Thanks Nathan for your Primal Diet and Amish farm experiences!

More about Nathan!

I am satisfied with the Primal Diet - experimenting and refining...

Epilogue

It has been nearly 2 years since I first wrote the Amish Diaries. I prepared this for blog publication while sitting in an open air kitchen in the middle of the jungle on the Big Island of Hawaii (where this photo was taken), typing and editing the last of The Amish Diaries. I am wondering how successful it is going to be and if people are going to find it interesting. I think about how much has changed and how much has stayed the same.

I am still friends with Albert and talk with him regularly. Because of my experience living with him, I fell into becoming his “broker” and was able to get him some large accounts. He is now busier than ever and is sending his products all over the United States and even into other countries. However, he has had many close calls. The PDA (Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, I like to call them the PDA-Holes) is well aware of his and other Amish and Mennonite activities and have tried to shut him down numerous times. Luckily, the PDA is so inept and unorganized that simply by Albert asking the PDA inspector for his identification when he comes to his farm is enough to confuse and set them back for months. Also, Aajonus Vonderplanitz and The Right to Choose Healthy Foods organization have been instrumental in helping Albert prepare legal documents, assist him with court cases and most importantly, simply know his rights. It has truly been a pleasure and a learning experience to watch the legal savvy of Aajonus in action. Without his love, knowledge and countless hours he has donated, Albert and many others, would have been shut down a long time ago.

As always I am still constantly experimenting with and refining my diet. Living with Albert was a powerful transition point for me from a Weston Price diet to an Aajonus Vonderplanitz Primal Diet. So far I am very satisfied with Aajonus’s diet and recommendations. After years of being fooled by unhealthy looking false gurus, I feel I have finally found a friend and a teacher who, frankly, knows what the fuck he is talking about. I have a home in Los Angeles right by the local Primal Diet style raw foods co-op and have been able to integrate myself in the community there. Having that resource of hundreds of people who are doing the same “weird” diet as me has been integral in my healing. I regularly correspond with Aajonus. As the months go by I find my respect and love for him grows. He is always very kind and humble and continually inspires me to learn more about the world around me. I credit him with saving my life and I will always be thankful for his tireless efforts to learn what makes us healthy.

I am submitting this blog while living at Pangaia, a permaculture and raw food community on the Big Island of Hawaii with about 8 other people. Pangaia is offering me the chance to get truly “primal”. I have gone spear fishing, wild boar hunting, slaughtered goats and drank the fresh blood. I believe that I will never know the true power of food unless I find the best quality available, Pangaia is offering me that chance. I have found that everything people say can kill me actually makes me stronger. I have eaten 1 year old rotten meat, pig intestines, brains, raw organs, fresh blood, feces and I haven’t died yet. It is a constant effort to undue years of brainwashing and force myself to be open to eating things which, for lack of a better term, are revolting. However, if there is one thing that I have learned, it is that when it comes to my health, it is usually the last thing I want to do or the thing that I am most adverse to, that ends up being what my body needs to heal. The fact that thousands of others have blazed the trail before me, and that I am not the first raw astronaut, offers some hope and comfort.

Living experience on a raw food farm - acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank Albert, his family and all the other Amish I hung out with who helped bridge the Amish/English cultural gap by allowing me, a raw meat eating, eccentric surfer from California into their homes and lives. I would like to thank my Mom, Dad and brother for putting up with my new choice of lifestyle once I came back from the Amish. I know raw chicken, 8 month old rotten buffalo meat and the multitude of scary and smelly jars that cluttered our house and refrigerators took some getting used to and I want you to know that without your love and support, it would have not been possible. Diane O’Connell for her continued love, support and help in editing the book. Mary Beth Clark and her son Mathew for being my kindred raw spirits, and motivating me to get it published. Manis and everyone at Pangaia for providing a loving raw food community for me to live, work and experiment at. James Steward and everyone at the Rawesome Co-op for providing a place for me to sell my book and by creating an epicenter of health and community. My current success with my diet would not have been possible without the Rawesome Co-op. Weston Price Foundation and Sally Fallon for getting me started on the path towards health and activism and for supporting so many local farmers. The Right To Choose Healthy Food Foundation for their activism and support of local farmers. Aajonus Vonderplanitz, my good friend and raw food compadre. I credit you with saving my life. Your attitude and love for the truth is a continual inspiration for me and I look forward to growing together in the future. Finally, I would like to thank all of the “astronauts” out there. Those people who are willing to dietarily boldly go where no one has gone before. When friends and family have turned their backs and said you were crazy and that eating raw pork, pig intestines, trichonosis, rotten meat, rat lung worm, brains, mongoose, baby mice was going to kill you, you still pushed forward because you needed to know the truth. Your persistence and dedication has helped thousands of people to get healthy. I hope all of the raw foodists realize that most of them would never have transitioned to a raw diet if it wasn’t for the pioneers who had tested the waters by eating things i.e. raw fish, raw dairy that at the time, were considered extremely dangerous and crazy. I have learned that the biggest obstacle to my health is my own prejudices and close-mindedness and I implore the raw food community to support scientific, unbiased and unorthodox research. You raw pioneers truly understand me and are my kindred spirits and I thank you for your inspiration. Everyone lives, some of us die trying.

And I would like to thank Mary Jo for editing and support. I would like to thank Jim Ellingson for his tireless efforts in getting my first book online and for believing in me."
Preface

So how does a “never worked a day in his life” white boy from the suburbs of Dallas, Texas end up living with a raw milk bootlegging Amish family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania? To put it simply, the common love of good food.

I first met Albert at a Weston Price conference in Long Island, New York. I was volunteering for the event and one of the event organizers, a kindly old man named Harry was allowing me to spend the night with him. Albert as well as another Amish named Mathew Fischer were selling their wares at the event and needed a place to stay. So Harry invited them to stay the night also and we had a big sleep over party.

It was the next day that I truly began to fall in love with the idea of living with Albert. His booth was a veritable buffet of life. Cheeses, yogurt, eggnog, creams, eggs, breads, kvass. This was the first time in my life where I was truly able to eat anything I wanted without fear of ill consequences. I remember eating a cup of one of his homemade egg-nogs, then being so overcome by the flavor and nutrition that I asked for 2 more. The more I ate the better I felt (usually the more I ate, the worse I felt with food). My stomach was bulging but I was fat, happy and felt no pain. I was starting to believe that I found the answer, that I could actually feel good for once in my life. Years and years of praying to God to make me better were finally coming true. Then it hit me, I was graduating cooking school in a couple of months and I was required to do an internship. Why not ask Albert? He agreed immediately and that is how The Amish Diaries began.

What follows is nearly the exact transcription of my diary entries of living with Albert from December 13, 2004 to January 14, 2005. If it was up to me, I would have left it exactly as I had written it. However due to reasons of clarity I have been advised to do some minor edits, add foot notes and an index of names. Also, names and places have been changed in order to protect Albert and the other people mentioned in the book. As you will find out, the Amish are a private people and I wish to respect that. Besides what I have mentioned, everything that you are about to read is exactly as I have written it. It is my intention to preserve the soul and “rawness” of my experience and have the reader be able to experience the excitement and newness just as I was experiencing it.

There are many reasons I wrote The Amish Diaries. I wanted to bring to light the extraordinary struggles that ordinary people go through in order to make healing food available to the masses. In this day and age, nutrient-dense food is a luxury and not a right and I want readers to see that without the continued efforts of people like Aajonus Vonderplanitz, Sally Fallon, Albert and many others, their access to healthy food will be become more and more restricted. To this day, Amish Farmers are still being illegally harassed by the PDA and other government organizations and whether it keeps happening or not is up to you. You the reader must not expect others to do it for you, or as the old story goes, once everyone else is gone, no one will be left to stand for you.

I also wanted to share the journey that I went through as I was figuring out “which diet is right for me”. I often tell my friends and clients who are in the process of changing their diets that they need to be aware of how big a shift they are making in their lives. Friends, habits, lifestyles, living situations and relationships will all be drastically affected, for better and for worse, simply by changing what we put in our bodies. The public is generally not aware of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual pain that people like myself and others must go through when we change our diet. We don’t do it because it is a fad or we are [hypochondriacs]; we do it because we must in order to live. There is an intense amount of self-reflecting that goes one. A continual building up and breaking down of the ego that must be done in order to rid oneself of the self-imposed mental barriers that much of the time are the real cause of our unhealthiness. I want others to see that they are not alone and it is normal for these feelings and situations to happen. If my suffering can help a few people transition easier in their diet, then I am doing something right. It has been said that it is easier to change ones religion than one’s diet and in my experience this has been true.

I hope you enjoy The Amish Diaries as much as I did writing them. When you have finished reading please check out Right To Choose Healthy Foods [an organization set up by my good friend Aajonus Vonderplanitz, that fights for us to get the foods we need to be healthy] and make a generous contribution. .

