I woke up at 7 feeling good, which is great since a normal Sunday morning at my boyfriend's house is I wake up a bit hung over at 9 or 10 and often refuse to leave the bed until he brings me some juice and promises we'll just do Yin yoga. Then, by the time we do yoga and maybe make a green smoothie and shower it's some time in the afternoon and we've missed brunch and farmer's markets and garden centers and so many other Sunday type things.
So I had water with lime and my boyfriend had grapefruit juice with Super Seed, then we did some power yoga and had pineapple-garlic juice. By the time we were done showering and getting ready, we still had time to go to the Jack London Square farmer's market! They have some cool stuff there like candy cap mushroom and dill kraut juice, but it was a little late and they'd sold out of that, otherwise I'd have had a shot. Still, we got everything we needed, three pounds of pickling cucumbers, garlic, 5 big heads of romaine lettuce for me to take home and juice during the week, 3 russet potatoes (hard to find this time of year at the farmer's market, but the best for making samosas) some stuffed naan type breads with some spreads for my starving boyfriend, 3 pounds of raw almonds (actually, I worry they aren't 100% raw, the girl at the booth didn't know and it didn't specifically say "unpasteurized" on the label, but I'm going to go with the idea that they are and then shop more carefully next time) and a half dozen eggs.
My boyfriend and I have been vegan for over three years now but he's been craving eggs that whole time. My thought is that eggs could be a healthy part of a diet but from both a health and an ethical perspective it just depends where they come from. I myself might eat eggs if...I don't know...maybe if they came from rescue hens that we were taking care of in our big backyard garden. Then I'd know exactly what they ate and I'd know the chickens were happy and healthy and I wasn't responsible for any male chicks killed because they just aren't useful or whatever. So these eggs we got, I probably wouldn't eat them because they come from a farm that has 1500 chickens and I'm sure they eat mostly chicken feed and not as much grass and bugs plus raising that many hens they must be killing a lot of male chicks and now they are raising "meat birds" too, so there's more killing for you.
We are talking about getting chickens some day. My boyfriend would get them now-ish, but he'd really like to get little chicks and hand-raise them, and if we're really going to live together I figure we may as well be living together first, otherwise it'll be like our garden when I miss half the stuff that goes on there and don't get to spend nearly as much time on it as I'd like. Even then, with our own chickens, I can't imagine using eggs for things like baking. We've spent several years making cakes and cupcakes and so many other things that often have eggs in them but making them without eggs and they taste exactly the same. If I'm going to eat an animal product, I want it to be special. I want to celebrate and honor it.
Anyway....
After the farmer's market we just sat by the water and talked a while. We were talking about weekend trips we might take and how that would work with juice feasting - like what if we want to go to Mendocino or Las Vegas or Las Angeles. We're also talking about taking a trip to Guadalahara. He goes for business a few times a year anywayy, but I've never gone with. That won't happen while I'm still juice feasting, but Mendocino certainly could. Hopefully we won't go to Las Vegas because there are a few more okay vegan options there than there used to be and I would be sad to miss those. I would like to see The Phantom of the Opera. Los Angeles I would like to wait a bit to visit because I'd like to lose more weight and then go shopping. Mendocino would be the best because there is a raw restaurant there and places that serve juice but mostly because there is plenty of kayaking and mountain biking, wonderful beaches to do yoga and walk on and it's a pretty drive up there. There is a nice vegan restaurant I'd miss out on but that's about it.
Dinner was quite a bit of work. I think I may have used my boyfriend's Blendtec about 20 times. It was cool to compare it with my Vitamix, though. I can't decide which one I like better, but I'm starting to lean towards the Blendtec. It doesn't have a tamper but any time I think the ingredients just aren't going to blend, suddenly they do and it all goes very fast with those huge blades.
We made some posole for lunch right before we started cooking the other stuff. Since it was all just vegetables, I blended some up and strained it and had some myself. I don't know if I'm supposed to do that but I have to say it was delicious. My boyfriend liked the flavor of my blended/strained version better than the plain version, so next time I think we'll blend up half the soup when it's done and then add it back in to the pot.
