ode to a dehydrator

I was in someone else's kitchen, washing dishes. Not just dishes - also all possible hardware designed for the purpose of turning dead animals into dinner table delicacies. Not the greatest fun, and a remarkably good place to discover that I had some distance to go in the cultivation of a generous & non-judgemental heart...

My hosts were accepting (mostly) of my fruitarian ways, but I found that I was reluctant to prepare my fresh fruit meals among the blood splatters. So for a while I survived - very happily - on my dehydrated fruit. Home-made and taken along on the trip as a sort of experiment, to see how well things lasted without refrigeration. It was a huge success, and I am now a committed dehydrator - if you know what I mean.

My current favourite - persimmon. The overflow from my brave & generous little tree turned into delicate discs of translucent amber, light as air, intensely flavoured. I should post a picture of it here, but I ate it all. Perhaps from the next batch.

Highly recommended therefore: EZIDRI dehydrator. And don't mess around - get the big one which can stack up to 30 trays - you buy it with the initial 5 trays, but you'll soon be ordering extra trays as you discover how useful & effortless the whole process is.

This is where you find the SA distributors.

And herewith my thanks to Alison from Tierhoek Organics - this generous, lovely lady who said to me: "But you should do your own dehydrating... this is what you do..."

This was at the Organic Expo in Cape Town - I wanted to buy some of Tierhoek's excellent dehydrated products, and Alison did the noble thing, and looked beyond her own profits, and advised me to MY best advantage.

A toast therefore, to the lovely Alison of Tierhoek Organics, and to those good Ezidri people who made it possible for this fruitarian to ALWAYS (whether in the bush, on a long expedition, or indeed in meat-eating territory) be able to eat a variety of excellent, organic, non-preserved fruit, without being troubled by considerations of weight (try carrying a bag of oranges up a mountain...) or refrigeration.

the secret of a happy garden...

We've always known that the secret of a happy garden is a generously sized compost-heap. And these days that is also the secret of a happy & well-supplied kitchen, and a happy & well-fed fruitarian. Cape gooseberries everywhere, and in the shade of every mulched tree, some sort of tomato - tiny little cherries, all the way up to heavy fleshy globes. Young papino and avo seedlings, pomegranate, guava & date - right through the household's menu - all kinds of seeds & pips now grown into generous new life.

What a lovely thing to suddenly find, in a most unexpected place, something delicious which required no attention, care or investment, but has been quietly growing towards that moment when the winter sun lights the shrubby corner next to the wide, deep stoep and reveals the little papery lanterns - this year's unplanned crop of Cape gooseberries.

A happy little moment, repeated all over the garden, throughout the year. Simple pleasures which somehow weave something rather special into the texture of an already rich life.

just don't talk about it

Here's something that never ceases to amaze me: You can discuss anything these days - even the traditionally taboo subjects like politics, religion & sex - and you will usually find it possible to have a rational & calm conversation. But mention dietary habits, and you'd better be prepared for some really touchy & defensive arguments. Even if you're not trying to convince someone to change his carnivorous diet, he will act as if you are. I've sometimes been amazed by the fact that a meat-eater can be so upset by the very fact that I am not also a meat-eater - as if that poses some kind of threat - and instantly has to defend & justify his own choice to eat meat.

I have realized the un-wisdom of trying to convert people a long, long time ago. But still, every so often, I will still find that people may act as if I'm trying to do just that, simply by virtue of the fact that I do what I do. As if being a fruitarian, and admitting to it, is equivalent to issuing a challenge to someone - daring him to pick up his club and go out and defend the patch in front of his cave.

Why is Food such a touchy & tricky issue ? It is easy to understand how food scarcity can ignite wars - hunger is a life & death issue. But in a society where there is no lack ? Why should a conversation about our relationship to food so often, and so easily, hit such a raw nerve ?

