Gracefully Raw

Support for the Green Queen

2010-04-13T22:02:00.006+01:00

Well, you all know of my last year regular dates for yoga and green juice with my dear friend Denise. As the spring returns and I begin to go and enjoy my green juice or smoothie outside once again, I think back to those days with a happy smile on my face. Oh, well, we still meet, but not as regularly as I am not at home during the week so much and she is super busy with her new web-based business 'The Raw Brides'. She is also VERY busy plotting her escape from dirty busy crazy old London, and that's where you all (hopefully) come into it.

Denise got married to a man of her dreams last summer - and it is my regret that to this day I did not write about the raw feast I had at their wedding!!! - and they both decided to apply for an amazing job - travelling around the world 6 months from a year, researching honeymoon destinations! They entered into a competition for this amazing job and because they are so fantastic they got into the 'semi-final' of 50 couples. The next step now is to be voted in the first ten by public, and then...

Wow, what a great adventure this would be, and trust me, as I know them, they would be so great for the job. They are fun and curious and will try pretty much anything, as they share in their video, and so I would like to ask all of you who read my little musings to click on this link, have a look at their profile and their video, and if you like them, give them your vote! It is not for mine or theirs benefit, really, as we are already married. It is all the singletons about to get hitched that will be sending you virtual thanks from their perfect honeymoons!

Repairing the Cooked Husband

2010-04-03T11:06:00.007+01:00

This year we have returned from our annual skiing holiday with more then we asked for - a cast wrapped around my dear Cooked Husband's arm. As any snowboarder out there will know, it is very easy to catch an edge and topple towards the snow on the board and, as the weather was not so great for us, with lots of white light and snow, this was easier then ever. And so one day I have skied down the slope to my husband to find him cradling one of his hand in the other, saying that he has fallen on it and was not sure if he caused any damage. Long story short, he ended up with a cast over his four fructures!

As soon as we got home I have ordered a couple of trays of wheetgrass and some essential supplements. I did not want to overload his system with new things, so I have settled on vitamin D to be taken in the morning and silica to be taken before bed. My original plan was to make him a shot of wheetgrass twice a day, morning and evening, but as it happened I had hard time making him to agree to have this once a day, and so we started the day with a small glass of super powered green juice. Most of the time this was pure wheetgrass, but some days I got more adventures and mixed a bit of parsley, nettles or sunflower greens in. I have also asked him not to say bad things about the juice as I think it is important that we feel positive about things we are doing, I believe that their power will be then strengthened by our mind.

Well; the first week after the trip my poor husband went to see a specialist here in London and was told that it is possible that he might have a surgery and might end up with a screw in his wrist! This was not something we wanted to hear, as you can imagine. And so my prescribed therapy was accepted more gladly, together with a few hand massages to improve the circulation in the area.

I am not sure if any of this helped but I am very happy to report that the second visit to the specialist brought good news of the bone growing together very happily indeed and now, at the time of writing, there are only 5 days left before the cast will be taken off.

One interesting point for me is that usually people with cast find that their skin itches a lot underneath. Now I have never had a cast, and I would like to keep it that way, so I do not have a personal experience, but still I thought it was great that the Cooked Husband never got this problem until yesterday, more then 5 weeks in. This seems pretty good, though I am sure he would have been happier if it did not happen at all, of course!

Winter in the Raw

2009-12-16T10:16:00.003Z

Ooooh, it is so cold outside, we actually have some frost on the ground today - and this is UK, the country of mild winters. Having said that, it is pretty humid here a lot of time, the cold just crawling right beneath your clothes and making you shiver. This, if not another time of the year, is the time of struggle for any raw foodist not quite anchored in the un-cooked way of living, as our body, and mostly our mind, keeps reaching for the warmth and comfort of old cooked favourites - you all know what these are for you, right?

To help myself stay motivated during these cold times and also during the festive season that is upon us, I went to a wonderful workshop a week or so ago called 'Winter in the Raw'. Twenty people plus have gathered in Karen Knowler'shouse to listen, smell, watch and taste Nina Dench's creations that will help us stay raw during winter with a bang. Her food was so scrumptious and delicious, most of it easy to prepare as well, I came home full of hope and ideas. I am not always very good with making my own recipes but I find that I can adapt other people's recipes to my taste quite well, and having suddenly over 20 new recipes gave me a lot to play with.

We got a little taste of everything Nina made and also were treated to a lovely lunch (see above) of Rosemary and Vegetable Tartlet with a trio of salads - Red Cabbage one, Curly Cabbage and Carrot Ribbons - and a small lump of Sage and Onion Pate on the side. It was amazing and so filling that I had to go for a little walk around Karen's farmhouse to help me digest, or else I would have wanted to sleep for the rest of the day and would have missed on the best part to come - the deserts! The Orange and Apricot Sauce was to die (or live!) for, and I have made it for myself for breakfast a few times since then. It is so yummy, zesty and light, a real treasure; you can see it resting happily on top of the Christmas pudding on the picture, but it is yummy enough on its own by a bowlful, perhaps with some raw muesli sprinkled on top.

I often find that I fall back from the grace of raw food into the trap of cooked because I become lazy and begin to think that raw is just too much effort and I 'could not be asked'. And so it was great for me to see Nina whip through 22 (!!!) recipes in the space of six hours, some of them pretty easy (Red Cabbage, Beetroot, Apple and Pecan Salad or Date Sweets), some of them more time consuming but so much more impressive for it (Savoury Stars; Banoffee Pie or Christmas Pudding). It was fun to be tempted into making my own chocolate again and playing with the recipe; I am not very fond of Mint Chocolate and so I changed things around and made a ginger one - WOW! That one has a kick!

It is not really possible to re-print somebody else's recipes but you can go to Karen's website and purchase the whole 'Winter in the Raw' e-book for yourself. I can definitely guarantee that it will be money well spent.

More garden gifts

2009-08-14T21:19:00.009+01:00

It has now been many years since I have tasted my first fresh juicy honey sweet fig. It was many many years ago, while on our first ever holiday together with the Cooked Husband, then boyfriend, and while we were driving all around and accross Malta and Gozo, he was often asked to stop the car so that I could climb out and collect ripe lush figs from trees that were all around without anyone tending to them.

It's also been a few years since I realised that people actually grow them here in UK and get to harvest their own figs. And so a dream was born, a small one, you could say, to one day have my own fig tree and to be able to eat figs directly from it, still warm from the sunshine. This summer saw me fulfilling this dream.

When we moved to this house, I knew that there was a perfect place to plant a fig tree. Our terrace is south facing, and we have a lovely corner sun trap, just above the indoor staircase, so I can see the beautiful leaves stroke the window when I walk up to the kitchen in the morning in our upside-down house.

After a huge disappointment of last year, when all the fruit dropped of the tree with rusty spots, I have had a feast like no else during the last month or so. Watching this beautiful tree grow from a small 'stick' into a large lovely and proud tree was a huge pleasure and then, finally, see the fruit ripen made the feeling even better. The figs start very small, smaller then the nail on your pinkie, cosily attached to the branch. As summer gets nearer, they slowly grow bigger but stay hard and green.

Being me, I bought a lovely fig in the market one day in early July, and brough it home to 'show it' to the tree. I mean, this tree was born in a garden centre in the UK, how could he possibly know what to do? You can think I am crazy but all I care about is that it worked!

A few weeks after this 'tree education' we noticed one of the figs getting bigger and darkening. Then it swelled massively almost overnight and became plump and soft and sweet smelling, and then it got plucked of the tree and ended up being my breakfast. The best breakfast ever. Sweet as honey, full of crunchy yummy seeds, deep red colour inside while purply yellow in the outside, just perfect. Many more followed over the next three or four weeks, ripenning one, two or even five at a time, every one of them enjoyed to one hundred percent. I played with the idea of creating something from them but have abandoned it at the end as this fruit is simply so perfect as it is, I had no desire to waste any of it in some recipe disaster ;-)

As I write there are still small green figs on the branches and I hope we will have a second harvest time in late September, which is the time we went to Malta all those years ago. I am the greedy one!

And so for me, it is time for a new dream, I think... A fig tree orchard, perhaps? But maybe I shall be more ambicious this time, as with the Living Magically program beginning this week I have to learn to dream big and allow magic into my life, here and now.

What are you dreaming about? And it does not have to be food related!

Uncooked dinner for Cooked Husband

2009-08-12T20:48:00.008+01:00

Once upon a time, there was a Cooked Husband. He could not imagine a meal without a cooked heavy-feel part to it, and so he was not very impressed when I suggested I would serve him some kale and avocado massaged salad as a side dish with his chicken tonight; we run out of potatoes and my wife-y duties will only push me so far... I was not going to go to the supermarket just so he could stuff his face with mashed potatoes... He was given some choices of what else could be for dinner - and though the green smoothie did not make it by far, it was a raw choice - raw vegan sushi!!

I make my 'rice' from cauliflower, cashew and pine nuts, dash of apple cider vinegar for tartness, some white miso for saltiness and a tiny bit of agave to balance it all with little bit of sweetness... Process till grany and pliable - and there you go. For proper measurements and recipes, please subscribe to Russell James's eZine at http://therawchefblog.com/ - that is where my ideas come from, and I have the best results with his recipes. Quick, easy and delicious. He is the master of raw kitchen, at least for me, on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Next step is to fill the nori sheets: spread some 'rice' on and then layer what you like on top - my choices were avocado, marinated mushrooms, julienned peppers, spring onions and some watercress. Roll it tightly using a sushi mat or clever fingers, cut with serated knife, and serve with a small dish of soya sauce, small pile of pickled ginger and a little bit of wasabi on the side. The result? One very happy Husband, no potatoes needed!

Oh, and my dinner, apart from sharing a little bit of sushi, was a green smoothie:

1 courgette

handful of strawberries

1 banana

2 handfulls of spinach

blend with some water to reach the consistency you like

Delicioso! You can see the tiny pink strawberry bits in the picture above, and I could taste them as I enjoyed this lovely concoction earlier this evening.

The International Green Smoothie day

2009-08-11T20:43:00.007+01:00

Yes, there actually is such a day. You cannot buy a card for it, although you could make one if you wanted to, and not everybody knows about it just yet. But what with all these raw girlies blogging away about it, who knows next year? And maybe the year after Halmark will print some juicy cards, you just never know. But this is your chance to join in the green smoothie revolution ahead of everybody else.

If you remember my humble blogging beginning, you will remember all those green smoothie pictures also. Decorated with blueberries and bee polen and other lovely yummies, I have been having them more or less every day ever since, even if you have not seen a 'green stuff in a glass' for a while. I do need a green juice or a green smoothie a day to keep me happy, balanced and radiand, just as a cat needs her little chin stroked to start purring!

I have two great news for you. One is that I will be so lucky and fortunate as to have a super duper sparkly VitaMix for the next three weeks, borrowed from my beloved Green Queen Denise of The Raw Brides. She is getting married this coming Saturdayand then she will disappear into the sunset for her honeymoon... and lo and behold - I am not only allowed to go round her house and play with her most adorable cats, I have also been given the permission to 'steal' her super blender and make it mine for the time she won't need it. This is absolutely excellent and my intention is to create not only many yummy things to make me feel like I live in a raw food heaven but mostly my number one creations will be green smoothies. When I make them in my blender I end up chewing them quite a bit, especially when I use rocket and parsley, and after reading about this amazing machine and the results all the raw foodists all around have been getting, I simply can't wait to get started. (For those who are not sure what the fuss is about, this blender will blend absolutelly anything to a complete smoothness, even raw asparagus and such fibrous things.)