Dinner was a hit. My boyfriend told me afterward that he was afraid the juices would be terrible, but all three were delicious and everyone had their favorite. He had made samusas and of course everyone loved those. Isa's recipe is wonderful. I think the secret is all the spices in the dough. They liked the soup as well - I had just the broth and I thought it was a bit weak and lacking flavor but for some reason his brother loved the soup enough to beg for seconds. If I made the soup again, I'd have to find some way to punch up the flavor. Also, I think some kale added to it would be good. For dessert I made cantaloupe sorbet and everyone loved that, too. I just blended/strained a cantaloupe and threw it in the ice cream compressor. I've seen cantaloupe sorbet recipes that call for adding lime and/or simple syrup, but I don't know why. It wasn't even the best, ripest cantaloupe and it was fantastic.
At the start of the meal, my boyfriend's brother was like "you're not having any wine?" and everyone was like "WHAT????" Haha, me not having any wine. I can be making everyone have a melange of fresh juices for an appetizer, I can have no samusas and only broth instead of the regular soup but NO WINE??? ME? No one could believe it. I had mint tea, though, and it was delicious. His brother also wondered why I would need to do a juice feast when I'm vegan and my diet must be so healthy already. I explained there are plenty of less-then-healthy things that as a vegan I have consumed quite a bit of, coffee, wine, chocolate, bread, pasta...haha, not sure how many people I can convert to veganism telling them all those things are not that healthy for you. Not that it's even that simple, I mean bread, for instance, has so many variables you just can't make a blanket statement like "bread is bad" or "bread is good".
By the time I got home, it was late but I still had to take out my (stinky) trash, force feed my cat, drink a quart of water/lime/msm and take my Intestinal Drawing Formula (which I hadn't been taking at my boyfriend's) and I did an enema, too, so I was up very late.
Weight: ?!?!?!?
Monday, May 2, 2011
Raw Juice Feast, Day 16
It's no surprise my weight was up when I weighed myself this morning. First of all, yesterday I started taking the Intestinal Drawing Formula and it seems to still be there in my intestinal tract, drawing up water. I guess, anyway. Plus, I'm up three hours earlier than the last few days and something I almost forgot - when I weighed myself I still had the at least a half a pound of henna that I applied to my hair sitting on my head.
I missed my local farmer's market for the second Saturday in a row, which is really too bad since the lettuce prices were so good AND I noticed the lettuce I purchased there before stayed fresh significantly longer than what I got at Whole Foods. *sigh* I guess it was worth it, though, since the reason I missed it was to go see the opera. Well, not the live opera but a live simulcast. Since we are on the west coast and the simulcast is of the matinee in New York, I had to leave at 9 am. I thought if I was up early enough and ready in time I could go to the market - which opens at 8 am - and be back in time for my boyfriend to pick me up but with the henna and having to drink so much liquid and trying to prepare for what is basically an entire weekend away from home, I would have had to get up about the same time I went to bed. As it was, I was up too late for the hair stuff and I have to have an awfully good reason to get up before dawn.
The opera was good. We were pretty much the youngest ones there by about 20 years, yet I think I may have been the only one in the audience to get up and pee when it wasn't even intermission. Hey, what can I say...I'd had a quart of lemon-msm water and then a quart of pineapple-garlic juice.
After the opera we hadn't really made any plans, but we were hungry so we decided to drive to Judahlicious near the beach in Outer Sunset, since we knew they had a big juice selection. I got some crazy kind of juice that had stuff like burdock root and nutritional yeast in it, and it tasted kind of weird. I also got another juice to go but I never ended up drinking it, which I felt kind of bad about since it was expensive. My boyfriend had a Half Nekkid burrito which I've tried before and it looked really good but I know it's a little too spicy for me even if I could eat it.
Afterwards, we didn't really know what to do with ourselves...going to a wine bar was out and we usually get together later on Saturdays than this. We ended up driving around some interesting neighborhoods and then finally driving to Oakland and walking part-way around Lake Merritt, which was kind of cool because we always say we are going to walk around it but we always find something else to do or run out of time. If only we'd worn better shoes we might have walked all the way around. Oh, we also went to the hat store he's obsessed with. He's always wanting to go there but Lake Merritt we run out of time, otherwise it's closed when we go by. He got a great hat - I was dubious about it at first because I've never known a hat to really enhance his appearance, but the guy at the store helped him pick one that really does look good on him, so that's pretty awesome.
We spent some time talking about things like maybe moving in together at the end of the year if he buys a new house by then and how it's been really hard for him not seeing me as much lately - I think the juice feast has gotten more than its share of the blame for that, since a lot of it has had to do with my cat's medication schedule, the part where I was a little mad at him and the fact that he went out of town on business, but it's true that the juice feast is somewhat disruptive to the way we've been spending out time together. Maybe not in a bad way, but the fact is that *I* decided to do this juice feast and didn't really consult anyone else or give much advance notice and all these other things happened at the same time.
