Update

So here's what's up with me. Back pain! I don't know if i have just been stressed or if I slept funny or if it's all the baking shifts i have been doing at work after not having done them in a while, but my back is fucked. Yesterday I made an emergency massage appointment because there was no way I was going to be able to sleep and get up and work a 9+ hour day the today unless something was done about my back pain. So apparently my Rhomboid major (I looked it up) on both sides of my spine have big giant knots in them. Worse on my right. It took pretty much the whole hour for my nice massaging lady to get the right side to FINALLY loosen up a little. She said she couldn't get it all the way out without bruising me so I have to go back mid week and get another treatment. Which is expensive but worth it.

I am about to go lay down for a bit to rest my back but I wanted to update and tell about my produce box and a good raw soup I made.

The most trustworthy raw recipe site that I have found Sunny Raw Kitchen (see links to the right) has a recipe for a zucchini soup, which looked really good so I made it. I must say it was the FIRST raw soup I have made at home that wasn't disgusting. It was pretty good and I would make it again. It definitely convinces me that the next big kitchen purchase should be a vitamix... since my soups are never completely smooth. More like slushy and liquidy...

The recipe is...
Cream of Zucchini Soup
By Jennifer Cornbleet’s Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 People
Serves 2

½ cup water
1 zucchini, chopped (about 1 cup)
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon mellow white miso
½ teaspoon crushed garlic (1 clove)
¼ teaspoon sea salt
dash cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ avocado, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh minced dill, or 1 tsp dried

Place all of the ingredients except the olive oil, avocado and dill in a blender. Blend until smooth.

Add the olive oil and avocado and blend until smooth. Add the dill and blend briefly just to mix.

Serve immediately.


On thursdays I get my SPUD Grocery delivery. I get a huge produce order once a week and it is seriously like christmas for me. This is the "fruit" box, but I also got a second one that was heavier items and leafy greens on top. It makes my life easy and delicious.

Satisfying Dinner

I had an awesome but pretty simple dinner tonight. I guess not THAT simple but relatively so. I made a raw "taco salad" and a RBG smoothie.

For my Taco Salad I set down a bed of mixed greens with romaine, chard, and green leaf lettuce, I topped it with guacamole I made yesterday with avo, red onion, lime juice, sea salt, cilantro, and grape tomato's. I also picked up some fresh salsa today on my shopping trip. So I put a big scoop of that on too. Finally a chance to use the dehydrated corn chips I made from everyday raw for their intended purpose!

My Red Blue Green Smoothie was 1 small sized banana, a handful of blue berries (frozen), a handful of strawberries, and a couple of raspberries (frozen), 2 ice cubes of my young coconut water/meat mix, and 1/2 t of spirulina. I added a tiny bit of water to get it moving, then blended it until smooth.

For being just greens, salsa, and guac, my salad was very tasty and satisfying. The chips were very good in it and a nice filling addition. I drank my smoothie first... At juliano's restaurant the nice and cute server girl told us that they serve desert and smoothies first, soups next, and entrees last. They do it because the sweet pureed stuff is the easiest to digest and they get your stomach and pancreas moving, so you are better able to digest the more fibrous foods/dehydrated foods in your entree. I like this philosophy, more so because I can't wait to eat dessert, but the fact that it makes sense helps.

For my real dessert tonight I am going to have some watermelon I cut up earlier and marinated in lime juice and agave. YUM!

young coconuts

I had my very first brush with a young coconut today, I think I am in LOVE...

I scraped the meat out and put the juice and the meat in the blender and when it was combined I threw it into an ice cube tray in the freezer to save for smoothies. It is so delicious. 

YOUNG COCONUT:
Nutritional Benefits
Young coconuts are considered highly nutritious. One whole coconut has only 140 calories and provides 17% of the RDA for calcium. The total fat content is 3 grams, all saturated. With a zero content of cholesterol, the young coconut has 50 mg sodium, 28 grams of carbohydrate, 2 grams of fiber,15 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein. 

Young coconuts are sold still in the husk. You can recognize a young coconut by its pale, almost ivory color and by its conical shape at the top. Look for these in the refrigerated section or produce section of some health food and Asian markets. If you're surprised at how heavy they are, try pouring the coconut juice into a measuring cup--just make sure it's a large measuring cup.

Young coconuts are valued for their juice, but the coconut meat inside, which is often sweeter than that of the mature coconut, is completely edible and has a softer, more delicate consistency than a mature coconut. The very young coconut meat is almost jelly-like and can be eaten with a spoon.

Store young coconuts in the refrigerator.

More info here: http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch58.html

on retraining myself to eat..

I DO love food. So it comes as no surprise that I have recently determined that I take BIG bites and don't chew my food. One of the most mentioned tenants of a raw food diet that I have read is that one must CHEW THEIR FOOD. The enzymes in your saliva mix with the food and begin to break it down, easing digestion and converting sugars, before you swallow. Now maybe for some this isn't a big shock. Well, and really it isn't a shock for me either, I just wasn't doing a very good job of it. I tend to bolt my food and eat as much as I possibly can before I get full. Really I think it is more to satisfy my hunger than to get full, but sometimes I eat SO fast that I become full and I eat a huge plate of food and I still FEEL hungry. I don't enjoy my food because its gone before I even tasted it. 

My new raw diet has really opened my eyes to some of my food issues. I am sensitive to sugar, even in fruits, if I'm eating too much of it. I knew that before (excema, athletes foot, food cravings) but I never saw such obvious and pin-pointable results. I started incorporating more fruit into my diet to get more calories and quickly began getting my nightly sugar cravings and needing to get up and have something sweet before I could sleep again.

Since starting this diet I have also had less cravings overall and feelings of ravenous huger, while still feeling like I can eat whenever I want and until I am full. I only started having cravings again when I was eating a ton of sweet fruit. I checked out a glycemic index chart on fruit and am trying to keep in mind what the lower sugar fruits are and incorporating more of those into my diet, and keeping the high sugar fruits in the slight minority.

Greens are the key. I need to eat tons of greens and start throwing them into my smoothies.

So back to my big bites. Since I have started focusing on chewing my food I have come to realize that I take such large mouthfuls of food that there is no way I can chew it without swallowing some. Like it is such a big bite I can't really move it around in my mouth without some going down the drain. Americans! ha

So I am working on smaller bites, chewing my food, and eating my greens. 

dehydrator

so, the big news in my life... I got a dehydrator! which is awesome because it gives me the option of gently "cooking" food. I can make breads, and crackers, and soften my vegetables like broccoli which are hard for me to digest. I am trying to take it a little easy with eating the dehydrated foods because I know if I go overboard it wont be healthy and will probably give me a tummy ache, buuut it sure is nice to have a pizza crust. So far I have made corn chips from everyday raw, which are good but I think could be better, I may tweak it a little bit next time... And I made pizza crusts from juliano's RAW: the uncook book. They turned out great. I made a pizza with sundried tomato and carrot juice, used the spring onion cheese recipe from goneraw.com, which rules... and added marinated mushrooms, olives (not really raw ones, eek! I cheated), and parsley on top. Yum! If anyone is interested in any of the recipes I used for my pizza let me know :)