nachos

Ingredients:

2 cups Cooked pinto (or black, or whatever!) beans, cook down the water

or

A can of pinto or black (or whatever!) beans.   cook up an onion in some water, and add some cumin and oregano, then add that to the beans.  can add some cilantro and lime too.

or

A can of no-fat refried beans

A ripe avocado

some cilantro or your favorite herb

Salsa which you can buy or make by cutting up a fresh tomato (or use ones from a can) and a little onion, little hot pepper if you like, little cilantro, little lime

Soft corn tortillas

A lime

It's basically, beans, guacamole, and salsa on corn tortillas.  blend the beans in the blender to make the bean dip.  For the guacamole, mash the avocado with a little garlic, lime, and cilantro.  Cut up the tortillas into chip-size wedges.  Add the bean spread, top with salsa and guacamole.  Put in the oven on 350 degrees for 6 minutes.  Not too long or the chips get overdone and hard to chew.   Housemate really liked it.  I thought it was good.

Collard green smoothie

I recommend this only for advanced green smoothie drinkers. For newbies, substitute spinach and/or baby romaine for the collard greens and kale. Or try this one.

Ingredients:

3-4 large collard green stalks

a couple of kale leaves and/or spinach if you want.

1 banana

a bag of frozen berries

1 cup orange juice or other juice

2 Tbsps ground flaxseeds (optional)
1-2 Tbsp sunflower or pumpkin seeds (optional)

any ripe fruit you want to throw in (optional)

1-3 tsp of lemon juice

Blend the seeds and juice. Rip the greens off the stalks and blend them. add the bananas and berries and blend some more. If you need more liquid, add some water or juice or non-dairy milk. This makes 2-3 servings depending on how much extra fruit or greens you add (more than a quart). The lemon juice is good for taking out the bitter taste of the greens but don't put in too much or it gets too lemony. When starting out, use smaller amounts of greens. Over time, you start liking it more and more and add more and more.

sept. 28-29 food

sept. 28

Breakfast:  rest of yesterdays green smoothie.

Lunch:  nachos

Dinner:  leftover ratatouille.  dessert, apple.  later on, oops, 4 (eek) dates stuffed with walnuts.  I was bad.  oh well, the dates are gone now.  Ironically I'm not in the mood for them right now which is why I finished them off.

sept. 29

Breakfast:  Collard green smoothie.  This was good enough I finally made a recipe out of it.

Lunch:  leftover ratatouille.  dessert, 2 small apples.

Dinner:  rest of green smoothie.

I'm super busy at work for at least a few weeks, so will probably drink two smoothies a day a lot.  It takes less time and hopefully gives me more energy.  

Ratatouille

This is just eggplant, tomatoes, other vegetables on hand, and herbs cooked together in a pot. At the store last night I was looking for local vegetables and ended up with eggplant and parsnips.

Ingredients:

1 eggplant

2 16 oz cans tomatoes

The rest is whatever vegetables and herbs you have on hand.  here is what I had:

2 small green peppers

some mushrooms

a giant leek (or onion)

6 garlic cloves chopped

3 parsnips

a bunch of kale chopped

edamame (boiled and shelled)

1 cup quinoa, rinsed

5 fresh figs 

lots of basil, some tarragon, rosemary and marjorum from the garden, chopped

I first peeled and cut up the eggplant, added some salt and let it sweat for a while (20 minutes). then rinsed it off.    I've heard this removes the bitter taste.   The parsnips you peel and chop like carrots.  I combined the parsnips, a giant leek, the eggplant, and tomatoes and started cooking that in a big pot on the stove. Then chopped the garlic, mushrooms, green peppers and added that. added the quinoa and kale. Let that cook for another half hour.  The total cooking time is probably 45 minutes to an hour.  Add the edamame in the last 15 minutes.  In the last 5-10 minutes, add the herbs and figs.   I thought it was good but housemate didn't like it because she doesn't like eggplant or parsnips.  I could have done without the parsnips too.  I haven't eaten them much and have not developed a taste for them.  

sept. 27 food

Breakfast:  green smoothie.  this is pretty much the spinach-mango green smoothie but I am still low on bananas so used fresh figs and pineapple instead of the banana.  I don't desire the dates for sweetening anymore, because I like the fruit sweetening and the taste of the greens now.  I went grocery shopping last night and got an 8 oz bag of locally grown spinach, yum, so that's what I used instead of the garden collard greens and kale which are still flourishing.  I'll get back to those tomorrow.  I also got the fresh figs.  I really like those now.  And I got some bananas but they can use a day or two of ripening.

