An update

I wanted to thank each and everyone one of you for the support I’ve received over the past week from my family, friends, and even strangers. This first week back on raw has been mostly enjoyable. The first few days I was experiencing some detox symtoms but that’s mostly over now and the clarity is starting to be more present. 

However, now that I’ve decided on a high raw diet for the long term, I’m finding very conflicting information about what the best way to eat raw is. It seems to break down to basically 2 schools of thought:

1. Raw foods with a focus on greens with healthy fats. This means a lot of green juice and salads, but also a lot of avocado, nuts, and seeds to make sure you are consuming enough calories in your day. This school of thought also tends to eat fruits in moderation because of the high glycemic index. 
2. 80/10/10 or the Low Fat Raw Vegan diet. This school of thought focuses on eating 80% of your daily calories from fruits (yes tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and all other seed containing “vegetables” are considered fruits in this case), 10% of your calories from protein, and the last 10% from nuts, seed, and other fats (avocados, olives, etc). This diet also tries to eliminate salt and added oils. 

Since these two views on the raw foods diet are in such opposition to one another, it’s sure to make a person confused. In the past when I’ve got raw before I would usually eat similar to #1. Trying to drink and eat lots of greens (chlorophyll reduces inflammation), but that would usually leave me hungry so avocados or nuts would help me get enough calories so I was full. 

I haven’t yet decided which way I’m going this round, but I’d love to hear from you all if you’ve had experiences with either. Which diet is better for reducing inflammation?

Juice fasting

So, inspired by my friend Rachel, who has now been on a juice fast for over 2 weeks, I have started a fast.

This is day 4. I tried to start on monday, but I ended up eating something for dinner, so while it wasn’t a total failure, I still don’t consider it day 1.

The first 3 days were really hard, detoxing takes a lot of energy so there can be times when you feel really tired and worn out. Don’t worry, it’s just you body adjusting and detoxing. Once you get over that initial 3-day hump it isn’t that bad. This morning has been great, and I don’t feel hungry at all.

I’m not sure how long I will stay on the fast. I am hoping to keep on it until the end of this month, which would be a total of 22 days (maybe longer depending on how I feel). But I do know that I will need to break the fast at least a few times during that period for social reasons, but I’ve decided that I’m not going to stress about that. I don’t think that it will damage the effects too much as long as I’m careful about what I eat and don’t overdo it. As long as I go right back on juice I think I will be fine.

So far I’ve lost 3 lbs.

Make Pure Food and Wine’s Pad Thai at home!

Once I had the pad thai at Pure Food and Wine I was hooked! It’s so good! What I loved was that it was made with kelp noodles that aren’t cooked, but still give you that satisfaction of eating noodles. In addition to being satisfying, these noodles are fat-free, gluten-free, and very low in carbohydrates and calories. So go ahead and make yourself a big bowl of this! 

This recipe is from the Pure Food and Wine blog. I haven’t tried it out yet, but I wanted to share this with you guys anyway. I will update you once I’ve made it. 

For the PAD THAI SAUCE:

½ cup soaked and strained tamarind pulp (see below for notes on tamarind pulp)**

1 cup heated water

1 medium tomato

½-1 thai chili (depending on spice desired)

1 medium clove garlic

1 small shallot

1/4 cup shoyu

1 tablespoons lime juice

1/4 cup sesame oil

1 tablespoon agave

Cut off a 2”x2” block and dissolve tamarind in 1 cup of hot water (not quite boiling) removing any seeds and with a fork, working it into a paste. Let it soak for 15 minutes.

Next, combine tomatoes, chilis, garlic, shallots, ½ cup shoyu, 1 tablespoon of lime juice, sesame oil and agave in Vitamix or high speed blender and blend well. Next add the tamarind pulp and blend until very smooth.

For the VEGETABLES:

1 head of baby bok choy, roughly chopped

1 medium carrot, diced or julienned

1 medium zucchini diced or julienned

1 medium orange or red bell pepper, julienned

1 large sliced king oyster mushroom (or handful sliced shittake or other mushrooms)

1 cup snow peas, thinly sliced on a diagonal

3 green onions, white and about 3″ of green, sliced

Mix all chopped veggies in a large bowl

For the vegetable marinade:

Add ¼ cup shoyu, 1 tbsp lime, drizzle of olive oil, 2 tbsp of Pad Thai Sauce

Mix veggies and marinade until liquid is evenly dispersed. Let sit in refrigerator for an hour or more.

For the NOODLES:

Opentwo 12 oz. packages of Sea Tangle Kelp Noodles and chop into 3-4” pieces

Add the noodles to the veggie mixture, pouring about half of the Pad Thai sauce into the bowl and mix well with tongs until sauce is evenly distributed

For the GARNISH:

½ cup chopped cashews

drizzle of sesame oil

sprinkle of sea salt

Handful of cilantro

Mix cashews with salt and sesame oil, sprinkle over finished Pad Thai. Drizzle with lime juice and sprinkle with cilantro leaves.

**Tamarind pulp can be found as cellophane-wrapped, sun-dried bricks in Asian, Latin and Indian markets. Tamarind pulp is the sticky interior of pods that grow on a variety of evergreen tree originally native to Africa. Tamarind, which is very intense in flavor, lends sweet-and-sour notes to dishes. Because the pulp usually contains seeds (even when it says “seedless”) you should always go through the paste to remove any seeds, or, strain it.