Martha:
>Remembering some cautions you posted a while back about using
>Cassia with cooked food, I've been wondering if you still use it now that
>you're including cooked veggies?

Interesting topic. Since I never had any experience eating cassia on a
less-than-100% diet I was cautioning because of stories I had heard from
other instinctos (who were perhaps repeating stories they heard--like much
of instincto posturing). Further, even some non-industrial cultures
consider cassia _poisonous_ because of the cramping and diahrea it can
cause). I clearly did not want to be party to someone "ODing" on cassia
coming from a SAD diet with a desire to clean out really fast. If that
makes any sense.

Anyway, I was (and am) relatively surprised to find that cassia has not
caused any discomfort since I have been eating some cooked veggies and meat
(I eat no grains however). I will post later about my experiment of eating
very rare red meat nearly everyday for about three weeks, but even then
cassia caused no problems. Indeed, in retrospect I would say it was most
problematicjust before the high rare meat experiment when I would eat a
high percentage of juicy fruit and raw veggies. There were times when
cassia seemed to put my system into a strange mode: the _next_ day whatever
fruit and/or salad I ate might pass through nearly undigested. Only when
eating some heavier foods (like avos, aged fish or meat) would I start
digesting again. It seems that cassia was just exasperating the problems of
eating a high water high carb high fiber diet of raw fruit/veggies.

I consider that I have probably eaten too many years of too many high water
fruits and veggies and I have finally reached the point where my body has
"had it" with a preponderance of such foods (especially when they crowd out
high fat protein foods). All conjecture of course, but I wonder if the
paleo diet (low sugar, high fat, high protein) has more to teach/help
instinctos than cassia, at least in the long run. (I'll be posting more
later on the topic.)

I use cassia rather sparingly when in CA, but now that I can collect it for
free in Hawaii perhaps my consumption will rise. We'll see. (Remember:
cassia is available de-podded in a jar from Pangaia--not from me ;))

>BTW, I'm not shining on your reply to my reply to ... in the Vegan Mercy
>thread.  Just waiting until I have time to come up with a coherent reply.

Shining? You always shine, Martha. ;) I responded simply because I didn't
want you to remain so POed about it all--whether I simply angered you more
I can't say. ;) I'd quess you'll want to respond in time, but I sure won't
feel shorted if you don't--threads have to end at some time, eh? How about
this: you can have the last word if you'd care to...

Cheers,
Kirt