Days Seven, Eight, and into Nine

Feeling a little rough this morning because I didn't sleep well last night -- I must have swallowed a pill wrong because I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like something was scraping its way all the way down my throat. This is the sort of morning I really crave coffee to give me that extra kick to get started.

I posted the other day on the Give it to me Raw forums requesting advice for a substitute drink -- several folks mentioned green drinks, another wheat grass, one even said a daily wheat grass enema! I'm not sure if they were joking or not, but either way I'm not sure I'll ever be ready for that one.

Unfortunately this morning I'm out of dark leafy greens to make a truly green drink or smoothie. At least one person suggested it was better to juice than drink a green smoothie in the morning "because it gets some nutrients in me without having to wake up my digestion right away" so I experimented with straining before drinking (I have a Vitamix but not a juicer). I avoided fruits in this concoction because I didn't want to spike my blood sugar without the fiber to slow it down, and the result was sort of awful. I threw half away. From what I have read the appeal of greens without adulteration may increase with time.

I've been (un)cooking alot in the past few days, including whipping up another batch of autumn squash cookies, though this time I threw in some brazil nuts and cashews as well as a carrot. I also made a wonderful batch of Kale chips. I've made these before -- I'm not sure where I got the original recipe, but I think it was this one because it seems closest to my version before I tweaked it:

Raw Pomona's Variation: Kale Chips In the food processor or Vitamix: Cilantro – qtr to ½ cup tahini – qtr cup cider vinegar – qtr cup juice of one lemon garlic clove half cup water qtr cup braggs pinch Celtic Sea salt De-spine a couple bunches of Kale, toss with dressing, then massage into leaves. Dehydrate.

These are ridiculously wonderful.

I also made up a batch of sour cream because friends were having us over for tacos. They said they'd provide lettuce leaf for shells and so for filling I brought over my raw chili and a batch of Ani Phyo's recipe for scramble (a cross between the Garden and the Spanish Scramble: almonds, sunflower seeds, turmeric, sea salt, red bell pepper, green onions, garlic, cilantro, tomatoes). I got the idea for the sour cream from this recipe for cream cheese. Here's my version:

Raw Vegan Sour Cream In Vitamix: About 2 cups of cashews soaked, drained and rinsed water juice of one lemon 1/2 tsp. probiotic powder Blend until utterly smooth and creamy. Leave out in a warm place until it achieves the desired level of sourness, then refrigerate.

The tacos, by the way, were fabulous. Not everyone ate my version, but some tried it. I also brought along the Kale Chips and even the most trepidatious agreed they "weren't bad." My friend Di, who is raw-curious, went to town on them. The thing about any new cuisine I think (I've found this to be true of vegetarian dishes as well) is that people have to first be open to thinking they could be good, otherwise even if they agree to taste it they do so with the expectation it will be bad. You see this phenomenon most obviously with kids, but adults are guilty of it too: if you don't think something will be good, it won't be.

Yesterday I also put together a batch of bread -- both recipes I looked at (from Matt Amsden's Rawvolution and Ani Phyo's Raw Food Kitchen) had onions in them and I wanted a bread that might be good with nut butter or something sweet on them, so I started with Ani Phyo's recipe, eliminating the savory ingredients, substituting white sesame for black, and adding raisins. It's still in the dehydrator so I don't know how it turned out yet.

Anyway, here's what I've been eating for the past couple of days:

Day Seven:

• 10 am: raw buckwheat granola and brazil nut milk
  
• 11 am: Raw green smoothie (4 stalks organic kale, 1 1/2 bananas, 1 papaya, 2 satsumas, 1 organic apple -- I kept adding fruit because I didn't anticipate the strong flavor of the kale, so I wound up with a huge batch. I drank half and refrigerated the rest)
  
• 2 pm: 1/2 Larabar cinnamon roll and 1/2 Larabar apple pie, shared with my daughter while shopping
  
• 3:15 pm: Avocado with Celtic sea salt
  
• 4 pm: Bowl of raw chili and sparkling mineral water
  
• 6:30 pm: Rest of my morning smoothie
  
• 9:30 pm: A few kale chips
  
• 10 pm: raw buckwheat granola with brazil nut milk

Day Eight:

• 7 am: Raw green juice (2 stalks of organic celery, 1 organic tomato, handful of organic arugula, handful of organic cilantro, strained). Drank half of this and threw the rest away.
  
