Here are some photos I took about a week ago when the sun was shining. Click on any image to see the larger version.
Nature Photos at Brockley & Ladywell Cemetery
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Current favorite tea
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.
The Price of Food
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…
Marinated Mushrooms
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!
- lemon juice
- flax oil
- 1/2 tsp reshi mushroom powder
- soak water from wakame seaweed
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.
Wild Garlic Pesto
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) (Edit: this is not actually wild garlic, it’s Wild Leek. Photos of wild garlic here.), 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.
Street lights get turned of, see the stars again!
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…
Are we eating too much fruit?
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!
Anastasia
I’m really enjoying reading the Anastasia series, I’ve just finished book 3, The Space of Love, which I think has been my favourite so far, with some really good information about how regular schools are not good for children, but Holly has just posted this from book 7, The Energy of Life which is so powerful I needed to share it with you:
‘The process of drawing people into such absurdities [the way life has become controlled by business] has been a long one. That’s not something you could do quickly. If you tried to do it quickly, even the most feeble-minded individual would be able to see the stupidity of what was happening.
Just think what a paradox it all is! One fine day you decide, as usual, to go to your apple tree and pick some fruit. You no sooner step off your front porch and start heading for the tree than you catch sight of a whole queue of people.
“Who are you?” you ask the fellow standing closest to you.
“I’m an apple dealer.” he answers.
“And who are those people behind you?” you continue to wonder, and hear in reply:
“Behind me is the person who trucks the apples to my store, behind him is the one who picks them from the tree, and around each one of us you see an entourage of people in fresh clean suits – they are the ones who record the quantity of apples that pass through our hands.
“But really, what are you, chaps? Don’t tell me you’re a bunck of schizos?” you blurt out in a fluster. “What’s with all the meaningless red tape? Who’s going to thank you for all this?”
And the reply comes:
“You will thank us – you will pay all of us money, and with that money we too shall buy apples”
“And where am I going to get all that money to pay you?”
“Go see you neighbour, the one with pear trees. There’s a job open for a record clerk You can become a pear tree record cleark, earn money, pay us and eat apples whenever you like.”
How absurd – you’re thinking, no doubt…Of course it’s absurd…But this is just the kind of thing that’s going on right now with each of us in our society.’
from ‘The Energy of Life’ by Vladimir Megre
Tom Yum Soup
Over on the Sunfood discussion forum, Kyle posted a photo of Tom Yum soup which made me want to eat it, so I decided to try and make a raw version.
First I made coconut milk by blending about a third of the flesh of a mature coconut with the coconut water and some more water and then squeezed it through a nut milk bag.
Then I got the following ingredients:
- 1 clove garlic
- 3 stalks of lemon grass
- 2 birds eye chillies (the small hot ones)
- small piece of fresh ginger
- 25g fresh coriander
- 1 red pepper
- 2 cherry tomatoes
- lime juice
- coconut milk (as made above)
I chopped the lemon grass quite finely, then chopped the rest of the ingredients and put everything except the coriander in the Vitamix along with the coconut milk and the juice of about a quarter of a lime and blended. I then added the coriander and blended again (so that there were still bits of coriander visible). I was very pleased with it for a first attempt!
David Wolfe on eating Ants
Update March 2026: The video has been removed. I’m going through this site checking links and unfortunately some of the best videos have been removed!
There has been a lot of speculation on this topic, I think it’s the first time I’ve heard David Wolfe say he eats ants. His viewpoint is pretty much the same as mine.