Hm. So much has been going on the past few days!
My family arrived on Thursday, and we've been having a pretty good time! Today I made Kandace's Curried Carrot Soup, which was pretty good. I upped the ratio of carrots to avocado, and added a few shakes of cinnamon. I also used fresh ginger (which I LOVE), but I think I may have actually used WAY too much. This resulted in my adding more carrots and other ingredients to try to balance the flavors. It certainly wasn't bad for my second attempt at raw soup. I even warmed it a bit in the VitaMix, which was delicious.
6 carrots, chopped
1 1⁄2 avocado
2 cups water
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 small lemon, juiced
2 teaspoons curry powder
1⁄2 teaspoon cumin
a pinch of cayenne pepper
celtic sea salt and pepper, to taste
I had a funny conversation with a friend while walking through the East Village today.
"Oh, so please tell me you're not still trying to eat raw."
"Actually, I am!"
"...Oh. Cause I'm freezing!"
The way she phrased the question put me off a bit. After going 100% raw thirty days ago (I'd been 100% raw for a good, GOOD part of the last year-and-a-half..but never for a NY winter), the whole concept of using food as a way of "warming" (like, heavy starchy crap) pretty much evaporated past the first week or so.
I finally threw out those alfalfa sprouts. They started growing, but BARELY. I did some googling, and apparently you're supposed to grow sprouts in the dark? I always thought my roommate grew ours on the counter, but perhaps I'm mistaken. I guess there's a pretty big difference between "on the counter" and "hanging in the window." I think these guys were getting too much light, and drying out way too quickly in the bag. I'm starting a new batch in a mason jar, and according to one website, I should have sprouts in four days. That would be AWESOME! I want to load up on sprouts and sprout salad before I start my juice feast. :)
Oh, and I tried Sarma's INCREDIBLE sundae last night at Pure Food & Wine. By far, the best, BEST I've ever had in my LIFE. I couldn't believe how incredible it was. Everything was PERFECT -- the candied almonds, the chocolate syrup...aaaah! It took a lot of restraint to NOT go back to Pure for another today while I was in Union Square with my family. :)
After 6 months of no 'poo, I caved and started using Aubrey's Organics shampoo & conditioner. Hm. I had some really good hair days the past six months, but I also had some really BAD hair days. I always loved the condition of my hair while I was using Aubrey's, and its has one of the best ingredient lists, in my opinion, of all the organic shampoos I checked.
I also took out my 7/16" plugs. I've been thinking about it, a lot lately. I'm looking forward to having earlobes again! I've known several people whose ears never go back to their normal shape when they remove their plugs, but I'm confident that with tons of water & greens, they'll be back to their normal size in a couple of weeks.
I made delicious raw vegan granola & a batch of chocolate this evening. I will post pictures & an ingredient list soooooon. I'm super excited for my family's Christmas dinner plans. My mother & brother are staying at my apartment...since I don't cook (ha!), I don't have gas for my stove. On top of that, the size of my kitchen/amount of counter space isn't particularly conducive to creating Christmas dinner for four people, so we aren't cooking, at all! My sister is going to pick up Chinese takeout from an "amazing" Szechuan place, and I'm going to make a GIANT salad, raw onion bread, and some other stuff if I'm feeling motivated. Then we're going to sit around the apartment and watch DVDs. Woo! I was kind of anxious about the whole dinner setup, because I didn't want my family to be obligated to eat my food, OR put their entire Christmas dinner in my roommate's microwave, haha. I also didn't feel like going out to eat with them and just sitting there. It doesn't bother me, but I think my family feels awkward in those situations.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
B-A-N-A-N-A-S!11
Hm. I ate like, a MILLION bananas today. SO ripe and SO good!
I'm really, really excited for this juice feast. I've got my nut milk bags, my Vitamix is all ready, I have a refrigerator FULL of greens, but...no supplements. Yet, at least. I'm debating about whether or not I want to include supplements in my Juice Feast. On one hand, I feel like they're totally unnatural and in no way necessary (except for zeolite!). At the same time, I feel like supplements might be beneficial if you take into account the fact that my diet for the first 20 years of my life wasn't really "natural" at all anyway.
While I never really ate a lot of dairy growing up, I ate a fair bit of meat until I began eating a predominantly vegetarian diet in 2000. Once I made the switch to eating vegetarian, that meant tons of soy, artificial meat products, and PASTA. I cringe thinking about what I used to eat. I could go for weeks at a time eating nothing fresh at all! Sure, I ate lots of veggies..but they were mostly frozen with the exception of an occasional salad or carrot sticks.
I really started hitting salads hardcore my junior year of college. That was right before my transition to raw foods, when I had cut out most of the wheat in my diet, and was eating tons of beans and veggies. I was drinking about a gallon of water per day at this point. I felt and looked great, and the ball just kept rolling as I tried new ways of eating...macrobiotic, vegan, vegan with lots of raw food, organic, no processed foods...I'm really quite pleased with the transition.
