FruitMonster.com

Yep! Tomatoes in a smoothie! Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time.  Even it if sounds strange, tomatoes are actually a fantastic smoothie ingredient, as the dates and other sweet fruits, are very complimentary!  Plus, nectarines (or peaches!) and tomatoes are in season here in Australia, so this is a perfect time to try one of these babies out!  I used fresh tomatoes out of my garden!

Nectarine Tomato Green Smoothie Recipe:

2 c orange juice (or water, just add a few more dates)

2 small or 1 large tomato

2-3 necatrines (2 large or 3 small)

4 c of greens (kale, spinach, chard, lettuce)

5-10 dates (5 large or 10 small)

Submarine that nectarine into green smithereens

Serves one monster (yields ~1 L)

Check out this page for videos on how to make a smoothie!

Tomato and Nectarine, Tastiest Combo Ever Seen

Let’s Take Back Food

Farmer FruitMonster

What We Eat and How We Make It is Crazy.

Using huge swathes of land we relentlessly grow one type of crop in a petroleum intensive fashion to produce pesticide laden, genetically modified crops using methods that exhaust soils, deplete aquifers and wash nitrogen into our rivers.  Instead of eating this produce, it is either delivered to food processing companies, sent off to feed massive numbers of livestock, or used to produce expensive and inefficient biofuels.

Monocropping or Monoculture, No Good

These food processors turn that fresh produce into dead, sugar ridden, salty infused, fatty crap that sits on shelves or hums in freezers for months or even years before it ever enters our bodies.  The livestock community feeds this food to penned and caged up animals whom are weak, sick and essentially tortured for most of their lives - and then we eat their flesh and drink their milk.  The biofuels industry takes crops which could feed hundreds of millions, and put them into our cars, driving up the costs of food related commodities worldwide.

The products that we eat after these massive amounts of produce are turned into ‘food’, leaves us sick (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc) and we are then bled dry by expensive pharmaceuticals and medical treatment.  This leads to more than just the person who ate the nasty food suffering from it!  It hurts our families, our communities and whole countries.  It’s such a big problem that it even blows up our national deficits, because of the subsidies we give to this process and from the great costs medical treatments impose on us ($2.4 Trillion in 2008)

Click Here to Read About This 'Corporate Crap Sandwich'

To be brief – the way we grow food, what we eat as ‘food’ and the effects it has on our bodies after we eat it is absolutely INSANE.  It’s actually comical that people look at someone like me who thrives off a locally sourced, seasonally driven, produce based diet that I try to grow in my backyard and call what I’m saying ‘controversial’ or ‘crazy’.   I don’t think it takes much more than an average understanding of our actual food production process and some basic nutritional intuition (one that ignores the heavy lobbying of the FDA and USDA by the meat and dairy industries), to see that the ‘normal’ way to eat is actually completely broken.

If this gets you down, then stop right now and cheer up.  Because I’ve got answers to this  pollution ridden, poisonous and corrupted system we depend on, and using these ideas we can quite literally save the planet, changing this world for the better.  So are you ready?  Listen up.

The whole plan revolves around your food choices

That’s because the revolution starts with your mouth.  You can change what you eat tomorrow and that is true power.  We the People can shift the supply and demand curve back into the direction we wish, just with our dollars.  It’s already happening everywhere around you, people are ‘waking up’!  So why not join in?

Alright fruit-freak, where do I start?  By shifting your diet towards a whole-foods based one, away from this system. The best way to start doing this and make a sustainable, community driven, change, is to start your own garden and grow some food on your own.  That’s what ‘The FruitMonster Garden’ is all about!

It’s easier than you think, and I’m going to devote this section of my blog to covering how you can do it.  Through my YouTube videos, helpful links on my Twitter feed and a series of blog posts – we’re going to go over how just about anyone can have a garden (yes, even you apartment ridden folks!).  There are countless methods of doing so, so there is really no excuse. If you want to make a difference in this world, then starting with a garden is an excellent way to start.  You’ll be amazed what you learn and how big the smile is on your face when you reap your first harvest!

7 Ears of Corn, Is That 9 With An Ear-to-Ear Grin?

It’s quite obviously hard to grow ALL of your own food, so what else can you do?  Start doing more of your shopping at your local farmer’s markets.  We really need to start doing this enmass right now!  (Watch out, Wal-Mart sells over 20% of the food in the US!).  So where are they?  In the United States, search for the nearest one here.  Australians, check out this link.  By supporting your local farmers, you are stimulating your local economy, getting fresher and healthier produce, and you will find great satisfaction in getting to know the person who grew your food.  Plus, I often find the best deals on fruit and veggies there!  Its a win-win-win-win!!

$55 At the Farmer's Market, Beat That!

If you can’t get to the farmer’s market, then there is another option for you Australians (if anyone knows of a system like this in the U.S., please email me: unleashthemonster@live.com) – it’s called Aussie Farmer’s Direct.  They will deliver fresh fruits and veggies right to your door, and you will get a GREAT deal.  They get goods straight from the farmers, bypassing the supermarkets and supporting Australian agriculture.  What a great deal!

So to review – I’m endorsing a produce based diet, self grown, locally sourced and supportive of farmers.  Doing so, you can snag up armloads of fresh fruits and veggies and indulge in a vigorous fruitmonstering session, a refreshing juice or a monster-sized green smoothie.

Be sure to check out my YouTube channel for the latest from the ‘FruitMonster Garden’!

Eating, Growing and Inspiring the Food Revolution,

Let’s Take Back Food

Farmer FruitMonster

What We Eat and How We Make It is Crazy.

Using huge swathes of land we relentlessly grow one type of crop in a petroleum intensive fashion to produce pesticide laden, genetically modified crops using methods that exhaust soils, deplete aquifers and wash nitrogen into our rivers.  Instead of eating this produce, it is either delivered to food processing companies, sent off to feed massive numbers of livestock, or used to produce expensive and inefficient biofuels.

Monocropping or Monoculture, No Good

These food processors turn that fresh produce into dead, sugar ridden, salty infused, fatty crap that sits on shelves or hums in freezers for months or even years before it ever enters our bodies.  The livestock community feeds this food to penned and caged up animals whom are weak, sick and essentially tortured for most of their lives - and then we eat their flesh and drink their milk.  The biofuels industry takes crops which could feed hundreds of millions, and put them into our cars, driving up the costs of food related commodities worldwide.

The products that we eat after these massive amounts of produce are turned into ‘food’, leaves us sick (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc) and we are then bled dry by expensive pharmaceuticals and medical treatment.  This leads to more than just the person who ate the nasty food suffering from it!  It hurts our families, our communities and whole countries.  It’s such a big problem that it even blows up our national deficits, because of the subsidies we give to this process and from the great costs medical treatments impose on us ($2.4 Trillion in 2008)

Click Here to Read About This 'Corporate Crap Sandwich'

To be brief – the way we grow food, what we eat as ‘food’ and the effects it has on our bodies after we eat it is absolutely INSANE.  It’s actually comical that people look at someone like me who thrives off a locally sourced, seasonally driven, produce based diet that I try to grow in my backyard and call what I’m saying ‘controversial’ or ‘crazy’.   I don’t think it takes much more than an average understanding of our actual food production process and some basic nutritional intuition (one that ignores the heavy lobbying of the FDA and USDA by the meat and dairy industries), to see that the ‘normal’ way to eat is actually completely broken.

If this gets you down, then stop right now and cheer up.  Because I’ve got answers to this  pollution ridden, poisonous and corrupted system we depend on, and using these ideas we can quite literally save the planet, changing this world for the better.  So are you ready?  Listen up.

The whole plan revolves around your food choices

That’s because the revolution starts with your mouth.  You can change what you eat tomorrow and that is true power.  We the People can shift the supply and demand curve back into the direction we wish, just with our dollars.  It’s already happening everywhere around you, people are ‘waking up’!  So why not join in?

Alright fruit-freak, where do I start?  By shifting your diet towards a whole-foods based one, away from this system. The best way to start doing this and make a sustainable, community driven, change, is to start your own garden and grow some food on your own.  That’s what ‘The FruitMonster Garden’ is all about!

It’s easier than you think, and I’m going to devote this section of my blog to covering how you can do it.  Through my YouTube videos, helpful links on my Twitter feed and a series of blog posts – we’re going to go over how just about anyone can have a garden (yes, even you apartment ridden folks!).  There are countless methods of doing so, so there is really no excuse. If you want to make a difference in this world, then starting with a garden is an excellent way to start.  You’ll be amazed what you learn and how big the smile is on your face when you reap your first harvest!