Living experience on a raw food farm - memories of the Amish

Day 33 1/14/05

A cheerful light skinned, plump, black man just walked into the train car. He announced, “Tickassss Out! Take ya ‘tam!” I asked, “How ya doin?” He said, “Fine, sounds like the train’s fawlling apaaaart.” The train was making a lot of noise. I said goodbye to everyone today. I didn’t stop to say bye to Elizabeth, Naomi, Peter or Susan. The driver was ready and I felt bad making him wait. I shouldn’t have felt bad, I should have said goodbye. I played a final best 2 out of 3 in Ping-Pong with George. He beat me both times. He is the official “Grass Fed Farm Ping-Pong Champion.” He is the “Organic Ping-Pong Champion.” I told him that I am going to come back and surprise him one day and ask for a rematch. I want to catch him off guard so I might have an advantage. I’m going to miss them, not in a huge way. Enough to make me think fondly of them. I’m sitting on a train with all of these English. I feel different, even more different from them now. I don’t want this feeling to end. I only want it to grow stronger. I don’t want to watch TV, radio, music or movies. I don’t want to want to do those things¹. I think of all the years that I’ve wasted watching TV with my family. We could have been out taking a walk, throwing the Frisbee, talking, creating memories. I feel angry at a society that has taken this from me. It has warped the minds of the people I love, destroyed their health, cheapened our relationships. I don’t know how to feel or who to be angry at. I just want everything to be okay. I want my family to be okay. I want my dad to not die soon and have his health². I want him and my mom to make money and feel secure. I want them to have occupations that are meaningful and help people. I want them to be fulfilled. I want to have a loving relationship with my brother. I want him to love me and want to spend time with me. I want to make my parents happy and proud of me. I want to make money doing something that I love and that helps people. I want to surf, in warm waters, really, really well. I don’t know how many of these things are going to come to pass. I’ve been finding out that generally, what I feel, comes to pass. Half of me is confident and filled with purpose, the other half is scared, timid and has low self-esteem. Am I going to make money? Am I going to have to go to another school and learn more? Am I going to have to learn about astrology and start doing that? Am I going to have to start eating raw food all the time? I don’t want to be anything else. Massage therapist, Nutritionist, Chef, Astrologer. I just want to be Nate, surf and help people. The train just passed a parking lot where I saw a kid doing BMX jumps.

1 That feeling still remains, but the willpower doesn’t! I fell right back into my own habits as soon as I got back home. Society is just too addictive for me.

2 Several years before that, my dad almost died in the hospital from a “heart infection”. The doctors had to saw through his chest and replace part of his heart with a pig’s. The doctors said that he probably got the infection from flying on a plane. I do not agree with their theory. I have eaten raw chicken brains, poop, raw meat, raw dairy and 5 month of buffalo kept in a glass jar on my stairwell at room temperature since I was at that Amish farm. I have not died and have only gotten stronger because of it. I know hundreds of people who eat that same food and they are healthy. How could “some bacteria on a plane” have almost killed my dad, if I eat bacteria and pathogenic-laden food every day and feel great! No one has been able to answer that for me yet. Healing my father has been one of the driving forces behind my quest for health.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 32 1/13/05

I’m hanging out with Albert and Marie right now. Lucy and Lisa are asleep on the couch. The wind is howling outside. The chimes are chiming. Albert is using my cell phone. I let him use it so we could hang out instead of him going to the phone outside. I hope I’m not being a bad influence. It’s fun though, to be a bad influence. Marie and I are eavesdropping on what people are saying. Some customers are bitching, others are just leaving orders. It was really warm and windy today. Extremely warm and foggy. Albert complimented me today. He said that the Amish made me a farmer and a Dutchman. I liked that. Cultured Bloodered Milk is a funny name.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 31 1/12/05

I woke up at 5:00 am this morning. I got picked up at 6:00 am to be taken to Christian Ackerman's to butcher a pig. The driver almost left without me. Peter didn’t know I was getting picked up and told her it was the wrong house. I had to run after her. She was fat and pimply. It was still dark out and extremely foggy. We started talking about the Amish. She drives a lot of them around. She thought I might be Amish. She found it surprising that I was able to live with them and they let me. She asked if they have running water or take showers much. I said, “Yes, they do take showers.” She said, “They smell a lot of the time when she drives them.” She asked, “Is it going to be hard for you to butcher a pig?” I said, “Not really.” She said that she doesn’t eat too much meat and that whenever she does she usually feels gross and will stay away from it for months. She doesn’t eat read meat, eats a little chicken, fish and usually turkey. I asked her if she feels good when she eats organic grass-fed meat. She didn’t know what that was. I explained to her what they did to cows in factory farms. She said, “That’s mean.” Christian I met at the conference a week ago. He’s a young guy, about 23. He has a wife, two kids and a whole farm to take care of. I ate breakfast with him and he made some eggnog with coconut kefir. I thought it was funny and neat that this Amish guy knew about and liked coconut kefir. Breakfast was good. We went to the butcher shop. I helped out his brother Michael in the barn a little bit, sweeping the hay etc. Christian has 15 Jersey cows. One has a crooked face. They killed about 2-3 pigs yesterday. They were Homer’s and he was going to come by and help today. I spent a couple of hours cutting them up. I talked with Christian a lot about Weston Price, Amish and English, etc. He said he used to have his own construction business and had a cell phone. He said he needed the cell phone in order to run a successful business but he is glad that he doesn’t have to have it anymore. He said it would never stop ringing and he felt that the radiation caused cancer. He had a friend who used to always chew on the antenna and ended up getting a blister on the inside of his lip. He talked about how the Amish aren’t perfect like everyone thinks and how they are human too. It was a good time. Michael, his brother, is 15. He was making beef jerky and gave me some. Christian had a bite and said, “Hmmmmm, RAW” It was funny, like a Raw Meat Commercial. They used whole garlic, whole onion and naturally fermented soy sauce. It was good. I cut up the pig into different sections for scrapple, bacon and sausage. I was working on grinding up the lard in a meat grinder and Homer came in with his son Andrew. Andrew was crying a lot. Later as we were cutting up pork, Andrew would take the bone and eat the raw meat off the bone like it was nothing. Homer said they gave Andrew raw meat every once in a while and he loves it. I thought that was great. They don’t like giving him raw pork though.¹ We took some of the cooked bones and some organs out of the wood-fire oven and I saw Andrew walking around munching on a liver. I hope my kids are like that. The kidneys were the delicacy that day. As soon as we took them out of the wood fire oven, everyone went after them. We added some salt and they tasted incredible. I felt really good, a little bit like when I eat a raw liver. We went to eat lunch, it was the best meal I’ve had since I’ve been here: extremely decadent spare ribs, tender and fatty beef, sweet potatoes cooked in cream and butter, peas and carrots, fermented salsa, cottage cheese, yogurt with raspberry sauce, milk and of course, butter. I showed them how it is possible to eat the spare rib bones if they are cooked long enough. They fell apart in my mouth. They tried it too and seemed to like it. It’s funny how a lot of these Amish people who are into the Weston Price stuff are open to just about anything, even raw meat. I feel I could get them to eat anything if I told them Sally or Aajonus said it was okay. I ate till I was stuffed. I still felt decently good. When we finished eating, we went back to the barn to make scrapple and sausage. Scrapple is pork scraps, organic lard and fermented grain (Christian does corn, wheat and oats with a kefir culture). I mixed it in the wood-fired kettle, it was great. I was addicted to Scrapple when I first came to live with Albert. I left with Homer Adams. We stopped to get some gas and Homer stepped out of the car. The driver turned around and said, “I’m trying to figure you out, are you Amish or what?” I told him, I was helping them out with some stuff. He told me how he thought they were weird cause they live like it’s the 1800’s. He said he drives a lot of them around. On the weekend, he’ll take a bunch of Amish girls to the beach and they will put on two-pieces. He said he’s had a couple over at his house swimming before. He said on weekends, there will sometimes be these huge Amish parties that 100 kids will go to. He said he used to have a 12 passenger van and the he would charge Amish kids $12 a pop to take them home. He said he would make $200 a night sometimes and would be up to 3 am. I stopped at Homer’s; he had his nephew drive me home in a carriage. He was about 12 years old². It was extremely foggy. It felt like a Disney land ride with fake fog. I already said what I ate today.

1 Sometimes, people have funny rationalizations. So raw beef and fish is okay, but raw pork? GROSS! I think people believe too much that they read. People freak out about salmonella in chicken, but maybe the salmon industry made that up to get people to eat more salmon. Then, the chicken industry retorted by creating the “mercury in salmon” theory. The chicken and salmon industries both attack the beef industry by saying that red meat is bad for cholesterol and the heart. But the beef industry counters by promoting the image, “Real men eat 10 oz steaks!” Beef, chicken and salmon all gang up on pork. The Pork industry needs to hire better PR people. “The other white meat”, just doesn’t cut it.