Late lunch:   Ratatouille.   I had several helpings so called it dinner too.  

Dessert: 2 small apples and a small pear (all local--so juicy!)

sept. 26 food

breakfast:  rest of yesterday's green smoothie

lunch:  what was left in the fridge:  2 beets, a sweet potato, half a leek, fresh local edamame (yum!), half a cauliflower.  I started the beets, leek and cauliflower boiling in maybe a cup of water.  then cooked the edamame separately (boil for a few minutes) and shelled them (squirt the peas out of the pod), then added the sweet potatoes, cooked for about 10-15 more minutes, added the edamame, added some chives, parsley and basil from the garden.  It was very good.  the water boils away mostly so you get all the nutrients.   dessert was an orange.

dinner:  leftover lunch, dessert was an apple.  it was locally grown and, wow, they are much better than the ones shipped from thousands of miles away.    then I was bad when I got home and snacked on a couple of dates with walnuts (take the pits out of the dates, replace them with walnuts, microwave for 10 seconds), and another small apple.

sept 25, 2008 food

breakfast:  rest of yesterday's green smoothie

lunch:  rest of yesterday's daal with peas and quinoa.  This was even better today because I added orange juice.  I also put in a bit too much cilantro so I'll have to remember not to try to fix a recipe with cilantro.  I really like this dish now.  I will update the recipe to include the orange juice.  Also had a salad--lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms (all local!), and leftover blueberry dressing that I froze (made from frozen blueberries, figs and sunflower seeds).

dinner:  green smoothie.  I'm low on bananas so this one had 2 large collard greens, a bunch of kale leaves, a bag of concord grapes (local, and good!), and a frozen bag of cherries.  and then the usual Tbsp each of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds (raw and in my freezer), and 2 Tbsp of ground flax seeds.  I put in the extra seeds since I split this into two servings.   I also had a delicious local pear.   This is a great time of year for local food!

I've gotten pretty good at not snacking lately.  Fuhrman is right that once you do it for a while (just a few days in my case), and if you eat healthy, you lose your "toxic hunger" that most people get a few hours after eating.  This makes life simpler because I spend less time thinking about eating and more time on the rest of life, which is probably healthy mentally.  I'm slowly getting over my trip exhaustion.  Could that have been the detox that Fuhrman talks about when you stop eating unhealthy food?  

daal with quinoa and peas

This uses the daal recipe, and adds quinoa and peas and 1/2 cup orange juice. it was easy and good.

I started with the daal recipe but only put in 1 cup of lentils and half the spices. I soaked the quinoa in water for the first 20 minutes while the daal cooked, then rinsed it and added it (soaking is not necessary but I understand rinsing removes a bitter taste). About 20 minutes later I added the peas, and 5 minutes later it was done and I added the lemon and cilantro. actually you can then wait about 15 minutes for it to cool and it cooks a bit more. so an hour's cooking time is about right. It tasted a bit flat without salt (I must have got used to salt during my last trip) so I added a chopped fresh ripe fig to each bowl. That was yummy. You could substitute any sweet like grapes or dates or maple syrup or agave nectar. Alternatively, the next day I added 1/2 cup orange juice (fresh squeezed). This was easier and tasted great. It didn't feel flat anymore. I like this a lot, better than regular daal. Plus the dilution of the lentils gave me much less bloating and gas!

blueberry fig sorbet

This is pretty much stolen from Dr. Fuhrman's website, though I use orange juice instead of pomegranate.  oh, so I changed 1/3 of the ingredients so maybe that's okay...(rationalization).

