Green Pool

When I get my own apartment (hopefully with a balcony), I would love to do something like this:



Smaller scale, of course, since I wouldn't have a pool or need chickens and fish, but still an awesome idea.

Blog 2.0

Welcome to my new and improved blog! While I will still be delving into raw food adventures and culinary exploits, I also want to focus on re-dedicating myself to veganism and spreading vegan goodness. I have really been concentrating on the Jain/Buddhist principle of ahimsa lately, and I think one of the best ways to "do no harm" is through dietary choices. Ultimately, I think 100% raw would be great, and I very much respect raw foodists.

Right now, though, I want to focus on fresh, unprocessed, clean vegan food. I have no doubt that vegan food in general is a great way to respect life and the planet. While I may be using energy to cook some of the food I eat, I'm not partaking in an industry that pollutes, wastes water and ultimately disregards and disrespects the lives of sentient beings.

Anyway, that's where I am right now. I'm so grateful for all the support I've gotten from everyone, and I invite everyone who stumbles across my blog to stay for the ride.

Here are some of the principles I want to follow from now on. Whether or not I'll be 100% successful, time will tell. I hope that just introducing some of these things into my life will have noticeable positive effects:

• Daily meditation. Right now, I'm really researching Theraveda meditation and its benefits, and I'm thoroughly impressed. I figure that by incorporating this practice into my mornings, at the very least I'll start out the day on a positive note.
• No processed foods. If I want tofu, I'll make it myself. If I want almond milk, I'll make it myself. I want to avoid chemical additives as much as possible. Lately, I've been slipping back into my awful Diet Coke habit, and I want to get away from that and as many chemicals I can.
• Daily reading. My students are encouraged to read eight books a quarter. If they can do it, so can I.
• Yoga. I've always wanted to start a yoga practice. If taking a shot means setting my alarm an hour earlier, I'm willing.

 Henceforth, today will be known as the day freshness was born. Here we go!

Mechanically Separated Chicken

Thank you, Snopes.com, for reminding me why I don't eat processed chicken.

Mechanically Separated Chicken

Freakin' nasty.

Dietary enlightenment, take two.

What have I been doing the last two weeks? Struggling. A lot. I contemplated just abandoning this journal and starting over, but then I decided that the journey to dietary enlightenment is just as important as actually getting there, so here we go... again.

I did get two days at almost 100% raw. However, let's just say certain digestive functions indicated that I wasn't actually digesting anything. I don't know if I went for too much fiber, or too many greens, or what, but something wasn't working out. I'm not sure how much was detox and how much was what I chose to eat, but I fell off the raw food path, hard. I mean, we're talking not even resembling vegan food hard. And the sad thing is, one of the classes I'm teaching is even doing a unit on environmentalism. Several of my kids chose to write about how diet impacts the environment, and I definitely fell off the low-impact eating train.

Now that confession time is over, here's the new plan. I'm going to keep up the green smoothies for breakfast and hopefully lunch, too. I think something about blending everything up helped my stomach out. For later meals, I'm going for vegan, with a twist -- everything (almost) needs to be made from scratch. For example, if I want tofu, I make it myself. Almond milk? Homemade. The only exception I've come up with is pasta, because any homemade whole wheat pasta experiments I've attempted in the past have fallen apart. So, I told myself that whole wheat pasta with NO ADDITIVES is okay. That means whole ingredients only, and no egg. So, that's the plan and I'm sticking to it.

Another thing I want to do is re-name this blog. I haven't really thought of a good name, so if any of my wonderful readers have suggestions, suggest away! I have some other ideas about life in general that I'm going to post about later, but I did want to let everyone know I hadn't dropped off the face of the Internet.

Okay, so that's that! I'm off to take advantage of some bookstore teacher discounts. Adios!

T-minus three days.

Eek, getting close! This week, I weighed myself to get my grand starting weight (not pretty). I'm going to attempt to do 90% raw until Friday, or at least as raw as I can, with a few cooked whole grains interspersed.

That said, I decided that I'm going to actually post my starting weight. While embarassing for me, my reasoning is that I won't weigh that much for long, and I might even inspire myself with how well raw food works to make my weight healthier. Plus, I figure that if I do lose weight, I can more easily show how great raw food is if I keep close tabs on my starting weight, and my weight from week to week.

So, there you go. You'll be able to find my weight ticker by clicking on the navigation bar at the top of my blog. That will take you to my special ticker page, which I'm about to create.

