Instinctive raw eating in practice

[Dorothy]

I regret that in this forum the interest in discussions and publications about instinctive raw eating is very small. So I decided to support another project: the publishing of raw menus in a diary about instinctive nutrition:
Tagebuch instinktive Rohkost
This diary is written in my maternal language, German. Of course, publishing in German feels really natural for me.

So I want to say goodbye to all girls and boys of the rawpaleoforum. Thanks for all of you who read and answered my posts. I wish you all the best.

Those pictures are beautiful. I can't wait to get a garden going! So much easier to eat intuitively going out to the garden. Susan, with so little going on every contributor counts more and besides - then it's really easy to keep up with the conversation right? You can be both places. I wish you wouldn't leave.

[Hanna]

Sometimes I´m asked per PM or email to detail my diet. Basically, I eat according to the "instincto" traditions, although with modifications.

Most of the time, I eat more than two meals a day. Usually, one of my daily meals includes food rich in carbs (usually fruit, such as persimmon, melon, fresh dates etc.), another meal includes animal food and a third meal one type of plant fat (i. e. a plant food rich in fat, such as nuts, coconut, sunflower seeds or avocado). My breakfast often includes a food rich in fat or a food rich in protein (for example, a few king prawns or a piece of a fatty mackerel). I eat vegetable and/or greens almost every day.

I often eat self-made coconut cream and I sometimes puree melons or papaya if their meat is not entirely soft. I noticed, BTW, that coconut cream takes on a very nice yoghurt or lemon yoghurt flavor if I keep it in the fridge for a while (usually in a closed plastic jar). Coconut cream is easily digestible, but seems to be even more easily digestible if kept in the fridge for a while.

Here I detailed the "food combining rules" I observe: http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/instinctoanopsology/instinctive-raw-eating-in-practice/msg68222/#msg68222
My weight is currently 58 kg.

[Dorothy]

Nice to see your post Hanna. Thanks for the description of your diet.

[Susan]

What I find sad about "die Instinctive Tagebuch" is there are so little infos. Only what you eat day out and day in. No infos how the persons health is doing, no pictures of the same.. no blood works.. nothing.

Maybe you are right but I don't want to spread out my personal life in public. Nevertheless sometimes I wrote about my sporting activities so you can imagine I stay well with my way of instinctive raw eating. 

Meanwhile the diary moved to a new domain: Tagebuch instinktive Rohkost

[Wattlebird]

Gratefully received today: abalone and sea urchin, straight from the water, eaten on rocks, sun warming body.
Later, some fruits on the beach.

[CitrusHigh]

Hell yes, bounty from the sea eaten by the sea, that's what I'm talking about. Topped off with some gratitude, that is some perfection!

[Wattlebird]

This morning the air is heavy with the smell of the sea.
Oysters eaten directly from the rocks at low tide will (surely) be the ideal alimentary complement.

[Wattlebird]

........yes, just right.
Then celery.
Then peanuts.

[Hanna]

I have added lentil sprouts and mustard sprouts to my food repertoire. Yum! The lentil sprouts are even more delicious to me than the peas I´m eating right now (and I really like peas), except maybe a few pea sprouts I ate which seemed equally delicious to me. Yesterday I ate salmon which was, I´m afraid, "rotten"; however, it was delicious for me.

[Dorothy]

I've always loved pea sprouts. I don't know why those taste so wonderful to me.

[Wattlebird]

I have added lentil sprouts and mustard sprouts to my food repertoire. Yum! The lentil sprouts are even more delicious to me than the peas I´m eating right now (and I really like peas), except maybe a few pea sprouts I ate which seemed equally delicious to me.

Hi Hanna
following your post, with an eye to variety and trying a different food, I undertook to sprout some lentils also.
Miraculously - as from past experiences, I am a far more efficient forager than grower - the lentils sprouted.
Good eating too at the time.
Variety wise, opens up an additional range of foods
Thanks for sharing.
Kindest wishes, J

[Hanna]

In the previous days I ate...

mackerels (my favorite food for years)
pork (I love especially the fat!)
chicken liver (however, respecting the instinctive signals I cannot eat liver in greater amounts on a regular basis)
bone marrow (I love it!)
almonds
fresh walnuts (tasting like heaven, so I ordered 18 kg fresh walnuts per ebay)
coconut (one of my favorite plant foods for years)
avocado
fruit (mostly overripe bananas)
vegetables (such as tomato, radish and radish greens - radish greens are one of my favorite greens)

[Iguana]

For my lunch today I had one of the ripe cantaloupe I was given for free yesterday at the farmer's market, plus a small one from my garden. As I had eaten enough melon, I wore my raincoat (yes, it's raining today!) and walked to eat some red grapes at an abandoned vineyard nearby. On the way back I stopped to an equally abandoned farm (yes, many properties are abandoned around here...) where there are three huge fig trees and I ate a few of the last figs of the season.

Standard people can't eat much fruits and buy unripe melons only, so we can often get the ripe ones free or for a symbolic amount. Yesterday, the seller told me “there aren’t many today” while giving me 3 big ones. I insisted to give her the 1 € coin she didn’t want, pleading her to accept otherwise I would have felt like a beggar. Then she selected a 4th melon and gave it to me as well. 

Who said raw paleo nutrition is expensive? 

[jessica]

haha iguana, never look a gift farmer in the mouth, trust that you are just lightening the load for them when they get back to the farm, nothing better then coming home empty handed unless you have hungry animals or compost piles.  what kind of figs do you pick?  i love them but have never lived near a tree during the right time of year!  we still have some pears and apples hanging on here, and really dry plums that i dont much like.  its interesting how my taste for foods changes with the seasons and what is available

[Iguana]

Hi Jessica,

There are several varieties of figs here and plenty everywhere from the end of august till now. Most people don't eat them and generally don't care if you plunder their trees. There are a few early figs at the end of July sometimes. The trees I planted 3 years ago already started to give fruits.

[Wattlebird]

Hi Francois,
heres some local indigenous figs. The commercially grown figs available in local stores much plumper, juicier and succulent, but these figs - despite being much more fibrous - are particularly tasty at times.
So many figs
Kind wishes, J

[Alive]

Hi Wattlebird - man I am impressed by you and your instinctive lifestyle, rawsome!

[Wattlebird]

Hi Wattlebird - man I am impressed by you and your instinctive lifestyle, rawsome!

Alive, thanks for your kind words.
I have always felt the pull of the wilds, as far back as I can remember. Many years ago growing up, I felt alienated from most other modern city folk, so I used to lose myself in the bush, or on remote beaches, for hours upon hours, because I felt so at home in that environment.
 I was largely perceived as  a 'freak' by other school age kids, and so the plants, and trees and animals, and beaches, mountains and rivers were my companions.
Ha! I am still perceived - even by close friends - as 'eccentric', or ' freakish', but these days I celebrate the diversity of people, realise that such labels are but perceptions only, have great joy living according to my calling, and would not change a thing.
Nevertheless, perhaps with respect to my eating habits, if I had access to a forum like this, with the likes of Iguana and others 35 years ago, I would have realised sooner the diverse range of edible foods.
I look forward to hearing more about the local foods (and wilds) you have access to in the Shaky Isles!
Kind wishes, J

[cherimoya_kid]

Hi Jessica,

There are several varieties of figs here.... Most people don't eat them and generally don't care if you plunder their trees.

This is ridiculous.  I know that people often don't eat the persimmons or muscadines on their land around here, but I can't imagine people not wanting tree-ripened figs.  They're amazing. I love them.  I can eat up to 2 pounds at a time.

[Iguana]

Yes, I eat a lot of figs too, it's one of my favorite fruits. In most of SW France there are plenty and almost no one cares to gather them. They fall on the ground and stick to the soles, birds eat some... while you can buy big ones imported from Turkey in supermarkets!   

I dried a lot of figs till all my big jars are full. Then I gave a bucket full of figs to my poultry everyday.   

[cherimoya_kid]

Perhaps I'll visit you during fig season sometime.  I could stuff myself on raw duck, figs, grapes, and other rawpaleo foods.

[Haai]

I love figs too, but when I eat fresh figs I almost always get what seems like an allergic reaction...sore, red, slightly swollen lips and a weird feeling on my tongue. But if I eat dried figs I never have any problem. Anybody else experience that?

[Iguana]

Yes, of course, it happens when you eat figs not ripe enough or/and when you eat too many. That's the final, total and absolute instinctive stop we should not go to: never go so far, but stop as soon as you have a feeling that you have enough, long before its gets painful! 

Dried ones could have been dried at temperatures exceeding 40°C and thus the instinctive doesn't happen at all or happens in another, softer way, much latter and too late. Even ones dried below 40°C don't trigger a very clear stop.

[jessica]

figs have a little latex in the skin that is probably why you are having an allergy, like iguana said, its only in the unripe skin.

gah i gotta move where, or do some serious landscaping so i can have a fig tree someday.  i am with cherimoya, i would gladly stuff myself silly with figs (and duck), they are so amazingly delicious.  its really interesting to know that they are a flower, not a fruit, and that each little tiny seed inside is an individually pollintated flower, there is only one species of wasp who lays eggs inside the fig, the larva hatch and do the pollination.  if an intruder wasp tries the same, the plant will drop the flower early and not waste its energy

people are incredible wasteful with fruit though, here there are tons of plump dark cherries that go to waste! in the desert southwest i have seen pomegranates littering the grounds.  many places berries line hiking trails and yes, people still buy them from the grocery store.

[Iguana]

 Yes, a white latex which is found near the stem of unripe figs.

Thanks for the interesting botanical info.

Most people are so much overloaded in carbs with their pastries, chocolate, bread, pasta and cooked potatoes that they can't eat any significant amount of fruits. Moreover, they try to eat them unripe or at least not really ripe and immediately bump into a strong instinctive stop. 

It doesn't take much to plant a fig tree: I just took the tip of some branches (about 20 inches long) and put a quarter of it in the ground.  Many grow up and a few die.

If you and Ch.Kid come here, I'm afraid there won't  be enough ducks to eat since I have only 4 females plus 1 male left, from which not a single baby duck ever came out of an egg... (I must confess that I eat most of their eggs  ) perhaps there'll be some one day and they'll survive in this though world?  But you'll be welcome anyway to help me plunder the grapes, figs and persimmon trees around here or gather chestnuts.  Every year I collect more than 1000 persimmons; about half ripen faster than I can eat and are thus finally given to my happy and ever hungry birds.