Day 3 of 100% raw attempt February 4, 2008

Today went quite well. Not swimmingly but well.

I woke up at 8 then slept again til 10.30 and literally DRAGGED myself out of bed. I had a shower, looked in the mirror and thought, “I look awful”. This is me.
I think I look awful but I’m happy to post random photos of my face because as I don’t have a lot of weight to lose, or really anyway, I’m hoping that my raw transformation will be apparent in my face.

Actually, just looking at my face, you can’t really see all the imperfections that I have which I would like to see disappear. Firstly, blackheads. Secondly, bags under eyes. Thirdly, scars from the chicken pox which some brute gave me last year (just after my birthday…the injustice!)

Anyway, so yes, this is me and my turban. We are very happy together.

Today, I had…

well, let me say that I started the day by drinking lots of water and doing voice training. So that was a great start and a good wake me up too. For breakfast though, I had a small 1/2 coffee/1/2 coffee substitute with macadamia milk. I caved. I just really wanted coffee!  But it was just a small coffee.

Then the rest of the day I was all raw and had:

Lots of orange juice

Green smoothie with banana, spinach and orange juice

Some raw brownie

Muesli of buckwheat sprouts, raisins, dates, almonds, sunflower seeds and macadamia milk.

Also, I created some amazing raw tuna sushi. Here is is:

The recipe, which I posted on goneraw (raw tuna sushi) is:

Ingredients

• 1 cup almonds
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tablespoon sunflower oil
• 1 dash cayenne (or as much as you want)
• 1½ tablespoons lemon juice (or juice of 1/2 a lemon)
• ⅛ cup nori shreds, soak in the lemon juice
• 1 slice large sheet of nori
• 1 cup buckwheat sprouts, soaked, sprouted and allowed to dry
• ¾ cup cauliflower
• 1 teaspoon nama shoyu (i used tamari)
• ⅛ cup dates (i used about 3 dates)
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 2 pinches salt
• 6 slices avocado (about 1/4 avo)
• ⅛ cup rocket salad/rucola/arugula

Preparation

So, for the ‘rice’, you need to first blitz in the food processor or blender the buckwheat sprouts. Make sure they’re dry so that it turns into a chunky buckwheat flour. Put that into a bowl. Then do the same with the cauliflower. Put that in the same bowl. Now put the dates, vinegar, salt and soy sauce in the blender and try to blend it to a paste. Mine stayed quite chunky but it’s fine. Add the date mixture to the buckwheat and cauliflower and mix well. It should be quite sticky. If not, add more vinegar or soy. That’s your rice.

Now for the tuna. This recipe is basically the tuna recipe created by James the raw (http://www.goneraw.com/recipes/1908-tuna-salad-sandwiches-) You blitz up the almonds till they’re quite fine. Then add the garlic (chopped), the nori shreds with lemon juice, salt, cayenne, and…that’s it. Whizz it all up. You will probably have to use a spatula to get it all in and mixed around. So, that’s the tuna.

Now, assembly. I’ve never rolled sushi b4 so this is just how I did it and can surely be done better. I first put the rice onto the large nori sheet and spread it over the whole sheet, not right to the edges though. Then layer on the rocket salad and also the avocado. Add a dash of soy sauce also. Then sblodge on the tuna. Roll up the nori roll and dab the edges with soy sauce so that it sticks. Turn the big fat nori roll so that the edges are underneath and slice ‘bite size’ chunks with a sharp knife. I say bite size in quotes because they don’t fit into MY mouth. It may be better to halve the nori sheet and spread the rice and tuna only half as thick. But, I’m just telling y’all how I did it. Anyway, they come out looking like California Rolls.

I had no ginger nor wasabi, but when I get some, this recipe will be PERFECT. Oh, and chopsticks.

So, that’s day 3 over with.

I feel good, with quite a lot of energy. My hands are still dry, as are my eyes, and I feel like I could sleep for 16 hours. Maybe I will.

Day 2 is completed…I officially am wonderful, but then, we already knew that. February 4, 2008

Yes, I’m smug.

Today as ALMOST 100% raw, save for a moment in which I caved HARD and had a decaffeinated coffee with soy milk. It was just half a glass of coffee! Not much, I swear. I had it with the orange and chocolate brownies which I had made the day before and the whole thing combined to form a very delicious breakfast.

Now I’m in a good mood, but the whole day was quite not-so-wonderful-as-yesterday. I felt terribly fragile and just…not very happy really, but without good reason. I was unmotivated to eat, period, but nonetheless, had:

Breakfast

• Glass of orange juice
• Glass of decaf coffee and soy milk
• A few pieces of orange + chocolate brownie

Late lunch/early dinner

Cauliflower ‘rice’ with tomato and avocado sauce  which was made thus:

I blitzed up some cauliflower until it got quite cous-cous like. I then blended 1/4 avocado, 4 sun dried tomatoes, 7 cherry tomatoes, a dash of sunflower oil, salt and cayenne pepper…oh, and some macadamias which gave it a good consistency. (Picture is down the bottom of the page….)

