Day 2

Yesterday went really well with my raw eating. I had:

Breakfast: Green smoothie (spinach and a mix of tropical fruit)

Lunch: big Mexican salad (mixed greens, Mexican veggie nut stuffer, salsa, and avocado)

Mid-afternoon snack: glass of milk

Dinner: Coconut cashew pudding

Mid-evening snack: Tangerine

By far the coolest moment of the day was when I was holding my little 17 month old son, Benjamin, on my lap while eating lunch and discovered that he LOVED my salad!!!! We ended up sharing it bite for bite. :-D I can't say that he's been an all raw baby, but he's definitely eaten a lot more raw food than cooked food thus far in his life.

Last night I downloaded a really great looking FREE raw food ebook. I'm excited about it and looking forward to trying some new recipes from it, including Chocolate Mint snack balls. :-) You can get it too at www.raw-pleasure.com.au.

What I found really amazing is how despite being in this exhaustion phase of early pregnancy, I got that huge rush of energy yesterday that has always come when I eat raw. I didn't even know that was possible during my first trimester. I woke up today still feeling GREAT!

Love, Dawn

New Year

We're in 2010 now and the raw bug has finally bit me again. This time I'm in my 9th week of pregnancy. I'm almost 40. I want to do all I can to nourish my body and the little one growing inside of me. At this point I don't have a specific plan in mind. Yesterday I watched a couple of videos on youtube about raw pregnancy. Last night I read some in a couple of my raw recipe books. And I decided I've had the wrong angle on this. I don't know why I have such a hard time with this. I know that raw food is better for me. I know it makes me feel awesome. I know how to make raw food dishes. I have the needed equipment for a raw kitchen, such as a VitaMix, a food processor, and an Excalibur Dehydrator. I even have a lot of the bulk ingredients for raw foods, such as a case of dates, a bin of oat groats, bags of sunflower seeds, bags of kelp noodles, etc. I think really it's more habit than anything else. It's just easier to stick with the old cooked food pattern, just adding in bits of raw here and there. I'm not making any big commitments here. I only know I want to do WAY better. Today I had:

Breakfast: Green smoothie of blueberries, spinach, and bananas

Lunch: Big salad of mixed greens with apple, walnuts, and a lemon juice/olive oil topping plus a Smoothie of blueberries and cashews

Dinner: Cashew coconut pudding

Love, Dawn

Loving Raw

It's been years now that I've known about raw eating.  I've gone through bursts of 100% raw.  I've gone through times of high raw.  I've gone through times of pitifully low raw.  During all of this time I've been overweight.  I've had health problems.  And yet I've known that the solution is raw foods.  Seems kind of nutty, doesn't it?  Well, finally I just decided that this time I'm really ready.  I'm done playing around with it.  I'm already on Day 11 of totally raw and I am absolutely loving it!  In fact, right now I'm loving it so much that I can't believe that I have struggled with this before.  That's just too neat.  I just finished eating up a totally delicious salad.  It had baby greens mixed with fresh mint from our mint bed, plus apples and walnuts topped with fresh lemon juice and olive oil and just a tiny bit of salt.  Ooh yummy!  This morning was my first time to get seriously tempted to eat something cooked.  My 10yo daughter Naomi Ruth made blueberry fritters.  Ooh did those look good!  I stuck with my quart of green smoothie instead.  :-)  I am keeping a paper journal this time, but will also share things here as I go on this journey.  I've already lost 5lb and am just thrilled about that.  Even better, though, I just FEEL so good!

Love, Dawn

Checking In

Things are going well here.  We're maintaining at about 2/3 raw overall and then have our all raw Mondays.  This seems to be working out well for our family.  We almost always have various things going in our dehydrator and the VitaMix and food processor are used and washed daily.  We had a neat experience last night.  For dinner, I fixed raw chili and then we still had our fixings from our raw tacos.  I served those things with mixed greens and oranges.  Well, before our children have been pretty picky with the mixed greens.  They especially have avoided the ones that taste more bitter.  They've been drinking green smoothies all month and between those and the rest of the raw food, their taste buds are changing.  Last night they couldn't get enough of those greens.  They were marveling over how fantastic they tasted and just kept eating more and more of them.  We ended up eating about 80% of one of those huge plastic boxes of mixed greens that Sam's sells plus the chili and leftover taco stuff PLUS 10lb of oranges.  :-)

