Days Twenty-Four, Five, Six, and Seven

Last night I woke up at 2:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep thereafter. I used to have this problem at least once a week when I was working and attributed it to stress. Considering I'm not at all stressed at the moment, it can't be that. It can't be caffeine either because I gave that up weeks ago. I don't know what to attribute it to.

The cooking experiments of the last few days have not gone well. I shouldn't be surprised: I tried to make patties of all the vegetables I had in the refrigerator that I hadn't used up: celery, parsnip, onion, zucchini, yellow bell pepper, broccoli florets, mushrooms, and almond pulp leftover from making milk, all seasoned indiscriminately with tahini, raw marinara, nama shoyu, and apple cider vinegar. I think it was that last ingredient that really pushed it over the edge into bleh. I'm going to stick to recipes for a while, at least as a foundation to tweak upon, and not just throw things into the food processor. I think I got overconfident with the fact that all veggies and fruits were tasting so good -- I thought I could just throw a bunch of them together and come up with something great.

I also decided to try two products that have been in the fridge a while: Living Tree Community Foods "Dream of Paradise - Organic Chocolate Ecstasy with Raw Cacao" and "Sweet and Kind - Organic Raw Pumpkin Seed and Sesame Butter."

A friend whose ex-partner works at Whole Foods gave them to me (she got them free). I didn't like them when I first tried them but I thought as my palate changed I might feel differently so I kept them. I really wanted to like these products, but I tried them again and bleh. For starters, the consistency wasn't at all what you'd expect of a spread: it didn't spread, it crumbled. Second, both of them had a strong, bitter taste. I think it might be the sesame that's in both of them -- ordinarily I love tahini, but the bitterness was just overwhelming. Sesame, cacao and lavender just don't go well together -- it was a bitter, flowery mess. It's a shame: I know these little jars go for about $9 a piece.

We've been raising our daughter vegetarian even though my husband is not. The other day, she wanted a bite of the mashed potatoes (which she calls cake -- we've never been able to fathom why) in his t.v dinner, but they were all mixed with the meat so I explained that she didn't want those because there were dead animals in there. Today, she saw Daddy carrying a t.v. dinner and immediately asked, "It has animals in the cake? I want to see animals."

What I've been eating:

Day Twenty-Four:

• 11:30 am: raw granola, banana, almond milk
  
• 2:15 pm: Salad (romaine, sesame dressing, pumpkin seeds, plum tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, broccoli) and lemon sparkling water
  
• 4 pm: Larabar, apple pie flavor
  
• 5 pm: banana and almond butter on raisin bread
  
• 6:45 pm: Green smoothie (bag organic spinach, juice 3 homegrown tangerines, almond milk, 2 dates, pear, tsp. spirulina, cinnamon)

Day Twenty-Five:

• 7 am: Larabar, apple pie flavor
  
• 10:45 am: Raw granola, 1/2 banana, almond milk
  
• 2 pm: 1/2 Larabar, apple pie flavor
  
• 3:45 pm: Green smoothie (banana, 8 oz. organic spinach, juice of 3 homegrown tangerines, almond milk, water)
  
• 7:30 pm: Mango
  
• 8:45 pm: Kale chips, salted pumpkin seeds, lemon sparkling water

Day Twenty-Six:

• noon: disaster patty (see above), a few Kale chips, green smoothie (bag organic spinach, couple of kale stalks, juice of 2 homegrown tangerines, water, banana)
  
• 1:30: disaster patty (had to give them a second chance) and Kale chips
  
• 3 pm: homegrown tangerine
  
• 5:30 pm: banana, almond butter and raisin bread, cracker and raw vegan cheddar cheese, taste of various Living Community butters on crackers and bread
  
• 7:30 pm: raw cinnamon roll

Day Twenty-Seven

• 3 am: salted pumpkin seeds, homegrown tangerine
  
• 9:30 am: Raw granola, 1/2 banana, almond milk
  
• 4 pm: green smoothie (bag organic spinach, banana, juice 2 homegrown tangerines, wheatgrass)