Here’s our little mashup video this weekend from Seattle! Where shall we go next?? Tell me!
Archive for March, 2011
Food Schizophrenia: Living in the “Real World”
I don’t live alone eating fabulous little organic snacks, with my re-useable eco-friendly grocery bag, from a health food store, wearing all-hemp clothing. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
I drive carpool in my SUV, and wore an Abercrombie t-shirt today, and forgot my re-useable bags so I stuffed groceries, unbagged, in my purse. And then, today, I worked the Snack Shack at my son’s baseball game. Serving hot dogs. Every varsity parent has to do a turn.
I really did that.
I stood at the end of the table covered with candy and stuff, fetching people Gatorade and hot chocolate and candy bars, signing a box of Green Smoothies Diet books in between customers, all while trying to see the baseball game. (Moms. We’re multi-taskers. We learn to live in snippets. You never really get to focus on anything.)
If you don’t think I took some heat for schlepping hot dogs, from the parents who were there who know me well, think again.
Jeff said, as he walked past, “People will wonder why the snack shack didn’t make any money today!”
Not true. The snack shack made a killing. I kept my thoughts of “Would you like Blue Dye Number 1 for Attention Deficit Disorder, or Red #40 for anaphylactic shock?” to myself. Instead I said, “Blue Gatorade or Purple?” I might think the thought, “Only a dollar for carcinogenic nitrites in a bun!” but what came out of my mouth was, “Would you like catsup and mustard on that?”
Someone said, “Are the hot dogs really really good?” I confess to saying, “I really don’t know. I haven’t had one since 1987.” (A mental censor stopped this thought from coming out of my mouth: “You mean ground chicken beaks and feathers?”)
Jeff also called me five minutes after he left and said, “You need to take a photo of you working in the snack shack. And send it to me.” So I did. Here it is for your enjoyment.
Right before I’d left for the game, I got a group email from my son’s church leader about the activity this week. He said, “It’s at 6 a.m., but don’t worry, because afterwards, we’ll feed the kids donuts and drop them off at school.” (He’s a DENTIST.)
I kept my mouth shut at the baseball game. But I confess that, to the church leader, I wrote an email saying that the activity requires that I have to choose between his physical health and his spiritual health. (I haven’t made up my mind whether to send him or not, but really? Donuts? If I ate a donut for breakfast, I’d feel sick for hours. Lard, white flour, sugar—that’s all it is.)
A father at the game asked what I was doing, signing books. His son, Scooter, is rather worshipped at Timp High School, and his older son Rhett led the baseball team a few years ago to a state championship. He thought my signing nutrition books while manning the candy table was a riot. He showed me his bag of caramel rice cakes and asked me if they qualified to clear my high bar.
I told him, “If you look at this table, I bet you can’t guess what my pick for WORST snack is.”
Here, I’ll tell you the options and you can guess. Laffy Taffy, Snickers, Hershey’s Chocolate, 3 Musketeers, Red Vines, Roasted Peanuts, Salted Nut Bar, Spitz Sunflower Seeds, Fruit Snacks.
He said, “Well, it’s not the peanuts.”
True.
He guessed Laffy Taffy. Nope. (It’s awful, of course, but there’s even worse.)
It’s the Spitz Sunflower Seeds (Dill or Barbecue flavor). They’re full of MSG, a deadly neurotoxin. I’d take sugar, over that substance, any day.
My second-worst may also be a surprise to you. It’s fruit snacks. First ingredient, high fructose corn syrup. The very worst refined sweetener there is. (This is actually a ridiculous contest because all of those candies have corn syrup, Laffy Taffy has those awful food dyes….it’s a contest between terrible and awful.)
Seattle…best day EVER!…part 3 of 3
This photo is the Rat Pack of Raw. So says Tony Ricco of HyperThrive, one of the geniuses behind our new tour.
Which is funny. Because Steve (left) is a Stanford rocket scientist by education, and a minister. I was a marriage & sex therapist and university professor. And David Wolfe was a lawyer whose parents were medical doctors.
We’re all self-taught and driven by life experience.
