Day 2!

Today went a lot better! :) I have to admit, I didn't follow the recipes exactly, and that was just fine by me! I just didn't feel like driving out of my way today. Maybe if I had more time, but I really wanted to just make recipes that are easy and don't require me to import anything from a far away tropical land! I also only spent $8 (and that included two Bora Bora bars!) I did have some trouble convincing myself to wake up early to go grocery shopping, and I didn't make it to my spin class at the gym. Alas, I guess one day of raw foods isn't enough to make me jump out of bed at 6am! I'll keep hoping for that day! I did work out on my rebounder though for 15 minutes, if that counts? When I woke up I was actually craving a green juice, which is weird since I hate anything green normally! So I made a smoothie of spinach, blueberries, and some coconut. Even though I can eat one normal meal, I have found myself not wanting to ruin it with a non-raw meal. Knowing that I have the freedom to eat whatever I want makes it a lot easier to not eat junk food! I thought that was just a fluke yesterday, but the feeling lasted today. I'm definitely not complaining! Ok, enough rambling...on to the good stuff! I actually have a recipe I can share since I got it online. It was Pad Thai, and it was really, really good! I'll admit I wasn't terribly excited about it, but made that one because it had a lot of ingredients I already bought yesterday and had left over. I was pleasantly surprised with how good it was! Where do people come up with this stuff? I would never have thought to put cashews with olive oil, lime, and peppers! lol I didn't use raw olive oil since we already had regular olive oil at the house. Maybe I'll splurge on some raw olive oil when the one we have runs out. I don't have a vegetable peeler so I just cut the zucchini up in some weird shapes, but hey, close enough, right? I'm also not sure if I got the right kind of zucchini, but it was all that was organic at Kroger, so I figured it was good enough. lol I didn't find bean sprouts, so I got broccoli sprouts. I also accidentally got a Green Pepper, after spending about 10 minutes trying to decide if it was a Bell Pepper or not...I forgot that I needed yellow or red! I also didn't exactly ground the cashews-I just put them in a bag and smashed them up a bit! Gourmet Chef I may not be, but I get the job done! lol Despite my, uh, issues, it turned out really good! I'm starting to get the hang out of this-just don't let any real chef's see me cook! ;) I also made the apple cinnamon porridge (p. 370 of Rainbow Green Live Cuisine) which turned out good even though I didn't soak the almonds (who has time for that? I need to start doing this the day before! whoops!) and that made it really tough to blend (finally figured out I needed to add more water...I was just afraid if I added too much water it would be too soupy). I am not sure why some people say they can't do raw foods in the winter time, as it seems the easiest recipes to do would be really good in the winter. I can definitely see myself eating this cinnamon apple porridge during the winter time. I have to admit I was really tempted to want to put some whip cream on it! lol (oh, and I forgot to mention that my friend put sour cream on the chili from yesterday, and heated it up! Oh well, it's still better than what he normally eats!)It kind of looked like cat vomit...but at least it tasted good! :) I looove cinnamon!The bora bora bar was good also-it was the closest I could find to a raw bar. Here's the book I got the apple porridge recipe from:



Pictures from today (mostly of the Pad Thai, the last is the porridge)


I may have snuck a brownie today also, but it was one of those bite size ones. ;) I will update my spark people page tonight when I'm done working! I'm curious to see what my nutritional intake was for today!

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:

One day to start....and I'm stressing out!

I am seriously getting really nervous about starting this tomorrow! Will I be able to do this EVERY day? I did a blog, 30lbsby30...and well, I think I actually gained 10 lbs. instead of losing weight! Whoops. I feel like this is different though-that was just a blog, and I didn't promote it. This is a website and blog, and I'm going to tell people about it. Not only that, but I have a video with ME on it. It's easier to hide behind a blog. It doesn't help that today started off pretty bad. I woke up with a really, really bad headache. It felt like my brain was trying to break it's way out of my skull. Ouch. So, I wasn't able to work out today. I was going to just go eat at Red Pepper Deli in Northville, Michigan, but they were closed when I got there! So much for eating healthy tonight! I was pretty angry that in order to have a nice Saturday night out, there is only ONE raw food restaurant. It's so hard to go out and have a good, healthy, organic meal...yet there were tons of fast food restaurants. How frustrating! Yes, I could have made something at home and not had anything to eat while we went to a regular restaurant-but really, why is it that way? Things just got better as I found out I was being kicked out of my room for two days. There is some good news to this story though, as I later found out when I went through the recipe books tonight to get prepared for tomorrow. Turns out I'm really understocked on kitchen utensils for most of the recipes, but my friends house that I have to stay at will have most of the things. I was looking at the recipes and saying, "I can't do this!" And he offered to help me, and even said it sounded like fun!(yeah, I don't see that yet!) I am pretty glad he will be helping me on my first day or I think I'd be in tears already! Reading through my recipe book, "Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine," by Gabriel Cousens, M.D I quickly realized it is basically useless to me-almost all the recipes I liked required a dehydrator. I should have realized it would be a bit too fancy for me when the chili was called, "Autumnal Chili." (Page 163) Seriously, who says, "Autumnal?" Ironically, that was one of the only recipes I liked from that book.So, I'm only going to be working from Alive in 5, by Angela Elliott for awhile, until I can buy a new book. Tomorrow I'll be making the autumnal chili, which despite having more ingredients than I care to buy, seems easy. I will also be making from Alive in 5, Spinach and Walnut Pie in a Flash.(page 92) It would seem fun if I had limitless money and time, but of course I don't. It's going to be a bit of a pain to get all the ingredients, plus I have to drive all the way to the gym tomorrow since I'm not at home. I hope this helps me change my attitude and be more laid back and accepting of things, but I don't have high hopes on this! Wow, did I ever look depressed in the Youtube video! It's really weird to see yourself on video like that. It was always one of my least favorite exercises when I went to Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts. I definitely prefer being behind the scenes-but I will have to get over that again like I did for school.This is going to be very time consuming-we're supposed to be watching a movie right now, but I am on the phone with Godaddy Tech Support...and have been most of the day. When the Tech Support person says, "Ohhh no, this is NOT GOOD!! I have never seen anything like that..." you know you are in for a long night! It was rather amusing when he called my blog, "Wah-Nah-Be" instead of Wanna-be. He must have thought my website was about Wasabi that is used in sushi! :P I need to stop worrying though-this is supposed to be fun, right?! RIGHT?

My Spark People Page

Just in case you couldn't find it in the link, or you weren't sure how to find it on Spark People's website, you can track my daily nutritional intake on spark people
here: Rawfoodwannabe's Spark People Page


I'll admit it's going to be really hard to find the time each day to go grocery shopping and make two raw food recipes, plus blog about it...so the Spark People page may be the one thing I will slack off on it. I will try to update it as often as possible though, because I think it will be interesting to see what kind of nutrition I receive on a mainly raw food diet.

Intro.

I made a youtube video to describe in more detail what this website is about. I forgot to mention that the recipes will not be taken from only one book, like in the movie, "Julie and Julia." Also, I won't really be going in any particular order in the book. I think most people who watch the video can figure it out, but just thought I'd add that in just in case there was any confusion! I am not starting this today. The official date of the challenge starts September 13th, 2009 (coincidentally one month before I turn 30! *gasp*) Here is my very *flattering* (you can hear the sarcasm I'm sure!) video (hey, I may have majored in video production, but we didn't use crappy Acer web cam's, and I was never the ON-SCREEN talent, so cut me some slack please!)