The Raw Chef Blog

Wow, what a few days I’ve had.  Flew out of Heathrow on Tuesday having got on the plane 10 minutes before it was supposed to fly.  Readers of a previous post could be forgiven for thinking that I didn’t leave enough time and was late, but actually it was due to the extra security checks.  I wasn’t the last one on either so take-off was delayed by about 40 minutes.

I’m here now though and absolutely loving New York.  It all feels strangely familiar to me, as if I have been here before.  From the minute I got here I felt completely at home.  That could be the fact that I’ve seen it all on so many films, and I have to say, it really is like you see in the films, there really is steam coming out of the drain covers!

I’ve been getting myself acclimatised to my surroundings; learning to use the Subway, and studying maps to work out how the whole street numbering thing works, not to mention working out whether Taxis are actually supposed to stop when you’re crossing the road in front of them!

Found myself in Madison Avenue today after getting some Portabella Fajitas and a Blue Green Smoothie from Matthew Kenney’s Blue Green Organic Juice Cafe (yes I have been eating very well, but more on that later) and taking a stroll through Central Park.

I’ve also been finding myself a nice little sublet apartment to stay in and I think today I cracked it.  I’m really pleased I’ve found somewhere as it was playing on my mind that I didn’t have anywhere to stay for the time I’m here, there’s no such thing as a cheap hotel here so that just wasn’t an option.

Usually I’m quite comfortable with leaving things to the last minute but leaving without sorting accommodation (the flat I did have sorted fell through at relatively the last minute) did fill me with a certain amount of fear.  It was a real fear of the unknown because I’ve never been to NYC before and didn’t know what to expect, right from how I was going to get from the airport to how I was going to get on the right bus for my hotel!  Fortunately I’ve been reading Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power Of Now’ which helped me to deal the situation better.  Whenever we create psychological time, that is, thinking about the future, we create a space between the ‘now’ and some illusory point in time.  And if we see a future event that worries us ("what if I can’t find somewhere to live?!!") we fill that gap with anxiety.  That’s why we must live in the now, because there is nothing other than the moment we have at this precise point in ‘time’.  If nothing can be done about the situation we imagine (which is always imagined worse than it is) then don’t think about it.  In the past I would have told you that is easier said than done but all it really involves is being conscious of the present moment.  This also has the benefit of bringing into play all sorts of unseen forces that cme alive when we stop imagining the worst and trust in the Universe to deliver what we really need.  Being fully conscious is where it’s at!

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I think I may have mentioned before that I don’t watch much TV (every time I tell someone that I proceed to describe several different programs in detail!) but there’s a program that I’m absolutely glued to when it’s on, having only watched it for the first time 2 weeks ago.  That program is BBC 2’s Dragons’ Den:

"Dragons’ Den is a series where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to secure investment finance from our dragons - elite business entrepreneurs."

I am completely amazed by the lack of some of these entrepreneurs’ preparation.  It makes for compulsive and sometimes cringeworthy viewing but honestly, what are they thinking?  The very first guy I saw had come along to present his idea to the dragons, only to completely lose it when questioned about his figures, both for staffing and projected turnover.  I mean, he had absolutely no idea and even said, "I’m sorry, I haven’t prepared for this". What???  This is all despite Duncan Bannatyne’s top pitching tip, "Know your numbers, know your percentages."

Having read-up on the dragons (something which the entrepreneurs would be well-advised to do) I found a great part of Theo Paphitis’ story and how he became so successful:

Theo returned to the insurance industry in sales at 20, where he discovered his natural ability of pointing out the obvious and applying common sense (which is not common)

With so many people to listen to for ideas, in any field, it’s very easy to think that one person has all the answers and that what they are doing is ‘right’.  It’s easy to completely miss some very common sense judgements that could have been made all the difference to your health, wealth, relationships and just about anything you can think of, if only you would open up to the possibility of there being more than one right answer.

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I’ve just watched an episode of ‘Just for Laughs’, a hidden camera show, which I wouldn’t usually do, but it was on after the football, honest!

Anyway, one of their jokes was to have a girl in a shopping mall giving out hot dogs for the purpose of trying a new range of sauces.  Each person was given a hot dog and squirted on their own sauces from those massive pump-action sauce bottles that were coloured red, brown and yellow, as they usually are for tomato ketchup, brown sauce and mustard.

The joke was that each of the new sauces were coloured with a luminous green, blue and purple colouring.  They were horrific, they didn’t even look like edible substances.  Even the people who were trying the hot dogs turned their noses up at them.

Despite all that, they still ate them!  Unbelievable!  They had no idea what the sauces were made of, there was just a feeling of, "well, it must be OK to eat otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to be giving them away in public."  I’m sure the colouring was ‘food grade’, but it appears Morgan Spurlock was right when he said that people will eat anything!

I don’t know whether this says more about our desire for anything free, or about our complete inability to discern when it comes to putting food into our mouths.

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It’s taken me over a week to write about it, for various reasons, but last Sunday (30th April) was my 30th Birthday!!!  So on a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning, Karen, Luke and I set off in my car for the coast.  The plan was to spend the day in Brighton and then go on to Bognor and then Chichester for some food with family and friends.  We had to change that plan slightly when we got to Brighton as it was just so busy.  Because of the Bank Holiday weekend, the car parks were all full - in all my years living in Sussex I’ve never known this to happen before!  There were even people waiting in queues 10+ cars deep at carparks with ‘FULL’ signs lit

So we drove through Brighton, admiring the sea, finally being able to positively answer Luke’s, "is that the seaside?" line of questioning, which had started about half an hour into the journey.  We were then left to try to explain why we weren’t stopping and had another 45 minutes to go before we could get out on the sand.

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I’ve come to realise the power of focus and sticking with a job until it’s finished.  In the past it’s been a real weakness of mine to start something more appealing when there’s still work to be done on a current project.  This past week, with my house move looming, i’ve consciously been resisting that temptation in an effort to improve my productivity and get everything done.  Isn’t it amazing that when you notice how often you do things, it’s really surprising how much you do them?  I would catch myself every couple of minutes thinking, "i’ll just check my email" or, "i really need to phone…".

Being into all things natural I like to look to nature for clues, especially animals.  It was no surprise to me when, on Friday, I was emailed this wonderful story from Bob Perks.

He’s focused.  I mean really focused.  His eye is on the ball and nothing with distract him.

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