The second great news is that this is the perfect timing for the International Green Smoothie Day as started by The Raw Divas and The Green Smoothie Queen over on the other side of the Atlantic. If you haven't seen their website, click the link, as they have a ton of info and lots of great articles, should you ever feel that you are lacking either motivation or inspiration. As the Green Smoothie Day falls on Denise's aka Green Queen's wedding day I will be very fortunate to feast on a raw food wedding garden picnic followed by a gournet raw food wedding dinner. But I will start the day with a green smoothie to be sure, and may even follow up with a complete green smoothie week when we come back from the wedding.

What will be in your glass on Saturday?

Another amazing free teleseminar with my favourite Raw Food Coach

2009-08-04T22:56:00.002+01:00

Soon after I have first started playing and experimenting with raw food, I have come accross the Raw Food Coach, Karen Knowler. I joined her programme 30 days to raw and discovered, as many people did before me, that this is not only about raw food; raw food is just the beginning. Tomorrow I am joining her new teleseminar where she will share with us how to take this lifestyle to a completely new level. Whether you are experienced raw foodist looking for ways to progress with not only your diet but your life and your life fullfillment or you are completely new to raw food ways, check out the following info. If it sounds good to you, join me tomorrow evening at 9.00 pm UK time for her completely free teleclass. It is going to be amazing! Sign in here or read on for more info.

The 7 Must-Know Steps To Take Your Raw Food Journey To The Stars – And Beyond!

Have you ever felt dazed and confused over the conflicting opinions raging among the raw food teachers and “gurus” out there? I know I have, and it really doesn’t help us does it?

With so many different approaches, coaches, classes and courses out there, all giving conflicting or confusing advice, even if you really want to step into the raw food world with all the best intentions and will in the world, you end up having no idea where to start!

Karen Knowler, The Raw Food Coach, has been in the raw food community for over 17 years and has seen how crazy it can get. In a previous life Karen used to host many of the world’s leading raw food educators year-after-year in London (she used to run The Fresh Network and created Get Fresh! magazine), but she saw that as much as people became inspired and fascinated by the raw food journey, they also became increasingly confused, lost and... disempowered.

As a result of witnessing this and creating an approach to raw food that was much more fluid, fun and realistic than what was generally being taught, Karen vowed many years ago to put each person back into the driving seat of their own diet and destiny - and that’s what she’s been doing for over a decade.

And now she’s taking it to a whole new level.

Over the past year especially, Karen’s name has become synonymous with a whole new way of approaching raw food that anyone can do. Karen believes passionately that there is not “one way” to do raw food and that by being honest and intuitive around our food choices we can find a way of eating raw that works for us and our life on every level – one that’s juicy, compelling and rewarding for us.

But more than that, Karen has been teaching that raw food is “all about the food and yet nothing about the food” – and as ironic as that sounds, I have to agree, she’s right! Raw food opens us up to so much more than we think food can ever do, but it does for sure, and Karen has a wonderful what of explaining and articulating this than perhaps anyone else in the raw food arena.

Over the past few months Karen has been perfecting all the key facets of the work she’s been sharing for years. She’s preparing to go big with her message and I don’t doubt that she will make it happen.

And what she’s doing this coming Wednesday, before she starts working hard on her forthcoming book, is to share with us – for FREE – her latest discoveries, namely “The 7 Must-Know Steps to Take Your Raw Food Journey to the Stars – And Beyond”

In what promises to be her most compelling free seminar to date (you just need a phone or internet connection to attend), Karen is about to share, for the first time, what these seven steps are, and I for one can’t wait!

Tomorrow, on Wednesday August 5th, Karen will reveal what these 7 Steps and much more.

And, while it is an exciting preview of her Raw Transformation Experience LIVE Event happening this August 27-29, 2009 and her brand new life-changing Living Magically on Raw coaching program, she promises you'll also get 3 POTENT ideas that you can use right away to start your journey to “raw heaven” from this free call.

You can find out all about it and register here. I’ll be there for sure and I hope to hear you on the call.

I can’t wait to hear what she shares! Let me know if you enjoy it.

Gifts from my garden

2009-07-27T19:10:00.006+01:00

While we were enjoying the amazing hot sunshine of North Africa, England was having its bout of summer as well. Thanks to my lovely neighbours our garden not only survived but actually thrived while we were away, and we came home to some very happy plants and herbs. Sadly despite my offering nobody came to eat all the chicory lettuces I was growing and they shot up into flowers, but there were still some leaves to be collected as well as beautiful blue flowers, which tasted like a gentler variation of the salad. On top of that I collected not only an armful of basil leaves to make the freshest pesto possible for my courgette 'noodles' but also a bowl of basil flowers. The scent of these beauties was so subtle yet ovewhelming, I could not wait to enjoy them as an aromatic topping for one of my evening salads. Eating flowers is a great idea, as they have a very subtly gentle energy as well as benefitial essential oils and traces of polen, and flowers from herbs such as basil or oregano have a wonderful soft herby taste that will bring your meal alive.

Here you can see one of my creations - a very simple meal, actually. A plateful of green leaves of your choice - mine was watercress, young spinach and chopped cos lettuce, topped with sliced heirloom tomatoes, sprinkled with some basil flowers, a glug of olive oil and a dash of pink himalayan salt. Very simple but scruptious indeed. Sometimes the best meals are the simple ones, as our body can recognise what all the parts are and what it needs to do with them in order to extract all the nutrients effectively. When I eat like this, my body is buzzing with happiness, I sleep well and wake up ready to face whatever the next day brings. Just what we need in this sometimes overwhelming world.

What's your summer favourite?

And another year has passed...

2009-07-17T22:23:00.006+01:00

Happy birthday to me! Do you know what? I am 38 now... My dear friend Denise just earlier today talked about some 'really old, adult like people', you know, like late 30s... Hmmm. Something to poke her in her ribs about next time then!

I know I wrote a post about how well and raw I ate most of the holiday. Well, the evening of my birthday was one of those days when my dear Cooked Husband would ask if he should start a blog on his own, called something like 'Gracefullyraw exposed', to write about all my foody sins....

Well, who cares. What would you do if you came 'home' from a day at the beach, which you spent windsurfing, reading a lovely book, worshipping the sun and then willing yourself at the end of it all to sign up for a wakeboarding session (eventhough you were afraid of who knows what), and then realising that you can still do it, and having the time of your life (I never grin as much as when I am gliding accross the smooth sea on the wake board), and found this amazing fresh coconutty delight topped with fresh sweet succulent pineapple and juicy orange left as a surpice from the hotel just for you, on your birthday. Would you not eat it?

Weeeeellll, maybe you would share a little bit with your Cooked Husband, but at the same time, you would poke the fork into it, feel how soft, flooffy and creamy it is, and think, that it was surely made and given to you with love, so there can be no harm in enjoying it. And may I tell you, aspiring raw foodist as I am, that it was amazing, delicious and I loved it. Hey - they even left a tiny candle and a book of matches!!! Judge me if you want. I always maintained my view of mind being above the matter, and guilt, as my dear friend Lada said many, many years ago, being overrated!

Whatever you want to do, especially if it is your birthday, just do it. Wake board! Dance! Have your (raw, if you are lucky) cake and eat it too, if that is what you want!

Many happy returns to me ;-) And be sure that I will attempt to recreate this cloudy goodness myself sometimes soon, only this time, of course, raw.

Back from other reality

2009-07-16T10:55:00.007+01:00

As I am reading the date of my last post I find it difficult to believe that it has been so long! Truth is, ever since I came back from my Czech home, I have had trouble with time - working a lot on both of my jobs took most of my time and catching up with myself took the rest, so writing was left behind. Well I am now back, at least from my two weeks of holiday in scoldingly hot Egypt, and ready to share some of my life with you once again.

My life in Egypt was close to blissful. Waking up to a blazing sunshine and golden heat every morning and going for an 'early' pre-breakfast swim in the empty bluey sea. Then feasting on lots of watermelon, sprinkled with a juce of some local, small but sparklingly tingly limes, before spending my day swimming, walking barefoot on sand and springy grass, reading, listening to music, creating lots of vitamin D and windsurfing or wakeboarding. Shortly - tough life - I have the bruises to prove it!

Lunch was something small to share with Cooked Husband, if he remembered to return to the beach from his hyper windsurfing sessions, and then some more of the same. As this is mostly a foodie blog, I must tell you all about the dinners. I have never have it so easy to eat raw. We stayed in this hotel on half board, and our breakfasts and dinners were buffet style. There was always fruit, salad and hot food, plenty of cakes and pastries . Somehow anything that was not fresh and juicy left me so uninterested; partially I think it was the heat, but also the cooked food was really not that great. Poor Cooked Husband kept trying, but always ended up disappointed, as everything seemed to have sat on the buffet for some time and was not very fresh any more.

Not so my salads. OMG! I had a large plate of green leaves (would you not have guessed) with lovely local olive oil and more of that zingy lime juice, followed by a huge plate of rainbow of veggies - the tomatoes were a true tomato red colour, sweet and succulent; the cucumbers were small, crunchy and sweet, the carrots were so flavourful and juicy in their own, carroty way... this made the 3/4 of my plate very night. The last small space left was filled with a selection from the rest of the fabulous salad bar. There were some local salads with aubergines and chickpeas, marinated fennel and courgettes, stuffed cucumbers, marinates spicy and sweet peppers, green and reddish black olives - in short, I could eat like that for a very very long time before I was bored! There was something a little bit different every day. It was amazing! Not absolutely everything was raw, but I was more then happy to enjoy a little bit of local hummus, egyptian feta cheese or tzatziki as a small addition to my mountain of raw food.

I was told many times before by my friends or family, who came to stay with me and for whom I prepared yummy healthy meals, that they would be very happy to eat that way if someone made it for them all the time the way I did. Now this was my turn to see what they meant. I am happy enough to eat my simple salads and smoothies at home, but to have a choice from around 20 different salads, all fresh, ripe, coulourful, vibrant, juicy and literally calling me to munch them, staying raw would not be an issue at all.

Self expression through un-cooking

2009-06-02T21:52:00.004+01:00

I realise how long it has been since I have posted anything, but somehow I am going through a writers blog.... and so finally I came to realisation that I might as well post a picture, so that you get to see where else have I found a creative expression. And you have guessed correctly - it was through making FOOD!

Breakfast a little bit diffrently: Apple slices with nut butter topped with raspberries, strawberries, lots of cinnamon and a little vanilla agave drizzle. AMAZING!

My latest creation - spicy crackers - became the base for a raw pizza, which became the best raw food I have so far made and eaten!

And so thus nurtured I will endeavour to be back in top form very very soon. That a promise!

