thailand: I miss you.

I have an on-going love-story with Thailand. I went there in 2009 to kind of escape my depression (I was unhappy with my studies, my eating disorder was so bad and I suffered from the good old post-break-up-with-my-boyfriend-because-he-cheated-on-me-and-treated-me-like-shit-pain). I stayed for about three months: from September 2009 till December 2009. Then I went back to this fascinating tuk-tuk-filled country again in 2011, again from September till December. Man, that was a really, really good time for me. Traveling helped me so much with finding my path, realizing who I want to be(come). That was huge. It was also in Thailand that I decided to let go of the (raw food/fruitarian) diet dogma - and I am so happy that I made that decision!

So, in today's post, I want to get a bit nostalgic and post a few pics of my travels in Thailand...

I slept in beautiful & cozy guest houses...

 I ate beautiful food...

I learned how to make these colorful fresh spring rolls in my favorite tea house in Chiang Mai (Cha Tea House) - I visited this tea house pretty much daily to have tea, relax, listen to the beautiful chanting music (in Tibetan language), get a massage, chat with the owners and mostly, I went there to read books and write into my journal :) It was a wonderful time!

I also really enjoyed my meals and kombucha, as well as some Thai mountain coffee and gluten-free rice flour muffins and other yummy stuff they make :) at this restaurant in Chiang Mai called the Blue Diamond!

oh, and then I found that lovely restaurant/coffee shop named The Nice Kitchen right around the corner of my guest house one day, during my Thai massage course... they had some really yummy black sticky rice with coconut milk! I always had some good gingery chai tea there and again, Thai mountain coffee in cappuccino-form ;)

and then I went to Pai. Sigh. I miss Pai. It's a village in the North of Thailand and I simply fell in love with it! I did a Yoga & Meditation Retreat there and it was one of the best experiences in my life! Want to go back so bad! Missing my yoga teacher, too...

my yoga mat. 

this was my "bathroom" sink... :) ...the view!

there was always time to relax... or drink some tea! every day of the retreat we had some nice and spicy chai tea to rise & shine in the morning...

 my cup was "simplicity", of course! love!

 

this is where we did yoga...

and last but not least: my fave snack in Thailand: roasted/grilled sweet potatoes (they taste better than any pie in the world)...

  this is fast food in Thailand. Sigh. Miss. Thailand.

[/end nostalgia]

craving veggies!!

a quick post. at the moment I am really truly craving simple veggie dishes...

hence: more veggies on my plate :) 

like steamed brokkoli, carrots, pumpkin with tahini-peanut-chili sauce and tamari and some more peanuts :o)

above shows: greens with acv, olive oil, tamari with steamed broccoli and pumpkin topped with a sour-cream-tahini-curry-sauce and basil-tomato-paste 

(in a brand-new glass dish I bought today!)

some days ago I enjoyed this very orange-dominated plate of goodness: carrot, sweet potato and white potato baked with some grass-fed butter with some carrot-cucumber-tomato-salad and raw cheese :)

I also started craving oatmeal again, so I prepared some the traditional way with soaking in an acid medium overnight and all :) in fact, my rolled oats (+ some spelt flakes mixed in) are soaking for about 24 hours! more on soaked oatmeal/porridge soon...

I am no oatmeal expert (yet), I always feel like there is something missing :(

I am tired and need some sleep! ♥

recent intuition-inspired eats

I've finally managed to upload some pics of my recent yummy eats. :)

booohooooo!! I usually have some gooood coffeeee in the morning! I really like our Senseo machine lately, it makes such creamy coffee-deliciousness with some nice full-fat cream (from grass-fed Austrian cows!). Last semester I absolutely loved having coconut milk in my coffee! Maybe I get back to that again. But right now I like a good latte or some good cream in my cup with my coffee...

For sweet stuff, I have been having some yogurt combos. This one shows greek yogurt plus home-made berry juice jello and some pieces of a ripe banana.

Looks kinda like the same, huh? But this one is creamy polenta with some strawberry jam and greek yogurt plus cinnamon on top. It kinda tastes like Topfenködel... :) yummy...