Don't be a pain in the whatsit: Rule #3 of 5

Southern Kalahari - early morning, as we were leaving to tackle the long trek to the softer south. Yes - it's the famous hoodia. The diet industry's holy grail - suppresses appetite - makes you lose weight. And you will never need it, because as a fruitarian you don't have weight issues anymore...

OK - Rule #3: DON'T JUDGE
The surest way to sabotage your own journey is to start judging someone else’s. None of us has even the remotest clue about the soul-stuff being worked out in another life. We barely glimpse the truth about our own.

So, when thinking about, shall we say, those people who pin all their hopes on the humble hoodia (the 60%+ obese Americans for example), let go of that superior smirk. Try for a bit of humility & compassion. This may be more difficult than you'd care to admit. So go practise on yourself. And you might just be surprised to find that this is hardest of all. Do it anyway.

Go stand in front of the mirror – look at yourself in the full awareness of the courage it’s taken to assume the grown-up charge of your own health. Claim that. Now look at yourself in the full awareness of your vulnerability & fragility, and (might as well admit it) stupidity. Claim that too. Now cultivate compassion for yourself. For the brave, flawed, fearful, precious, real person you know yourself to be. From now on you don’t do Blame anymore, or Pity, or Victim-consciousness. You don’t do Denial anymore, or Fantasy. You don’t Judge. You are deserving of your own compassion – so is everyone else.

As a footnote to yesterday: in the shop today - fresh organic dates. Refrigerated & overpackaged - but still, a muted little echo from my childhood.

Don't be a pain in the whatsit: Rule #2 of 5

How’s this for keeping things in perspective ? The Orange downstream from the famous Augrabies Falls. Makes one feel really small. Keeps you humble. Which brings me to this:

DON'T EVANGELIZE about your newfound fruitarian life.
The fact that you believe that you have seen the light does not confer the right (or the obligation) upon you to bore & bludgeon anyone else into abandoning their own convictions and instantly join your crusade. They don't owe you a buy-in; Your fruitarianism is not a franchise.

OK, of course, speak your truth – if and when appropriate, with kindness and discernment. But you'd better accept that everyone else is already doing his/her best. Whatever the evidence to the contrary, we are all just doing the best we can, when we can, according to the awareness we’re holding at the time. So, leave the persuading for now - you have quite enough work to do in overcoming your own inertia.

Oh, you don't have that kind of problem ? Well, lucky you. Even so, for the rest of us ordinary (and honest) mortals:

Better to keep your eyes on your own goals – they are glorious enough, and all too often, seemingly unattainable enough. Like the Augrabies Xtreme. Look at the picture - that's the kind of terrain waiting for me. And there's the heat: it couldn't have been very far off 50 deg C when we were there, and I loved it. But I wasn't running, I wasn't carrying provisions for a week, and I didn't have to keep doing it for days on end. And then there are still the dunes...

Sounds quite mad, but people have done it. WOMEN have done it. And the woman who won the women's section last time around is now running the Atacama desert. But I don't like to think about her. She's young, she's blonde, she's an experienced ultra-athlete, and she's not a fruitarian. See what I mean ? Just absolutely NO POINT in looking at someone else's journey - it'll result in one of two things: either despair, or pride. Either way, it's a killer.

Who's the woman ? Oh, Mimi Anderson - just Google her name - goes as marvellousmimi. But I'd really rather not think about her right now ...

of snakes & support

An autumn chill in the air, rain in the night, and - this morning - a shed snake skin among the vygies between the house and the stone cottage. One of the resident Cape cobras. A big one, obviously getting bigger. Which makes me wonder about the little striped mouse in the courtyard.

Talking of eating...