The raw trials

2009-05-15T22:58:00.004+01:00

A friend recently commiserated with me about how it makes her feel depressed when she gives in and eats cooked stuff, either through social pressure, or because it is there, or simply because her cravings get the better (or worse) out of her. I am totally same that way. So many times I do not resist, so many times I end up with achy tummy and tell myself not to do it again only to let it happen next time.

We all have our weaknesses, I suppose. Mine is travel. One of the joys of travelling to different countries, at least for me, is tasting the local food. Also, as I most often travel with Cooked Husband, it is nice to take it easy and share whatever he eats, taste each other's food, that kind of thing. And I am not even bringing into the picture other people and their opinions...

My body definitely always lets me know that I didn't follow my best rules or guidelines or knowledge. I don't feel great, my energy level starts to drop, my skin looses its luster and often I get spots ... but the hardest thing of all is what my mind does to me. It tells me stories about how I am living a lie, it tells me how I failed myself (and others) and how depressed I am now that I stuffed my face with a cooked feast. It really can makes me feel low, depressed and a failier. This is terrible. It is a bit like slipping on a banana skin, twisting your ankle and then beating your head against the pavement as a punishment for not seeing and avoiding the banana skin in the first place. Basically making the pain worse and the damage longer lasting.

And so this is what I said in an email to my friend. I wrote it at work, just really quickly, and this small droplet of wisdom flew through me. Here I share it with you, and at the same time I am hoping that I will take my own advice. Eat raw as much as possible, if pleasurable, but do not make it a religion.

"I am sorry you are feeling down because of what you ate. I do it all the time, too, and it is a bit pointless, don't you think? We want to eat raw to feel good about ourselves, not to feel bad when we don't manage to stay raw. Does that make sense?"

How do you deal with your raw lifestyle slip ups? Let me know, every little helps!

Uncooking for Cooked parents

2009-05-05T21:53:00.007+01:00

I believe that one of the challenges of being succesfully raw and living in peace with all other people never mind what they want to eat is in not pushing your raw ideas on them. When I first 'discovered' raw 15 months ago I could, as every raw fooder there will know for themselves, not believe that not everybody out there didn't want to hear what I learned and how much sense it made. So I talked to people, gently, but still, letting them know about this wonder that simple unheated and unprocessed food is.

I am not so new to eating well. I have been an avid healthy eating / nutrition / alternative almost anything reader for over two decades now and have acuired some knowledge in the field. And yet even for me the journey to raw food took a long time. I have read Norman Walker's books first time 18 years ago, and although they resonated deeply with me I have totally missed the point that he was a raw foodist! It just was not a concept I was ready (or perhaps willing) to understand. I have also met several raw foodists a few years ago while living in Canada and working in a lovely yoga centre Rama Lotus. Back then I have began to understand what it meant to eat only raw food, but I was not yet ready to believe that it was the perfect way. Especially not in Ottawa where the temperature in winter regularly drop 3o degrees Celsius below zero. It simply did not make sense to me. Not yet. I must confess that even Luke's amazing raw chocolate truffles left me rather clueless... What a shame!

Anyway; when things fell in place and I was finally ready to start eating this way, I have remembered my own slow process and I did my best not to impose on people by only sharing my diet habits when asked about it. When told I looked amazing, I would mention that it must be the benefit of my raw food diet and smile. Lots of people found this interesting, some people said to be careful and not to make myself ill, and a few probably thought I was crazy, but this is not a new concept to me and left me unchallenged.

One of the more gentle sceptics are my dear Cooked Parents in-law. They do their best to be supportive and even stock their house with lots fruits and veggies when we are visitting. I could not be more lucky,really, I could not have a more loving Mum in-law. But I think sometimes she is worried about what it is I am doing.... It seems so strange to them, strangely, to eat only stuff that has not been cooked. We are all such creatures of habit, we do not question why we do what we do, but we will question when we see something new, unexpected, radical even.

With myself, I find that the more raw I eat, the less I am actually willing to cook certain things, and mostly I do not want to work, touch or eat meat. And so when my cooked in-laws came to visit last time, I have given up my role as an exclusive chef for the evening and asked Cooked Husband to prepare the main meal, as he wanted somthing cooked. I have, as usual, prepared a raw starter, which you can see above. Cooked husband named it 'The Trafic Lights Salad' and it was created from red, orange, yellow and brownish tomato, yummy ripe avocado, basil and pinenuts based pesto and extra splash of olive oil. It was delicious, everyone loved it, and we even had a 'which tomato do you like best' contest.

One more way to bring more raw food onto people's plates are the side veggies. You can steam carrots, green beans, mange touts and brocoli for just a minute to warm them up very very gently, or you can even steam a half and then leave the second half raw, letting people to help themselfs from whichever bowl they prefer. Presentation is the key, and dressing the veggies in a bit of olive oil, lemon juice and a dash of pink himalaian salt will help as well. Also I find that during a dinner party the focus in as much on a conversation and having fun as it is on food, so your guests might not notice so much that the carrots are a bit crunchier then they would make them at home.

After Cooked Husband spent a sleepless night last time I made a raw chocolate cake, I was a bit worried to make it again, and as I found my raw larder a bit empty, I ended up making a regular non raw desert. I was surpriced to not like it as much as I used to, finding it clogging and overly sweet, so it is my plan that from this moment onwards, in this house, there will be raw starters and raw deserts at every dinner party. This might also mean Cooked Husband's bigger participation in preparing the meal, which I found left me strangely unstressed and collected, having all (t)his help. So now I have two reasons. And who knows, as I get more confident and practice and play more with my raw recipes, I might one day serve a completely raw meal to a definitely cooked unsuspecting people and have them coming for seconds, perhaps even without knowing how much good this is doing to their bodies!

2009-04-28T16:12:00.006+01:00

I have come to realise that, ever since I came off my attempted juice feast, I have been blogging about food. Well, I might not have been telling you very often, but I have been also drinking at least a pint (about half a litre) or more of super charged vibrant green juice pretty much every day. Most of the time I will have it for breakfast, but sometimes it will become my afternoon snack, or, if I am feeling very very motivated and disciplined, I will make it my dinner.

That, by the way, would be my ultimate ideal, as far as my eating habits go. I know very well how unhealthy it is to eat in the evening, but at the moment I am not quite able to keep my diet that way. Evenings are for me, as they will be for most other people, the hardest time when it comes to craving and overeating. It will become especially difficult if I have too many things on my mind, if I had a tough day or if I feel unhappy or uneasy about something... It is the ultimate way to shut up my mind - stuff it with food. It is better if the food is raw, of course, but better still if it was just a huge glass of energy and healing power giving green juice. We all strive for perfection, I guess, and so I do my best not to beat myself up, and just make sure that I have my great green potion first thing in the morning the next day.

I have found, by the way, that it is the best way to put yourself back on your eating well path. It alcalises the system, makes you feel better and more energetic almost instantly, and the huge dose of minerals and vitamins you are getting will ease any further cravings.

I wanted to share with you an amazing green concoction I had for breakfast today. Every Tuesday, after Denise and myself have done our yoga session, we make ourselves a breakfast. This used to be a green smoothie but has become a green juice ever since my fabulous Oscar machine arrived a little while ago. We both get organic vegetable box delivery, and this, accidentally, happens on Tuesday as well. That means that when we meet on Tuesday morning we put together whatever leftovers we found kicking around our fridges... Yes, I know, that does not sound too good... But you have to remember that everything that goes into the juice has to be green, pottentially with some fruit, and so we always end up with an interesting combination. So far we have always enjoyed our juices, never were we forced to pour them away.

But this week - oh this week, it was something else! Somehow we both had lots of herbs, and so the juice was all about green herbs. We used pineapple for sweetness and ginger for a kick, and then we were transported into a magical land of great beauty, energy and harmony and taste buddy pleasure while we were sipping this amazing recipe:

1 bunch of parsley, mostly stalks, as I used the leaves already

1 bunch of mint

2 bunches of corriander, with their fine white roots attached

1/2 pineapple

1 very small fennell

1 brocolli stalk

2 cm of ginger

1/2 head of celery

juice of lime added at the end, juiced by hand, so not too bitter

If you have a juicer that will wotk on green leaves, you simply have to try this. I cannot describe it well enough. It was a little bit sweet, a little bit tingly, a little bit sour, and very very green! This, my dearest readers, was the Queen of all the green juices I have ever drunk! May I be fortunate to recreate it again soon.

Daily bread

2009-04-22T22:39:00.020+01:00

While I have not been writing very much in the last many days, I have been busy in the kitchen and in the garden. The weather in London was amazing, sunny and almost hot, and as everyone living in the UK knows, this is to be savoured and enjoyed, because we never know how long it will last. And so instead of sitting in front of my laptop typing away I have been planting lettuces and beans, reading in the sun Evie's Kitchen: Raising an Ecstatic Child and creating some lovely summery raw foods in between, when I needed a rest from all that sunshine.

As I mentioned before, I don't have a dehydrator, as the space in our kitchen is quite limited and Cooked Husband gets stressed about me overcrowding the kitchen with my 'raw gadgets', but since I had my first positive outcome using very low oven for my Easter feast I have been playing with dehydrator based recipes quite succesfully. I am lucky, I suppose, as the lovest setting on my oven is somewhere around 35-40 C - this basically means that the trays feel just warm, not hot, when handled with my bare hands. Please be careful the first time you experiment, as every oven is different and I would not like it if you burned your fingers! I have also, through trial and error, learned that it is very important to leave the oven door open a little bit to let the moisture out, as some of my first attempts went sour and ended up on the compost heap. I just stick a wooden spoon in the door so it stays open a crack. When you make something like coconut maccaroons this way, the whole house smells of sweet coconut and you are, at least mentally, transported to a lovely caribean island...

My raw bread and the marinated mushrooms are from Russell James' eZine recipe. You can subscribe on the page where this link takes you, it is free, and I urge you, if you do not yet receive his eZine, sign up now. He is such an inspiration! The bread is based on sprouted buckwheat, zuccini and avocado, and it tastes rather nice. I found it a bit off an acquired taste at first, quite savoury, but it made a perfect base for several different open sanwiches and raw pizzas during the last week or so. On that note I would recommend to make only a half of the recipe if you are a single raw foodist in your household, as, even after I shared some with The Green Queen, I have been eating the bread every day and still have a few slices left in the fridge!

What you can see on the picture is my lunch one day last week; the base is the already mentioned bread, spread with home-made almond/cashew nut butter, drizzled with a bit of extra virgin olive oil, then topped with alternate slices of avocado and marinated and dehydrated mushrooms, decorated with a few vibrant radish slices and microgreens. It was delicious and filling, and another day, when I had a similar version of this for dinner, I gave Cooked Husband a taste ... and he liked it! Never say never!

Un-cooked Easter

2009-04-14T14:52:00.007+01:00

Last week, specifically on Easter Monday, something very special happened in the world of Raw Wife and Cooked Husband. I have prepared my first time ever raw food feast for other people, some of them raw, and some of them not.

My dear friend Denise aka Green Queen and her boyfriend Mark brought the starters - gorgeous vietnamiese rice wraps with mango, avocado and corriander and some beautiful raw sushi with cauliflower rice. I made marinated portabela mushrooms with satay sauce from my new Thai e-book from Russell James, who is always an amazing inspiration.