Tomorrow morning, the plan is to get up at 5 in the morning and at least walk... possibly run. I haven't been able to sleep past 5, so I figured I might as well get up and do something productive. I guess it's all that increased energy I keep hearing about!

This will be my first official raw-as-possible day. Instead of thinking about all the foods I'm not eating, I'm trying to be thankful for discovering a pathway to health and vitality. I'm also trying the meditation thing. Honestly, I never thought I would be the "meditating type," but now, I look forward to having some time to center myself each day. If all else fails, this raw food experiment will at least have taught me that much!

T-minus five days.

Dear Diary,

Today, I made it through the Chick-fil-a drivethru without ordering ANYTHING for myself. I just kept thinking about the nice smoothie I was going to make when I got home, and listening to Jason Mraz to drown out the hypnotic crinkling of Chick-fil-a paper bags, and I made it!

Oh, and I'm going to try raw spinach in the next smoothie I make. This will be monumental, diary, because as you know, I hate raw spinach. Hopefully, though, if I blend in enough fruit, I'll be able to get all the wonderful spinach vegetables without the taste. I also got some blueberries (yum!) strawberries, black pears, and more kale. I'm pumped. For breakfast this morning, I didn't get my kale and I could seriously feel it later. It's good stuff.

My energy hasn't been that great today, but I think that's mostly to do with the fact that it's that special womanly time of month, if you know what I mean, diary. I have a little headache behind my eyes, and my ovaries feel like they're going to explode, but I'll survive, just like I do every month. One exciting thing, though! While my jeans are normally too tight to be comfortable because of water weight, now they fit just right! That must mean I'm doing something correctly! Yay!

I'm debating whether to post my actual weight on here when I weigh myself on Monday (that will be a week of being about 60% raw), but I figure I should probably just suck it up. Maybe I'll be glad I did, if I do end up losing the weight I need to. (I mean, WHEN! WHEN I lose the weight I need to! Thinking positively, here, diary!) Plus, I think there are actually people reading this, so maybe I'll inspire someone to join me on this insanity.

That's another thing, diary. I've had a lot of people ask me how the raw food thing is going because they've been keeping up with this blog. I'm seriously motivated to keep going now, and extremely grateful that I have a little audience. Thanks to them, diary, I think I'll be able to avoid the merciless siren call of the drivethru from now on.

Oh hey, diary, should I have been capitalizing your name through this entire post? Oh well, hopefully the grammar police will be kind.

Next up, Case 39. My dad and I are ringing in the month with a scary movie.

Talk to you soon, diary.

Erin

T-minus six days.

I've been a bad little blogger! I have a lot to report, but I'm going to make another post this evening (hopefully) about all of that. Meanwhile, my half-aunt (is that right?) Anne Marie suggested I post a donations button, since I'm trying to save for several raw food appliances, the first of which being a Vitamix Blender.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I know most of the people who read this blog are either students, teachers, or student teachers, so I sincerely hope that none of you feel pressured to donate at all! Even if you don't fall into one of the above categories, please, please, please don't feel obligated to give me money. Seriously, that's not my intention to pressure anyone.

However, if you happen to have an extra few bucks (or cents, or Euros, or Yen, you know, whatever) lying around, I would sincerely appreciate any contribution you can make. I promise that every penny will go toward a juicer (hopefully used, if I can find one... save the environment, and all that). And, anyone who donates (really, anyone in general!) is welcome to some fresh, raw juice at any time at all. I would be more than happy to share the fruits (har har) of this endeavor.

So anyway, please feel free to send a few pennies this way, and if not, again, that's completely okay! Thank you all SO much!

T-minus nine days.

Entering the single digits now! I'm still going strong. Earlier today, I was definitely thinking something along the lines of, "is this what detox feels like?" Took asprin this morning and felt better for a while, but I got another killer headache this afternoon. Luckily it took care of itself after about an hour. I was definitely excited -- generally when I get killer headaches, they don't go away until I take strong prescription painkillers and take a nap. It's a very rare occurrence that they go away completely by themselves.

Another thing I've noticed is that I don't feel disgusting after I eat anymore. I used to get hot flashes, headaches and generally feel like I needed to lie down. None of that anymore! I did eat white rice for dinner (I know, bad!) and I could definitely tell. Yuck. I can literally feel it sitting in my stomach, and I'm already hungry after dinner.

