Good news, Issue 12 of the Funky Raw magazine is out now, with amazing cover artwork by Nemo. It seemed to take forever to get it finished but I am so pleased with the result, including the use of full colour for Twinkel’s edible flowers article. The magazine is available as either a printed magazine or as an eBook in PDF format.
Stevia is an interesting plant. It’s leaves are sweet, 30 times sweeter than sugar but it contains no calories. It has been used for centuries by the Guaraní tribes of Paraguay and Brazil. And it has been used in Japan since the 1970s. But in Europe and the USA stevia is not allowed to be sold as a sweetener. According to some sources, it is suspected that the company that makes toxic artificial sweeteners has put pressure on governments to ban this healthy natural sweetener.
The good news though, is that we have started selling stevia in the Funky Raw shop, we just have to put “Not for human consumption” on the label. I’m sure you’ll work out what to do with it 
April 12th, 2008
I saw an advert in Kentish Town tube station today, it went something like “Need Energy? Try fruit.” I couldn’t believe it! It was sponsored by Camden NHS (National Health Service). I’ll try and take a photo of it next time I’m over in that part of town…
April 3rd, 2008
Hush The Many (Heed The Few) are one of my favourite current bands, great name and some very thoughtful lyrics, they’ve got their first single out on April 7th:
Hope you like it! You can hear more of their music and see their current tour schedule on their MySpace page - listen to “In Bloom”, you’ve got to scroll down the list of tracks to the last on, it’s beautiful.
March 28th, 2008
Here are some photos I took about a week ago when the sun was shining. Click on any image to see the larger version.
March 22nd, 2008
I’ve been making tea with damiana, which says on the packet “Euphoric, aphrodisiac, restorative, dream recall”. It smells beautiful too. Interestingly I have remembered a few dreams recently, which is not common for me.
According to the Wikipedia article, it bears fruits similar in taste to figs. I’d love to try them - it’s interesting to note what a small selection of plants we as humans use as food, there are so many edible plants out there, there is probably something edible and delicious growing near you as I keep finding on my wild food walks.
March 8th, 2008
I think this chart explains a lot about the way people are eating:
The price of raw food has gone up by 40%, compared with junk food coming down by up to 25%. Taken from www.photobasement.com/cheap-calories/ which has a great photo showing the results of these changes…
March 8th, 2008
I also made a marinated mushroom dish. I got some reshi mushroom powder from Holly’s shop ages ago and didn’t really use it much, and then last week I had some and have probably eaten it every day since!
I mixed the above ingredients and then added sliced shiitake and chestnut mushrooms. I also soaked some dried porcini mushrooms and added them to the mix. Leave to marinate for a little while and then you have delicious mushrooms.
February 13th, 2008
I like making pesto with basil, but it’s not really in season at the moment, so I used some wild leaves I collected. I used mostly wild garlic (pictured), a few chives and a few sorrel leaves. I ground up a couple of handfuls of pine nuts, then added the leaves and some flax oil and blended. It had a strong flavour, delicious on a green salad of dandelion leaves and other wild greens.
February 13th, 2008
I can’t believe it, at last local government gets something right and people start complaining. The Council in Buckinghamshire has started turning off street lights at midnight in an attempt to save money and the environment. Have a look at the photos, in the second photo with the street lights off, you can see the stars! Most people have probably forgotten what stars look like…
February 11th, 2008
This was one of the headlines in today’s Guardian newspaper. I really don’t know where to start, but this has got to be one of the worst articles I’ve ever read. The lowest point was this statement, made by Tom Sanders, director of the Nutritional Sciences Division at King’s College London. He was talking about fruit smoothies:
“If you liquidise it into goo it’s just like drinking ordinary Coke. Or worse, actually,”
I don’t think so. Fruit has a vast array of different nutrients; minerals, some protein and lots of vitamins including Vitamin C, which may be more important than conventional nutritionists realise. Look at the nutrition of coke. It’s got zero vitamins, zero protein and lots of sugar and some nasty acid. Work out for yourself which is best!
The articles finishes with the following:
“The way you’ve got to look at fruit is that it’s better to eat fruit than biscuits, cakes and puddings, because there’s very little energy value in it and it’s not fattening,” he [Sanders] says. “A bit of sugar gives you a lift and takes the pangs of hunger away. But it’s not full of all sorts of other nutrients as well. That’s a myth”
The nutrition is fruit is a myth is it? Has he looked at nutritiondata.com recently? Maybe he should try it. You can enter any fruit and it will list all the vitamins and minerals they contain. For example, one large kiwi fruit gives you 68.2mg of vitamin C, that’s 114% of the RDA.
The bit of the article they do get right is about ready prepared fruit (like sliced apples, etc) is not as good for you as it starts to loose nutrition from the moment it’s been cut.
If you want to read the whole article, it’s here, but don’t worry, you are almost certainly not eating too much fruit!
January 23rd, 2008
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