My wife and I were in Farmers Market this morning and we stumbled upon lanzones!  Imagine, lanzones in January.  We tasted and tasted until we found a bunch that tasted really fantastic.

The seller said the lanzones came from Camuigin.  His sources say that after the terrible typhoon last year, all of a sudden by the end of this year the lanzones started blooming and fruiting again!

Ah nature.  Making up for the lost reproductive opportunity last year.  There was a lanzones shortage last year due to the big typhoon.  I don’t know how long this mini bloom will last.  The lanzones we got came in at P 120 / kilo.  Expensive, but not that exorbitant yet.

I found a source of reliable raw organic guavas in my local market.  The guavas are usually meant for cooking.  But a great number of them are edible as raw fruit.  My kids love guava.

The old lady selling the guava told me that guava is potent vitamin C.  She recalls that when she was a little girl, their parents gave guavas to the children when they had colds or coughs.  Wow, ancient knowledge handed down to me.

I was back again at the same stalls, my boy reminded me to buy more guavas.  We wound up buying 1.5 kilos, that’s all there was.  Satisfying.

The raw paleolithic diet yahoo groups are helpful. The old timers pointed out that the newbies gorged on too much protein by eating the lean cuts of beef. They are right. Protein overdose. The trick they say was to get the fattier portions.

So off we went this afternoon to Farmers Market and bought 2 fattier 1/2 kilos of beef. One was the nape and one was the brisket. I think I liked the brisket better. But I remember having an easier time searing the well defined flat sirloin.

Me and the kids were more animalistic this time. Just use bare hands to rip off parts of the seared beef. Chew and swallow. That was what the raw paleo guys taught me. The fatty portions were hard to chew, just swallow. I sure hope my stomach does what its supposed to. I will know tomorrow.

My sister in law said I was a caveman eating seared / raw beef. I told her this was called the caveman diet. Technically, the raw paleolithic diet.

I was lucky to pass by C.P. Garcia road today on the way home just before lunch.  My favorite jackfruit vendor was open.  Those policemen are hot wanting to close them down.  For what crime?  Selling jack fruit beside the road in their squatter homes?

This time I was really lucky.  The meat was almost orange.  The meat was thick and juicy.  More than perfect!  One of the best I’ve ever tasted.  Lunch was a jackfruit feast.  I ate most of it in the car.  Then at home I shared with the kids.  They wanted more.   And I did have more, I had another slice I kept in the car.  That one we ate at dinner time.

I am reading a book which explains the health benefits Maoris of New Zealand get from eating raw New Zealand mussels. It is a book promoting the benefits of the oil extract brand named Lyprinol, anti-inflammatory properties for asthma and arthritis.

My raw food study analysis show that most people today are sick due to the lack of beneficial fats and oils. Bad science calling for lower cholesterol levels and substituting with artificial oils aka trans fatty acids in place of the natural fats humans should be eating. Raw beef, suet, lard, raw oysters, raw eggs, raw mussels… So you give people back these beneficial oils in the form of a supplement say Lyprinol and BOOM! People have their health back. Just like taking Cod Liver Oil a few decades ago.

So I decided to experiment today and bought just 1 kilo of fresh live raw green Philippine mussels aka “tahong”. My maid taught me how to pry open a raw mussel with a knife. Too much work and the meat stuck to both sides of the shell which made scooping it out as a chore. The easy way was to fire up the grill. Put the mussels on the grill. As the intense heat weakens or kills the mussel, it opens up. You watch it and at that precise moment, get your opened mussel. So much easier. Still raw.

I got organic coconut vinegar plus garlic in a dip and coconut vinegar plus ginger and onions in another dip. Great feast I had this evening. It was great. Red tide? Doesn’t scare me. January is still the cold season. By March or April I would be wary to eat mussels.

Next time I’ll try oysters.

My driver pointed out the obvious yesterday as we were in the goat store. We also tried their Kinilaw na kambing (goat). Kinilaw means “kinain” na “hilaw”. So it is joining two words. Eaten Raw is the rough translation in english.

It seems the raw goat we had in the store is made from the goat they didn’t sell the previous day, which makes it less fresh, or I could be wrong. To make sure your kinilaw is fresh, make it yourself!

I made a previous post regarding kinilaw of fish. Same thing with goats. But goat meat needs to be grilled lightly first. There’s no escaping it. The process of removing the hair from the goat requires the goat body be dunked in boiling water and blasted with fire. But the muscles and the internal organs are still raw.