After the lake, we went to Whole Foods and I had my menu plan for tomorrow but not really a proper shopping list, and I was a bit anxious about getting everything we needed. It was a lot of produce, and I needed to think about what I needed and felt a bit panicked and stressed about it. I had everything I needed, though, by the time we left the produce department. Well, I got some Dr. Bronner's liquid soap and my boyfriend picked up some coffee and a beer, but other than that it was like here's this whole big rest of the store and we're done already. It was a bit expensive, too. I mean, it was maybe what we would usually spend if we are planning to have his family over for an elaborate meal IF we also got a few bottles of wine while we were there.
For dinner, I made my coconut-curry broth and my boyfriend had some of his soup from Judahlicious (which they'd forgotten to bring to the table so we got it to go) and a bit of chocolate and his beer. He'd had some bread in the car but overall he really didn't eat enough for the day. Or maybe it was enough if it was just that day but it's more like he hasn't been eating right or enough of the right foods lately and my juice feast doesn't make it easier. He feels bad that he "gets to" eat solid food and I don't. I think he's feeling better about it, though, especially when he tried my broth and was like "wow, that's really good, much better than my soup!" I thought of maybe giving him a little bowl of it, but being out and about all day I really hadn't had that much juice and was pretty hungry.
Weight: 201
I missed my local farmer's market for the second Saturday in a row, which is really too bad since the lettuce prices were so good AND I noticed the lettuce I purchased there before stayed fresh significantly longer than what I got at Whole Foods. *sigh* I guess it was worth it, though, since the reason I missed it was to go see the opera. Well, not the live opera but a live simulcast. Since we are on the west coast and the simulcast is of the matinee in New York, I had to leave at 9 am. I thought if I was up early enough and ready in time I could go to the market - which opens at 8 am - and be back in time for my boyfriend to pick me up but with the henna and having to drink so much liquid and trying to prepare for what is basically an entire weekend away from home, I would have had to get up about the same time I went to bed. As it was, I was up too late for the hair stuff and I have to have an awfully good reason to get up before dawn.
The opera was good. We were pretty much the youngest ones there by about 20 years, yet I think I may have been the only one in the audience to get up and pee when it wasn't even intermission. Hey, what can I say...I'd had a quart of lemon-msm water and then a quart of pineapple-garlic juice.
After the opera we hadn't really made any plans, but we were hungry so we decided to drive to Judahlicious near the beach in Outer Sunset, since we knew they had a big juice selection. I got some crazy kind of juice that had stuff like burdock root and nutritional yeast in it, and it tasted kind of weird. I also got another juice to go but I never ended up drinking it, which I felt kind of bad about since it was expensive. My boyfriend had a Half Nekkid burrito which I've tried before and it looked really good but I know it's a little too spicy for me even if I could eat it.
Afterwards, we didn't really know what to do with ourselves...going to a wine bar was out and we usually get together later on Saturdays than this. We ended up driving around some interesting neighborhoods and then finally driving to Oakland and walking part-way around Lake Merritt, which was kind of cool because we always say we are going to walk around it but we always find something else to do or run out of time. If only we'd worn better shoes we might have walked all the way around. Oh, we also went to the hat store he's obsessed with. He's always wanting to go there but Lake Merritt we run out of time, otherwise it's closed when we go by. He got a great hat - I was dubious about it at first because I've never known a hat to really enhance his appearance, but the guy at the store helped him pick one that really does look good on him, so that's pretty awesome.
We spent some time talking about things like maybe moving in together at the end of the year if he buys a new house by then and how it's been really hard for him not seeing me as much lately - I think the juice feast has gotten more than its share of the blame for that, since a lot of it has had to do with my cat's medication schedule, the part where I was a little mad at him and the fact that he went out of town on business, but it's true that the juice feast is somewhat disruptive to the way we've been spending out time together. Maybe not in a bad way, but the fact is that *I* decided to do this juice feast and didn't really consult anyone else or give much advance notice and all these other things happened at the same time.
After the lake, we went to Whole Foods and I had my menu plan for tomorrow but not really a proper shopping list, and I was a bit anxious about getting everything we needed. It was a lot of produce, and I needed to think about what I needed and felt a bit panicked and stressed about it. I had everything I needed, though, by the time we left the produce department. Well, I got some Dr. Bronner's liquid soap and my boyfriend picked up some coffee and a beer, but other than that it was like here's this whole big rest of the store and we're done already. It was a bit expensive, too. I mean, it was maybe what we would usually spend if we are planning to have his family over for an elaborate meal IF we also got a few bottles of wine while we were there.
