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Published March 13, 2012 | 
Day 12 and we haven’t had a serious fall out yet. We have threatened to kill each other in a sort of serious joking kind of way. Have any of you watched Jeff Dunham a very popular ventriloquist? One of his characters is Achmed the dead terrorist, hilarious! Achmed is dead but refuses to accept this even though he is a skeleton with bandages wrapped around his head and every time the audience laughs at him he screeches ‘I keel you!!’ We find that if we threaten to ‘keel’ each other, it diffuses the tension. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go 
Geoff bless him, knows I don’t want oily, meaty cooking smells in the campervan – so he sits outside in the cold with the little portable barbecue, smokes and drinks beer while cooking his food out there. Or we use the communal kitchens at the caravan parks. And he puts up with my paranoid South African ways of double-checking that he’s locked ALL the van doors whenever we leave the van (even if it’s just for 10 minutes). 
We had an amazing day in Queenstown. First thing in the morning we took the Gondola cable car up the mountain to ooh and aah at the view. There are heaps of activities for all ages – the luge, mountain biking where you use the cable car to come up and bike all the way down again, bungy jumping, paragliding. Fortunately we both agreed on coffee drinking as our main activity up there.
After lunch we experienced the Onsen hot pools, by appointment only. There are 6 private hot tub rooms on the edge of a mountain, a view over the river. No one can see in and there are dials that open the sliding window all the way leaving us in the hot bubbly water with the real sky above us, leaning on the edge of the tub gazing out at the riverbed. Luxuries like this make up for any bad days at work! From there we headed back into town, parked by the Lake Esplanade and ended up at Bar Zero. They provide you with snuggly snow jackets, hats and gloves to enter into the -8 degree bar totally carved out of ice. The ice stools covered with cloths to sit on, the counter, table and even our drinking glasses made out of solid frozen blocks. 
I bought myself some vegetarian sausages to have with my salads & cooked potato, a 50-50 meal as I call it. 50% raw fresh and 50% cooked. 
Published March 12, 2012 | My raw goodies have run out! For a lot of the committed raw vegans out there, a solution is always at hand including wild edibles. So far I have not ventured far into any paddocks to see if there are dandelions, purslane and other weeds. Lacking in experience I’m not sure what is edible or not.
(Photo of us in one of the camper van communal kitchens, each of us preparing our own food!)
I know that is a cop out and this holiday is about attempting to stay on my high raw diet while travelling with a die hard meat eating, cooked food diet person especially if we plan to live together one day. Breakfast is easy, fresh fruit and organic muesli. By mid morning my ‘time for a little something’ is kicking in and the ‘I want a cappuccino’ trigger takes over. An emotional trigger which I have refused to deal with over the last 6 years of eating raw. Geoff is usually hungry by then because he only has coffee and cigarettes for his breakfast.
Next best thing is to buy a gluten free option but that usually contains dairy. Lunch is taken in a picturesque location overlooking either the ocean, rivers or mountains, cosy little café’s and restaurants that offer tempting cooked food options and sweet white fizzy wines. Cold weather = warm hot meals. So as you can gather my resolve has slipped. I have had some dinners that were salads with cooked potatoes, not too bad and a magnificent veggie wrap. The quality of food offered in restaurants has been impressive.
Geoff is surveying every lake we drive alongside, we stop at lay byes and he casts an experienced eye over the water and gets excited when he see the tell-tale splash which means FISH! After throwing the line out a few times he has had no luck, the fish have had a look and decided ‘Nah, not interested.’ Smart. Greens and blues of the countryside and waterways, so clean and unspoilt.
Tomorrow is another day to start fresh with living foods, after all that is what I encourage people at my raw food workshops to do. If you have a bad day, start again tomorrow. The benefits are huge and Geoff knows this, he commented on my cough that has returned (from gluten and lactose). When I eat high raw, I glow with good health.
Photo of my delicious veggie wrap looking so fresh and alive, plate next to it Geoff’s with the cooked meal. Spot the nutrients!
Besides the raw ‘n cooked food differences we have, the Campervan life is going fairly smoothly but more about that next time….
fresh living foods, gluten, high raw diet, lactose, raw goodies, wild ediblesPublished March 10, 2012 | The wind is whistling outdoors, we are only a stone’s throw from Antarctica after all and it’s blowing right around our campervan. I made a quick run this morning down to the showers and back to my warm little home.
