Day 10:Headaches, Cookies, and A Raw Food Dinner Party

Killer headaches! Why do I have killer headaches. Last night. The night before. Tonight! Glarg! is this detox, should I take something, am I not getting enough water. What! What! What! What do you want body, what can I do to make you happy!

whew! glad thats out. No but seriously my head has been hurting a lot lately and I am not sure what's to blame. I wanna say it's just detoxing but my neck is tight as well....hmmm... must do research.

Something else I've noticed is that I get full on less for longer. I eat less food lately. I don't think about food as much either, which is weird because I love food so much.

Oh but I started work on the Cookie Recipe again. We finally finished off the old batch so I can start again. One thing I will give it to the old batch is that those were the best energy bar ever! I would get sound pepped up on cocoa and coming down was no big deal at all. Some mornings I would eat them as a snack when I knew I had a big day ahead. This next batch will be much milder and the batter taste pretty darn good. Recipe soon follow.

I am pretty excited about next week (aside from the Christmas factor) my boyfriend and I are going to a raw food dinner party. Just us and another couple and it should be pretty fun and I will be sure to take pictures of the grub. I will def. be testing my new cookie batch on them. yum!

Day 9: 99.9%, Green Smoothies, and Sashimi

Something tells me that 99.9% is a better description of my raw diet at the moment. I'm sure there are details that I am not catching but you know what, this is not about perfection. This is about self improvement. For the last week my boyfriend and I have been getting up early and hitting the gym and we feel great. We've been reforming our over sleeping ways and investing time into our physical self. It's amazing how everything has gotten better after we made this choice. We'll actually we've made several choice. We've cut back on drinking (as in not drinking), we've been eating raw (rawer in his case), working out everyday, Getting up at 7 am/ 8 am, keeping the house clean, and listening to this book "The Psychology of Success" and between all of that our live are way better. In seven days our lives are noticeably better. 

Green smoothies have a big part of the last seven days. I read an article about Raw Model on the Huffington Post and in it he talks about green smoothies. They are the perfect breakfast and an awesome way to get super gummy greens in at the start of the day.

I've been really craving fish for the last few days so I decided to get some sashimi today for lunch. I've never really like sashimi until really recently and I must say it was quite good. Which brings me to and interesting idea of not labeling ourselves. For me, I feel that not labeling myself a raw food vegan it so much healthier for my sense of metal well being. It's like declaring your on a diet, it's like your doomed from the start. All that focus on what you can't have, what you can have. I feel better when I just consistently make the choice to be excited by raw foods, to eat raw foods, to research raw food. Just a little food for thought.

Day 5: The Worm, Bok Choy, and Checking In

It's been a reflective day. I've heard a rumor that often when you fast and switch to 100% raw food you go through a reflective period. That has been this week for me. An me, I've been reflecting on the past year and a half of my life. This last year has been quite year but I feel like I have just come out on the other side, beat, tired, worn out and ready for change and inspiration. That's where I am right now... the worm has turned and I want my life to change.

Thai Noodles

Tonight was a blah night as far as dinner is concerned. We tried two recipes from "The Raw Food Detox Diet" by Natalia Rose and they were Okay, but not great. Not re-dos in my book. The first was the Thai Noodles which required me to get the meat out of two young coconuts. I really fun task if you ask me. It was the first time I had used the meat for anything and using it as noodle was great. The sauce for the recipe was really lacking in flavor though. We also made a Carrot Ginger Dressing that was kind of blah as well. I don't know how soon I will be trying any of her recipes again honestly, but hey a least I discovered how perfect the bok choy at Whole Foods is.

Also I'd like to report that since September your dear blogger has shrunk. An inch and a half to be exact. And I've gone from a size 10 (US) to a size 6. My skin had a major eruption last night that I was able to calm with some Bentonite mud. Looking at how far I've come and how far I've got to go I am tinkering on plans. I'm thinking that next week my meals are going to get more simple. Green smoothies and simple combinations. Save my gourmet cooking for when cravings pop up, and of which I've had none by the way. I will be interested to see how things are in a week or two with the more consistent gym visits and healthy eating.

Day 3: Restaurant Salad, Raw Spaghetti and Life Long Dreams

Day 3! Brilliant! They recently changed my work schedule and now I stay there an hour later and this has caused several things in my life to change.