The raw pancakes I made yesterday weren't that great. I think my tastebuds are just used to refined foods. Well, that, and I was missing a couple ingredients. I want to try and track down some coconut oil this weekend, since I've found a lot of recipes that call for it. Also, possible stupid question warning -- where in the grocery store might I find dates? Are they with the fruit, or what? And what is date paste? Can I make that myself?

Last night, I did make a rather unfortunate discovery. When I finally bit the proverbial bullet and hopped on the scale, I found out I weigh sixteen pounds more than I thought I did. Granted, I usually avoid weighing myself like the black death, but still, I would have thought my jeans would be tight or something. Oh well. All the more reason to get to 100% raw!

Tomorrow for lunch, I'm having a green smoothie with kale, peaches, raspberries and bananas. I'm excited to try making smoothies with Vitamineral Green. My wonderful dad ordered some for me (thankfully, because I definitely can't afford it!) and I hope it gets here quickly. I've heard wonderful things about it, so hopefully it lives up to the hype. At the very least, it'll give the blender a break. It overheats every time I put in the kale leaves, no matter how much I rip them up. Eventually I get them pureed, but it takes a lot of down time and waiting around for the motor to cool down. In my very extravagant dreams (you know, the ones where I marry a foreign dignitary and win the lottery), I would love to have a Vitamix Blender. Maybe someday!

T-minus ten days.

Well, so far, so good! I didn't get any dreaded headaches that some people described with detox, although I've only been at this for a day, and I am eating cooked dinners. I think it's kind of awesome that I haven't gotten a headache especially since, while on the SAD, I got headaches almost every day. It seemed like I had some extra energy today, too -- enough to go and get dinner supplies at Kroger even after a full day at school. Usually I just come home, plop on the couch and, more often than not, fall asleep. I'm not tired enough for a nap at this point, which is happy.

One thing that I did notice was peeing like Seabiscuit every ten minutes, it seemed like. I don't know if that's because I was chugging water to avoid detox symptoms (yeah, it was probably that, actually). But seriously. I'm not exaggerating when I say I was peeing twice per fifty-minute class period. Hopefully any artificial soda sweeteners hanging out in my digestive tract are long gone now! I'm excited for the point at which they're out of my body all together, but I've gotta take it slow.

For dinner, I'm sticking with cooked vegan. We're having lentil sloppy joes with whole wheat buns. I was going to make kale chips, but I couldn't find sesame seeds or coconut oil. If anyone wants to enlighten me as to where either of these things might be located in your standard grocery store, it would be much appreciated. I also made some batter for raw flax seed pancakes for lunch tomorrow. I'm going to have them with raw honey -- not technically vegan, but still raw, at least. It'll have to do until I can pick up some agave nectar.

Oh, and I decided to continue the countdown even though I jumped the gun -- there are still ten days until I aim to be 100% raw. Keep the comments comin', guys! I'm so grateful so many of you are reading this.

T-minus eleven days.

Change of plans. I'm starting tomorrow. Well, sort of. I plan on eating a raw breakfast and lunch and a cooked, vegan dinner. I figure that way, my body won't go into total shock. That's the theory, anyway.

So to prepare for the halfway switch, I dragged my mom to Sprouts Farmers Market, where I picked up a ton of fruit and even a couple of veggies (gotta start slow). I'm all set to make several salads and lots of breakfast green smoothies. Despite the nerves, I'm feeling really good about this. Basically, I ended up grabbing whatever fruit looked good and ended up with, among other things, a giant, 6lb papaya, mangoes, strawberries, raspberries, bananas and several apple varieties. I got some raw almonds and sunflower seeds, too.

Anyway, I'm off to figure out which green smoothie I'm going to try tomorrow! I hope the food processor is ready for this.

(still) T-minus twelve days.

Researching this raw food diet has gotten me thinking a lot about respecting the planet through our dietary choices. The Standard American Diet (aptly abbreviated SAD), is responsible for more environmental damage than all of our transportation emissions combined. Meat eating is one of the worst things we can do for the planet. I say "we" because right now, I am a meat eater. Granted, that will change in a few days, but right now I'm just as responsible (or irresponsible, as the case may be) as anyone else.

Through all this research, I've come to associate eating meat with a vast disrespect for our fellow sentient beings and the planet. How arrogant are we that we know we can have a perfectly, vibrantly healthy plant-based diet and choose to pollute the planet and cause pain to beings that have, in essence, the same neurological system and pathways as we do? It's ridiculous that there are people offering to attend my vegan, raw food-induced funeral right now when it's their dietary choices that are doing the most harm.

