Raw's More Wonderful, The Second Time Around

Well I'm working on my second, non-consecutive week. I took Saturday and Sunday off and I must be honest, I ate too many things that I hadn't had in the previous five days. It wasn't a complete 360 but I didn't love my eating response. Part of what I'm disappointed in is that I said that I would eat half raw and half cooked, well i only ate cooked. I think I threw in a juice on Sunday to assuage my guilt, but for all intensive purposes, I ate cooked. This weekend will be the last weekend for a month, when I plan to eat cooked and that will only be one day, Saturday. I'm going to the Fair and I don't imagine that there will be much to sustain me on a raw diet. In all truth, It's hard enough to eat vegetarian there let alone raw!

Today and yesterday have gone well. I've been packing uncooked oats for breakfast and a hearty salad for lunch. Those usually tide me over till I get home and have a snack.

I've made another batch of Sunburgers and I'm really enjoying them. I def though need to find other dinner meals. Breakfast and lunch have been easy. Dinner has been a little tougher. I ordered a few more raw food books. One that was suggested by my friend Nancy; Raw: The Uncookbook by Juliano Brotman and two others; Raw foods for Busy People by Jordan Maerin, and Ani's Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo. I'll let you know what I think of them when I get them and try some recipes out!

My Weight still says I've officially lost about 12 lbs. I'm hoping to drop a few more this week. Really good news on the Blood Sugar front, today my blood sugar was 106. That's as close to normal as I've ever been since I started testing myself. If this continues I can start to investigate decreasing my insulin!

Well tomorrow will already be hump day and it doesn't even feel like it is! It's definitely getting easier. Wanna join me?

I (mostly) made it through a full five days!

Well Thinks got a bit screwed up on Friday. To make a long story short, I couldn't sleep Thursday night and went to work with only 2 hrs of sleep. So as soon as I got home I fell right a sleep. I was supposed to go out with a friend at 9:00 PM and woke up too late to prepare something raw to eat. So we hung for a few and I stopped off to pick up some food. Well I wound up eating a couple of spring rolls with the sheet chili sauce. Ok there. Mostly raw! Well i also picked up some chocolate covered almonds and came home and ate a few more things., Nothing major, but nothing raw! So I made it for 4 and 3/4's days. I'm pretty proud of that!

I'll go back to it on Monday. I bought some more sunflower seeds and plan to make some more sunburgers! I'll as be sprouting some garbanzo beans to make raw Hummus. I'll let ya know how that goes.

It was cool weird, I stopped in a cooking supply store and asked for a spiraler for veggies. They asked why, assuming it was for decorative cooking, an I informed them that i was working towards a raw diet. It turns out that two of them had just been talking about raw diets, one had done it a few years ago and the other was investigating starting. I'm not sure how far she has gotten. So I told them about my blog, I hope they check it out! (Hello if you have!) The one woman asked why I was doing this and I told her about my blood sugar and she suggested Cinnamon pills so I've bought some and started tonight. (I'd heard about it before but had never checked it out.) Here to hoping that it helps!

Along with my raw morning shake, I had a bagel this AM (Thanks Tom Horton's!) The reason i mention it is because right after eating it my acid reflux started to kick in. Someone had suggested that it might be a wheat gluten issue. I'll have to watch closer as I switch on and off between the two! Well I'm off. I probably won't right again till Monday. Till Then!

Chocolate Pudding on a raw diet?

Yes sir! You can have chocolate pudding on a raw diet! I just made it and had it. Even let my sister and niece try it, both of who gave it a polite if not enthusiastic thumbs up. I think in part because, even before they knew what was in it, they knew it wasn't dairy so there was some reluctance to like it.

A big plus to this desert was that it was so easy!

Raw Chocolate Pudding
2 cups avocados
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 agave nectar
4 dates (soaked at least 45 minutes)
1/4 cup date water
3 tbs fresh squeezed orange Juice
2 tsp orange zest

Throw in a blender till creamy. Keeps for two or three days in the fridge.

This is really good but there are a few things to note. I made two batches, one with Haas Avocados and a second one with Florida Avocados. The Haas seemed to work much better. There really was no comparing. Also I found no hint of Orange in the recipe so I don't think it is necessary. There are a number of different recipes on line, check other ones out. tell me what you think.

Today went pretty well. I had the previously stated Breakfast and lunch. For dinner i was pretty lazy and finished off the Sunburgers. I wasn't sure That I could make it through four days and was even starting to wonder if I could do a full three to four weeks. I'm now thinking I could. So I will finish up tomorrow and take the weekend off. But I will be careful not to eat wild. Thanks for the support out there! Nancy, I know you are keeping up with my blog while on vacation, right? lol Talk to ya when ya get back! Enjoy!

Hump day

I'm gonna run out of titles for these soon.

Today was a really good day. Breakfast was the left over muesli which spiked my blood sugar to 230. So that will need to be off of my menu.
Lunch was a nice salad with balsamic vinegar. Dinner I had a few more of the Sunburgers. I really like them and urge people to try them I would just not dehydrate them for the full 24 hrs. They were a little dry then. But really good. I eat them just like a burger, well kinda, I used lettuce leaves for the bread part. I added sliced tomatoes, onions and ketchup. Really good. They'll be good to eat for the next few days.

i finished up with a v4 (not 8 vegetables) tomato, celery, carrots and beets. Yum. Ok it would be better cold but it would be yum then! lol Then I had another popcorn. I'm gonna shy away from them for the next two days.

Tomorrow I'm eating rolled outs, raisins, stevia, Cinnamon, pumpkin seeds, maple syrup and filtered water. I'll get back to you on that one. For lunch another salad with olives, onions, cherry tomatoes, avocado slices and balsamic vinegar again. Dinner will probably be lettuce rolls!

