40 46 Days of Raw: Day 46 (The end!)

I woke up as early as possible, drank some grapefruit juice and started my lessons. A coworker agreed to swap shifts with me at the bar so I could start at 4, definitely getting off by midnight. After finishing lessons at 2:30, I scooted over to my fav local bakery, Guglhupf, and bought some pain paysan (house sourdough, 25% rye, 75% wheat). At home, I rolled some cukes and avocado together in nori and scarfed it, then headed into work.

All I have to say about work today was that I can't stand basketball.

Fortunately, I got off around 10:30 due to the pacified masses, came home, took a shower and Sicka and I headed back to the bar to wait on midnight.

12:00 am was a Makers, a Bells two-hearted and a ripped off piece of pain paysan. All guests agreed that pain paysan is effing delicious.

By 12:45 I was pretty wrecked from my two drinks. Miss Steve got me a PBR which I nursed until about 2am, then Sicka drove me home. At home, I decided that my other long-lost friend, pasta, shouldn't have to wait. I tossed some tofu macaroni and broccoli in a pot, then melted down some daiya with silk and makeshifted a mac and cheese. While it cooked, I had part of a Snicker Dude from Liz Lovely. Sick and I also sampled a little bit of bread which was...obviously not quite right. I think I made it through about 1/4 of the mac and daiya before my stomach protested and I had to stop and go to bed. Which is cool.

This morning, my head and tummy reminded me at 7:45 that I have NOT drank, eaten that much salt, or wheat, or processed stuff in over 6 weeks. I pounded water like it was my job. Then passed back out for 5 more hours.

Now, I have to say that my head feels surprisingly okay and my stomach is as good as can be expected.

Reflections on Raw Life:
-Eating raw is pretty rad. You can eat pretty much until you are stuffed and not feel guilty about anything you put in your body.
-Once you purge all the processed stuff, you feel pretty good.
-Your environmental impact can be pretty much negligible, especially during farmer's market season.
-Save money! No more processed stuff! If you avoid all the raw "treats" like cookies, crawkers and so on, think about the cost of eating a banana and a salad every day. Probably 6-10 dollars.

I'm considering picking a day of the week to be 100% raw overall, and then try to do 50-60% the rest of the time. But man, raw recipes, aside from drinks, probably will be few and far between, because I like raw fruits and veggies just the way they are :)

40 46 Days of Raw: Day 45

A good day...

I bought a pineapple and cut it up, and got inspired.

I call it a Pink Escape (Pink Pina Colada)

~Waste parts of 1 pineapple (the tough ring in the center, the shavings with some of the brown holes around the outside, but not the skin. Eat the rest of the pineapple as you ordinarily would...)
(OR) appx 1 1/2 c pineapple.
~1 medium to large banana
~Appx 1 Cup Coconut water
~1/2 c strawberries

Blend until smooth. Drink with umbrella. :)

This was probably the first drink I ever made that I would rate a 10 on drinkability. I pounded these in like, 20 minutes then immediately regretted it.

at work, I snacked on the rest of the pineapple that I didn't use for the pina colada. Work was nuts, but it was all good, made decent money and still got out by about 12:30. Finished off the pineapple with some Chia. Those who like shakes...MAKE A PINK ESCAPE. It's delicious!

Failure of the evening: baking bread for tomorrow. Using the "getting started" guide recipe from the vitamixI ground up some white wheat berries, made the yeast, mixed the dough and then tried to "knead" in the vitamix...which didn't work, either because the dough was too watery or because it was too hot. But nothing came together, and after about 10 cycles of "kneading" I gave up and baked it as it was. It didn't rise when I proofed it. Boo hiss. Anyone got any advice on vitamix bread baking?

40 46 Days of Raw: Day 44, or Urumbo

So, today marked the slump. Urumbo was described to me as Shona (a Zimbabwe and South/East African language) for "the troubles." I think they meant it more in the way the Irish say "the troubles," but I'm taking both, man, because I am seriously facing my worst time right now, on the last mile. Number one, my brain is all over the place.

Got up this morning (had the day off) after getting a wonderfully unfulfilling 5 hours of sleep only to find out that my hairdresser is sick and couldn't come. I then failed to accomplish the one thing I was supposed to do today besides get my hair cut. But y'all don't want to hear me gripe, so let's talk food, gardens and veg*n, shall we?

After my stop at the bank, I hit up whole foods and picked up some snacky-poo for myself. I lazied out and got some pre-made guacamole (made in store, the only kind I find bearable as far as premade guacs) and seedless cukes to dip in the guac. I cut the bad boy up and had a mighty filling lunch, then set about my major task for the day, gardening.

As you can see, I got my garden turned over and some of my crops held over from last year (lavender and rosemary) and my bulbs are coming up and making life a delight, particularly on the walkway up to the front door, which is lined with Daffodils and paperwhites, creating a beautiful stink of spring and a splash of color, too. The paperwhite smell, for those unfamiliar, is most similar probably to the Easter Lily (one of my students just gave me a plant for the holiday, it is living in my room), in that it's pervasive, somewhat treacly but overall pleasant.