7 Ears of Corn, Is That 9 With An Ear-to-Ear Grin?

It’s quite obviously hard to grow ALL of your own food, so what else can you do?  Start doing more of your shopping at your local farmer’s markets.  We really need to start doing this enmass right now!  (Watch out, Wal-Mart sells over 20% of the food in the US!).  So where are they?  In the United States, search for the nearest one here.  Australians, check out this link.  By supporting your local farmers, you are stimulating your local economy, getting fresher and healthier produce, and you will find great satisfaction in getting to know the person who grew your food.  Plus, I often find the best deals on fruit and veggies there!  Its a win-win-win-win!!

$55 At the Farmer's Market, Beat That!

If you can’t get to the farmer’s market, then there is another option for you Australians (if anyone knows of a system like this in the U.S., please email me: unleashthemonster@live.com) – it’s called Aussie Farmer’s Direct.  They will deliver fresh fruits and veggies right to your door, and you will get a GREAT deal.  They get goods straight from the farmers, bypassing the supermarkets and supporting Australian agriculture.  What a great deal!

So to review – I’m endorsing a produce based diet, self grown, locally sourced and supportive of farmers.  Doing so, you can snag up armloads of fresh fruits and veggies and indulge in a vigorous fruitmonstering session, a refreshing juice or a monster-sized green smoothie.

Be sure to check out my YouTube channel for the latest from the ‘FruitMonster Garden’!

Eating, Growing and Inspiring the Food Revolution,

Sorry America, but Australia just does pineapples better.  So much better in fact, that I’ve found a new love for them.  And that means they are going to be making some repeat appearances in the Fruitmonster.com smoothie recipe section of this blog!  Is your inner berry excited? (A pineapple is actually coalesced berries!) It should be!

So where do we start?  How about with a tropical remix of the Banana Pear Smoothie?  Sounds fruitastic to me!

Pineapple Banana Pear Green Smoothie Recipe:

2 cups water

1/3 of a medium size pineapple (Or 1/4 of a large pineapple) – and HEY!  YEAH YOU CUTTING OUT THE ‘HEART’, ‘CUT’ THAT NONSENSE OUT INSTEAD!!

1.5 medium pears – green, brown, whatever you want!

1 medium banana

3-4 c of your green of choice! (spinach, kale, lettuce, chard, etc.)

20 dates

Amalgamate and annihilate!  Satisfies one monster!  (Yields ~ 1 L)

 Check out this page for videos on how to make a smoothie!

"What a Delicious Smoothie!", The FruitMonster Opined

My Mug-shot

So I have a confession to make… just an itty-bitty, tiny one.  Sigh.. Ok here goes.. The FruitMonster, yours truly, has been a bit more of a Cookie Monster than a fruitmonster lately.  Gasp!?  Cookies? Don’t those have milk and egg in them?  Yep, yep, they do… well they did… *BURP*.  So yes, I am here to admit that I haven’t been the on the strictest of vegan diets over the past month and a half.  Since arriving in Australia I have been in a bit of a ‘vacation mode’, excited about being in a new country, and trying all sorts of new foods.  I hardly feel guilty about having a five-star soufflet at the Sydney Opera House watching boats come across the harbor while the sun set, certain moments in life require a little ‘loosening up’, and that was certainly one of them, but not all of my sins have unfolded so elegantly…

I've Come Undone, For Finger Buns

I really just need to be straight-up honest with myself.  There sure as heck is no real excuse for restof my dessert laden antics, I’ve just been outright misbehaving.  Ok so maybe I needed to try a few danishes and finger buns when I initially discovered the wonder of Australian bakeries (fresh breads and treats made daily are a regular indulgence here), I’d say that was an experience worth having, but I’d draw the line there.  Everything else has been purely ‘off track’ indulgence.  I use the phrase ‘off-track’ because there is a certain momentum that needs to be built up to eat a fruitmonster diet.  When you first begin to cut out all the sweet treats, the salty-crunchies and the fatty platters, there is a period of heightened temptation that seizes you.  Something occurs in the pathways of your brain that drive you back towards those sugary, salty, greasy junk foods, it attacks you in strange ways and inopportune times and you need to be ready to repel those temptations.  Such temptations are your food addictions haunting you, calling you back into a cycle of unhealthy behavior that breeds disease and malaise.  To a certain degree, this is outdated evolutionary programming within your brain driving you to sieze naturally scare, but completely necessary components of your diet with great voracity.  However it also needs to be accepted for what it really connects to: a lack of discipline, greedy behavior and straight up stupidity (and a bit of victimization by food companies!).