My journey so far has been fantastic! I've made some incredible food, and met some incredible people who've inspired and motivated me to be where I am today. I might take some time later on to describe them and their influences individually in later posts. I think it'd be an interesting tribute.
Wish I was there. :)
PS: My alfalfa babies started sprouting! I'm soo excited to have a fresh, delicous sprout salad. Yum.
I'm really, really excited for this juice feast. I've got my nut milk bags, my Vitamix is all ready, I have a refrigerator FULL of greens, but...no supplements. Yet, at least. I'm debating about whether or not I want to include supplements in my Juice Feast. On one hand, I feel like they're totally unnatural and in no way necessary (except for zeolite!). At the same time, I feel like supplements might be beneficial if you take into account the fact that my diet for the first 20 years of my life wasn't really "natural" at all anyway.
While I never really ate a lot of dairy growing up, I ate a fair bit of meat until I began eating a predominantly vegetarian diet in 2000. Once I made the switch to eating vegetarian, that meant tons of soy, artificial meat products, and PASTA. I cringe thinking about what I used to eat. I could go for weeks at a time eating nothing fresh at all! Sure, I ate lots of veggies..but they were mostly frozen with the exception of an occasional salad or carrot sticks.
I really started hitting salads hardcore my junior year of college. That was right before my transition to raw foods, when I had cut out most of the wheat in my diet, and was eating tons of beans and veggies. I was drinking about a gallon of water per day at this point. I felt and looked great, and the ball just kept rolling as I tried new ways of eating...macrobiotic, vegan, vegan with lots of raw food, organic, no processed foods...I'm really quite pleased with the transition.
My journey so far has been fantastic! I've made some incredible food, and met some incredible people who've inspired and motivated me to be where I am today. I might take some time later on to describe them and their influences individually in later posts. I think it'd be an interesting tribute.
Wish I was there. :)PS: My alfalfa babies started sprouting! I'm soo excited to have a fresh, delicous sprout salad. Yum.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Seasonal Affective Disorder?
I miss trees and leafyness...the city is SO grey and icy and bleak right now. There has been a serious lack of sunlight in New York over the past few days (week, even?) and I'm certainly feeling the difference. Ever since we switched the clocks back, I probably haven't been getting as much sunlight as I should, as I'm inside teaching kids all day. I was out and about yesterday in the city running some errands, but I was covered from head to toe in winter gear. This is definitely a matter of concern for me. My energy levels have really slumped, and I'm worried about the other detrimental effects a lack of sunlight can have.
Someone on the Give it to Me Raw forums mentioned something about going to tanning beds in the winter, and I really must agree that artificial sun light seems like a better option than no sunlight at all. I'm really excited that my family is coming up for the break, but at the same time, I wish I was going to Florida so that I could soak up some sun at the beach. Its SO dark here.
Also, I figured out why my alfalfa seeds weren't sprouting! I didn't soak them for nearly long enough, a couple of minutes at most. After a few days of the sprouts just...sitting there, despite a few rinses. I did some more research. One website recommended soaking them overnight, so I was waaay off, haha.
Less than week until my family gets here for the holiday! I will be making tons of yummy recipes to share with them while they're here, and I can't wait! I will post directions & pictures of the finished product when I do. :)
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Sprouts & Abundance
So, today was a particularly stressful day down at a certain public junior high school in Brooklyn which shall remain unnamed. :)
The dance I chaperoned was really upsetting. There was a HUGE table full of...crap. There were like four different types of chips, cupcakes, cake, and all kinds of cheap, bad food...soda, you name it. The cake was SO BAD, apparently, that one of the teachers (who happens to eat a fairly Standard American Diet), SPIT IT OUT, and had the worst look on her face for a good three minutes. She later told me the icing tasted like lipstick. :)
I feel like I contributed to the awful food situation, since the school guidance counselor "assigned" me to bring pretzels. I realize that pretzels aren't, by far, the worst thing I could've brought, but I also know that there was probably a much better option.
On the other hand, I have no idea what I could've brought that the kids would've actually liked. I considered a fruit & veggie tray, but that would've required me to bring plates, etc. as well. Storage would have also been difficult. Its just a bad situation. Would the kids have eaten it? Should I spend $15 on a vegetable tray just for it to sit there? Is it fair for me to decide what I want to bring even though the chick coordinating the dance needed pretzels? Is it fair for me to assume the kids wouldn't eat the fruit & veggies?