Ingredients:

1 bag of frozen blueberries

2-3 fresh figs or dried figs (may have to soak a bit)

about 1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

blend in a blender.  I think this is my favorite dessert!   I must be weird.  It's not even that sweet but it is so creamy and tastes just right to me.   if you want it sweeter you could replace some of the juice with maple syrup or agave nectar.

what this blog is about

Just a quick note to clarify what I'm doing here: I'm sharing what I eat to show that it's easy to eat healthily. However, it's completely foreign compared to the Standard American Diet, so this is meant as a guide to this foreign way of eating. What better way to learn than by example?

For a few weeks I was writing down my exercise but I don't want to put in the effort to continue that. Plus, that is not so easy to emulate. Everyone has different schedules and environments and most people can figure out how to get their exercise if they want to. Suffice it to say I do think exercise is an integral part of a healthy lifestyle and I try to exercise 5-6 days a week.

Next, I should point out that I eat my main meal of the day at lunch due to housemate's schedule. Like everyone else, I have too much to do and don't make the time to cook 3 big meals a day. I make a nice lunch and then scrounge at dinner. The scrounging is usually fun but quick. So if your main meal of the day is dinner, you would be more interested in looking at my lunchtime meals for examples.

that is all I wanted to say at this moment. carry on.

sept 23-24 food

sept. 23 breakfast:  rest of yesterday's green smoothie

Lunch:  leeks and potatoes.  leeks add a nice flavor to potatoes.  I just cup up a leek and part of an onion, peeled and cut some potatoes, and boiled them in water for 20 minutes.  added some frozen peas in the last 5 minutes.  added some chives and parsley from the garden.   also made some cabbage salad.   This was the best yet and the easiest.  I will update the recipe.

Dinner:  cabbage salad and snacked on lettuce while making today's smoothies.  I probably ate half a head of lettuce.  It was local and fresh and delicious, and I am often too lazy to make a salad but don't mind just eating the lettuce as is.  I also had an orange.  

sept. 24 breakfast.  green smoothie.  this had 4 (big) collard green leaves, two bananas, a bag of frozen raspberries, and it needed something else so I added some fresh squeezed orange juice--that goes really well with green smoothies.    plus I added my usual 1 Tbsp each of flaxseeds and sunflower seeds.

lunch:  I made daal with quinoa and sweet peas.  I thought this was very good.  

dinner:  cabbage salad, followed by my favorite dessert:  blueberry-fig sorbet.   I absolutely love this.  I'm not sure why.  It sounds kind of boring and it's not super sweet.   I ate the whole thing, but it probably wasn't even that many calories, 200-300?

"Spaghetti"

Ingredients:

small or part of an onion

few cloves garlic

1 16 oz can  tomatoes

several leaves fresh basil (5-ish)

other herbs you like if you have them (I used my favorite, chives)

1 carrot

1 medium zucchini

2 Tbsp pine nuts

This serves 1, so double it for 2.    Cut up onions and garlic into not small pieces, say 0.5-1 inch.  Start cooking them in juice from can of tomatoes.  Grate the carrot into the cooking pan.  Let this cook for say 10 minutes.  Add the tomatoes.  Cook for another 15-20 minutes, until onions are tender.  Add the basil and herbs.  

Now for the fun part.  Peel the zucchini and then run it through a spiralizer.  Here's a link showing a spiralizer from amazon.com (if it gets out of date just type zucchini spiralizer into google and you'll find one).   This was my first use of my new spiralizer and it is really cool and easy to use.  The result looks just like cooked angel hair pasta, but zucchini is way healthier and I really like raw zucchini.   

Next, toast the pine nuts in a pan on the stove (no oil).  Then smash them in a mortar&pestal, or grind them a little in a coffee grinder, or smash them however you can think of.  Pour the tomato sauce on top of the "angel hair" zucchini, and top with the pine nuts.  