You can’t see snowy Mount Ranier off the side of this photo where Mr. Long Legs Brent Hauver is sitting. I keep getting asked on Facebook what I’m drinking in these photos. It’s Ormus Greens, of course! Tastes even better in a wine glass.
The SunWarrior guys had it made up, in gallon jugs, in the Party House on the lake. So I drank it whenever I wanted, which is a lot, and I got by just fine without my beloved green smoothies.
If I’m asked, “What do you do when you travel?” that’s my briefest answer: Ormus Greens.
One of my favorite things about Avocado is his motto. See what his shirt says? BEST DAY EVER! Everything in his world revolves around that. At Chaco Canyon, the food was generally wonderful, but I told him one dish wasn’t my favorite. He said, “Yeah, it’s a little bit less than the Best Thing Ever.” Cracked me up. (My ex-husband used to describe something he didn’t like as, “That’s below average.” I love understatement.)
We’re going to Hawaii in September, maybe do a lecture on Kauai, Oahu, maybe one more. Do I even have any readers in Hawaii?
And this weekend I’m going to Avocado’s Longevity conference in the OC, I just decided. I’m going to take a notebook, see if I can get a drink from the firehose. You coming?
Seattle….things that come in 3′s….part 2 of 3
I’m not superstitious, but strange things happen to me in threes. You may have heard me speak about that. (I changed this to a three-part series, in honor of that.)
So I almost brought an ex-boyfriend to Seattle with me as an assistant. That kinda blew up. Then another one I affectionately refer to as “Hot Cop” told me he needed a vacation and wanted to come. Airfare was outrageous at that point. So I let go, and got on the plane by myself. And guess who got on with me?
My first high-school boyfriend, Rich. He wrangled me a seat next to him. He had nothing to do that night so he volunteered to come along to our U of W event, and he ran the GSG book table brilliantly after the show. I learned a long time ago not to force things—relationships, work, kids—and karma rolls around and provides solutions. Sometimes the solution is better than the idea you started with. This ever happen to you?
I introduced him to everyone as the guy who taught me how to kiss. On the plane, he informed me that he could never believe it that I let him kiss me, because I was a year older and he kept waiting for me to reject him. (We saw each other, on and off, for 4 years, through my sophomore year in college.)
He was the ridiculously hot, suntanned high-school quarterback. But JV, when I should have been dating varsity! I never acknowledged him to my friends, because his being a year younger and a friend of my brother’s embarrassed me. We talked about going to prom but then didn’t–I went with someone a year older than me. But we’d make out for hours in the forest behind my parents’ house. Or in the basement. Or at Burke Lake.
We reminisced about a night we both remember as one of the most-fun times of our lives. At that point we were friends, and he and I drove out to an “away” game where my then-boyfriend (#2 of 3 in high school) was the Center on the basketball team. (My senior year, it was the tight end–back to the football team!)
On the way home, an inch-thick layer of ice on the road brought Washington, D.C. to a standstill. We had to abandon my car to traverse the last couple of miles home, sliding on the ice in our shoes. It was a very still, silent night and all the trees had become thousands of delicate icicles. With no cars on the road, we had a blast, dancing around, falling, screaming, and laughing until our sides hurt.
Rich came home from Bosnia a USAF veteran, and is finishing a PhD to become a pharmacist. He was on his way to Seattle for a one-day immunization clinic. He said, “If the pharmacist thing doesn’t work out, can I come work for you?” I said, “People on my site would chew you up and spit you out. Lots of them don’t immunize their kids. I don’t either.”
He told me story after story about the stomach-turning literature he reads about the side effects of vaccines. One that is known to cause a child’s digestive system to fold in on itself. One was linked to Failure to Thrive.
He said, “They don’t tell us to stop giving the shot because of terrible side effects and risks. Instead they just tell us to warn people!”
He talked about observing Teflon, from cookware, built up in the crevices of intestines, in the cadavers he’s worked with.
He told me that he’s never seen people in worse health than the Clinical Nutrition professors he has studied under. I said, “Did anyone talk about plant food? The China Study? Raw food, enzymes?” He said, “Nope. I think they teach that in dietetics.” I said, “Nope, they don’t teach it there either.”
