October is in general a hectic month for us at Hella Delicious, being a time of harvesting as well as getting my handmade stores ready for the Christmas shopping season. Here in Canada, Thanksgiving comes in October and so I also spent a couple days cooking for that–so I have some nice recipes for grain-free (GAPS/SCD friendly) pies that I will be posting soon. As a matter of fact, while sorting my photos from the last year to make the Hella Delicious calendar for 2011, I realized, not only have I gotten way behind in posting recipes, but I have enough recipes and photos to put together into a cookbook, so I hope to have that ready by the end of the year (which is probably a little ambitious, so we will see if it happens by then). Thankfully, we did manage to get out on October 20th for a little forest bathing in some of Vancouver’s beautiful parks–I was starting to really go nuts from lack of interaction with nature!

In looking back over those photos from last year, I also realized that at this time last year I was spending about a month in bed with what was physically the worst digestive condition I have yet to suffer. As a direct result of that, I did a very powerful colon-cleansing fast (This time of year is also good for fasts, and detoxing of various types), which actually probably did some harm in itself (I will post this fast soon as well), simply because my digestive tract was so abused and torn up that any type of fibre and rough material hurt the sensitive tissues. Anyway, when that fast didn’t help my situation I really got worried and that finally spurred me to take the plunge and do the GAPS diet. I am so glad we did. Although, I will say going on the GAPS diet has been like a walk through Dante’s Inferno (In the sense of the extreme healing crisis’ we have gone through over the last year–really brings you together!)– I am amazed at how much more energy I have these days compared to last year. We are actually doing pretty well with the wet (moldy!) conditions this year, so I hope our digestive systems are nearly healed and our micro-organisms are balancing out–finally! I gave in last month and ordered some Bio-Kult, which is a powerful pro-biotic supplement with 14 strains of various gut micro-flora, we haven’t started taking it yet, so we will see how that works out.

I don’t want this post to be too long, but just wanted to mention some of the things that have been going on this last month. I am assisting with a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy training course, which will take place every two months for five days down-town. We did the first block in September and since then I have been looking for a room to share so I can start doing cranio again. I have also set up a website www.fluidhealing.net (my brilliant web-designing partner has been crazy busy so I had to do it myself, please excuse!) and I am making some fliers and whatnot to get that running. The price isn’t set, it will depend on how much a room costs–I hope that will help to support Hella Delicious, because I don’t really want to start doing what a lot of urban home-making blogs are doing these days and charging for the information in e-courses. I think it is important to have this type of information available to everyone–as often the people who need it the most can’t afford it and I have been in that situation A LOT, so I know how much free info helps.

I also had the opportunity to attend my first trial. It was a very interesting experience. The judge seemed like a reasonable fellow, but he was clever and said he would think about it, and he is taking his time. I was there for a Contempt of Court order that had been placed on our local Agister, Alice Jongerdan for packaging raw milk for us, the owners of the cows. A cowshare program is like a C.S.A in that the Agister, houses and cares for our cows–since I live in an apartment this is the only way in Canada I can access milk right from my cow. The province of British Columbia earlier this year declared raw milk to be a Hazordous Substance (!). (I have worked with some hazorous substances cleaning industrial ovens and I blame them for some of my current health conditions–and I can tell you raw milk is not the same sort of thing at all). Anyway that took all day and I plan to also write up more info about that coming up.

I also attended a fundraiser for a very special organization, called HUGGS that provides schooling for poor kids in India. It takes these kids all the way through their high school and sometimes college education, and it keeps in close contact with them, supporting them all along the way. Currently they have 19 young people in their program. It is nice to see an in-depth and personal NGO, as so many aid organizations are actually nothing but another way to grab money.

Last but not least, the Hella Delicious 2011 Calendar is here and there is a 30% discount until the 3rd of November if you use the code 2011CALENDAR! So get them while they are on discount!