I enjoyed this a lot, but if you are used to a lot of oil and salt you may notice the lack of salt.  For a treat, you could add olives, which are salty.  I might do that next time for a treat.  

food sept 21-22

Yesterday and today I was exhausted!  I slept well both nights but I think the excesses of my trip must have caught up to me.  Let's see, there was jet-lag, caffeine (not much but enough), alcohol (maybe a little too much), adrenaline, sleep deprivation while in Germany, and not my usual healthy eating.  I'm not sure what dominated but I've only felt this exhausted once before and that was after a 2-week marathon work situation (working on a Space Shuttle mission) with similar amounts of sleep deprivation and much more adrenaline.  Hopefully I will recover soon...

sept 21 Breakfast:  green smoothie made from a bunch of kale leaves, 2 bananas, a bunch of concord grapes, some figs (yum), 1 Tbsp sunflower seeds and ground flaxseeds.  I think that was all.  it was good.  the concord grapes are what made it good.  the figs were fresh and yummy.

Lunch:  salad and fruit salad.  the salad was just lettuce, mushrooms and dressing made from blueberries, figs and sunflower seeds blended (really good!).  The fruit salad was strawberries, banana and pineapple.  It was easy to make this and we had it for a picnic while hiking.

Dinner:  rest of smoothie

sept 22 breakfast:  green smoothie made from 4 large collard leaves, 2 bananas, an apple, a bag of frozen mangos and an orange.

lunch:  1/2 small watermelon.

early dinner (didn't have enough lunch!):   "spaghetti".   I enjoyed this a lot, but by now my taste buds have changed so I'm not sure what you'd think if you like a lot of oil and salt.

food Sept. 20, 08

The garden is bursting with collard greens and kale so I may have to eat two green smoothies per day.  That's okay because I'm super busy with many things and don't have time to cook dinner anyway.  I'm still working out my green smoothie recipe but think I'll post what I try so I can remember what works and what doesn't until I figure it out.

Breakfast:  green smoothie with 4 collard leaves, 2 bananas, half a small watermelon (the red seedless didn't taste that good so I put it in the smoothie), a couple of pears.  plus vitamins, DHA, and 1 Tbsp flaxseed, and 1 Tbsp sunflower seeds.  Those last four ingredients will go into all the smoothies (sunflower seeds would be replaced by almonds or walnuts sometimes).  this makes two smoothies.   I think it would be better with 3 collard leaves.  they are gigantic.   tomorrow I'll try 3 and a few kale leaves that need picking.    this was an okay smoothie, not great, probably not recipe-worthy.   For housemate, I made the usual berry smoothie.

Late Lunch:  made some salsa with can of garden tomatoes that didn't seal, onion, chives, green pepper, basil.  it could use some cilantro but we didn't have any.  Toasted some sprouted corn tortillas with pesto on them.  put a spoonful of salsa on them and they were very good.  Also, cooked up some edamame, tossed it with some salsa and pesto and ate that up.  that was really good.    

Late dinner:  rest of the green smoothie.

I enjoyed this all more than anything I ate in Germany.  and it was so much more healthy.  an interesting thing about those green smoothies is that they give me an energy boost, so I don't need coffee.  

