40 Days of Raw: Day 17-20...halfway! Need recs for tour!

Day 17 - Friday...oh man, I made a gross smoothie. I used the acai juice, thinking it would be good in a smoothie. Boy, was I ever wrong. So, I ended up pretty much wasting a
1 banana, 1/2 c strawberries, more spinach, a carrot, celery, a clementine and a pear to make something I essentially had to choke down. I thought it would be more fruit-punch like. Amazon cherries are no fun at all. :( The rest of the day, I had a snack of avocado and mulberries, which are so cute together!

Day 18 - Saturday. My first Mishap with the vitamix.
I forgot to pack breakfast, so ended up having to wait until 3:30 to get food. The good news? I successfully pulled off a runny ice cream. The bad news, when I tried to pour it into a glass, a HUGE chunk of ice cream came out, tipped the glass and painted my floor, baseboard and a little bit of the cabinetry. The grout is now a resonant blue. I also snacked out on a mango. At Broad Street Cafe in Durham, I ordered a house salad. I have a small bone to pick with like, every restaurant in the world: if you describe your salad as fresh green, garden, "mixed veggies" or even "lettuce, tomato, onion and crutons"...WHERE DOES THE CHEESE COME FROM? I don't understand why you'd put cheese on a salad that is supposedly comprised of veggies, with absolutely no mention of it. I don't like sending food back. I work in a restaurant. You need to tell your customers what's true though!

So I washed the vitamix and used it to chop radishes, carrots and celery, then mixed that slaw with my kimchi to ease the spice a little. It worked and was quite tasty. My dog's ball also fell into the kimchi bowl, which was adorably heartbreaking (she's obsessive) because she'd put it in her mouth, drop it and run, then slink back to it, stare for a while, then try again. It was darling, you have to believe me.

Day 19 - Sunday. Yet ANOTHER Kombucha mishap. I'm starting to think these bottles are structurally unsound. So my entire food intake for the day was a Go Raw bar, some cashews and a grapefruit. I really need to make another batch of pickles. I won't lie, it was a bad day for eating.

Day 20 - A good smoothie! Mix of the following:
1/2 c almonds
1/4 c cashews
handful flax seeds
1/2 c blackberries
1/2 c tomatoes
1 red pear
1 grapefruit
1/2 c spinach
1 c water

So I'm sipping on that. I've found that I'm grazing more now that I've gotten into the groove. I'm packing some cashews, almonds and mulberries from The Raw Choice (I used to get pick up food when they had a lifestyle center...it was SO good. If you're out there, TRC, start doing raw cooking classes and demos again!), as well as some radishes for the later in the shift boredom eating.

Sorry about the delay in posting, by the way, but expect some more delays, since my band is going on TOUR! We are hitting up Wilmington, NC; Baltimore, MD; New York, NY; and Philadelphia, PA. Any suggestions you have for places in those cities (I've heard Yabba Pot in MD is good, and will likely be trying Angelica Kitchen's raw selections unless I'm told otherwise), please let me know!

40 Days of Raw: Day 15 and 16 a new toy!

So I got up today and packed some fruit, stepped outside for work and lo and behold, my VITAMIX had arrived. I raced through my lessons, so excited about my vitamix. First thing...I cleaned it. Yep, I'm a nerd.

Then I got to business. First things first, sweet sweet almond milk. They recommend filtering with cloth, which I didn't do. The milk is, admittedly, a little grainy, but a little fiber never hurt anybody. I then attempted to make the ice cream recipe using:
1/2 c blueberries
1/2 c bananas and mango
1/4 c strawberries
1/4 c blackberries
1 c almond milk
1/2 c spinach

Let me say, FAIL. However, I did end up with a big fat smoothie dinner, which I quickly downed. Later that night, I also wrapped some avocado in nori for an evening sushi snack, as well as noshing on the avocado spinach dip (which I can't wait to attempt in my vitamix for an even creamier smoother greatness). For the record, Dork tried that spinach dip and said "This is how raw hummus should taste." And I agree. Fuck raw hummus. There, I said it.

This morning, I attempted another green smoothie this time containing:
1 whole grapefruit
1 whole cucumber
1 c almond milk
1/2 c frozen banana and mango
1 handful flax seeds
1/2 c blueberries
5 strawberries

This smoothie was not really as tasty as yesterday's, probably because I used 2 very large, bitter fruits for this drink. I'm going to drag it along to work with me and hope for the best. I'm also planning to pack a raw crunch bar for the fatigue. I'm really looking forward to trying to make ice cream again, as well as some cashew butter!