Main meal was all in the oriental mood; here are the veggies mixed with spices and ready to go into my low oven as no dehydrator to warm up and soften a bit.

Pineapple rice in the making. I pulsed some cauliflower, salsify, pinenuts and maccadamia nuts in a food processor with sesami oil and salt, then added finely chopped chilli, corriander and pineapple into the mix. Delicious....

To have something simple with all these gourmet choices, I have created some yellow zuccini 'noodles' on my new spiraliser toy thing machine. I love this thing. It is the best! I have never had so much fun with vegetables before!

And lunch is served. Eating with chopsticks might not be very 'thai', but it is fun, so we did it anyway...

And a chocolate surprice at the end. Tart is from Raw Food Real World, ice cream is frozen bananas and frozen almond milk blended together with a raspberry swirl. Yum. I am sorry the true chocoholics who could not resist a second helping and then could not sleep that night, but that's raw chocolate for you. Powerful stuff. But then again, when else would you eat a lot of chocolate if not at Easter!?

Visiting Raw Bar

2009-04-05T11:47:00.011+01:00

I cannot believe how fast time flies! It has now been almost a week since I started this post. But here I am now to tell you all about this new exciting place that recently opened its doors to us, raw foodies, here in London.

I met my 'rawfriend' Marianne for late lunch at the Raw Bar at Noting Hill. We both subscribe to the amazing quarterly magazine GetFresh, and so we both read the review of this place and could not get there fast enough to experience it for ourselves. It is effectively a shop run by an English organic farm and apart from being able to buy here anything from fresh produce through books and clothes you can also sit down to a lovely meal, cooked or not, vegan or otherwise. For us, the raw enthusiasts, the best part in here is the already mentioned Raw Bar. Not all meals are vegan, but I see that as almost a good thing as you can come with your non-raw friends and they will feel like they have an interesting choice of dishes as well.

We were not allowed to take pictures of the place, which I find strange because I was only going to use them to lure more people into visiting, but I will tell you what it looks like and you can check it out for yourself, if you are in London, or follow this link for a nice picture. The whole place is created in natural materials, every surface covered in wood or wicker, and through middle of the long lovely smooth wooden tables runs a narrow grass 'meadow'. You can touch it or stroke it and feel its juicy green softness; it is rather cool, actually, and makes you smile! You can almost imagine you are having a picnic in a park...

The food is competing with the environment for your attention. You can sit at the bar, as we did, and watch your food being prepared, and even ask a question or two from the two handsome chefs. They might let you into a secret or two if you become a regular customer here, or you can come to one of the open days they run once a months and actually learn hands-on how to create some of the yummy creations we ate.

Although they do have a lovely wine list, we chose a juice each. Drinking before 5pm and all that, you know. Mine was a 'Lemonade' shake from pears, apples, lemon and ginger, and it was a delicately tasting pale green cloud. I had to guard it from Marianne, who ordered a straight green detox juice but fell in love with my sweet creation instead. She has since been experimenting busily at home, attempting to recreate this delicious drink. It was very refreshing and will be great in summer poured over some ice cubes.

To start with we shared a selection of raw crackers with dips and pickles The dips were avocado cream and almond hummus, both of them dreamily creamy and yummy, the crackers fluffy and light, full of chopped almonds and pumpkin seeds. Marianne could not get enough of the onion rings pickled in red wine vinegar, too.

We both got very excited about the Pad Thai, which was reviewed in the magazine, and we both ended up ordering it. This could be seen as a bad thing to do as you cannot taste different dishes from each other. Well, obviously, you can, but there is no point, right. But it was SOOO good, we were both more then happy with our choice. The bottom layer was made of spiralised carrots (of which you will soon see and hear more, because I ordered spiraliser as soon as I got home), mixed with a mild, perhaps macadamia nut based sauce, topped with finely julienned veggies - red and white cabbage, spring onions, red peppers - with almond butter based spicy Thai sauce. All this was topped again with a pyramid of mixed baby salad leaves drizzled with the most fiery chili oil and sprinkled with some honeyed spicy cashew nuts for extra crunch and flavour. It was SOOOOOO GOOD, and it looked beautiful! Marianne's hand was shaky and so the picture above is not very sharp, but you can just see this yummy pretty meal, and how excited I am about it!

Although we talked about the intriguing sounding deserts and saw some of them being prepared, we ended up too full to have room for anything else! We decided on sharing the main meal next time and sampling them then, as we will definitely be back!

The total bill came to £17 each, which seems a bit pricey for a plate of vegetables, but let me assure you - a plate of vegetables this was NOT! It was a lovely creation, put together with enthusiasm and skill, and compared to a cooked dish of pasta I imagine it took as much or more work and surely involved a bit more careful flavour balancing. Creating from raw ingredients is at least as much fun as it is a challenge. I personally left with not only a full and content belly but also with my head spinning with ideas about want I want to make and create. As I said earlier, I ordered a spiraliser as soon as I got home and also bought a Thai inspired collection of raw recipes from Russel James. I have since played with some of them, but I will leave that for another post.

Aloe vera

2009-04-02T18:02:00.007+01:00

My green juice of the day included

1/4 head of butter lettuce

few chard leaves

2 celery sticks

bunch of parsley

small piece of gallanghal root

3 inch piece aloe vera, as you can see on the picture, skin included

1/4 large sweet lemon

juice of 8 small blood oranges

This was sooooo citrussy and yummy, I had over a liter of it for dinner. This is my new plan, to have a huge green juice for dinner instead of solid food, as I tend to overeat and then give in to a sweet tooth, and I generally don't feel very energetic next morning. So my 'normal' vita food will be eaten at lunch, snacks, elevenses, but any time after 6 pm let's say, I am going to do my best to have only juice and fruit teas. Let's see how that goes, as that is the time I make dinner for Cooked Husband, and often feel seduced by the smells of his meals, so I will have to develop a strong will...

Cooked Husband + Raw Ice Cream = Happy Home

2009-04-01T21:01:00.004+01:00

So this was my first experiment with Oscar, my super juicer, the first time I made something that was not a juice. My dear friend Denise was telling me on Tuesday morning that she heard about people making 'raw' ice cream from frozen babanas. Well, so have I, I just haven't tried it - YET!

As I write, my dear Cooked Husband is enjoying a bowl of this yummy banana raspberry mix drizzled with a bit of vanilla infused agave, happily humming to himself. Do I sense SUCCESS? I am very inspired right now and will be stocking on more bananas soon. The possibilities are endless, as I am thinking I can freeze almost anything, run it through the juicer, and then even whizz it in my blender with more yummy raw things to create the most delicious AND healthy treats.

This is what the process of ice cream making looks like when you use a clever juicing machine - rather fun! And as long as you have some frozen fruit at hand, it only takes a few minutes.

Let's hope for a hot summer and watch this space. Maybe I will even try a green ice cream... but maybe not quite yet..

Tickle your taste buds

2009-04-01T21:00:00.001+01:00

Purple sprouting brocoli, red cabbage and marinated mushrooms with Thai inspired dressing with tahini, chilli pepper and lime juice.

Meditative Juice

2009-03-31T18:27:00.007+01:00

Tuesday brought to my home as usual my great friend Denise, the Green Queen. As it is my day of work these days, I appreciate her arrival in the morning even more; there is no better reason to jump out of bed early then meeting up with your girlfriend and doing something you enjoy. This is especially vital if you have over-combined and overeaten your food the previous evening and you feel like had two bottles of red... Do you know this feeling? It happens as our bodies get used to the cleansing, simpler diet; as soon as we regress back to badly combined cooked or even sometimes raw but heavy food, our body lets us know that (s)he does not like this. I am very happy to observe though that there are things my body has learned to expect and it does ask for them. One of them is my daily morning glass of water with MSM and lemon juice. It's a great way to rehydrate the body after the many hours spent sleeping, and I also see it as some kind of internal shower. It refreshes and sort of wakes me up; I feel immediately ready for some San saluting. This morning I immediately followed up with a small glass of super green juice, which works wonders for me. I cannot get enough of the stuff. It has strong alkalising effect on our bodies, and so is great for as most of us are over acidic from eating too much processed or sugary foods and drinks. This morning, as I suffered from my morning-after-the-night-before-over-indulgence I felt better with every little sip I took. I salute the juicer! If you are feeling inspired by my enthusiasm, go for it. The only warning I give is in case you are on any kind of medication - then I recommend consulting a medical practitioner, preferably one who knows and appreciates the healing effects of proper (raw, vegan,green) nutrition. However, if you are (relatively) healthy and want to feel MUCH better, fresh green juices are waiting! If this is your first time with fresh juices, start with more fruity ones and slowly add your greens, that way you will get used to the green taste better and will end up enjoying them more.

Denise and I left out yoga this morning and spent an hour with Nadabrahma meditation instead. This meditation is based on ancient Tibetan techniques and was brought to us by Indian mystic called Osho. It is a very calming one, and after half an hour of humming and then some quiet sitting in inner reflection we were almost too sedated to talk. So we went to spend some more quiet time with the juicer and made us an amazing breakfast juice. Green,of course, what else?!

1/4 cucumber
1/3 butter lettuce
1/2 celery
leaves from 10 radishes
handful of parsley
handful of lambs quarters
3 pears
2 passion fruit, because it is Denise's favourite fruit, and because it smells heavenly

At the end the taste was surprisingly sweet. I bought some pretty green pears, but as they sat in our fruit bowl, they ripened and became lovely and sweet, and the passion fruit added a tropical touch.

I was not so good later in the afternoon when I met with another of my friends and ordered a cappuccino. Unfortunately, or should I make it fortunately, they didn't make it very well, the milk was a bit off and it tasted so bad I left most of it behind. I had to ask myself again and again when will I learn? When will I stop ordering stuff I only want because that's what everyone else is having? I don't enjoy it, it makes me feel bad and I end up being annoyed with myself... I know it is a question many transitioning raw foodist asked themselves before me and at the same time I am not the last one to go through with it, but I so wish I could be 'perfect'! I am going to do my best and follow my own advice - what happened has happened and with every next decision I will be a step closer to my own version of perfection... be it a vegan, 100% raw vegan or something in between.I have met a few individuals, who were able to stop eating everything they realised was bad for them overnight, but it is not an easy way, and it most definitely is not for everybody.

Dinner for me was another green juice and a Thai inspired salad from shredded red cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli, mung bean sprouts, tamari marinated mushrooms, sunflower seeds and sun dried tomatoes marinated on herby olive oil with a very spicy dressing based on tahini and lime juice. Yum!

DRINK ME!!!

2009-03-27T21:48:00.002Z

So this is how my first green juice looked like and it tasted something like ZZZZZZZZZZZRRRRRRRRRBURGUMBUNGRZBRUNG! There was not one piece of fruit in it if you don't count lime juice a I could taste and feel its vibrations long after I had the last sip. All I could feel was greenness, cleanliness, spring and regeneration and renewal plus multitude of feelings and thoughts.... but also I kept glancing at my fruit bowl and at the end I went to make juice from a few apples to soften the last of this green goodness. But, although this is a mere wine glass, it is Cooked Husband's wine glass and it is a pint sized one no less. So I got a lot of minerals and vitamins and other goodness and it felt as if every sip made me younger by a week. It does not show - not yet... Can't wait though.