back from my trip

I got back from Germany yesterday and I'm very jetlagged.   As part of my usual splurge when a trip is over with, I ordered a medium decaff soy mocha yesterday.  Well, it wasn't decaff!   I was nervous all day and couldn't sleep at night despite my lack of sleep from the night before.  it was awful.  my left eyelid was twitching.  That was two shots of espresso.  It's mostly worn off now and I'm tired and just have to get through the day.  I had a great yoga class today.  I always have a great yoga class when I'm jetlagged, I don't know why.  Anyway, this blog isn't supposed to be about jetlag.  So I was not super healthy on the trip.  I drank about one 16 oz beer a day, and German beer is pretty strong.  I drank about 1 small decaff soy latte per day.  At first I ate too much because going out for lunch and dinner is just too much.  Then I got into a groove where I had museli and fruit for breakfast at the hotel, fruit from a fruit stand for lunch, and then dinner from a restaurant.  That worked out well.  At least I didn't eat too much until the evening . We rotated between Italian and Thai food mostly.  I had one meal at a German restaurant, and even though I got all vegan food, it was still rich and gave me a stomach ache.  The Italian and Thai places were pretty good.  I ate a lot of bread at the Italian place.  I hope it didn't have milk in it.  I ate curries at the Thai place.   Everything tasted very salty since I'm not used to it, especially the bread.   I had a great time socially and professionally.  It was a great trip.  I am weird though the way I succumb to peer pressure with the alcohol.  I don't even really like drinking any more and yet I drank.  Another weird psychological thing is my desire to splurge when I get home.  So I had a Nothing Muffin and two (vegan) cookies at the Co-op when I got home.  The muffin was good.  The cookies taste like flour and salt.  They either aren't good bakers or I'm not a big fan of cookies anymore.   But it's weird how I want to splurge on this stuff even when it doesn't even taste that good.  For comparison I made a "shake" with frozen banana, carob powder and dates, and it tasted better than the unhealthy stuff I splurged on.  but I still wanted to splurge.  Maybe it's just a habit that will die away over time as I realize I don't want it that much.  It takes me a long time to break habits though I eventually succeeded with the caffeine and alcohol (almost, except when traveling!).  oh, a funny thing about the caffeine.  it makes my forehead crinkle.  I used to have a crinkly forehead all the time and I noticed over the last year that I don't have it anymore.  Then yesterday I saw that I had it again.  it's the caffeine!  it makes my eyes pop open and my forehead crinkle.  I notice my friend Mike's forehead does the same and he drinks a lot of coffee.  I'm going to start looking more at people's foreheads and see if it's common.  My forehead definitely looks better without caffeine.  

I went grocery shopping and got all kinds of wonderful food.  There's so much local harvest now.  And I decided I don't want to be raw, at least not 100%.  For one thing, I haven't seen any science that shows it's better.  Plus, winter is approaching and to eat raw in Wisconsin, I'd have to get all my food from the tropics.  That's not eco-friendly.  Plus I am getting in the mood for fall foods like potatoes and squash.   I'm even thinking of eating beans again.  One thing I recall is that beans didn't used to bother me so much and maybe it's because I used to eat more grains.  So I think I'll try eating beans with grains when I eat them.  So I'll probably go back to more of the Fuhrman and McDougall eating plans now.   That means eating lots of leafy green vegetables and other vegetables, fruit, some grains and beans, and a few nuts and seeds.   The thing you should not eat are oils and salt.  And I think I might try to avoid wheat since that is not as healthy as other grains.    so that should be easy enough.  Today I enjoyed my healthy food more than anything I ate in Germany I think.  I'll post that next.

food sept. 6-7

yesterday

Breakfast:  collard green smoothie--the other half of Friday's.  I added some blended grapes and I thought it was quite good.  But as I said before, I think it's an acquired taste so newbies should start with something like the spinach mango smoothie.  

lunch:  corn on the cob, leftover cabbage salad, watermelon.

dinner:  collard green smoothie, the other half from a few days ago, orange.  

today, well, the refrigerator was getting empty and there was no corn at the corn stand, so I ended up eating cooked food!

Breakfast:  green smoothie that was in the freezer

Lunch:  For housemate I boiled potato, carrot, sweet potato, and peas in a small amount of water which mostly boiled away.  Then added avocado spread.  And I made a big salad of lettuce, mushrooms and fresh cherry tomatoes.  The dressing was juice of one orange, some walnuts, and the rest of a pineapple, blended in the blender.   Okay, so for me I thought I needed something to go with the salad (mistake) but I didn't have much in the fridge, so I blended up a carrot, celery, tomato, half a sweet potato, and half a small green pepper in the blender.  yuck.  I added some avocado spread, didn't help.  it was okay but not terribly appealing.  meanwhile the cooked stuff looked good so I tasted it and it tasted good so I thought, well, I went raw for 8 days, let's see how cooked food tastes.  It was good, especially the sweet potato.  I ate it much faster than I eat raw stuff, so had to consciously tell myself to slow down.  It did feel a little different digesting cooked food, maybe I felt a little heavier feeling in my stomach but that could be my imagination.   After my blended veggie experiment, I understand now why raw people juice their vegetables.  I think carrot juice probably tastes a lot better than blended carrots.  my problem with this is that it seems so wasteful.  Dr. Fuhrman also recommends juicing carrots and celery and putting that into soups.   We would compost the pulp, and carrots and celery aren't too expensive, so maybe I will try juicing some in the future, when I get back from my trip.

okay for dinner, well, since I went off raw for lunch,  I decided a splurge was in order, so at the co-op I got a peanut butter cookie (vegan), a maple/fruit/oat bar, and a little bowl of a rice/edamame salad.  The cookie was not that great, tasted like flour and hung in my throat.  The fruit bar was pretty good, as was the salad.  The only problem with eating this stuff is that I'm then too full to eat my favorite stuff like grapes and watermelon.  Then I made twelve breakfast smoothies and four chocolate smoothies for housemate to eat while I'm out of town!  Pretty funny eh?  It was partly procrastination because I have so much to do before leaving town and don't want to face it.  I'll regret it in the morning.  And I just had 2 computers crash and not boot up so have to waste time tomorrow morning at the Apple store.  I do have a bit of a tummy ache but that's just from overeating the sweets and snacking on the smoothies while making them.  I feel a little more tired than usual, but again, overeating rich food of any kind will do that to you.

food sep. 5

Breakfast:  another green smoothie.  this one was pretty good.  I'm still not sure I want to make it a recipe.  I don't recommend collard green smoothies to newbies.  Spinach is the best because you can't taste it and it just tastes like a delicious fruit smoothie.  But I have to admit, the collard greens are growing on me, which is good because the garden is full of them.  I got the idea from the Vita-Mix website--oh, shoot I forgot to add grapes and an orange.  I picked this one because I had all the ingredients.  So let's see, I put in some collard greens and kale, and my usual nuts, seeds, vitamins and DHA, two bananas and 2 pears.  I thought it was pretty good.  I made the usual berry smoothie for housemate.  All of these make two servings so I end up freezing the other one.  So now I have to stop making them and just eat the frozen ones until I go out of town.  I'll continue making berry smoothies for housemate so she'll have something to eat while I'm gone.  She is as helpless in the kitchen as I am at yard work.

Lunch:  cabbage salad and corn on the cob with avocado spread.  I improved the cabbage salad greatly by adding mashed avocado (i.e., avocado spread) and chopped walnuts, so I modified the recipe.  This suggests to me that adding fat to things adds flavor, and I've heard this said before but never was sure it was true.   But I believe Fuhrman when he says that you should only eat the healthy fats, not oils.  Plus, avocado tastes better than any other fat, it's better than butter, better than olive oil, so there's no sacrifice here.  I also had some watermelon for dessert.

Dinner:  cabbage salad, watermelon, grapes, an orange, and some mushrooms.  that was a bit excessive.   I could have done without the watermelon but for all I know, when I return from my trip to Germany, there will be no more watermelon.  But in that case, then I could have done without the grapes and the orange and the mushrooms.

corn and zucchini salad

This was inspired by this recipe, but I didn't have most of the ingredients, so consider this an example of how you can modify recipes.

Ingredients:

2 ears corn, kernels cut from cob

1 zucchini, peeled with a potato peeler into strips, or cut up however you like

part of an onion

lots of cherry tomatoes, halved

cucumber, sliced

avocado spread, make a double batch if you want

mix it all together.  The avocado spread was a great touch.  That made me realize it would be great in potato salad.  I was going to add sunflower seeds but I forgot.  This was really good but it could be because I had fresh local corn, fresh local zucchini, fresh local onion, fresh tomatoes from the garden, fresh local cucumber, fresh herbs from the garden, and all organic.   so in the dead of winter when you are getting this shipped from California, maybe it's not as good.

food sept. 3 and 4

yesterday 

breakfast:  berry smoothie

lunch:  corn and zucchini salad.   This was very good.  I probably had watermelon for dessert or a peach, I'm already forgetting.  I was hoping my cleaned up blood vessels would improve my memory but that doesn't seem to be happening.

dinner:  leftover lunch, a peach.  some watermelon, grapes.  snacked later on because housemate brought a ripe peach home and it needed to be eaten.

