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Grow big apples with chicken manure and volcanic rock dust!

Guess which apples grew with chicken poop and volcanic rock dust!

Here are some apples from a tree in our garden. The two bigger apples in the picture weigh in at 11.75oz and 13oz! The ’small’ one for comparison, is a shop bought breaburn apple weighing in at 5oz.

The home grown apples are EATING apples and they are totally delicious! This year they are quite a bit bigger. Earlier in the year I spread around the base of the tree some generous sprinklings of chicken manure and volcanic rock dust.

The theory has it that plants need the micro nutrients that are slowly released from the volcanic rock dust. If they don’t get enough micro nutrients then they can’t utilise efficiently the main three nutrients; nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Well I do know one thing for sure. Volcanic rock dust when combined with some sort of poop seems to make things grow bigger and tastier!

I’ve had some giant courgettes as well. Courgettes do grow into ‘marrows’ if you leave them long enough. I left mine so that they were about a foot long and about four inches in diameter. They tasted fantastic, like no other that I’ve tasted before! There was no need to remove the seeds, they had an incredible flavour. They are just like normal courgettes but on a bigger scale and much tastier.

A friend dropped round to see me today, and I gave him some slices of raw beetroot that was grown in soil fertilised with well rotted cow manure and the volcanic rock dust. He kept helping himself to them as they were rather more-ish! I explained that once your body gets a taste for the minerals, you just want more!

The greens off my allotment are a bit like that too. Because I’ve not been able to get to the allotment much over the past 6 weeks,  I’ve not been harvesting , nor eating as many greens as usual. A couple of days ago I went to the allotment and was about to chop down and throw out my overgrown spinach bed, it just looks too big! I’m glad I didn’t though, it’s quite tasty as it is, and it made the tastiest green juice that I’ve ever had. The juice was made with: mainly spinach, quite a bit of home grown parsley, a couple of oranges and a lime. I had a whole day of green juice (2 to 3 litres), with no solid food eaten. I wasn’t hungry at all. From the following day onwards, I have been ravenous for eating greens! My body has very quickly developed a taste for all the minerals, chlorophyll,  and antioxidants again.

Any greens grown in soil fertilised with manure and rock dust are much more satifying and have a much better flavour than most of the greens that you can buy at the shop. The courgettes even taste slightly salty, I guess it’s the high concentration of minerals in them. Perhaps that’s why many people (and manufacturers) add salt to food, because their food is deficient in minerals (or is just tasteless!). If adding salt, perhaps the body is fooled into thinking this is good to eat. I rarely add salt to food any more, I haven’t had any at all for two months.

Setting yourself free from addictive foods that control you

Alcohol for many people is ok. But for some, taking just one sip of it, leads them back down into a spiral of being controlled by it. Cooked and processed food is the same. Many many people, more so than with alcohol, are gripped by food addiction and compulsive over eating. I count myself in this category.

If for example I eat toast, then I always want more, and more, and more. If I am presented with some sort of dessert, like cheesecake, sticky toffee pudding, in fact any dessert(!), then NO AMOUNT satisfies me. Even when I am full, I still want to eat more. It’s the same with many other foods, like pizza, chocolates, crisps. Pretty much any processed food, and many cooked foods don’t satisfy me, and that is irrespective of the amount eaten.

To help rid yourself of foods that seem to control you, you could try a few simple tricks.

Decide one day that a particular type of food is no longer part of your diet, and substitute it for something healthier. For example, do this for wheat. Instead of wheat, eat whole grain brown rice. Brown rice doesn’t have gluten in it and is much more wholesome. It is nowhere near as addictive as wheat based products. This may mean having to be pre-prepared so that you always have some ready. Another option is, you could eat lentils instead of wheat.

I currently eat neither cooked rice or nor cooked lentils, but they will be much better for you than cooked wheat, and they could help you transition to healthier alternatives still.

Just make one decision at a time. And learn how to eat without consuming that offending food for a few weeks before you try and eliminate or substitute another food. Keep chipping away at it, and eventually you’ll be on a healthier diet.