Snacks throughout the day

• Green smoothie of spinach, pear, banana and coconut oil
• Orange juice
• Brownie (new batch, with more honey and no orange peel…finished all the oranges with my juices, must buy more)
• Nori rolls with buckwheat sprouts mushed up with avocado…very satisfied

Right now, I’m feeling quite good, though I have yet to GO today, so I’m feeling a little backed up. I just love how open we raw fooders are.

What else? I don’t think I’ve lost any weight but don’t quite know yet. I more or less weighed 55kg b4 starting so in a week I will weigh myself and see what happens. The skin on my hands is VERY dry. Other than that, I’m normal. Same ‘ole Ciara.

That’s all for now.

My Raw Rice and Avocado Sauce

Cauliflower ‘rice’ with tomato and avocado sauce  which was made thus:

I blitzed up some cauliflower until it got quite cous-cous like. I then blended 1/4 avocado, 4 sun dried tomatoes, 7 cherry tomatoes, a dash of sunflower oil, salt and cayenne pepper…oh, and some macadamias which gave it a good consistency.

Day 1 100% raw food attempt February 2, 2008

I am demoting all my previous days. What used to be day 1 is now day minus 5. Because I went rather off-track.

Now I’m back on track and am aiming for 100%. I’m taking part in the 30 day raw food challenge at raw food talk, which is my favourite raw food forum, which is really helping me.

And today is my first day sin caffeine! No tea, no coffee! And I feel fantastic.

Today I have eaten:

Orange juice
Orange + chocolate brownies
Bananas 4/5
Green smoothie
Nori rolls with guacamole and cauliflower rice
Lemon water

And soon…
Zucchini ratatoille

I will add photos and recipes tomorrow but the important thing to state right now is that I feel great!
Relaxed, energetic, happy, and SO proud that I have committed to this. I didn’t have any cooked food (not intentionally anyway). Oh! And I now have raw cacao which makes everything SOOO much better. God, I love chocolate.

Day minus 1…sigh…. January 30, 2008

Well today was not a particularly raw day. Ok, it was like 80% which isn’t so bad.

I started the day with a cup of tea with soya milk and then…it went slightly downhill (but then back up…) because I had a glass (not a bowl) of special K (the cereal) with soya milk. Aside from that I was raw, more or less. I had a green smoothie later on in the day then feasted on a lovely dinner/lunch which I had prepared which consisted of:

Dehydrated flax seeds

A salad of smoked salmon, avocado, tomatoes and iceberg lettuce

Buckwheat seeds with a ‘pesto’ made from walnuts, lemon juice, salt and rucola/rocket leaves

All was delicious. I had a tea afterwards.

I will post the recipe and pictures of the flax seeds presently…

So, this was my lunch. It was SO tasty. FYI, I’m not against eating raw fish, but yes, I am against eating dairy.

So, the flax seeds were an adaption of a recipe from Karen Knowler (the original recipe is here: Raw Flax crackers)

The way I did them was quite improvised as I didn’t have all the ingredients which Karen has in her recipe.

I used:

• 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
• 1/2 cup red pepper
• 1 cup ground flax seed (1/2 golden, 1/2 brown)
• 1 cup whole flax seeds (1/2 golden, 1/2 brown)
• salt + cayenne pepper
• juice of 1/4 lemon
• 1/2 cup water

I blended everything together except the flax seeds and then mixed the flax seeds into the wet mixture. I spread the mixture onto a plastic tray which had been coated with olive oil and cut lines into the mixture to divide the crackers. These all went into my oven at the lowest possible temperature. My oven goes down to 50 degrees centigrade so when I set it just below that and keep the oven open, the temp. varies between 30 degrees and 45 degrees, I constantly measure with a thermometer.

I left them in there for about 6 hours until the top parts of the crackers were dry and then turned them over which was very easy to do. They turned out really REALLY well, so I was very happy with that.
Later on in the day Paolo and I went to meet a friend and I had two glasses of white wine. When we got back I had a flax cracker with peanut butter and raw honey…SO good…and then even later, 3 flax crackers with avocado and salt, and 1 flax cracker again with peanut butter. That’s a lot of flax crackers so it will be interesting to see how my body reacts to that tomorrow. In fact, I ate a LOT of fat generally today…3/4 avocado, walnuts, olive oil, flax seeds, peanut butter…

So, as you can see, today was about 80% raw, which isn’t great as I am aiming for 100%.