So, anybody got any great recipes for a new vitamix owner? Man, when raw is over, I'm gonna make some soup! It's gonna be so RAD.

Days 15 and 16: yay getting calories. I've lost about 7 pounds since the start of this experiment (2 weeks ago). It's not that I don't want to drop some weight, but I am worried that it is more starvation method than healthy stuff. I've started doing at home bodyweight exercise to attempt to preserve my muscles. :)

40 Days of Raw: Day 13 & 14

Guys, I'm not going to lie, day 13 was a doozy. My roommate bought some sourdough bread which tempted me the whole morning. I fixed myself a bowl of ultra spicy kimchi and tried mixing it with the raw hummus I made, which essentially rendered both elements totally unappetizing, so I ended up just swishing it around in my bowl and not eating it. I didn't include a picture because it looks grody. So naturally, when I got to work there was an amazing vegetarian (easily veganized) dish on the specials and I also sold about 15 orders of the hummus plate (which is my staple meal on shift). The scent of hummus and warm pita was kind of overwhelming.

I left work and ran to the Local 506 to catch Pretty and Nice, who stayed over. They were quite enamored with my homemade fermented veggies as well as my darling puppies. Having essentially not eaten all day, I cut up some celery into the kimchi, which helped ease some of the spice. I think next time I'll try cutting radish into it. We stayed up way too late and were planning to try and get up and maybe hit Elmo's diner this morning like we did last time, but work and tour schedule interfered. Alas. Anyway, if you've never heard them, check them out. I believe you can (with some ease) find and download the song Tora Tora Tora, which is pretty rad and the reason I ended up buying their cool, off-kilter pop album.

Day 14: dippy.

Today I set aside about an hour to go to the store, since all I had to eat were pickles, kimchi and that hummus. Of course, I was famished by the time I arrived, wandered the aisles in a stupor and ended up leaving the store with half the ingredients actually required to make pretty much anything worth a damn. Fortunately, I'm crafty. For late lunch I whipped up a Broc and Guac-- avo diluted by peas after I read this scary article on goneraw.com which decries the high fat diets of many raw foodists and blames fatigue and illness on them (I have been tired! I do need energy! This made me feel like I was reading an infomercial.). It was SO delicious.

I hung out with some friends and slowly but surely my blood glucose dropped and dropped to the point that I got a bit of a headache, got giddy and then got a BAD headache. Having not eaten in almost 10 hours, I took my food processor into the basement when I got home and made the creamed spinach dip from goneraw.com while pounding coconut water to try and bring some quick sugar into my blood stream. Can I tell you something? This dip rocks. It ROCKS. It is awesome. When I am no longer raw, I'm gonna buy some rye bread, spread this all over it and refuse to leave the house until it's all gone. Either way, it's still pretty good with cauliflower. :)

Days 13 & 14: Not my best. But stickin to it.

Sidebar-- Giveaway over at a friend blog

Ginger is the New Pink is giving away a FREE RAW CLEANSE. In addition to this neat giveaway, I'm kind of excited to have been turned on to the blog (thank you Sarah!) because it has lots of sweet raw food info!

Update: I'm a tool and this giveaway already ended. Man, I am lame. I really would love to get a free cleanse!

40 Days of Raw: Day 12, when I FINALLY get Kimchi right!

So today I finished off my last bit of Sunja Kimchi, just in time to test the waters of my own recipe...and IT IS GOOD. I mean, it's a little spicier than I would ideally make it but the flavors are right! It tastes tangy and salty and hot and GOOD. I used (according to recipe)--

1 whole head nappa cabbage
1 whole bunch green onions
1 7" piece of daikon radish
6 cloves garlic
1 1/2" thumb ginger
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp liquid aminos
3 tbsp gochgaru
about 1 tsp extra salt

and voila, in 2.5 days, I have a cheaper, homemade alternative to the 4.59 a small bottle stuff. Oh, happy day. Thank you, thank you Yummy Vegan Dinners. And thank you to the PPK boards for recommending this recipe.

I'll also be blagging some cool recipes from Chef Shirle in the near future. She told me about a killer key lime pie recipe that sounds crazy good.

So munching on nuts, trying to kill the rest of this grody acai juice (I'm sorry I ever bought it! Next time sticking to the tried and true friends, like passionfruit juice, grapefruit and so on), and now, my freshly milled kimchi! Doing well!

40 Days of Raw: Day 10 & 11

So, on Friday, I set up two fermentation projects: another batch of my surefire half-sour pickles and an attempt at the Yummy Vegan kimchi. On unfermentated taste...it seemed alright. While I waited for the cabbage to salt, I fixed myself a big ol bowl of salad, consisting of zucchini, mixed greens, tomato, red pepper, onion, walnuts, avocado, pear, celery, olive oil and lemon juice. Can you say mm mm good?

