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.