The holidays took their toll on 100% raw. Then my parents decided to take a snowbird trek to our house until March. That has been an interesting ride. Mom is pretty supportive of our “different” way of eating. Dad, on the other hand, has chosen to play “devil’s advocate” – demanding an answer for why dairy isn’t good, why meat isn’t healthy and why the documentaries we have chosen to watch are more reliable than those put out by the FDA! This has been wearing! After making him a beautiful vegetable lasagna and watching him eat each bite with a bit of butter, I decided that I was spending too much time thinking about food each day in terms of “what could I feed Dad that would make him happy and healthy?” I was also eating more myself as I spent too much time in the kitchen and taste-tested my vegetarian recipes. I don’t even like cooking, but I hoped I could win him over. I thought I was making headway when he announced that he had to cut his diabetic insulin in half; until he explained that he was now annoyed that he had to be bothered with monitoring his blood. He stated that he simply wants to lose belly fat and then go back to his old way of eating, so he will tolerate our weirdness “for awhile”. Alas, all my efforts only confirmed what I should have known – that each person has to be “transformed by a renewing of his own mind” and until a person is ready to make a change for their own reasons, you really can’t convince them. So, I am going back to making my own very simple raw menus. We have ripe fruit on our grapefruit and orange trees in the backyard, so my choices are very easy. I am going to let Dad figure out his own thing while I munch on my grapefruit. Perhaps, you also have someone in your life who wants to argue more than cooperate with your personal choices. My advice is to stop trying to fight them. It’s like swimming against the tide. Turn yourself around, walk out of the room and paddle yourself off to still waters. And take some raw food with you – you will feel better!

Tomorrow I’m going over to my sister Holly’s house to show a bunch of ladies what I’m learning concerning eating and preparing raw foods. After 30+ years of cooking the SAD – Standard American Diet, I am jumping into a new paradigm. Plant based food, in it’s uncooked form is the healthiest and best for us. I should have known this after reading Genesis 1:29, but how easy it is to breeze over Truth and be Deceived by something else that “sounds good” or “tastes good” or “that everyone else is doing”. Those indicators don’t mean it is good for us. So, I’m learning a new way to think about food and enjoying the process – and I’m thirty pounds lighter and loving the feeling of that as well. This is where I blog my journey.