In my haste to go out and see some great rock and roll from River City Ransom, Mosadi Music and Rat Jackson (arguably my fav local band right now), I failed to put the kimchi into a bath (*foreshadowing!*). Coming home late (4am) snack was mixed almonds, cashews and walnuts with kiwi.

Today, I woke up (after a none too refreshing 4 hours of sleep), tossed a raw crunch bar into my bag along with some kombucha, and ran out...only to hear the kombucha crack on concrete of the driveway as I got into my car to go to work. That was an expensive mistake. One of my lessons canceled, so I ran out and bought some Naked Juice over at Whole Foods (on sale in Chapel Hill, 2 for 5. Not a steal, but worthwhile.) In the hour break, I came home and made some more raw sushi.

Upon arrival home from my restaurant job, I found that my kimchi had bled juicy vinegary goodness all over the counter. AND IT SMELLS LIKE KIMCHI! I cleaned it up before attempting to make Raw Kitchen's Homemade hummus. I'm not posting a picture because it is a tub of beige goo, you all know how hummus looks! Besides which, it will pale in comparison to my salad porn. In sofar as taste is concerned, I tweaked the recipe a bit (added more lemon juice, some cumin.) It isn't bad, especially when used as a dipping sauce for cauliflower, celery etc, but on its own, the rather pungent and unmistakable flavor of raw chickpea is a bit overwhelming, even with all the masking veggies in there. I wish I had some red pepper to add. That would probably dress it up a bit. I think it's probably better than just trying to sprout your chickpeas and use a traditional hummus recipe, but this is one thing I'll be happy to cook again when it's all over.

Anyway, I'm exhausted and just wanted to update.

Days 10 and 11? (1/4 way there)...not too shabby.

40 Days of Raw: Day 9, When I get into the groove

So, today, woke up and decided to attempt to put good use to the rest of my chard and came up with a KICK ASS salad. I've been munching it all day:

Pear and Chard salad:
1 bunch red chard (although any color will do, I like the look of the red)
1 whole red d'anjou pear
1/2 vidalia onion
1/2 red bell pepper
6-7 fresh radishes
1/2 cup raw walnuts

Soak chard in cold water and a little apple cider vinegar to kill any bugs or anything. This is a good habit to get into with all leafy greens. It also perks them up a little bit if they are wilting (this chard was about a week in the fridge, so it definitely appreciated the boost). While it's soaking, cut the pear into quarters, then divide those lengthwise by 4 and slice. Cut the vidalia onion in quarter rounds. Slice the bell pepper into rounds about the same length as the onion. Slice the radishes finely. You can run the walnuts through a processor, bang them with a hammer or crush them a little finer with the side of your chef's knife (the way you'd bang to peel garlic). You can also just use them as is :). Lastly, chiffonade your chard. I'd recommend just slicing around the middle vein as it can be a little tough when eating raw, but you don't have to, and I sure didn't this time. Toss all this stuff into a big tupperware or bowl. Dress as you please.

The dressing I used was a simple homemade balsamic vinaigrette:
1/4 c olive oil
1/2 c balsamic
herbs de province, salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste

Toss into an old dressing bottle, put your goodies in and SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE. Pour as much or as little as you'd like over it.

The pear really helps to balance out the green-y flavor of the chard, while the radishes pick up the peppery tang. I also tried out making radish butterflies. Let's just say that my knife skills need improvement.

Lastly, I mixed up some juice for myself. I used like, 3/4 water, 1/8 coconut water and 1/8 acai juice. I noticed something weird, maybe you have too-- acai has a distinctive spearmint scent and aftertaste, no? Maybe it's just me.

A truffle for an after work treat and we're baller.

Day 9: not hungry, not dehydrated, great new salad recipe? PUNK ROCK DAY.

40 Days of Raw: Day 7 & 8, going out to eat, falling off the wagon.

So, after all my hard work on Tuesday, I went into work and asked a couple of my coworkers about how to make kimchi. No dice. So I've got a napa cabbage sitting in my fridge. In the meantime, I portioned out some cashews and dried figs for the workday. Of course, had pickles before I left, then worked, grabbed some kimchi and drifted to sleep.

Wednesday, still my most challenging day, I grabbed a new type of raw bar, called Go Raw. This was the flax seed kind and it tasted EXACTLY like an apricot fruit leather with some flax seeds in it. Either way, it tided me over until I got to my destination, Butternut Squash, to meet a friend for dinner. I went to BNS a few weeks before I decided to go raw, noted that they had a raw entree on their menu and bookmarked it in my mind to go back.