2 Many of the Amish that I was with, would give their children responsibility at young ages. For example, teach them how to drive horse and buggies before they were 12 years old. I like this way of parenting and felt it was more beneficial. Among the English, it’s like, “You are such a cute baby, look at the cute baby. We do everything for our baby.” Then the kid starts going through puberty and isn’t as cute anymore and the parents say, ‘Get a job! Get some responsibility!” The kid doesn’t know what to do because his parents never showed him how and he gets blamed for it. That is how it was for me. When I went to college, I didn’t even know how to do laundry. Parents need to take more responsibility.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 30 1/11/05

Hand hurts too much to write. I caught 200 chickens that were to be sold at an auction today. Luckily, I didn’t have to kill them. Peter told me we had to clean the entire hen house tonight of poop, it’s over 300 feet long. I was thinking “Uh-uh”. We didn’t finish it thank God. They will finish tomorrow when I am interning at Christian Ackerman’s. My hand fucking hurts and is sore. Breakfast was eggs, bacon, and fermented stuff. Lunch: chicken brains and eyes (all raw, brains taste surprisingly good, not a raw gross smell at all). Dinner was ham hock, mashed potatoes, peas and pickles.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 30 1/11/05

Hand hurts too much to write. I caught 200 chickens that were to be sold at an auction today. Luckily, I didn’t have to kill them. Peter told me we had to clean the entire hen house tonight of poop, it’s over 300 feet long. I was thinking “Uh-uh”. We didn’t finish it thank God. They will finish tomorrow when I am interning at Christian Ackerman’s. My hand fucking hurts and is sore. Breakfast was eggs, bacon, and fermented stuff. Lunch: chicken brains and eyes (all raw, brains taste surprisingly good, not a raw gross smell at all). Dinner was ham hock, mashed potatoes, peas and pickles.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 28 1/9/05

Lazy day. We woke up late. Too late. We started eating breakfast at 11 am. I took a nap afterwards, and then it was 2:30. I had to let the cows out. The day went by pretty quickly. It took me over an hour to write the diary entry from the previous day. Too tired to write it last night. I finally ate “intestines and contents” today from a turkey. I chose the turkey over the chicken because the turkey’s livers looked really good, almost dark purple. I figured the intestines would be good too then. The intestines weren’t too bad, the poop inside was pretty gross. I think it made me feel better. I’m pretty sure it did. I had a lot of energy. I think my liver felt better. Can’t wait to leave. Breakfast was raw unborn egg nog, cheese, hash browns and eggs. Lunch: eggnog, intestines and contents.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 27 1/8/05

We woke up around 5:30 am this morning. I was getting picked up by Homer at 6:30 am and I wanted to help out a little bit before I went. We were going to an 8 hour conference by this Mennonite Nurse named Melissa who was giving a lecture on Ten Steps Towards Super-Duper Health. She invited several of the Amish farmers to set up booths and sell their stuff. Albert wasn’t going to go, they were going spend the weekend at Albert’s sister’s. They couldn’t get a driver who was cheap enough. But at the last minute Albert decided to go to the conference too. Homer was late picking me up, Albert ended up taking me. Before he left, he was talking to Marie in her bedroom. She was crying and saying something in Penn. Dutch. We left and went to the conference. Melissa said there were going to be 150 people there. There were about 70. It was largely a mixture of Mennonites and Amish. Mennonites are like Amish Light or Diet Amish. They have to wear plain clothes like the Amish, but they can be light blue or have floral patterns though. The women have to wear white caps, and without the strings that the Amish women have. They can have cell phones and drive cars. They can get divorces only if they are “mistreated”. It is looked down upon if they re-marry though I think. They have to look really plain. On a whole from what I saw, they were usually fatter and were less eye-candy than the Amish. I helped Albert set up a little bit. We were set up right next to Futurorama Hearing Instrument Center. It seemed like a glorified hearing aide company. They had a sign which said they were voted best Hearing Instrument Company 2 years in a row by the main Lancaster Newspaper. They had this big sign up with a group photo of the 5 main people that worked there. It was 3 women and 2 men. They all had their names up there with letters after them. One or two of them had a B.S. and some other weird letters. My favorite one was “HIS” (Hearing Instrument Specialist). The three women were sort of attractive in a weird Lancaster, Pennsylvania way. One guy (the owner) was short, fat, had a widow’s peak and a round head. The other was giving this kind of sexy serious look - like if James Bond were a Hearing Instrument Specialist, he would look like him. The only letters after the “sexy look” guy’s name were “HIS”. I don’t think he had as much educational training as everyone else. One of the guys and one of the women were manning the booth. They were both the owners. The guy was the short, fat, widow peak one. He had this weird, nervous twitch when he wasn’t paying attention or thought people weren’t looking. He would blink a lot and shrug his shoulders. He was really going at it. Albert brought way too many boxes and coolers, he said he’s used to not having enough so he tried to bring extra this time. I went into the kitchen to help out. Sara, the bread lady was there with her husband Mervin who I hadn’t met. Abe Stoner and his wife Annie were there too. Abe Stoner is a dairy farmer who deals with a lot of Sally Fallon people. Homer Adams and Christian Ackerman were at the conference also. They were manning their booths in the main area. Peter Aeschelman and his wife Barbie (which seems to be a pretty popular Amish name) and ten year old daughter Sylvia came in. They are a freaky looking family. They look like the Adam’s family. Peter is super tall and gangly, with a big, long face and some missing teeth on the sides. He looks like an Amish Rob Zombie. He looks like he should have fangs and long yellow fingernails. His kid looks like Wednesday (Adams’s family), big pale face, red eyes, his wife is short with a skinny face and pale complexion. I have mixed feelings about Peter Aeschelman. I’ve heard from some Amish that he is kind of shady. They said he pasteurizes his yogurt before he makes it and still calls it raw. This is generally done to make it more creamy. He doesn’t produce dairy, only meat. He is kind of like Sally Fallon's Amish middle man. He buys products from people like Albert, Sara and Homer then resells them. I have mixed feelings about him. He’s really hardcore Amish. He has 11 kids (one reason his wife looks so worn out); he won’t go to Disney land again because it’s “owned by the gays”. He grabbed my arm pretty hard one time and ordered me around a little bit. He brought a lot of his “kvass,” which is a Russian addictive, naturally fermented soda (not organic or as healthy as people make it out to be) and was happily pouring it out to as many people as he could during lunch time. By the way, I was at the conference to help cook lunch. Maybe he’s just a good businessman. He’s also heading down to Florida in a couple of days to help one of his customers who distributes cream for him. His customer’s buildings got destroyed by the hurricane and he is going to go down there to help rebuild it. So I don’t know what to think of this guy. I’ve come to realize lately that I am a horrible judge of character. We were able to joke around a lot as the day went on. We made jokes, I told him to bring me back some sand when he goes to Florida and he said, “I’ll bring it back between my toes.” Maybe he’s good and bad. Working with all of them in the kitchen today made me not want to leave Pennsylvania. It was the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here. We were cracking jokes the whole time. The kitchen had a pro-kitchen dishwasher, the kind where you put the dirty dishes on a tray, put it in the metal box and slide the walls down. They could not figure out how to turn it on and make it work. I figured it out, and every time they needed the dishes washed they would ask me to do it. They started joking about how, thank God I was there and how I am the best dishwasher ever. It was extremely easy to operate. All I had to do was put the dishes in and slide down the walls. It would then automatically turn on. I didn’t tell them this; I thought it was funny. When I finally told them how easy it was, we all laughed. There was a vitamin company called “SuperPepPills” there. The speaker Melissa was supporting and working for them. They had a machine called a bio-platonic machine which was supposed to measure the level of cartenoids (anti-oxidants) in your body and tell you your “body defense score”. Then depending how good your score was, the average was 20,000-25,000, they would tell you how much of their vitamins you needed to take. You put your hand on the machine and a blue laser would shine on it. I got 30,000. Ann the speaker had 44,000. The rest of the people in the kitchen ranged from 20,000 to 40,000. Homer Adams got 76,000. We were all joking about that. The people who were doing the test never saw a score that high before. He started selling them on the value of fermented vegetables and raw milk. The Amish and I loved that. If anyone could have gotten 76,000, it would have been Homer Adams. We told him that he scored so high that he was going to go back the other way now. That he was so healthy, that he is going to get sick. We couldn’t stop joking about that and how for breakfast he had six eggs, bread and as much butter as bread on it. The speaker, Melissa was introduced on stage by this fat, ugly, diabetic, extremely unhealthy Mennonite lady named Rita. She was talking about how much the vitamins had helped her and how much better she feels since working with Melissa. Again, another extremely unhealthy looking person in my life trying to tell me how to be healthy. WARNING! WARNING! I did not enjoy the speaker. She was a nurse who was really into Western Medicine and then went to a conference by Sally Fallon and started combining the two. She is like a combination of Sally Fallon, modern crap science, “Praise the Lord” and “You need supplements to be healthy.” She borrowed a lot from Sally, she even had some of her slides from her Weston Price slideshow. We kept making fun of her. We asked each other if we thought that someone needs vitamins to be healthy, we all said, “No”. We kept on saying, “Melissa, will get there soon.” We were also making fun of ourselves, saying, “If they’re not talking about grass-fed stuff, we don’t care.” I had a wonderful time. I ate a lot. I talked to Dorothy McCoy there. She’s English and is pretty heavily involved in the Weston Price Association. We talked about how she’s had Chronic Fatigue for 13 years and now it is getting worse. I related since I am tired all the time also. I asked her if she knew of Aajonus and would try the raw meat thing. She seemed grossed out by that. I wonder if that would help her¹. Albert was still acting a little weird today, off and on. We talked about the raw meat thing a little more. I explained it a little better. He even said that he might try it. We got the Jersey in her stall today, she kept on breaking free. She dragged me again a couple of times. I told Albert I should climb on top of the pipes and then grab her chain and hook her up. We didn’t do that. Instead, we got her squished in a stall with another cow, then we tied a string behind her on the two poles so she couldn’t get out. It worked.

