I could make this the shortest review ever “You must read this book. Go out and buy it now.” Actually, given the subject of this book, you don’t have to buy it if you don’t want – it is available to read for free on the internet. Either way, I suppose I best tell you a bit more about it… As an introduction, on the back cover it says “That we need money to live – like it or not – is a self-evident truism. Right? Not anymore.” And to prove this, the author, Mark Boyle, lived for 2½ years completely without money. Not because he was forced to, but out of choice. He says “living without money changed my way of being. Existing outside the monetary economy enabled me to sit inside the organic flow of life and recognise the interconnected oneness; it enabled me to experience a different sense of self.”

The book is broadly in two parts, the first few chapters introduce Mark’s thoughts on money, why he thinks it is no longer working for us, how it is causing the destruction of our communities and the destruction of nature. He shows how money makes us feel like we are independent and don’t need anyone’s help, but that of course all we have done is switch our dependence from our local community to much further afield. There is also a look at alternative ways of living without money.

Then the bulk of the book covers how to live without money for various aspects of our lives, including land, food, washing, transport, education, leisure and more.

Mark is always direct and forthright with his choice of words. Not many books where you can read sentences such as “I believe that shoes are like condoms, in a way” – this is in the section where he talks about walking barefoot being the only truly sustainable form of transport – “But I believe that until we feel the earth beneath our feet again we will never learn to walk gently on Her.” While you may find many ideas in this book radical, Mark is aware of this and tries to present a range of options to suit different people.

Re-learning ancient skills is clearly important if we want to live without money. Such as how to light a fire without matches or a lighter – “the industrialised system that creates such useful little gadgets may not exist at some point in the future. Therefore learning how to create fire without them could save your life in an apocalyptic style scenario that we would all like to avoid. Likewise, if for some reason you find yourself in the middle of nowhere (like a forest) without a functioning lighter, then knowing how to utilise the natural materials at hand could be the difference between life and death. Convenience can leave us dangerously unskilled.”

While he gives as much detail as he can in this book, including recipes for natural cleaning liquids, hay fever cures, how to make compost, and more, he can’t do this for every topics as many subjects he touches on are books in themselves – I had to put the book down and search the internet to find out what a bow drill was and how to make one! (If you are wondering, it’s a simple tool which can be used to start a fire.) Throughout the book, Mark includes short sections written by experts in particular fields, including permaculture, compost, wild protein, hitch-hiking, home-schooling and more.

There is a chapter on moneyless leisure. Mark says “Reality TV is the posterboy of a culture that consumes instead of plays.” Instead of listening to music created by other people from far away, he suggests that we would be more fulfiled by creating our own music, and he gives more ideas for ways of creating our own entertainment.

I love this book. It is well written and engaging, I couldn’t put it down!

320 pages, £14.95 or free to read online
ISBN: 978-1-85623-101-5
Website: www.moneylessmanifesto.org

• 1 small red pepper
• couple of large handfuls of nettle tops (top 4 to 6 leaves from each plant)
• 4 sun dried tomato halves
• lemon juice
• olive oil
• small handful dried wakame seaweed, soaked for 5 mins
• oregano (maybe 1/8th teaspoon?)
• 2 egg yolks (optional)

Sorry, as usual I didn’t measure anything. Put everything except the egg yolks and wakame in the blender and blend, adding olive oil as needed. Then add the wakme and blend a bit more – I left it so the wakame wasn’t blended in fully. The paté was finished at this stage, but I wanted to make it a bit more filling so I stirred in 2 egg yolks.

• A couple of large handfuls of nettles
• 1 cup walnuts, soaked for 4 hours or more
• 3 sun dried tomato halves, soaked
• squeeze of lemon juice
• around a cup of olive oil
• dried oregano
• water if necessary to blend

Blend! I actually had problems blending as we don’t have the Vitamix with us while travelling and the blender we have is not very good, hence needing to add a fair bit of olive oil and water to make it blend.

Enjoy! Let me know in the comments if you like it, or make your own version of it.

A couple of days ago I was in a health food shop in Lagos and saw Raw Chocolate covered mulberries and I just had to buy them!

Interestingly the ingredients were just white mulberries, cacao powder and cacao butter; no extra sweetener like there is in the choc mulberries we sell at Funky Raw – those have coconut palm sugar in them.

They were delicious, the only problem was that the chocolate melted fairly quickly as it is still hot here.

The company Iswari have a range of organic superfoods such as acai, wheatgrass, lucuma, goji berries, etc, which we have noticed in several health food shops around Portugal. It seems to be a Portuguese company and according to their website, they also operate in Spain, Ireland and the Czech Republic.

What got you started with growing your own food and permaculture?

The original intent was to simply design a life that didn’t require lots of bills and headaches to maintain. I wanted to minimise expenses (without sacrificing most comforts) and have that extra saved money for travelling and manifesting projects. Once I got into conscious eating, the path eventually leads to growing your own. So these two worlds melded really wonderfully. I later found out that it was called permaculture.

