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.

Day 2 of my Raw Food Month

Yesterday, September 2nd, 2010, was my second full day of eating High Raw for a month and it started off great.  For breakfast and lunch I had a green smoothie of two apples, a banana, blueberries, and a whole head of romaine, it was delicious. 

I discovered when I ate raw for a week is that it is very important to have some raw snacks available, you know for snacking.  You could cut up things like carrots, celery, cucumbers, peppers, etc. for easy snacking.  Fruit is of course super easy, grapes and strawberries are portable and delicious.  Raw nuts and seeds are of course an excellent option that have loads of protein and nutrients.  But, if you have a local health food store or whole foods there are other options for snacks as well.  One that I have discovered is Kale Chips.  I have seen several different brands on store shelves, but I found one at my local health food store, Good Health, that I really enjoyed.

Essentially it’s deliciously seasoned kale that has been dehydrated, the kale ends up crispy and satisfying.  This particular brand has three flavors, Cheezy, Salt & Vinegar, and Barbecue.  I tried the salt and vinegar flavor and the flavor was great, just like their potato chip cousin.  Occasionally there are some stems in the bag that are perfectly good to eat they just end up a little crispier than the leafy part of the kale.  So, kale chips are one pre-made raw snack that I have been enjoying.  They are rather expensive (I bought them on sale) but if you have some cash to spare they are so satisfying.

For dinner last night we had raw pasta made from some organic green zucchini that I spiralized.  We have been keeping our veggies in the fridge in order to keep them fresh in the warmth of summer.  In order to have warm pasta (nobody likes cold pasta raw or cooked) I mixed some extra virgin olive oil with the noodles and put them in the oven which was set at the lowest temperature.  This way they would get warmed up without being cooked.

Next I made a raw tomato sauce.  Remember yesterday when I said that I had the tendency to improvise recipes and sometimes they don’t turn out so well.  Unfortunately, this has happened several times when I am using raw tomatoes to make a soup or a sauce.  It just never came out right, something about the raw tomatoes.  Well, I finally discovered what I was doing wrong and my sauce last night turned out amazing.  Turns out when you cook tomatoes they become a little sweet.  In order to sweeten my sauce I added some medjool dates to the blender and then some raw agave nectar.  Here is the recipe I came up with:

Ingredients

• 3 Medium Tomatoes
• Juice of half a Lemon
• 2 Medjool Dates
• 1 tablespoon of RAW Agave Nectar
• 1/4 cup Nutritional Yeast
• Onion Powder to taste (I used about a teaspoon)
• Garlic Powder to taste (I used about a teaspoon)
• Kelp Powder to taste (Again, I used about a teaspoon)
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• Several Leaves of fresh Oregano (from our garden)
• 3 cloves of garlic
• Dried Basil to taste
• Dried Basil to taste

I think that’s about it, just blend everything up in a blender until smooth.

If you let the blender run for a minute or so on high the sauce will actually warm up a bit because of the friction.  I like my tomato sauce smooth, if you like it chunky you can stir in some diced tomatoes.  The noodles had been in the warm oven for the whole time I was coming up with the sauce so by the time I was done they were ready.  I mixed the sauce with the noodles and topped it with some salt, pepper, and crushed red peppers.

I had some diced tomatoes ready to put on top, but I completely forgot about them.  So, I ate them later.  Day two was a big success, my raw pasta dish even got Michelle’s seal of approval!

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.

Raw Foods

I am all by myself this week.  Michelle is off at a Montessori conference and the cat and I get to spend some quality time together.  Usually when Michelle goes away I take the opportunity to eat really bad food.  I would go out and eat really crappy food.  To be honest I was kinda looking forward to doing it this time as well, but something changed.

The Raw Food Lifestyle is something that has intrigued me for a while.  We have a couple of raw food recipe books and I have always wanted to go raw for a couple of days.  At home, I do a lot of the cooking and I didn’t really want to experiment with raw food on Michelle.  Since she is away until Friday i’ve decided to spend the week and focus on simple raw foods.

After I dropped her off at the airport I came home and made a big green smoothie that I drank for breakfast and lunch.

Another thing that I tend to do when Michelle is away for a couple of days is spend a lot of time at the movies where I can eat a lot of popcorn.  While I was initially sad that I wouldn’t be able to eat popcorn and drink soda at the movies I decided to make my own.  I cut up cauliflower into bite size chunks and mixed it with nutritional yeast, salt, and old bay seasoning.  It was delicious.  Luckily I was able to sneak it into the movies.

For dinner I made some raw pasta out of a zucchini with a spiralizer and made a cheesy sauce for it out of cashews, a red bell pepper, cayenne pepper, and salt.  It was so amazing, luckily I had some left over for lunch today.

After dinner I did have some dark chocolate and a beer, so it wasn’t a completely raw day, but today will be.  So far today I have had an apple and leftovers from dinner last night.  For dinner I am gonna have a nice big smoothie with greens and fruit.