New Blog

It's been a while since I've posted. So much has happened that it seemed a good idea to start an entirely new blog, which can be found at http://birchcenter.blogspot.com.
The blog will keep people up to date about the goings-on at the Birch Center, and also has themed days:
Meditation Monday: words, thoughts, quotes, tips to make meditation a part of everyday life
Treatment Tuesday: about acupuncture and Chinese medicine: what we treat at the Birch Center, how acupuncture works, etc.
Wellness Wednesday: wellness tips people can incorporate at home: from nutrition to stress relief to aromatherapy, etc.
Thankful Thursday: a day to reflect and appreciate
Free-form Friday: can be anything
Saturday: Sabbath, no computer, no blog
Simplify Sunday: ways in which we are simplifying
I really hope you come check us out!
Thanks so much for your interest.
xoxo

Wild Edibles!

The wild edible walk was amazing! We had such a great time, and the potluck was full of delicious food.

On our way to the Birch Center for the walk, we saw a katydid right on our front porch. At the time I didn't know what it was, I had never seen one before. Then during our walk we saw another! Someone on the walk identified it as a katydid. Wow.

I looked up the meaning of katydid, and found lots of information lumping them together with grasshoppers (and locust...notably the fact that they are edible! Though as a vegetarian I prefer to look at them rather than eat them, it is interesting they did appear on the wild edibles walk!)

Other than that the lesson of the grasshopper was about moving forward, leaping into the next big thing. It's been a while now...seems I may have to look it up again to refresh my memory.

Other news: Dave is doing a free talk at the East End Food Coop tonight at 7pm, for all you local Pittsburghers! It's called "Acupuncture and You" and should be very interesting, and a great place to get all your questions about acupuncture answered. He hopes to see you there!

Edible Plant Walk

I hope everyone in the Pittsburgh area will join us this Saturday, at 12:30, for our edible and medicinal plant walk! We'll be joined by Pittsburgh's raw food meetup group for a hike around the south side, looking at wild edibles and medicinal plants. Lately I have seen so much lamb's quarters, purslane (pictured), pig weed (a kind of amaranth) -- all growing up between the cracks in the sidewalks!
The hike will be followed by a raw food potluck.
For more information and to sign up, visit http://rawfood.meetup.com/196/calendar/6292655/ .
Hope to see you there!

Wild Meals

Here is the harvest of greens (and tomatoes) from the yard and garden this morning. Among the wild edibles today were plantain, lambs quarters, dandelion greens, red clover (flower and leaves). I also picked lemon balm, lettuce, swiss chard and baby collards.

They went into these two blended meals.
The first is a green smoothie made with 2 bananas, frozen cherries and frozen mangoes (and half the greens.)
The second is a blended meal which contained many ingredients, including pine nuts, tomatoes, celery, cucumber, garlic, avocado, goji berries, mungbean sprouts, cultured kim chee, lime juice and salt. It had the other half of the garden greens, of course. It was very yum!

Lunar Eclipse

The eclipse this morning was amazing -- though it started earlier than I expected! I was awake and waiting for my alarm to go off at 5:15 am, luckily I got up to check the time and look out the window at 5 am: it had begun! We got to Schenely Park by 5:30 (couldn't find the dog leash so it took us a while to leave the house) and saw the end of the moon going under shadow; the last light being across the bottom. It stayed covered until it disappeared into the fog of the new day. We walked around the track once, to see the colors of the sky change for the sunrise (though we didn't see the actually sun come up until we were driving home.)
And now I'm celebrating the full moon with a raw day. So far I've had carrot/celery/apple juice, zucchini pasta with tomato sauce and pine nut cheesy topping, and coconut water.

Raw Summit

I recently listened to the first Raw Food World Summit, and it has really changed much that I do. I thought it might be nice to list some of the changes I've made here.

