Category Archives: Photography

Strange Plant: Chia Growing in our Garden

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In August I found this plant growing right outside the house:Young Chia Plant

I’d never seen it before so I assumed it was something we had inadvertently introduced. I took a guess that it might by physalis (Incan berry, Physalis peruviana – yes even with a name like that it grows well in Europe!), it looked somewhat similar.

Anyway, as the months went by I realised it wasn’t physalis, but I didn’t know what it was. It has beautiful small blue flowers. Then yesterday by chance I saw a photo of a chia plant and the lightbulb went off in my head! So soon, we might be able to harvest some chia seeds…

Chia plant in flowerChia Plants in flowerTall Chia Plant in flower

So, now you know, chia plants are easy to grow, just soak the seeds, scatter and wait!

Berlin – Photos of The Wall

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I’m in Berlin for a little while, yesterday I went to explore the city and see what is left of the wall, a section about 1.6km long which is now covered with artwork, some of which is really beautiful with inspiring messages.

There are organic (“Bio”) shops everywhere in Berlin, often with local organic produce, and of course raw chocolate bars and superfoods, I’ve seen the LoveChock raw chocolate brand everywhere.

Berlin is a very green city, parks everywhere, even a small forest (Plänterwald) along the Spree river.

Berlin wall - Peace for all that lives on this earth

The text translates as “Peace for all that lives on this earth! Care for what’s living!”

Berlinwall Berlin wall Berlin wall Berlin wall Berlin wall Dancing to Freedom - Berlin wall

General Update: Photos, Offers and More

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Not been posting here much, so I’m here with an update on everything! Been working on the land a lot, looking after the trees and bushes we’ve planted and growing some veg. You can see where we live now as I’ve uploaded some photos of our land and of the area we live to our new website. Here’s a sample:

Our house and landKiwi VineMedieval Footpath Nearby

The Funky Raw magazine is now sold in more shops across the UK. I’m looking for more people to write about what they are passionate about. While the focus of the magazine is raw food and healthy eating, there are a wide range other subjects to be covered from permaculture and wild food to nature and spirituality. Get in touch if you have a topic you would like to write about. Raw recipes also needed. You can read more about helping out with the magazine.

I also want to tell you about some of the special offers we have over at Funky Raw. Today is the last day to get the Purple Balance raw snack bars I reviewed a little while ago with 14% off. And we have many new offers which run until the end of July: Lots of magazine back issues at £1.99 each, 6% off 1kg chia seeds, 10% off 1kg maca powder and 15% off 500g chlorella powder – see all the specials here.

And finally, do you make your own sauerkraut? According to this article, you probably should. The article says “this means one 16 ounce of sauerkraut is equal to 8 bottles of probiotics.” And most of us need more probiotic beneficial bacteria in our diets.

Greece – Photos from our travels

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We spent almost 3 months in Greece, from mid Jan to mid April, mostly on the mainland, although we did go to one island, Evia. The most surprising thing was the weather, it was a lot colder than I was expecting! Although we did have some really beautiful weather too.

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.


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

Croatia – Photos from our travels

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I got a little behind with travel updates – for now I’ve skipped forward to Croatia, which was November – December last year. Croatia is a really beautiful country, and the local food from the markets was of amazing quality.

Click on any photo to enlarge.

Croatia has over 1000 islands, this is a little island called Lošinj, just below Cres island. It was really beautiful here. I was very supprised when I found that Pula has a Roman Amphitheatre, in amazing condition. Plus other Roman buildings.
Near Pula is a wild peninsular called Rt Kamenjak. Wild and beautiful. Pazin is an interesting little village, but the best bit is in the ravine, really beautiful but so cold as not much sunlight.
Pazin ravine. More coastlines on Krk Island
Plitcitce National Park was one of the most beautiful places I have been. A completely unique landscape with lakes and waterfalls, made even more beautiful due to the November frost.
More in Plitvitce.
And more Plitvitce. Waterfalls in Krka National Park.
Forest in Krka National Park We got a ferry from Makarska to Brac island.
An amazing beach which sticks out into the ocean, called Zlatni Rat (Golden Beach) on Brac island. Korcula town on Korcula island, a short ferry trip from Brac island. Dubrovnik is amazing, the old city is surrounded by the castle like walls.
Another view of Dubrovnik We went for a great walk along the coast from Dubrovnik. The sunsets in Croatia were almost always beautiful, the colours this night are amazing.