exercise:  body power and yoga classes at the gym

today

breakfast:  experimented with a new green smoothie.  I'll be trying green smoothies for a few days.  I don't want to write this as a recipe because I don't really think it tasted that great, though it was okay, and I can see how you could acquire a taste for it.  I think it's hard to make a great tasting smoothie with collard greens.  but we have a bunch in the garden and they need to be eaten.  I did a google search on the web for collard greens and green smoothies and found a few.  They usually consist of greens, bananas and berries, so I put collard greens and kale filling about half the blender, 3 bananas, a bag of strawberries, then my usual small addition of sunflower seeds, walnuts, vitamins and Fuhrman's DHA (to keep my fragile heartbeats regular).  It makes two 20 oz servings, so quite large.

lunch:  corn on the cob with avocado spread, salad (lettuce, cherry tomatoes from garden, mushrooms), orange-cashew dressing (made with walnuts instead of cashews).   I ate the corn raw!  ha.  it was really good.  it's even sweeter than cooked.  I could see throwing it in the boiling water for a few seconds to warm it up.  but I didn't see the need today.   The co-op has corn so we are back to corn until they run out.   

snack:  peach and some grapes

dinner:  leftover salad (lots) and dressing, watermelon for dessert.

exercise:  fit class at the gym.   

Sept. 2 food

okay, I'm on a raw kick.  I'm thinking of doing it until I go on my next trip, next week.  So about a week.   I've been talking to a raw guy.  He's very fun to talk to.  So far every book I've read on raw food eating, I hate to say this, I'm don't like being critical, but they are full of hogwash.  I'm okay with saying you feel better when you eat raw.  But to make up whacko pseudoscience to go along with it bothers me.  I know most of the raw foodists mean well and are just quoting from the "experts". But some of them, the "experts" making up this stuff, must know they are just making it up.  Also all the raw cookbooks I've seen are, well, I'm sorry to say this too, garbage.   The recipes are full of nuts and salt and oil.  They think sea salt is somehow better than regular.  Sure, it probably has less chemicals, but sodium chloride is sodium chloride, if it comes from the sea or a chemical plant, and it's not good for you.  And the amount of nuts these recipes call for is crazy.  I tried a raw recipe once and got sick from all the nuts.  This is because there are two ways to get your calories when you eat raw:  nuts or fruit.  I'm in the fruit camp, with a small amount of nuts.  Of course, you also need lots of greens for your health.  I've found a few websites that promote a more healthy kind of raw.  For example, organic athlete, Steve Pavlina (and links therein), and Zenpawn.  I've heard of another guy that might be good but I haven't had time to check him out.  So, to get to my point, even though I haven't seen science to back it up, I have to admit, I feel much more energetic when I eat raw, and I am satisfied and don't have cravings---maybe that would change if I did it for a month.  So I'm experimenting this week, doing my own science study to see if it's true, and so far it is.  But I don't know what I'm doing as you'll see.  Here's what I ate today:

Breakfast:  smoothie

Lunch:  For housemate, I made potatoes stewed with tomatoes and peas with chives and basil and rosemary and parsley (from the garden).  She loved it.  For me, I didn't have much fruit lying around so it was up to the vegetables to fill me up.  I've been wondering how you eat collard greens raw.  You have to blend it.  So I blended it up with some kale and tomatoes and garlic.  it actually wasn't bad.  I poured that over chopped okra, green pepper, celery, carrots, and kohlrabi.  It was okay in small quantities.  It took forever to eat with all the chewing.  I only ate about 1/3 of my plate.   Fortunately I had one peach left.  I was full and didn't get hungry until the usual time at dinner.  then I went grocery shopping, thankfully.

Dinner:  1/4 watermelon, grapes, mushrooms, a small pear (I didn't realize these were ripe at lunch or I could have had a feast), an orange, a handful of walnuts.    

I'm thinking the healthy raw diet needs a green smoothie every day or a big salad.  and then you can have a lot of fruit and some nuts.  and you can learn how to make some stuff too which I'll figure out.  I bought a zucchini today.  That will be easy to chew and eat and I like the taste.  

