I just finished reading my Hanuman book. My Chinese astrological sign is the year of the monkey, and I love monkeys of all sorts. In Ubud, Bali, I visited the Monkey Forest, where I met these 3 cuties eating fresh fruits and all raw foods: leaves and fruits.
Ani Phyo's Raw Food Kitchen at Mom Tri's Villa Royale, Thailand: 2 min, 41 sec Watch video This is an overview of the workshop I taught in Thailand at Mom Tri's Villa Royale in Phuket. It was edited and posted immediately after the workshop on January 24, 2010. This video ends with a view of the beautiful sunset over the ocean. The end to a perfect day. Watch video
My friend and raw model Anthony told me to find Sari Organics in Ubud. I was ecstatic to finally find it on my 2nd visit to Ubud. I had one of the best medicinal herb salads ever, made with organic herbs from the fields and also gathered from the forest.
I was thrilled to find an amazing vegan and raw food soup on the menu at the St. Regis, a 6 star resort in Nusa Dua. This wasn't just any gazpacho...it was green, and topped with a deliciously refreshing Bloody Mary Sorbet. Nusa Dua is a resort area at the south eastern end of Bali. This beach is full of white sand, and the water is the most amazing turquoise I've ever seen. My photo doesn't even begin to capture the color of the ocean. 2 friends met up with me in Bali. Chris, the surfer, is my best friend from freshman year in college. That was a long time ago! And Carol's my drum and bass dancing ballerina who keeps me up dancing late at night back in LA. The best of friends, sunshine, blue ocean, and hot weather. These are the main ingredients fueling my bliss.
It's rainy season in Bali, so it downpours buckets of rain for 20 minutes to a couple hours almost every day. It's warm, so I don't mind it. On my first rainy day, I decided to visit a local grocery store, where I found a new fruit called salak. It grows on palm trees. This is salak. It has a brown snakeskin that's really thin. You peel it away to find what looks like garlic cloves inside. These pods of fruit contain a small seed, and taste sweet and tart at the same time. The meat of the salak fruit is not juicy, but rather dry and firm. It has a texture similar to a pear, but not as firm and crisp, smoother in texture, and dry. Interesting texture and delicious flavor. This brightly colored, hairy fruit is a rambutan. I love lychees, and the rambutan is very similar in texture and flavor. Rambutan is very cheap in Bali. I bought a big bag for about 50 cents. The rambutan, even at the grocery store, is always covered in crawling ants. I guess this means there's no pesticides on the fruit, a good thing. Here in hot, muggy Bali, I live off fresh tropical fruits (durian, salak, rambutan, mango, papaya, pineapple, and banana), and enjoy only occasional greens when I find them. Back home in the States, I had been cutting back on my sugar intake over the past several months. I was concerned about eating so much fruit. But, my body is thriving on this raw food fruit diet. Combined with swims in the warm ocean, walking everywhere, and the sunshine, all this fruit is making [...]