Love, Dawn

Day 7 - New Plan

We have a new plan.  I could not handle the amount of time it was taking me in the kitchen to be 100% raw and still get done homeschooling and the running of our home.  Then there was the cost, too.  I hadn't realized that these would be such problems because when I've done raw before, it wasn't the whole family.  I've loved how I could fix food just a few days a week and have plenty of food for the whole week.  Now I have to triple or quadruple recipes just to have enough for one meal.  Benjamin wasn't doing well at all with my raw eating, either.  Here is the plan that Aaron and I came up with related to raw foods:

1.  This month Mondays will be all raw.  Next month, Mondays and Tuesdays, etc.  We'll continue with that until we're happy with our level of raw.

2.  I'll start soaking things Thursday/Friday and Sunday afternoons I will fix a bunch of raw foods for us to enjoy during the week, so that I don't need to make them then.

3.  Naomi Ruth (10) will be my kitchen assistant, helping me with all meals and snacks.  (Being in the kitchen working with me is just about her very favorite thing to do!)

4.  The non raw food I fix will be healthy natural food, not processed junk.

So what have I been eating?

Yesterday:

Green smoothie - mixed greens, mixed fruit

Apple muesli - oh wow was that delicious and so filling, too!

Leftover caesar salad with fresh zucchini, carrots, and papaya plus dates and mixed nuts

(The children had scrambled eggs instead of the caesar salad, but then all of the rest of the above.)

Milk

Tea

Cooked take-out pizza and Chinese food 

Today:

Green smoothie - mixed greens, mixed fruit

Banana cinnamon smoothie

Chocolate milkshake smoothie

Cooked hamburger soup with fresh hot whole wheat bread slathered in raw butter

Milk

Tea

Raw chips with fresh mango salsa (yummy!)

Cooked popcorn

So I've still been high raw, just not 100%.  Benjamin is doing sooooooooooo much better, too.  I think I was "toxing" him while I was detoxing.  Isn't that just awful?  He was having so much gas, though, and horrible tummy pains.  He wasn't sleeping well and was crying a lot.  Poor little guy!  Today he was back to being happy and napping great.  :-D

Love, Dawn

Day 5

Today was tougher than I had anticipated.  I was doing well this morning and early afternoon.  By mid-afternoon I was surprised to find myself thinking that I didn't want another BITE of raw food.  I was actually fighting the temptation to call Aaron and tell him to pick up pizza on the way home.  I decided to fix raw corn chowder for dinner.  I've done that before in just this situation and it has worked before.  I heated it just until barely warm on the stove and we had it with a big caesar salad for dinner.  Yummy!  I'm feeling much better again about the whole raw eating thing.

Green smoothie - mixed greens, mixed berries, bananas

Oat porridge with bananas, strawberries, milk, and butter

Leftover lunch - I went with pizza and also Asian veggie nut stuffer in Romaine leaves

Snacks - dates, mixed nuts

Corn chowder 

Caesar salad

Milk

Herbal tea - forgot to mention that one on the other days, I'm currently drinking Sleepy Time tea

Thank you for those of you who are reading and commenting.

Lynn - Thank you for all of your encouragement.  The farmer markets are all closed this time of year.  Raw is definitely easier in the summer because of the abundance of produce AND it is a lot easier to eat almost all cold foods when it's hot out!

Catherine - I'm glad that you enjoyed the recipes and that's great that you got a raw book.  I wish we could have gotten together, too.  We hadn't been there in 5 years and were able to see 19 relatives in just 5 days.  Our days were full, but wonderful.

Kristen - If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.  :-)

Love, Dawn

Day 4

I just have a minute here so this will be quick:

Oat porridge with banana, blueberries, milk, and butter

Flax crackers with apple mango chutney - sooooooooooooooooooo good, but it is giving Benjamin (my nursing baby) problems :-(

Zucchini, cucumber, and carrots with almond hummus

Pizza 

Milk

Snacks - dates, cashews, almonds, cheese

The pizza was fun.  I put out the pizza that was crust, sauce, and shredded cheese.  Then I put bowls of goodies on the table - green pepper, orange pepper, olives, red onion, and pineapple.  We all had fun making our pizzas exactly like we wanted them.  That was a real hit!

Love, Dawn