1 I meet people like this all the time. They say they want to be healthy and will do anything to get it. What this usually means is that they will do anything to be healthy, as long as it fits into their comfort zone. The only solution for this is that the pain gets so bad, that they have to step outside their comfort zone or die. Even though they were dying they will still eat crappy food. It is easy for people to forget the pain they were in before. I know some people whose cancer was reversed by The Primal Diet.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 26 1/7/05

Tired, super tired, sore. Super tired and sore, super sore, sore. I woke up earlier, not necessarily early this morning. 6:00 am, we had to have a lot of packages out by 10:30. I had to get up earlier. I got out there, it was still dark. Peter was already in the barn cleaning the gutters (which is really a two man job) by himself. Every time I see him I always say, “HHHHHEEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!!” ... really loud and excitable. He likes it. He smiles and says, “HEY!” back. I help him clean the gutters. He puts the shovel in the gutters, lifts up the poop and starts pushing. I have a piece of hay-bale string, tied around the shovel. I grab both ends of the string, wrap them around my hands and elbows and walk backwards. Poop is heavy! I have to put my back into it. The ground is sometimes slippery with urine and poop, I have to watch my step. We start talking about different things. He says they might stop having the Organic Valley milk truck come to his farm, they are able to use enough of it for marketing directly to the public. That makes him happy. He says he really enjoys what he’s doing and they’re starting to make better money doing it. He says that he’s happy that he can make money doing what helps people. He says, “It’s really hard to pay off the farm.” They are barely paying back the interest right now. He says he can’t wait till he has the farm paid off so he can just worry about making good products¹. He said that he’s going to miss me... that it won’t be the same without me there. It really touched my heart. I told him that he needs to come visit me in California. He smiled at that. He said he hasn’t had a vacation in years. He has never seen the beach to the ocean before. I don’t think he knows what a dolphin is. I’d love to show him what a dolphin is. I’d love to win the lottery so I can pay off their farm and have them be able to produce grass-fed Jersey milk and meat for me for the rest of my life. They are really good people. We finished the cows, I ran over to where Albert was and began getting packages ready. I took a heaping tablespoon of high vitamin butter oil mixed with cod liver oil. I got a huge rush or energy and was bouncing around. The work was easy. We were late getting the packages out. The driver was getting impatient. Albert could sense this and felt bad. He tried to joke with him. Albert was packing an oxtail. He took it over to the driver and said, “Do you know what this is?” Driver said, “I can guess.” Albert started laughing and said, “I know what you think it is, you think it’s a penis!” It was really, extremely, funny to hear Albert say that at that time. I kept laughing as I was cutting the cheese. We finished the packing. I bottled some whey and went into the kitchen. I was talking with Elizabeth and Naomi (Yomo). Elizabeth said, “I heard you’re on a diet, who told me you’re on a diet?” Naomi asked if I was on the Aajonus raw food diet. I felt ashamed for some reason and I kind of brushed it off. I had to break down ten chickens into boneless and skinless parts. These were the same chickens that I caught, killed and gutted. Now I’m doing the final thing. I was sick and tired of chickens. I wanted to quit when I found out I had to do ten of them. I originally thought I only had to do four. Naomi showed me how to break the chicken into parts and cut the meat off. She said she used to work at a market. She’s really good and fast at that. She asked me what Aajonus’s diet was while were chatting. I told her it’s a lot of raw meat. She didn’t really say anything. I was eating a couple pieces of the raw chicken. I offered her some. She said, “No.” It didn’t really have a particular taste at all. I ate it and felt really charged and energized. I got really good at cutting the chickens up. Before I did the chickens, I played Naomi in Ping-Pong. She’s pretty good. She’s aggressive and impatient. She’s a red-head, she has a lot of fire in her. I was beating her and then started going easy on her near the end. She then beat me. I won 3 or 4 and she won 2 or 1. I played George next. He beat me 4 games to 1. I started beating him with this killer new serve I had. It bounced once on his side then would bounce diagonally. He was never prepared for it and I got him every time. I then used it so much, he caught on and then it didn’t work anymore. We had to chase pigs today. The smaller pigs were getting too big and needed to be moved under the chicken house with the bigger pigs. Chasing pigs is extremely difficult. They ran fast and if we tried to herd them one way they would go right around us. Good thing I ate that raw chicken, it gave me the energy I needed to chase them. Pigs are like the corvettes of the barn animal world; low to the ground, fast and able to make sharp turns. We had to yell stuff like, “HHHEEEYYY!” and “YAAAHHH!” and “GETTA’ IN THERE!” really loud and in deep, scary, scratchy voices so they would go where we wanted them to. One pig wouldn’t come in. We chased him all over the property. I dived and tried to get him, I missed but I touched him. We finally got him in. Albert was acting kind of weird towards me. Not talking or smiling too much. We went right into the barn after that. He was still acting weird. I had been suspecting it was the raw meat thing. I brought it up half-jokingly if he told Naomi and Elizabeth if I was doing the “Aajonus Diet”. He kind of laughed and slightly denied it. He then admitted it and touched me on my chest like when someone touches me on my shoulder. It felt like a caring touch. He was kind of looking down, sometimes smiled. I told him I wasn’t on his diet, I was just trying it for a day or two. He said that it was fine and it was okay for me to try that if I wanted to. It didn’t seem like he really meant it. I told him I want to cook for people to make them feel better. I said Aajonus cured himself of cancer and other diseases that he attributes towards eating raw meat. I told him I need to experience every diet so then if I need to cook for someone who is sick, I can help them. He understood that and said that it made sense. I said that people thought I was going to get sick that it was gross to drink raw milk, but now I know that raw dairy is healing because I have tried it. I would have liked to have experimented more diet-wise being here; his farm is definitely the place to do it. I don’t know if raw meat conflicts with his religious ideals or what. I could tell it made him uncomfortable. I didn’t want that to happen. When I brought it up, he said it was kind of funny that I decided to switch from Sally to Aajonus all of a sudden. He was laughing though. I believe everything is okay now. We were sweeping up the rest of the hay when Peter came and said there was someone to see Albert. He was a tall English (non-Amish) guy. Albert told me to go finish sweeping the hay. I started sweeping. I tried to listen in on the conversation. I heard things like “equity”, “I know you like raw milk but…”, “You’ve had your fun…”, “Bacteria…” “You guys are on thin ice.” He said that twice². Albert and Peter didn’t seem too happy. They finished talking and he left. Albert wasn’t talking much. I asked him a couple minutes later who that guy. He said, “He used to be the old organic certifier for Peter.” I asked him, “What he was there for, to say hi?” Albert said, “Yes.” We had to chase the six new Jerseys into their stalls. It was very difficult. It was their first time in a new barn. We had to fight to get them into their stalls. Once they were in the stalls, they didn’t know how to stand in there correctly. They would stand in the gutter and kick at me if I got too close. It felt like prison almost, and they were the new inmates. I could imagine the Holsteins yelling, “FIIISSSHHH!!, FIIISSSSHHH!!” It was funny. One Jersey would not go in, we kept fighting her. We would get her in the stall and she would then bust out and make a break for it. I would grab her chain as she came running by. I tried to slow her down and grab her neck like they do in rodeos. I didn’t slow her down at all. I was being dragged really fast and almost got slammed into other cows a couple of times. I felt like I was playing football and I tackled someone and they were dragging me towards the goal line. It was fun though. Albert was a man. He grabbed the Jersey’s tail and was twisting it to try to get her in the stall. I was too afraid to get kicked. He was a super farmer man. He was right up against the butt of the cow grabbing and pushing and yelling. He was very brave. That’s what a man is, someone who wrestles cows for a living. For breakfast I had raw veal cubes, eggnog and cheddar cheese. Lunch was a hodge-podge of sour creams ( piima, crème fraiche and sour) and raw chicken.

1 It is very difficult for an Amish farmer to make enough money to support himself. Albert says that Organic Valley would pay him $22 for a hundred weight of milk (100 lbs). 100 lbs. is about 8 gallons ($2.75 a gallon). Albert has 3 options. 1. If Albert feeds the cows mostly grain, they will produce 3-4 gallons a day. 2. Mostly grass with a little bit of grain, will be closer to 3 gallons. 3. If he feeds them only grass and hay, they will only produce 2-3 gallons a day. Albert has 50 cows. Option 1: He makes between $562-$750. Option 2: Around $562. Option 3: Around $375. As you can see, financially it makes far more sense to produce an unhealthier, grain-fed milk instead of a healthier part grain/part grass or grass only. Another note, once he pays for the cow feed, electricity and the hundreds of other miscellaneous things it takes to run a farm, he is making a very small profit. It is no wonder most family farmers never get out of debt and end up having to sell their farms.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 25 1/6/05