When I first walked in, I thought, wow, much nicer than I expected. I don't know why, but I was just expecting a sort of retro cafeteria feel, so I was surprised by the soft jazz, carpets, linen napkins and overall "classy" feel of the joint. I sat down the first time with a book and ordered the tomato basil soup and the thai seitan skewers, both pictured. The soup was complex and tangy with hints of sweetness, roasted garlic, basil and chunks of tomato. The skewers, less so. I found them to be a little tough, the sauce reminiscent of tahini, the rice underseasoned with just a hint of coconut flavor. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. So I went back.

This time, being raw, I ordered the mixed salad (which, to my dismay but not enough to totally stop me, contained corn and edamame beans). If I were NOT raw right now, I would eat the shit out of that salad, all the time. My dining companion ordered the tomato basil soup on my recc, but they ran out, and instead ate the butternut squash soup which she insisted was delicious. I am not a fan of squash, so I'll pass. For entrees, we ordered the BNS salad for her, and the raw plate for me. The BNS salad was reportedly quite tasty and looked beautiful. The raw plate was a decent showing but I took issue with a couple of points-- 1, do not claim to be serving a raw plate with a live dipping sauce if you're going to put it out with a trio made up of sour cream (!), hummus and an avocado dip. Avo dip, yay. Other two, kinda nay. That said, I may have dipped a cuke into some hummus. I can't help it, I haven't gotten around to sprouting my chickpeas yet!
2- If you're serving raw dipping stuff, don't shred the carrot. You can't dip shredded carrot. 3- Don't charge $12 for cruditee and sour cream. I won't even honor it with a picture. The search for a great raw meal out in the triangle continues.

After dinner, I moseyed to the Nightlight club in Chapel Hill with the intention of seeing Kevin Blechdom's new operetta with Neill Prewitt and Leslie Moon, entitled Exponential Death, USA. For the uninitiated, Kevin Blechdom is a performance artist whose primary mediums include electronic music, banjo playing, extended vocal technique and video accompaniment. This particular piece was made up of a story about a demented birdfaced psycho-killer's victims. These victims included the crocodile from Peter Pan, A retarded man bringing home turkey for his wife (that they would dip every morsel in gravy), a Swedish nun and a priest on vacation in America, a drug addict, a SLUT (this was probably the highlight of the evening, with Neill Prewitt prancing around in a leopard print dress holding a torso-sized cardboard vagina just below the hem), and a slew of horses. There were so many clever references to pornography, pop culture and so much laugh out loud goodness that I'm considering going to see it again, in Raleigh, on 3/3. If you read this blog and live in the Triangle, GO SEE THIS SHOW. I may need to skip because my friends Pretty and Nice are coming into town again and I wanna support their goodness (at the Local 506, 3/3).

For your listening/viewing pleasure, a little Kevin Blechdom:





and my favorite Blechdom Song...

40 Days of Raw: Day 6, in which Whole Foods becomes Whole Paycheck

I've advocated for years that if you shop wisely, you can shop cheap at Whole Foods. Today, I failed. But I'll tell you why!

#1 Splurge item of day: Ulimana Truffles. At 13 a jar, they are steep. But they're truffles. And the truffle I snuck in the parking lot said, "You did the right thing, BS."

#2 Splurge item: More Sunja Kimchi. I can't help it. Until I can figure out how to make edible kimchi, I will let the Sunja company continue to have its way with my wallet.

#3 Splurge item: About 2 pounds of Cashews. I don't care. Nuts are my life right now.

#4 Splurge item: Vitacoco coconut water and some fancy juices to mix with it. I just wanted to toss together a quick pick me up that is not hippie juice. Hippie juice is tiring.

#5 Splurge item: Arugula. Yes, it's $5 a little plastic box/bag thing. But I want to mix it with my chard and some pears to make something earthy, spicy and delectable.

#6 Splurge item: prep food chutney and salsa. I got some mango and salsa. I figure I'll mix them together with other things, make salads, etc.

These things did come in handy tonight when I came home and saw it was SUSHI NIGHT. I hate to be left out, so I popped some cauliflower into my processor, pulled out some untoasted nori, spread the cauli-rice out, laid some cuke strips, avo, radish pickles and finally mango salsa and BLAM. Flavor explosion. The sushi doesn't hold together very well when it gets too big, so for part 2, I made a variation of my (As yet unprinted, holding out for when I open a restaurant, don't you dare steal this as your own) sushi salad. The salad this time was a bed of nori with cauliflower, cukes, avo, radish pickle and rice vinegar. Pictured in the feast, the extremely generous maki rolling Dork did (I believe the filling was rice, avocado and peanuts), tempura broccoli, carrots and sweet potatoes, my sushi salad (with food porn close-up) and of course, lots of water, dipping sauces for the non-raw kids and rice vinegar!