So - Bottoms up! Your health!

Big little helper

2009-03-27T21:46:00.004Z

I just wanted to show you how magically this machine works when it comes to greens. I am not having as much success with fruits, but for leafy greens it is magic. Well, you can see for yourself - the jug is about 1 and a half pint, and there was just about a small handfull of almost dry fibrous solid stuff. I run the fibre through second time as not to waste a single drop, and I thought that to get this much juice was simply AMAZING!

This was the first juice I have made, and in it was

1/2 green soft lettuce
1 cucmber
1 courgette
1 inch galangal root
juice of 1 lemon

It was very zingy and wonderful. Later that day I made a juice from

5 large chard leaves
1 cucumber
2 apples
1 lime
1 small head of celery

Poor brave Cooked Husband! He agreed to have a taste, but he is just simply not ready for all the goodness found in green juices yet. They are super-power stuf, not for the faint hearted. Not that he is faint hearted, but I mean - you have to taste a straight green juice to understand. He was very happy and impressed with the fresh pineapple juice I made him the next day for breakfast, so I will have to start him softly and sneak in a green leaf here and there, to build his taste buds up to the challenge.

Watch this space!

Oscar!

2009-03-26T22:35:00.006Z

So he is here. He has arrived! And as I promissed he is absolutely amazing, super shiny and fabulous, and he is all mine! My new super juicer called Oscar!

I have to confes that he arrived already yesterday, but it was Cooked Husband's birthday and so it was not a day for me to open presents but for him. I will write a post about yesterday as well, but for now I wanted to let you know about our new family mamber. I unpacked him this morning, washed and polished him, and then I got him work. And is he clever!?

My first ever home made super green juice was made out of

1 cucumber

1 courgette

1/2 a huge lettuce head

1 lime

2 cm piece of galanghal root

It had a lot of umphf, so I added a juice from 2 apples to the last third to soften the taste. But still! WOW! Rather strong and zingy and GREEN!

I will blog about what I like and maybe not like about this juicer once I have had it for a while. After the first day I have to say I am very impressed with the yield for leafy and crunchy veggies, absolutelly amazing, but not so sure about those apples, as I got more like a thin puree then a pure juice. But that might be because those apples were a but dry... I know that serious juicy people sometimes have more then one type of juicer as they are better for different kinds of veggies and fruits, but me, for now, I am happy and juicy and celebratory.

Viva le Oscar! Viva la New Moon! Viva le Juicy life!

These sheep were so hungry they were following us... and I had nothing green to feed them... surprisingly so!

2009-03-24T21:41:00.000Z

Everywhere I look there is a baby sheep

2009-03-24T20:42:00.005Z

It has been SOOOO many days since I have written! Well, I am sure you have noticed that, but I actually almost haven't...

What happened is that I have been 'unplugged' from the Internet, and the computer for that matter, for a few days over the weekend and then spent some time looking after a friend in need, so I do have some legitimate excuses one might hope people will accept...

So. I went to Wales for the weekend. This trip was a part of the reason why I gave up my green smoothie life for a few days as I could not face hiking and travelling while eating and detoxing in that way. For a while I was a little bit unhappy about the whole trip though. You see, this was supposed to be Cooked Husband's weekend away with the boys, only at the end it turned into a family trip with our friends because some of the boys could not make it. Like I said, I felt a bit 'grrr' about this, as I had all weekend planned, no cooking, lots of juices, maybe even a water only fast.... and at the end I ended up eating chips for dinner instead. Quite a detour from my plan then. But I had so much fun, and I think we were so lucky to visit Wales during the only three sunny days they (apparently) get every year, and so at the end it was worth the detox break. It was even (just maybe) worth the chips. Also, as a bonus, there were baby sheep just about EVERYWHERE!!

I developed a special relationship to sheep almost as soon as I first crossed the Canal La Manche almost 15 years ago. For those who do not know this, you can see these peaceful woolly creatures standing by the road, watching the world go (or drive) by, while chewing on juicy grass. I have not seen anything like this before, as we do not have sheep filled meadows lined roads in the Czech republic very much, and the sight of white dots on green grass makes me for whatever reason illogically happy and jolly.

Enter mid March in Wales, the home of sheep. I was in a sensory heaven; enjoying fresh air, healthy dose of walking, catching up with my girlfriend and enjoying her children's company as well, and, as a bonus, walking through field after field full of mother and baby sheep. I especially enjoyed observing the close relationship between the mama sheep and the baby sheep that we could see everywhere. First, the mothers were extremely protective of their babies. Sheep are very shy and generally, if you approach them, they walk or even run away. Not when a baby sheep is present. The mama would stare at us, rather directly, and Baa loudly, in a deep voice, to scare us away. The other, even more amazing behaviour, and very natural indeed, was that every time any of the lambs strayed from the mama, as soon as the mama Baa-ed for them, they galloped back as fast as they could and immediately had a little cuddle and a little drink of milk. Now some of these lambs were bigger and were happily grazing on the grass, and the milk drinking was a quick one most of the times, more like a comfort blanket, like making sure the mother was really there. I loved this, it felt so caring and, well, natural. It made me sad in a way though as I thought of cows and their babies, who get taken away from the mother cows too soon, so that we, people, can steel their milk and drink it instead, while we feed the calves some human made stuff... It is really sad and makes me really want to be strong enough so that I can give up the white stuff for good. This subject will most certainly develop into another post about dairy, the whole industry built around it, what it does and does not do to us and our health, books to read on the subject and much else, but not today. This is now a rather long post, so let's just stay with the memory of the woolly happiness of jolly sheep.

As far as the food goes, I will only mention breakfast. It was interesting for one reason, and that is that I actually got organised enought o write to the B&B we were booked into and asked them to prepare a raw vegan breakfast for me. They had the usual menu of cooked Welsh breakfast, all about sausages, eggs and bacon with toast and cereal, and I knew that sitting there sipping hot water with lemon while Cooked Husband was munching away would leave me feel unsatisfied. So I wrote to them explaining that I did not eat any cooked or processed food and would they be willing to make me a fruit salad. And that is what happened. I was told that they actually had the fruit special ordered for me, and my breakfast was made of lovely ripe kiwis and strawberries with other crunchy fruit and bananas. It was yummy and even Cooked Husband tucked in. Admitedly, the lady who served us in the mornings was a bit worried about how I was going to survice the day, but it was beautiful, colourful and lovely. The perfect start to my day! I am writing about this to encourage you to speak out for yourselves. Too often we feel that because we are different we might be judged and people will not want fulfill the special request we make, but the oposite is true. And by asking for the food we like to eat, perhaps we might spark an interest in people. Imagine that every time we do this, ask for a fruit salad for breakfast in a cooked hotel or ask for a large raw salad for dinner in a posh restaurant, we could make one person think about eating more raw fruits and veggies. Would that not be great??

I leave you with that for tonight.

Good night, and remember to count the sheep before you fall asleap. There are far too many for me to be the only one to do so!

Salad day

2009-03-18T19:22:00.007Z

OK, it's become incredibly busy in this household. How grateful I am that I can only work part time! My day definitelly needs to have more hours... but I know that if I eat carefully and simply then I sleep less... so it is a no brainer!

Breakfast:
simply just fruit, cut into pieces and enjoyed as it is
1 pear
1 asian pear
piece of fresh pineapple

Snack at work:
green smoothie made from
1/2 pineapple
handful of rocket and watercress
water
GREEN SMOOTHIE TRIVIA: rocket and watercress add a lot of umphf to your smoothie and are not for the novices, I would say. Start with softer tasting leaves such as spinach and various lettuces, lambs quarters, yummy herbs such as corriander and mint etc, but remember to ROTATE your greens. Do not stick to only one or two. Also if at all possible go for ORGANIC.

I was definitelly going through some coffee cravings today and the image of a muffin was swimming aluringly in front of my mind's eye. As I was going to my favourite health food store to pick up some raw goodies for the forthcoming hiking trip to Wales I was having a little discussion with myself about giving in and having what my mind wanted, reasoning that at least it was organic. Somehow, when I got there, I went straight to the salad bar and got a large selection from all the yummy lovely fresh goodies. I did not think of that coffee/muffin scenario until I was on the tube on my home, looong afterwards. A very interesting experience. And I am glad I did not give in. Every day that I resist the pull of the old brings me closer to the health and vibrant energy I desire. Lots of coffee does maybe bring longer days in the beginning, but there is a price to pay later on. Eating living energy giving healing food will make my life longer, so who cares of I sleep a bit more every day.... wink wink

Late lunch:
salad in a health food store
mixed salad leaves
grated carrot
lots of sprouts (not brussel sprouts, but sprouted growing seeds of watercress)
few cubes of roasted sweet potato
few roasted herbed mushrooms
few pieces of roasted red and yellow pepper

Even as I was picking this up, I was dreaming about getting a dehydrator or kitting my owen at home so that I can make dehydrated veggies, and so I can get the same taste and texture as if they were roasted without exposing their heat sensitive goodness (enzymes, vitamins) to the high temperatures. This is a change in thinking, and a very welcome one. I even designed in my head a change to the owen so that I can make it work. Now I just need a clever handyman, and we are in business.

Dinner:
2 large handfulls of kale
stripped from tough stalks
massaged with
a glug of yummy cold presses olive oil
and a few pinches of pink himalayan salt
which makes it wilt and soften
add
handful of baby tomatoes
few semi sundried tomatoes marinated in herbs and olive oil
chopped half a cucumber
finely chopped chilli pepper
scatter sunflower seeds on the top

Not the simplest salad but LOOOVELYYY! I learned about massaged kale salad about a year ago and I seriously mourned when its season here in UK finished. It was one of the things I looked forward to in winter! Does that make me sad?

Oh, by the way... are you there? Is any one reading this? LET ME KNOW!

Struggle resolved

2009-03-17T15:50:00.013Z

The truth is, I have struggling with this green smoothie and juice regimen for a few days now. I must acknowledge and publicly say that the fault is not in the program, as surely as the proof is not always in the pudding. After all, I have attempted to follow a juice feasting program, and I still don't even have a juicer! Every day I have been eagerly awaiting my new shiny super duper juicing machine, but it has been, yet again, delayed, and is not coming till the beginning of the next week. The juice feaster's guide calls for 4 litres of freshly squeezed vegetable and fruit juice, with a big emphasis on juice from green vegetables; it also advices you that if you still feel hungry after you had those 4 litres to have more. And what have I been doing? I have been having a pint of green smoothie for breakfast and then about a litre of mostly fruit juices during the day, with some Master Cleanse put in for a good measure, and maybe, but only a maybe, a green smoothie for dinner if I was really hungry. This is not a feast but a fast and I have been almost consistently hungry for a few days now. And I don't mean having a sweet tooth. I really mean rumbling tummy.