We woke up earlier today. I had to leave early to go to Homer’s to slaughter 30 chickens. I had to do everything. I had to catch them today. It was hard at first, I found the trick was to go for the feet, then they can’t fight me as much. It was raining slightly, it was slippery. I kept reciting the Lord’s Prayer while I was catching them and stuffing them in cages. I felt like Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction when he was reciting Biblical Verses before he whacked people. I was saying the prayer because I still feel like I need to do something spiritual when I’m killing animals. I feel that it’s wrong for me to get used to it. I definitely see animals differently now that I’ve killed them and seen them be killed. They seem more like animals instead of animals that have human characteristics. I feel differently too. After pulling out nearly a hundred intestines from chickens, I now feel that I have an idea what mine are like. I played George in Ping-Pong today. I did not have my glasses and it was dark. He won 2 out of 3. Someday before I leave, I will beat him best 2 out of 4. I put the chickens 15 to a cage. They were crammed pretty tight. There was a little drop of blood on the wagon from one or more of the chickens. We tied the cages on top of the wagon, to the back of the horse and buggy. It was George’s buggy. George definitely has the pimped out buggy. It has all the bells and whistles. It has a wooden dash board with knobs and dials. It was a horn which he hasn’t hooked up yet. He has 3 or more different key-chains. Two of them have stuff like, “I’m innocent and cute” or those stupid ones that I see high school freshmen girls have on their backpacks. He has one that has his birthday horoscope (which is a big no-no for Amish) on it. It says on one side. “I am timid and shy” and other personality traits. On the other side it has things that happened on that date throughout history: First escalator was patented, Julius Caesar was assassinated 44 B.C., and Hitler began his Third Reich. I looked in the back and I saw that he had a boom box. I started laughing and said, “George, what’s this?” He started laughing too and said, “Shhhhh”. We got out on the road and I got it out. We put in a tape of a Christian Country band called, Breakthrough. They sounded pretty good, for a Christian Country band. Lisa and Lucy are majorly whining right now. Marie is trying to put them to bed. They whine so much. They’re super-whiners, they need to eat better. When they say, “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”, they really say “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”. George said him and two other friends chipped in to buy the boom box. They all ride together on the way to church, so that’s when they listen to it. His friend brings a cd case then and they listen to “country and rock n’ roll”. He was pretty polite; when we were passing houses he would turn it down and say, “Well, the neighbors don’t need to hear it.” I killed several chickens and two turkey’s today. Warm blood on my hand, same as before. I’m getting better and swifter at it. Homer’s chickens were young and small. They had beautiful red to dark reddish-purple livers. The turkeys livers’ were almost purple they were so good. Albert’s hens were older, some had weird stuff inside them. Richard King, the guy who was helping me butcher them said they could be cancer or tumors. That usually happens in older chickens. Richard makes really good fermented vegetables. Some of the chicken livers were brownish, I didn’t want to eat those. I ate the unborn eggs though. They taste awesome. Homer said, “Noah Noosewingers wife (he is a great raw cheese guy) eats raw meat sometimes. Richard was cutting a chicken and showed me how its beak was cut. He said they do that to them when they are young at the chicken farms so they don’t end up eating their own eggs when they are older. He says that makes it so they can’t eat grass as well. He says if they are de-beaked, then they are vaccinated as well. He said before, a farmer had to ask the chicken selling place to debeak and vaccinate them and they charged extra. Now he says, they do it automatically unless you ask them not to and they will still charge the same price. I did some spying for Albert today. I told him how Homer makes some of his stuff like cottage cheese and yogurt. It was fine because Homer told me anyway. I told Albert and Marie that I was going to start eating raw meat at their house. He has a refrigerator full of fresh and unfrozen meat. I figured now would be a good time to try. Marie laughed, Albert seemed a little weirded out by it. I hope it’s my imagination. Maybe I’m being a dick by telling them I am going to eat raw meat at their house, or maybe it will be good. Maybe if they or one of their kids get really sick and nothing works to make them feel better, they’ll try some raw meat and it will help them. I hope I didn’t offend them. In a way, I also don’t care. For breakfast I had raw, unfrozen veal cubes and eggnog. Lunch: sprouts, lettuce and chicken soup. Dinner was lard cooked potatoes and sweet potatoes with Sauerkraut, cream, whipped cream and bananas plus cooked string beans.

Avoiding heart disease with a raw food diet

My side of a story belongs on this blog. You will be hearing the other side of the story soon on this same blog. That there are two sides of the story does not mean this has been an argument, but there are definitely different points of view. I wish to remain anonymous by the way.
The story you will be hearing one of these days on this blog is from my wife. I will call her Molly.
The strength of her character is what makes this important to tell. Maybe some day I will write the book, but in a few seconds let me just say that she puts the word 'caring' in a whole new ballpark. I may be biased, but a complete stranger is not. A patient sharing a hospital room with her and only overhearing her conversations, later that day pleaded with the doctor to really take care of Molly well because she is somebody really special. In a nutshell, over Labor Day weekend on 2006 Molly went to the hospital because for three days she could not get out of bed or even stand. She was diagnosed at that time with advanced spinal cancer, based on the tumors in full view on an MRI.
Let me say right now that in my opinion, this could have been avoided. I say this with 20/20 hindsight in full view. If what I say enables anyone visiting this blog to avoid the same mistake we made, I will be glad.
The thing is, we had both read We Want To Live: the Primal Diet. We had both already benefited greatly from the work Aajonus has done. We should have known that he really has mapped out how to live without disease and there is no need to try other diets.
At the time we read the book (in 2001 or thereabouts) and Molly had a consultation with Aajonus, she was suffering from an illness only partially identified by an M.D. & heart specialist practicing in Beverly Hills (after a wrong diagnosis by an earlier M.D.). Aajonus spotted the (heart disease) problem easily during our consultation and he spotted what made the problem continue (inability to get a good night's sleep). He spotted these things not based on anything that we said, but through correct use of iridology. He told us the raw food diet details to enable Molly to reverse this disease. Within one year of following Aajonus' recommendations, Molly went from being a space case [where she couldn't climb stairs, would forget where she was heading when she got out of an elevator and so on] to her natural bright and intelligent state. She passed a physical exam by an M.D. with no trace of the former problem.
Right after this victory is where we made the mistake. She then went off Aajonus' recommendations a) she had solved the problem that had been so destructive before the raw food diet, b)because she didn't like the taste of some of the items on the menu (this was just before The Recipe for Living Without Disease came out, giving many many recipes for making food that is good for you also taste very good) and c) as apparently is the case with many good looking women, she was concerned about gaining weight.
Weight loss is the apparent goal of many diets offered these days. Molly selected one acclaimed weight loss diet, got the required check-up from her M.D. and started. She lost weight right away and continued to lose weight. Back problems began to creep into her life. This continued right up to the point where she ended up in the hospital diagnosed with cancer, over Labor Day weekend in 2006. Please understand there is no medical advice in anything I am saying; also, we are not naming the specific diet nor accusing them of intentional wrongdoing.

Now you will be able to follow her story, when it arrives on this blog, with an understanding of what happened before the diagnosis that brought her back to the raw food diet 100%.

a blog entry about aajonus' two books, from a Ph.D.

I've recently purchased (via download) Aajonus' two books and have soaked them up like a sponge.
They are self-consistent and consistent with the clearest and bravest minds of the last few centuries.
Bonnie L.S., Ph.D. La Crescenta, California

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 24 1/5/05

I called Aajonus again today. He told me to call between 7:00 and 9:00 am. I called at 6:59am, I didn’t know if he was going to be busy or not, I wanted to make sure I got him. His answer machine picked up saying, “Thanks for calling Optimal Health etc, please call back between 7 and 9 and you will be able to reach me directly.” I hung up, waited till my clock said 10:07 am (3 hour time difference) and called again. He picked up. He said he woke up a little late today and he was putting the chickens out. He has a very nice sounding, half-grandfatherly, half middle aged confident man voice. He said he lived in Malibu, I asked him if he surfed. He said not here, it’s too cold, in Hawaii he did though. He said he stood up the very first time he got on a board. He asked my name, I told him Nathan Donahoe, he said, “Oh are you Hawaiian?” I said, “No”, not understanding. I told him I was half-Russian, half-Irish. There was a pause while he was writing my name down. I suddenly got the joke and said, “Oh, Tiny Bubbles.” He laughed and said, “You’re pretty young to know “Tiny Bubbles”. We both laughed. I set up an appointment with him. Saturday Jan 22 1:30 pm at his house. I don’t know how I feel. I feel that I have reached the end of a very long and tiring journey. I tried Standard American Diet, that didn’t work, I tried Hippie, Tai-Chi, meditating mountain boy organic vegan, that didn’t work. Then Sally Fallon, etc. I’ve tried every way of eating possible except this one, so this must be it. I just graduated from cooking school; my parents are going to be pissed. “Sorry Mom and Dad, I can’t cook for you, it’s bad for you.” I wonder if they are going to freak out if I start eating raw liver in front of them. Are they going to let me still live with them? They probably will. I don’t think they will understand though. Not many people will. I just want to feel better. My parents want me to make money and pay off my debts and be happy. They are right, I need to do that, I need to make myself healthy first. I need to find out what the truth is so I don’t live my life never feeling good enough. It’s going to cost $300 for Aajonus. My parents won’t understand. I feel bad using them for their money, it is something I have to do right now. I can never help people until I understand how to help myself. I feel like I don’t even want to cook for people anymore. I have no idea what’s going to make people healthy. Aajonus does, he’s been dong this and helping people with it for over 20 years. I’m not going to go around professing I know what people need to eat now to feel better. I’m tired of that. I’m tired of information and knowledge and opinions. I’m tired of the vegans hating the animal eaters, the animal eaters hating the lard and raw milk eaters, the Aajonus raw, rotten meat eaters hating the Sally Falloners. I’m tired of every one fighting. I’m tired of everyone’s opinions. I’m tired of my opinions and acting like I know what I’m talking about, when what I know to be true changes every couple of months. I feel like I never want to have another opinion as long as I live. It just fucks me up and separates me from people. I am not going to be someone walking around preaching the values of raw meat, I don’t care anymore. I just want to surf and help people. I don’t feel like I can help people right now in my current state of health. I was so sure of it a couple of weeks ago. Every time I think I found something that works, I get disappointed. I’m even afraid to do Vedic Astrology now. I don’t want that to be another dead end. I gutted and cleaned 4 chickens today. Peter killed them, thank God, I don’t want anymore scars. I ate a liver, threw up in my mouth, and forced myself to swallow it. I ate some of the unlaid eggs that were in the birds. They actually taste good, normal people would like them. Ate some lung, tiny piece of poop. No intestines or contents today. Maybe soon though, before I leave Albert’s. There is a thing called the oil sac on the back butt of the bird. Usually, we cut it off because it’s not supposed to be good for people. Ruth (Homer Adams’s sister) says that’s where the birds’ hormones are. I cut it off and tasted it, it actually tastes really good. I was surprised. Normal people would like it. Really busy today, a lot of orders. Lucy and Lisa are playing with me a lot now. Lucy was playing with a sauerkraut jar today. We’re trying to use psychology to get her to eat it. Marie, Albert and I would smell it and say “Ahhhh” or “Yum-Yum” to try to get her to eat it. We would say, “Mmmmmmmm…Candy” or “Pop-Pop (popcorn)”; it didn’t work. The pigs always bite me when I go into their pens to move their bowl closer so I can dump food into it. I think they move the bowl far away on purpose¹. That new Jersey is gorgeous. Her face looks tie-dyed. Absolutely gorgeous. Breakfast was Egg-nog, raw eggs, something else. Snack was gross chicken organs and egg-nog. Dinner was raw veal cubes, potato soup, cream and honey. I took some unfrozen veal cubes from the fridge. Albert wouldn’t mind. Vas? (what) They made me feel good, hard to chew.

