My High Raw Experiment Has Ended

I decided to end my month of raw food yesterday, only halfway trough the month.  It’s a little bit disappointing but I am comfortable with my decision for a couple of reasons.

First, let me explain why I have decided to end this experiment.  There was a serious lack of preparation on my part, but this is not really a surprise to me.  I like to improvise in the kitchen when I am preparing dinner.  I am not really a planner.  I go in the kitchen, see what’s available and start throwing things together, usually they come out pretty good.  This is true not just in my kitchen but in the rest of my life as well, perhaps it is not a great attribute but I kinda like it.  In addition, I am still trying to find a good balance between preparing my meals at home and the convenience and novelty of going out to eat.  When we have had a stressful day or a long week, it is really nice to be able to order good Indian food or a sushi from down the street and not feel guilty that I am eating cooked food.  I was hoping that I would be able to sustain eating mostly raw foods for an entire month, but maybe I should stick to doing it every once in a while for a week, if I can plan an entire weeks meals that is.

It was fun for half a month and I have learned a lot, including some things about myself.  I already knew that I had some serious addictions to certain foods but eating raw helped focus those things.  During the 15 or so days I had some serious cravings for bread, sugary sweet things, and processed vegan things like seitan.

With those things considered even though I will stop eating raw for the rest of the month I will be changing my diet.  During the week I will be avoiding bread, processed food, and anything with processed sugar in it.  When the weekend rolls around I will just eat whatever the heck I want.  I may be setting myself up for failure by not limiting myself on the weekend, but this seems like something I can do, it’s within my grasp.  I will continue to incorporate a lot of raw foods, probably in the form of green smoothies for breakfasts and lunches during the week.

So, I’m done with High Raw for now.  Sorry for ending it early for all of you that were following along, don’t be too hard on me.

Labor Day Weekend

With the passing of Labor Day 2010 it is the unofficial end of another summer, much to the dismay of teachers everywhere.  What a beautiful weekend it was though.  I continued to practice my raw food experiment with some adjustments, hey I can make adjustments it’s my experiment.  I’ve decided that during the week I will eat High Raw and on the weekends I will open it up to eat some more cooked foods while still focusing on whole foods.  Some of the cooked foods I’ve decided to eat are things like quinoa, beans, brown rice, and fermented foods like tempeh.  There are some foods that I have decided to strictly avoid for this month, like bread, sugar, and processed vegan food (like hot dogs).

I hope you are interested the kinds of things I ate over the weekend, cause I am gonna tell you.  Friday night I decided to cook some quinoa and mix it with some raw cut up veggies which included some massaged kale.  Kale is one of my favorite foods, I love the flavor and how good it is for you, but it is not always palatable raw.  But, it can be made a little tastier by massaging it.  Cut up your kale into bite size pieces, drizzle a teaspoon of olive or flax oil on it and grind some coarse sea salt onto it.  Then using your hands massage the kale, I know it sounds weird, just do it for a couple of minutes and soon you will have slightly wilted kale, almost like you have steamed it, but none of the nutrients are gone.  We also had a huge salad on Friday night while the quinoa was cooking.

On Saturday we had smoothies for breakfast and were out most of the day working to complete our list of summer tasks.  By the end of the day we were both kind of tired and extremely hungry so I decided that it was ok to go to our local Chipotle.  I was able to get a burrito bowl which essentially means a bowl of rice, beans, fresh salsas, lettuce and guacamole.  The only thing that disappointed me about this meal was the white rice.  This is when I came up with my set of new rules.  We actually went back to Chipotle last night and I just got extra beans instead of rice.

Sunday was a raw fruit breakfast of a bannana and an apple, but dinner was the highlight.  It is a treat to go out to eat and get raw food, one of the few places in the Boston area that serves raw food is The Other Side Cafe.  For an appetizer we got Spicy Lettuce Wraps which is a raw pate made of nuts and seeds wrapped in some romaine, they are so good.  For my entree I got something from the appetizer section they call Nature Boy which is essentially a raw mock chicken salad, the pate from the lettuce wraps, and another mixture of nuts and seeds surrounded by a generous portion of sliced beets and carrots to dip.  It was so good and although I was stuffed I did not feel bloated.

I know some people would say, “that was your dinner, it seems so boring,” but I assure you it was far from it.  For dessert they have this raw chocolate mouse with fresh fruit.  It is made out of raw cacao and avocado, it too is amazing.

When labor day came around we decided to have a cookout, it is labor day after all.  Before hand I had decided i would fore-go some of the raw food and grill some cauliflower and tempeh.  I was still planning to stick with the whole foods and not the veggie dogs we got for some of the other people coming by.  Well I relearned something I have known for a while but have been trying to ignore.  It is not good for me to drink when I am trying hard to avoid certain foods, my inhibitions lower and I say to myself “It’s OK, just have one hot dog.”  So, that is exactly what I did.  I had a couple of beers and then I ate a hot dog and it’s bun, with ketchup, mustard and relish, it was so good.  At first I felt extremely guilty but, I made the choice and I can just pick right back up where I left off and continue on my way.

