18 February 2009

One day I made this tea for my friend Melissa who was having a particularly bad go of things.  Since her name is Melissa, I started out with Lemon Balm.   I added in chamomile for relaxation and to alleviate feelings of sadness.  I added in rose petals and lavender for the beauty of the flowers and scent and then some orange peel to pep it up.

Happy Tea

1 part Melissa (lemon balm)

1 part chamomile

1/2 part rose petals

1/2 part lavender

1/2 part orange peel

….

I got my first lesson of homework back from my herbalism home study course.  I got butterfly stickers!  And it said my work was excellent!  Very validating.  I think working with herbs on quiet afternoons is the only thing keeping me sane these days.  Lately I’ve been drinking root beer tonic tea with lots of cinnamon and ginger to support liver and kidneys.

17 February 2009

Everyone knows fish oil is good but I couldn’t really understand how people would have primitively extracted the oil from fish.  Extracting oil seems like a pretty high tech process, right?  But nope, fish oil is a totally primitive food.  The Tsimshian people in British Columbia actually made fish oil and used it to supplement their diet! They would gather Eulachon fish, then let them rot and then boil them and skim off the oil.

Museum of Civilization

How lucky we are these days to benefit from professional quality processing of high quality fish oil.  Although we don’t get the benefit of all the exercise that it takes to catch those fish and boil them up.  Nor do we get to go fishing in boats in seas teeming with fish, feeling the salty sea air and sun on our faces. Nor do we get to say the prayers of gratitude to the fish as we catch them and use their bodies to nourish us.

15 February 2009

We watched this movie, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, last night.  It was filmed on location in Iqualuit by an Inuit film company.

Amazing production values.  Amazing storytelling.  I loved the way it moved slowly but was not boring at all.  Totally in Inuktitut.  And totally Inuit actors and film crew.  The production company is 75% Inuit owned. 

Check out the walrus tooth necklace.

Reminded me so much of reading about Farley Mowat’s Caribou eaters, although the caribou eaters would have said they’re nothing like the Seal and Walrus hunters.

These people were totally living the original primal lifestyle.  Lots of freshly killed seafood, game and the occasional bird in the form of seals, walrus, fish, caribou and ptarmigan.  It also showed them eating eggs they had collected from nests.  In the movie they ate some berries in the summertime but other than that they stayed away from vegetable matter, not that any was really available in the area.  I also noticed they didn’t eat any seaweed even though there was plenty of that around.  Hmmm.

I can’t wait to see Ce Qu’il Faut Pour Vivre (The Necessities of Life) which stars the main actor, Natar Ungalaaq, from Atanarjuat, but is not directed or producted by Isuma.  It’s about the outbreak of tuberculosis among First Nations people in Canada’s north in the 1950s.

14 February 2009

I just finished reading this book yesterday.  Amazing!

My favourite topic – the fur trade in Canada.  Favourite setting – Ontario in the 1860s.  Add in some homoerotic elements as a twist and I’m hooked. The writing was great and the plot was superb.

My only complaint is that I thought there could have been a lot more actual descriptive information on the First Nations people and their culture in the book.  I don’t think the word “Cree” is even mentioned until the last 20 pages of the book.  Mohawk is only mentioned once in passing with a minor character.  Although the author did a good job of showing how the Hudson’s Bay Company plied the natives with alcohol and kept them dependent on it.

I read that the author had never traveled to Canada and that she had done all of the research for the book at the library because she had agoraphobia at the time.  It actually explains a lot about the novel.  Someone on the amazon site points out that the cover looks more like BC than Ontario, which is very true.

Northern Ontario.

13 February 2009

My sister called me to remind me to watch the Westminster Kennel Club dog show the other night.  I love watching it to see all the breeds of dogs.  I love the herding dogs.  I can’t believe a 10 year old spaniel won!  I have two English Springer Spaniels who are 10 and 11 years old.

Buddy at Crooks Hollow

Last year my favourite dog was the Australian Shepherd.  She won in the herding dogs category last year.  This year’s entry in that breed isn’t as pretty as last year’s.

2008 – Australian Shepherd

This year my favourite is the Finnish Spitz.

He didn’t win anything this year, but I don’t care.  He looks like a red fox.  He has the same hair colour as me!  And he’s Baltic!

And the puppies are sooooo adorable.  I want a Spitz when we move onto our farm.

10 February 2009

My mom decided to cancel Danny’s surgery.  We took him to the rehabilitation/injury specialist vet in Puslinch last night.  The vet doesn’t exactly know what it is wrong with him either, but does not think it’s necessarily a cruciate ligament injury like the other vet said.  Well the other vet said he couldn’t get a drawer movement so “what else could it be” and therefore he should have surgery.  Silly, and leaping to conclusions in my mind, since he’s only a year old.  Surgery is a pretty radical solution.

The rehab vet gave him laser therapy on his muscles and felt around to see if she could feel injury or inflammation.  She also gave him a massage which seemed to help, since he was carrying his leg more forward afterwards.

We put him on the underwater treadmill and he was pretty freaked out!  He is a really quiet dog and I have never heard Danny make so much noise as when that chamber started filling up with water.  His eyes were bugging out of his head.  I wish I had had the camera!  When they turned on the treadmill part, Danny, being a border collie, tried to outsmart it by swimming instead of walking.  He was freaked out for the first few minutes but then he got the hang of it.  He’s going back on Friday to use the treadmill again.  It’s supposed to let him get some exercise and use his leg muscles without weight being put on the muscles to injure them further.