Don't get me wrong. I feel great, and I am loving the weight loss. My ribs are happily sticking out above my waist, from which I have lost 5.5 centimeters. In just over two weeks! My face is more defined, my skin looks more toned and healthy despite a few very discreet detox bumps and spots, and my eyes are much clearer. Cooked Husband is dropping praises and so are my girlfriends, and I am happily basking in them. But I cannot sustain this any longer while living a normal life in busy, loud and poluted London. I would need to take this kind of program somewhere pristine and clean and calm and quiet, with time for journalling and reflection. And at the moment, I don't have that space. So after many days of pondering about it and about how people are going to be disappointed and let down (and some of them no doubt satisfied), I am going to start eating again. But only until the juicer arrives, then I will have another go at the real juice feasting!

There, I said it.

Breakfast:

3 pears

2 apples

1 banana

closed fistful of parsley

1 courgette

1 handful young rocket

1 handful baby red chard

I drank this on the patio, in the sunshine, while chatting with Denise about life, how it is now, and how we would like it ot be in the future. We talked about how we both love meeting on Tuesday morning for yoga and green breakfast, then doing some blogging, writing and translating during the day, working from home. No boss to shout at us, no tube to ride to the office, no given time for a break, just enjoyment and happiness. We both wonder how realistic this is. For me, at the moment, Tuesday is a day of work, because I am not needed at my office, and for her, this is her second months trying to make it on her own, freelancing. So we do not know how long it will last. What we do know is that we would like to live like this. And that there is no reason why we shouldn't. We want to work, we just want to do it in the way that fullfills us. Is it too much to ask? I am sure everybody out there, even the biggest workaholic, has a little dream inside them, that wants to come out and become a reality. Reality, that would make that person much happier and balanced, and in that way a much nicer person to be around, in many a case. And this is my vision for the future of the world. Don't you think that if everybody is doing what they trully believe in the world will become a much better place with a much more optimistic future? Let me know your thoughts!

Lunch:

1 mango

gel from 2 inches fresh aloe vera, which we were given last week while visiting the Earthship in Brighton

large handful of kale

water

I had a pint of this and my stomach felt empty in a couple of minutes. So I took the leftover pint and blended it with two bananas - now THAT was filling.

Snack:

a few brazil nuts

A note of causion here. I have not been strictly juice feasting, and so I feel quite ok to eat some dried fruit or nuts, but still I shall not over do it. If you are reading this blog as an inspiration, but you have been only drinking juice for a few days, you must break the feast properly, slowly and carefully. Have a look at Juice Feasting website for help.

Dinner:

salad from

baby tomatoes

cucumber

red and green pepper

few raw olives

soaked arame seaweed

olive oil and lemon juice

During the day I drank two large mugs of fruit tea and about a litre of water. I feel much better now... are you glad to hear it?

Le weekend struggle

2009-03-15T16:47:00.007Z

So I have reached the point now when I want to eat some 'normal' food. It is my first real crisis, as I would call it, and my first reaction to it is that it is not really real, that it is something else going on. Emotional stuff? I also suspect that I haven't been drinking enough of my green smoothies and juices every day to get enough calories in me, as I have been feeling really quite hungry for most of the day, but I was somehow lacking any motivation to go, squeeze some fruit and consume the scrumy juice. What is going on???

We spent the weekend with Cooked Husband's parents and perhaps the change of scenery and not being in my own space threw me out of balance a little bit. I did not sleep very well and I felt cold, and the whole Sunday I felt tired and de-motivated. I ran out of maple syrup and forgot to buy lemons, so I could not make Master Cleanse, my savior and my inner heating helper so far. In short, a lack of preparation has caused me a lot of grief this weekend... What can I say? Learn from my own mistake and try harder, that's what I say!

Just a short post today due to all the reasons mentioned above. Have to go and immerse my body in a bath full of steaming hot water with some yummy smelling salts and then will eat a huge plateful of fresh juicy sweet watermelon, my most favourite food in the whole world!

Bright Brighton

2009-03-12T23:16:00.010Z

This was such an unusual and adventures (and coooold) day. Thursday is my day of work and it is most often spent doing yoga, poking around the internet and maybe doing a liiiiitle bit of work or studying from home. Today was completely different and it's soooo late and i have to go to bed because I am so very tired and cold.... so I will tell you what I ate and what I did and what I will be blogging about soon.

Breakfast:

1 banana

3 apples

large handful of kale

water

My first time blending kale, and it was wonderful. Loved the taste of the smoothie, and my body was singing.

At the train station it suddenly hit me how MANY coffee and muffin stands there are. No wonder we all eat it all the time! Determined as I am at the moment to eat only raw, my mind was reeling from all the cake pleasure-land! I did, however, and surprisingly, found one store that sold FRESH smoothies! I really did not see it coming, and it just shows that I should have more faith!

Train station snack:

strawberries

fresh orange juice

smoothie

I packed a green smoothie with me for the trip, but now I was SOOOOO full and happy from the pink concoction above, I thought I would not need it. However, I carried it with me through the day and its time came later on...

Lunch:

hot apple juice with cinnamon

and

apple

celery

and ginger

juice

in a juice bar in a bright hippie area in Brighton :-)

We spent the day wondering around the town, visited the Earth Ship and then 'hiked' accross the town for Angela Stokes' talk in Manna cafe - the first 100% raw cafe in Europe, apparently. WOW, that must be my most-linked-sentence to date... And they are all very worthy links, too! Anyway, I will find time to blog about all of them in the next few days; for now, here is the rest of my food of the day:

Afternoon snack:

home made and all day carried smoothie

3 peaches

large handful of baby spinach leaves

Dinner:

GREEN JUICE!

I mean GREEN, no fruits in it!

celery

cucumber

spinach

kale

lemon

ginger

This was my FIRST EVER seriously GREEN juice and it was AMAZING! You can see I am still buzzing from it with all these capital letters, but I had to let you know. I loved it. It was tingling and slightly bitter and juicy and it made you take just small sips at a time, which is the perfect way to eat or drink anything, and it just filled me with peace and pleasure. GREEEEAAAT, now I just need my juicer to arrive so I can start making my own! Absolutely cannot wait, but wait I must... The universe knows what it is doing, maybe I am not ready for daily green juices yet and need to stay with the green smoothies to slow the detox. All right then, shall go with the flow....

How are you all? Have you tried a straight green juice yet?

Determination

2009-03-11T22:23:00.006Z

Sooooo, I have to say I have been teased quite shamelessly yesterday, on my first juice feasting non eating nor alcohol drinking outing, especially when it transpired I have actually brought my own bag of fruit tea. But hey - I needed a hot drink and mulled beer is not my favourite!

I thought about this a little bit, about the strange place you get into when you start doing something new, unususal, or just completely weird like juice feasting. People are quite used to vegetarians these days and will just about tolerate vegans, but I am sure most people would be terrified to have a raw vegan coming to their dinner party. They might just not get invited, to keep the matter simple ;-). And so I thought about people's reaction to my juice feasting, and how this puts a kind of mental mirror in front of me. My colleague at work, for example, who acually is a vegetarian herself, said very clearly that she thought I was crazy. I came to realize that I am quite glad for all these comments and reactions. They are what I need to strenghten my resolve to keep up with the plan and let the results speak for themselves. Glowing skin, better figure, shining health and lots of positive energy might even motivate people to follow in my steps. If I gave up half way it would be the doubtors who would quickly say it was all just a bit overstretched anyway, and if I can't do it, then they won't even try. So not just for myself, to see that I can do this, I can heal myself to a great level of health that will show on the outside, but also for all those who are not sure what on Earth I am doing and why, I stuck with it and had another wonderful juice and smoothie day today. Thank you all.

Breakfast:
1 mango
1 pear
2 handfuls of mixed salad leaves
YUMMY

I had to go back to the Master Cleanse and fruit teas at work, so far it is prooving a great solution while the juicer is (hopefully) on his way. Especially good is the maple syrup, which calmes my hunger feeling in seconds, and the drink as a whole makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Loving it.

Late lunch from Crush
juice from
kiwi
pears
apples
spinach
celery

As I walked down the street sipping on this vibrant green drink, I got a smile from a handsome stranger. This is fun as it is, I am a girl after all, but it is also great because of the green stuff in my hands. This shows me that people no longer look at you in disgust because you are consuming something very very weird. This is a step closer to a recognition that it si normal, that green food and drink are not only good for us, but jsut good. What do you think? Use the comment link, talk to me, people. Tell me I am strange, if you like, or tell me what you put in your smoothie in the morning!

Snack:
breakfast leftover

Dinner:
half a small watermelon

Dinner number 2:
juice from
a few oranges
1 t Nature's Green Superfoods
1 t powdered barley grass juice
1 T flax oil
blended

I was feeling hungry quite a lot today and so I really found it hard preparing dinner for Cooked Husband this evening. It all smelled lovely, my belly was quietly rumbling, and I was planning to sneak a little taste in. But something happened and I did not do it. I told myself this was not the last time I am cooking and that I would regret breaking my juicing day with cooked stodgy food, however lovely, and somehow, unbelievably, it worked. I am very proud of myself right now!

PS: The picture today is my organic fruit delivery box, full of sunshine, radiance and optimism! Smile!

A little bit about many things

2009-03-10T19:26:00.009Z

I feel very lucky for having so many wonderful, generous and loving friends in my life. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am not one of those people who have thousands of 'friends' on Facebook or Twitter. But all those that are there have a very firm spot in my heart!

Well, that is it for today's philosophy...

I really just wanted to express some gratitude for a lovely morning I spent yogaing and chatting with my friend Denise. I am very much aware of how important my girlfriends are for me, what a difference they make in my life. And man-friends, of course, if such a word exists - and is not rude, that is.

Breakfast for two yoginis:
1 pineapple
1 pear
little bit of fresh mint
big handful baby spinach
fresh juice, oh what a treat,
which Denise made at home
and brought with her,
made from apples and celery

I have shamelessly spent the whole day hidden at home, reading, blogging, writing and searching the Internet for new inspiration. My new favourite website is the freshly new Czech raw foodists forum Freshness.cz, started and run by an amazing young Czech man. He did an excellent job and I am very proud to be a part of that community. I created a link, just in case you are a Czech speaker, or, of course, just in case you are curious!

Lunch:
juice from
3 red grapefruits
5 tangerines
blended with
2 t powdered barley grass
1 T flax oil

I had to decorate this with a bright orangey-pink strawberry, because that colour is plain weird, but it tasted quite alright. Really rather yummy. But then again, I AM a heath nut, as someone commented on Twitter recently!

Many mugs of fruit tea and Master Cleanse filled my afternoon, and then I had the breakfast green smoothie leftover for dinner. I had to have a lot of energy for the Tuesday Pub Quiz, mentally and physically. They serve sandwiches (and yummy lettuce leaves, that other people think are decoration but which are - possibly unsurprisingly -my personal favourite) during the break, and I wanted to be sure I would resist them. So I packed a fruit tea bag in my handbag, as I suspected they would not have this in a pub, and hoped for the best...

Girls only, sorry boys

2009-03-09T12:09:00.007Z

After the up and downs of yesterday, I was rather spaced out this morning, but I would think this is not because of the juices but rather the after-effect of the painkillers I had to take at night. I am sorry to announce this in public space, although virtual, but I am sick and tired of my extremely painful periods! I can't wait for my body to heal enough to stop hurting so much while something really quite normal and natural is going on inside it. I know that eating drugs is the last thing a juice feaster should do, but no amount of hot water bottles and tender loving self care would make any difference in my situation, plus, I did have to make it to work, at least for a short while.

