Raw Milk

Check out this fantastic article from Harper's magazine in April 2008 about the dilemma of pasteurized vs. unpasteurized.  I'm pro unpasteurized of course.

The revolution will not be pasteurized: Inside the raw-milk underground

I LOVE raw-milk and drink it every day.  Here are some of my favorite treats.

Green Eggs and Cream

1 avocado
2 eggs
1/2 cup of raw-cream OR 1 cup of raw-milk
1 tbsp raw honey OR raw agave

Blend and go. Yummy.
I eat this one usually for breaksfast before ballet class.


Banana Chocolate Smoothie

1 banana
2 - 3 heaping tbsp almond butter (or any nut butter)
1 cup raw-milk
1 - 2 tbsp raw honey OR raw agave
1 - 2 tbsp raw cocoa powder

Put it all in a blender.  This is a great treat any time of day.

JUICE!

Ever since I started this diet in January  I have been experiencing an overwhelming number of synchronistic coincidences.  Sort of like "all my prayers to God being answered", one after the other. 

One of the biggest obstacles and the most prominent questions in my life a few weeks ago after settling into my diet was how I would get my afternoon juice everyday during my busy rehearsal and performance schedule. My house and my juicer are in the Sunset while I work in Hayes Valley (i.e. a twenty minute drive and a forty minute bus ride), which makes for a difficult sprint home with rarely more than an hour break.  I asked the question and then forgot about it.  Then God spoke.  

Just a few days later I was off to lunch with my friend and she insisted on taking a less traveled route to our usual lunch spot, La Boulange.  That’s when I first saw it, Mandarina, a juice and smoothie bar.  It was just opening up two blocks from the Ballet building.  

Question: How do I get my afternoon juice?

Answer: Go to the juice bar down the street.  

How awesome?!  Never any explanation from my friend as to why she wanted to walk that way to lunch and I would not have been aware of this juice bar without going that direction.  So now everyday I go to Mandarina on my way to La Boulange and the owners let me request my own juice, pineapple, cucumber, celery and kale, but sometimes I just get two shots of wheatgrass.  It is my new regular spot.  Next time you’re in Hayes Valley, check it out, ask for the green juice with kale and cucumber, and tell them Luke sent you.  

Let's Meet for Dinner

Give me a call and let's plan to have dinner.  How does popcorn sound?

Curse of the Corn!

I have an idea for a blockbuster horror movie, called the Curse of the Corn (or perhaps Revenge of the Natives, Drowning In Cornor Corn Karma).  It is the story of an arrogant civilization discovering a new land and terrorizing its native people.  Occupying the land in hopes of discovering many riches, like gold.  What they find is a grain called corn.  They kick out the natives and harvest the corn making it the staple of their new culture. Its harvesting is supplemented with tax dollars and grown in massive quantities. But, the native’s have “cursed” the corn and several generations later, the corn has come to life and started to seek revenge on its consumers.  The people consuming it are stricken with cancerous diseases and swell to unsustainable sizes.  They are bed ridden and unable to carry the burden of their own weight, yet they cannot stop eating the corn...  What do you think?  It’s great, lots of death, revenge, hubris and we’ll throw in some sex somewhere. 

My inspiration, you ask?  Well, tonight, while watching cable television for the first time in months I witnessed a commercial promoting the consumption of high fructose corn syrup.  The slogan they used is, “it’s safe in moderation.”  So many responses raced through my mind and my friends and I were in hysterics we were so shocked.  Most of the “foods” on the shelf in your local grocery store contain high fructose corn syrup - I don’t believe it qualifies as moderation.  And only one company sells the seeds and chemicals necessary for growing highly subsidized corn.  Only one company owns the patent to the genetically modified corn that contains a dominant gene that takes over other varieties of corn. The high fructose corn syrup is a highly processed food. It retains almost none of the original nutrients of the “corn” it came from.  It affects insulin levels and confuses the body so that it doesn’t know how to break down the fructose and pass it through the digestive system.  It sticks inside of you and turns to fat, makes you tired and lazy and leaves you wanting more food because your body has not received the nutrients it was craving when it signaled to you that it was hungry.  

How awesome that our buying power is strong enough to force the corn industry to spend millions of dollars to create pro-high fructose corn syrup ads.  You make a difference everyday.  Every time you go to the grocery store.  Make the choices that represent what you stand for.  

“You know what they say about high fructose corn syrup...” If you were to answer the way they do in the commercial, “what?”, then I suggest you check out the movies, Future of Food (free on Hulu), Food Inc.  If you have not read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, then do.  Check out the blog, www.highfructosecornsyrup.org.  Spread the word.  Lobby your senators and congress people to stop supplementing the corn industry’s poisoning of the population.  Be informed and stand up for your health and happiness.

What Do I Eat?

