Raw Pecan Pie with no Pecans!

I wanted to make a cheesecake, but the recipe called for cashews for the filling and I dont have any. Instead I grabbed the nuts I had, and made this: 

The only thing it has in common with a cheesecake are the strawberries, but honestly, this was pretty freaking great. The crust is made up of crushed almonds (previously soaked) hazelnuts, and honey to make it sticky all put through the food processor or in my case a blender.
 The "filling" (Which is really just another layer of yummy nuts) is made with macadamia nuts, walnuts, expeller pressed coconut oil, honey, vanilla and a pinch of salt. It turns out really creamy and good. 
I decorated it with strawberries to make it look less like  a creamy mess.


Although there wasn't any pecans, the sweet nutty combo here made it  taste more similar to a pecan pie than a cheesecake.


For me, its hard to follow  recipes in the Raw Food world,  and have all the ingredients you need. Therefore I dont mind inventions as long as they turn out to something like this, cause otherwise its a pretty big waste of food. I'm looking forward to both inventions and reproduced creations. 


PS: Ya'll dont have to try this, I'm really only writting it down for me to remember. 

Maria

She. Is. Here! Yes, our best friend from the Dominican Republic, after 8 months of no physical contact we can finally sit across from each other and completely ignore one another, not!

Expect  pictures! 

Avocado Mango Yogurt

Last night I was gladly able to accompany my new friends Taylor Huston and Roselia Bañuelos to a RAW food feast. My intrigue  for raw  food  started several years ago when I made the choice to adapt to a healthier lifestyle. Not only has my perspective on life changed, but my mind and body have  been reborn in the course of time through this 'transition'. Both Taylor and Roselia spurred up in me again the want to create new things. So I did. Even though I only slept 4 hours last night I woke up with  a refreshed mind and made this: 

An avocado mango yogurt topped with sliced banana's and sprinkled with macadamia nuts. 

All I did was mash them up, add some vanilla and put the toppings on. The only thing I would add is a pinch of sea salt for the next time to liven the flavors up, but other than that, YUM!

PS: Like: Raw Foodies on Facebook.

Forks over Knives

2 days ago I watched a documentary called Forks over Knives, its one of many documentaries i've watched about health in America; like every other documentary it  only reinforces the truth although with a more scientific approach that the way we eat can potentially control and even reverse most chronic diseases affecting half of the world today.


The sad reality that bothers me completely is that my generation may be the first generation to live less than its parents.


Thomas Edison said "The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition". Its heartbreaking for me to think that we are letting ourselves go through the worst because of the negligence and ignorance that is being educated to us by our society instead of being encouraged to do what in our nature is right to do.


Our mechanisms of satiation are being fooled- Doug Lisle, Ph.D.


Fact: There is a range of receptors in our stomach that helps us gage  how much food we've eaten, these include stretch receptors to help meassure the shared volume of food in our stomach, we also have density receptors to help determine the chloric density (The "richness") of our food. Only 500 calories fills the stomach completely, triggering all our receptors to signal the brain that we are full, but 500 calories of unnaturally rich, or processed foods fills the stomach far less deceiving our receptors into telling our brain that we need more.


The problem is that if we make our foods completely artificial, which we do today, we wind up with the problem that people have to over- eat, just to be satisfied- Doug Lisle, Ph.D.


Fact: We are programmed to: Seek pleasure; avoid pain; and do it all with the greatest economy of energy. The world is designed to service your wants, encourage your comfort, and promote your excess.  This may sound like a life of comfort and ease, by we all know the consequences are broad and devastating. The world is designed to promote immediate satisfaction, not optimal health. Ritch foods naturally excite our senses because they tell us they will provide the highest amount of  a dietary reward with the least amount of effort; this helped our ancestors find the most calorie dense and whole foods availabe which contribute to our survival. In today's environment however; we can artifically increase calorie density well beyond what we can find in nature, these foods give us a hypernormal amound of pleasure leading us into a pleasure trap. The pleasure trap is an interaction between our natural instincts which are trying to tell us the right thing to do and some kind of artificial modern stimulation that is high jacking that process. The easiest way to describe this trap is to that of a drug addiction, the ways drugs work is  they high jack the existing pleasure circuits and when certain chemicals hit those areas, they cause feelings of excitement and euphoria. This reaction happens when we eat highly concentrated processed  foods. We have removed every essential part of a whole food and have created a food so highly  saturated in fats and sugars that it is becoming a low grade addiction. 


But ofcourse that is the stragedy, luring people to have to want more; numbing our instincts to making the right choice, obliviating the consequences that these choices will bring. What's worse is that the lower class citizens are boxed into having few or no choices on how they eat because this kind of food is what they can afford. 
A lot of us can't break free from the system because its all we have to support us, what's sad is that the only interest they have is not our best interest. 


