Happy New Year!

Been a bit off track this last week or two.  I was sick with a cold that turned into a sinus infection.  Finally feeling somewhat better yesterday.

I’m trying to get myself psyched up for The Rawtarian’s 14 day raw cleanse starting Monday.  I’ve been eating far too many SAD foods and they have me feeling awful and cranky.

I’m going to start journaling my food again.  I have almonds soaking for milk and am going to go make some cauliflower popcorn now.  I think I’m going to do 15 for ’15 and start with a 100% raw day tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

Nutribullet To The Rescue

We’re on our weekend trip to Rhode Island. I survived on my two juices, oranges, and bananas yesterday. And coffee.

I was starving by the time I was done with my work meeting (the purpose of the trip) at 5 and so we went out to a Mexican restaurant that was recommended. They had avocado fries on the menu and what can I say, I was curious. They were about a 1/1 ratio of fried breading to avocado though. Tasty but a mistake. They were $10, too, so I didn’t want to just let them go to waste. Bad logic.

Then I got an arugula salad with some roasted vegetables that was a bit too oily to be really good. My margarita saved the meal at least.

We went downstairs for breakfast this morning. I had a small cherry Greek yogurt and an apple with some peanut butter and then we headed to Stop & Shop for smoothie ingredients.

I just used my Nutribullet for the first time. It works really well! I wouldn’t replace the Vitamix with it but it’s far more portable and great for travel.

I might make a chocolate shake now.

Food Journal 12/16 – 17

Yesterday:

6 AM Coffee

9 AM Green Juice

12 PM Huge Green Smoothie

5 PM 2 little raw gingerbread balls

6 PM We went out to our favorite taco place so only a fraction of my meal was raw:  chips and salsa and guacamole, roasted beet taco with arugula, yogurt crema and sweet potato soup

8 PM another raw gingerbread ball or two

Today:

5:30 AM Coffee

9 AM Green Juice

11 AM Huge Green Smoothie

12 PM 2 little raw gingerbread balls

2 PM Yum, I’m eating a collard wrap from the restaurant across the street from my office.  It’s not all raw as it has chickpeas and roasted corn in it bu thtere’s also avocado, tomato, cilantro all wrapped up in two big collard leaves.

2:30 PM Raw brownie

Mid Month Update

I’ve been struggling a bit of late with the holidays ramping up into full swing and I’ve had a cold since Friday that I’m just getting over.  I’ve been making lots of juices and smoothies at least and trying to have a salad every night.  Saturday I had a giant smoothie for breakfast but then succumbed to a bunch of unhealthy food at dinner thanks to having plans with my husband’s family (they don’t eat well at all!). Sunday I recovered a bit with juices in the morning and then  I made a buddha bowl with quinoa, spinach, beans, and guacamole for dinner.

Yesterday I had juice in the morning and then forgot to eat until 3:30 when my husband had made some leftover latkes from Saturday night.  Not healthy but alas it is the holidays and I’m doing much better than I probably would be otherwise.  For dinner we had a nice big greek salad and I tried making some quinoa porridge for dessert.  It was sort of delicious.  Not raw but healthy enough.

For the rest of the month I’m going to stick with my goal of raw till dinner and then make sure at least half of my dinner is raw, which I usually accomplsih with a big salad, which I’ve been pretty good about. Not perfect.  But pretty good.

I’ve been experimenting with lots of recipes this month but am finding I’m struggling with dehydrated foods.  I just don’t really like the dehydrated crackers and breads and nut heavy SAD substitutes I’ve made thus.  I love the onion bread for but um, let’s just say it would only work if I didn’t ever spend time around other people as I seem to have some digestion issues with it.

In January I think my goal will be to start experimenting with some more things like marinated and dehydrated non-nut based things.  I remember liking marinated and dehydrated portabellas and marinated and dehydrated tomatoes.