1.) I got up at 7:30 AM this morning and went to the gym which was great. It was hard at first, I am not a morning person IN ANY WAY! Seriously I could sleep for twelve hours easy if there were no reason to get up. I'm also a night owl. I love the night hours, they suit me, I get tons done work wise. I always start this blog after the sun has gone down. But this morning I drug myself out of bed, drank a cup of yerba matte and headed out to the gym. I love the gym in the morning. There's less people there, I don't feel rushed, and I walk out feeling like I have the whole day ahead of me. I love that feeling, that whole anything could happen feeling. I did a full hour of cardio and if I could keep that up I know it could be life changing for me.

2.) I forgot my snacks today. boo. But one of the wonderful cooks with red rubber shoes and checkered pants at my work made a lot of adjustments to my salad to help it fit with in my diet.

"Um, what kind of substitution can I make to the Gouda Salad."

"What are you taking off?"

"The gouda."

"Oh, well, we can do a different kind of cheese."

"No cheese."

"Okay, how about fish."

"No fish."

"Okay. What can you eat?"

"What do you mean what can I eat? Loads of stuff, just not cooked stuff."

"Nothing cooked?"

"Yeah, so long as it's not cooked I can have it."

long pause. blank stare.

"Okay, I'm guessing the dressing isn't gonna work either."

I love these kinds of conversations. The moment where people's minds kinds click around what I am telling them is a some what entertaining for me. You'd think out here in California it'd be a little more normal, but really I guess it's still not the norm.  But I guess it's better than being a total freak out in Texas.  The cooks at my restaurant are really wonderful though. They are always willing and already have a plan for our Vegetarian and Vegan guest and they are always open to when I bring food in for them to try.

At any rate things are going well.

Tonight for dinner is Spaghetti. I know it seems like I make a lot of labour intensive stuff but really I don't spend that much time in the kitchen, I tend to bounce in and out of the kitchen between tasks. Really I bounce around the whole house changing my task every so often.  Okay. Spaghetti. Go.

Spaghetti Marinara

Okay this one is a little weird but I had a lot of  Pizza Chip paste left over so I decided to see how it would turn out in Marinara Sauce and it's pretty great. 

Marinara Sauce

1 Large Tomato or 3 Small Tomato chopped

1 1/2 of the Pizza Chip paste

Handful of Fresh Basil Leaves

1/2 a Lemon juiced

1/2 sun dried tomatoes (soaked until soft)

2 tsp Agave Nectar

1/4 a Small Onion

Salt to Taste

The secret to making this sauce is blending order. Put the fresh tomatoes in the food processor first and blend until completely pulverized. Next add the Pizza Chip paste (by paste I mean that it has not been made into chips yet in the dehydrator) and blend again. Next add the sun dried tomatoes and blend and then add the rest of the ingredients and blend. I taste as I go so that I can adjust the flavor as I blend. Sometimes you need a little more sweetness and sometimes you gotta add some more oregano because the pizza chip better wasn't strong enough that batch. But I like the pizza chip batter as a base, the sunflower seeds, flax and sesame seeds really make the sauce hearty and filling (perfect when you are making grub for hungry boys). I also put the sauce in a shallow dish and put it in the dehydrator for a few minutes to get it a little warm when it's cold out side. 

Noodles

1-2 Zucchini

You can remove the  skin of the zucchini if you want to but I always leave it on cause there is so much good stuff in that emerald coat. Using a spiral cutter or a mandolin cut the zucchini on the smallest setting into angle hair paste size strips. Pile on a plate and cover is sauce. 