This meal was a lot quicker and easier than I anticipated. I think next time I'll try to grind the cauliflower a little smaller so it gets a little wetter, and maybe do a (I was thinking about this on the ride home, actually) cashew-ginger cream dipping sauce and/or hold sushi together agent. See the first (much better, somehow) roll at right. It's surprising that I was more conservative and successful with the first pass. I think once I got the taste of food for real, I kinda went nuts trying to get more of it and lost my patience. :)

The scent of heated oil was actually a turn off for me, but visually, I have to admit that the sight of broccoli tempura was tempting. As was holding itself together rice-sticky sushi. Observe pretty tempura.

I also purchased a bunch of chickpeas and am considering an experiment in soaking them to get some raw hummus/falafel/legume goodness into my life. Cauliflower just ain't the same without its partner in crime. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, off to share the cucumber and radish pickle goodness with the world.

Day 6? First time on raw diet where I have had a tummyache from eating too much food, so, I think we win. Raw sushi = totally approved.

40 Days of Raw: Day 4 & 5

Saturday:
Thank god for those Raw Crunch bars. Taught lessons until 3pm, ate one around 1pm, felt better.

When I came home, I realized I had about 2 hours to shower, pack up and get my butt in gear for the Dirty Little Heaters' CD release. For those uninitiated, you should go ahead to check out the leaked track, "City Square," which, fortuitously happens to be one of the standouts on the album.

I cut myself up some avocado, polished off the rest of that chard salad (yes, I realize I've been calling it kale for like 3 days. it's chard, I know.), ate a fistful of cashews and grabbed one of my other favorite prohibitively expensive raw indulgence foods (besides my new friend Raw Crunch and my old standby for idiots who can't make kimchi, Sunja Medium Kimchi): KOMBUCHA! Don't hate. Dork is actually supposedly growing some someplace, but I'm starting to think that most of us in the house are fermentation challenged.

We ran over to Bailey's for like 3 minutes, then went to soundcheck at 7pm. The whole show was freaking incredible...really high energy, great crowd. What I failed to factor into the equation of not drinking and not eating any cooked or processed foods was that when you play a really raucous show then dance around for 2 hours...you get HUNGRY. Like, touchy, pissed off, might kill-a-bitch hungry. So when we finally got our gear loaded out around 2:30 am, I was ready to go. At home, we all joked around in the kitchen while I inhaled a grapefruit and some almonds and Sick put away some chicken wings our friends had been nice enough to pick up.

Sunday:
Waking up at 10 this morning was a little like dying. I talked to Kyle about how I was more tired than I'd expected to be, giving up drinking. I mean, I literally slept 15 hours on Friday. That's ridiculous. I did my thing, came home and crashed out again until about 3.

At 3, I ventured downstairs to try my kimchi. Those of you thinking positively? Wrong. I kimchi failed, again. This time, I was also icked out by the fact that I put the kimchi in ball jars and they surreptitiously sealed themselves shut, which got my hypochondriac botulism antennae panties in a twist. The kimchi was wrong on so many levels
1 - Not the right color.
2 - Not tangy
3 - Not spicy until the very end
4 - Not particularly tasty

So, it's back to the drawing board. I appealed to the PPK Forums for guidance. I suppose they are my version of going to a chapel. Thus far, the following seem like viable candidates for my next attempts (I'm thinking maybe I should do simultaneous attempts in order to avoid so much heartbreak):
David Lebovitz
Yummy Vegan Dinner

I'm wondering if maybe I should scrap the idea of using ball jars altogether for kimchi since they aren't supposed to seal? Again, any thoughts are appreciated, peanut gallery!

So, time will tell. At least I can count on my tried and true pickle recipe. I should probably have packed a few more. Tonight I busted open a jar of my Sunja's kimchi for dinner, since I'd been hoping to have kimchi, as well as some cantaloupe, raspberries and pecans.

Now I'm sippin on coconut water, trying to decide what I should plan to stock up on this week. I'm relying on nuts as a crutch right now, and am actually eating more fruit than I ever thought I would. I need to find some easy to scarf with no prep veggies that are not red peppers, grape tomatoes or celery.

Day 4: Good, but a little bit more planning could've prevented a lot of heartache.
Day 5: Lazy, but well-rounded.