>Submitted to veg-raw by Jeanette Hohls <[log in to unmask]>

> I am new to this list and I hope that my questions are not too
>silly. I am South African living in Kwazulu-Natal. I trying to become
>completely vegetarian, and vegan if possible, but it is taking some
>time to adjust. I eat manily fruit and lots of salad with sprouts,
>but I do eat cooked vegetables and grains as well.

>I am currently trying to eat only raw foods for at least two weeks,
>and I was wondering if eating nuts and seeds is okay.

Yes it is. Remember to soak them overnight (or as long as it takes for the
water to get all the way down into the core of the seed/nut, which means a
little shorter time for small seeds as sesame and longer time for big nuts,
especially brazilnuts who usually need several days in cold water to get
all soaked) in the double amount of clean water. This procedure is
nessecary for two reasons, first you make the seed/nut more easy to
assimilate because it will already be humid when you eat it, otherwise if
you eat nuts or seeds that are dry they will start to attract humidity
from your stomach and because of that they will move slower through your
intestines. This feels somewhat uncomfortable, like an itchy feeling
during the passage towards the so called endstation and you will probably
have a little hard stomach.  However, soaked seeds and nuts feels OK
during digestion and don't give you a hard stomach and they also move
faster through your intestines than the dry ones does. Furthermore the
seeds or nuts gets cleaned this way. Now, the other reason is that nuts
and seeds are generally acidifying to the body and the soaking neutralizes
some of these acids, eating Living Food means to neutralize acids in the
foods and to even make the same food alkaline by fermentation. When it
comes to nuts and seeds it's easy, all you have to do is to pour off the
first soaking water (good for your plants and flowers but not for drinking
or cooking with yourself) and rinse the seeds/nuts thorougly. Then you add
fresh water to them again and let them soak in this in room temperature
for up to four days depending on the season. Now you have fermented seeds
or nuts that taste a little sour and all you have to do is to rinse them
before you eat them. They will stay fresh in this same water in the
refrigerator for several days if you wish and actually, keeping them
in water in the fridge is a good way of having a supply of proteins easily
accessable so you don't have to wait for them to soak overnight.

>My other question is whether it is safe to eat raw potatoes and, if so,
>what to do with them?

The raw potatoes are perfectly safe to eat exCept for the sprouts from
potatoes, you know those little roots or leaves that develop sometimes
after a period of time when the potatoe start to grow. Those sprouts are
hazardous to your health.
Don't eat them because they are poisonous, otherwise it's very nutricious
to eat a little raw potatoes sometimes, they contain minerals and above
all - starch.

What about wheatgerm?

Do you mean sprouted wheat? That's another marvellous invention in Living
Food (as I call it) because it is a way of making the acid little
difficult-to-digest wheatberry alkaline and easy to both digest and
assimilate. I higly recommend it and btw, you should try to ferment some
oats as well, this is how you do it...
First you clean some whole oats by scrubbing them between the palms of
your hands in water. Then you rinse them thoroughly under running cold
water and soak them in the double (or so) amount of water overnight. The
next morning you should rinse the oats a second time as before and then
put them with the strainer in a bowl so there is a little space between
the bottom of the strainer and the bottom of the bowl, with the oats
lying inside the strainer of course. Now you cover the clean oats with
new fresh water and put a lid on top of the whole thing to prevent things
from falling into it all and then wait for up to three days depending on
the temperature until the oats and the water have become sour in a good
way. It should smell sour and fresh if it's successfully made, otherwise
- if it smells bad - you have failed, but that's ok. Just try again! The
oats are from this day preferrably kept in your refridgerator inside this
water where they will stay fresh for up to a week. Lift the strainer up
to have some oats for your meal but try not to stir around the water more
than neccesary because in the bottom of the bowl you will find a white
cake of starch or gluten or a mix of both - this should not be ingested
but rather thrown into the compost or mabye even made glue out of (I
haven't tried that so far though) since it is very sticky and I don't
want anybody to eat such things. The water itself has now become
rejuvelac and it's a good, fermented energy boosting drink.

>Any ideas or comments would be greatly appreciated.

>Thanks a million.  Jeanette Hohls.

You're welcome. Krister Knutars. [log in to unmask]
Krister Knutars