• 9 am: Raw autumn squash cookie
  
• 9:30 am: Ani Phyo's scramble
  
• noon: Raw smoothie (several organic carrots with tops, satsuma, organic apple, 1 stalk of celery -- I ran out of dark leafy greens)
  
• 4:30 pm: Raw autumn squash cookie
  
• 7:30 pm onward (at a friend's house): drank club soda while I snacked on baby carrots, sugar snap peas, dried pears, walnuts, kale chips. Ate a raw taco (lettuce leaf, tomatoes, avocado, raw chili, raw scramble) and some mixed fruit (apples and bananas with the canned mandarins picked out) with a bit of the "sour" cream, which hadn't gotten very sour yet.
  
• Throughout the day: snacked randomly on kale chips
  
• Middle of the night after waking: salted peanuts (not raw)

Day Nine:

• 9:15 am: Raw autumn squash cookie, raw buckwheat granola with brazil nut milk

Day One

I've just returned from a week in Alabama to visit family over the holidays. I'd been waiting until my return to fully begin my transition. As a vegetarian, I've always been limited when I dine at parties, but at least I could go crazy on desserts. Then I got diagnosed pre-diabetic and that was out the window too, so while I was in Alabama, I survived the first few days mostly eating the cheese, crackers, and chex mix that was sitting on the table at family gatherings. I also stocked up on a variety of bars before I left to make sure I had enough protein on hand. Most of the bars weren't raw, but a few were. My newest raw discovery are Larabars: I really like the cinnamon roll flavor.



It's cheap too -- at least as far as bars go -- about 1.25 each. I also tried Jocalat, made by the same company. The one flavor of that I had, chocolate coffee, was really wretched: it tasted like chewing on stale, used coffee grounds. Bleh.

After the first couple of days, which was dominated by family parties, I was able to go to the market and stock up on supplies for green smoothies (which generally consisted of some combination of organic spinach, romaine, carrots or apples and nonorganic mangoes, clementines and bananas). My mother in law's blender wasn't as powerful as my Vitamix at home but if I chopped the fruits up a bit more to begin with it survived just fine (My Vitamix is an ancient 3600+ I bought decades ago that I won't give up for the even more powerful newer models because I love the all-stainless steel design)

Yes, I imagine a choir of angels singing when I see that photo too, and rightly so.
I love my Vitamix too much, I know.

By midweek I was eating at least some raw and entirely vegan. I got a strange hankering for plain avocado with salt and ate five over a few days. I was still drinking coffee or diet coke because I knew once I went off it the detox headaches would start and I figured I'd better wait until I was at home for that.

So today, my first full day back, was also officially my first day of this regimen. My refrigerator, however, was barren after a week away so my first order of business was to head to the market. O.k. my second order of business: Target holiday merchandise was at 75% off and I hadn't nearly gotten my fill in Alabama so I hit three before going to Trader Joe's. Along the way I had a Larabar Key Lime Pie flavor to keep up my strength until I could get home with groceries (I can't say I'm as fond of this flavor upon trying it -- a bit too sour).

The rest of the day was spent experimenting with (un)cooking and cleaning up the Christmas decorations. Here's what I ate:

• 9 am: Larabar Key Lime Pie flavor
• noonish:
  Raw green smoothie (organic pear, two homegrown satsumas, large handful of organic spinach, a few sprigs of hydroponic watercress, banana, 5 organic baby carrots, water), raw hummus (adapted from a recipe in Ani's Raw Food Kitchen -- organic zucchini, tahini, lemon juice, garlic; next time I'll skip the garlic because even one clove of raw garlic was way stronger than I expected) and raw organic baby carrots
• 3 pm: handful of "raw" almonds (I'm still working through a batch of almonds I bought before I realized all so-called raw almonds you buy in the store have been pasteurized and are therefore not truly raw. I hate to waste food, so when I get through these I'll buy some that are really raw)
• 7 pm: brown rice, furikake (a Japanese sprinkle for rice) and baked teriyaki tofu with a glass of sparkling lemon mineral water.