Rich bemoaned the way “they” keep adjusting the BMI chart, where “ideal body weight” range gets smaller and smaller—and the overweight and obese ranges get bigger and bigger. This is a big deal for pharmacists because dosing is based on weight. If you’re overweight, you always get higher doses.
There’s no joy in his acceptance of his future, now that he’s this far into a profession the U.S. military has invested a lot of money in, and he has invested a lot of time in.
He doesn’t want to do it. I know, since we were kids together, that he’s a math and science genius. But he wants to do something good with his education, and can’t get excited about injecting babies, little kids, and old people with toxins, bacteria, and heavy metals.
Seattle….I might have a crush on David Wolfe….part 1 of 3
I’m back from speaking in Seattle and Federal Way, WA with David Wolfe, see photos below. In one, we’re sitting on the pier at our Lake Washington party house. (We had an after-party Friday night, and although I went upstairs to bed at 1 a.m., I woke up at 4:45 and the party was still going! For the raw foodie crowd, KOMBUCHA is the alternative to booze! Yum.) And of course I had to have a picture of the guy named Avocado eating….an avocado.
What I didn’t take a photo of was Bikram Hot Yoga. OMG.
Ninety minutes of it, in 120 degrees of steam. Only SunWarrior’s Cody didn’t make it through. Everybody else? Shirtless, wearing next to nothing, 10 minutes in. There’s nothing else like it. What a release! The first 45 mins., I felt like I was in hell, and I wanted to kill Brent Hauver who insisted we all do this. Endorphins, toxins through the skin, emotions, you have to just let go of it all. (As you stand there holding a pose, dripping from every pore.)
Go to Hot Yoga if you ever get the chance. We don’t have that here in Kansas, Toto.
Making a video in the photo below, I’m with SunWarrior co-founder Brent Hauver, Avocado Noni Cacao Himself, and Sacred Chocolate’s Steve Adler. (He’s a modern-day, nutrition-guru Willy Wonka whose 45th birthday was that day.)
And in the photo below eating a lot of fabulous raw food at Choco Canyon is all of us and the SunWarrior / Hyperthrive crew, where Dave the Raw Trucker downed FIVE shots of wheat grass juice to all of us egging him on.
We had 350 people at Mary Gates Hall (see me, then Avocado, speaking there in photos below) and more than 350 in every nook and cranny at Marlene’s Market in Federal Way.
We’re gonna take the GreenSmoothieGirl / David Wolfe show to a few more metro areas. Should we come to your city? Tell me: where?
Not gonna lie, I have a little thing for David Wolfe. I like smart guys who can talk and are passionate about something. And then there’s his Johnny Depp-ness. He is the Encyclopedia Brittanica of biochemistry, human anatomy, superfoods, micronutrients and more.
After I spoke, I literally sat at his feet the second night (since there were no seats and no standing room either), highly entertained by the audience “getting a drink from a firehose,” someone’s description on facebook yesterday of what it’s like to listen to Avocado speak. Got a kick out of watching folks try to write it all down. Good luck with that! I’m not wowed often or easily. But let me say this: WOW.
I’m not a supplement girl, but I confess he inspired me to try a few of his favorites. We dreamed up some GreenSmoothieGirl superfood chocolate bars in our long drives in the car. We talked about what the best sweeteners are that we’ll use in formulation to keep blood sugar impact LOW, and what superfoods we’ll include in the formulation to slow aging, increase your energy, and rocket your LIBIDO.
(Nobody talks about it. Lots of people struggle with it. Just sayin. I’m going to bring you a chocolate that addresses PMS *and* makes you an enthusiastic lover. Just you wait.)
Are you fixing the plumbing, or building a mansion? Part 2 of 2
At church Sunday, someone was making an announcement about a care center that wants us to bring them snacks for the mentally handicapped residents: “The care center staff said they want HEALTHY treats, like fruit snacks and Gushers.” I don’t know what Gushers are, but the fact that they have a brand name is a bad sign. The person making the announcement turned to the side of the room where I was sitting and said, “Robyn would not approve of these ideas as healthy snacks, and neither do I, but anyway, that’s what they want.”
(I love how at church I seem to have a “rep” even though I never talk about food there.)