During the night I have our on board toilet which is such a treat, I love it! And it means I can drink a cup of tea in the morning and not worry how many loo stops we need to make. Geoff has a smoke break and I pop into the loo, life is good.
Photo of the crispy raw crackers and nut cream ‘cheese’ from eternaldelight.co.nz
Later on it was back down to the laundry $2 for a load and another $4 to dry it in the tumble driers. Caravan park facilities are SO clean and organised here in New Zealand, spotless with lots of hot water. If it was summer we might have sat outside and mingled with other campervanners in the evenings. But we hibernate inside with a few glasses of Kahlua to keep us warm.
This morning I’m drinking my organic lapacho tea with dried stevia leaves to sweeten it. Breakfast was yummy organic muesli with fresh orange juice, nectarines and banana. Geoff is on his second cup of instant coffee and cigarettes and then had some dry toast and tomatoes.
A couple of nights ago we did a boat trip to the glow-worm caves, across Lake Te Anau. Majestic mountains and deep blue lakes and then we crawled into the cave opening, just like an Indiana Jones movie! Dripping ceilings, rushing rivers masking the sound of my very bad sauerkraut gas problem. Raw or not that fermented stuff does not do me any good. I was polite and stayed at the back of the pack. When we got into the boat to glide silently along in the dark quiet glow-worm caverns I had to restrain myself.
Geoff is determined to catch a fish; he has bought the license and also brought his fishing rod with him from Oz. He will have to leave the reel behind when we go home, there is a danger of rock snot contamination. No I did not make that up, it is some kind of algae problem. He set off to the lakeside and I stayed inside the van reading and keeping warm. The long vigorous walks to get my circulation going have been avoided. It can’t be healthy for me being outside in that wind surely. We moved to the next spot and I ventured out to watch the master fisherman at work, he had seen a trout splashing. My thoughts were with the fish hoping he would get away in between wanting Geoff to catch a fish and be happy that he had. Conflicting emotions but I did not throw a rock in the water to warn the fish; luckily he disappeared to live another day. 
On Thursday we did our Milford Sound cruise, we had studied the weather patterns and chose this day – bless technology and being able to google the weather! OH WOW, how insignificant does one feel amidst such magnificence. Giants of mountains carved from glaciers, deep blue seas with dolphins riding in the wave crests of our boat. And here we come along with our creature comforts, technology and pettiness to invade this pristine environment with polystyrene coffee cups and plastic packed sandwiches in hand. Shame, shame, shame.
His ‘n Her’s dinners – my raw burgers crumbled into a salad with crachers and salad and some cooked veg.
Milford Sound – pristine and unspoilt
Lands End south of Invercargill on the Bluff.
fresh living food, Milford Sound, nut cream cheese, organic muesli, raw crackersPublished March 9, 2012 | Holiday time again, feels like just the other day we went but it was more than a year ago to South Africa and Victoria Falls. And the trip I had in between to Queensland was more a business trip with a bit of holiday tagged on the end. This time Geoff has planned a 3-week Campervan holiday for us.
We have our little home on wheels for 23 days to travel around South Island New Zealand with enough little hidey hole cupboards for his ‘n hers things. Mine all packed neatly in little compartments and Geoff’s just thrown in higgledy-piggledy. 
I ordered some food online to try and stay on the straight and narrow as much as possible while travelling. I found a lovely lady in Christchurch www.eternaldelight.co.nz and the goodies bag was delivered to our motel the first day. How exciting unpacking and filling our little van fridge with raw treats; quiche made with a curried nut cream, ‘cheesecake’, burgers, nut spreads, heart shaped cookies, fermented kombucha and sauerkraut, oh and muesli & crackers.
Beer? You want to put your beer in my fridge? Our fridge darling he replied. Well I reasoned, you can buy beer and ‘bloody’ meat everywhere on a daily basis but you can’t exactly buy raw food goodies every day. Luckily we did hire an esky (ice box) to put extra stuff in. And a portable barbecue so cooking can be done outside. And so far there is enough space in the fridge….
Our part of Australia is flooding with excess water from the skies. When we left for the airport a few days ago it was pouring down so we put on those cheap plastic macs and dragged our cases up the road to the nearest bus stop. Got to the airport and by 1am had arrived in Christchurch. A restless night waiting to hear from Nicole if baby had been born.
