Know Any Literary Animal Lovers?

Hi there PureJeevan readers! We wanted to let you know that Jim's new novel CHROO is available on Amazon. It's a crazy adventure involving a billionaire heiress, her Chihuahua BFF ("Chroo") and a host of human and animal characters. Find out more on Amazon! Here are some links:




Today, and every day, I am thankful for lovely Mother Earth. Where would we be without Mother? May we always care for her in a gentle and loving way.

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Here's Wendi in Portland interviewing Wes Hannah, one of the owners of Blossoming Lotus, a vegan restaurant that also serves a lot of delicious raw foods. Wendi said it's worth a trip to Portland just to eat there!

[Sorry about the video quality there. I was having some trouble editing this on an old machine. Wendi took the good one with her on the trip!]

Brutal Honesty. 100% Transparency. Unedited Feedback. Absolute Truth. ... How often are we treated to these things by those we know? How likely are we do conduct ourselves with these ideals in mind?

Propriety. Politeness. Decorum. Political Correctness. ... How often do these conventions in others prevent us from knowing what others think of us? How often do these conventions in ourselves restrict our own words when directed at others?

Wow, what a stressful weekend! We spent pretty much the entire past two days going through the dozens and dozens of suggestions we received in response to our July 30 post concerning our move (in which we asked for help in finding the perfect new place to live). We listed every city suggested to us, as well as a number of cities we specifically wanted to consider. Then we attempted to gather data from the Internet to rank these cities. Here's a HUGE snapshot to show our progress. (I'll explain a few things below.)

As you can see, we ranked each city according to many criteria. These included the number of sunny days per year, average high and low temperatures, air quality (higher #s better), water quality (higher #s better), Superfund statistics (an indication of the general toxicity of an area -- higher #s better), land prices, crime rate (the numbers "x / x" indicating scores from 1 to 10, lower #s being better, for "personal" crimes and "property" crimes), and finally a "liberal / conservative" ratio based on voting records for that town.

THE TOUR IS COMPLETED! For pictures, videos, and commentary about their adventures, check out the Trip Dashboard!!

For those of you who've been following our plans for a few years, you know we've been preparing for a cross-country tour for a long time. The plans have expanded, contracted, changed dramatically, but the core of the idea has always been there: we plan on relocating to a new city and we need to find the right place for Pure Jeevan to settle. In order to do that, a big cross-country tour is in order. So, the exciting news is that we're leaving in a couple of weeks to check out some of the cities/towns we're thinking might be a perfect fit for Pure Jeevan! The sad news is that all of us can't make the trip. Jim will be holding down the fort here in Pittsburgh (i.e. the house still hasn't sold and he still needs to keep his corporate job so we can pay the mortgage).

To continue with our Summertime Raw series, we took a trip to Pittsburgh's Frick Park to enjoy the beautiful day. Before leaving, we packed another meal to show you how easy it can be to eat a raw food diet while away from home.Frick Park was wildly popular among dogs; we saw canines of all shapes and sizes -- all playful, yet calm in comparison to our lovely Julia, a rescued blue Doberman. Joogie enjoyed the outing very much because she was able to snack on cucumbers (a favorite treat), chase after a few joggers (we're teaching her that this isn't proper doggy behavior), knock the cooler out of Jim's hands when we were leaving (which broke a few of our best glass dishes), and lick the faces of a few new furry friends. We've been to many parks, but we have a feeling this is now Julia's favorite. ?

In yesterday's blog and video post, we showed you how easy it is to simply grab fresh fruits and veggies and head out the door for an outing. In that show, no refrigeration or preparation was necessary. However, we also know that many of you are new to raw foods, and perhaps eating simple chopped produce isn't so appealing for you compared to traditional foods you'd normally eat while in a park. So, today's goal is to demonstrate how simple it can be, making it easy for you to stick to a raw food lifestyle and not feel tempted by the cooked foods that may be around while you're out enjoying the summer with friends and family. So, today's video is about stepping it up to the next level.

In this video, Pure Jeevan heads to Washington, D.C., to visit some close friends. See what these raw foodists pack to eat for the weekend and hear proof that Wendi Dee is getting younger! A friend who has known Wendi for 20 years says she now looks as young as she did when they first met! *giggles* Raw foods are AMAZING at restoring youthfulness! Are you getting younger, too !

You'll see a picture of a raw apple pie that Wendi created (the recipe is included in our free raw food recipe ebook) and hear her friends rave about the raw cheesecake she prepared for them. It's always nice to make some extra special raw treats for your friends, so they can see that you're enjoying the food that's helping you regain your health (and youth!).

Yesterday was a ton of fun, wasn't it? Sam loves all of the comments, so if you haven't viewed her video, please do -- and let her know how much you enjoyed it!? For today, we just wanted to announce the addition of a permanent new button along the right sidebar of our blog. As you can see, it links to this post from a few weeks back when we first announced a call for guest raw chefs. There, you'll find the details on hosting a segment of Makin' It Monday, just like Sam did.

By the way, just last week, we passed a noteworthy milestone that we didn't mention -- our 500th blog post here at Pure Jeevan. That's a lot of raw foods coverage, right ! Well, we're really still getting started when it comes to the level of information and inspiration we're planning for Pure Jeevan -- so it's great to add new features like this now, as we're able to. Of course, once our home sells and we're finally able to move on to the next phase of our lives, we envision Pure Jeevan exploding with more content than ever before. What fun it'll be to be able to devote ourselves full-time to spreading the word about raw foods!

Original Comments

Below, we have included the original comments from this blog post. Additional comments may be made via Facebook, below.

According to Mike Adams of NewsTarget.com:

"Many Florida oranges are actually dipped in an artificial orange dye in order to make them more visually appealing. It's the same dye that's been banned for use in foods because of cancer risk."

I know this is our Fun-Filled Friday post, but I have to admit that most of today isn't going to be all that much fun. But, this weekend should be very enjoyable! We have some very special guests arriving tomorrow for a SUPER SPECIAL evening tomorrow night! Leela Mata, a beautiful spiritual teacher, has offered to visit my home and hold Satsang here. One of her extremely talented students, Devaki, will be joining her (and bringing a harmonium to play at Satsang!).

Thanks to everyone who has offered, so far, to help us out with our project (mentioned in yesterday's post). If anyone else thinks they'd like to help, we're looking for as many people as possible! We'll fill you in soon, just be sure to send us your email addresses if you haven't already done so. Thanks!

Here are more pictures of some of the foods we've been eating. Over the past year, we've pretty much been eating simple foods (except for the time I was preparing meals for the Raw Food Retreat). However, recently KDcat has been doing some extreme yo-yo eating between raw foods and packaged/unhealthy cooked foods. The back and forth has been causing her to experience a bit of a tummy upset. So, I've decided to make our meals a bit more exciting for her---so she'll possibly not feel so tempted by all of the colors and artificial flavors of the packaged "foods" she's been eating.

Talk about color...check out this salad I made earlier today: