Raw Week #2 Report

What I'm Eating

I haven't switched up my diet much - my garbanzo bean and lentil experiments both failed, and my raw zucchini hummus wasn't really edible. I'm not saying that other raw foodists couldn't make these things work, but I clearly did one or more things wrong on each of these recipes. I've had good luck the past couple of days at making taboulli, and I've been enjoying that. A few of the raw taboulli recipes I have seen recommend using ground almonds in place of the traditional bulgur, but I just omitted them since I am quite taken with just the parsley, mint and tomatoes on their own :) 

I tried making raw frosting tonight with coconut oil, orange juice and zest, and agave nectar. The flavor is good but egad, that texture. It's like lard times twelve. Not for me. The flavor is nice enough that I might experiment with using coconut oil in non-raw frosting though - maybe mixing some in with the butter I normally use, or just trying it with powdered sugar instead of the liquid agave and seeing how that changes the texture. 

Besides those forays, still just eating lots of fruits and veggies, raw nuts, and raw honey. 

How I'm Feeling

My body seems to have fully adjusted - my appetite and interest in food have returned, although I still skip eating sometimes when I'm hungry because I'm bored with what I have on hand or, when I'm at work, I don't have anything on hand. (That happens when I'm not eating raw too, of course - just not as often.) 

Mentally, I have good days and bad. On good days I'm excited about this experiment and happy to be learning new things about food and my body and reserves of self-discipline. On bad days I'm just plain bitchy about the whole thing and spend a lot of time thinking "What's the point?" Of course, I've only been doing this for two weeks, so it's not really fair to expect drastic changes, but so far I have not experienced most of the alleged benefits of eating this way - increased mental clarity, energy, etc. And while I'm curious about how long it would take me to experience those things, right now I'm not planning on extending this experiment any further. Maybe I'm just swayed by popular belief, but it feels strange to eschew foods I both crave and "know" to be healthy - beans, lean meats, whole grains (and by that I mean quinoa, not "whole grain" Doritos). All day today I just wanted a couple of hardboiled egg whites, and it's hard to keep saying no to such a simple request from your body when you don't quite believe in the reason behind your "no." I've been reading lots of raw food literature, including a couple of books by David Wolfe, and that has been interesting. But I wouldn't call myself a convert just yet.

This Week's Challenge

I spent the weekend in New York City, and now confirm that it is raw food paradise. I can hardly say that the weekend was a challenge, unless you accept that it was pretty hard to sit at an authentic Mexican restaurant and eat a plateful of greens and jicama rather than a cheese-smothered burrito :) 

Some of the awesome raw/vegan things I had this weekend:

• Fresh rhubarb/apple juice from the Union Square farmer's market
• A pint of the teeniest strawberries you've ever seen, also from Union Square
• A caramel chocolate bar, the size of my index finger, from Pure Food and Wine - the best thing I've eaten since I started raw/vegan - really amazing
• Huge assortment of different salads from Bonobo's, including one that freakishly tasted of fresh feta cheese
• Banana pudding and a "mesquite truffle" from Bonobo's
• Something creamy for once! Coconut chai from Bonobo's - young coconut milk, masala spices, and agave
• A Peach Perfection smoothie from Jamba Juice
• My first wheatgrass shot
• Two very nice salads from Bus Stop Cafe and Mary Ann's - I ordered off-menu and they were both great about it, no trouble at all - very much appreciated since I'm generally not the type to make up my own menu item (or, you know, ask for more water)

Up Next

Just getting through the week. We're going on a short beach overnight over Labor Day, but we're driving so I will be able to take more of my own food. I'll also have Monday to buy produce and prepare some things, which will be a nice change from the last two rushed weekends. 

Raw Week #1 Report

What I'm Eating

About what you'd expect - a lot of chopped salads, some fruit smoothies, snacking on nuts and fruit. My favorite breakfast at the moment is a Granny Smith apple chopped up and mixed with a handful of chopped raw walnuts and a spoonful of raw honey. Filling and a bit like muesli. I've been eating a lot of cucumber/tomato/scallion salad drizzled with olive oil for lunch, with a Larabar on the side. I mix it up more at dinner, because I've found that my appetite varies a lot in the evening. I usually have a snack of raw almonds dipped in honey when I get home, but then I may wait until 9pm before I'm hungry again. Sometimes I have a smoothie for dinner, and I've made "guacamole salad" a couple of times - avocado, tomato, onion and jalapeno diced up. Very filling. Tonight I had a bunch of sugar snap peas as soon as I got home, followed about an hour later by a very simple raw potato salad - just diced raw potatoes, cold-pressed olive oil and salt and pepper. Then late in the evening I wanted a bit more so I had my raw almonds dipped in honey.

How I'm Feeling

Overall, I feel great. I had a headache for most of the first day, but that hasn't been a problem since. On the second day I felt like I was going to faint at work around mid-morning. I ate some almond butter and that made me feel better. I changed my breakfast the next day from just fruit to the apple/walnut/honey mix, and that seemed to help a lot. I've had almost no stomach discomfort, which I attribute to the fact that I was already eating a high-fiber diet before I started eating raw. I really thought that the detox/transition would be much harder on my body, and I'm pleasantly surprised.

Mentally, I find myself much less interested in food and eating than ever before - an unexpected side effect, especially considering the amount of thinking that goes into planning a raw food day. Calculating to have enough food on hand and predicting hunger is taking up a lot of real estate in my brain right now. Although it's still pleasant, eating has become more about avoiding discomfort (strong hunger, faintness) than anything else. I don't know if that will pass or if that feeling will last the whole month.

This Week's Challenge

Just transitioning to a raw diet was challenge enough for this week, thank you very much :-) But I did have my first travel experience with the raw diet. When I said I was only going to NYC this month, that was a lie, in the service of a surprise bachelorette party this weekend. I was fortunate enough to be hanging out with people who were really open-minded and accommodating about this experience - they even made me gazpacho and fruit salad, and hardly harassed me at all about not drinking beer with them. Thanks, Pam, Ashley, Kath, Jessie and Joanna!

Traveling wasn't all sunshine and lollipops though. I spent about 9 hours on the bus, and I was glad that I'd packed apples, raw almonds and a couple of Larabars for the ride because the gas station we stopped at didn't have a single raw option. Most gas stations these days at least have a bowl of bananas or a couple of limp salads in the cooler, but not this one. I also learned that it frankly stinks to pay $8 for a take-out salad stripped of the cheese, meat, nuts (they're roasted), and dressing. I won't complain about the lack of raw food at Fenway Park, however, because beer, hot dogs and Cracker Jacks really should rule the day there. (Side note: Aramark caters Fenway, and they list 'fruit cup' and 'veggie cup' among the offerings. This may be true, but I didn't see any sign of these alleged cups on Saturday night.)

Up Next

I have two goals for this week:
(1) Start running again - I can't take the whole month off, and I really have no excuse since my detox symptoms disappeared on day 2.
(2) Vary my diet by adding soaked beans and lentils. I have garbanzo beans soaking overnight right now so I can make raw hummus in the morning, and I bought lentils to soak for lentil salad.

I'm very much looking forward to buying some overpriced raw/vegan desserts in NYC this weekend :-) I'll let you know how they taste!

Porkalicious, sans pork

I will be temporarily borrowing Porkalicious to discuss a decidedly non-porkcentric topic: raw foodism. Inspired by Tim the Raw Runner and curiosity, I decided a while back to try eating a raw vegan diet for a month. That month starts tomorrow.

I chose this month specifically. First and most importantly, there is an abundance of really yummy produce around at this time of year. We get a box of produce every week from Washington's Green Grocer, and August deliveries are primarily things that don't need to be cooked to be enjoyed. Lots of good tomatoes, cucumbers and corn at the nearby farmer's market. And we are fortunate enough to live near two grocery stores for the necessary produce supplements - avocados and things like that.

I also chose this month because we've started racing recently, and it fits pretty well into our schedule for the rest of the year. We just finished a sprint-distance triathlon last weekend, and our next races - a duathlon and a 10K - aren't until October. So if I need to take a couple of weeks off from training - because I'm detoxing or lack energy - no overall harm done. Finally, this is a good month to try it out because the only travel I have planned is a weekend in NYC, and that's a good place to be a temporary raw foodist!

My preparation for this month has been pretty basic. I read the introductory materials and many of the recipes in The Complete Book of Raw Food, read some raw food blogs, and purchased some non-produce raw food: raw almonds, walnuts, and pistachios, raw honey, raw coconut oil, cold pressed olive oil, raw almond butter, and Larabars (raw food bars made primarily of dates and other fruits and nuts). I'm not sure how much I will use the raw recipes I've found - at first I expect that I'll just be eating a lot of smoothies and salads. I'm not one for elaborate recipes unless it's a special occasion (holiday, entertaining), and many of the recipes that attempt to recreate cooked favorites are way beyond my standard level of effort: see, for instance, 14-ingredient walnut burgers requiring 8 to 24 hours in a dehydrator I don't own. I'll definitely be trying out the raw frosting recipe I found though :) Some raw foodists also grow a lot of sprouts, and I may do that sometime this month.

To keep myself sane, I have set up a few guidelines for myself to follow.
1) I will be taking a regular Flintstones multivitamin everyday; there are "living"/raw vitamins available, but they are expensive. I will also be using Advil when necessary, although I'm going to be as minimal as possible about it.
2) I am going to buy and consume processed/commercial juice as a last resort when I'm stuck away from home and grocery stores and need calories. Although most juices are pasteurized and many contain non-natural ingredients, I'm a newbie at this and expect that at certain times because of my lack of planning or experience, there will simply be nothing else available, and I'm not going to be miserable and/or faint if there is juice available.
3) I don't consider irradiation to be cooking, and therefore will be purchasing produce at various grocery stores regardless of whether it may have been irradiated.
4) I will be eating Larabars because they are widely accepted as being raw, even though there are some people in the raw/vegan community who claim that they are not 100% raw. (I will not be eating the Jocolat flavors of Larabar, however, as they are 90% raw at best.)

So, we'll see how this goes. I'm sure I will stop missing my daily skim iced latte after a few days, right? :) I will be checking in regularly over the next month and posting yummy recipes as I discover them. Thanks for reading!