For dinner, I made my coconut-curry broth and my boyfriend had some of his soup from Judahlicious (which they'd forgotten to bring to the table so we got it to go) and a bit of chocolate and his beer. He'd had some bread in the car but overall he really didn't eat enough for the day. Or maybe it was enough if it was just that day but it's more like he hasn't been eating right or enough of the right foods lately and my juice feast doesn't make it easier. He feels bad that he "gets to" eat solid food and I don't. I think he's feeling better about it, though, especially when he tried my broth and was like "wow, that's really good, much better than my soup!" I thought of maybe giving him a little bowl of it, but being out and about all day I really hadn't had that much juice and was pretty hungry.
Weight: 201
Raw Juice Feast, Day 14
Today I slept until 9:30, several hours later than I have been. I guess I stayed up a bit later than I have been as well, and also my cats woke me up a number of times during the night, but I think it also has to do with all the walking I did yesterday and also with the fact that I started taking the water-msm-lemon at night now as well and I've gotten back to using my magnesium oil (which actually has nothing to do with the juice feast, it's something I started before that.)
When I got up I realized I didn't have enough water left for water-msm-lemon, plus I thought I was out of limes (errrrr, I've been using them instead of lemon because I like the taste better) so I had to trudge to the water machine before I could do anything else.
Weight: 201.4
When I got up I realized I didn't have enough water left for water-msm-lemon, plus I thought I was out of limes (errrrr, I've been using them instead of lemon because I like the taste better) so I had to trudge to the water machine before I could do anything else.
Weight: 201.4
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Raw Juice Feast, Day 13
Seeing the scale go down I just want to...well, figure out what else I can do to make it go down faster. I am so anxious for it to go below 200! It's like, it's not real weight loss until it does, it may just be a fluxuation. Actually, though, I just opened a spreadsheet with my weight from 3 months ago and apparently I started the year at 5 pounds more than I started the juice feast, so I am down 15 pounds for the year which sounds much more real and substantial than 10 pounds.
I feel so dumb sometimes, season after season I watch the show "Biggest Loser" and all the contestants start out weighing more than I do, but by halfway through the show, the smaller ones start to weigh less than I do. Then I just think...what the heck am I doing? The answer, I suppose, is "nothing".
Anyway...I woke up before my alarm today. Not exactly all by myself...one of my cats woke me up BUT I wasn't really tired. The night before, my other cat kept waking me up all night long and then yesterday you'd think I'd have been really tired, but I didn't even take a nap, something I did several times last week. So, it's starting to seem like maybe I'm needing less sleep.
On a whim, I got the circulars from my mailbox and actually read them for the first time in years. I was checking for produce specials, and decided to walk to a store that is over an hour away on foot and take a nice long walk. I thought I knew the route, but after walking past the rowing club and the yacht club, I passed the homeless shelter and dead-ended at the women's correctional facility. I had to go all the way home and look at a map to realize I needed to go INTO the yacht club past the sign that says "private property, permission to enter may be revoked at any time" and then I would find the pedestrian path that runs between the marsh and the freeway. So, I added probably an extra hour to my walk.
When I finally got to the store, my credit card was declined and I had no other method of payment. Fortunately, there was a branch of my bank there and I managed to find out my credit card had been duplicated and was being used in New York and New Jersey. Apparently, I used it at Costco here on the east coast and then ten minutes later someone used it on the New York turnpike and my bank figured that couldn't be right so they shut down the card. I was racking my brains trying to figure out how someone could have skimmed my card and the only time I think that could have happened was right before the last time I went to my local farmer's market and I used the cash machine outside my local bank...someone could have had a skimmer on that machine.
The bank was able to issue me a temporary card, it doesn't have my name on it and it doesn't work as a credit card, debit only, so I'm not able to order anything online right now. Maybe that's a blessing in disguise since it's tempting to order more supplemental things for the juice feast but if I keep doing that I'll run out of money even sooner than I already am.
Weight: 202.8
I feel so dumb sometimes, season after season I watch the show "Biggest Loser" and all the contestants start out weighing more than I do, but by halfway through the show, the smaller ones start to weigh less than I do. Then I just think...what the heck am I doing? The answer, I suppose, is "nothing".
Anyway...I woke up before my alarm today. Not exactly all by myself...one of my cats woke me up BUT I wasn't really tired. The night before, my other cat kept waking me up all night long and then yesterday you'd think I'd have been really tired, but I didn't even take a nap, something I did several times last week. So, it's starting to seem like maybe I'm needing less sleep.
On a whim, I got the circulars from my mailbox and actually read them for the first time in years. I was checking for produce specials, and decided to walk to a store that is over an hour away on foot and take a nice long walk. I thought I knew the route, but after walking past the rowing club and the yacht club, I passed the homeless shelter and dead-ended at the women's correctional facility. I had to go all the way home and look at a map to realize I needed to go INTO the yacht club past the sign that says "private property, permission to enter may be revoked at any time" and then I would find the pedestrian path that runs between the marsh and the freeway. So, I added probably an extra hour to my walk.
When I finally got to the store, my credit card was declined and I had no other method of payment. Fortunately, there was a branch of my bank there and I managed to find out my credit card had been duplicated and was being used in New York and New Jersey. Apparently, I used it at Costco here on the east coast and then ten minutes later someone used it on the New York turnpike and my bank figured that couldn't be right so they shut down the card. I was racking my brains trying to figure out how someone could have skimmed my card and the only time I think that could have happened was right before the last time I went to my local farmer's market and I used the cash machine outside my local bank...someone could have had a skimmer on that machine.
The bank was able to issue me a temporary card, it doesn't have my name on it and it doesn't work as a credit card, debit only, so I'm not able to order anything online right now. Maybe that's a blessing in disguise since it's tempting to order more supplemental things for the juice feast but if I keep doing that I'll run out of money even sooner than I already am.
Weight: 202.8
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Raw Juice Feast, Day 12
It's frustrating to see the weight loss slowing. Okay, okay, realllllly I'm not just doing this to lose weight, but since that is one benefit of a juice feast I got kind of excited about it and I want to see those numbers keep falling! I do see my stomach shrinking, it's like a deflating balloon or or something, and I can feel parts of my body shrinking, and my boyfriend says my face looks thinner (I see it, too) but then I'll catch a glimpse of my reflection in a pane of glass and I'll be like "whoa! I'm sooooo wide! Ugh!" and I just want that weight to melt off.
One thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that I did a coffee enema. I definitely used too much coffee. It was the equivalent of about 8 cups and I don't know how much caffeine you actually get when taking your coffee that way but for me it was....well, I felt jittery like maybe I actually drank 8 cups of coffee, although I haven't had coffee in about two weeks and I haven't had solid food so maybe just one cup of coffee, taken orally, would have made me just as jittery. I did have that kombucha, though, so I guess I did have some caffeine. Oops. maybe I shouldn't have kombucha? Wait, but if you get caffeine in your system from the enema, then maybe the kombucha IS okay? Or maybe only if it's a kombucha enema? :P
I had the enema at 1 or 2 pm, then I had a terrible time trying to sleep.
Today I thought I'd go to the produce store, since they were closed yesterday. I figured this would mean they'd have lots of stuff on the "old clearance produce" shelves, but it wasn't all I hoped it would be. I got 4 pounds for $1 oranges, then on non-discount I got some purple garlic and a bunch of curly parsley. I spent a grand total of $3.04, which should help bring down my daily average!
I didn't have my first juice until about noon, and I actually started to feel sort of light-headed. Meanwhile, I was doing things like planning a meal to make for my boyfriend's family this weekend. I think I did a good job of coming up with a menu that people on a Standard American Diet can enjoy but I will still be included in the meal and people may not even notice I am not eating everything!
Here's the menu:
Starter: a melange of fresh juices (three different juice blends served in 6 oz juice glasses that I got when we were doing a beer tasting, I chose really yummy ones, mostly from the book Raw Food, Real World - even non-vegans and non-raw foodies seem to love all the recipes in that book.)
Soup: Black Eyed Pea & Squash w/Shiitake Mushrooms from Vegetable Heaven (the broth from it sounds wonderful, so I'll have that.)
Samusas (aka samosas - we like the recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance, even the dough is full of flavor. If we have leftovers, probably my boyfriend will eat them but theoretically we are going to freeze them and use them in Samusa Soup in a couple months, so I won't be able to eat these when we make them but maybe eventually.)
Dessert: Cantaloupe Sorbet (or watermelon, if we can't find a luscious cantaloupe. I'd love to make 3 sorbets, and I do have an ice cream compressor, but I think it'd be too many leftovers.
