Day 4---Staying the coarse!

Today begins my day 4 of raw food.  I have finally found my combo for breakfast that I think will become my morning regular.  1 cup blueberries, 1 large banana and 10 strawberries with 1/2 cup of raw/unsweetened coconut milk, 1 teaspoon ground untoasted golden flax seed, blended until it's a beautiful shade of purple.  YUM!  Yep, it's my new favorite smoothie!  I think today is starting out good.

On day 2 I visited this wonderful fruit vegetable market on Warren in Canton.  I think it was called Randazzo's or something like that.  The selection was HUGE!  There were so many different things I had wanted to try but couldn't find in my regular grocery store.  Was very fun!  I struggled all day though.  I felt constantly hungry.  I think (and I could be wrong) I ate 6 bananas as snacks that day, and half as many apples.  For dinner I had a huge salad with mixed greens, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and radishes, it was so bland!  So, I tried to invent some dressings.  I did one that was a blend of raw honey and ginger with red pepper flakes diluted with a little water to thin it out, it was good!  Yay, my salad was now edible.  Whew.  I was just gonna choke it down.  I'm a dressings girl, what can I say.

Yesterday was rough.  I felt queasy all day.  Then for lunch, I did not help myself out.  I had salsa (homemade, raw --thank you Chris!) with artichoke chips.  The artichoke wasn't entirely raw because we had to steam it a bit for it to be edible.  Yep, I can safely say that I do not care for artichoke chips (leaves).  It smelled weird and eventually I just had to stop eating it.  So, I switched to romaine lettuce and made salsa boats.  Those were yummy.  I don't think it helped that for breakfast I tried this recipe for "Oat Meal" that I found on a raw food site.  Yep, not eating that again.  I had to soak flax seed overnight, then next morning you rinse them and add those along with 2 apples and a banana to your blender with a 1/2 cup of water and 2 teaspoons of Cinnamon.  Izabella loved it, I let her have as much as she wanted and shared some with Will too.  It's one of those things that are good at first and then the texture starts to creep in on ya.

So here I am, day 4, sipping on my lovely smoothie.  I'm pondering the idea of having my first "green shake" for lunch.  That would consist of carrot, kale or swiss chard, and tomato.  Hmmm.

Mission: Two week detox

This weekend, I was able to chit chat a bit with a good friend of mine about a "diet" he had started.  His meals for the past 11 days consisted of only raw fruits, veggies and almonds.  I know, I know...where's the meat!?  Or more importantly...Where's the chocolate!!??  


When I first heard of this diet a couple weeks back, I was convinced that there was no way I could do it.  For one, I love meat.  Seriously.  Secondly, I'm not all that crazy about eating fruit unless it's a raspberry.  So, I logged it into the deep recesses of my mind and pretty much forgot about it.  My recesses must not be very deep because when I saw him it was the first thing that pop'd into my head.  I asked him how it was going (as I ate chips with this amazing buffalo dip that was super cheesy, rich and a tad spicy).  It's his answer that convinced me that I needed to give this a try.  He went on to tell me of how he had more energy, he felt better overall and how he could think more clearly.  More than all that he told me that his emotional responses to the ones he loved most was drastically improved.  Things didn't immediately cause irritation or anger, his blood pressure wouldn't spike up during things that before would be stressful.  He was able to calmly talk through things and handle them much better than he had before emotional and health wise.  To me, that was what made it worth it!  


I'll be the first to admit, sometimes I can become easily irritated with those closest to me.  I tend to raise my voice (drives me crazy when I do that!  It's like I've become some kind of beast.)  So, I'm gonna give it a try.  It's going to take lots of self-control on my part, mostly because I'll still be preparing meals for my family.  So all the yummy things will be right there.  I'm hoping to have time to blog about this as I go through these next two weeks, almost like being accountable to whoever reads this.  But mainly i'll be depending on God's grace being renewed every morning and the strength that only He can give me.  


The tangerine pear smoothie I had for lunch today was really yummy!  I'm looking forward to exploring all the smoothie possibilities.