The other question is, “What do you eat?”   The truth is that my new diet is not about denying myself anything.  It is about abundance.  At this point I am still transitioning and experimenting.  I would say my diet is somewhere around 80% raw plant foods. So, what do I eat?  Well, in the mornings I have four oranges blended with flax oil, I still have two eggs, free range and 100% vegetable diet of course, then maybe toast or some lettuce or a tomato, then for lunch I eat a big salad of mixed greens avocados, tomatoes, broccoli, maybe some homemade raw hummus with a bell pepper. I snack on fruits, nuts and raw chocolate - I actually had an awesome raw vegan chocolate cake for lunch the other day.  I put MSM powder in my water and I have  superfood protein powder for my water as well. Then, for dinner I eat another yummy salad, maybe a sweet potato or some quinoa, and I make a juice of cucumber, celery, kale and an apple (although Im starting to think the apple makes it too sweet), I’ll also have a glass of raw (un-pasteurized) milk from a happy, healthy, non chemically treated cow.  But, the best is dessert, my favorite is a slice of sprouted grain bread slathered with raw almond butter, and raw honey drizzled on top - soooo delicious. I have pasta in my freezer, just waiting for me to feel deprived and craving “carbs”, but I haven’t.  And, although I am not denying myself a steak, I don’t really want one.  I have every intention of eating one again at some point, though - maybe I’ll have steak tartare.  In the end I eat anything I want, but when I’m hungry I always start with the raw food first then I wait to see how I feel, if I’m still hungry and craving a steak or pasta then I will have it, but that hasn’t happened. Im satisfied with the raw food, and more than that I am excited about all the benefits I am reaping physically, mentally and spiritually.  Im discovering new foods every week and I plan to share these discoveries through this blog.  

If you're intrigued and inspired - even just a little - you should check out the book by David Wolfe to figure out how to start incorporating more raw foods into your daily routine.  The book is, The Sunfood Diet Success System, my friend and I refer to it as the "Bible".  Go check it out at your library and check out David Wolfe, and his company Sunfood.com  Then once your ready go here to purchase the "Bible" from Amazon. 

Why Raw?

Everyone wants to know two things from me as of late.  The first is why would you eat a rawfood diet? (We’ll get to the second one in the next blog.) People seem baffled that I, the skinny ballet dancer with more defined muscles than an anatomy book has listed, who has preached his love of steak and potatoes for 25 years, would ever consider going on a ‘diet,’ especially one consisting of rabbit food.  

Hmmm, why?

In one word, Tendonitis.  

But, the journey really started about two years ago during my first season with San Francisco Ballet.  I had a chronic injury of some kind - I can’t exactly remember what - and I was very nervous about the medications and treatments my doctor recommended.  That’s when my good friend, Emanuela Gay, offered to take me on as a client with her classical homeopathy practice.  It was worth a try.  Immediately the treatment had a profound effect on my mental state.  I became much more stable in my perception and reaction to people in my daily life.  That’s big for a sensitive artist like me.  Next, my acne went away.  After ten years of trying everything from benzoyl peroxide washes to Accutane, homeopathy solved it.  The treatment also cured my shin splints and I haven’t had one since.  But, the biggest selling point for me was when I went to stay with my sister for a week and for the first time ever I did not have an allergic reaction to her cat. Wow, that was amazing.  I have had terrible allergies all my life and thought I would have to live on a daily dose of Claritin. 

Sold on homeopathic medicine, the next turning point happened in January 2009.  My mom was diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma, a very serious and deadly skin cancer.  Through the research that my mom, many of our close friends and I began doing we discovered that medicine outside of the US has found the cause and the cure for cancer.  It is diet.  The over-processed world we live in is suppressing the body’s natural ability to heal itself, and making a perfect design susceptible to cancerous cells.  I became a fan and started advocating the Gerson therapy to my mom.  My homeopath recommended the Bruess juice diet and my mom eventually settled for the diet prescribed by Dr. Budwig that centered around the healing powers from the fats we get from raw foods.  All of them were German doctors who believed in a raw, vegetarian diet.  My mother is now in remission and her doctors were impressed to see her exhibit significantly less side effects to the western medication probably due to her new diet.  This experience led me to the Slow Food movement, and the books by Michael Pollan.  They turned me into a huge supporter of local and organic produce and I became a much more responsible and aware meat eater.  I also started juicing daily. 

Then I hit a low.  While in China with SFB I went off my homeopathic remedy.  I got sick, depressed and my tendonitis returned with a fury.  Once back in the US, my homeopath got me back on my remedy and started recommending two juices daily from a diet that she had recently adopted and with which she was experiencing many benefits.  It’s The Sunfood Diet.  The juices consisted of a smoothie of 4 oranges and 3 tbsp. flaxseed oil in the morning and a green juice made with cucumber, celery, a leafy green such as kale or chard and an apple.  I loved it.  I stopped wanting coffee, and I craved my green juice after work.  My health - both mental and physical - started to get better - everything but the tendonitis which got worse during our annual run of the Nutcrakcer.  That’s when I finally started to consider submitting to a week-long dose of Celebrex for relief.  My homeopath gave me freedom to make my own decision, but urged me to do a little research online before making the decision.  Well, I did.  And after visiting just one website, the official website for Celebrex, and reading the details about side effects, I was determined to find an alternative.  What I found was amazing.  Over and over, website after website, I read that one of the most successful, alternative, non-toxic, most natural and most effective cures for chronic inflammation such as tendonitis and arthritis is something called MSM.  What is MSM?  Methylsulphonylmethane.  It is the substance our body uses to create sulfur, something that the rest of the life on earth receives through rain water and raw foods.  However, an average human today misses this important ingredient in a typical diet of cooked and processed foods and purified, chemically treated water. I needed no further persuasion.  On December 28, 2009, just two days before the new decade, I started with one week on a mostly raw food diet and more specifically, following the guidelines of David Wolfe and his book, The Sunfood Diet Success System.  I have been eating 80% Sun food ever since.