Went to the orchard and a HUGE thank you to Mystical!

[vegggeeemom]

Well, we took the trip out to the Orchard here in Caldwell and I fell in love with it!
I was so excited to see all that fresh fruit and the apples were not all waxed up!
I am just amazed at what we got. I split some of this with my mom, but it was so worth the drive out there.

For $44 we got

50 pounds of peaches
18 pounds of baby cucumbers
4 pounds of Italian prunes
6 eggplants
1 zucchini
6 tomatoes
5 pounds of onions
5 large potaotes

My mom was amazed at the prices and the quality of the fruit and vegetables!
She was running low on food, and so we went there and she was able to stock up on some things. She was very excited and wants to go back when she gets paid next.

Mystical, thank you so much for telling me about that orchard. We really needed to find something like that and will be back again and again.
Now to find an orchard that was open year round, I'd be a happy camper! :D

Now, off to eat my wonderful findings! ;)

[Arky]

...Now to find an orchard that was open year round, I'd be a happy camper! :D


You might be surprised at what can be found all year round when foraging in local parks/woods etc. I highly recommend you have a browse on Amazon and find yourself a wild-edibles foraging book that relates to the area you live in. Ok, I'm not talking about huge luscious succulent fruits, all year round, but there IS a huge amount of first-class nutrition, much of it chlorophyll-rich, to say nothing of being bursting with life-force, just waiting to be picked for free by the intrepid forager.

As David Wolfe is so fond of pointing out, Ann Wigmore did not (as is now popularly assumed) heal herself with wheatgrass and sprouts - she healed herself with wild edibles/weeds. The rest only came later.

A genuine staple component of my diet, these days, is dandelions and stinging nettles. They are each available virtually 12months of the year, and are as mineral-rich as they are easy to find (I'm serious about the minerals - if you read up on these two plants, you may be stunned at how nutritious they really are). I put them in my daily smoothies (once blended, there is absolutely no danger of getting stung by the formic acid in the nettles, I assure you). Try searching these forums for threads discussing these two plants.

Once such thread, from a while before I began consuming nettles, may be found here:

http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5174&highlight=nettles

There are a few underlined links in my post there which will lead you to further information.

I'm glad you liked the orchard - it's amazing how expensive the suprmarkets are for certain 'fresh' produce, especially when you consider how denatured (irradiation, long-term cold storage, chlorination, pesticides, mineral-deficient...the list goes on and on) much of their produce is. I can now see the wisdom of growing one's own produce, even if I do not presently have the means to undertake this (I fully intend to, in years to come, however).


J.

[rawpriestess]

Vegggeeemom,

I just wanted to say that I came to read what you posted, and my beloved hubby glanced over my shoulder, he thought you list was a recipe, and he said, "My god what is she making?" We both cracked up, when he relized it was a list, and not a recipe.

LOL

That is so great, to find such good buys.

And yes, Arky, my hubby is a wild edibles kind of guy, he forages almost every day where we are, we are blessed to be in Western Washington state, where there are tons of wild edibles, and we live on a lake, next to a meadow and a hillside with tons of black berries, and right near a forest, swampy land, too, so we have it all right within a few steps.

He has tons of books on this stuff.

[Arky]

How lucky you both are, Rawpriestess. I got back only an hour or so ago, having been blackberry picking, myself, here in the UK :) It's a short bicycle ride for me, but well worth it + I get some excercise.

Dandelions, nettles and blackberries - am drinking a smoothie from them right this moment (with a little celery and chlorella thrown in for the additional sodium and chlorophyll). Whenever I don't have dandelions or nettles to hand, I use kale and a little seaweed to keep the mineral levels high, in my smoothies. (I generally use 20% fruit, at most in my smoothies, and very often no fruit at all, prefering to blend my high mineral greens while eating my tasty fruits as nature envisaged). I do not concur with Victoria Boutenko's 60% fruit target for smoothies. I feel smoothies are more ideally suited to making (relatively) hard-to-consume green leafies palatable in large quantities, while fruit is very easy to eat in the conventional fashion, followed by a little green leafy vegetables, to neatralise oral pH and to remineralize tooth enamel. Not blending the fruit also, I feel, allows the fructose to be released slightly less rapidly in the stomach, since some of the cell walls still need to be broken down by the digestive process,making an undesirable 'sugar-hit' a little less likely.

Whatever I consume, though, be it fruit or vegetable, whole or blended, I try these days to make more and more of it 'wild', which means I am currently on a steep learning curve, foraging-wise. The books are good, but I must admit I really do wish I knew someone of advancing years with a lifetime's foraging wisdom, to take me foraging as their apprentice! :)


J.

[Mystical]

I'm so happy you went there, and came home with a bounty of fresh produce. They are usually open until Dec or so - by then it is mostly apples, some potatoes, onions and winter squash. I visit them often during the growing season. I'm experimenting with drying, but have not been too impressed so far. Maybe I'll feel differently about the fruit leathers in the middle of winter though!

Happy shopping and eating!