Then I had some good "fries". I use some potatoes and slice them up, toss them in coconut oil and Himalayan pink salt and put the in the oven (on full heat) for about 20min. They. are. so. good. I like them with some catsup, carrot salad, greens, raw grass-fed cheese and macadamia nuts on top. Very filling!

This a hot bowl of some spicy carrot-pumpkin-"chili" on top of baby greens with raw apple cider vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, along with some grass-fed cheese and toasted sourdough bread. Awesome.

Sometimes I just have salads with some steamed veg (somewhere buried underneath that dollop of catsup). Plus some curry powder on top. Yum.

Today's lunch: hot veg broth in a cup, steamed broccoli, iceberg lettuce, hard-boiled egg, raw grass-fed cheese, toasted sourdough bread with yogurt butter. :)

What are you munching on lately?

Going to watch Django Unchained (OV) with my boyfriend in an hour. :)

just had some raw grass-fed milk... and it was delicious!

... and soooo satisfying, I feel so happy and centered and grateful in this moment. The milk is from cows from a bio-dynamic farmer in the Wienerwald area (that means close to Vienna - or "Wien" - where I live!) I have been trying pretty hard to find a good raw milk supplier for a few days now... and now I have found this beautiful resource! (BTW, I can recall that some friends of mine actually lived with a farmer in the Wienerwald for a while and helped with the farm work, also with caring for the cows. They are both vegan, and they were pretty happy about how the cows were treated, I'd say. They were there for over a year, I think! I also used to be vegan a while ago. I can recall how I found it a bit weird that they spend their time on a dairy farm - as vegans. But I found it pretty cool anyway. And now I am so happy that this farm exists! At least I guess that it must be the same farm...)

I am re-reading parts of Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition, 2nd Edition and so I wanted to find a good raw milk dealer. ;) The organic shop just 5min down the road happens to sell raw grass-fed milk from happy Austrian cows. And that makes me happy. I am super grateful! And the best part is that I actually really like the fresh taste of this one!

Here in Austria you can buy pasteurized grass-fed/hay-milk in pretty much every supermarket nowadays. As well as raw milk cheeses, free-range eggs, good butter, raw apple cider vinegar, sauerkraut and (most of the time) some sourdough (rye) bread etc. I used to hate Austrian culture and the anti-vegan food mentality, as I used to experience the traditions of this country. Now that I became interested in the real food movement and the Weston A. Price Foundation, I am pretty grateful about that! It makes things easier.

I also got some powdered organic gelatin and some organic cream yogurt from the store. I totally love Greek/Turkish yogurt lately... oh, and talking about yogurt...

... yesterday I read online about kefir again and tried to find an online shop where I can buy some (cheap) kefir grains. And then I thought, why not contact someone from the people who already have kefir in their home? So I went ahead and sent an e-mail to some member of a kefir online "community" website to ask, if I could have some kefir grains maybe. Answer: "Of course! Please call me under this number, I can give you kefir grains for free!" I was so happy!! Some total stranger somewhere in Vienna with a doctor title invites me, a total stranger, to his home to get some kefir grains for free. :)

Plus, I have just made some veggie stock. Yeah. Instead of the bone broth.One day I will make it. No, really. But right now... I am happy with veggie stock and some gelatin powder.

I am grateful!

nutrition dogma: learning my lesson... again :)

So, after a few months of being low carb and following the WAPF and paleo/primal community, I  come to a conclusion: It doesn't matter which diet dogma I try to follow perfectly, it is a dogma. Some rules by someone else, someone other than my own body. Diet dogma is so not healthy. I knew it before. I should have known, and I thought I did! At least I was saying that all this paleo and WAPF, SCD and GAPS eating was an experiment.

But there was so much attachment to the ideology again. It's tough to overcome this attitude towards food. There was so much fear of certain foods, that the past few days I was crying constantly, I feared the moment of being hungry, as that meant that I needed to eat something. See, I don't want to starve myself thin anymore, I am way past that stage in my life. All I wanted was health, and yet it turns out there is no one recipe for health that applies to all. So I feared being hungry because obviously I need to eat in order to function. I am a busy student. I am studying German Studies and this semester I started studying Law as well. Very intense. So I need my food! I need energy.