My goal at least for now is not to be raw during the day with a really healthy mostly vegan dinner.  I’m really enjoying the Jennifer Cornbleet interviews she’s been doing daily and am getting a lot of inspiration and ideas from them.   A lot of the guests have been recommending some sort of buddha bowl in the winter with quinoa or sweet potatoes and then beans or lentils with greens.

Food Journal Recap

From Wednesday (Travel day to CT):

7 AM Coffee

8:30 AM and 10:30 AM I made myself a green juice and a green smoothie for the drive there.

11 AM – Stop for coffee

1 PM For lunch I had a salad with roasted beets and some goat cheese.  I resisted the dessert thought the menu looked delicious.

5, 5:30, and 6 PM: I brought an orange, an apple, and a banana for snacks and I ate all three on the way home.

7:30 PM For dinner it was salad with some brown rice (with soy sauce and butter).

8 PM A couple of vanilla drop cookies.

It wasg a tough day on the craving front.  I’m feeling a bit worn out from all of the driving  yesterday and might be fighting off the cold my daughter has.  Fingers crossed I don’t get it.  I’ve been taking oil of oregano to help boost my immune system.  That stuff is like a miracle.

Yesterday:

7 AM Coffee

9 AM – This morning all I wanted to do was get a coffee and a bagel and cream cheese on my way into work.  I didn’t.  I decided to make a green juice and a sweet potato/pear/orange juice before I left for the office and see how I felt after that.  The bagel craving is gone at least.  I’m feeling sort of uninspired though.

11 AM I ate the last raw brownie from the batch I made last week and a raw vanilla drop cookie.

I skipped lunch altogether yesterday.  I just couldn’t stomach the idea of getting a salad down.  I seem to have caught my daughter’s cold so was still craving comfort food.

5 PM YESTERDAY  we went out to our favorite wood fired oven pizza place in town and I had a salad with some pizza.  No regrets.  It’s good enough to be worth it.

Today so far:

6 AM coffee

6:30 AM More Coffee

9 AM Huge green uice.

Lunch – I have the salad I brought in yesterday that I’ll eat today.

Dinner – we’re having friends over and I’m going to serve the rest of the veggie soup we made earlier this week in addition to salad and the zucchini noddles and “cheese” sauce.   I might make a raw cheese cake, too, if i can get it together.  I’ll see how I feel by then.  Yesterday I was pretty exhausted by 5 PM thanks to the cold.

No Pendulum This Time

It’s been almost a month since I started this high raw diet.  I’ve been raw until dinner most days and have been making sure I eat a big salad with dinner when I do eat something cooked.  I’m feeling pretty good.  I have more energy.  I feel clear headed.  And most importantly, I feel happy.  Life feels good.  I feel grateful for, and better able to connect with, the people around me.  I don’t think I’ve lost much if any weight but so be it.

I was going through some old entries from 2009 when I first started this blog and and remembered how I would go off the rails when I used to eat something cooked after going for stretches of weeks eating all raw.  It always seemed to be all or nothing and if I would swing the pendulum into the 99% raw territory it seemed to swing just as furiously back towards things like bread and cheese.

I’m really not depriving myself this time around, which seems to be creating less of a pendulum effect.  If I really want something then I eat it.  We went to the movies with Ruthie on Saturday and I was hoping to bypass the popcorn but Ruthie really wanted to get some.  Next time I’ll make some popcorn at home without a bunch of chemical additives but since we hadn’t planned ahead I got her the kid-size popcorn.   Then I smelled it and I really wanted some, too, so I had about two handfuls.  Afterwards I had horrible stomach cramps.  (This is one of the problems with eating really well… it can make you intolerant to eating all those things that really shouldn’t be in anyone’s food in the first place.)

We went to Chipotle for dinner since it was getting late after the movie and there is one right near the mall so I had a salad bowl there.  Did have some brown rice, black beans, and a bit of cheese on it.

Yesterday I ate raw for most of the day but decided to have a half cup of brown rice pasta with a little butter and parmesan with my big greek salad.  It was delicious.