1 Pigs are smart and dangerous. Sometimes I would stumble and fall while I was trying to feed them in their pen. They would swarm all over me and bite my boots. If I ever got knocked unconscious in a pig pen, I would be a goner!

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 23 1/4/05

I’m tired and exhausted. I worked all day today, helping Albert pack and ship. He does so much; I don’t know what is going to happen when I’m gone. I talked to that guy Richard today; he orders from Albert, he’s an Aajonus guy. I called him, wanted to hear his experience with the Aajonus or “Raw Everything Diet”. He sounded very satisfied. He’s a tax accountant. Last night he was helping someone prepare for an audit, so he couldn’t talk too long. He was up and bustling around this morning. He said he feels great on the Primal Diet, and he immediately notices the difference when he eats cooked food. He says he feels incredible. When he eats cooked food, he just wants to go and feel incredible again. Aajonus works in L.A. Every Wednesday, they have a place where people can go and pick up unfrozen raw meat and stuff like that. It’s about ten minutes from my house. I knew it was going to come to this. In order for me to feel how I want to feel, I need to eat an all raw, sometimes rotten food, sometimes poop diet. Paul Pitchford and Chinese Medicine made me feel slightly better, Sally Fallon and Weston Price made me feel a lot better, Aajonus and raw meat is going to make me feel the best. And the epicenter of this diet, is ten minutes from my house. I’m going to call Aajonus tonight and try to set up a consultation with him, it costs $300. My parents won’t understand, they don’t have any money right now, it is something I have to do¹. I’m going to do a yagya, where I pay monks to pray for wealth, health, whatever I want to come to me or my parents whoever. I’m pretty sure that will work. That costs money too. So $300 for Aajonus, however many hundreds for yagya’s for me and my family, around $500 for a new surfboard, and $100-300 for a new wetsuit and surf accessories. I am thousands of dollars in debt and so are my parents. Someway, it is all going to work out. When I was talking to Richard, we were talking a little bit about the Weston Price Organization. He said Weston Price is for people who want to look good and aren’t willing to go the whole way. He said Aajonus is for people who want to cut through the bullshit. It’s funny that there is a rivalry between Sally Fallon and Aajonus Vonderplanitz. It’s like the Jets and the Sharks from Westside Story. Albert told me that he was packing an order for a lady who used to be an Aajonus client, now she does Weston Price stuff. I’ve heard of people going from Sally to Aajonus, not vice versa. She was ordering 20 lbs of soup bones and 5 lbs. of knuckle bones. Albert said she has a retarded kid in a wheelchair and it is easier for her to get him to drink broth than eat raw meat. We were sending out tons of meat and organs that were unfrozen. That’s the only way the Aajonus people will eat it. We had liver, veal liver, even thyroid. Albert threw away the testicles, he didn’t have time to save everything. Someone bought some cave-ripened cheddar today. It has the exact same smell as the manure gutter does in the barn. Super ammonia smell. I showed Albert how to get high off of it. “Put your nose close, breath deep and hold your breath”. I felt dizzy, I don’t know how he felt. We were smelling the cheese, not the poop by the way. Marie said Lisa was laying on the coach and was calling my name, “Nasan, Nasan.” When I was eating dinner, they kept smiling, laughing and saying my name. I kept saying, “What?” or “Vas? (“what” in German) or I would say their names. They’re whining right now in the other room. They’re sleeping upstairs tonight, Marie says she can’t get them to go to bed otherwise in the living room. The girls really bitch all the time. They really seem to be opening up to me. For breakfast I had eggs (cooked), hash browns, cheese, sauerkraut. I cooked breakfast today. Lunch was smelly cheese, cream, and honey. Dinner was mashed potatoes, leftover potato soup and beef (cooked). Marie just spanked one or both of them because they would not shut up. They need to be spanked more.

1 This was something that I have struggled with my entire life. I did not want to be a leech on my parents, but something was wrong with me. I had to figure out what that was and it didn’t matter what I had to do to figure it out. I felt bad using my parents for money for the consultation and the juicer, but I felt like I had no choice. I needed to know the truth, no matter what. Why do I always feel like shit? I needed to know. Now I am glad of the decisions that I have made, I have learned that using my parents for their money so I can learn how to be healthy is neither good nor bad, it just “is”. I cannot know the final outcome of these actions, hopefully in the end, it is something that we both can learn and grow from.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 22 1/3/05

Albert’s mom doesn’t care about what Albert and Peter are doing with the raw milk and would rather just have Organic Valley pick up the milk like it used to. They all still eat pretty badly. Shortening, white flour, bad oils, really crappy bread. His mom still buys cream cheese at the supermarket when they make their own. They are literally surrounded by some of the greatest food on the planet and they still eat like crap. It angers and mystifies me at the same time. I want to change it all, I constantly have to remind myself to step back and to not get attached. It was still really warm today. Overcast, sprinkled a little bit. We got six new Jerseys in today. They’re gorgeous. One is speckled all over. I don’t even miss the old ones now. Cows act a lot like dogs, they lick themselves everywhere with their long tongues, they scratch their heads with their hooves, they poop all over each other, it’s great. One cow today was turning around and started pooping all over a cow that was laying down, they both seemed oblivious to it. I ate some raw, unfrozen, veal liver today. It made me gag like all the other times I’ve eaten raw liver, it felt really good. I felt like I might get sick the first 20 minutes, then I got that same familiar burst of energy. I hate liver, love its effects. I wonder if I’ll ever learn to like the taste. Breakfast was eggs, kale, fermented vegetables, orange juice and kvass. Midday snack was liver, cream and honey. Dinner was pizza on spelt bread, awesome beef stew, fermented stuff.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 21 1/2/05

I’m laying here on my bedroom floor listening to the sounds coming through the vent. Marie is playing harmonica and tapping her foot. I hear the sound of Lucy and Lisa laughing, Barbie crying and playing with the toys. The warm air from the living room hits my face as I look down the hole, it’s really peaceful and nice. It’s warm outside and inside. It’s a Sunday and we’re all relaxed. We finished the chores early. I just finished putting my cell phone up to the hole to record the sounds. It’s nice, really nice. I laid around a lot today. Reading the Vedic astrology books and a Christian/Amish one called “How to train up a Child.” It’s actually a really good book. It gives the experience and advice of a man and his wife on how to raise children right. I enjoyed reading it. It was helpful. It’s all about being strict and loving. Seems like a good combination. It’s funny because it is really hardcore Christian. It has verses from the Bible in it. There’s this one great quote where the guy is talking about public schools and how bad they are. He tells parents that home schooling is good and to not worry about what “Sodomites and Socialists” think of them. I love that line. Is it ironic if you don’t like Sodomites to say “Fuck Sodomites”, or “Fuck Sodomites in the ass.” I wish the Amish surfed, then I could live with them by the beach. Work hard and surf, it would be a good life. They’ve been using new hay the past several days. It’s the hay they kept in the silos. They call it “Haylage” like silage. It smells really sweet, maybe it fermented. It makes the barn really dusty. I have trouble breathing in there sometimes. Albert and the family went to church today. It felt good to see them looking so nice. Usually, I see them in the work or house clothes. They looked nice as they left. They went over Mathew 3 and 4 today in Church. It’s the part where Jesus fasts for 40 days and the devil comes to him and tries to tempt him. It seemed pretty interesting. They have bibles in German and English here. For breakfast I had yogurt colostrum with a raw potato and raw onion. Lunch was Jersey cream, honey and a pear. Popcorn and cheese (cheddar) as a middy snack. Beef cubes, awesome cream of potato soup and fermented stuff, and an apple for dinner. “Evo of speela” (I want to play).