I thought I was changing my diet selfishly, and just for me. Really, though, this has turned out to be a foray into how much our human choices affect not just other humans, but the rest of the world. It's amazing how much we can change through the choices we make with our fork.

I think the Symphony of Science provides a good soundtrack for meditation on the interconnectedness of the planet.

T-minus twelve days.

If someone would like to check my math on the countdown, feel free. Maybe I should have hired a resident mathematician for this experiment.

I got a lot accomplished in my quest for freshness. First of all, I bought a small dorm fridge for my room. It's nothing special, but I think that will help me stay focused on my raw food diet. If I open the fridge and see all these things I'm not supposed to be eating, I would get discouraged. Therefore, my logic is that if I vow to only open my own personal fridge with lots of fresh, beautiful produce, that's all I'll see and all I'll want to eat. I never did very well in Psychology classes, but it's a shot. I think I mentioned before that I'll always know what I have on hand, too, so that's another plus.

I also got a TON of literature last night and this morning that I've been thumbing through. I'll take a picture of the books I've acquired so far later on. It was really amazing to sit in the raw food section of the bookstore (granted, small, but growing). All of the books are so gorgeously designed. Maybe it's the five year old in me that loves vibrant, colorful pictures in books, but the raw food collection was definitely not lacking in pretty photos.

One thing that I'm a little nervous about is detox. I keep hearing that our body stores toxins in fat cells, and I've got more than my fair share of those. The reason I want to start on October 8 is a) that's a Friday. In theory, by the time detox hits that night, I'll be at home and able to isolate myself from high school students, and b) I'll have that Monday off for Fair Day, which gives me another day to get back on my feet. I'm hoping that after four days, detox symptoms will at least start to recede and I won't accidentally take a migraine out on any of my students.

Aside from detox, I'm also concerned about how this new diet is going to jive with my parents. We're living in the same house and they're paying for my food while I finish up my MAT. Since they're out of town this weekend, I sent out what I thought was a well thought out, mature-ish e-mail about what I am doing and why, as well as what would change in my life as a result of my diet change. Based on previous vegan experience, I kind of tend to go apeshit when I don't get respect for my diet choices, and I promise to try really, really hard to avoid that should the worst happen. Seriously, though. Really, REALLY hard.

So that's what's been going on so far. Like I said, I'll add pictures of recent acquisitions later. First, though, I need to make a dent in my pile o' laundry.

T-minus thirteen days.

Well, I'm starting to get excited! My dad ordered a bunch of books for me, and I'm about to go spend the evening at Barnes & Noble so I can start reading right away. I've also been perusing the internet, and man, if what people say about going raw is true, maybe I should start sooner! Here are a couple videos I ran across that I particularly enjoyed:

(The amount of space these videos take to embed is ridiculous, so I've replaced them with links.)

Raw Food Weight Loss
Go Raw Now Trailer

There are many more on YouTube if you're interested, but those were a couple of my favorites. Rocker guy in the first clip is a little intense for me, but what he says makes sense.

Anyway, I'm starting a list of things to get before the Final Transformation, so to speak. So far, I only have two things, but I haven't even figured out basic food I'll need to keep around.

1. Dorm-sized fridge, so I'll know exactly what I buy and have left, and not have to worry about other family members getting into my stuff.
2. Big ass knife, as recommended by Mr. Jason Mraz.

Thirteen days!

T-minus fourteen days.

Like most things I do in life, the raw food experiment was a spur of the moment decision. My career choice, several piercings and my first cat were also choices I made on the fly, and they've all worked out very well. Hopefully raw food will follow along those lines.

Right now, I'm working on obtaining literature to help me transition into the land of fruits and veggies. My first internet search on raw food dieting led to horror stories of detox, and, being a diet soda addict and relative wimp, I would very much like to avoid any unnecessary pain and suffering.

Here we go. If you aren't seeing frequent entries, please call and bug me to post. I want to document this addition to a long history of spur of the moment decisions for future generations of the planning-impaired.

So, my therapist says I need to set goals (oh, how I wish I was kidding!) so here's my first goal: begin a totally raw food diet on October 8. That will give me enough time to get some reading under my belt, find recipes that I can put together, acquire a small fridge and stock it with essentials.

T-minus fourteen days. Fig, anyone?