Can you briefly explain permaculture from your point of view?

To be honest – its basically a way of designing paradise. Its more than organic gardening… its a way of life. It can include living in a house the produces more energy than it consumes, and having abundance in every facet of life, and living in a backyard that frankly looks like the Garden of Eden. I think it is a birthright for every human – and the beauty of permaculture is that it is more accessible and creates more abundance locally than anything I can think of. Especially with Agritourism (Eco Bed and Breakfasts located on working farms) and organic superfoods grown abroad.

Tell us about your Grow Paradise project?

Grow Paradise was a natural extension of what I was promoting through youtube and facebook via Rawmodel – I really saw that if an average suburban middle class family could adopt these principles of planting fruit trees and berries, and vegetable gardens in their yards, they would be overflowing with abundance within a few years. This seemed more than just green living, it was about personal and communal liberation. I saw the permaculture and food forests accomplishing this.

I want people to be free. I want them to be able to earn money from their passions and live in these paradise gardens that feed them nutritious organic food. With the internet these ideas could spread quicker than ever, and at a most crucial time, so its a must to inspire and show that it really is possible.

Grow Paradise is a social entrepreneurship. Its in early stages still, and we have already done a project abroad. The key is using the events to inspire people via youtube and the rest of the web.

Soon I will be offering stickers, organic tote bags, other aligned products to help pay for expenses, and any donations we get fund the future “planting parties”. We have a few coming up in Harlem within the next few weeks. We show the kids how to make easy smoothies and plant trees. There are few better things to do!

What can people do to help with Planting Paradise?

Ideally, one can physically start planting wherever its possible. Whether its a sprinkling of wild edible seeds on your walk to work, or planting a 20-tree food forest in your backyard, it all adds up.

I love it when a few citizens realise that their garden is actually their neighbourhood… and start to take care of it as it should be… suddenly magic infuses into the area. It only takes a few people to make this happen – that is the beauty of permaculture.

If one doesn’t have the space, there is always sprouting and growing seedlings to offer to friends, rooftop gardens, but even more importantly is to vote with your money and support the people who are already bringing good food to your table without dousing it in pesticides. Keeping the money circulating with the people that are actually walking the talk will result in more and more people adopting these practices. And that is where it will soon be going… where its just natural to have raspberries and chickens in your backyard, or to have cities covered in trees so when one flies over, it appears as if nothing is there. This is the world that I envision in the next 10 years if people actually want it and put just a little percentage of money into manifesting it.

Can you tell me a little about your diet? I’ve also recently added meat and fish back into my diet and it seems that many others are doing the same. Are you still eating a raw diet?

I still have a high raw diet, but I don’t focus on it too much as before percentage wise. Much of it is plant based, but there are now high quality animal products included. Grass fed raw dairy, especially from goats is a truly excellent food for me. Everyone is different. Most people digest fish quite well actually, and there are still options that are tested to be very clean and free of carcinogens. It changed everything for me. I had some times of really bad digestion, and the cravings would be replaced with loads of dehydrated crackers and nuts and would leave me feeling very sluggish. A little grass fed butter was all I needed.

From your experience, what’s the key to being super healthy?

High quality water is key, as is naturally grown food loaded with minerals and hopefully with love. Clear air too. Those three things seem to make all the difference. The details will consume some people… but those three core items will fix nearly all issues in life.

By “High quality water” I assume you mean spring water you have collected your self?

Yes that is optimal… I leave it open so people can do what works best for them. See findaspring.com for finding local spring water.

Tell us about the Vitality planet conference in London and what you will be talking about.

I’m very excited to be coming back to the UK! I worked there as a model in 2009 and am so excited to visit everyone. I will be speaking about “Growing Paradise”… everything around the idea of designing this way of life for true health, freedom, and abundance. Now is the best time to be talking about these issues, and I’m thankful for the organisers to be bringing this info to London.

If you could recommend people read one book, which would it be?

Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway.

And is there one video/dvd you would recommend? 

The Man Who Planted Trees… you can find it on Youtube and Amazon.

Find out more at Anthony’s websites www.growparadise.com and www.rawmodel.com
The Vitality Planet conference will take place in London on Saturday 8th September 2012 from 10am to 8pm. Edit: The date has been changed again to Saturday 11 May 2013.

Any comments please let me know below.