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 20 1/1/05

Aaahh, the New Year. New things, new possibilities. It doesn’t feel like something new. It feels like the same old stuff. Holidays, special occasions, new years, etc. don’t really mean too much to me out here. When I was living in the real world, I always knew when something “special” is going on. Here, the cows don’t care, the Amish kind of care, and I really don’t care at all. I’m getting comfortable here, I’d be more comfortable if there was a warm ocean nearby and I could surf. English people think the Amish are weird or cultish for some of the things they do. Now that I’m living with them, I understand the benefit. Amish don’t allow records, cds, instruments, etc. That may seem weird, and since they’re not spending their time up in their room with their headphones on, when they want music, they sing or play the harmonica. Which is tons more fun than listening to a record. That’s probably why people are always hard up for the live version of cds, because they want the feeling and energy of actually being there. I’d rather be singing or playing the harmonica with a bunch of good people than listening to a cd any day. Amish people don’t go out and buy a bunch of extravagant clothes. They get to learn how to make their own. If they want a new dress, they just make it. People like to think the Amish are weird or strange and they forget to look at how fucked up their world they live in is that they think is “normal”. Albert took the two Jerseys over to his dad’s farm yesterday. It was too much trouble bringing their milk over all the time. I miss them. I wonder if they miss me, probably not. It was summer in full effect today. Sun was shining, slight breeze, birds were chirping. I had to take a lot of layers off. It felt great; I decided to take a walk out onto the field where the cows were. They were all staring at me as soon as I walked out there. One or two of them came over to me, which was slightly unusual; one of them sniffed my hand. I bent over and one of them sniffed my butt. It was beautiful out there. I started walking towards the other end of the field, the cows behind me started following. I thought it was cute. I saw the bull up and to the left a little ways. He had about 3 girl cows around him. He was pimping it. He would try to hump some of the cows. They usually wouldn’t let him. The girl cows tried to hump him a couple of times, he wouldn’t let them. The girl cows tried to hump each other, the “humpee’s” didn’t like that too much. It was like a big cow orgy, it was funny. A girl cow would be standing there and another one would come up from behind and try to hump the other one. The other one say, “Uh-uh” and try to get away. It looked like the cow was trying to hump with her udders which looked like a bulky 4 pronged penis. The further I walked down the field, the more the cows would follow me. I would stop sometimes and they would literally surround me. I thought it was cute, and then started getting freaked out. Did cows attack? They wouldn’t take their eyes off of me. The bull would come over sometimes and paw the dirt and growl. I’m not as afraid of him as I used to be. I had to get him inside to mate with the blind cow that Albert keeps in the barn to give milk to the calves. He wouldn’t come. I was standing in above ankle deep field of cow poop, only a couple of feet away from him, saying things like. “Hee-Yaw” and waving my arms. I wouldn’t have been able to run very fast. He was angry too, sometimes he didn’t back down. I wonder if he can see in the dark better than me. I slept a lot today. Albert usually takes New Year’s off. He was too busy to do that today. He works a lot, and still spends time with his kids. They hang out with him when he’s working sometimes. They need to quit whining big time. Lisa and Lucy whine all the time, sometimes I want to smack them. Marie says she needs to begin disciplining more¹. I hope they start soon. For breakfast I ate scrapple, an apple (that rhymes), kim-chee, some cheese, and sweet potato hash browns. I made the family that and awesome omelets. For dinner I had and made hamburgers, creamed spicy corn (the twins were confused, they like corn and couldn’t figure out what was wrong with this one, they kept on rubbing their tongues because it was spicy), mashed potatoes and something fermented. For a snack in the midday, I had yogurt colostrum, an apple and honey.

1 Some Amish are really hardcore with their kids and rule with an iron fist. Others, like Sara and Albert, let their kids run the show a little more. That is how it was with me and my parents. I could and would manipulate my parents to get anything that I wanted. It ended up really hurting me socially; when I went to college, I didn’t even know how to do my own laundry. Now that I am a man, and trying to establish myself, there is the unconscious feeling in the back of my mind that says, “Hey Nate, if you fuck up, you can always just stay with mom and dad.” I hate that. I don’t have a sense of self sufficiency in me. This is what I am trying to do with my life now. Learn how to rely on myself and not be a leech.

Meet Aajonus personally within the next few weeks...

If you can get to southern California, you will have the opportunity to meet the author and world class nutritionist Aajonus Vonderplanitz. You will also be able to meet Nathan Donahoe the author of these Amish Diaries. Get the details here.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 18 12/30/04

I went to learn how to bake bread today at an Amish woman’s house named Sara. I was picked up by a driver. He was a fat older man, crew cut gray-black hair. His truck was a phallic symbol. Diesel, big ass truck, red, extended covered cab and six seater. The stick shift was like 2 feet long. The seatbelt almost didn’t fit around him. A couple of minutes after I got in the car, he started smoking a pack of Kool’s. His lips were brownish purple. We talked about different things. How exhaust brakes work, how good the soil is here in Lancaster etc. He gets paid to drive Amish people around. He picked me up 45 minutes late. He said he would pick me up at 1:00. I was dropped at Sara’s house. She lives right near the highest point in Lancaster. It’s beautiful. A lot of trees, hilly, good view. She was a nice, short, slightly plump woman, she welcomed me warmly. She makes the soaked spelt and sourdough breads that Albert, Jon-Lee, and Peter Aeschelman sell. A lot of people love her bread. We bonded pretty quickly. We talked a lot about bread, Weston Price stuff and the Amish. She was talking about how the Amish have gotten away from their roots. She said that there are different kinds of Amish. She and Albert and several others are Olde Order Amish. There are several other different kinds, mainly called the New Order Amish. They originally split because they wanted to use more technology and the Olde Order wasn’t OK with that. She said that the New Order Amish have a lot more problems with people not agreeing, drugs, alcohol etc. The men don’t have to wear beards, they can drive cars. She said that when you turn 16 (for new and old order), there are different youth groups you can choose to be a part of. Some really party hard and some don’t. She doesn’t know how to make good sauerkraut. Albert knows it, I know it and she knows it. She wants to learn how to make better ‘kraut. Her bread is pretty good. She had two kids who were running wild¹. One was named John Richard. She said he likes fire and is always getting into things. I forgot the other’s name, he is 3 and he doesn’t speak yet. He says a lot of sounds though, only John Richard understands what he means. I asked her if she was doing the Weston Price diet when she had any of her kids. She said no. We started talking about her kids issues; some have bad teeth, etc. She talked about it in a half sly/secretive, half guilty, half amusing way. Similar to the way that Homer and Lisa talked about their kids. She talked about how when some or the Amish people have a lot of various vague ailments like, chronic fatigue, etc. They say "They’ve got the Lymes”, like Lyme disease. She says it’s really just bad nutrition, but that’s a popular thing to say. She also said a lot of young Amish try to be farmers but have to give up because their backs start hurting after a couple of years. She said that they were a lot more attractive back in her day than now. She attributes that to bad nutrition. Her kids were running wild. Her husband had loaded some hay into the barn and her kids pushed ten bales out for fun. She laughed and said, “Look at them go.” The driver picked me up at 11:30. He started smoking right away again. He talked about an Amish woman he dropped off who was cooking some potato chips in lard and chicken fat, he said they were great. I agreed and said, “They’re one of the best things in the world”. He said, “Not better than sex.” I wasn’t expecting him to say that to me. I bet he doesn’t say that to the Amish. It was gross to hear him say that. I agreed with him and said, “There aren’t many things better than sex.” He said, “Well, maybe the birth of your firstborn.” I said, “Yeah, but in a different way.” He said, “Yeah, sex is more delicious.” His wife had a stroke and almost died. I can understand why, if she lives like he does. He said they both tried to quit smoking together and then they started up together again. He was drinking carb watcher diet root beer. He said his wife was on a special diet for diabetes. “No sugar because that causes triglycerides and no fat because that causes cholesterol.” She must be pretty unhappy; no wonder she wants to smoke. When he dropped me off, he helped me carry some meat he was transporting into the freezer. He was wheezing a lot. He wanted to say hi to Naomi. He said she is a smart kid. A lot of the older English that come around seem to dig Naomi. She’s pretty friendly. For breakfast I had chow-chow, colostrum with honey and yogurt, lettuce and an apple, some cheddar cheese. For supper I had some sausage, frozen Jersey cream and chow-chow. I told Albert as we were getting broken eggs to feed to the pigs, that I bet the next big thing is going to be a person who says that wild game is the only good kind of meat to eat and that you need to eat it raw². Watch for it, I guarantee it will happen.

1 English aren’t the only ones who have a hard time controlling their kids. Though most Amish control their children pretty well, others have a hard time disciplining.