Lots of the chaperones were looking for water near the refreshment table throughout the night (hahah after all the salty crap they were eating), so I think I might bring a few gallons next time. I'll also check to see if the cafeteria staff can stash a vegetable tray in one of their refrigerators the day of the dance. If that doesn't work out I could at least bake some vegan cookies with zucchini mixed in. Haha. :)
I find that when I'm teaching my 6th graders and they're at their absolute worst, rolling around on the floor, screaming obscenities at each other, and and shoving people/objects across the room, I start getting intolerable cravings for the not-so-good-for-me Cuban food the bodega across the street starts dishing out around 12. Hm.
Now that its getting colder, I always pack an enormous kale salad, with lots of seeds (ususally sunflower & sesame) thrown in to fill me up. I also keep a lot of fruit in my bag to snack on in case I get hungry during my planning periods or after school.
Today's goodness, in order of consumption:
--1.5 quarts banana/mango/blueberry smoothie
--giant kale salad w/EVOO, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, carrot, black sea salt, lemon juice, west African hot pepper and freshly ground black pepper
--two gala apples
--5 bananas
--giant kale salad with carrots, cucumber, plum tomatoes, sesame seeds, and ginger dressing (ginger, garlic, sesame oil, lemon, honey).
Here goes tonight's dinner:
...which happens to look a lot like last nights dinner. :) I just recycled my broccoli stir-fry ginger sauce recipe from the other night. It wasn't nearly as good without the broccoli, though. I can't wait to make more of the original stir fry recipe for dinner on Friday night. Fancy Schmancy!
Sprouting:
Today I made my first solo attempt at sprouting alfalfa seeds. They are probably my favorite type of sprout, but don't really buy them too often. First of all, I spend most of my time shopping at Trader Joe's, and they just don't have them. On the off chance I do walk over to Whole Foods, they're generally out of stock or the sprouts look ick. My favorite part of making my own sprouts is the cost. I spent $.80 for a little over an ounce of organic alfalfa seeds, and half of that is probably going to fill up the sprout bag. An entire meal's worth (if not more) of organic, FRESH, living, enzyme rich, incredible food for $.40. Sign me up!
These seeds have been sitting in my cabinet for a couple of months but I've been too lazy to do anything about it. The thought of sprouting is also somewhat intimidating. I've sprouted with jars before, but I've only gotten good results about 50% of the time. I don't mind sprouting lentils and garbanzos in a colander, but that is obviously out of the question for alfalfa seeds.
So, rather than try the jar method again, I used a nut-milk bag (When you use a bag, your seeds are less likely to get moldy). I threw in about 1/2 ounce of dried alfalfa seeds, and soaked them for about 60 seconds in purified water (I don't know if they even needed to soak for that long...). Then I hung them in my window, and I should have some decent sprouts in...a couple of days? I have no idea. I'm going to wait it out and see how they do. I hope the window pane isn't too cold, though, as they're pretty close to it and it was sleeting/snowing earlier today in my neighborhood.
Oh! After considerable peer pressure, I FINALLY joined Give It To Me Raw, the world's PREMIERE raw-food networking community! I'm really glad I did. What are you waiting for? Go! Join! Oh, and add me!
The dance I chaperoned was really upsetting. There was a HUGE table full of...crap. There were like four different types of chips, cupcakes, cake, and all kinds of cheap, bad food...soda, you name it. The cake was SO BAD, apparently, that one of the teachers (who happens to eat a fairly Standard American Diet), SPIT IT OUT, and had the worst look on her face for a good three minutes. She later told me the icing tasted like lipstick. :)
I feel like I contributed to the awful food situation, since the school guidance counselor "assigned" me to bring pretzels. I realize that pretzels aren't, by far, the worst thing I could've brought, but I also know that there was probably a much better option.
On the other hand, I have no idea what I could've brought that the kids would've actually liked. I considered a fruit & veggie tray, but that would've required me to bring plates, etc. as well. Storage would have also been difficult. Its just a bad situation. Would the kids have eaten it? Should I spend $15 on a vegetable tray just for it to sit there? Is it fair for me to decide what I want to bring even though the chick coordinating the dance needed pretzels? Is it fair for me to assume the kids wouldn't eat the fruit & veggies?
Lots of the chaperones were looking for water near the refreshment table throughout the night (hahah after all the salty crap they were eating), so I think I might bring a few gallons next time. I'll also check to see if the cafeteria staff can stash a vegetable tray in one of their refrigerators the day of the dance. If that doesn't work out I could at least bake some vegan cookies with zucchini mixed in. Haha. :)
I find that when I'm teaching my 6th graders and they're at their absolute worst, rolling around on the floor, screaming obscenities at each other, and and shoving people/objects across the room, I start getting intolerable cravings for the not-so-good-for-me Cuban food the bodega across the street starts dishing out around 12. Hm.
Now that its getting colder, I always pack an enormous kale salad, with lots of seeds (ususally sunflower & sesame) thrown in to fill me up. I also keep a lot of fruit in my bag to snack on in case I get hungry during my planning periods or after school.
