Day 1!

Today was...interesting! Slightly discouraging as well, but I will not give up! (ha, it's day one...easy to say now!) Mainly it went not so great since I wasn't at home. My friend was in absolutely no hurry, and pretty much wasted my whole day. He meant well, but he's just so sloowww. I wanted to work today, but here it is, 10:24pm...I guess I won't be making any money today ;( And the food cost $70! We made way too much food, so I guess it would have been cheaper also to cut it in half...but the recipes didn't really say how much it would make. He also just grabbed the first stuff in the store, without trying to think about cost, so it added up quick. Oh, yeah, and my friend added way too much cumin in the chili, essentially ruining it. He also kind of took over, and wouldn't really let me do as much as I wanted (hello, it's MY project-I'm the one who needs to learn here! He went to culinary school for a semester) I actually did surprisingly good though, other than some rookie mistakes-I'm quite the natural at this! I learned how to grind flaxseed, that was fun! Nobody was there and I figured it out all by myself :) The food processor and the grinder scared the crap out of me-they were a lot more powerful than I thought they would be! lol The spinach and walnut quiche was pretty good, but I thought it was a bit dry-and I actually like blander food. Oh, well. It was still really good-and very easy to make! I did make some stupid mistakes though- when I first started I mixed the cashews and walnuts together, but I was only supposed to put in the cashews at first...so I had to pick the walnuts out of the cashews...one, by one. I learned the hard way, right from the beginning, to read the directions CAREFULLY before doing anything! I won't make that mistake again! When we made the chili I also didn't know how to dice carrots. Personally, if my friend wasn't there and hadn't insisted on dicing them perfectly I would have just cut them up. Whatever. But he made me dice them! We peeled them first, but realized we were out of cumin. So, he offered to go to the store. No problem, right? Wrong! I got a little hungry and ate what was left of the peeled carrots! I thought the peeled skins were what we were going to use! LOL Whoops. Luckily we had plenty of carrots. When he got back, he forgot how much cumin he put in and added way more than we needed! So,I could only eat a few bites before I started to get spice burps. It was not good! The chili actually would have amazing though if we hadn't (read: NOT me! I'm not a big spice fan....I wish I would have watched him better when he added the spice. I know he's is spice happy! Ugh) over spiced it. It would be really good for a dip with dehydrated crackers, or even as a bean burrito in a lettuce wrap. I definitely want to make it again. It's very filling, and since it's kind of spicy it would be good in the winter time. It looked really gross though!! :) I threw in some cordyceps for a superfood boost!Grocery shopping was fun also-he kept arguing with me over how we had to get exactly what the recipe called for! Sun-dried tomatoes or regular? What's the difference? I don't get the point, but oh well. I like to mix and match on recipes, I don't follow them exactly, but I humored him for today! At least I got to work out today! My sparkpeople page was way off I think, since I had to guess a lot on the nutritional info. I did find a blackberry app for it, so that made it easier to keep track during the day! I was way over on fat, but it was all good fat and I worked out, so I'm not too worried about it. I also may have had some Nestle Sno-Caps left over from the movies this weekend. That certainly didn't help. I was under on protein, but that happens even when I eat a non-vegan diet, so what can you do? It seems tough to get the recommend amount of protein every day. Not to mention I think fruit/vegetable protein is better than the kind from meat. So to wrap up what I learned today-always read the directions CAREFULLY, lol. I learned how to use a grinder :) I learned how to dice carrots. I also learned to cut the recipes in half to save some money if it's just me or one other person eating it. I also found out that even though I am allowing myself one non-raw meal a day, I didn't really want to eat non-raw foods. I was tempted with pizza, brownies, pancakes...and even spam!! (why is it when I'm trying to eat healthy all this free, bad food presents itself magically to me?!) and yet I didn't want it! It just seems wrong to go through all this effort on the other two meals, and than ruin it with even one bad one. I honestly only ate the sno-caps because I was waiting for my friend to get back and he took forever...and it was the only thing to eat while I waited. I think that's it for today! Anyways, here are some pics :)

Day 1 Pics


Recipes used today:

Autumnal Chili from Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine, and Spinach and Walnut Quiche in a Flash from Alive in 5: