RAW

Well, sorry again for the late post. Even though I usually type most of my blog posts up the night before, I'm not able to get online right now and add last-minute comments before I activate the post from work like I used to. I'm not sure if this is just temporary or not, but for a while, at least, it looks like I'm gonna' be on a little bit different schedule with my posts showing up either a lot earlier or a lot later than they used to. At any rate, I'll still post every day, just don't be surprised if the timing is really weird.

For my lunch today, I just packed a simple raw lunch containing some fruits & vegetables, as well as a few nuts. I've got some raw Broccoli & Carrots and some fresh Strawberries for "dessert". I packed a few raw Almonds to munch on as a snack at some point in the day too. I just love raw nuts, especially Cashews & Almonds, although I did discover in some reading last night that the Raw Foodists are up in arms because there will soon be a requirement that ALL Almonds be pasteurized. So even though they might be labeled as "raw", and will still sprout, they are all going to be exposed to high temperatures. Not such a good thing if your a raw foodist and want all of your food to have all of its enzymes intact. Sounds like there will definitely be some fighting over this.

And as far as the raw food thing goes, I've eaten 100% raw for two days now, and I (once again) realize that I'm probably being unreasonable in thinking that I can eat like this for an extended period of time. If you've been reading the blog for very long, then you probably remember previous times where I've gotten stirred up and claimed I wanted to go 100% raw, but reality soon sets in when I realize how much work is going to be involved if I want to have any kind of variety, and how much it actually costs to eat that way all of the time.

So even though I was on here yesterday claiming I thought I could go 100% raw, after a second day of it, I realize that it's probably really not for me. Just eating raw veggies (and nothing else) gets old fast (in 2 days actually). And I would like to create all of those fancy raw dishes but I really don't have the time to do all of that sprouting & dehydrating and stuff. Just keeping this blog going takes up enough of my time. Plus, I enjoy cooking too much. I mean, if I went raw then I couldn't work on perfecting that veggie burger recipe!

So I confess, I've failed at trying to go 100% raw again. Of course, I did do it for a couple of days, and I did get a nice POP! in my weight loss this week from it. But it will be interesting to see if that holds out for the rest of the week as I go back to regular old vegan food. Of course, I'm still trying to lose weight so I'm not going to stuff myself or anything, and I'll still be working in plenty of raw fruits & veggies to go with my cooked food.

So, this ended up being strange. I posted some cooked food yesterday and told everybody that I didn't even eat it because I was eating raw from that point on, and then today I've posted some raw food and told everybody that I want to start cooking again. Sorry for being so indecisive. But anyway, nothing bad happened. I just ate raw for a couple of days and found out that it's not as easy to stick with as I thought.

I've still got my Buckwheat Groats sprouting in the kitchen. I do want to finish sprouting those and make some raw vegan "bread" items from them just to see what that tastes like, so don't be surprised if you see a funny looking bun pop up in the blog in a few days.

So, sorry for flip-flopping so much. I AM intrigued by the raw lifestyle, but I guess I just kept forgetting how much I was already enjoying the way that I was eating. I like cooking too much, and I've got a trip to Savannah coming up here in another week or so and I want to document all of the eating out that I do down there here in the blog. So this was definitely not a good time for me to try something like going 100% raw. Maybe someday. And if nothing else, perhaps I'll just start making one of those fancy raw dishes from time to time and featuring it in the lunchbox.

Speaking of fancy raw recipes, let me tell you really quickly about something that I tried last night. This was the recipe that got me so excited about going raw yesterday. It's for raw Banana Ice-Cream. I couldn't believe the recipe was that simple and could actually resemble real ice-cream. BOY! Was I wrong...

If you want to do something really cool sometime, just freeze 2-3 peeled bananas. I sliced mine and layed them out on a pan so they would freeze faster. After they are good and frozen, then just put them in a food processor and process them with the S-blade. They will look really gritty at first, and you'll probably have to keep taking the lid off and using the spatula to mash it back down in there where the blades can get hold of it. In fact, I finally added like 1 Tbsp. of water to help soften it up a little bit more until the magic finally happened. There will finally come a point where the whole thing just creams up and becomes the EXACT texture of ice cream, and I'm talking about the full-fat kind. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Just from frozen bananas. It tastes like bananas, of course, but my immediate urge was to sweeten it up some more by maybe adding some frozen Strawberries to the mix, or something like that.

So I guess, if nothing else, my little two day venture into raw food found me a nice recipe for a really healthy snack that seems like it's really naughty. So it's not a total bust. Well, I lost a little extra weight too.

So thanks for coming by my schizophrenic blog today. The lunchbox and I will be back tomorrow with some more delicious cooked vegan food, and maybe some raw too. I want some vegan pizza right now so bad I can't stand it, so maybe tomorrow. See you then!