In the mean time, Danny is off the anti-inflammatory pills from the original vet and will be taking Arnica tablets.  He is being kept quiet and is really sad.  We are setting up the cage downstairs so he can’t run up and down the stairs or run around with the other dogs.  We’re going to try to keep him quiet to see if we can see any progress.

2 February 2009

My friend says I can’t be Raw Canadian Girl anymore since I’m no longer a raw vegan.  I said I’m still a raw Canadian girl, it doesn’t have to mean I’m a raw foodist Canadian girl.  Only people who know what raw foodism is are going to assume that it implies I’m a raw foodist.

Anyway, I’m staying here until I can think of a better name. Any suggestions?  Primal Canadian Girl?  Primitive Canadian Girl?  I’m as lost as you are…

I made like a million of these knit cotton dishcloths for my family this year for Christmas.  (Okay, not a million, but a lot.)  This one for my sister is the only one I got around to taking a photo of.   It’s diagonal garter stitch and then my mom crocheted the edges since I don’t know how to crochet. I think the pink ones turned out particularly pretty.

This is the scarf I knit for my sister for her birthday.  It looks deceivingly short in this photo since I folded it many times to fit.  My sis likes extra long scarves so it took 3 balls of Soy Wool Stripes (SWS) to knit it up.

This is my sister’s dog Lulu who was just visiting here from Alberta for a week.  She got her hair cut at PetSmart the second day she was here and the employees had to phone my mom to come pick her up because she was having explosive diarrhea all over the store.  I’m sure they loved that!  With all the shitting and pissing (at PetSmart and then inside our house and on my bedroom floor, ew) I didn’t like her very much but then the cute little bugger grew on me.  I am used to big dogs and I love big dogs, so getting used to Lulu was different for me.  It’s so funny how different some dogs can be.  She is such a princess.

I made burn salve the other day with Calendula, Comfrey and St John’s Wort but I think it started to burn in the crockpot because I didn’t have quite enough oil to cover all the herbs.  I think it kinda smells burnt and that it’s the wrong colour, but I am not sure.  I don’t know what to do except make another batch and try to cover all the herbs with oil and then compare the two. I have no friends who are into such herby things to ask.

I also made some herbal shampoo this evening with a Rosemary Gladstar recipe.  It has comfrey, calendula and chamomile made into a tea as well as peppermint and lavender essential oil plus unscented Dr. Bronners and some Kukui nut oil.

Sprinting

Cool!

Primal Exercise

So since I’ve changed my diet, I’ve also been thinking about what I will do this spring and summer in terms of exercise.  I am rethinking my plans to do ultras.  I had been planning to do at least a baby ultra (50K) this spring.    Perhaps, yes, ultras can do some damage to the body which is not quite natural.  Though, there is still something that draws me to them, so maybe someday.  But the question that really gets me thinking is when would a hunter-gatherer have had to run for 24+ hours straight?  The only instance I can think of is the Tarahumara tribe (who incidentally kicked ass at Leadville many times) because they historically ran to deliver messages across long distances…  Unfortunately in terms of my running career, my heritage is not Tarahumara, it is half-Estonian serf and half-Canadian (and if you go way back, logically, British Isles of some sort.) so maybe my genetic stock is less suited for long-distance running and more suited to cutting wheat in fields and going fishing.  No wonder I’m such a slow runner.

The idea of exercising primally is:

• move around a lot at a slow pace
• lift really heavy things
• run really fast once in a while

This idea is meant to mimic how we would live if we weren’t in technologically advanced modern civilization, which is a relative blip on the genetic timescale of humans.  So perhaps a primal exercise plan might look more varied than training for an ultra and focusing so much time and effort just on running.

My husband is planning on doing a 24-hr bike race in June, so focusing on cycling again would be good so we can do a bit of riding together.  Cycling definitely fits into the idea of moving around a lot, but slowly.  I did some sprints with my friend on Monday, and doing some sprinting once a week or so seems pretty do-able.  Also looking into adding swimming and whatever other fun exercise opportunities come along.  I’ll still probably end up going to the gym to do weights 1-2 times a week.  The lazy part of me that likes to stay inside during winter really likes the fact that a primal diet seems to allow one to maintain muscle mass with much less exercise.

Primal Progress

I have really only been following this Primal stuff for a few days and I can’t believe how immediate the results are!  I am ready to wake up in the morning at 7 or 8 whereas before I was sleeping in until 9 or 10 and still wanted to sleep more. I don’t feel bloated in my tummy anymore and my friend noticed yesterday that I already lost weight.  My joints feel flexible and I feel really energetic.  My mental clarity is amazing and my moods feel even.

And most impressive to me, I am not craving sugars or having any cravings whatsoever!  Hunger is different now than when I was eating a high-carb diet.  I would get ravenously hungry and would have to eat right away and when I would eat the jitteriness would go away and my mood would get better.  Now I don’t get jittery or in a bad mood if I’m hungry and my hunger can wait and eating can be delayed for an hour or two without negative consequences.  I am feeling true hunger, but it is much easier to deal with.

For the past few days I’ve been eating lots of nutty and fatty primal bars, full-fat organic and local yogourt mixed with berries, almonds and a tiny bit of raw honey and miso soup broth with loads and loads of spinach and a bit of tempeh and carrot.  I am basically doing primal vegetarian right now.  It’s a lesser carb load for sure.  Slow transitions are best.  I am really enjoying my food and when I eat I feel so satiated.