It’s a throwback to my days as a grad-school intern on the State Hospital Children’s Unit 15 years ago. I went to the director to plead for less sugar on the unit. I could see that the kids were constantly ill, incessantly fed antibiotics, most of them overweight, because the school and therapists rewarded them with candy, the hospital cafeteria’s nutrition was appalling, and after-school volunteers brought cookies and junk nearly every day. I was brushed off by the psychiatrist director who said, “Sugar is the only love most of these kids every get, and it’s not a big deal. We’re dealing with REAL issues here.” In other words, he was saying: nutrition doesn’t matter for these kids.
I don’t want to roll my eyes. I want to educate patiently. I hope I am always tolerant. I hope I always teach to the knowledge level of the audience. I hope I never act superior.
Whatever knowledge I have, I gained it as God was building a courtyard in my cottage, while I would have much preferred just a little cleanup. I lean on others in their areas of subject-matter expertise where I am shaky. (Computers. Applied math. Spatial puzzles and maps.)
God is making a mansion of me. When He knocks out a support beam, I want to grow from it instead of shake my fist at heaven.
Last Sunday at church, Carla, in our women’s organization, gave a lesson on the Word of Wisdom scripture. I attend a lay church, where the parishioners are also the teachers. She said my name three times during the lesson, as if she had no right to teach on nutrition because I happened to be there.
Fact is, as I told her later, it was the best lesson I’ve ever heard on the Word of Wisdom, my religion’s scripture about nutrition. I told her, “I don’t think I would have had the courage to be so bold.”
She’d researched statistics about the health risks associated with red meat, caffeine, carbonation. She indicted Utah’s prescription drug dependency (especially anti-depressants) as fueled by the culture, even reading a quote from our attorney general. She read stats about the benefits of whole grains, the benefits of drinking a lot of water.
She didn’t cover sugar, she didn’t cover the Word of Wisdom’s counsel to “eat meat sparingly,” she said that poultry and fish are good for you. But overall, I found the whole lesson to be starkly committed to the truth, relative to most lessons I hear on that topic.
She did cover the closing line of D&C 89, that if we eat whole foods, “I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them, as the children of Israel, and not slay them.” This seemed to have a profound emotional impact on the teacher. No wonder, as her husband has battled prostate cancer this past year. Who doesn’t want to put that amazing promise to the test?
She was so stunned when I gave her a hug and told her I would probably have soft-pedaled the topic, myself. Why? I hate offending people. And, as I said to her, “People are more emotional and opinionated about food than they are about religion and sex.”
Anyway, thanks for the food for thought, Jennie, and the Word of Wisdom lesson, Carla.
Are you fixing the plumbing in your cottage? or building a mansion? part 1 of 2
My high-school junior son’s photo is on the front page of Sports, rubbing the snow of the baseball before he pitches it on Tuesday. Brrr! And then the next day, I’m skiing in a t-shirt at Sundance. Gotta love Spring in Utah!
I was in warmer St. George last week with a lot of downtime, watching my younger son play baseball.
(Tips for traveling there? Café Rio, this is what I always order. Vegetarian salad, all beans/no rice, no fried tortillas chip-strips, whole-wheat tortilla, extra romaine. And Dixie Nutrition’s frozen yogurt with no sugar, one flavor has just stevia, $0.99 for a small.)
Some GSG readers were in the baseball stands in St. George. They talked to me through my son’s last two games—except the times I’d leap out of the stands as my son (shameless bragging alert):
–bottom of the last inning with two outs, score tied, got trapped in a pickle between 3rd and home but beat it (that’s where the catcher and 3rd baseman have the runner in between them trying to get back to either base), and then:
–slid face-first into home plate, beating the tag with a “SAFE!” call from the ump only after the dust cleared, with the other team’s coaches and parents screaming, “OUT!” — to score the winning run, 11-10.
One of the GSG readers is in her 70′s and pointed sadly at her adult son, who had just shown up, Coke in hand. She said, wistfully, “I wish I had an influence on that. I just don’t.” She’s already lost one of her 9 children to colon cancer.
Young moms, you have all the power in the world. Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Your children are all yours, right now. They won’t be forever. Eventually the larger culture starts to own them. So walk the talk now—they will respect you for it always, even if they have occasional tantrums.