Off-Track!

Getting Back ‘On-Track’

But the great part about this ‘off track’ concept is that it implies there is an ‘on track’ component.  This ‘on track’ phase is entered once you push through the initial phases of temptation, when your brain actually begins to build new habits and connect in radically different pathways.  It takes a few weeks of wrestling with urges to chow down an obnoxiously big bag of chips or endlessly stuff your face with fistfuls of brownies (both things I’ve been known to do!), but if you can let those (sometime very intense, remember you’re addicted!) desires pass, something really amazing begins to happen within your mind and body.  A new connection is forged between what you perceive to ‘taste good’ and what makes you ‘feel good’.  For most of us, stuck in the more traditional way of eating, the two are not synonymous.  For a fruitmonster, an amazing harmony comes into play.  Instead of identifying craving with junk, you begin to genuinely crave things the delicious fruits and greens you were meant to consume.  When I’m ‘on track’, my mouth will water for a liter of fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, my mind will wander into a daydream of mango-munching-mayhem.  In this mode a bunch of bananas beats out a bag of chips without question and a brownie wouldn’t touch my lips over a fresh bunch of grapes.  It really is amazing when you find yourself operating in this mode, when you connect with a deeply engrained part of your ancestry, wherein a symbiosis between body and mind is re-activated and what ‘tastes good’ is ‘good for you’.

Dude, You’re Crazy!

811 - The Optimal 'Diet'!

Most people will look at fruitmonster.com and the recipes and diet I adhere to on this page and conclude ‘yeah, thats great for you, but I could never do that’ or’that’s just plain freaking crazy dude’ (or perhaps the ‘you ain’t eat no meat boy!?! but thats for another rant, another day).  If that echoes your thoughts, listen up, because this post is meant for you.  In fact this very sentence is being written for you – you CAN eat this way and you will LOVE it if you do it right.  How your mind works will change, what you believe is the ‘normal’ way to eat will undergo a complete paradigm shift into a radically ‘new’ place which actually isn’t ‘new’ at all, but connected to your fruitmonstering ancestors.  The ones who came across a mango tree and pillaged their way to the pit without pity or found a bush of blackberries and pounded their stomach full of berry-bounty.  This is the way you were meant to eat and the level on which your mind and body connect when you do, is absolutely profound.  It is something you have to experience to understand.  (interested? check out the 80/10/10 Diet Book on this page)

And I’m ready to get back to that fruit inspired level of vibration.  That leafy-green loving land of lusting and longing for apples, oranges, pears and pineapples.

But if you can recall as I said a few paragraphs ago, I have not been doing so hot in that category!  I may still be drinking juices and slamming smoothies, but I’ve also been sneaking cookies and munching pastries.  I’ve been wrestling with my own food addictions and shamefully, failing miserably.  Looking back, I was certainly not prepared for the frequency of Australian ‘tea’ gatherings, which are more of a ‘lets all eat desserts for breakfast’ and then wash it down with tea type of events, nor was I ready for the wave of eating excuses I made due to arriving in a new and exciting place.

So Your Point Is?

Twitter!

So here’s the deal.  My main point.  The reason I’ve clamored for your attention with links and RSS feeds.  Many of you may not have heard about the FruitMonster Munch Report (and others of you may be painfully aware and wish I would stop it ).  Using my twitter account, I have, in the past, been posting what I eat, which shows up on my facebook page as well as on the right-hand side of any given page of fruitmonster.com.  This twitter feed was originally meant to be a ‘eye opener’ to what a frugivore might eat in a given day, to inspire people to eat more healthily and to spread recipe ideas.  It was never meant to be all-inclusive and I certainly did not post any of my ‘slip ups’ or ‘complete and total melt/munch-downs’.  If I ate a carton of crackers or devoured a mound of muffins, it would have, in the past, surely not show up in the Munch Report.

That was at least, until today.