I have decided to carry on with green smoothies for breakfast until my sparkling new super juicer arrives - hopefully at some point this week - as I want to make sure that I consume enough fresh greens and keep my energy balanced. I think it did the trick, as apart from the pain followed by drug induced spaciness I felt pretty good all day ;-) .

Breakfast:
3 apples
1 banana
5 strawberries
2 handfuls of baby spinach
water
very very smooth and loooovely

At work today. As hunger and belly emptiness arrived around 11 am, I made a half litre mug of Master Cleanse with hot water. It made me feel good and warm, and the hunger went away for a short while. I also had a mug of fruit and a mug of peppermint tea, before having another mug of MC, all this while cradling ahot water bottle in my lap. There is at least some advantage to working in female only environment.

I sadly had to take two more painkillers as I thought I was going to pass out from the pain. Anybody out there has similar trouble? I have been suffering from bad period pains for years, and the only advice I got from the medical people was to take a painkiller... Well, thanks! Very helpful and insightful. Ever since I have been reading about raw, though, I came accross some super success stories that gave me hope. One of the recommended things for general hormonal balance is Maca, the great peruvian radish, which we can buy in Europe in its powdered form. It is supposed to help with the pain as well. For me it was a question of taste (I did not like it to begin with), but as the promise of no pain was very aluring, I did take it religiously for about a month before my previous period - and - success. I was not without pain, but the amount of nasty tablets I absolutely had to take dropped rather dramatically. I have unfortunately fallen of the wagon and have not taken it almost at all last month - and - here we are. In pain. So, ladies, I definitelly recommend investigating this amazing plant. If you blend it with some bananas, cacao powder and nut milk, you won't even know it is in your shake. If you really cannot stand the taste, you can buy it in capsule form, but remember that this means much harder work for your stomach.

Late lunch:
juice from
beetroot
carrot
cucumber
with some spirulina
from Crush juice bar

I felt very powerful and light this afternoon. Supplied my body with another pint of hot MC, then had a lovely juicy dinner:

2 white grapefruits

3 oranges

1.5 t Nature's Green Superfood

0.5 powdered ginger

1T flax oil

made a lovely almost creamy juice

Sunny Stormy Sunday

2009-03-09T08:30:00.006Z

Woke up today feeling OH SO ACHEY from the yoga yesterday. It is the danger of a slow motion class, I reckon, as it lours you into going deeper into your postures and it pulls you out of your cocoon and then ... AUCH! But it is all for a good reason, nothing that a few stretches and perhaps a hot bath would not take care of, and in the long term my body will be all the more flexible and well oiled in the future (or so I am telling myself while feeling a bit like an invalid).

While I was expertly cooking a typical English breakfast for Cooked Husband and our Friend, I manage to squeeze juice from some plump tangerines for my own breakfast. It was like a liquid sunshine, it smelled almost intoxicating, I LOVED every little drop and really felt sunny inside. It was also sunny outside, but windy like crazy. Before I managed to make it outside, it was raining and thundering - a real April weather a month too soon.

My body unfortunately reflected this. My sunny feeling was replaced by unquenchable hunger, I was feeling very cold and shivering despite wearing woolly socks and a sweater. As I do not have a juicer, I was filling up on mugs of Master Cleanse diluted with hot water and I think it was all this sugar from the citrus and the maple syrup that gave me totally up and down energy. I could carry the world in my arms one second and then you would find me collapsed on the sofa the next. Eventually I created some citrus juice with powdered greens and flax oil to slow down the metabolism, and then promptly fell asleep for a couple of hours on the above-mentioned sofa. Thanks goodness today was Sunday!

By the evening I was feeling weird, shaky and headachey, and so I gave in and had some yummy green smoothie for dinner. Much better. Short but very valuable lesson: I need some fresh greens. I would happily live on fruits if I could eat them whole, but pure fruit juice is just too much for me, at the present moment anyway. So I decided that until my super maxi awaited juicer arrives, I will have green smoothie for breakfast, and then follow this up with the rest of the day on juices. Let's see how that goes...

Breakfast:

7 fresh tangerines

squeezed by hand

Elevenses and lunch:

Master Cleanse (MC) by Stanley Burroughs

6 - 8 T lemon juice

6 - 8 T maple syrup / raw honey / raw agave syrup

1/10 90.000 Heat Unit Cayenne pepper

1 liter of water

You can adjust the sweetness / sourness of this and also the heat to your taste. Start carefully with the cayenne, as it is very powerful. I was overheating after the first mug so much I had to go and wonder around the garden for a while in the close to hurricane wind...

Snack:

2 grapefruits

4 oranges

juiced and blended with

1 t Nature's Green Superfood

1 T cold pressed flax oil

Dinner:

2 apples

1 banana

handful of baby spinach leaves

decorated with strawberries

= life saving for this juice feasting novice

While looking after my body physically like this, I must be good and remember to do some 'self care' for my mind, soul and spirit. As the evening was spent talking and planning trips and holidays with Cooked Husband, this mission was accomplished for today. Very nice indeed, dreaming... And all the travel talk brought back some memories from the round the world trip we did in 2007, and so here I share with you picture of me savouring one of my first Dragon fruits in Krabi, Thailand. If you have lots of time to waste and want to see some fun pictures from round the globe, look at http://www.davidandblanka.wordpress.com/

During the day: 1 liter of water and two large fruit teas

Peaceful Saturday

2009-03-07T21:36:00.005Z

I woke up early again today, despite not sleeping very well last night; I felt cold for what seemed like hours. Must remember the hot water bottle tonight for the feet. I also woke up feeling very hungry. And dehydrated. It is quite difficult to make sure I drink enough water while my food is liquidy as well, as it seems to me that I am drinking all the time. I must remember to have enough pure water every day.

I made a lovely fruit salad for Cooked Husband's breakfast - apples, pears, plums, blueberries and as a special treat a dragon fruit - and then I whizzed my half with a bit of water in a blender. I strained it through a nut milk (very fine mesh) bag, which resulted in the loveliest pinky coloured juice. Love in a glass!

Breakfast:
Pink juice
a few tiny pieces of dragon fruit

I went for a yoga class later in the morning, and it was one of the best classes I have ever took. Focussed on deep breathing the entire 90 minutes, it left me deeply peaceful, content and calm. I left envelopped in a protective bubble that lasted the rest of the day. As I write this, I am still feling very serene, almost too much so to type. I picked my lunch in the local branch of Crush juice bar. It was called Green Goodess. I planned on sipping it slowly, but it was so delicious, it disappeared within a few minutes.

Juicy lunch:
cucumber
apple
kiwi
spinach
aloe vera

The rest of the day passed in a whirl of the usual Saturday at home activities of cleaning, supermarket shopping and then helping Cooked Husband actually cook dinner. We have a friend staying and so he was making his signature dish, veggie chilli sin carne. Unfortunatelly for me, it was just too good, and I ended up having some. I am very sorry to all my readers (so far to the one, actually) for stepping of my chosen path so, and I will endeavour to not do it again. I want to experience the power of living without solid food, the cleansing and rejuvenating effects, and also the feeling of lightness when my stomach does not have to work hard on digesting things like beans. I want to experience it for myself and I want to be able to write about it here.

So here is to the new beginnings, I am rising a mug of fruit tea to you.

The view from my window this afternoon...

2009-03-06T18:09:00.005Z

Well, I thought you might be getting bored by all those green artsy fartsy smoothie pictures, so here is a golden sunset one for a change. The view from our terrace warms my heart as it could almost not be in a huge city... One can dream, and also hope that dreams will one day become true, and I will be living by the sea. But for now, I am loving my house, and the almost spring like sunsetty mood that London created for me earlier today.

It's Friday

2009-03-06T07:32:00.010Z

Well, something is definitely going on in my body because I woke up feeling not so great today. Quite yucky, actually. My back and the joints in my hands were achey and stiff, my head felt like it was cracked, and my mouth felt bleagh! I got up early just so I could clean it with my beloved tongue scraper.

Have you heard about this amazing thing yet? If you haven't and you do not have one, don't worry. There is no need to go hunting for one and spending money (unless you want to, of course) as you can also use a large spoon. Basically, before or after you have brushed your teeth, just stick your tongue out of your mouth - and look at it. If it is reddish pink with nothing on it, I would venture a guess that you are either a small baby, or you have been eating and drinking and living extremely healthily for some time. For the rest of us, there is a layer of usually white-ish substance that tends to cover the surface of the tongue. Mmmmm? - I know! Grab your tongue scraper or the spoon, and just draw it alongside either side of the tongue from the back forward. Rinse mouth, rinse tool, done. It takes literally about 5 seconds to do, and you are going to feel sooooo much betteeeer!!! You might also accidentally become more kissable! And don't get scared if you do this in the evening and you had a green smoothie for dinner beforehand - of course it is going to be GREEN!

Breakfast:
6 small pears
large handful of baby spinach
water

I realised this morning that I no longer feel self conscious about drinking vividly green coloured stuff in front of Cooked Husband, and he seems to have accepted the situation as well. Needless to say, he is not exactly asking me to make him one! (Not yet, anyway...)

Lunch:
2 apples
2 bananas
2 large handfuls of baby spinach
water

This was a yummy smelling smoothie, very creamy and light and clean and fluffy. I enjoyed it tremendously. It is a sad fact that I did succumbed to the lure of a cappuccino, when I met my friend Louise for a girlfriends' catch up, accompanied by blueberry muffin. Well, I am guilty as charged, but at least I enjoyed it. I am having a green savoury smoothie dinner and lots of water, so I am already back on track. I am very positive that these 'slips' will happen less and less in the near future, because once I start seeing the effects of this fresh green diet my motivation will soar! I am also telling everyone I know that Juice Feast starts tomorrow, so hopefully they will all be supportive.

Dinner:
1 cucumber
2 tomatoes
small bunch of watercress
small bunch of parsley
only a little bit of water
to make soupy consistency
finely chopped red onion for decoration

Strange Thursday

2009-03-05T18:34:00.005Z

I have noticed this morning that ever since Monday I have been waking up at the precisely same time of 6.39 am. This is rather early for me, as I am a very lazy person, I love the warmness of the bed and the softness of the duvet, and I like the relative safety of sleep. No decisions to make; that is, until it is time to wake up - then the decision has to be made - is it time yet? This sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I bet I am not the only one who feels that way. We linger and close our eyes for a few more minutes, just revelling in the small universe that we in are at that moment. My guess is that people who jump out of the bed in the morning with a grin on their faces and joy in their heart are people who are, in one way or another, living their dream. I am not sure it is me. Not just yet. Don't get me wrong, I like my job, at least enough to make it there when I am supposed to and not get fired. But it is hard for me to believe that I am in this word to BE an (at times un-appreciated) administrative assistant in a recruitment office. It just won't do. And so this is what my day was filled with today - pondering about my destiny, dream job, responsibilities and fulfilled heart.