So here you are, a budding fruitarian in an omnivorous society. Which makes you brave, or desperate, or both. And more than likely without knowing many people who mirror your experience. So you discover a couple of bottom-lines: Firstly, Food is a tribal issue, and secondly, the way you commune with your food becomes an identity issue. Books have been written about this, and will continue to be written about this - and somewhere buried in a great deal of nonsense you'll find some useful insights & a few nuggets of wisdom. Here's one:

Don't confuse Support with Community. You could find support in someone who doesn't have a clue about your journey - and if you do you should thank your angels for it. But to find yourself among others who actually share your experience - that's Community, and you're going to need it. Which is why I'm telling you about "Hokaai" - a community of fruitarians. No matter if you've been at it for a while, or are just thinking about maybe possibly, one day, perhaps considering moving somewhat more or less in the direction of fruitarianism - speak to Herma. (051 4365668, or if you're outside of South Africa - that's the nervous country just south of Zimbabwe - add 27 in front). Or just post here & I'll do the rest.

Now here's something I'll bet you didn't know. If you were to take a 5kg dumb-bell and do biceps curls, here's what you'll find: first 2 - it is twice as heavy as last week's 2.5 kg dumb-bell; next 2 - it weighs 3 times as much; from that point on it doubles in weight with every move, until you find you've stopped breathing & more or less lost interest in the whole business.

The Man

No, sorry - he vetoed the sheepskin pictures. But here he is - just before the start of a hair-raising trek down the Nossob valley which brought us to the TweeRivieren camp gates loooong after the justifiably annoyed ranger had locked up for the night. A map-miscalculation which I do not recommend. Must admit though, it was exciting - after all, it was a Kalahari night.

The picture is in fact quite revealing - albeit rather less so than the sheepskin pics would have been. First of all, he likes rivers & forests & cool green shady jungly places. A 40+ deg C desert is not his preferred habitat. But it is mine - which makes this the picture of a generous man. It is also the picture of someone who's breaking the law - not allowed on foot in this part of wild predator country. But then the late afternoon light was making magic out of tsamma melons and red sand...

So there you have my one-man support team for the Augrabies Xtreme: a heat-intolerant, desert-hating free spirit who excels at navigating - in the dark - through dangerous, possibly hostile territory. I rather think I might be in good hands.

Which brings us to the matter of support and community - and that serious challenge which awaits all fruitarians (see 4 problems - 1 solution). As soon as I've taken care of some heavy breathing involving a couple of dumb-bells and a pezzi ball...

Who/what is a fruitarian ?

Well the easy, quick answer is "someone who eats fruit, nuts & seeds". What ? No eggs, cheese ? No - only fruit, nuts & seeds. Biltong ? No. Really ? Wine ? No, only- Bread ? No, only fruit, nuts- Are you sure ? Just fruit, nuts & seeds ? Yes.

OK, finally got that straight.

And then the next batch of FAQ's: You mean you eat like this EVERY day ? Isn't that boring ? Don't you get hungry ? Are you crazy ? (Yes, No, No, and No Comment.)

So what kind of person decides to become a fruitarian ? What does it take for someone to make such a commitment ?

Before I give you my take on that, just imagine this (if you're already a seasoned fruitarian you won't need to imagine it, you'll know): the best health & vitality you have ever known; abundant energy; a body which is supple, flexible, robust & years younger than your chronological age would indicate; sharpened senses; a clear, agile & peaceful mind...

Now who wouldn't want that ? You mean - all of this comes just from eating a fruit diet ? No. What do you mean, "No"? Well, it's true that the fruitarian diet brings enormous benefits, but it can do way, way more. It is but the beginning, the key to the real treasures. So here is my honest answer to that first question: A fruitarian is someone who – through making a conscious commitment to live on a fruitarian diet – opens the door to his/her own healing and conscious evolution, and contributes to the restoration of the integrity of the natural world.

Oh. OK. So what about the second question: Who in his/her right mind would sign on for this?

I can be flippant here & relate a couple of anecdotes. But you know, in touching on these matters, we're looking into the most personal & painful corners of people's lives. That deserves - at the very least - that one should tread delicately & with respect. So, wearing my grown-up hat...

The truth is that in the greatest number of instances (by far) we don’t have an elegant progression towards fruitarianism. Many of us arrive there through a brutal confrontation with the reality of our lives – and the witnesses to that moment are not gentle & pretty. Desperation, disease, pain, debility – a body & spirit exhausted beyond bearing. In that moment, we are ready to sign on for whatever change we need to make.

