Summer in May

Today was finally a warm day. The past few weeks there has been sun, but the winds were so strong that it's been too cold for me to be outside very much. It looks like tomorrow will be even warmer. Ever since I got my 12 pounds of fresh, organic dates I have been eating little else. Sometimes I eat up to two pounds a day. They're very soft and Rowenna says they taste just like buttery cake batter. Only they have no fat and taste so much better to me than a pasty white cake. I've also been eating avocados for the first time in almost 6 months. I've eaten the odd one here and there, but lately I've been eating at least 2 per day. I know they're not good to eat in those quantities, but the price per calorie has been lower than other fruits so I'm just trying to get by. They make me feel nauseous and really tired though. I can't wait to spend weeks eating nothing but watermelon once they're good and cheap. I love how I feel eating only juicy fruits.

My website is just about ready to go as far as content, but I still need to figure out how to work with SEO and local advertising. I'm still hopeful that it will take off, but I'm trying to work out other options to make money this summer. I really want to work at a fruit farm, but Rowenna isn't very enthusiastic about driving me so I'm hoping to find one that will provide accommodations or at least let me pitch a tent.

If I manage to save up a bit of money I can be off for South America or Mexico this fall. If I do house sitting or camping, or anything with free accommodation I can live for very little and stay all winter. Round trip flight will be about $600, and food for 6 months will be about another $600, but those will be pretty much the only expenses. I'll feel pretty comfortable if I leave with $2000 and I think it's possible to make that this summer if I work really hard.

Spring

Spring has sprung and everything is beginning to change. I left my dad, hopefully for good this time. I want good influences around me. At first I was really worried because without him buying my fruit I didn't know how I'd afford it. I waited though and tried to truly believe money was coming my way. Then Someone from 30bananasaday told me of a freelance writing company she wrote for and recommended I give it a try. It sounds awesome so I applied. It said it can take up to 2 weeks to find out if you get the job so I'm patiently waiting and practicing on increasing my typing speed. I've been using Garfield's typing tutor, mostly working on dictation. It's actually pretty fun typing for hours and hours about a fat cat who loves lasagna=D

While I'm waiting for huge amounts of money to come my way I'm eating the cheapest food per calorie-bananas. Today is my second day on banana island, and it looks like I'll be here for a couple more days. I can't wait till I can start buying watermelons and mangoes. And just so you know, that's the first thing I'll be doing with my first paycheck. I'm going to treat myself to all the yummy fruit I want...can't wait!!!

Abundance

A few weeks back I was researching mono melon diets. I was interested because I was so drawn to eating only melons, and I felt like that everyday. I kept reading how dangerous it was to eat only melons, even for as little as 3 days. At first I was totally baffled because melons are filled with vitamins, minerals, water and the complex carbs that can fuel an athlete. After more research I found out that almost all the people that were recommending the melon diet for weight loss and detox suggested eating 1 cup of melon for each meal of the day. That's where the problem lies. I wouldn't recommend people eat only 3 cups of melon a day just as I wouldn't recommend them eating only 2 dates per day. That is a starvation diet, and coming from a recovered anorexic, eating that little will cause your health to plummet.
Fruitarianism is about abundance. That's one of the reasons I love it so much. You don't need to watch what you eat, you simply eat as much as you'd like. For a successful watermelon diet I'd say you'll need anywhere from one large melon up to 4 per day. If people would try that they'd see what vitality is all about. Eating only melons WILL NOT HURT YOU!! I know a woman who ate nothing but melons for 6 months straight, and she is a glowing picture of health. She's been eating nothing but fruit for 17 years. If you need more proof check out Freeleas blog: http://sweetjuicyfreelee.com/ She's a low fat raw vegan eating fruit and greens for the past 3 years. Her and her boyfriend(eating the same diet as Freelea) are organic athletes. Harley has competed in 24 hour bike races eating bananas. The fruitarian way of life will help you excel at every level.

Cantaloupes!!!!

I just ate the sweetest Cantaloupe for breakfast. I'm finally learning to tell when they're perfectly ripe. They need to sound hollow inside, have a ring around the stem, and be a little soft at the opposite end. It took me about 50-100 melons this past month to figure it out just right. I've been eating cantaloupes everyday, sometimes only cantaloupes. I can just keep eating them and they continue to be the only food I want. This week I've been eating about 4 extra large a day, less if I eat other fruits. So that's about 15-20 pounds of melon per day!! That gives me over 4000% of my RDA for vitamin A!!!

Last week I treated myself to some books from Amazon and they arrived a couple of days ago. I just finished reading Arnold Ehert's Mucusless diet healing system. It was an amazing read. I would recommend it to anyone. I also spent some time looking through my new book, Melons for the passionate grower. It's filled with beautiful photographs and info. I just started reading The China study last night. it's the most comprehensive study ever taken on nutrition....ever!! read it, and it will change your life!!!

Dad mentioned yesterday morning that the plan is still on to leave for Mexico in April. I'm soooo excited! He's letting me be in charge of planning, and learning Spanish so it's definitely keeping me busy. We're going for 2 weeks so I want to spend one week in The Yucatan, and one in Chiapas. I'd like to rent bikes so we can spend our days in the beautiful outdoors, cycling from one small village to another, trying to find our perfect location.