But what should I eat? I was SO confused. Low carb? High carb? Meat? Veggies? Sugar? Dairy? I wanted to say "fuck it" and just eat whatever I craved at that moment. But I wasn't craving anything. I didn't know what I could possibly want to eat because food didn't seem appealing anymore. You can find information on every single food out there on how bad it is for your health. And being such a health nut and nutrition freak, I couldn't stop myself reading up on all those articles; restlessly I was trying to find "the truth"... confusion was the result. Massive confusion. And with that came depression, frustration, disappointment.

I want to live. Really. I don't want to spend all day thinking about food, and then fearing food, and then reading about food and how it is bad or good or whatever. I just want to eat food and live; maybe write a blog post now and then. There are so many things I would like to do. I actually really enjoy my studies. I love being a smart ass. I am in love with my boyfriend and we moved into our apartment (finally!). We are happy and I want to enjoy my time with him. I signed up for 2 Yoga classes... but because of my depression/disordered relationship to food I was too stressed to go to Yoga in order to de-stress myself. See?

I really want to be healthy, but I cannot be perfect and perfect health is something that (maybe) cannot be achieved. It's time to let go. It's time to surrender and make the best of it. It's time to say good-bye to nutrition dogma. It's time to eat good food and be happy and grateful for it. It's time to be calm, smile and fuck it! There are things we cannot control and I don't want to waste my energy and my life trying to fix something that I cannot fix.

Life is an experiment, and I am doing my best to trust my journey.

primal & low carb

I need to share this. I have been following a low carb and primal/paleo/WAPF inspired diet for a few months now. After quitting gluten, grains in general, sugar and starchy foods, I felt so so so much better right away. I also quit eating fruits - pretty much. I still enjoy low sugar fruits in moderation, but I keep my diet pretty low in carbs, and that is key to feeling a) satified and b) emotionally balanced - well, at least much much more than when I was high carb (raw) vegan.

So, this also means, that I am no longer a "vegan". If the definition means to eat solely plant foods. I am no longer a fan of following certain specific diet rules either, I am more listening to my intuition nowadays. Sure, I get my inspiration partly from "primal" and "paleo" authors and blogs, and I am reading about fermenting, traditional diets, SCD & GAPS (specific carbohydrate diet & gut and psychology syndrome) etc. But there is still no real label for what I am eating now. I go with the flow.

The only thing I can say is this: I have found out (through trial and error) that grains, starchy foods and fruits didn't do my digestive system good. Adding in a good probiotic supplement and some fermented foods is very helpful in healing the gut, in my experience. I took a lot of courage to start eating animal products again, after being a vegan for so long and with such a passion as I was. I still love animals, my respect for my food has grown. Maybe I am even more connected to "nature" and the life cycle now, I don't know!

I am still not eating a  whole lot of meat, I simply can't. I eat grass-fed dairy products, eggs, some fish etc. It took some time to get used to the idea again to eat something that is coming from another animal! Me and my boyfriend have been experiencing better health on many levels since incorporating animal foods back into our diets; but I am still open to (near) vegan diets. I have learned that change is the only constant thing in this universe and this life.

I just wanted to share with you where I am at at this point of my journey of mindful eating. :)

Namaste everyone ;)

healthy eating affirmations

    Eating right is easy and fun for me.

    I love my body and take good care of it by eating correctly.

    I successfully release the desire to eat beyond the point of being full.

    I release the need for foods that cause indigestion and discomfort.

    For me, eating and emotional comfort are separate and I forgive myself for overeating.

    I let go of all reasons and excuses for not eating healthy meals.

    I replace dieting with healthy eating principles and habits.

    Healthy eating and I are one and I am richly rewarded for my healthy eating habits.

    I accept healthy eating as a way of life.

    I am allowed to decline food and do so in total peace.

    The Universe provides more than enough food for me.

    When I am comfortably full, I avoid more food.

    I get all the vitamins and nutrients I need.