2 I am pretty satisfied with the Primal Diet by Aajonus Vonderplanitz that I am doing right now. It is pretty “extreme”, but then again “extreme” is merely culturally relative. If I lived in a traditional African Tribe, eating raw beef and cows blood would seem pretty normal to me. Anyways, there is always some new guru coming out trying to push the envelope. So I bet there will be some guru that says only wild, non-domesticated food is healthy.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 17 12/29/04

Today…(dot dot dot) was a gross day. I got to pluck and eviscerate 6 chickens today. I didn’t kill them, Peter did. He did it a different way than Homer did. He put the head between two nails on a log and chopped it with a machete. An old, rusty, pitted machete. As soon as he did that the head separated from the body, a white piece of skin, which I guess was the eyelid, immediately covered the eye. He tossed the chicken to the side. I fully understand the saying “Like a chicken with its head cut off” now. Chickens who have their heads cut off act like spazzes. They still seem alive. They flap around, do double backflips, literally double backflips and act like they are alive. I had to corral them or grab them to make sure they didn’t flap too far away. I still tried to be gentle when I grabbed them. Even though they were obviously dead, I still didn’t’ want to grab them hard. Peter didn’t care, of course. I was telling Albert tonight how a lot of English people think animals are cute and cuddly and that they can kind of understand humans. I told him this was probably because all the cartoons and movies with animals that talk, dance and sing. I’m beginning to see now that animals aren’t as human as people like to think. They seem to act mostly on instinct and learned behavior. The cows with calves get pissed if they don’t get a chance to hang out with their calves. They moo a lot, at first it seems like they do that because they care and are compassionate. Now I don’t feel that way as much, the more I hang around animals and the more I kill and gut them and see their insides. A lot of the mystery is gone. I feel how temporary my body is now. I feel my muscles and I feel them inside me like I was feeling the chicken’s muscles. It seems like people are more like animals than animals are like people. I’m hanging out with a bunch of people who are raised up with the same patterns, beliefs, clothes, haircuts, etc. Sometimes they seem like a herd of cows. Reacting with instinct and the way they were told to react. And it’s the same in the English world. That’s why advertisements work, they tell you to do something and you do it. People do what they’ve learned. That’s why the Amish are Amish because they learned life the Amish way and English are English because they learned life the English way. The insides of these chickens were different than the insides of the ones at Homer’s. These were older. They had eggs inside them. One actually had a whole ready to eat egg. I ate it raw. Tasted like a normal egg. There were other not yet formed eggs inside. They were golden with red veins. I tried one of them, they tasted pretty good. Peter said they taste great and likes to eat them too, probably not raw though. I ate a liver, ate some chicken fat, tastes gross. I felt okay, didn’t feel too sick and didn’t feel as “Take on the world” awesome as I used to do with the raw liver. I tried some of the poop; Aajonus says it is good for you. I heard traditional people used to eat poop from healthy animals sometimes. Albert and I always tease Marie about eating animal poop. So I tried it, a little, little piece. Wasn’t too gross, tasted grassy. I don’t view poop the same way as I did before. When I cut open a chicken, I see the food before, during and after. It’s still the same thing just smells different. The knives were way too dull. I was supposed to make 3 chickens boneless also, couldn’t do it. I had to have Naomi take over. She said she used to work in a market, she tore that chicken apart. She’s a little firecracker, she’s full of energy and really helps Albert out. They started burning wood and plastic in the stripping room, which is the room where we do the packing. The furnace leaks. Today it was really bad, I couldn’t even go in there. They don’t have many trash cans, they just take their trash and burn it. I told Naomi there were clouds of death in there. She boiled some water and vinegar and said that would help with the smell. I don’t know if it did, I didn’t want to go back in there. Albert and I are excited about his pastured veal. It’s pretty hard to get, most people when they hear the word “veal” think, “conventional, cement floor, chained, evil, factory farm veal”. I keep telling Albert they’ll make so much money if they sell pastured veal. I tell him people will call and immediately they’ll ask if it was chained to a cement floor. As soon as they know it was humanely raised they’ll buy it. We’re also excited about the eggs from the pastured hens. They’ve been feeding them oats and for the past couple of days Peter has been feeding them skim milk as a protein source. He said they seem better and healthier and are laying more eggs. I told Albert it’s a perfect marketing tool. No corn or soy, just oats and milk. I said he can soak the oats in the milk and then he’ll be feeding them oatmeal for breakfast, and thriving on it. And if he sours the milk, even better. I told him he could jack up the price another 2 dollars and make millions. I don’t think anyone else is really doing that right now. Hope it works. I love the brown Jersey, I’m in love. I call her “Daddy’s Little Girl”. She reminds me of a fat baby who is just learning to walk and who is so cute and fat and falls down on her diapered butt so much that all of the adults laugh and say “What a cute baby.” I’ve been talking to her a little more sexually too. Not in a bestiality way, in a funny way. I am slightly turned on by her though. I’m not going to fuck her, its funny. For breakfast I had scrapple, eggs, fermented carrots, cauliflower and broccoli (chow-chow). An eggnog for supper (lunch). Dinner was potato egg pancakes, creamed corn, butter of course, pretty light, just had an apple, feel okay.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 14 12/26/04

It’s the day after Christmas. I slept on the couch by the heater this morning it was extremely hot. I would have slept naked, which would have been fine because they aren’t coming back till this afternoon. I feel weird in sleeping naked in an Amish living room. Like I’m going to go to hell or something. I won’t though. My throat is really dry and scratchy, the heater is really hot and dry. I’m being very lazy today. I’m just hanging out reading and eating. I’m not really too bored though, now that I’m working really hard, I don’t get too bored on my off time. I don’t miss T.V., radio, electricity at all. Especially electricity. I don’t miss it at all. I love propane. I go to sleep in 5 minutes now since there is no artificial light or very little to keep me up. I got some books sent up here on Dec 13. I told Albert to tell his family about it so they would know they are for me. I don’t think he did. I was talking to Elizabeth and she just remembered it. She kept saying, “I thought what for these books?” over and over. Albert and I were laughing. The books are about vedic astrology, so she had no idea what they were. I told her they are about stars. She’s funny and sweet. She gave me a footstool as a Christmas present. Her mom made it. It’s seven large aluminum juice cans wrapped in velvet with a pattern of birds on top. She made me write a return address on it in case I lost it. I told her I’d make a chocolate cake for her. She said that’s not the deal, and I told her that if I didn’t remember the footstool, I’d make her a cake anyways. George called and left a message on my cell phone today. I called him back. He said he was watching a Falcons game with a friend. I don’t think he is supposed to be doing that, I didn’t say anything.

Living experience on a raw food farm

Day 19 12/31/05

We woke up around 7:00 am today. After milking the cows, I came in and hung out for around an hour or so. I was able to open the Vedic Astrology books that I got. They’re great. I played ping pong with George again. I’ve gotten better. He won best 2 out of 3 then 3 out of 5. I didn’t want to do 5 out of 7. The two times that I beat him, it was fairly close. We went into over time where you have to win by 2. His spinning backhand serve is nearly unbeatable. I’ve gotten better and now he is getting better as I’m getting better. So I don’t get too much of an advantage over him. We had to work on the pipes in the barn today. They busted when it got really cold about a week ago and we haven’t been able to get them fixed because we have been so busy. I’m not too good at manual labor or things having to do with metal and tools. I get too sore, too tired and I’m not good with the fumes. They brought a welder, a gasoline powered welder. It filled the entire barn with smoke. They didn’t seem to care. They were just able to keep on working like it didn’t bother them. I couldn’t handle it, I had to leave the room a couple of times. It felt like really hard work. I was milking the cows tonight with Albert. He said that 4-5 years ago, this place wasn’t a happy place to be. He said he was feeding the cows corn silage that had mold. He said that his cows were always sick. He said that he had to pull a lot of dead cows out of there. He said that salesmen told him and his dad that it wasn’t good to let the calves nurse from the mother. They fed their calves powdered milk or would pasteurize the milk, then feed that to the calves. He had a lot of calves die. He said the only reason they did that was because that’s what the salesman told them to do. It’s just like with people. The salesman would make 5-10 bucks off a bag of powdered milk or minerals that they would sell to the farmers. They would make nothing if they told him all they need is fresh air and green grass. Albert said it was just like with people. Salesmen make money off of selling people things that make them sick, it’s the same with animals. He said that “minerals” was and is a big thing. Albert impersonated one of the mineral salesmen with a hilarious country bumpkin, used-car salesman voice. “Why, buy my minerals and your cows will be breeding and reproducing and giving more milk in no time.” He said the minerals never worked. Minerals are like human supplements, but for cows. We were milking and I heard a flapping sound behind the door that leads to the silo room. I got closer and listened. It sounded like a bat. It started screeching like a pig. I called Albert over and I started to hear a flapping behind the other silo door. Albert opened it up and a starling flew out. We opened the first one where I heard the screeching. One of the barn cats had caught a pigeon. Albert tried to take it away and the cat retreated with it back into the darkness. Albert said that was a shame. He likes pigeons more than starlings. He said he used to climb up the silos and catch the pigeons up there. He said he could sell them for five bucks a pop to people who shoot at them. He said the cats are a lot healthier now that he has been pasture feeding more. We were outside the house, talking about why cows and chickens like grain so much if it is not good for them. I said maybe if it was soaked or sprouted it would be good for them. He was really interested in that. He’s already planning to soak the oats he’s feeding the chickens with skim milk to see if they do better with that. We couldn’t figure it out why they liked something that was bad for them. He thought maybe it was the same way with humans and sugar. He said, “Cows are stupid, like humans.” That was the greatest line I had ever heard from him. We couldn’t stop laughing. I’ll never forget that. We got in late around ten o’clock. Marie, Albert and I were hanging out with Lisa who was sleeping on Marie’s lap. Albert loves to philosophize by lantern-light. I though I’d be cheesy and say “So let’s all share our New Year’s resolutions.” Marie told Albert to go first. She was trying to get him to say that he’d work less and not spoil the girls as much. He would start to talk about his resolutions, then get distracted and philosophize and ask, “Why do people eat chemicals?” and things like that. I had some warm whey, when I came in, I felt good. I ate a half a quart of yogurt. I was tired. I wanted to stay up and share resolutions but I was tired. I don’t remember what I ate that day. Oh yeah, egg frittata as Marie calls them (pancakes that had bread, cheese, onions etc). Also I had kale and apple, sauerkraut and Kim-Chee. Dinner was boiled carrots and cheese, potatoes cooked in cream, chicken croquettes.