I believe I mentioned that I'd put in two raspberry bushes last Thursday and over the weekend, they really took! The foliage increased, the plants seem to be in good shape. Granted, the bushes I planted this week were a little more robust straight from the store, but I think you can still see the difference (newbie plants are the two on the left, week-olds on the right). So, if you, like me, have soil that's full of clay and essentially destroys anything but the heartiest of plants (seriously, my lawn is half dead because my yard is totally overtaken by trees, ivy and crabgrass). I also put down a couple of fig tree-lets (that are literally 6" tall right now and absolutely darling).

The real challenge of the day was that my vegessentials order came in today and the temptation to eat something, anything out of that box of joy was great. There were the cookies. There was pasta. There was chocolate and there was fake cheese. There were 3 fake meats I am really excited to try. There are 2 more days. I'm trying, and everyone says they're proud right now but I am JONESING for some processed wheat with partially hydrogenated soy involved. It's taking a lot of will power to pour myself a bowl of Chia with fresh cut strawberries with local honey* or pour myself a glass of grapefruit juice and a handful of cashews (that was dinner and evening snack respectively) instead of just going downstairs and tearing through a frozen bagel. I've had NY bagels in my freezer since early march =/. /rant

Anyway, I'm getting my plans together for the rest of the garden. I just found out that planting basil and rosemary side by side is bad news, so I think the rosemary side of the garden will be for brassicas, since I recently learned that rosemary and basil hate each other and battle it out underground, as do their counterparts. For those unaware, rosemary is a good compliment to things like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. Rosemary and the brassicas should be kept away from tomatoes, peppers, basil, oregano and carrots, apparently. Oregano is also supposedly good for cukes. As far as eye-candy to help yr dirt candy, the 3 big reccs are geraniums, marigolds and borage (new to me this year, but I'll sniff some out).

Any gardening tips out there in the blog world? I've had a heck of a time keeping my brassicas alive, hopefully this year with the division they'll at least get a fighting chance to battle it out with the evil squirrels (seriously, I've had squirrels eating my cucumber stalks before they even reach a decent size through like, 3 attempts last year. I don't want to sprout my seeds only to see them become very expensive sprout feed for squirrels.

Gosh, there I go again. Just trying to resist Liz Lovely's cookies. Til tomorrow, kids.

*Yes, I know honey is not considered vegan. NC has one of the highest number of indigenous flora of any state in the US. People who never had allergies move here and are debilitated by sinus pressure, snotties, sneezies and so forth. I try to work about 1 tsp of local honey into my daily diet at the beginning of the season and have just had some slight itchy eyes. Plus, I'd totally eat a bee, or a wasp. It is one of my secret desires to get a fig that has eaten a wasp. You can fight me on this, but honey (and, for that matter, insect byproduct in general) is not something I get up in arms about. Obvs, when I find out if things are truly vegan for YOU all (like beer) I get that info to pass along, because we all draw our line in the sand in different places. :)

40 46 Days of Raw: Day 42-23

Oh, some crappy days. Something I ate on Monday really didn't agree with me. I've narrowed it down to the almond butter from Mara Natha (a company I don't really like much to begin with) or the raw crackers =/. Either way, I was in severe intestinal distress for most of Tuesday (and believe me, it's not fun having tummy cramps and having absolutely no appetite when you're a waitress and have to be around food all night). I packed myself another arugula salad w/ strawberry vinaigrette, but ended up just eating a little bit of kimchi, a pickle and some grapes and strawberries that my co-worker Kat (who had mentioned that she thought bringing fruit habitually over candy was a good idea) brought for all of us. Day 42: Bust.

Day 43 was busy, but strangely so. Wednesdays are my double days. I managed to get out of work at the Fed fairly early and head to whole foods Chapel hill to pick up some pineapple and kombucha for a snack. Then, only one of my lessons showed up. The whole day. I finally got back home at about 7, where I worked on LAM! LAM! 2.0 until 8, when we left to play a show at Craig's House in Durham with Just Friends (Ex Fake Accents/Puberty) and So Cow, who were both rad. So Cow are on tour from Ireland and if you dig the Beach Boys, Hefner, or twee pop in general, you should check their schedule and see if they'll be near you. It'd be, as they say, "grand." We got home from the show at 4am, when I realized I'd consumed all of, oh, about 150 calories and promptly shoved an avocado down my throat. So, two days where I probably coulda eaten a little more.

I won't lie, these extra six days are really starting to wear on me. I placed an order from Veganessentials of shit that is sure to make me sick as a dog on Easter Sunday. I HATE having to choose a vegan online shop. Did anyone else notice that Cosmo's seems to have an exclusive on the reduced fat vegenaise (PS OMFG reduced fat vegenaise!)? While VE has all the Larsen stuff (which makes sense, I suppose). Either way, my list of stuff due to arrive on Day 44 is as follows:
Daiya Shredded Vegan Cheese - Cheddar
Daiya Shredded Vegan Cheese - Italian
Organic Cowgirl Veggie Steaks by Viana
Organic Chickin Fillets by Viana
Seven Grain Crispy "Chicken" Tenders by Gardein
Match Meat Vegan Meat Alternatives - Crab
Vegan Sliced Baked Ham by Pure Vegetarian
Liz Lovely Artisan Cookies - Goats A' Grazin'
Liz Lovely Artisan Cookies - Snicker Dudes
Organic Tofu Elbow Macaroni
Bow Wow Bon Bons Truffles by Rescue Chocolate (SIDEBAR: these profit animals, choose these as yr truffles!)

So I can't wait for this stuff to come! :)