Today's goodness, in order of consumption:
--1.5 quarts banana/mango/blueberry smoothie
--giant kale salad w/EVOO, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, carrot, black sea salt, lemon juice, west African hot pepper and freshly ground black pepper
--two gala apples
--5 bananas
--giant kale salad with carrots, cucumber, plum tomatoes, sesame seeds, and ginger dressing (ginger, garlic, sesame oil, lemon, honey).
Here goes tonight's dinner:
...which happens to look a lot like last nights dinner. :) I just recycled my broccoli stir-fry ginger sauce recipe from the other night. It wasn't nearly as good without the broccoli, though. I can't wait to make more of the original stir fry recipe for dinner on Friday night. Fancy Schmancy!
Sprouting:
Today I made my first solo attempt at sprouting alfalfa seeds. They are probably my favorite type of sprout, but don't really buy them too often. First of all, I spend most of my time shopping at Trader Joe's, and they just don't have them. On the off chance I do walk over to Whole Foods, they're generally out of stock or the sprouts look ick. My favorite part of making my own sprouts is the cost. I spent $.80 for a little over an ounce of organic alfalfa seeds, and half of that is probably going to fill up the sprout bag. An entire meal's worth (if not more) of organic, FRESH, living, enzyme rich, incredible food for $.40. Sign me up!
These seeds have been sitting in my cabinet for a couple of months but I've been too lazy to do anything about it. The thought of sprouting is also somewhat intimidating. I've sprouted with jars before, but I've only gotten good results about 50% of the time. I don't mind sprouting lentils and garbanzos in a colander, but that is obviously out of the question for alfalfa seeds.
So, rather than try the jar method again, I used a nut-milk bag (When you use a bag, your seeds are less likely to get moldy). I threw in about 1/2 ounce of dried alfalfa seeds, and soaked them for about 60 seconds in purified water (I don't know if they even needed to soak for that long...). Then I hung them in my window, and I should have some decent sprouts in...a couple of days? I have no idea. I'm going to wait it out and see how they do. I hope the window pane isn't too cold, though, as they're pretty close to it and it was sleeting/snowing earlier today in my neighborhood.
Oh! After considerable peer pressure, I FINALLY joined Give It To Me Raw, the world's PREMIERE raw-food networking community! I'm really glad I did. What are you waiting for? Go! Join! Oh, and add me!
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Broccoli & Carrot Stir-Fry
I was craving broccoli (specifically, chinese food) all day today! The recipe I wound up making was 239823 times better than I'd anticipated. :)
Broccoli & Carrot Stir Fry
2 broccoli crowns
4 medium carrots
1/4 clove garlic
1 tbs fresh ginger
1/4 cup sesame oil
1/2 lemon, juiced
nama shoyu to taste
1/4 cup honey
black pepper to taste
sesame seeds to taste
Break the broccoli into thin stalks. Julienne the carrots, then throw into a large mixing bowl.
Process the garlic, ginger, sesame oil, lemon juice, and nama shoyu (I used a teaspoon or so), in a food processor until smooth. Taste and adjust before pouring on the veggies! My measurements for honey and sesame seed oil are approximate. This definitely makes enough sauce for several servings, so whatever you don't use you can bottle up for the next day.
Toss the sauce in with the broccoli and carrots. I sprinkled some black pepper and sesame seeds on top of the stir-fry. Incredible! Its a good idea to add baby bok choy, sprouts, julienned zucchinni...whatever you have on hand and feel like throwing in!
I generally don't eat foods that have so much oil or honey in them, but this was an amazing treat! With all of the ginger, this tastes just like (Okay, honestly? Better than) the old-school cooked chinese food I used to love...except SUPER fresh and yummy! The marinade softened the veggies a bit, but the broccoli still had a great crunch to it.
Today's Food, in Order of Consumption:
--1.25 quarts of spinach/mango/strawberry/banana smoothie (this combination didn't taste so good...i think there were too many types of fruit going on)
--1 gala apple
--5 bananas
--cashew & raisin mix
--1 Blue Moon w/ orange (not raw..i know, i know)
--a few squares of raw onion bread
--2 bowls of broccoli & carrot stir-fry
Monday, December 10, 2007
Overdue
According to my pal Philip out in Connecticut (www.lovingraw.com), I am "long overdue" for a raw blog. He's right!
I went ahead and created this journal to track my progress, discuss health issues & living foods, and to post about the path I've taken so far. I'm really excited to start blogging with everyone, and should have some YouTube recipes up shortly as well!
I went ahead and created this journal to track my progress, discuss health issues & living foods, and to post about the path I've taken so far. I'm really excited to start blogging with everyone, and should have some YouTube recipes up shortly as well!
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