Of course we can choose the fruitarian way without having to go through such depths – and some people do. It is not necessarily a better or a worse way to arrive at fruitarianism – in each individual case the metamorphosis required will bring with it a treasure trove of teachings. Omnivores who take the scenic route – via vegetarianism, and veganism, to fruitarianism – will learn a great deal about themselves and the world they live in; so will the impatient traveller who takes the courageous shortcut and relishes the adventure of leaping into the unknown; and so too will the fragile & bruised ones who no longer see any other hope than to surrender to this journey of last-resort. All of them will meet with challenges to their progress, as well as the most tender guidance – and all of them will gain immeasurably.

You might ask: Why are there so few fruitarians ? The short answer to this - alas, as I know from personal experience - is the following: The human being is essentially & fundamentally lazy. We can dress this up in all kinds of psychologeze, but the fact remains that it takes something of a psychic earthquake to get most of moving. Oh we can be very busy & active & achieve wonderful things. Especially when we’re busy with distractions & indulgences, or can be paid (bribed) to Achieve. But watch the inertia when the task at hand involves personal change. We can become astonishingly inventive at finding reasons (excuses) for not budging. “My family/spouse/religion won’t let me”; “I first need to do this, finish that, begin something else”; “I won’t have any friends left”; “I am not ready”; “I could never do that – I do not have the willpower”.

Classic ruses, especially the lack-of-willpower excuse. That is a particularly useful scapegoat – never mind the fact that the willpower-issue is something of a myth; it will serve to sabotage any self-improvement intention whenever we feel It’s just too much trouble, too much hassle – we’re just too (sorry !) Lazy.

Oh and the suffocating comfort of Habit ! The way we’ve always done things – the way we are used to living & thinking - the familiar social rituals of our culture. Somewhere along the line we somehow got the idea that Habits are sacrosanct, and to change them would be to violate a taboo. Habits, customs and taboos are tribal issues, and they will have a paralyzing magnetic hold on us until we are awake enough (or desperate enough) to embark on the journey to our own empowerment. The way we commune with our food is an Identity issue, and until we are ready to examine it as such, it is far easier & safer to remain (unhealthily and unhappily if need be) within tribal confines.

So we suffer a little longer, we complain a little more; we look for more sympathy and find it; we ask for more advice, receive it, and follow it – or we don’t. Our precious days slip away as we bury our discomforts and our unease under loads of unfinished, unexamined baggage; we silence the small insistent inner voice which urges us to action through mindless & mind-numbing indulgence in our drugs-of-choice; we blame, we rationalize, we play the victim, and we adjust stoically to the steadily increasing suffering of our body, mind & spirit.

Until one day, we wake up, and realize that there has to be another way. We are drawn to the vision of a life which is more than just the unremarked diminishing of who we are, and even more tragically, who we might have been. We wake up to the fact that we have the capacity for something much greater.

So we take the leap. And then we discover the most marvellous thing - we find a freedom we've not known before, a gift for unbounded joy we never thought we'd rediscover; we realize that we're courageous & strong & fascinating in a way we've simply just not seen before.

Here's the bottom line: There are certain choices one can make only when one is ready to wake up, and grow up. For some of us, Fruitarianism is such a choice.

Next time: how about something testosteronic ? The Man with - if I can persuade him - the sheepskin boots...

4 problems - 1 solution

5 problems actually – and you’re guaranteed to encounter them when you’re new to the fruitarian lifestyle, and everything, quite frankly, just seems like more of a hassle… For example:

THE FRUIT GLUT
In-season fruit at a bargain price – but you have to buy a crate of the stuff. Apart from the fact that your ridiculously low purchase price means that the poor struggling farmer (without whom you & I would not survive) must have been paid next to nothing for his crop, you are now stuck with more of one kind of fruit than you can possibly consume before the fruit-flies move in.