Make sure that you eat enough. If you used to eat a lot of bread, then you may need to eat a lot of rice or lentils instead. In the example, the important thing is to keep off the wheat based products – that includes bread (however healthy), biscuits, cakes, biscuit bases in desserts and so on.

There may be occasions when a social gathering brings you into temptation to eat that food again. Or it may be expected that you’ll eat it when served as part of a meal. This is something that helps me out:

People who matter don’t mind, people who mind don’t matter!
(That’s part of a quote I saw on the internet somewhere. It helps me keep on raw food!).

If however, you feel that you have to give in and eat what others are eating due to social expectations, then go for it and enjoy it!!! Make a decision that whenever you are in control of your food then your diet will consist of abc and not xyz.

If you really can’t completely let go of a food then another possible method is to have a designated cheat day in the week (eg. Saturday). For the rest of the week be totally strict with yourself.

The food substitutions and non-cheat days can really help your body get used to eating a healthier lifestyle. Have a practice at turning down food, or taking your own food to social occasions. Most of any awkwardness comes from within, and not from the other person. I now tell friends that most cooked foods make me ill (which they do), so I try not to eat them. This is almost always understood by the host. I try and explain beforehand so that there is no sudden embarrassment, and I may even take my own food. It’s very easy to cater for me though. A bunch of ripe bananas and a whole lettuce would make me more than delighted!

Here are some possible food and drink substitutions that may help you on the way to eating yourself into a healthier lifestyle. The first option is the offending food, the second option may help you let go of the first option. You may for example be able to let go of coffee if you have tea instead. Eventually you’ll break the grip that coffee had on you. When you have set yourself free from coffee, then try setting yourself free from tea, by drinking green tea instead. Then drink hot water and lemon instead of green tea, and so on. Eventually set yourself free from all the foods that control you.

Example food substitutions:
red meat > chicken
chicken > fish
bread products (eg pizza) > jacket potatoes
potatoes > rice or lentils
rice or lentils > several pieces of fruit with a large salad
cows milk > soya milk
coffee > tea
tea > green tea
chocolate > dates
sugar > honey
oil dressing > lemon or vinegar dressing
cooked dessert > fruit dessert
cooked veg > large salad

The other transition method that some people go for is to make a straight swap and never eat the old way again! If you are ill then you may be determined enough to go for this option, but it does take some will power!

I have now progressed onto a diet that is at least 95% raw. The past couple of months, apart from a couple of mouthfuls, I’ve eaten 100% raw. I think it is difficult to call yourself 100% raw though, because an occasional food will invariably slip through the net. This only leads to disappointment if you give yourself a label. There may well be an odd meal in the future when I eat cooked food as well. I do however aim to eat as near as possible to 100% raw food.

Can you build muscle on a raw food diet?

I’m not a body builder or an athlete, I’m a bit of a couch potato who has these phases of trying to shake myself out of it and get fit, usually overdoing it in the process! Before a high raw diet, I struggled building muscle or loosing body fat, but earlier this year, on a 100% raw diet, I was in the best shape I’ve been in my life. It’s the raw diet AND exercise that did it.

Before I’d eat anything (2002)

After - Not any more! 50 pounds lighter (23 Mar 2009)

You can definitely build muscle on a raw food diet. In fact it is probably the best way of doing it! When raw, your body becomes ‘wise’ and you can trust it in regard to hunger, body fat levels, muscle size, strength and so on. Let me explain.

If you train more then you get hungrier, and so you eat more. This gives you the calories to fuel the training. This hunger is natural, you don’t have to count calories or force yourself to eat. When I was training and doing lots of strenuous DIY building work at home earlier this year I probably ate twice as much as I do now. My body needed the food for fuel and to build muscle.

If you follow a very high raw diet (ideally 100% raw) then your body will gradually change to be whatever it needs to be as a result of your physical lifestyle. When you engage in strength or endurance based exercise then your body will use that food to slowly build any appropriate muscle needed. Similarly, your body will consume or rid itself of what is not needed. So, if you are raw and don’t do much exercise, then almost certainly you will become a slim build person. If you are raw and do plenty of strenuous exercise though, then your body will gradually build the appropriate muscle needed to help with your higher activity level.