So with more free time than usual, I had some long convos with friends I’ve been neglecting and needed to catch up with. My friend Jennie, as I was driving home for 4 hours, reminded me in a long philosophical chat, about this quote I’d forgotten about, from C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity:
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
Jennie and I had been talking about two subjects, switching back and forth. One was religion, and the other was nutrition. Comparing C.S. Lewis’ comment to religion, she said this to me:
“Robyn, you take for granted all your knowledge about nutrition. You sent me to Dr. Rodier, and I did this cleanse, and I had no idea what to eat, for so long. I still don’t. I obsessively read labels. You might roll your eyes, but that’s because two months ago I was that girl you blogged about once who asked if fresh fruit is as good for you as canned fruit. The one who thinks there has to be Jell-O at every meal, because that’s what my mom did.
“I’m still celebrating that I ate whole-corn tortilla chips with my lunch, because it’s better than the Doritos I ate before. And that won’t make any sense to you. But you have to know where I’ve come from to celebrate where I am.”
I’ve been thinking of Jennie’s words for days. She’s so right. I have become aware over and over, recently, that many of us start from a very low point, knowledge-wise, regarding nutrition.
More tomorrow….
Educate your kids about nutrition!
Here’s my video showing Tennyson why food matters in his life, and why he
should make good decisions about food.
He’s no different than you and me. He needs REASONS. And praise.
Here are my tips for teaching your kids—some I mention on the video, and
some you’ll just see me DOING:
1. Make it relevant to their lives. (In Ten’s case, link it to sports
performance.)
2. Keep it short. (I didn’t do a good job of this in the video. This
was for your benefit to tell you a bunch of things you can say to YOUR
kids.)
3. Make it interesting.
4. Make it visual.
5. Involve them. Ask them questions.
6. Avoid clichés like “eat your greens.” Tell them WHY eat greens.
7. Use car time. We spend a lot of time in the car. They’re trapped
there. So talk to them about things that matter when they can’t roll their
eyes and run away.
8. Ask them what they notice, when they eat right, and praise their
good choices!
Please give your opinion on a proposed GreenSmoothieGirl logo!
A heartfelt thank-you to those of you who have been here for 3.5 years giving us your wisdom, your feedback, and your experience. Thanks to those of you who are new! And thanks to those of you who send your friends to GreenSmoothieGirl.com because you trust the message and the support you get here.
Will you please weigh in on this logo design? If you like it, why? If you hate it, why?
We’re branding. Redesigning the entire website “look and feel,” as well as lots of collateral, like fliers and video intro/outtro, etc.
I wanted an “avatar” (the GSG you see pictured here) that is iconic and recognizable as we grow.
Growth is all about getting more and more people involved in our grassroots movement back to….well, grass.
Thank you for your support and your feedback!
Robyn
Avocado-Almond Sandwiches
When I was in Portland last month, GSG reader Debbie made all this fabulous food for the road. Which was a good thing, since we did 3 lectures in 24 hours, sometimes with a 2-hour drive, so we had no downtime. (Now she’s setting me up with some speaking engagements in Hawaii for September. Anybody have a place that would like to host, on any of the three major islands? Speak up now before we commit to some others, okay?)
When we got home, Kristin and I craved those sandwiches Debbie made. They were mashed avocado, with chopped Smokehouse Almonds, on Dave’s Killer 21-Grain Bread that you get at Costco.
When I got home, we came up with this healthy, sprouted version of “Smokehouse Almonds.” (I googled the ingredients and made lots of substitutions.) I added lemon juice, kelp, and garlic powder to the mashed avocado for the sandwich filling. You can eat the almonds any way you want—you’re not limited to chopping them for this recipe.
I made the sandwiches for my kids for dinner tonight and they loved them:
Smoke House Almonds
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 TBSP chili powder
1 TBSP nama shoyu
2 tsp Original Crystal Himalayan Salt
2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp cayenne
7-8 cups sprouted, dehydrated almonds (soak truly-raw almonds overnight, drain and dry in dehydrator until crunchy)
Mix all ingredients except almonds in a small bowl. Add nuts; stir to coat. Arrange on teflex dehydrator sheets and dry at 105 degrees until crunchy.