Mexico

I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but it looks like we might be going to Mexico!! I asked the lady who visited there lots of questions, and Yucatan sounds so amazing. So I told Dad about it and he loves the idea too. Then he looked into real estate and found that we can get 200 acres with 8 little cabins on it for US$70 000!!! He says

once the weather breaks we'll go there and see what kind of property we can find. I'm so hopeful! I'm working all day on learning Spanish because I know that will be very important there. Then I found out that in a lot of Yucatan they still speak Mayan. It looks like I might have more languages to learn. All I can think about is how once I'm there, I'm going to grow every type of watermelon imaginable=D

For the Fruit Bat in You!

Mexican Fruit Stand

Here's an article I read about what our bodies are meant to eat(or not meant to eat):

The Basic Facts

"This article provides the basic information on the natural diet for Human Beings. The scientific facts are easily available, should the reader wish to know the full details.

From a physiological perspective (the way the physical body functions), humans are frugivorous. That is, their natural diet consists of fruit, nuts, seeds and green leafy vegetables, all eaten raw.

Why? The human's digestive tract is long, about nine times longer than the body length, suitable to the slow digestion of fruit, nuts and vegetables. A Carnivore's digestive tract is only about three times longer than its body. This enables it to expel toxic rotting flesh from the body quickly, before it putrefies in the digestive tract or intestines.

Digestive Juices - Ptyalin, an enzyme that breaks down starches into sugars, is high in the saliva of the mouth of frugivores and either non-existent or present in very low levels in the saliva of carnivores.

Humans and other Frugivores have weak solutions of acid in the saliva, used to predigest proteins. The acid in a carnivore's saliva is very strong, enabling predigestion to begin in the mouth. The stomach acid of frugivores is weak, compared to carnivores, and is not ideally suited to breaking down of "animal" proteins, in particular, flesh.

Humans do not have teeth suitable to tear raw flesh from an animal, whereas carnivores are adequately equipped to do this, with long strong canine teeth.

Humans do not have claws with which to grasp and rip the flesh off their prey. But our hands are ideally suited to picking fruit!

The only milk suitable for humans is human mother's milk. Cow's milk is meant for its calves. Goat's milk is meant for the goat kid, horse's milk is suited to foals, Cat's milk is suited to their kittens, and dog's milk is ideally suited for their puppies, while elephant's milk is meant for the elephant calves.

What happens if we eat food that is unsuited to our digestive system? Digestion becomes more difficult or incomplete, which may cause petrifaction in the intestines, a precondition of Toxaemia and consequent disease. "

People are always telling me we've evolved to eat meat, but the truth is that our bodies haven't changed much at all. Physiologically we're designed to eat fruit.

I sort of got good news yesterday. I got a reply from a woman who was just in Mexico, and she said she visited Yucatan, and it was peaceful and beautiful there. Also that the fruit was amazing(she's a raw vegan too). She was there looking at property and is trying to find people to buy into a 260 acre ranch. She wants to get enough people so that it will cost about $5000 each, and plans to turn it into a raw retreat. Ok, so I don't have $5000, but I'm going to write her back and find out as much as I can. If nothing else I found a great place in Mexico to research.

I had a cantaloupe for Valentines day. It wasn't ripe, but it still tasted pretty good. My melon obsession hasn't passed yet. They're still all I want, but I have been enjoying a litre of fresh orange juice the past 2 mornings.

The other day the sun came out and me, Dad, and Chilufya went for a walk. With all my warm clothes on, and when I was out of the wind, it felt just like summer. The sun was so hot, and I just wanted to stand in that spot forever. My whole outlook on life became far less clouded, and everything made sense. Of course it only lasted a minute, but it did give me hope. Someday I will be in a warm climate.

Melon Mania!!

It's been a rough couple of weeks, but I'm finally back. I've been trying to deal with all my disappointments, and I'm starting to get through it, starting to see the silver lining. I guess BC might have been a disappointment anyway with the Olympics there. I guess the hardest thing has been losing my travelling companion. I still have plenty of time to decide what to do though. Even though we're still going through the worst of winter and I'm stuck inside I'm trying to keep busy. I've been studying Spanish a lot. Maybe soon I can start writing a little of my blog en español =D

Fruitwise, it's been really hard. It seems February is the worst month though, and soon the stores will have more fruit and lower prices. Right now all I want is melons. Nothing else satisfies me. Even when I want to cry all I have to do is see a watermelon and I feel sunny and happy again. I probably sound crazy, but I'm not, just summer deprived, and melons, they remind all my senses of Mexico and summer heat. Speaking of Mexico, that's my latest obsession. I've been doing loads of research, and I'm hoping to take a trip there sometime this year. I just have a good feeling about it. Not the touristy areas of course. I want to find someplace far off the beaten path where there are watermelons galore!

I'm also working on getting together things for a meatout (from www.meatout.org) I want to do some leafletting or set up a dsiplay table downtown. I really wish I had other veg-heads to help me out, but I don't know of any here. Maybe Rowenna will want to be a part of it.

That's it for now, but I'll be updating soon with some super neat info I got about the length of our intestines compared with carnivores and omnivores!