BTW. I'm not sure how much weight I've lost. (I was up to ten pounds lost but it's been another week and I've been behaving.... I do find that my pants and shirts are looser and my face is looking thinner! Here's to weight loss and good health!

Control! (Thank you Janet)

1:00 PM
Well I'm feeling a bit more in control today. I woke up and had a bowl of the Muesli that I prepared last night. I really enjoyed it. I threw a banana on it as was suggested and it was Delicious. I'll save the rest for breakfast tomorrow. It will be quick and easy and won't require me to do any extra work being that I will be back at school.
I just threw in my Sunburgers into the dehydrator.

Sunburgers
2 C sunflower seeds, soaked 6-8 hours
1/2 C carrots
1/2 C celery
3 green onions, sliced
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1/4 C fresh basil
1/4 C fresh parsley
Braggs to taste
Process all ingredients with S blade in a food processor. Make patties and dehydrate at 105 degrees for 12-24 hours until dry. Turn patties over when dehydrating on a teflex sheets after 6 hours.

I've decided to follow the advice of several of the books that I've been reading. They now recommend that you dehydrate for 2 hours at 155 degrees because it reduces the potential for bacteria growth. I'm guessing some purists will frown upon this but I'm doing it.

I tasted the batter, it wasn't too bad so It should be interesting. I'm also going to cheat when it comes to certain condiments. There are recipes for Live Ketchup but i will use a smattering of store bought. Being that I'm only one person, it is a lot of work to prepare a food that will not last more than a few days.
Additionally, I'm think I will stop making full recipes as they are too much for a single person. My Sunburger recipe made 9 burgers, certainly more then would want to eat in a three day period.

7 PM
Well I've been busy all day preparing foods. I made corn chips.

South of the border Corn Chips
Bobbi Clinger

4 c. sweet corn, fresh or frozen
1/2 t. garlic powder(opt)
1 t. chili powder(opt)
1 t. tomato powder(opt)

Chop corn in food processor w/ "s" blade until fine.
Add choice of seasonings "to taste" and process til combined.
On dehydrator tray, spread about 1/8" thick.
Score diagonally left to right, then across right to left into triangles, or preferred shape.
Dehydrate about 5 hours, or to desired texture. These are super, and helpful for those with a previous "chip" tooth!

I added kalamata olives for a little more flavor. they went from being yellow and looking like eggs to being dark brown. I'll be tasting them soon.
I also made stuffed mushrooms and we'll see how they taste.

Stuffed Mushrooms
1/3 C pine nuts
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 C fresh cilantro, packed leaves, chopped
1/3 C fresh basil, packed leaves, chopped
1 T lemon juice
1 C tomato, chopped
2 T Braggs or to taste
Put all ingredients into a food processor, except the tomatoes, and pulse chop several times. Stop to scrape down the sides and repeat. Add the tomatoes and continue to pulse chop until just blended. Keep a texture to a pesto, it should not be a puree. Remove stems from mushrooms and stuff the filling into the cap of the mushroom. Place on a dehydrator sheet and dehydrate at 105 degrees for 2-4 hours.

Both were pretty easy so...

I tested 118 for my blood sugar. It's supposed to be around 100 or lower and I've been as high as 290 and my lowest before today was 131. So there is some success. I know it's more a matter what I've eaten and not where my blood sugar would be if I ate "normal" but it's still good, and as I drop weight, it will be easier to keep it down.

Well dinner was pretty good. I had two Sunburgers on lettuce leaves with tomatoes, onions and ketchup. It tasted pretty good. The mushrooms were fine, but not anything to jump up and down about. I tasted the corn chips and if my first bite is any indication, I'm not gonna like them. I'll try them again, but....

I'm gonna have a little cheat tonight. I'm gonna make a bag of microwave popcorn. Thoughts on that?

It's a piece of cake!

So all in all the first day has been fine. Breakfast and lunch was real easy. Now dinner I goofed up a bit with. I had done a little running and didn't have time to prepare a dinner. So I came home at 9 PM and just threw together a pineapple, banana, coconut milk shake and some store bought bruschetta with the flax seed crackers. It was ok. I topped it off with a glass of apple/carrot juice.
Tomorrow I'll hope to have sunburgers. I'll let you know how that goes then. I also prepared a bowl of muesli for my morning breakfast.

Muesli
6 juiced apples
1/2 cup of the pulp
1 cup of whole oats
1/4 cup of raisins
dash of Cinnamon
Then you mix it all together and leave it in the fridge over night.
Top it with fresh fruit and serve. Bananas and Berry's are suggested. It makes about three servings so I might eat two tomorrow and save the last for work on Wednesday.
I'm excited to be doing this for a whole week.

Right now it is feeling like a difficult task. Talk to me on Wednesday and see if I still feel that way.

I have reviewed the 21 day plan and am actually considering doing it for 28 days. The one book I'm reading suggest four full Weeks not three. So I'm gonna try that. Once I'm done I will eat two raw meals a day and 1 cooked (Boccee Pizza!)

The one thing I read is that you have to be careful reintroducing cooked foods into your diet so I will tread carefully. Well thats all I have for you tonight. Hope to sit and break raw crackers with ya soon! Till then!

Whew! I made it!

Well I made it through a second day. I had left over soup from yesterday but upon my second taste of it, really decided that it wasn't anything I enjoyed. For the most part I didn't find today to be too difficult. I was happy to see that my blood sugar continued to stay down. we'll see how it responds when I go off for the next two days. Come Monday though I plan to make it five consecutive days. Not really much more to say today so I guess I'm signing off! Later!