That's How I Roll

I've spent the last week eating summer rolls every single day. And I have no regrets. This is perfect summer vegan food at its easiest and it also gets a bunch of greens into me when my brain occasionally says "NO SALAD NO!" (I don't know why that happens. It's really weird. I still like restaurant salads; I just get too lazy to make my own. Too lazy to make salad? No wonder I sitll have incompletes, yipes). That was an excessively long parenthetical remark, sorry. Anyway, I skip the cellophane noodles because they are devoid of nutrition (I suppose the rice paper is, too, but it's the key to making this fun and NOT A SALAD). I chop up a ton of romaine and scallions, julienne cucumber and sometimes carrot, and lay out bean sprouts, cilantro, mint, and basil. And then it's time to roll! Oh, and I make an easy easy peanutty sauce out of hoisin sauce and peanut butter (to be even more honest, I've been using PB2 because it's bikini season and it works brilliantly). Yum yum yum.

(I also sort of accidentally bought myself a new [used] digital camera on The Ebay, so soon I should be able to take lovely good photos and hopefully that will motivate me to cook?)

RAWR

Oh crumbs. Day 1 of Back to the Raw is not going so well for me. I feel really awful and bloated and sick. Which probably means that I ate too much. But I also still really want some sweets. This didn't happen last time! I'm also probably crashing from no caffeine, and I feel fuzzy and ugh.

Sad, too, because I'm feeling really excited about this go-round, and my ability to keep my raw percentages up indefinitely.

Today's pig-out:
- two small cantaloupes
- half a pineapple
- 1/4 cup soaked sunflower seeds
- two mangoes
- four zucchini cut in rounds and topped with raw marinara (um...yum!). tiny pizzas!

Sort of a lot of food. I need to get strawberries, avocado, and lettuce tomorrow because that's what I actually want to eat all summer. I think I can have an avocado a day as long as I avoid nuts. Now I love avocado! Fancy that!

Go, Mango!

• one incredibly juicy mango. it was really basically liquid.
• one crunchy fuji apple
• a small handful of raw cashews. (it is so dangerous for me to have these around. i need to use them in recipes, stat!(
• a small head of cauliflower (i ate this with non-raw hummus, but i plan to make zucchini hummus soon.)
• guacamole and a plate of other green things. i am completely obsessed with romaine now. i could eat three or fours hearts a day, easily.
  

sometimes you gotta do what your body tells you to do

Maybe I'm not so good at this blog thing. But I'm back on the (high) raw wagon, so Im just going to keep boring track of what I'm eating just so that I can, um, keep track of what I'm eating.

Today!
- one organic gala apple
- one young thai coconut (oh oh oh, am I ever obsessed with these of late! I bought my first two a couple of weeks ago. I opened the first one and thought, "Ick, I don't like this water and the meat is tasteless." Then a day later, I gave the other one a chance, and a little switch flipped in my (monkey) brain and I realized, "I have to eat one (or three) of these every day from now until forever." Desert island? I'm ready!)
- one mango (Oh man, why haven't I been eating mangoes for the last, um, year? I'm a freak! They are amaaaaaazing.)
- one cashew cookie Larabar. (I was really hungry during seminar and the Zot'n'Go carries these. Not ideal, but tasty!)
- Mexican squash "rice" (My first attempt at a recipe from my first raw uncookbook--Ani's Raw Kitchen--and holy cacao, was it delicious! So so good. I didn't put onion in because I'm out, and it was so good anyway. I am definitely putting winter squash on my shopping list from now on; it's so sweet and filling.)

And then, um, I went to visit the hospital and afterwards Costello and I went out to eat, and it definitely wasn't raw. Or very healthy. Oops. Still 75% for the day, though, I think.

Freaky Greeky

My paycheck finally came and the first thing I wanted to do was go grocery shopping. I was so excited about it! I wanted to look at every single thing in Trader Joe's and Whole Foods just to see if raw items were secretly hiding on the shelves. I'm trying to budget a little so that I'm not desperate at the end of the month (see: two days ago), but I had to buy a few exciting things.

I should have just loaded up on baby spinach, though. I bought raw nuts, but now I just shove them into my mouth compulsively, like a neurotic squirrel. Also, I bought raw cacao powder, but then today I read some articles about how it isn't even healthy and probably not actually raw and also probably full of insect parts and rat feces. Yum! Can't wait to make desserts now!

Yet the new ingredients allowed me to finally make something other than a smoothie or salad. Falafel! I found the recipe on Gone Raw and it doesn't involve a dehydrator, and while I was concerned that my poor little blender wouldn't be able to handle sunflower seeds, it pulverized them. I put them in a bowl and mixed the other ingredients, then mixed them together in the bowl. With my hands, how earthy!

I actually screwed up and added way too much onion and cilantro to the first batch (still aggravating my Pitta nature, sorry glittahface), so I had to pulverize a whole 'nother cup of sunflower seeds to balance it out, but in the end, they were quite tasty. Or at least the bits that I licked off my hands after rolling them into little balls were tasty.

But still green! What can you do?

Later I'll eat them in a romaine leaf with some tomato and raw olives. I wish I had cucumber, but they were over $2.50 EACH at WH, and TJ's isn't much better. Come soon, summer, come soon.

(The neighboring building just got painted. I wonder if I'm next!)

Alligators in My Pudding

As I attempt to climb up the healthy-living ladder, I worried that there would be a missing rung (I mean, I know there will be several, I'm looking at you, wheat-grass). The possibly rough transition to rawness is supposed to be ameliorated by the fact that most people already eat fruit, salads, and good ol' guacamole. Avocado is a very well-loved healthy food and I have encountered it in the most unlikely places (what? what are you thinking? I'm talking about food!). But I've always been a bit...indifferent...to avocado. I'm no guac-hating freak, don't get me wrong, but I'll admit that seeing someone with just half an avocado in one hand and a spoon in the other hand is enough to turn my stomach.

"Look! It has its own little nature-made bowl!" [exulting avo-enthusiast]
"Mhmm!" [me, trying to smile through the nausea]

But the creamy, greeny ahuacatl is very important to raw foodists, especially impoverished ones who can't afford to order vats of hemp butter over the internet. (If I crack, it's going to be because this diet tends to be so bourgie, please don't get insulted everyone, but I'm never going to have $400 for a blender). So today's breakfast pear got a little sexy stir time with a little organic avo. Zoom! Or bzzz bzzz scrape bzzz bzzz. (Man, I really really want a $400 blender).

It's going to be a long while until my kitchen creations are a) pretty and b) not green. I'm mostly okay with that. And while the first bite was a little, oh no avooooo, eventually the light sweet flavor of the pear shone through (and um, I added some raisins because I am an ADDICT).

I'm headed to the beach now to soak in a little Vitamin D. I'm bringing water and an orange, hopefully that should hold me since I need to go buy some more spinach. I know I'm not doing this quite correctly, but hopefully there will still be some good results (oh, mental clarity, come to me).

Life in the Raw

"You just like to construct new little food hells for yourself, don't you?" - Mark

I'm a little obsessed with food. Just a little. And lately I've been reading about raw food and fruitarians, and juice feasting and all of that.

[to be continued]