On the emotional side of the day, I feel unproductive. I haven't made a single to do list this week( I am a to-do lister by nature) and I feel fussy. Like I am not accomplishing anything. I get into my mind that I want to do all these things and then *poof* there went the day. What the hell is that, aside from an evil time fairy. I know the sun going down a 5 PM is really messing with me. I love the winter but this shortened day stuff does not help a busy bee like me. I feel like I have this pent up snake twisted inside my chest where my heart should be when I look at the clock and do the mental count down to bedtime. I wonder if this feeling has more to do with my whole life and feeling like I am not doing enough. "what else could I be doing, am I missing something, is there some crucial step I'm not taking" is the mental ticker tape that reels through my brain every night. Is this normal... most likely. Something tells me that this might just be the back lash of the last year where just surviving was my goal and my dreams kind of had to take a back burner. I wonder how many other people who are out there trying to just survive during this current economic roller coaster and have had to ignore their life long dreams. Life long dream. Damn, I've never really thought about those words before, I mean literally those words. For your whole life, you have had one dream and your still waiting and working for that dream... it's kind of heartbreaking when you think about it. Well better to have a dream because I have a feeling even more people spend their whole lives with out even a dream or a real purpose to life, they may not even realize that they can. So I am lucky then. I survived the last year and I have a purpose, I have a life long dream.

Day 2: "Cooking" Class, Holy Guacamole and Supportive Boyfriends

Day 2 is going pretty good. I was really strong at work today and resisted the wonderful grub that my restaurant makes and stuck with my snacks I brought. Interesting that my arms are now starting to break out again a little bit. But what's different about this break out is that I am actually happy about it. When I was fasting and I would have eczema breakouts I was always a little concerned, worried that maybe this concept of healthy eating for healthy skin was wrong. Scared that nothing would change, that I would always be itchy. But this time, this outbreak, I'm actually happy cause I know phase two of my plan is under way and I am detoxing and burning through my toxic fat.

Tonight I went to a free Raw Food "Cooking" Class hosted by Whole Foods and taught by Stacy Kesten (here website www.learnlivingfoods.com). It was great. She and her husband was really sweet and informative. They made a Fresh Cranberry Relish, Pumpkin Pie, and a very tasty Burger patty that would be killer with a lettuce, tomato, pickle, and onions. I highly suggest anyone new to raw food to pop into her class (check out the Whole Foods in West Hollywood website for more info) and ask lots of questions.

Since the Tortilla Chips were so amazing my boyfriend and I are gonna have guacamole and chips for dinner tonight (and some salad I'm sure). And since I once had a roommate who was Latino and didn't know how to make guacamole (I still think she was lying) here is a recipe.

Holy Guacamole

3 Avocados very ripe

1 Small tomato diced small

1 Garlic clove minced

2 Limes (juiced)

2 tsp Onion diced

1 bunch of cilantro diced 

sea salt to taste

Slice open the avocados and remove the pit (hang on to the pit, if you need your guac to keep a little or store in the fridge add the pit back and it will help your dip keep longer). Remove the meat of the avocado by slicing it with a knife and popping it out with a spoon. Put the meat in a bowl with 1 of the lime's juice. Mash the meat until you achieve your desired texture (I like it lumpy, if you want it smoother stick it in a blender). Add the remaining ingredients and eat! YUM! 

Speaking of dinner I also just want to take a moment and talk about how great it is to have a supportive boyfriend. He lives with me so it's a pretty big deal that he's got my back and not just rolling his eye's behind it. He's not even a vegetarian but since he and I have started dating I've notice his eating habits change. His habits were healthy before me (compared to the SAD diet) but nothing quite like raw foodism. But he says he always feels better when he eats healthier. When I told him I wanted to fast for 25 days, he asked how he could help. After watching "The Future of Food" and "Food Inc." and eating some of my dishes his interest in eating more raw food has increased. He may never fully give up meat (and well, I LOVE sashimi so I might not either) and I don't expect him to but I greatly appreciate his ongoing respect and support. Something else that's weird is that so many of our old friends see my boyfriend now and insist that he's to skinny. I mean he is a naturally slim guy but I think that so many people now have a skewed view of what a normally healthy weight is. To me he looks healthy, strong and lean. To others he looks emaciated. So weird!

Day 1: Food Inc. and Tortilla Chips

Today has been a wonderful rainy lazy day. I find myself redirecting my normal healthy choices to raw choices but other than that the first day has been going swimmingly. 

We watched Food Inc. today and if you have not seen this film yet it's a must no matter what kind of food you prefer to consume. There's been so much going on in the world and in our country I feel like we have lost sight of the food battle. The battle to more transparency with our food and producers. We are sick and we are fat because our food has made us that way, because it's cheaper to go buy a meal off the dollar menu than to buy vegetables. For more information about the film here is the website http://www.foodincmovie.com/

Right now I am making Raw Tortilla Chips. Yum yum yum! A little recipe action for those who are interested. 