To me its not a matter of support and acceptance by Society; its a matter of knowledge and education of this simple truth. 


There are many people taking on this movement providing us with vital information that can change the way we think and the way we live forever. 


List of Documentaries I've watched:


Food Matters



Food Inc.



Forks over knives



Simply Raw



There's a whole bunch of these everywhere, they  all have WOW facts in them that really shake you up and wake you up to reality;most of them you can watch online. Do it! 

The way to love: How to give ?

When you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing-Matthew 6:3


It is with charity as with happines and holiness. It is not possible for you to say that you are happy because the moment you become conscious of your happiness you cease to be happy. What you call the experience of happiness is not happiness at all but the excitement and thrill caused by some person or thing or event. True happiness is uncaused. You are happy for no reason at all. And truen happiness cannot be experienced. It is not within the realm of consciousness. It is unself-consciousness.


So it is with holiness. The moment you are aware of you holiness it goes sour and becomes self-righteousness. A good deed is never so good as when you have no consciousness that it is good- you are so much in love with the action that you are quite unself-conscious about your goodness and virtue. Your left hand has no idea that your right hand is doing something good or meritorious. You simply do it because it seems the natural, spontaneous thing to do. Soend some time in becoming aware of the fact that all the virtue that you can see in yourself is no virtue at all but something that you have cunningly cultivated and produced and forced on yourself. If it were real virtue you would have enjoyed it thoroughly and would feel so natural that it wouldn't occur to you to think of it as a virtue. So the first quality of holiness is its unself-consciousness.


The second quality is its effortlessness. Effort can change behavior, it cannot changen you. Think of this: Effort can put food into your mouth, it cannot produce an appetite; it can keep you in bed, it cannot produce sleep; it can make you reveal a secret to another but it cannot produce trust; it can force you to pay a compliment, it cannot produce genuine admiration; effort can perform acts of service, it is powerless to produce love or holiness. All you can achieve by your effort is repression, not genuine change and growth. Change is only brought about by awareness and understanding. Understand your unhappiness and it will disappear- what results is the state of happiness. Understand your pride and it will drop- what results will be humility. Understand your fears and they will melt- the resultant state is love. Understand your attachments and they will vanish- the consequence is freedom. Love and freedom and happiness are not thing that you can cultivate and produce. You cannot even know what they are. All you can do is observe their opposites and, through your observation, cause the opposites to die. 


There is a third quality of holiness: it cannot be desired. If you desire happiness you will be anxious lest you do not attain it. You will be constantly in a state of dissatisfaction; and dissatisfaction and anxiety kill the very happiness that they set out to gain. When you desire holiness for yourself you feed the very greed and ambition that make you so selfish and vain and unholy. 


Here is something you must understand: there are two sources for change within you. One is the cunningness of your ego that pushes you into making efforts to become something other than you re meant to be so that it can give itself a boost, so that it can glorify itself. The other is the wisdon of Nature. Thanks to this wisdom you become aware, you understand it. That is all you do, leaving the change- type, the manner, the speed, the time of change- to reality and to Nature. Your ego is a great technician. It cannot be creative. It goes in for methods and techniques and produces so-called holy people who are rigid, consistent, mechanical, lifeless as intolerant of others as they are of themselves- violen people the very opposite of holiness and love. The type of "spiritual" people who, conscious of their spirituality, then proceed to crucify the Messiah. 


Nature is not a technician. Nature is creative. You will e a creator, not a wily technician when there is abandonment in you- no greed, no ambition, no anxiety, no sense of striving, gaining, arriving, attaining. All there is, is a keen, alert, penetrating, vigilant awareness that causes the dissolution of all one's foolishness and selfishness, all one's attachments and fears. The changes that follow are not the result of your blueprints and efforts but the product of Nature that spurns your plans and will, thereby leaving no room for a sense of merit or achievement or even any consciousness on the part of your left hand of what Reality is doing by means of your right.


-Anthony De Mello 

Aisha's Tattoo.

Saturday 14th my sister Aisha got her first tattoo. I'm sure she'll have more, or even some additions to this one since we've talked about it countless times. But what's special about this tattoo besides that its her first one, is the meaning behind it, its a quote from the book "The Shack" by William P. Young, for some,the book was just  a made up idea of what God is and how he relates to us. For me it was a new perspective on how my relationship with God can be. For Aisha it was a conversation with God,so meaningful that it lead her to want a tattoo because she never wants to forget what he told her.
 "You were created to be loved, so for you to lived as if you are unloved is a limitation, not the other way around." She modified the quote to say: "We were created to be loved, so for us to lived as if we are unloved is a limitation, not the other way around." 
Its a truth so simple and so bright, something we should always remind ourselves of.