I’m learning what I like and don’t like.  The veggie burger patty was good on Friday night.  I had another on Saturday and had a hard time getting it down.  Things like the raw ketchup that have sun dried tomatoes in them I find mildly repulsive.  As do the nut heavy entrees.

I love my juices in the morning for breakfast.  Sometimes followed by some chia pudding or oatmeal with berries.  Sometimes not.  First lunch is a huge green smoothie (a quart or more) in the late morning and second lunch is after noon and has been an avocado on some sort of raw cracker with lemon juice and salt.

Chocolate shakes are a delicious treat.  The raw brownies are, too.

A salad most nights with something cooked – anything from a slice or two of pizza to some brown rice or quinoa – is keeping me even keeled.

I made a raw bread this morning.  It’s in the dehydrator at home as I type this from the office.   Fingers crossed.

We’re doing a fair amount of entertaining this coming weekend so I think I’ll make the cheesecake on Thursday or Friday.

I’ll try the zucchini hummus and collard wraps one day this week when I tire of the avocado on crackers (or maybe the raw bread!) as my post smoothie lunch.

I’ll try the raw ravioli for dinner one night and have a fully raw day.  Maybe the raw fettucini alfredo another night.

Tonight, I’m making vegetable soup.  The cooked kind.  And I’m looking forward to it.

Meal Planning and Prep

I was starving this morning and not really in the mood for chia pudding and we didn’t seem to have much else in the house that was raw, prepared, and appetizing.  I had a banana and then it occurred to me that some juice would tide me over.  I made a green juice and then a juice with oranges, sweet potato and pear.  Yum, it was good and now I feel stuffed.

I use weekends to do most of my prep and dehydrating.  I’m trying to make a meal plan for the week so that I have food ready and available so maybe I can continue to stay raw all day even at dinner.  I’m not going to stress about it if I don’t but I’ve felt so good on the days this past week that I did all raw and I want more of them!

Staples that I’m trying to always have on hand:

• Almond milk (I make a quart every 4 or 5 days by soaking 1 cup of raw almonds with about 5 cups of water)
• Oranges
• Tons of bananas
• Berries
• Green Juice (2 Apples, 1 cucumber, 1/2 bunch Kale or other greens, 1/2 a bunch of celery, 1 lemon, and 1 -2″ ginger makes about 32 oz each morning).
• Green smoothie ingredients (kale, apple, bananas, frozen mango and frozen berries).
• Chia seeds for pudding
• Oats
• Buckwheat groats
• Flax seeds
• Almond butter
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• More apples
• 1-2 batches raw bread or crackers – I’m going to make the rawtarian’s soft bread for the first time today.  Fingers crossed it’s good!  When I’ve been making bread and crackers I keep some out for the week and then freeze some so then I have a variety in rotation.
• Cut up veggies – carrots, celery, peppers & cucumbers.
• I try to make sure I always have at least a cup each of cashews, macadamia nuts, pecans, walnuts, brazil nuts, and pine nuts so that if I get inspired to make a sauce or cheese or raw cheesecake or something; I am prepared.
• Salad ingredients (lettuce, carrots, celery, beets, sprouts, grape tomatoes)
• Avocados
• Garlic
• Lemons and limes
• Vanilla
• Cinnamon
• Olive Oil
• Honey, agave, and maple syrup
• Cocoa powder
• Zuchini
• Tomatoes
• Basil (plant)
• Sundried tomatoes
• Rosemary (plant)
• Parsley
• Cilantro (plant?)
• Dried unsweetened coconut
• Dates
• Brownies or some other chocolate treat
• Another dessert
• Coffee!
• Milk for coffee

As for the recipes I want to try this week:

• I want to start making a dip every week for veggies etc.  I think I’ll try the Rawtarian’s ranch dressing this week.
• Jicama to cut up into “fries” to have with the raw ketchup and veggie burger.
• Collard wrappers – marinate collard greens in some lemon juice and salt to soften them up a bit and then use them for wraps for things like burgers and hummus
• Zucchini hummus
• Fettucini alfredo with spiralized zucchini
• Ravioli using thinly sliced turnips with a cheese filling
• Cheesecake
• A raw salad dressing (in addition to the ranch dressing dip)

Prep for the week that I’ll do this weekend:

• Make bread and cheesecake and ranch dressing
• Sprout mung beans.
• Juice some lemons so that I have fresh lemon juice on hand for salad dressings etc.
• Marinate collard leaves for wrappers.
• Shred carrots and beets to throw on top of salads etc.