Real Raw Lemon Cheese Cake Recipe

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After a short break in London, we’re back on the road. We’re heading to Croatia, but had a little detour to Slovenia. It’s a beautiful country, loads of forest and wild nature. On Saturday we went to Ljubljana, the capital and found an amazing market. Loads of organic veg stalls, plus we got organic raw milk, raw butter, raw sour cream and raw cheese.

I love cheesecake, and it is actually very easy to make raw cheesecake, assuming you can get some good raw cheese to start with. We got some soft plain curd cheese, it needs to be fairly plain to make into cheesecake.

I didn’t measure the ingredients, but I think this is a recipe where it is hard to go wrong.

Base
brazil nuts
apricots
a few cacao beans (optional)
1 tsp vanilla powder
grated lemon rind

Topping
cheese
lucuma
honey
grated lemon rind

For the base, you want an approximately equal amount of nuts and dried fruit, you can use various combinations of fruits and nuts. I soaked the apricots for a couple of hours so they would process easier, but you don’t want them too wet otherwise the base will be soggy. Put all the ingredients in a food processor until it forms a sticky ball. If you need more liquid you can either add a little lemon juice or water. As you may know, I don’t generally eat dehydrated food as I find it hard to digest, so this base was soft and sticky, but you could probably dehydrate this is you want a more traditional cheesecake.

For the topping, just mix all the ingredients together. The more lucuma you add, the thicker the mixture will become. And of course, the more honey, the sweeter. (The cheese I used was very soft so I only needed to mix it with a spoon, with a firmer cheese you may need to blend.)

I’m sure there are many variations you can make instead of lemon.

Photos from our travels: Part 5 – Basque Country and Pyrenees

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Some beautiful scenery in this part of the world. This is the final part of this section of our trip, from Bagneres de Bigorre we drove through the Pyrenees into Spain, across to the Spanish and then French Basque Country then along the Spanish coast to Santander where we took the 24 hour ferry to Portsmouth – we then spent a month in the UK, mostly in London.

Basque Country - map 5

Ainsa, our first stop in Spain. I have a friend who was staying there and she took us to visit a local lady who was growing all sorts of food plants, we ate some delicious figs and I got to try fresh stevia leaves for the first time (first photo), they are amazing, so sweet! The dragonfly was dead on the ground, but it gave me a good opportunity to take some photos.
The road out of Ainsa towards Jaca was amazingly beautiful. We just kept stopping to take photos! Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido
Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido, in the Pyrenees on the border between Spain and France – well worth a vist, amazing waterfalls.
Back in France, Saint-Jean-de-Luz The Atlantic coast of France here is beautiful. This is Lac Blanc, a little inland from Vieux-Boucau. Bayonne was a very pretty city.
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
Bilbao: Outside the Guggenheim Museum were several sculptures, including this dog made out of flowers and giant spider. And of course, the obligatory photo of the Guggenheim Museum!

Photos from our travels: Part 4 – French Pyrenees

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This was a beautiful part of France. Châteaux, mountains, hot springs, French markets and lots more, from 17th August to 5th September 2010. Click to enlarge the map or photos.

Carcasonne has an amazing fairy tale Château, and is generally a very pretty place, but once you go inside, you are greeted with tacky souvenir shops.
This is the Château at Peyrepertuse, it’s an amazing old Cathar Castle built in the 11th Century. We’re big fans of hot springs, although at Rennes-les-Bains we only found the warm springs (still beautiful), this photo is nearby.
This is not far from the campsite we stayed on near Foix. In the evening we followed a footpath and went for a great walk, founds lots of wild food and saw wildlife like this butterfly.
In Saint-Lizzier near Saint-Girons, lots of interesting plants, including this kiwi vine. Bagnères-de-Luchon, beautiful place in the Pyrenees. Sunset from campsite at Bagnères-de-Bigorre.
Bagnères-de-Bigorre. We spent a week here, it was a beautiful place and I had some work to catch up on. Lots of walks in the surrounding countryside, some amazing views and wildlife and a great market on Saturday. As well as the amazing mushrooms and spider, we saw a hummingbird moth, which looks a bit like a hummingbird, but it was flapping its wings too fast to be able to take a good photo of it.