I would like to thank @woman-onthe-wing for asking me to judge this great weekly competition #steemitculinarychallenge.

Food is of course one of the most important factors in maintaining a healthy body & mind. And when care is taken to prepare it, can be a most pleasurable break from the daily grind. It also presents an opportunity for families and communities to come together and share their knowledge and food lovingly.

10 years ago the food I put in my body was 100% about the pleasure I gained from eating it. I had no interest in nutritional value or the effects of the chemicals and preservatives.

And then from a rather unexpected source came my salvation: For one year I lived with a male porn star @sebcam, whose goal was to achieve maximum energy combined with an aesthetically pleasing body through his diet and free-running regiment. After researching the subject for many years he had concluded that raw vegan was the optimum diet for this purpose.

He appeared to me to have an enormous amount of energy, he never got sick, was always very positive, and had a body that I was somewhat envious of.

So, naturally I thought I would give it a try. And... wow! Everything changed almost instantly. And I have never looked back. Thank you @sebcam. I am forever indebted.

Thanks also to David Wolfe for this nice little montage here. Hope to see you on Steemit soon!

@sebcam advised me to start slowly and add things to my diet rather than take things away. So I started each day with a freshly squeezed orange juice, right before my sausages, bacon, eggs, beans & toast!

I had one big salad every day and one big smoothie too, fruit mixed with some spinach.

Very quickly my body started to feel different. I had more energy and even my mind felt better somehow. And I wanted more of this awesome feeling...

So I became more strict with myself, gave up meat & dairy completely and did my best to eat raw fruit & veg as much as possible.

I did crave the 'naughty' foods at first and found myself eating a lot of nuts to compensate, but this was expensive and not good for me in these quantities. As my knowledge grew so too did the variety of my food and preparation techniques.

In the cold of the London winter I very much enjoyed preparing this smoothie, a combination of warm water, ground cacao beans, bananas & creamed coconut.

Unlike @sebcam, exercising didn't interest me. Only diet. Yet even without the exercise I lost all my excess body fat and developed muscles where I never had them before in less than a year!

As you can see above I was more comfortable in my body than I had ever been. Big poser! haha :)

I mentioned my mind because this was evolving with my body. I started questioning modern society and doing tons of research to discover as much as I could about every subject you can imagine.

And it quickly became evident that I was very out of place in the city, trying to make ends meet as a filmmaker.

So I said goodbye to it all and set off out into the world with little more than my clothes & camera kit in a bag on my back.

Less than a year later I met my partner Sabrina on a bus in Thailand and now we have two beautiful children, Esteban & Luna. We have been travelling together for three years and are currently based in Bali... and finding it rather hard to leave :)

All of us are vegans. And all of us are in perfect health. We are not 100% raw vegans and we are not strict vegans either. Sabrina is from the South of France and loves to cook. And around once a month we do have a meat night, making sure the meat is blessed and shown respect. And we do also have eggs from time to time. But I always feel in my body when I need to go raw for a while and sometimes even do a few days of fasting, drinking only water or fruit smoothies.

We really love our daily smoothies & salads, and we particularly enjoy sprouting our own beans & lentils. This softens them up & increases nutrients without any cooking required.

They take only a few days to sprout and we eat them in the salads.

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This Week's Theme - Raw Vegan Dessert

I chose this theme because there is nothing better than a tasty dessert and I enjoy it even more when I know I am eating something good for me. It's a tough one when we are accustomed to sugar, pastry & dairy filled creations... but where there is a will there is a way!

Our favourite dessert is a raw vegan cheesecake. The base is made with crushed almonds & dates. The topping is made with cashew cream (after soaking them overnight), vanilla bean paste, melted coconut oil, agave and lemon juice.

Sorry to say that I don't have any pictures of our past creations, but I very much look forward to seeing yours.

Thanks for reading everyone, and I hope you enjoy the challenge.