The way to love

A while back I was given this pocket book by my mother who encouraged me to read it and reflect on these meditations by Anthony De Melo called "The way to love.". I haven't been as consistent as I've wanted to be with reading through the whole book, but everytime I pick it up and glance through it, I appreciate the thoughts on how love is meant to be to this man. I figured since I'm blogging I could share the very short chapters with you and that way I'll actually read through them and maybe give you something to reflect on as well. Although I know ya'll probably dont read through these long posts. I know I probably wouldn't unless I found it interesting, which  I can assure you this is.

Love One Another:

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. - John 15:12

What is love? Take a look at a rose. Is it possible for the rose to say, "I shall offer my fragrance to good people and withhold it from bad people?" Or can you imagine a lamp that withholds its rays from a wicked person who seeks to walk in tis light? It could only do that by ceasing to be a lamp. And observe how helplessly and indiscriminately a tree gives its shade to everyone, good and bad, young and old, high and low; to animals and humans and every living creature - even to the one who seeks to cut it down. So this is the first quiality of love: its indiscriminate character. That is why we are exhorted to be life God, "who makes his sun to shine on good and bad alike and makes his rain to fall on saints and shinners alike; so you must be all godness as your heavenly Father is all goodness." Contemplate in astonishment the sheer goodness of the rose, the lamp, the tree, for there you have an image of what love is all about. 

How does one attain this quality of love? Anyhing you do will only make it forced, cultivated and therefore phony, for love cannot be forced. There is nothing you can do. But there is something you can drop. Observe the marvelous change that comes over you the moment you stop seeing people as good and bad, as saints and siners and being to see them as unaware and ignorant. You must drop your false belief that people can sin in awareness. No one can sin in the light of awareness. Sin occurs, bitm as we mistakenly think, in malice, but in ignorance. "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing."

To see this is to acquire the indiscriminate quiality one so admires in the rose, the lamp and the tree. 

And here is a second quality of love - its gratuitousness. Like the tree, the rose, the lamp, it gives and asks for nothing in return. How we despise the man whose choice of his wife is determined not by any quality she may have but by the amount of money she will bring as dowry. Such as man, we rightly say, loves not the woman but the financial benefit she brings him. But is your own love any different when you seek the company of those who bring you emotional gratification and avoid those who don't; when you are positively disposed toward people who give you what you want and live up to your expectations and are negative or indifferent toward those who don't?

Here too there is only one thing that you need to acquire this quality of gratuitousness that characterizes love. You can open your eyes and see. Just seeing, just exposing your so-called love for what it really is, a camouflage for selfishness and greed, is a major step toward arriving at this second quality of love.

The third quality of love is its unselfconsciousness. Love so enjoys the loving that it is blissfully unaware to itself. The way the lamp is busy shining with no thought of whether it is benefiting others or not. The way a rose gives out its fragrance simply because there is nothing else it can do, whether there is someone to enjoy the fragrance or not. The way the tree offers its share. The light, the fragrance and the share are not produced at the approach of persons and turned off when there is no one there. These things, like love, exist independently of persons. Love simply is, it has no object. They simply are, regardless of whether someone will benefit from them or not. So they have no consciousness of any merit or of doing good. Their felt hand has no consciousness of what their right hand does. "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty and help you?" 

The final quality of love is its freedom. The moment coearcion or control or conflic enters, love dies. Think how the rose, the tree, the lamp leave you completely free. The tree will make no effort to drag you into its shade if you are in danger of a sunstroke. The lamp will not force its light on you lest you stumble in the dark. Think for a while of all the coercion and control that you submit to on the part of others when you so anxiously live up to their expectations in order to buy their love and approval or because you fear you will lose them. Each time you submit to this control and this coercion you destroy the capacity to love which is your very nature, for you cannot but do to others what you allow others to do to you. Contemplate, then, all the control and coercion in your life and hopefully this contemplation alone will cause them to drop. The moment they drop, freedom will arise. And freedom is just another word for love. 

Enneagram

 Yesterday a group of friends and I had the chance to get to know each other in a more detailed way thanks to the enneagram. For those of you who dont know, the enneagram is basically a map which main  road  is the way to find the core of who we are with the goal of gradually learning ourselves on a spiritual level to grow into a  better self and use that to make a difference in our lives. It has been one of the best references for myself to look back at to help me through my toughest times. Not only have I grown with the help of getting to know myself with this test, but I've also gotten to know and  understand how others can be and why and how to cope with that. 