Tortilla Chips

2 cups of corn kernels

1 yellow or orange bell pepper 

1/2 yellow onion

1/2 cup ground up flax seeds

2 tsp salt

1 tsp cayenne 

2 tsp lime juice

In the food processor chop up the corn, bell pepper, and onion until pulpy. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until a pasty. Spread the paste onto two Teflex sheets, making sure it's fairly even and thin (ya know, like a chip). Dehydrate for 8 hours. Flip the giant chip onto a cutting board and peel back the Teflex sheet. Using a pizza cutter or a knife cut into smaller chips of your desired shape or size (you can also us a round cookie cutter for more uniform look for special occasions). Pop the chips back into the on a waffle sheet for another 8 hours (or until crisp, out here in LA sometimes is doesn't take as long)


Alright I am gonna start putting dinner together. Tonight we are having Portabella Steaks and Mashed Jicama Cashews. It's really awesome I tell you. It comes to us from "Raw Food Real World" and my favorite little trick is to take the mushroom juice that collects in the caps on to the Mashed Jicama as gravy... sooooooo groooooood....(yes that word is "grood")

Oh! and one more thing. Bill Maher, someone I really admire for having an actual opinion, is an advocate for healthy food and I'm thinking pretty raw. He's good a good head on his shoulders about... you can't be perfect.... check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aztxTPXbWbw

Jewish Federation and 30 Days/100% Raw

I catered at the Jewish Federation Carnival today which was a ton of fun and a little bit of a curve ball. The food was all vegetarian so it wasn't to far off the path but it was cooked and a little cheese involved and pretty yummy. And now I feel a little puffy, so some cause and effect going on. But as I talked to other vegetarians and vegans I started thinking more and more about doing 30 days 100% raw. I just finished a 25 day fast two weeks ago, which was great and makes anything seem easy. I've also really loved the idea of getting up at like 6am and going to the gym and getting the work out done and out of the way. I think I would actually work out longer and not feel the anxiety of needing to get back to my work. Clearly something inside me is yearning to making a healthier life for myself. 


Okay! Lets do it! I'm going to the farmers market and grocery store tomorrow so it seems as good a time as any..... here we go folks...30 days 100% Raw.... SUPER RAW ME!

Sarma Melngailis

Don't get me wrong for what I am about to say. I think that Sarma Melngailis is awesome. I bought her first book "Raw Food: Real World" about three years ago when I first started to change my life. And although I don't always cook such complex dishes, her meals give me great ideas and a template to work with. But here's what's weird about "Living Raw Food," her most recent book...there's a picture of one of her staff smoking in it. Okay I get it, being a bartender at a restaurant, A LOT of chefs and cooks smoke but why on earth is that in a cookbook about healthy eating. I did a double take, it's just weird because I know how much work and careful selection people put into the making of cook books...so weird.

Whole Foods and Cookies

I just back from a meeting with Whole Foods today. I am currently working on producing a cooking show called "Recessionite Cooking" and lucky us! Whole Foods has agreed to sponsor our first series of shows. It's not a raw food cooking show but my chef Hannah Bennage is quite amazing and awesome at cooking wonderful healthy foods in a budget. I'll post more information on the show are things progress. My long round about point is that this coming Tuesday is a cooking class at Whole Foods for Raw Food. My director and I are going to go (we'll be having similar cooking classes in at the top of the next year with Hannah) and I will be sure to post more information about it. Apparently the Chef for the class is really great and I can't wait.

In other news...

Chocolate Chips

(learning piping is harder than it looks!)

 I am working on a Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe per the request of my boyfriend. I tried out a recipe from "Everyday Raw" by Matthew Kenny. The batter is awesome but a little to chocolaty. There are chocolate chips but you really can't tell cause it's all just the same really intense chocolate flavor. It would make awesome fudge however. I'm gonna work on the recipe a little and maybe find something better, something with better levels of flavor and I will be sure to post it on here when I figure it out.

