimen started. Penni is an experienced juice feaster who chronicled her 92-day feast last year and is very inspiring. (A juice feast or fast is a period during which you consume ONLY fresh juices for a span of time.) Penni has currently challenged herself again (read her Juicing Couture post) and many individuals are joining her in the challenge — including us!

To make it more fun and motivational for us and our readers, we have decided to create a fun event out of it. So, the message of our Juice-a-Day Jamboree event is easy: Incorporate more fresh juice into your life, at least once a day if you can. This isn’t a juice feast or fast. It’s just a small, ongoing “challenge” to prepare yourself some juice every day and see how you feel as a result. No rules, no time limits, no pressure. Just some delicious juice to nourish your system. (In the future, we may desire to do a full juice feast. But currently, a more simple juice goal fits better into our lifestyle.)

If you want to have a little more fun with it, grab one of the following sidebar buttons …

… add it to your blog and link it here to this page — http://purejeevan.com/blog/?p=876 — to let others know what you’re doing. This way, you can encourage others to incorporate more fresh, health-giving juice into their daily lives. And you’ll also remind yourself of your Juice-a-Day goal. Don’t forget to come back to this page periodically and leave a comment to let us and everyone else know how you’re doing! We look forward to sharing our Juice-a-Day journey with you. We’re starting today. How about you?!

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We’ll be posting periodic updates about our Juice-a-Day Jamboree experiences, below, and look forward to hearing from you about your Jamboree experiences!