I have played house storing everything away. Geoff is a wonderful driver and knows what to do with all the van things like pumps, toilet, power, invertors and boy things. I sit in the passenger seat like Lady Muck enjoying the scenery.
Finally the long awaited birth of my second grandchild Summer Eden born 3rd of the 3rd, long past the due date of 17th Feb and oblivious to everyone in different parts of the globe waiting to hear the news. 8lb 10oz, phew and she looks so soft, rosy and round cheeked. Congratulations to Nicole and Steve!
– fresh living tomato, cukes and orange for me, Dry toast and sticky cheese for Geoff.
Now we can drive on each day and the only stress in life is that I bought a new laptop a month before I left and sadly did not learn how to use it properly. So if anything looks a bit dodgy on the blog, apologies and I look forward to improving with time!
Published February 23, 2012 | Are you living with someone you love dearly and yet friends and family look at you and say ‘but you have nothing in common, you’re total opposites!’ I know we’ve heard it all before but then we also hear ‘opposites attract’. What do you think, is this really the case?
So this is our long awaited campervan trip to see how we get along in a confined space for 3 whole weeks, driving together every day, squeezing into a tiny space to eat, sleep, wash and live.
We’re coming up 7 years together in our part time relationship and along the way I discovered raw fresh living food, gave up smoking and lost weight. I woke up to the environment being destroyed and became a greenie I suppose.
So I don’t want to cook food anymore, eat meat or smoke and Geoff still wants to cook food and eat meat and smoke.
And we have a tiny campervan to cook/not cook for 3 weeks. I can talk quite happily for the whole day and Geoff being a long distance truck driver is used to hours of being behind the wheel without contributing anything to a conversation. And I will want to hit him and he will want me to just SHUT UP for a few minutes.
Here we go! 
Published January 8, 2012 | Raw and Eco Road trip
| 3000km later…… An invitation to do a Raw weekend workshop up in Roma Queensland set the wheels in motion for me to plan a Raw and Eco Road Trip and finally start my blog.First it was business facilitating the workshop followed by a holiday touring around doing what I love – eating RAW fresh living foods and meeting like-minded people.I did bring back a lasting impression of my trip in the form of multiple bites on my bum! Just thought I would share that with you.Queensland is not all tropical fruits, rolling lush hills, sparkling rivers, white beaches and ocean reefs. It has lots of wee beasties who also need to eat, bless them, leaving an itch on the bum that turned into an inflamed red patch of about 20 bites in a pattern like a constellation of stars. Combined with that, the lymph nodes in my groin swelled up which meant some poisons and toxins were being flushed through. Fortunately this did not affect my appetite or ability to enjoy the holiday. |
| Enjoying a high raw lifestyle while traveling makes things a lot easier and also helped to keep me more alert while driving. Heavy, hot meals can leave you feeling tired, fine when you are the passenger! I had to take my esky’s/cool boxes with me anyway for my workshop so I kept one as the ‘time for a little something’ food bag for me to ensure my habitual grazing needs were met.In such hot weather, it was a pleasure to stop at a roadside rest area and cut up some juicy fruit and take short breaks under shady trees munching on my banana walnut fruit leathers. |
| It was more than a 1000km to Roma which meant 2 days travel so I took enough fresh living fruits and vegetables with me to last for a few meals and planned to finish them before crossing over into Queensland. There are rules for what you can and can’t take over the State borders. See Travellers’ Guide to Interstate Quarantine http://biodiscovery.imb.uq.edu.au/Portals/52/oztravelguide.pdfNot that I saw anyone doing road checks for fruit smugglers but I would hate to be the person who introduced an exotic pest into an area. Okay no smart comments about my rear end please!And it was so easy to cut up some fresh tomatoes and cucumbers for my dinner in the motel at Narrabri. It also meant I didn’t have to go out looking for dinner. |
| Breakfast was equally refreshing with banana, pear, orange and some yummy raw granola from http://thegoodnesscompany.com.au/ – one of the sponsors on our raw food support group Gaia’s Table.I reached the Queensland border about lunchtime on the second day and stopped at a service station before going over, found some shade and cut up the last couple of tomatoes and cucumbers for a cool lunch. I reached Roma about 4pm, this is the furthest I have ever driven on my own!Amazing how the raw journey really does turn into that, a journey of discovery, a return to health and meeting so many terrific people. |
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