We chose the kinilaw goat which seemed yummy. The ones with the tiny diced ginger.

Vinegar is used to clean the meat.  It is the calamansi that “cooks” the meat.

I discovered that the EDSA Central Bus Terminal before the Trinoma Mall is a great place to buy fresh goats! There are five or six goat stalls there in that one terminal, all side by side, interleaved with canteens that serve all goat dishes. Goat heaven for goat lovers. You can buy any goat part you want, freshly slaughtered in the morning or right in front of you. You can buy live goats too.

The best part about goat as meat is that goats by default in the Philippines are organic. Fed only on fresh grass. There is no such thing as goat feeds. Goats need a pasture, sunshine, water, vegetation. So if you fellow Pinoys are still stuck eating miserable, stinky, sickly pigs and 45 day chickens… see for yourself which animals are healthy in the Philippines… goats and cows!

Fresh is important. Goats can be as fresh as they can be slaughtered in front of you. Or if you don’t like watching that you can just buy the goat they slaughtered in the early morning. I would think Paleolithic Diet followers would like to see and experience slaughtering in front of your eyes. Then you would really know if the Paleolithic Diet is for you. Brings out the hunter in you huh? You have to slaughter them to eat them you know.

Anyway we walked back and forth and found the freshest goat and the freshest 2 livers we could find. One liver was in the ice box with the freshly killed goat… still warm… and the other liver was still inside the hanging goat carcass. Cheap. P 160 / kilo for goat liver. And here they can sell you just the liver, not with all the innards.

So I happily take home the livers and experiment with my searing just like I did with the steak. My two boys ate with me at lunch. We seared some of the liver. I discovered goat liver needed a bit more searing / cooking. It doesn’t immediately appeal to my taste buds entirely raw… unlike the beef steak that appealed to my taste entirely raw. The trick was to cut it up in smaller pieces and then sear them. Darn I dropped one piece and our dog grabbed it before I could pick it up.

Dinner time was goat liver again and this time we tried the grill with charcoal. We made thinner slices and let the maid grill it for us. It was still bloody fresh, all around our plates. But it tasted better lightly grilled this time. In fact the goat liver tasted great. Without condiments. The kids tried one of the condiments in the kitchen but found out it tasted better without condiments.

That is the lesson I learned and I taught my wife with this goat dinner. That for us to get the benefits of better nutrition, we must eat our foods without condiments. That is a page from Natural Hygiene. To determine which are our true foods… they taste great alone. When you use condiments, seasoning, marinating, you are dependent on those artificial flavors. It is as if the meat you bought was cheap, bad, and rotting, it needs flavoring to mask it and pass it off as food.

Imagine, if this liver was in the freezer for a couple of days. It would have tasted bad if it were grilled alone. Just like the beef steak we had. Never refrigerated the beef steak was awesome in taste. One day in the refrigerator… so so… after 2 days I just threw the last piece away. But for the cooked eater… with their LOW STANDARDS… would happily cook the old meat with condiments… happily eating low quality meat.

Eating fresh, raw or lightly cooked meats without condiments forces you to rethink the concept of REAL FOOD. The issue of Freshness is clear. Freshness is vital. The freezer and the refrigerator do not lock in freshness. Freshness is life to give life. As much as fresh raw ripe fruit is obvious to our senses, fresh raw meat is also obvious to our senses. Rotten, bad, old meat DOES NOT get healthier when you cook it. This is why eggs must be eaten RAW. You immediately see, smell and taste if it is fresh and good. Cooking and condiments obscures and covers up the rottenness of fruits, vegetables or meats and passes it off as food.

No wonder routinely cooked food eaters are sick! They are so far removed from the concept of REAL FOOD they cannot discern what REAL FOOD is. And if you cannot discern REAL FOOD then you are routinely being fed BAD FOOD.

I observe our maids. These people are from the provinces, the farms, the mountains, the sea shores. I take them with me to market. I view their faces, their frowns when I go out and choose produce. They instinctively know what fresh is. They used to make fun of me or keep quiet and not eat the fruits or vegetables I picked because it is OBVIOUS to them that I was choosing something already ROTTEN in their eyes.

So I urge you to learn to eat raw. It’s good training for you. Freshness is king. Fresh food gives life.