I will leave it at that, I hope you had a great labor day weekend, mine ended up being pretty relaxing which is exactly what I was hoping for.

Yesterday’s Raw Food Meals

Even though yesterday was a little hard at the start in the end it turned out awesome.  For lunch I made it to the salad bar in the cafeteria here at the Boston Medical Center where they actually use (according to them) local foods that are picked the day before.  I had a lunch of cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, carrots and a banana.  Surprisingly, it kept me pretty full for the rest of the day, along with a lot of water.

For dinner I took stock of what we had in the fridge from the local farmers market, which included corn on the cob, tomatoes, some romaine lettuce and cucumbers.  I cut the corn off the cob and diced the tomatoes and cucumbers and mixed them all together.  My plan next was to improvise a sauce using some more tomatoes and spices off the top of my head.  Michelle, my wife, having experienced some of my improvised recipes implored me to use a recipe.  After some grumbling and pushing my pride aside I looked in a book that I have used for a couple of recipes called Raw Food Fast Food by Philip McCluskey.

I ended up making a Thai inspired sauce, here is the recipe;

Ingredients

• 2 TABLESPOONS BRAGG’S OR SHOYU
• 2 TABLESPOONS OLIVE OR FLAX OIL
• 1 TABLESPOON RAW APPLE CIDER VINEGAR
• 1 TABLESPOON LIME JUICE
• 1 TABLESPOON RAW HONEY OR AGAVE NECTAR
• 2 CLOVES MINCED GARLIC
• 2 TABLESPOONS HEMP BUTTER
• 1 TEASPOON SEA SALT
• 2 TEASPOONS KELP POWDER
• 1 TABLESPOON CRUSHED RED PEPPER FLAKES
• 1 TEASPOON CHILI POWDER

Directions

Mix sauce ingredients with a whisk or fork in a bowl until well combined.

Luckily I had all of the ingredients.  Hemp butter is very hard to come by and it is expensive, so I make my own.  Raw hulled hemp seeds are available at most health food stores and Whole Foods.  Throw a cup or so of hemp seeds in a food processor until it becomes creamy, then you have hemp butter!

So after I whisked all of those ingredients together I mixed it carefully mixed it with my corn, tomatoes, and cucumbers to they wouldn’t get crushed up.  It tasted amazing.  Initially I intended to out this salad that I had just created onto crispy romaine pieces and then eating like a taco.  It turned out the romaine was not as crispy as I wanted so I just cut it up and we ate the whole thing as a salad, topped with some diced tomatoes.  It was amazing and surprisingly filling.

First Day of Raw Foods

So today is officially my first day of going High Raw and to be quite honest it did not start out well.  I kinda had a late night last night.  We went out to a movie and because of construction on the T it took us two hours to get home.

For breakfast and lunch today I was supposed to be having a green smoothie with two apples, a banana, some blueberries, and some romaine lettuce.  But getting home at 11:00PM last night put a wrench in the works.  I am always worried that our blender is too loud to use late at night or extremely early in the morning.  Getting home late meant going to bed late which meant getting up late and not having time to making a smoothie.  It all just spirals out of control.

It’s ok though, I will be still be able to pick up some fruit and veggies to have a raw food lunch.  For dinner tonight I think I will make a fresh veggie salad with corn, cucumbers and tomatoes all from our borrowed CSA this week.  We will use romaine to wrap the salad and enjoy.  I am not quite sure how I am gonna season it yet.  I will post a picture and let you know how it is.

The raw food experiment has started.

Going Raw in September

I weighed in this morning at 241.6.  I have gained about 8 pounds since my last weigh in on July 23rd, 2010.  I have been quite lazy this summer, I guess that’s why they call it the lazy days of summer.  Lazy with exercise, lazy with food and especially lazy with this whole blogging thing.  Well summer is almost over and I am a little happy to be moving on from vacations, travel, and being lazy.

We are planning to get back our health beginning in September.  I will be hitting the gym several times a week and keeping track of my calories.  Having already been to a newly open gym right near our apartment several times we even have a bit of a head start.  It may be hard to get back into the swing of things but I am gonna do my best.

In order to jump start all of this we are planning to eat mostly raw foods for all of September, 30 full days.  The raw food lifestyle has been something that I have been increasingly interested in.  Back in July I went completely raw for a week and at the end of the week I felt amazing.  During that week though I did have some cravings for sugary, crunchy, salty things.  I am hoping that 30 days on a raw food diet will be detoxifying and help me get rid of some of the cravings I have.

There are many people who eat 100% raw foods we are planning on eating what some folks call the “High Raw” diet which means eating 85% - 95% raw foods.  With the cooked foods being mainly whole food grains.  It also will allow for the occasional (very occasional) non raw food snack or meal out somewhere.  Going raw for 30 days will no doubt be hard at first, but much like going vegan I believe it will get easier after the first or second week.

I am not sure how we will feel at the end or even in the middle.  What I hope is that we will sort of reboot our health and at the end eat much healthier by default.