So that's what I was doing instead of making my first juice of the day - pouring through recipe books. I was so inspired that I started devising a Mother's Day Brunch menu as well, but that was a bit harder. You want people to feel satisfied even though you are serving them a bunch of fruits and veggies and maybe not as many refined grains as they are used to. I think the trick is to hit them with the fruit or the veg first, before they've had time to serve themselves anything else. For instance, we make this wonderful walnut-red pepper spread that we serve with lots of (often home made) bread - and we usually serve this while we're cooking, so people don't feel hungry and antsy while waiting for us to finish. For my menus, it'd be a bad idea to give people all that bread first...they just won't eat that other stuff. So, hence the melange of juices being served first before people have eaten anything else, and same with the brunch menu - I'll make sure to put out a big platter of cut fruit and serve big glasses of orange juice before the meal - hopefully people will then be satisfied without as much coffee cake and quiche as they are used to us serving them and will actually eat plenty of fruit/veg.
I was pretty happy about how little I spent on produce today and thinking how long I could make my money last until I started doing a little more reading on juice feasting and realizing maybe I was missing a few things I should be doing/taking. I ended up ordering some Healthforce Intestinal Drawing Formula, which I should be taking right now, the Chanca Piedra I need starting day 31, some maple syrup and more MSM powder, which I realized I should be taking morning AND evening, not just morning.
The Intestinal Drawing Formula contains flax meal. This kind of confuses me. Aren't we supposed to be avoiding things that contain fiber? Hopefully I will stumble upon the answer soon.
Weight: 203.6
One thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that I did a coffee enema. I definitely used too much coffee. It was the equivalent of about 8 cups and I don't know how much caffeine you actually get when taking your coffee that way but for me it was....well, I felt jittery like maybe I actually drank 8 cups of coffee, although I haven't had coffee in about two weeks and I haven't had solid food so maybe just one cup of coffee, taken orally, would have made me just as jittery. I did have that kombucha, though, so I guess I did have some caffeine. Oops. maybe I shouldn't have kombucha? Wait, but if you get caffeine in your system from the enema, then maybe the kombucha IS okay? Or maybe only if it's a kombucha enema? :P
I had the enema at 1 or 2 pm, then I had a terrible time trying to sleep.
Today I thought I'd go to the produce store, since they were closed yesterday. I figured this would mean they'd have lots of stuff on the "old clearance produce" shelves, but it wasn't all I hoped it would be. I got 4 pounds for $1 oranges, then on non-discount I got some purple garlic and a bunch of curly parsley. I spent a grand total of $3.04, which should help bring down my daily average!
I didn't have my first juice until about noon, and I actually started to feel sort of light-headed. Meanwhile, I was doing things like planning a meal to make for my boyfriend's family this weekend. I think I did a good job of coming up with a menu that people on a Standard American Diet can enjoy but I will still be included in the meal and people may not even notice I am not eating everything!
Here's the menu:
Starter: a melange of fresh juices (three different juice blends served in 6 oz juice glasses that I got when we were doing a beer tasting, I chose really yummy ones, mostly from the book Raw Food, Real World - even non-vegans and non-raw foodies seem to love all the recipes in that book.)
Soup: Black Eyed Pea & Squash w/Shiitake Mushrooms from Vegetable Heaven (the broth from it sounds wonderful, so I'll have that.)
Samusas (aka samosas - we like the recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance, even the dough is full of flavor. If we have leftovers, probably my boyfriend will eat them but theoretically we are going to freeze them and use them in Samusa Soup in a couple months, so I won't be able to eat these when we make them but maybe eventually.)
Dessert: Cantaloupe Sorbet (or watermelon, if we can't find a luscious cantaloupe. I'd love to make 3 sorbets, and I do have an ice cream compressor, but I think it'd be too many leftovers.
So that's what I was doing instead of making my first juice of the day - pouring through recipe books. I was so inspired that I started devising a Mother's Day Brunch menu as well, but that was a bit harder. You want people to feel satisfied even though you are serving them a bunch of fruits and veggies and maybe not as many refined grains as they are used to. I think the trick is to hit them with the fruit or the veg first, before they've had time to serve themselves anything else. For instance, we make this wonderful walnut-red pepper spread that we serve with lots of (often home made) bread - and we usually serve this while we're cooking, so people don't feel hungry and antsy while waiting for us to finish. For my menus, it'd be a bad idea to give people all that bread first...they just won't eat that other stuff. So, hence the melange of juices being served first before people have eaten anything else, and same with the brunch menu - I'll make sure to put out a big platter of cut fruit and serve big glasses of orange juice before the meal - hopefully people will then be satisfied without as much coffee cake and quiche as they are used to us serving them and will actually eat plenty of fruit/veg.