Yes, starting today, I am going to be ‘tweeting-all-of-what-I’m-eating’, not just the pretty, nice, fruitmonster-recipe-type meals.  There are two primary reasons for this text-message driving intrusion into your cellular device:

First and foremost, this will provide people who are curious about my fruitmonstering diet some open, honest insight into the challenges the lifestyle entails and the creative solutions I develop in the face of them.  If I am grabbing lunch with friends or colleagues or heading out to dinner on a date with my beautiful fiance Teddi, you can count on the low-down dining details.  I’ve come across some misconceptions from friends and family that being a fruitmonster means you skip out on such things.  This is completely not true!  What a terribly lonely and sad way to live that would be!  Cooking/eating together is a fundamental point of interaction within society, an expression of culture and conduit to conversation!  Being a fruitmonster doesn’t lead me to boycott a family meal, to stay home on Friday night or to pass-over an eat-out-invite from friends!  Instead, such events mean making an adventure out of ordering and they create a great opportunity to talk about fruitmonster.com !

Secondly, this will provide me with some serious accountability to the FruitMonster.com community.  I sincerely and passionately believe in the amazing health benefits that underly the low fat, high carb, fuit and leafy green centered fruitmonster lifestyle and I am striving to be the bestest-fruitiest-monster I can be in order to inspire you into better health.  If I eat four bags of chips, it makes a greasy-guilty appearance on the twitter page, if I eat ten cookies, it heads to the twitter page with contrite-crumb-covered fingers.  This isn’t some sort of masochistic monkhood I am imposing upon myself nor is it meant to turn my twitter feed into a confessional booth.  It is instead an opportunity to take my commitment to health and to this webpage to the next level, which, in the end, benefits those who matter most, all of you.  (Remember, this website is about inspiring you!)

So here goes: I, the FruitMonster, do hereby solemnly swear to twitter all foodstuff eaten, gobbled, devoured, gorged, grazed, munched, nibbled, pecked at or dined upon, no matter how sinful, strange or (hopefully) fruity.  Should at any time I wish not to post what I am eating, I will declare that I have gone ‘on vacation’, an event which is not to occur regularly (and thereby defeat the entire purpose).

Dear fruitopia, what I’ve I gotten myself into??

Enjoy the new Munch Report… it could get interesting!

Wowzers!  It has been nearly five months since my last blog post!  With nearly four months since my last recipe update!  How did I become such a slacker?  How did I manage to disown the blog-o-sphere for that extended period of time?  What could have possibly contained my passionate FruitMonster tirades with such earnest restraint?  Did you fear that I left my life of massive grapefruit juice consumption behind?

Well my fellow monster friends, I must admit that I have quite the excuse for leaving you alone for so long!  These past few months have been insanely busy!  I finished writing a Masters Thesis, graduated with a Masters Degree, did a 30 day smoothie fast (more on this soon!), sold off all of my belongings, put my poor confused dog  in the cargo hold of a 747, snagged up my wonderful fiance and … moved to Australia!  Oh yeah baby, the FruitMonster blog is headed ‘Down Under’ (thats ‘D-OW-n Un-duh’ for all of you back home)!  And now, for the next few years, I will be sending monstrous updates out to fruit-lovers from a new hemisphere, a new perspective and a stomach full of all sorts of nature’s goodies.

Now let me tell you, as a hardcore frugivore, I’m excited about the juicy possibilities.  Australia has a diverse set of climate regions for growing all sorts of fantastic fruity goodness.  From fresh, sweet oranges in the southeastern groves, to a wide variety of luscious mangoes and mandarins in the north, through a ton of tasty tomato types and on into crunchy pears and apples by the dozens, there are going to be some great opportunities for me to chow down, juice away, and blend up an endless stream of new fruitmonster.com blog content.  And I haven’t even begun to explore all the new foods to try.  There are all sorts of new types of leafy greens and green veggies to throw into my green smoothies, including flowery endives, lots o’ lettuces (crisphead, cos, butterhead, oakleaf, coral), english and ginormous silverbeat spinach!  And… I’m going to try to contain my excitement here, someone at my work told me that they organize mango purchases by the truckload during the summer!  I’ll take two of those!

But perhaps what I am most excited about is that this new life of mine in Oz will bring with it plenty of inspiration for yumtastic recipes and blog posts, as well as a whole new audience of people to share this site with!  And with 1 in 4 Australians obese, nearly 900,000 of them plagued with diabetes and cancer as the leading cause of death in the country, the more kangaroos kids that come hopping through this site, the better!   Because spreading a healthy inspiration and bringing people the resources to fruit-up-their-life is what fruitmonster.com is all about!

Now go grab some fruit!

Hey Aussies, like the fruit boxes seen below?  Check out Aussie Farmer’s Direct!

Armloads of Australian Awesome-ness