First of all, at the end of the summit, interviewer Kevin Gianni was interviewed. He mentioned taking action: how important it was. When you are impressed by what you hear or read, take some action to make it part of you. I was happy that I had done that after nearly every call -- at least just visiting a website. Here are some of the changes I made:

Green Smoothies! After Victoria Butenko's talk, I began making green smoothies every morning. Basically, this consists of adding a handful of greens like chard, collard, dandelion and other wild edibles (lamb's quarters, purslane, red clover) to my fruit smoothie (usually bananas, frozen pineapple and frozen cherries or strawberries.) I actually have a nice ritual now: in the morning I go out into our yard/garden with a collander, and fill it with greens and wild edibles to use for my smoothie and throughout the day.

Wild Edibles. Both Victoria and Happy Oasis talked about incorporating wild edibles into the diet. Happy mentioned oak leaves and red clover! I hadn't really thought of that. While Victoria not only mentioned dandelion greens and lamb's quarters, but also plantain. I know a lot about what wild plants are used medicinally, but I had never thought of just eating them...until now.

Rejuvelac and Cultured Veggies. Brenda Cobb is a woman who, now cured of breast and ovarian cancer, has started a living foods health center in North Carolina, based on the teachings of Ann Wigmore. So I revisited my Ann Wigmore information and put up batches of cultured veggies and made rejuvelac successfully for the first time. It now goes into my smoothies in the mornings.

Cacao and Goji Berries: After hearing David Wolfe speak, I ordered raw cacao and the goji berries (which I know as a great Chinese Herb.) I have been eating them straight, and also making new fantastic recipes with both.

I found Raw Vegan Radio! I never knew about that. I'd also never heard of David Wolfe's Best Day Ever radio, but you need to pay subscribe to that one...raw vegan radio is free. I've listened to amazing interview with raw chef Ani Phyo and also Victoras, who is seventy and started Hippocrates Health Institute with Ann Wigmore.

Happy Oasis proposed some questions to ask yourself daily, to return your life to a state of joy and bliss: What would I love to experience today? What are the blessings of this moment? What are my ideals, and how can I live them today? How can I enhance wholeness and deepen peace?

Happy also mentioned "fasting" (in whatever way feels right to you) the day of the new and full moon, and four days before each of those moon. To me at this point, that means stepping up whatever I'm doing a notch. If I'm eating a lot of sugar, I'd refrain from sugar those days. If I'm eating lots of cooked foods, I'd have an all raw day those days. If I'm all raw already, I may decide to have a juice and smoothie only day. And maybe, eventually, when I'm not nursing anymore, I'd water fast. Maybe. But I marked the days on my calender through the end of the year and have already begun! A bonus of this is it's nice to be more aware of the phases of the moon.

Again with Happy: the idea of not using shampoo. I'm still just playing with that idea right now.

Happy again: The Raw Spirit Festival in Sedona Arizona. I would desperately like to go, but I don't know that it will be possible this year.

Shazzie mentioned Hay House radio (also free to listen), and so I've been tuning in to that every now and then.

The idea of living in bliss, mentioned not only by Happy, but also by Shazzie (and Ani Phyo, who was not in the raw summit but on raw vegan radio.) Doing what makes you happy, all the time. Imagine! I'm incorporating a bit more of that into my day, for sure.

Quotes

As a first post, I'll reprint some inspiring quotes I heard today dealing with raw foods:

"Kill neither men, nor beasts, nor yet the food which goes into your mouth. For if you eat living food, the same will quicken you, but if you kill your food, the dead food will kill you also. For life comes only from life and from death comes always death."

~ From the Essene Gospel of Peace, Book 1

"The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison."

~ Ann Wigmore, nutritionist and living food advocate

The picture above is of the raw tacos (or burritos) that I make that I love so much. The Romaine leaf is the tortilla. The "meat" is made from pecans blended with nama shoyu and cumin. Then I heap homemade fresh salsa and avocados or guacamole on top. Easy, fast and yum!