THE TIRED BANANA
Astonishing, isn’t it, just how quickly they can go from green to spotty-black ? You can only eat so many bananas a day, and you’ll be d—d if you let them go to waste – especially if they’re organic (which I HIGHLY recommend) and came with an obscene mark-up.

THE VICIOUS PINEAPPLE
Picked too green, burning a hole in your tongue – now what do you do with the rest of the pineapple ?

THE SWEET TOOTH
Whether in the form of a whiny child, depressed adult, or well-fed guest still looking around expectantly for dessert… There will be times when you’d really like to have an alternative to the guilt-ridden ice-cream tub cave-in - especially if said child, adult or guest is diabetic, hypoglycemic, arthritic, overweight, or otherwise sugar-intolerant.

THE "I NEED SOMETHING" MOMENT
Make no mistake, you’re going to deserve a culinary reward from time to time. The usual socially entrenched artery-clogging riches won’t do it for you anymore. But you might still find yourself – from time to time – standing in the kitchen and pondering that most existential of dilemmas: Now what can I eat now ?

5 nuisances, with a single, utterly delicious solution – Eskom permitting.

Here’s how: Freeze your excess in-season fruit; ditto with ripe bananas (chunky slices). Make up your own combinations of (frozen & fresh) fruit including when necessary that bitey pineapple, always using bananas as your base (frozen bananas somehow give a better ice-creamy texture than unfrozen bananas – and here “organic” really makes a difference); whip up the whole lot with good (no preservatives / additives) coconut cream in a food processor. Heaven. All fruit, no sugar, always available, and excess again freezable.

There is simply no end to the combinations you could try. One memorable short-notice dinner party success: frozen bananas (lots), nastily sharp pineapple, lime, coconut cream and fresh organic vanilla.

Yes, yes I know – ideally the fruitarian should only eat fresh, unfrozen fruit. Directly off the perfectly healthy tree, perfectly ripened ON the tree. Like Kyloe’s persimmons, and wild mulberries, and grapes, and nectar-sweet purple plums, and golden greengages, and juicy round-flavoured satsumas, oranges & grapefruits… Well, we’re trying, but Eden is still a long way off, and in the meantime the freezer is my ally.

But there is one, much bigger difficulty every new fruitarian will face. And this one can derail you completely. That’s for next time.

Quest for the perfect avo

More than 500 kinds of avocado in the world, and what do our South African shops offer us? 4, 5 different kinds ? Fuerte, Hass, Pinkerton, couple of others ? Easiest to find – though not necessarily the cheapest – is the one that only reveals its inedible black threads & black bruises once you cut it. Show me a fruitarian who hasn’t bought a box of those…

Many, many years ago I found what I still think is the perfect avo. The size of a rugby ball – yes, literally, no exaggeration. Found them in the Lowveld – now Mpumalanga. Deep yellow buttery, nutty flesh. I have a vivid memory of an evening in the bushveld, sitting on the rocks high above the Olifants River, and eating a slice of one of these. It was my whole supper and I had trouble finishing it. Although that might have had something to do with a small drama involving red-checked underwear & a couple of bats – but that’s another story.

Anyhow – ever since that time I’ve been on the track of those avos. Needless to say: not commercially available. Then I met someone who remembered seeing the rugby-ball avos at a Lowveld wedding reception. She knew a Greek guy who used to be married to someone who had a friend who owned the farm which produced the avos. But then the Greek guy wasn’t talking to his ex anymore, so that trail went cold.

And then an internet-trawl produced this:
"Giant avocados, large enough to make three gallons of avocado soup or two pounds of guacamole, are about to go on sale in Britain. Fourteen inches in circumference and as large as a water melon, the naturally grown pears are eight times the size of a normal avocado and will feed a family of six. The monster fruit are all descended from a single, ancient tree at Devil's Cliff, a town in South Africa's Northern Province. At the time of the Dutch Settlers, the tree was discovered to produce bumper-sized avocados, probably the result of a genetic mutation."
An item in a 5-year old British newspaper. Not too useful. But still - a clue in Duiwelskloof.