I was pretty happy about how little I spent on produce today and thinking how long I could make my money last until I started doing a little more reading on juice feasting and realizing maybe I was missing a few things I should be doing/taking. I ended up ordering some Healthforce Intestinal Drawing Formula, which I should be taking right now, the Chanca Piedra I need starting day 31, some maple syrup and more MSM powder, which I realized I should be taking morning AND evening, not just morning.
The Intestinal Drawing Formula contains flax meal. This kind of confuses me. Aren't we supposed to be avoiding things that contain fiber? Hopefully I will stumble upon the answer soon.
Weight: 203.6
Monday, April 25, 2011
Raw Juice Feast, Day 11
Today I was hoping to go to the Menlo Park farmer's market - my boyfriend said maybe we could, but once I found out it closes at 1pm I should have known that wouldn't happen. His daughter left town in the morning and he's been so busy lately and he's going out of town this week and he needed a little time at home to relax, do yoga, maybe some housework. He probably needed more time than he actually got. I just ended up being annoyed because I like to know ahead of time what's going to happen, and I thought we would meet earlier and do farmer's market and then we didn't.
It all worked out, though. I really needed some oranges and I knew the produce store was closed for Easter, so I decided to take a one gallon water bottle to fill up and go in search of an open store. The discount grocery (pretty much my closest store, if you don't count 7-11) was open and I got oranges, grapefruit, cantaloupe, ginger, pineapple and three boxes of organic prunes. I was pretty excited to find organic prunes at the discount grocery - I think they were a really good price and they'll keep just fine until July so I'm already for Prune Day!
I did a really short yoga workout and wasn't even ready yet when my boyfriend came to pick me up at 4pm because I was making my green juice - then we went for a little hike at a nearby park. It's wonderful there are soooo many parks and preserves and nature trails around here and we are finally exploring them! After that he took me to Whole Foods and bought me a bunch of red leaf lettuce, a couple young thai coconuts and some carrots. So I guess it doesn't matter that I didn't go to the farmer's market. I want to get my bicycle up and running again, though, and check out all the farmer's markets in my area.
Then we went to see a movie and I had a tea there. I've never had tea at the movies before - normally I would have an icey or we'd sneak in a bottle of wine or something, but the tea was nice. I do question the quality of the water, but I'm sure boiling hot tap water is better for you than most of the stuff you get at a movie theater concession.
My boyfriend is worried that after this feast I am going to become 100% raw. He's also feeling like maybe I'm purposely using my juice feast to distance myself from him. I've tried to assure him that neither of those things are true. I know my juice feasting is something of an inconvenience to him - I mean, for instance he has some customers of his that want to go on a hot air balloon ride in wine country. If we take them to wine country during my juice feast, how is that going to work out? Not the balloon ride itself, of course, but there are sure to be restaurants and wineries and things involved as well. And then what about his family? Spending time with his daughter was fine, but we often have his family over and cook for them. I'm totally game to cook for them while juice feasting, but I'm sure he's thinking that would be really weird. Maybe I need to come up with a menu that we can all enjoy. You know, a juice everyone will like, a soup with a broth that I can have too, and then maybe he can make some bread to go with it or something. Maybe this weekend we can try that.
As to the 100% raw part, I don't really want to do that. My boyfriend is vegan - well we both are although we eat honey (haha, I hate that when people say "well, I'm vegan but I eat fish" or "I'm vegan unless I'm out to dinner with my friends" or whatever weird qualifiers, and now I'm doing it too) I guess...I should say...we eat a plant based diet, and we do it for both health and ethical reasons - the ethical part is more me, but I think that you're going to cause suffering no matter what. I'm not convinced that eating agave nectar grown in Mexico under who-knows-what conditions and then processed under who-knows-what conditions and then shipped to who-knows-how-many different places or how far is better than eating locally grown honey purchased directly from the beekeeper who harvested it. And, from a health perspective I think the honey is healthier, although we shouldn't be eating too much honey anyway.
