Raw in Ireland

[kaleidoscopeeyes]

Hello, all! I'm an American student interested in going to Trinity College (Dublin) for post-university...what's the raw scene like over in the Emerald Isle? Anyone know?

Cheers!

[GreenTroll]

I don't know how it is in Ireland but maybe u can contact the people at purley raw (http://www.purelyraw.com/index.htm) they are very nice and are at least located in England.

Hope it helps!

[sport]

http://rawfood.meetup.com/cities/ie/dublin/

As you can see from this link there are 17 people waiting for a raw food meetup group to start in Dublin but nobody has organised it. I would organise it but I live in Cork. I would attend if someone gets around to it.

[kaybee]

im in kerry but thats no use to you.....

have the impression theres not a big movement here; havent met any raw fooders at all in my area; I think part of it is due to the expense of fresh food and that greens etc, in my observation, arent used in large amounts. They sell about 4 sprigs of parsley at the shop in a plastic container for about 2 euro...I want about 4 BUNCHES of parsley for a meal. what i would give for a whole foods ;) My understanding is that there might be more variety and availability in other places such as Dublin, and I know Sport is able to get a bigger variety of things than I can get here. but on the whole, I cant rely on the shops to be able to go in and get bunches and bunches of parsley and cilantro and spinach and romaine lettuce like I did in Massachusetts or Seattle or Washington DC. People here dont seem to be used to using large amounts of fresh stuff, especially greens; people I know tend to be heavily dependent on potatoes, cabbage, carrots, meat, dairy, bread, etc. One thing that will make it more feasible for you is to get a couple of sprouters and sprout whatever you can, alfalfa, sunflower, grains, buckwheat, etc. Im sure you can get more stuff in Dublin than here, but you will probably pay more for it than you are paying now, and its just not the same as being able to go into a whole foods and get a billion bunches of everything :)

kaybee

[sport]

Kaybee
What you need is to snag yourself a nice Kerry farmer and then grow it all yourself.

[sport]

And try and find one with good teeth. I know how fussy you guys in the US are about good teeth and we are not as carefull.

[SekhemNefer]

What does good teeth have to do with getting greens?! :confused: Am I missing something. This convo turned funny.

[sport]

What does good teeth have to do with getting greens?! :confused: Am I missing something. This convo turned funny.

Yes
It was just a joke. If you ever listen to people like Jay Lenno you would think that everyone over here had bad teeth. To be honest my own are not the best.

[cavany]

I also have difficulty finding good quality veg. and find even the shop sold organic produce to be poor compared to real organic from local farmers.

I know of these which are close to Dublin and maybe could lend support.http://www.irishlivingfoods.com/

[kaybee]

hey sport--JUST saw your post. FINALLY got internet at the 'van (caravan ;) ) ...yeah, im not counting on finding a farmer here ;) ....not really a fan of the animal agriculture; in short, i dont think i could be with someone who wasnt vegan or at least veg... theres a few nice alternative hippie guys around here that are in to the subsistence farming thing, but also tend to be into raising and killing their own animals.... i cant deal with that. even in exchange for a place to grow my veggies.... maybe i should give up on the irish men...i need to find myself a nice rich american to come BUY me a farm here ;)
by the way, im going to try to teach a raw foods course sometime in the next month. i heard theres another woman in dingle who has been doing raw for 3-4 months. i was struggling to figure out how to do it becuase i thought i would have to do it at the health shop because of facilities but my friend said her mom has a studio i could probably use.... i would love to get RAW off the ground here, even more, would love to start a raw foods cafe, but dont want to commit myself to dingle for the long run at the moment.

kaleidescope eyes--if you end up going to trinity and you end up doing some traveling around ireland, you are welcome to crash at my place for a visit. dingle is beautiful and at least you would know you would have a raw-friendly stop along the way. i have to say, things have improved as the summer has gone on in terms of availability and finding where to get stuff. as much as i hate supermarket chains, the german discount store Lidl just opened in dingle and they have cheap fruit, some of it organic (organic grapes for 1.79 euro a pound), decent size non organic avos for 80 cents each, papayas for under a euro, bags of lemons for 70 cents, that kind of stuff. they also have affordable organic apples (quality varies) and some other org fruits on occasion, and sometimes cheap org. peppers, etc. they have a variety of cheap veggies but i wont buy veggies that arent organic. So, if you end up at trinity, check out Lidl. also, if you can make ventures out to the countryside, there are some wild plants that i have learned about that grow in abundance: i use alot of sorrel, and i believe that grows even through the winter. NETTLES are everywhere too, and work for smoothies. theyre supposed to be really good for you. also, theres seaweed along the coasts, but id hesitate to use any from anywhere near dublin. in fact even where i am im hesistant to use any as i dont know how to know if its contaminant-free as there are fishing boats that lose fuel into the ocean etc all the time. what a shame that theres so much seaweed but its all potentially polluted... biggest problem for you is that you are not going to be somewhere where you can grow your own stuff... but on the other hand you will probably have more access to organic markets that you might in other more rural areas.... would be great if you could find someone with a greenhouse in the suburbs that you could help out at, but those things tend to be rare here. if you decided to stay in the summers too, you most certainly could find organic farms to work on, through WWOOFing or whatever. i think theres one on the aran islands, theres one in limerick, one in castlemaine, also tralee, i think theyre all over. the local hfs here is just starting a commerical organic garden so she might be looking for woofers too by next summer

a bit of advice--jam pack your bags with things like artisana coconut butter, unpasteurized almonds, cacao, agave, raw carob, dates from the date people and the like. ALL nuts are expensive here and most of the other stuff you literally cant get easily or affordably if at all, at least in my experience.

good luck

kaybee

[sport]

I am going to Lidl for those papayas. I am paying twice that at Tesco.

[kaybee]

yeah. less than a euro. they dont have them all the time but usually. mangoes too, less than a dollar. and avocados. cheap. not usually the hass variety, but ill take what i can get. oh yeah and organic red and yellow peppers too. go lidl. id get it all local if i could but.....that stuff doesnt grow here... :(
oh yeah and lately organic fairtrade nanas for 79c for a five pack.

[kaybee]

yeah, ok, or a brit :) there seem to be more of them that are into vegan stuff/animal rights/raw food, etc. guess im just ruling out the irish since i havent met ANY even vegetarian guys here in the 4 summers ive been here, nevermind vegan (and the vegan thing is pretty critical for me). only place ive been that there were alot of veg/vegan guys was Seattle....so thats why im thinking american :)

Why?, do you know any nice vegan British guys who are looking ;) hehehe

[Bananna]

by the way, if you did find a farmer who'd let you grow some veggies, or that you could buy some veggies from, then you'd be supporting his livelihood...and that's a passive way to plant a seed in his head that he can still make some money without using the animals.
and I agree with iamacranberry...vegans are just plain hard to find...especially rich ones, lol...because those people are also hard to find.

[kaybee]

yeah, thanks iamacranberry and bannana-- I think youre right about there being a higher density in cities..and thats precisely what Im struggling with is in my experience Im just not happy or healthyin cities....but the people i want to be around or there. So that makes it SO difficult--because it feels like I have to choose between being where I feel good, both physicallyand where my soul feels good at least on some levels, but where I dont have the sort of community that I crave... or living somewhere where there is the type of community I want, but where I dont seem to be able to thrive on many other levels--(I tried this when I moved to Seattle--I had a job whos cause I believed in (i.e. i worked for an organic produce home delivery company so i felt like i was helping give people access to fresh, healthy food)and I was around a good number of people on the same wavelength as me, had unlimited organic produce at my disposal, liked my coworkers, --and yet I was just not thriving on so many other levels--i.e. the work taxed my body too much, the hours were so long that I didnt get to USE the organic produce I had access to; I felt run-down all the time, and I felt closed-in by being in a city--i.e. there was nowhere to grow food, which i love doing, there were no truly clean beaches to take my dog for a run at; i just wasnt happy there and my soul couldnt sing. but I found a solidarity that I had never before had because I was around people who understood the depth of my pain about the way other creatures are treated and who were into raw and vegan foods, and this struck me in a deep way. Now I am living in a place of absolutely fabulous beauty, access to various long deserted beaches, clean air (except on the days that my landlord decides to burn all his trash (includeing plastic....argh.)), access to a greenhouse and some outside space to grow stuff, and a chance to settle down and breathe and get a bit of stability. But Ive traded the sort of community solidarity that my heart longs for with people who are on the same wavelength with me. And that leaves me kind of "stuck." Yeah, I may need to get more serious about the online dating thing. Ive toyed with it a bit when i was in the states but the one guy I did meet, though vegan, ended up being a total jerk. Id really much rather find someone in person because i think theres something significant about your paths crossing; i.e. you were both in a particular place at a particular time and you were BOTH there for your paths to cross, and i think theres something significant about that that you miss out on in internet searching...but yeah, i may need to just give up my idealism in terms of that and be more open about the internet dating thing.... why cant life be simpler? :mad:

bannana--i do have some space to grow stuff, but i never know how long ill have it for, as none of it is mine, and none of it is on an allotment or community garden plot, so it doesnt make sense to put down perrenial things and theres a certain insecurity about the spaces Im using. Im thrilled to have them for now, but they are not something that I can build up with fruit trees or berry bushes or whatever for my own future use, which I wish I had somewhere like that. I do support local farmers as much as I can, but interestingly enough, most of the ones that do organics ALREADY use it as an income source separate from animal agriculture; none of them seem to be into raising cows or sheep on a large scale... but some do tend to keep pigs and/or goats and poultry for slaughter around on their farms...so unfortunately, in their minds the fact that they can make money off of veggies is irrelevant to the fact of their desire to raise and slaughter animals... but I see your point. And honestly, I think that with the epidemic of cancer in this country, over the next 10 years or so, use of animal products WILL start to decline. oh yeah and btw I dont really need a RICH vegan, :p but would like there to be the possibility of us owning our own land in the future...I dont want to be gardening in other peoples backyards for life....

...kaybee