Oh! And the pizza snack's were a total sucesse yesterday though there was an incident down in Venice involving a ziploc bag that sent Pizza Chips flying everywhere. It was tragic! There were still a few left over and it did make it easy to find the car later, just follow the Pizza Chip trail Hansel and Gretel style.

Pizza Chips and Grumpy Moods

Just got back from the gym. I think I forgot to mention the work out regimen. Well there will be one cause I am a big believer in healthy muscles and cardio vascular systems. I can be a punk though and not push myself very hard, must work on that.

On today's agenda is Pizza Chips.

Pizza Chips is an idea I am stealing from the "

Go Raw" company and their "Pizza" Flax Snacks. They are pretty good but not nearly spicy enough for me and a little to pricey as well for what they are. (sorry Go Raw, you are awesome, but I'm on a budget). Not to mention that I really

do believe in making as much of your own food as possible. That connecting we get from making our own meals and snacks is really important. You are more mindful of what you are eating and how much if you made the meal yourself. And overeating, even healthy foods, is still really hard on your body and overeating is something I struggle with because I LOVE food.

Pizza Chips

The on the go snack!

1 cup sunflower seeds (soaked 2 hours)

1/2 cup flax seeds (soaked 2 hours)

1/2 cup sesame seeds (soaked 2 hours)

1 small tomato diced

1 cup sun dried tomato (soaked 2 hours or until soft)

oregano

onion powder

basil

garlic

sea salt

water

In a Vita Mix/Magic Bullet/Blender combine the diced tomato, sun dried tomato (drained from soaking water), and gradually add a little water to the mix to help it blend and make a thick paste.

In a large bowl add all the seeds (drained from their water), the tomato paste, and the spices and mix with a big spoon (I find a rice spoon to work the best). As far as how much spice to add, it's totally up to you. I like things to be pretty intense in flavor so I keep adding to the mix and tasting it till the flavor is strong enough.

Spoon out small blobs of the mix onto Teflex sheets and flatten into small chips. Then put the sheets into the dehydrator at 105 over night. If you are short on Teflex sheets (as i am at the moment) you can wait till the chips are about halfway done and flip them over and transfer them to the waffle sheets (does that make sense) and start another batch on the Teflex.

I noticed I've been feeling a little grumpy lately. A lot I know has to so with financial concerns but I'm sure overhauling my diet and lifestyle has a bit to do with it. One of the major reason I have only cut back on coffee and booze instead of just quitting all together is to take it easy on these life changes. Re-loading all my eating habits is enough right now and it's gonna take me time to give up Mixology ( I am a bartender after all).

A Return to Writing

I have not blogged on this sucker in about a year.... maybe more. Why the absence? Life I suppose. I will say that in the last year my skin has taken a nose dive for the worse. I have psoriasis and eczema and my particular kind is cause by meat and dairy. Tragic cause I do love cheese. So my skin, my gradual weight gain plus the return of the pasta puff face has cause me to reconsider my life style again. To kick off a new season and a re-birth I am gonna post up some old information from my past. About three years ago I embarked on a 75 days juice fast with some amazing results.

So to the left is me at 170lbs (size 12-14) a vegetarian (more like a carbo-tarian) all puffed up on dairy and pasta. To the right is about three months later at about 142lbs size (size 8-6). This was beyond a shadow a shadow of a doubt the most amazing experience of my life. I drank at least gallon of vegetable and fruit juice a day plus tons of water. My skin got worse for a a bit during the fast but turned the corner somewhere near the end and was clearer than I have ever experience. Strangers would approach me and ask what my face wash regimen was because my skin was beautiful and luminous, to them I always said healthy food and dove soap. I also felt amazing when I was done. I'm sure that critics are now saying that I have probably gained the weight back but not only have I kept the weight off, I've actually gotten smaller, more muscular and leaner that is when I stay on the raw foods.

So this is where I am starting from I guess. I am going back to what works for me and I am fighting to get rid of my skin problem once and for all. The goal here being to eliminate all the toxic fat that is currently housing the skin irritants my body hates so much, re-establishing my raw food life style in a way that is practical for my go go go pace and share and collect recipes that appeal to my culinary love of food and keep me from wanting those tasty cooked options. Can it be done, can I change the course of life by just changing what on my dinner plate... lets find out... together ....