Then, couple of weeks ago, I spoke to Essie Honiball – and she also remembers those exact same avos. Many years ago she had in fact propagated one of these wonder fruits, but just as her little tree was bearing its first massive fruit – not ready to pick – she had to move. They heard later that the tree had had to make way for some development.

So here is a Cry from the Heart: Is there anyone out there who can put me on the track of these gigantic avos? And to all fruitarians: please do yourself a favour & start searching. If you have in fact personally encountered these avos before, you won’t need me to tell you why; if you haven't – well, you’re just going to have to take my word for it. I'm not even going to TRY to describe the flavour.

In the mean time: some extra motivation for growing our own avos:
* In one year a single California avocado tree can absorb as much carbon as is produced by a car driven 26,000 miles.
* Two mature avocado trees can provide enough oxygen for a family of four.
* One avocado tree produces nearly 260 pounds of oxygen each year.
* A one acre avocado orchard removes up to 2.6 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

And to Karin: Of course! Wouldn't that be something: both of us on the Augrabies Xtreme. Bearing in mind that you're about half my age, I would have absolutely no hesitation in using the fact that I helped to nurse you through the measles when you were 4, to blackmail you into carrying my pack over the highest dunes !

How ?

Same way you'd eat an elephant (You, not me - I'm fruitarian) - one bite at a time. I'm giving myself 4 years to turn into that Muscled Marvel crossing the finish line in the Kalahari, to thunderous applause, witnessed by hordes of skeptics busy eating their hats. So: 4 years of little goals, with a built-in reward-system. Of course. We'll get to that sometime.

Right now, it's carbo-loading time. Organic bananas & brazil nuts in the blender - half glass of water - with a generous shake of ground cinnamon (5 shakes this morning - on the principle of "If a Little is Nice, a Lot might be Even Nicer").

So, my carbo's are feeling loaded. A short rest is indicated.

the beginning

To begin at the beginning...

Yes of course Dylan Thomas said it first; he had to - he was born 38 years before me, so he had plenty of time & got first innings. But the phrase served him well and is none the worse for having been used before, so To begin at the beginning -

Oh, and the reference to my age is in fact relevant, as will become clear later - the relevance, that is, not my age. So. To begin ...

Sorry - one more thing. The reference to Dylan Thomas is in fact also relevant. A sublime poetic voice, silenced before he was 40. Why ? Usual suspects: lifestyle choices, and we'll get back to that - in fact it's sort of the point of all of this. But first,

To begin at the beginning - it was My Fair Lady on the opera house stage. No, I wasn't the fair lady, and I wasn't on stage. I was in the outside broadcast truck - the only female among the rather rough diamonds in the television crew (the senior engineer carried a gun, and probably needed to). I was also the only one who wasn't on the meat-tobacco-alcohol nutritional plan. I was in fact a fruitarian a.k.a. fruitflake & nutcase.

But of course that wasn't really the beginning. It began well before that, and in an even more unkind & uncaring environment - a hospital bed. Fast forward to 2 weeks later to find me climbing a big mountain. Two short weeks from medical crisis to active & healthy. What happened ? Fruitarianism happened, and that brings me to the Real Beginning of my story.

Back to the Welshman. Remember that grand, now immortal, poem he wrote for his dying father: "Do not go gently into that good night - Rage, rage against the dying of the light" ? Well 50 years ago there was a young South African woman who felt her life ebbing away - her body was in fact moving towards death. But then the fates offered her one last chance. What followed became an amazing account of survival, of her own "fight against the dying of the light" - but that story is hers to tell. Her name is Essie Honiball, and because of her story, I chose the fruitarian lifestyle.

So it really all began with Essie Honiball - although she will tell you it all began long before her. And she'll be right. But more about that later.

Oh, The Kyloe Experiment ? Well, more about that too, later...