Yeah so, anyway...I don't want to be 100% raw, but I want to make better choices, and to me juice feasting is a short cut of sorts. I do this for three months, lose weight, get healthier and make a fresh start and better choices afterwards. So for instance, before at one of our favorite restaurants this would have been my typical dinner:
bread with olive oil
vegan cheeses with oily crostini
portobello sandwich with lots of aioli on oily focaccia bread
chocolate peanut butter pie
3+ glasses of wine
But what I'd like to choose is more like:
seasonal pickled vegetables
salad with tempeh
soup
1/2 glass of wine
The second menu is a totally normal amount of food to eat for one meal, but it's just not what I do when I go out to a restaurant, and I want to change that. It's also a lot more raw food, but it's not 100% raw, and that's fine with me.
All the words in the world may not convince my boyfriend about this - I guess I just have to show him with my actions.
Weight: 204
It all worked out, though. I really needed some oranges and I knew the produce store was closed for Easter, so I decided to take a one gallon water bottle to fill up and go in search of an open store. The discount grocery (pretty much my closest store, if you don't count 7-11) was open and I got oranges, grapefruit, cantaloupe, ginger, pineapple and three boxes of organic prunes. I was pretty excited to find organic prunes at the discount grocery - I think they were a really good price and they'll keep just fine until July so I'm already for Prune Day!
I did a really short yoga workout and wasn't even ready yet when my boyfriend came to pick me up at 4pm because I was making my green juice - then we went for a little hike at a nearby park. It's wonderful there are soooo many parks and preserves and nature trails around here and we are finally exploring them! After that he took me to Whole Foods and bought me a bunch of red leaf lettuce, a couple young thai coconuts and some carrots. So I guess it doesn't matter that I didn't go to the farmer's market. I want to get my bicycle up and running again, though, and check out all the farmer's markets in my area.
Then we went to see a movie and I had a tea there. I've never had tea at the movies before - normally I would have an icey or we'd sneak in a bottle of wine or something, but the tea was nice. I do question the quality of the water, but I'm sure boiling hot tap water is better for you than most of the stuff you get at a movie theater concession.
My boyfriend is worried that after this feast I am going to become 100% raw. He's also feeling like maybe I'm purposely using my juice feast to distance myself from him. I've tried to assure him that neither of those things are true. I know my juice feasting is something of an inconvenience to him - I mean, for instance he has some customers of his that want to go on a hot air balloon ride in wine country. If we take them to wine country during my juice feast, how is that going to work out? Not the balloon ride itself, of course, but there are sure to be restaurants and wineries and things involved as well. And then what about his family? Spending time with his daughter was fine, but we often have his family over and cook for them. I'm totally game to cook for them while juice feasting, but I'm sure he's thinking that would be really weird. Maybe I need to come up with a menu that we can all enjoy. You know, a juice everyone will like, a soup with a broth that I can have too, and then maybe he can make some bread to go with it or something. Maybe this weekend we can try that.
As to the 100% raw part, I don't really want to do that. My boyfriend is vegan - well we both are although we eat honey (haha, I hate that when people say "well, I'm vegan but I eat fish" or "I'm vegan unless I'm out to dinner with my friends" or whatever weird qualifiers, and now I'm doing it too) I guess...I should say...we eat a plant based diet, and we do it for both health and ethical reasons - the ethical part is more me, but I think that you're going to cause suffering no matter what. I'm not convinced that eating agave nectar grown in Mexico under who-knows-what conditions and then processed under who-knows-what conditions and then shipped to who-knows-how-many different places or how far is better than eating locally grown honey purchased directly from the beekeeper who harvested it. And, from a health perspective I think the honey is healthier, although we shouldn't be eating too much honey anyway.
Yeah so, anyway...I don't want to be 100% raw, but I want to make better choices, and to me juice feasting is a short cut of sorts. I do this for three months, lose weight, get healthier and make a fresh start and better choices afterwards. So for instance, before at one of our favorite restaurants this would have been my typical dinner:
bread with olive oil
vegan cheeses with oily crostini
portobello sandwich with lots of aioli on oily focaccia bread
chocolate peanut butter pie
3+ glasses of wine
But what I'd like to choose is more like:
seasonal pickled vegetables
salad with tempeh
soup
1/2 glass of wine
The second menu is a totally normal amount of food to eat for one meal, but it's just not what I do when I go out to a restaurant, and I want to change that. It's also a lot more raw food, but it's not 100% raw, and that's fine with me.
All the words in the world may not convince my boyfriend about this - I guess I just have to show him with my actions.
Weight: 204
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