Thursday, April 14, 2011




Marie / On the Road to Raw




The Green Drink




Every morning Alisa would come into the Bed and Breakfast with a large glass containing a green drink. It looked remarkably like slime, reminding me of something from an old B science fiction movie – something that grew and devoured a town. But Alisa drank this stuff as if it was ambrosia and, despite it’s somewhat toxic appearance, when she offered me a sip one day I decided “why not” and gave it a try.




That afternoon I was driving myself into town, shopping list stuffed into my purse, to get all the ingredients I would need to make myself one of those verdant concoctions the following morning. You couldn't help but be a convert; it was really good, made of fruit and all kinds of superfoods including cacao nibs. Alisa, with her self- admitted chocolate fetish, always put in at least two tablespoons of those. They have the reputation all by themselves of being mood altering – which probably explains why Alisa was always so eminently even tempered.




I started drinking the green slime concoctions every morning when they took the place of breakfast. All of a sudden – just like that – I was starting my day out raw. I barely even had to think about it. Strangely, even though I’m always creating these elaborate breakfasts for my guests, I never eat any of them myself. Oh, sometimes I would love to! I stand around waiting for leftovers like a dog expecting scraps from the table. But most often there are no scraps to be had. I wash empty baking dishes and pie plates hungry and unfulfilled with a few hours of work still ahead of me before I can eat. I end up starving to the point of ravenous by the time I get home around 11:30 after clearing the table, washing and drying dishes and cleaning the rooms. I inhale my lunch as if I’d spent a week on hunger strike! Don’t ask me what I ate… I wouldn’t know except that it usually began with bread – the first thing I could shove into my mouth! The green drink takes me three minutes to make in the morning- most of it blending time and it satisfies and staves off hunger well into the afternoon. A revelation! When I get home henceforth, I calmly make myself an enormous salad full of everything I can find in the crisper. I add some nuts. I cut up an orange. That salad could sustain ten men. Within a week of doing this I realize that I am living my day- at least until 5 o’clock – totally and irrevocably Raw. Almost immediately I experience a shift. It’s funny but I begin to feel strangely happy. There is almost an aspect of feeling drugged. In the raw food literature, they frequently talk about how raw food is the fountain of youth, the experts regaling us with ‘proof’ that when you eat a raw diet you tend to eat less and people who eat less live longer and look better. Well, that’s all very well and good but what I feel is happy – sometimes so happy that I have to cook something or eat a doughnut just to get a feeling of relief. I’m not used to so much ecstasy. I believe that there is something narcotic about such a pure diet… all those fruits and vegetables, the blender buzzing like an orgasm. Raw food guru, David “Avocado” Wolfe tells us that introducing raw foods into our diet helps to remove the junk that has built up in our bodies and that as we move through this purification “you’ll feel a sense of intuitive powers. You may feel a sense of absolute relief… you may feel a sense of just gentle and ever increasing energy. You’ll definitely notice an enhanced change in your immunity.” Alisa says once you really go raw it opens you up to so many possibilities, not just physically but mentally. I believe it has opened me up to the possibility that I might be insane because where else could all this happiness be coming from? It’s unnatural! I look around me and see that the floor isn’t properly swept. There is a spot on the glass of the back door. I catch sight of a little tear on the corner of the bedroom rug – perhaps something the cat decided to scratch at when I wasn’t paying attention enough to pay attention. I notice that my daughter’s homework is not in a neat pile on her desk but fanned out sloppily like discarded cards. I notice that all is not perfect but in the midst of it all I smile. Boy! Do I feel good!

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