Anyway, this post isn’t really about the book, it’s about a drink the Tarahumara make with chia seeds which is supposedly one of the reasons they can run such long distances without tiring. Chia seeds are amazing, there is a whole page in the book which reads like an advert for chia seeds: very high in omega 3 and 6, protein, calcium, iron, zinc, fibre and antioxidants, etc, etc, actually I had a customer on the Funky Raw Shop say they bought the chia seeds after reading this book! So it’s always good to have another recipe of how to use them, and this is simple and delicious:

• 1 tablespoon chia seeds
• 1 tablespoon lime or lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 300ml water

Mix the lime or lemon juice with the water – the original recipe calls for lime but I used lemon as it was all I had. Dissolve the honey in this mixture. Add the chia seeds and stir well. Leave for about 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Drink! It will keep for longer in the fridge if you want to make a larger batch.

If you have any chia seed recipe (or other comments), feel free to share below.

Surprisingly, most recipes didn’t need much tweaking to make them 100% raw – they already contain raw eggs, just substitute raw chocolate for the cooked chocolate (and use raw butter and/or raw cream in the recipes that call for these ingredients.) This is the page I found on the Guardian website with a good selection of chocolate mousse recipes and useful comments.

So yesterday I tried the first recipe from that site, the classic French recipe from the book French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David and it worked really well.

First I made raw chocolate using the following, quantities approximate:

• 25g cacao paste
• 22g cacao butter
• 10g dairy butter
• 3 tablespoons lucuma
• 1 tablespoon carob powder
• 1 tablespoon algarroba powder
• 1 teaspoon orange blossom honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla powder
• 1/2 teaspoon reishi mushroom powder

I grated the cacao butter and paste, added the butter and melted over a bowl of hot water (bain marie style). When fully melted I slowly stirred in all the other ingredients. This made too much chocolate, so I took 90g of the still melted chocolate for the mousse, and put the rest in moulds.

I then followed the recipe from the Guardian website above, using 30g of chocolate and 1 egg per portion. So I mixed 3 egg yolks into the melted chocolate (although of course I didn’t have the water simmering, I just kept it warm to keep the chocolate melted). Then I beat the 3 egg whites until they were relatively stiff (they use the term “soft peaks”) and gently folded this in to the chocolate and egg yolk mixture. Put in the fridge to set and you have a delicious raw chocolate mousse!

I’m sure it would work with other raw chocolate recipes, or even a purchased raw chocolate bar that you melt back down. Let me know in the comments below if you try this or any of the other recipes on that web page…

This was our route (only approximately, you can only have a limited number of points on Google Maps):

We got the ferry from Bari in Italy to Igoumenitsa and then fairly quickly travelled down to the Peloponnese, assuming it would be a little warmer there, although it wasn’t much different. We stayed on a campsite in Gythio for a month over the worst of the winter, the campsite has a large shared room with heating where we could spend our time when it was too cold and wet!

Click on any photo to enlarge, then you can scroll through the large versions.

The campsite near Gytheo was right on the beach and the sunsets were amazing.

Greece was full of wild flowers.

We went for some great walks with beautiful views.

Another sunset at Gytheo.

An amazing rock fortress, a tiny island with a bridge across.

We were amazed to see this tortoise in the wild - although it turned out to be the first of many.

Love the shape of this rock!

The cave at Didima was a massive crater, although hard to show the scale of it on the photo.

There was a passageway into the crater, quite amazing.

Epidavros

I've already posted some photos and raw food info about Athens.

Amazing hot springs at Loutra Edipsou (Evia Island).

The water is very, very hot, but it feeds into the sea so you can find places where the hot water mixes with sea water for the perfect temperature.

Beautiful river near another hot spring at Thermopiles (back on mainland).

Olive trees with snowy mountains in background at Stilida.

Lizard - this and the next few photos are on the Pelion Peninsular, one of my favourite parts of Greece.

This was on a beautiful walk from Kissos on the Pelion Peninsular.

More wild flowers on the walk from Kissos.

Waterfall near Kissos.

Fakistra Beach, so beautiful!

Milopotamos, another beautiful beach.

Another stunningly beautiful place, Nestos Valley, a natural park along the river valley.

Another view of Nestos Valley.

Nestos Valley again.

The waterfall at Edessa.

Prespa Lakes - Two beautiful lakes in this very remote part of Greece.

These last few photos are all from Meteora. An amazing place with massive rocks,

and beautiful nature.

More rocks at Meteora.

And More rocks at Meteora.

The reason Meteora is famous is because there are monasteries built on top of the rocks, in very in-accessible places.

Although for me it was the wild nature that made this another of my favourite places in Greece.

Hope you like them, please feel free to leave your comments or questions below.

Try and find a local farmers market to buy food from and you will instantly know the difference. Even if the food on the farmers market is not certified organic, you can talk to the farmer personally and find out how they grow the food. You will probably find that it is fresher, fruit is riper and it all tastes a lot better – I think you notice the difference in flavour even more when you eat it raw. And it can even be cheaper than the supermarket, as there is no middle man taking a (large) slice of the profit.

To find your local farmers market in the UK, see www.localfoods.org.uk, or www.lfm.org.uk and www.weareccfm.com for London.