Exercise:  I kicked butt today!   We did sprints and it was about 90 degrees outside and I started at the end of the line like always, so people wouldn't have to pass me, and I passed everyone except one guy---I'm not sure who finished first because we took a different route on the last one.  We did 12 x 50 yards, with 50 yard rest in between, 6 x 100 with 100 yard rest, 2 x 200 with 200 yard rest, and 1 x 400.  It really wasn't that hard but the heat destroyed everyone but me.  I got hot but it was no big deal.  On a cooler day I probably would have been at the back of the pack as usual.  I'm pretty sure I am the oldest one in the class, probably by 10-20 years over most people.  ha.  I also recovered quickly after each run--that's where I passed everyone was in the walking.   I was ready to go after each walk was done.  That's those cleared up arteries doing their job.  That's why athletes can benefit from a healthy vegan diet. 

Okra salad

Edited Oct. 21.  Looking back on this, I don't think I would recommend this recipe.  I was trying to eat raw for a week.  But it was work to chew all these vegetables.  Well, maybe I'll try it again next summer.

I liked this but if you don't like slimy okra, but wanted a recipe with okra in it.  I made some recommendations in this post.

Ingredients:

about 8 okras

corn from one cob or about 1 cup frozen

1 chopped piece of celery

1 chopped carrot

1/2 green pepper, chopped

some pineapple pieces if you have them, I cut about, um, 2/3 cup from a fresh pineapple.  if you don't have pineapple, um, maybe a bunch of pieces from a peeled orange?  or an apple sliced up?  or a chopped date?  or nothing.

part of an onion chopped.  this was a good addition to my surprise.

1/2 lemon squeezed or less (mine wasn't juicy)

some herbs if you have them:  I had chives, rosemary, parsley, basil, a little of each

Chop everything up and combine it.  I let it sit in the fridge for about an hour to see if the flavors blended at all--that's why I added lemon, to marinate it a bit.  I didn't really notice but it might taste better if you let it sit for a few hours.  I chose the ingredients because a lot of them came from a gumbo recipe, but it was too hot to make gumbo.  I didn't make a big salad because I didn't know how it would taste but I actually liked it.

food aug 31 and sept 1

breakfast:  berry smoothie

lunch:  green smoothie and some cabbage salad.  I thought I was going to be away all day but was able to come home for lunch after all, but the smoothie was already thawing so I ate it anyway.  so the watermelon I've been eyeing had to wait until

dinner:  1/2 small watermelon, corn on the cob with avocado butter, a little cabbage salad

then today I had

breakfast:  berry smoothie

snack:  Colorado peach

late lunch after hiking in the heat:  1/2 small watermelon.   perfect!  

dinner:  a weird okra salad that I actually kind of like.  But it might be too weird for my friends and family.  I saw fresh locally grown okra at the co-op and I love okra, due to my southern heritage, and we almost never get okra in Wisconsin (now there's something to plant in the garden next year!).  Normally I would have made gumbo and I had a recipe picked out from one of my cookbooks that also includes corn and bell pepper which I have fresh from the garden and corn stand.  but it's hot out (finally at couple of hot days to enjoy!) and I don't feel like cooking.  so I made an okra salad.   If you want a recommendation for something more normal to do with okra, here are a couple of gumbo recipes from fatfreevegan.com:  blackeyed pea gumbo, and garden gumbo.  I've made both and they are good.  Or here is a recipe from the same site for roasted okra, or stewed okra with tomatoes.  ooh I hadn't seen that last one until now.  I might try that out with the remaining okra.  Anyway, along with the okra salad, we had, what else, corn on the cob with avocado spread.  I added a few more herbs from the garden to the avocado, some rosemary and mint and parsley, along with the usual chives and basil.  just a little of everything.  it was good as always.  We don't expect to get corn until next weekend now and then only for a couple more weekends, so I will have to come up with something else to eat for lunch every day.  Well, it was great while it lasted.  We never got tired of it.

Exercise:  yesterday, nothing, except a short walk, 2 miles.  today, a 5 mile walk in a sanctuary.  oh and a made-up MGB body power workout at home.  I have a medicine ball and power wheel and a strap to do assisted chin ups with.