Finding my path!

So I'm off of the Raw diet and looking to figure some things out.  I hope/plan/want to return to the raw diet but It will not be immediately.  To all of this I say, "I make apology's." I learned this from my hero Carl Paladino (Please not sarcasm!) Well I am ok with my choice and like I said def not done with it.  But while I'm not 100% Raw I am still cooking and trying to develop a healthy vegetarian diet.  I'm trying to cool with all whole grain foods, artificial sweeteners and stevia and seeing how it impacts my sugar and weight.

I'll star off by including two things I've good in the last few days! Both recipes are from Meatless Meals by Barbara E. Echols

The other day I made My Granola page 282.

My Granola

3 1/2 cups rolled oats

1 cup bran

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1 cup chopped cashews

1/4 cup tahini
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup honey
1 cup diced dried apricots or any dried fruit

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
2. Combine the oats, bran, sunflower seeds, and nuts in a bowl, Add the tahini, salt, extract, cinnamon, and honey. Mix well.
3. Spread the mixture in a shallow baking pan and toast for 30 minutes, stirring after the first 15 minutes.
4. Remove the pan from the oven and toss immediately with the dried fruit  to prevent the mixture from sticking together in lumps, When cooled, store in a covered container.

I've made this granola many times over the years.  I'm going to try to make it in the dehydrator next time because if the mixture burns even a little bit it impacts the granola.  I'll get back to you on how that turns out.

Next I made Meatless Meatloaf from the same cookbook page 155.

Meatless Meatloaf

1/4 vegetable oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup any combination of mixed vegetables and cooked beans ( used frozen mixed vegetables.)
1 cup finely chopped nuts or 1 cup chunky peanut butter
1 cup cooked rice (I used brown)
1/3cup bread crumbs (Whole wheat)
1 cup grated cheese
2 eggs lightly beaten
black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Heat the  oil in a skillet and saute the vegetables till they are limp.
3. Combine the sauteed vegetables with the remaining ingredients. Mix well, adding a small amount of liquid if the mixture seems too dry.
4. Pour the mixture into a greased loaf pan and bake for 40 minutes. Serve hot or cold.

This is delicious.  It's great hot or cold.  I promise you will like it. My dad, when he was alive,  ate this and didn't hate it.  For him that is a ringing endorsement.  He was very much a meat and potatoes man. The funny thing about my dad was that, even though he was not very fond of a lot of my cooking, he always wanted me to become a chef.  Maybe I missed my calling.

First Post

I figured this would be as good a title as any for my first post, so here goes. I'm currently on insulin and two different medications for type II diabetes, hypertension and severe acid reflux. After a little research I've decided to try a raw food diet. I had been interested in it some time ago but had never good beyond the curiosity stage.

I've been a quasi-vegetarian for the past 23-24 years. I was first introduced to a veggie lifestyle while on The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament. During that 12 months I hated (or so I thought) every aspect of the vegetarian lifestyle and ate meat at every opportunity. When I returned home, I found that I missed the way this healthy diet made me feel so I began to investigate becoming a vegetarian. I started slow by first removing pork from my diet, and then beef. This took less than three months to accomplish. Next was the hard part, giving up poultry. It took about a year to completely remove poultry from my diet. During this time, I ate seafood, as did most of my friends who were vegetarians. I was very dogmatic during this period. Lecturing others and refusing to touch anything that had touched meat. I even gave up my beloved Oreos because at the time they were still made with animal lard. After about 5 years I became vegan.

I still ate honey but everything else was off of the table. I had traded milk for soy, ice cream for rice cream and never found a suitable replacement for cheese. (The vegan Parmesan was the only one that was palatable.) This phase lasted for about a year. It was difficult but a lot of fun learning all different things about food and cooking. It was funny because at the time people would say to me in a rather incredulous tone, "Well what can you eat?" Suggesting that life with out meat and animal products would leave a huge void in my food choices. The truth was, I never felt before that I had had so many options. I was introduced to foods and cooking techniques that I had never known existed. While I have never returned to the vegan lifestyle, I've considered it a number of times. An end result of the raw food diet might be renewed commitment to being a vegan again.

Over the next 15-17 years I'd gone back and forth to including poultry in my diet. I'd gone from a dogmatic position to one of more accepting that everything had cycles, including my diet. This past year I've sworn off poultry again and have been free of it since last September 2009 (the 8th if I remember right). Before that I had been eating poultry for about 3-4 years and during that time had seen my weight increase and a general feeling on being unwell. For the past two months I've altered my diet and have gone almost exclusively to whole grain, fresh foods ands limited my use of processed foods.

All of which brings me to today. Today I went shopping for many of the supplemental foods that will assist me with maintaining a raw food diet. At this point I'm only looking at it as a cleansing. I will start with one day on a few off, another day one, then a few more off. After that I will try two days straight, next I will take a few days off and then try a whole week (I'm not sure if they mean 5 or 7 days in their suggested week, but I will try seven.) I will then take a few days off and finally begin my 21 diet.

I'll post what I eat, how I feel; physically, mentally and emotionally for the next few months. I've never blogged before but I really felt that this would be a good time to start.

What do I hope to get out of all of this? A stronger body, mind and soul. I hope to drop a little bit of weight and most importantly, I want to start myself on a path to decrease and maybe even eliminate my need for my meds.

I am using three books as a guide to this change. The first one is:

There is a cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21 Day+ Program by Gabriel Cousens, MD

Raw Energy By Stephanie Tourles

The Complete Idiots Guide to Eating Raw by Mark Reinfeld, Bo Rinaldi and Jennifer Murray.

and I've pulled a few recipes from the following website:

http://www.living-foods.com/recipes/

If you are currently living a raw life or have in the past, please drop me a message and let me know what did and did not work for you. Also let me know what resources you used.