Hello Again! And a happy, happy day to you! Jason went up to Canada to see his friend Bill, and I was at home with Jahn today, so we got a lot of chocolate making done. But I’ll get to the details of that in a minute.
Jahn saw Food Matters with us yesterday and is more gung-ho to eat organic, raw food than ever before. He tried yellow peppers and dehydrated red chard (that I marinated in olive oil, apple cider vinegar, Herby, nutritional yeast and lemon pepper) today, and he loved them both!!! I’m truly floored at how well he’s taking to raw food! And thrilled! It really is amazing how little kids, who we think will only eat burgers, candy and the stuff that’s full o’ things no one can process well, will gravitate toward greens, veggies, and stuff that we are trained to think kids hate. I think it just takes some time to acclimate them to it after they’ve been exposed to the things that have addictive chemicals in them.
He was so cute this afternoon. He had 3 little friends over today (ages 5-8) and tried to feed them all raw food. He got all 3 kids to eat bananas, but one adorable little 5 year old who visits our neighborhood to see his grandparents on the weekends, totally tried the chard and the yellow peppers … and he loved them, too! He thought the chard was weird at first, because he’d never tried marinated, dehydrated greens before, (heck, neither Jahn nor I ever did before today either) but he is very curious about the smells and tastes in our house, and always is willing to try something new. Plus, everyone in the neighborhood knows that we have healthy chocolate here, so lots of kids (with their parent’s permission of course) visit us for nibbles whenever they can. I guess all kids are curious about new sights and smells, and who doesn’t like chocolate?
I had to put the brakes on, though, when Jahn tried to get them all to watch Food Matters. The kid is turning into one of those preachy little evangalists who wants everyone to convert to his rawligion. I sat him down and explained that even though he wants his friends to have the same education about food that he has so that they will grow up healthy, not everyone is as ready as he is to hear about what happens in a meat processing plant or in a sprayed field, and we can’t show other children that movie without their parents’ permission. Ah, teaching the budding raw foodist to not “witness” to people. It’s a challenge. On the one hand, you want to shout it from the rooftops how great you feel and how twisted and carcinogenic some of the things we’re sold in supermarkets and restaurants are, but on the other hand, you have to let people be on their own path and make their own dietary choices. But he’ll learn. I told him that he can offer anything in the kitchen to any kid who doesn’t have food allergies and who has permission to eat here. But past that, their parents should be teaching them what’s what, to the best of their knowledge and abilities. But that’s not good enough for our little minister. He wants to have a party for the neighborhood kids and only serve raw food at it so that they can be exposed to how fun and tasty it is. Too cute. Oh! And now he’s starting to imitate David Wolfe’s mannerisms and hand gestures. Well, if you’ve gotta have a role model …
So after the gaggle of kids went home, Jahn and I started in on the chocolate. It didn’t form a very good shell today (we were making molded candies with chocolate shells on the outside and fillings on the inside, like raw versions of Whitman’s or Russell Stover’s or Ghiradelli’s, etc.) I’ve got to work out how much cacao paste vs. butter to use with this new brand I’m trying out from Ultimate Superfoods. I was using Divine Organics, but they are a little out of my price range for a 30-day cacao binge, so I tried something a little less expensive (wholesale) that we got in our Super DUPER Super Foods Delivery (see Day Seven’s post). They didn’t come out bad, though. Jahn had on his Spongebob Squarepants apron that Grandma (my mom) made him, and we made chocolate bars with goji berries in them for Grandpa’s heart, some orange-chocolate hearts (also for Grandpa’s heart — his favorite!), some chocolate cremes, and some filled peppermint patties. Although the consistency of the outer shells wasn’t quite what I what I wanted, I think they still came out pretty well. I’m a bit of a beautiful food hound, so if it doesn’t look magazine-ready, I’m not as pleased as I might be. But like I said, they are certainly better than just presentable, and they taste marvelous!
So since we’ve started drinking 1-2 litres of water every morning upon getting up (before consuming anything else), I wasn’t really hungry for my 1st meal of the day until about 1 p.m. I tried like 2 bites of the red chard “chips”, and was somehow, miraculously full! I know, it sounds like I’m comPLETEly full of crap (which, as I’m going through detox, I’m sure I am in a literal sense), and if I were you, I wouldn’t believe me either, but I swear it’s true. I guess this is what comes of eating organic, raw food. Nothin’ but nutrients, and it fills you up fast! So lunch was peppers and more chard with the boys that would eat them, plus I had a handful of the skinniest, tiniest baby carrots I’ve ever seen. They should be called preemies! Then, when it came to being amateur chocolatiers, licking spoons, bowls and fingers was about enough cacao to satisfy an army. A very unplanned, odd sort of day, dietarily, but delicious through and through! I’m glad that my tastes seem to be changing, because the yellow peppers were so sweet, I couldn’t believe it. And I’ve disliked raw peppers all my life. But today they were good. Actually, they were delicious!
So tomorrow is day twenty. I can hardly believe that this is almost 3 weeks!!! I’ve never felt LESS like I was on a diet, and more in control of my body, my life and my future. God, I love this life! 
) What’s odd is that i haven’t eaten McDonald’s hamburgers in YEARS!