Breakfast:

1/4 galia melon

3 soaked dates

spinach

watercress

rocket

1 T coconut butter

water

This was delicious, almost too sweet, so I poured it back into the blender and added some more spinach and water. It was yummy though, and I had enough to eat for lunch as well. I am working from home today, and so I was able to create a lovely drink mid morning.

Elevenses:

3 juiced tangerines

1 t powdered Nature's Living Superfood greens

served in a martini glass.

Quite classy, actually, but a bit powdery. I am not big on the powdered greens, but I know they have their place in the raw and healthy food world.

Lunch

as breakfast

I have given hard time to one of my friends this afternoon for not having enough greens in his life. I guess, as I have been thinking all day about the possibility of becoming a raw food coach, I was in the mood to tell someone how to improve their health, and he got the handful. I hope he is still my friend... the email is very silent. All this mental trauma (the thinking about my future) had me craving some comfort and so I gave in and made a (non-green) Cinnamon Maple Pecan Milk from Raw Food Real World by Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis. This is my all time favourite raw food book and I have actually made several of the recipes, rather then just looking at the pretty pictures while chewing on a carrot.

I have really enjoyed the luxurious creaminess of that drink, but now I feel all yucky, bloated and ... well, very very full. I had just looked in the book and it clearly says the recipe will serve up to 4 people. Well, greedy me, I had over half of it!

I am sipping hot mint tea as I write this and I as it is already after 7 pm I am not sure I will be in any mood for dinner, which is a shame because I was going to experiment with a savory green smoothie today. But there is always tomorrow - the last green smoothie day before the Juice fiest officially starts on Saturday!

Parsley Wednesday

2009-03-04T18:20:00.009Z

I am happy to share with you that the headaches are gone, not troubling me any more. So that is not too bad - considering how sensitive I am to caffeine and how much of the stuff I had last week.

I started the day with a pint of water with a teaspoonful of MSM (nutritional form of sulphur) and juice of half a lemon. MSM is an amazing substance, that should be naturally present in our food as it falls down as part of rainwater. The reality is that most of our food is grown in greenhouses or ripened in special warehouses, and so we are lacking this important substance. Generally MSM is celebrated for its ability to make our bodies more flexible and it is often enjoyed by yogis. I am honestly not sure if it can work within 2 days, but my yoga practice this morning felt different, very bouncy in a way, as if my body developed a few secret springs! So hail the MSM. It is also great for healthy radiant skin and shiny hair, as it is a sulphuric substance, and our hair, nails and skin love sulphur. The other quality of MSM is that it allows our cells to absorb all the other important chemicals we get in our food - vitamins, minerals and things we yet do not have a name for. This is great news, because most of us are defficient in many nutrients, and so is generally the food we eat, which is often grown in depleted exhausted soil. To make every little bit count is a bonus. At the same time it allows toxin and waste products to leave our cells, which keeps us healthy. As the time goes by I will be upping the amount up to a heaped tablespoon every morning.Lemon juice is added mostly to help us to adjust to the taste, although lemon juice first thing in the morning has many benefits on its own - I will enlighten you about this another time.

Breakfast:

6 small pears

1 small banana

bunch of parsley
water

Work was a little bit intense today and so I have to confess to eating a huge square or raw chocolate as a result of this behaviour today. Well, as a result, I spent the rest of the afternoon feeling rather shaky, as two days on green smoothies made my body a liiiitle bit sensitive to this kind of stimulation. But I enjoyed it, and it helped me keep my cool. Note to self - start practicing some protective meditation, as there will be strictly no solids next week. It was my last chocolate in the office drawer as well, which will help next time. The hand might reach, but it will not find...

Lunch:

3/4 galia melon

small bunch of parsley

small bunch of spinach

water

I ate some of my lunch at work, but as I was stresses and also shaky from that chocolate, I brought most of it back home and ate is as a soup with some hemp seeds on the top. I am not sure if I am 'allowed' nuts and seeds, but I am taking it easy, being nice to myself. Jut as important as getting enough greens!

Dinner:

leftovers from previous two meals

in a lovely glass bowl

sprinkled with a few blueberries

I have had a really nice day, despite stress at work. I am feeling good, and was told I look good, too, but this will be courtesy of the still lasting alpine tan and freckles; even green smoothies cannot work that fast! Or can they?

Juicy yoga Tuesday

2009-03-03T17:29:00.013Z

Recently my Tuesday mornings became filled with yoga and juicy breakfast, both shared with my wonderful friend Denise, aka the Green Queen. I was going to introduce her to Kundalini yoga today, but as my dvd player went on strike, we found a couple of podcasts on line and went with that. It feels SOOOOO good to stretch and expand with yoga in the morning, I cannot imagine starting a day without it. Afterwards, we were both ready for some sustenance:

Breakfast

1 large mango

2 small bananas

three handfuls of baby spinach

water

Deeeliciouuuss!

Lunch was at Denise's, after a brief visit to a Celia Hammond Charity Clinic. I am a real cat person and for years now I have been without one. I decided it was time to take an action to amend this situation. I have brought the subject up with Cooked Husband and was very surprised as, without even letting me go through all my reasonings and arguments why it is the best possible idea ever and we almost have a moral obligation to adopt a needy cat, he happily agreed. So hopefully we are about to become cat owners once again. As the rain is slashing against the windows, I can't imagine a better thing then to have a purring creature sitting on my lap as I type. Of course the reality will be that the said cat will be walking all over my keyboard making it pretty much impossible to do anything else then to pet her, but - well, we all feel needy sometimes... and it is a small price to pay for all the pleasures attached to having a feline friend around!

Lunch

Larfe jug of fresh celery, apple carrot, cucumber and zuccini juice

1 avocado

1 or 2 bananas

= absolutely lovely creamy dreamy juicy smoothie.

I drank it while Denise's cat purred madly next to me - double heaven. Having said that, I offered some to my new furry friend, but he didn't even sniff at it! Cats, hey?

Afternoon snack

remaining smoothie from breakfast

topped with a small handful of blueberries

(in the picture above)

eaten with a spoon, purrrrr

The wind outside is howling, the windows are rambling, rain drops are hammering on the glass roof and my taste buds are calling for some warm and warming food... I chose to ignore their un-welcome request and have made a lovely mug of tea instead. My favourite of the moment is Spiced Apple with Cinnamon, which is almost Christmassy - too late for that it may be, but who says that Christmas only happens once a year in this house? (In fact, it always happens twice!)

Dinner

6 ripe pears

bunch of corriander

sprinkling of hemp seeds

Green smoothie Monday

2009-03-02T16:42:00.014Z

Green smoothies, for those who do not yet know, are a super-powerhouses of nutrition made very yummy. They are also very simple to make. The only thing you need is a blender, the stronger the better, and you are ready to go. Take your favourite fruit, add a handful or more of any green leaves, splash of water to your liking, and blend blend blend. Mixing greens, which often taste bitter, with ripe and sweet fruit makes them much more palatable which allows us to consume much more of them then if we had to chew our way through handful upon handful. Blending them also breaks the tough structure of the leaves, making them a bit easier to digest. Sergei Boutenko from The Raw Family does with an enviable charm much better job at teaching you about this wonder-food in his short video.

I started the day with a pint of water with teaspoonful of MSM and juice of half a lemon, followed by a short yoga session to stretch and open my body to allow it to b r e a t h e .

Breakfast
1/2 galia melon
+huge handful of baby spinach
with a splash of water
= about a pint of yummy fresh potion

My colleague at work can't stand watching people drink smoothies or juices, and so out of courtesy to her I waited for her lunch break to have my lunch smoothie, as she is then out of the office (I only work part time so do not get a break, poor me). I managed to drink two huge mugs of fruit tea to stop feeling hungry and by one o'clock I was ready to tuck into this:

Lunch
1 large banana
5 small pears
lots and lots of baby spinach
+enough water to make 1 liter
= very sweet and filling concoction

Started feeling a bit spaced out and headachey in the afternoon and had a rather complex conversation with my inner self about having, or not having a latte to make my head feel better. (Whatever excuse for an addict, right?) At the end I promised myself a cup of tea once I got home instead. I figure I will have to get through the coffee withdrawal migraines sooner or later anyway. I do have to confess to being weak though and taking a couple of painkillers and a handful of pecans, as I started feeling a bit too ill. Lesson learned? God knows!

Snack:
1 large mango
very full handful of flat leaf parsley
large glass of water
= a tropical treat served in a tall wine glass

Just served dinner to Cooked Husband and had a huge mental fight with myself, this time about licking the spoon from his mashed potatoes. It is a bit weird serving food you didn't taste, but I won, and now am feeling very smug about it. Every little victory counts!

No dinner for me, just a large mug of mint and fennel tea.

First words

2009-03-01T17:04:00.017Z

So...

A few hours ago I landed back in UK after spending a week skiing in the French Alps. I was supposed to work on the first blog post while there, but instead I spent all days outside, gliding down beautiful white hills, grinning madly because the sun was shining and I felt happy and exhilarated and free. I figured there was enough time for blogging when I got back to polluted London where I am more then happy to hide at home with a green smoothie at hand.

As for this blog and it's name... My experience with raw food in the past year was often anything but graceful. I had two or three a-few-weeks-at-a time-long experiences on purely raw vegan food and I felt AMAZING. At the same time, there were many bowls of rice pudding and starchy pasta followed by wondering why, but WHY!? have I left the 'raw' wonder behind yet again. There were headaches and stomach upsets and moments of clarity and moments of despair (mostly with myself). But I tried not to make myself suffer more then is necessary, especially in a world where others do it for us often enough. And so I forgave myself, and moved on - which really means I allowed myself to eat cooked and starchy and diary laden food for long enough to remember how bad it makes me feel, and then slowly gathered the strenght to start eating raw again (at least for a while). All this back and forth started to make me feel like it is the stuff in the fridge that holds the rains of my life rather then myself.

I followed several raw food blogs last year including a few raw foodists who decided to join the Global Juice Feast to detoxify and cleanse and regenerate their bodies by eliminating all solid food and living only on fresh vegetable and fruit juices for up to 92 days. Although Juice Feasting sounded rather amazing, I was not sure I would ever be motivated enough to try living just on juice, even if there was to be A LOT of it. Somehow, one year later, it is exactly what I am about to do. I will start tomorrow morning with a few days of green smoothies, and come next Sunday I will be there with my jug and fat straw in hand, ready to rock and roll (and juice for England).

So this is the plan. My commitment to myself is to Juice Feast for at least 40 days, as I still do not feel ready to go all the way to 92 days. As a kundalini yoga practitioner I believe in the power of number 40 - it takes 40 days to break an old habit and begin to create a new one. I see this experience as a chance to reconnect with myself, to relearn to listen to my body, to what it wants, what it needs. It is a new start. I very much hope that by the end of the juicing experience I will no longer be a slave to every (taste)whim of my mind.

Of course all this will be made more interesting (and harder) by the fact that my husband will still need to be fed, and I think I did mention that he is no raw foodist! But I really do feel READY for this challenge. I feel like I need it, and I am looking forward to it.

I will keep a food - or rather a drink - log, and I will share with you what is going on during this time - as honestly as I can. Join me if you like, read about the challenges and successes and crazy stuff if you like, and tell me what you think - just use the comment link.