Ooh yum.  These raw hashbrowns looks good, too.  I might have to make them as well since I have some raw ketchup made up already.

Burger Success!

After work I wasn’t feeling very hungry and had a headache but I’d managed to get out a little after 4 and so had time to make a green juice for myself and The Husband and then do some yoga before thinking about dinner.

I definitely wasn’t craving anything cooked but was so skeptical about those raw veggie burgers. I’d made them over the Thanksgiving break and finally decided to just freeze them when I hadn’t eaten them after  a few days.

I made the ketchup and mayo to go with them and had one with green pea shoots, a slice of tomato, raw ketchup and raw mayo in a romaine leaf. It was soooo good. Ketchup and mayo were key.  As was the tomato slice, sprouts, and romaine leaf to lighten and brighten the whole thing up.

I made the full recipe for the ketchup and it made at least 12 oz and there’s no way I can eat 12 oz of raw ketchup in the next week so I froze an 8 oz jar of it.  We’ll see how that works out.

For the mayo I decided to try making 1/3 of the recipe and doing it in my little magic bullet blender instead of the Vitamix (I didn’t think there would be enough volume to do it in the Vitamix).  It came out great!

I wish I had a group of people to share the task of making raw condiments each week.  The recipes make so much and it would be nice to have a bit of variety.

Oh, I just realized I should have put some raw sauerkraut on my burger last night!  Oh well, I might just have another today and I can add some then.

After dinner Ruthie and I made the Perez Hilton cookies again.  She loves them and they have no added sugar or bad ingredients.  I used dried cranberries instead of raisins since that’s all we had.  I had a couple of them after dinner.  They’re not raw but they’re pretty innocuous and oddly tasty.  You take one bite and kind of wrinkle your nose but then you keep going and they’re quite delicious.

So that was my Friday.  Not completely raw but pretty damn close and I’m feeling great.  No desire for the junk food binge I had on Thursday.  I’m so looking forward to a weekend in the kitchen!

December 5th:

Feeling a little headachy and low energy today (too much coffee?  the SAD mac n cheese yesterday, no green juice or yoga this morning?)

Here’s my raw till dinner report. I might make some raw ketchup when I get home to try on the nut meat burgers I haven’t quite been able to bring myself to eat. The few nibbles I had weren’t that good but maybe with the ketchup and maybe I’ll even make raw mayo.  With the sauces and wrapped up in a leaf of romaine they might be good?

Here is my food log for the day:

coffee with milk at 7:30 AM

Starbucks latte @ 9 AM

16 oz of green smoothie leftover from yesterday @ 1130 AM

banana @ 12:30 PM

leftover moroccan carrot slaw with green pea shoots on top.

big bowl of chia pudding with berries @ 1 PM

onion bread crackers with avocado mashed up with lemon, salt and pepper @ 3 PM

I’m going to try to keep it raw tonight.  We’ll see what happens.

Later on December 4th:

Ugh.  I just ate a bowl of mac and cheese.  Not the raw kind!  Scott had gotten it for Ruthie when he got the shepard’s pie and after putting Ruthie to bed I had a serious case of the munchies.

It’s like I have two stomachs:  a healthy food stomach and a junk food stomach.  I was completely stuffed after the salad and cooked shepard’s pie tonight but I still wanted something junky b/c the junk food stomach was near empty.

I’m going to blame it on PMS.

I topped it off with some chocolate chia pudding.  I recently discovered blended chia pudding.  I love it that way!  Smooth and creamy.