Day Eight: Keep Me AWAY from the BBQ Beef!!!

My land and stars!  Ok, so if there was ever a temptation issue, it was today.  Thank GOURD I am gluten intolerant, and caramel coloring (which comes from wheat) is in BBQ sauce, or I may have lost it today.  I was over at a friend’s house, and he was eating BBQ beef, and it smelled SO good, I was going a little wonky!  It wasn’t even that I wanted meat.  Just that smokey-sweet smell of the sauce, I actually started to drool and hop up and down a little.  He would’ve offered me some, but thankfully, he is a better friend than that.  But I didn’t give in to temptation!  I TOTALLY stayed raw, put some goji in my belly for nutritional value and had a bit of avocado with Herby — that one usually kills my desire for meat and smokey flavored foods, as does the Rawmesan on salad.  It’s amazing how much easier it is to stay raw when you know what to do to kill your cravings by satisfying them with other nutrient-dense foods and specific flavors.

Breakfast was a shake with just bananas, water and cacao — not as good a smoothie/shake as usual, but good.  Oh, and I had to add a bit of agave as the bananas were under-ripe and I didn’t put any coconut in it.  Lunch was trail mix of goji, pine nuts, pecans, raisins and white mulberries.  Then I had a piece of fudge that I made with cacao, maca, mesquite, agave, pecans and … are you ready for this?  AVOCADO!!!  It tastes more like ganache, but it’s freakin’ YUMMY!  Dinner was a spinach salad with strawberry vinaigrette, Rawmesan, flax meal, hemp seeds, strawberries, grapes and pecans.

I had to take Miko home, and even though I took an apple and a mango along as snacks for the drive (it’s about an hour and a half trip to his house and back), by the time I got to his place to drop him off, I felt like I might make a bad food choice.  So I threw myself on the mercy of his kitchen and good nature and begged an avocado off him (trying to get some fat in my tummy to distract me for a bit).  He kindly obliged, and I was able to make it home without incident.  It is so nice to finally be raw!  I just almost can’t stand how great this is.  )

Day Five: Let the Cleansing Begin!

Good GRIEF!  I know that one always goes through detox when going raw, but this is ridiculous!  I woke up this morning, and my bowels were competeing with every other part of my body for the “Who can release the most” award.  I went 3 times in under 1/2 an hour!  And all afternoon, it was my bladder in the lead.  But I’m 8 pounds lighter in only my 1st 5 days, so I’m off to a freakin’ good start!    I say good riddance to the weight — as Nathalia Rose says, “waste = weight”.  Let’s get all the crud OUT!

Breakfast was a mango with chocolate, then to the gym for a workout, sauna and lots of stretching.  Let me tell you, while detoxing, there is NO substitute for moving your body and making yourself to sweat in a sauna (followed by a cool, refreshing shower!)  Moves those toxins RIGHT on through and you feel so refreshed and cool-headed afterward!

Went and looked for wild cattails before the workout, and met a nice lady at the gym named Peggy (who told me I should be writing a book about raw food with recipes) then stopped by Kent’s Garden & Nursery to look at Frost peach trees and blueberry bushes.  We’re gonna start growing some of our own food this year!  We’ve already got an apple tree on the property that came with the house.  All we have to do is fence off the remainder of the yard and we’ll be able to keep the deer and other animals out of the garden.  Plus, a little diatomaceous earth, and we’ll be able to keep the buggies off naturally.

So back to today (I do tend to get off on tangents, don’t I?)  I’m really starting to lose my appetite during the day.  All that chocolate is really keeping me full, plus the fat in the mangos is really helping.  I’ll be making frozen bananas tonight (on a stick) for dipping and rolling in chopped pecans tomorrow … who says you can’t have your favorite Disneyland food as an adult and have it raw?  Remember those frozen, chocolate-dipped bananas on a stick?  First place I tried that as a kid was Disneyland.  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

Jason and I had late-evening cravings – he for raw tahini and I for avocados – so we went to the grocery store and got avocados, more young thai coconuts, bananas, a large mango, celery and something else I can’t remember.  Then we went to Terra Organica and got his Tahini as well as something called Rawmesan by Gopal’s Health Foods — and it is AMAZING stuff!  It’s unbelievable how tasty raw walnuts, sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast and celtic sea salt can taste in the right combination!

But this isn’t about chocolate, is it.  Alas, I am rambling, yet again!  I’m just so thrilled to be finding all these fun, new things to eat.  If I’d've known raw could be this much fun, I’d've done it years ago.  I didn’t really have lunch, as I’m not too hungry during the day very often.  I think I had maybe a banana or 2, of course dipped in chocolate sauce.  For dinner, I had about a quarter of an avocado with Herby on it (the Rawmesan wasn’t too good on it, in my opinion – not a great complementary taste), and a chocolate bar I made.  Then I had a bit of the most bizarre food I’ve ever eaten.  Jason mixed raw tahini with Nama Shoyu raw soy sauce, added some water, and dipped green cabbage in it.  Now, I hate cabbage.  No, no, you don’t understand.  I HATE cabbage!  Cooked, raw, dudn’t matter.  HATE the stuff.  And this tahini mixture is fairly repugnant on its own.  Bitter, slick and just all-around odd.  All that being so stated, when you dip the cabbage IN the tahini sauce he made, something frickin’ MAGICAL happens.  This bizarre, nutty, sweet, almost meaty and fruity flavor with several layers … it just blossoms in your mouth!  I can’t explain it.  I’ve never had anything like it in my life, but it’s farking fanTAStic!!!  In fact, I want some more right now!  But how to incorporate chocolate into it ….  Maybe sometimes you just can’t eat chocolate on everything.