I'm an eight (The challenger); some adjectives that describe me are being  bold, self confident, just, resourceful and protective. There are many other characteristics and stages that can define me as a whole, and as anyone we all have our strengths and weaknesses, our sides, and we've all drifted from one side to another at some point in our lives. Here's an overview of what the enneagram says about me:Type Eight

There's obviously a lot that I can do to make it easier for people to get along with me, but if you're curious to know some key points on how to do that on your own without my help and do it well, here are some REALLY important things to know:


How to get along with me:


-Stand up for yourself...and me. I like confrontations!


-Be confident, strong and direct. Again, I like a person who speaks their mind.


-Dont gossip about me or betray my trust. Big no no.


-Be vulnerable and share your feelings. See and acknowledge my tender vulnerable side. I'm softer than I look and its special when I show you that.


-Give me space to be alone. Understand that I dont mind it, I actually need it.


-Acknowledge the contributions I make, but don't flatter me. If I clean, keep it clean, and I dont know how to answer to a compliment so just keep it to yourself, I know I look good,thank you but no thank you. 


-I often speak in an assertive way. Don't automatically assume it's a personal attack. Don't react too fast to my reaction, I promise I make sense once I get that first blow up out of my system and I definitely do not appreciate assumptions.


-When I scream, curse, and stomp around, try to remember that's just the way I am. I've managed to keep that under control, but I have my moments.


I hope you dont think I'm a controlling freak now. I'll admit that there have been times where I've let the worst take over me and I've lived the consequences of it. I work on myself everyday to become the best that I can be, I'm a failure most days, but a lot has carried me to a healthier level with myself and I'm a living witness of how wonderful things are when I make the effort to allow my weakness to be my strength.  I encourage everyone to learn themselves with a more  clear understanding of why you are how you are and what your healthiness can achieve in your life and relationships, the enneagram is the best way to start. 

Sleep Over

(Updated) 

Its 1:30 AM, there's a 

thunderstorm outside and plenty of laughs inside. Great spontaneous sleepover accompanied by amazing new friends.

This is why I dont let  others use my camera. This is why we should be sleeping at 2:00 in the morning.

Janisley

For a while now I've been wanting to take pictures of a girl I saw at our Sunday Service at Casa de Luz in WCCC. First thing I thought when I saw her was "I love her hair". See, I've always wanted to have what many people call the "Curly Curse" Okay nobody calls it that, but I literally just thought of it and its pretty clever I think. You'll understand why I wanted to take her picture when you see her. I not only see a beauty about her, but her eyes to me seem elegant and serene. All I told her was stand there, and she took care of the rest. It's amazing how a look can say so much. And she's only 15.

Cloudy Saturday.

Today I went on a walk. I aimed my camera without stopping at these kids, and this is the shot I got. Im happy with it.

Lately i've been ispired to go out more often and get more still life pictures. Humans of NewYork has triggered that spark in me   specially because Brandon Stanton (The photographer)  has the boldness to go up to people and ask to take their picture and the results are very curious portraits that capture the unique beauty of many. Im working to get to that point, but for now I capture moments quielty behind the eye of my lense. 

Top ten.

I probably have a collection of 80 or more pictures that are the most memorable to me and the number keeps growing with time,  but out of those I would like to share with you ten of my favorites in random order.

                                                               

                                 

                                

                                 

                                  

                                

                                 

                                 

In the beginning

As you all know, one of my very few hobbies is Photography, its also one of my favorites and it just so happens that I'm actually good at it. Now, I wasn't just given a camera and suddenly become amazing. I'm still not amazing, but I am proud of what I have been able to capture. I'm an observer and I love being able to look at things through my camera lense and give them a different perspective or even a story. Not every picture I take is good, but even when its not great on the screen I tend to visualize what it can turn into and its how I get many of my pictures to look they way they do.

I remember my very first time out in the open with my new/refurbished Canon Rebel XSI, I was intimidated and nervous, not only because I had no idea what I was doing, but because I was guided by a flipping good photographer and I was embarrased at my empty brain compared to his tank of knowledge. I didn't take many pictures, but despite that fact, I was able to capture two good pictures that made me sure I had an itch for photography. And thats how it all started.

This was the first photo I ever took seriously-in Central Park, New York;

This one I took shortly after; 

This blog.

I created this blog for the main purpose of keeping you friends and family up to date with my upcoming journey to Brazil. I will also randomly post nonrelated news. Starting now, throughout my trip and possibly after depending on how much I enjoy blogging.I'll include my collection of photos previously taken just to show off and photo's I'll be taking in Brazil as well.