In other news, I went to a health food shop nearby and discovered that I can buy raw tahini there. Which is wonderful as I just LOVE and could live on (not really) tahini, honey and banana, which is a nice all raw treat.

For educational purposes…here’s Karen’s video instruction on how to do the flax crackers…

Day minus 2…hear me ROARR! January 28, 2008

Or rather hear my stomach roar…I’m hungry but don’t want anything to eat. Nothing appeals to me. I could eat a big bowl of porridge…the cooked kind, but I don’t have any and I wouldn’t anyway.

I’ve just had a black tea with soya milk so far. Feeling very nonchalant and my eyes are very dry, as though I had been on the computer for 10 hours straight. Well, not THAT bad. I didn’t do any bentonite consuming today so far, nor oil pulling, but I haven’t eaten so I could still do it. Meh (shrugging shoulders)…

o: It’s now today, not yesterday. But I’ll finish up yesterday then go onto today, i.e. day 5. I have to make sure to update everyday…it’s easier. Anyway.

So, after I wrote yesterday, I took a shower and oil-pulled with coconut oil. I then went for a walk and picked up some freshly squeezed orange juice on the way. When I came back I ate some buckwheat sprouts and bleh… I just didn’t feel like eating any raw food at all. I did ok, with the cravings though I did munch on some cooked food. I had a coffee and also, later in the evening (we had been to see live Irish music, when we got back I was so hungry) I had buckwheat sprouts, raisins, a small amount of frosties (I don’t even particularly like frosties!) with soya milk. So, well, I didn’t do badly, but nor did I do great.

On the feelings side of things, I actually felt really good yesterday, i.e. day 4. I had lots of energy and was literally bouncing around to songs and when we walked to listen to the music, when we stopped to wait for the lights to change in order to cross the road I was literally jumping around like a fool.

Also, my attitude right now towards to the raw food diet is that I want to be 100% raw. But I also want it to come naturally. Obviously I will have to make an effort but I don’t want to be like “ok ciara, you HAVE to eat all raw food, and if you don’t you fail!”. I want to accept that I’ll fall off the raw wagon but that I will get back on and each time I do fall, I will learn something. So, I’m not bothered by my lack of total rawness yesterday. Plus, I’ve been about 60-80% raw for the past month in which time I’ve stopped eating dairy products, so that’s good in itself. And I still haven’t eaten dairy products.

That’s all. No photos today.

Day minus 3 – My 100% raw food attempted journey…yessss…. January 27, 2008

Day 3 has just begun.

I have had my bentonite drink with 2/3 tablespoon of bentonite powder, lots of flax seeds and lots of water.

Now I’m drinking a black tea with soya milk. It’s so not raw, not in the least, but I’m seeing it as the fact that black tea is far less addictive for me and if I drink it I don’t get such strong cravings for coffee. So…we’ll see how that goes. I still really want coffee, it has to be said…god, I love coffee!

I’m gonna finish my tea, then drink the smoothie that was left over from yesterday.

o: ( <<< this sign designates the passing of time…in this case, one day, it is now day 4 but I’ll finish writing about day 3)

So, what else happened yesterday? Oh yes, after my smoothie, I went for a run. I had lots of energy and felt positively bouncy. It only turned out to be a 20 min or so run but it was a hill run so that’s not so bad. After running I went to a small shop (it was Sunday so most places were closed) and managed to buy ingredients necessary for raw tacos, which were: an iceberg lettuce, an avocado and also ingredients for a juice.

When I got home, I showered, then made a zucchini and apple juice for Paolo and I, and started making the raw tacos. It went down like this:

I blitzed about a cup of walnuts with a 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt and cumin seeds. That’s the meat part. (REALLY tasty.) Then I blitzed one tomato, put it in a bowl and added 2 chopped tomatoes, dried cilantro, salt and pepper and olive oil. That’s the salsa. (Needs work.) Then I blitzed up some red pepper, tomatoes, salt, pepper and 1/4 of an avocado. That’s the cheese sauce. (Also needs work, I had made it before but I guess the ratios were different because it tasted MUCH more like cheese sauce that other time.) Then I made some guacamole, i.e. mushed avocado with salt and pepper. (Always tasty.)

We then ate the tacos in the ’shells’ of iceberg lettuce leaves. The meal was nice, all in all, but it definitely needs refining. Sobre todo the iceberg lettuce just makes it all too watery and messy. Here’s the photo I took:

Gnammy.

Molto gnammy.

Umm…so, yes, that went down well. Paolo liked it too, though he did also have bread with his. I could have eaten much more of the meat and guacamole but I hadn’t made enough.

So, I was still relatively hungry after that but just had a black tea with soya milk which more or less did the job.

A few hours later, I had a green smoothie with under ripe bananas and mandarins. Not great, but not bad.

Before bed I had a salad with iceberg lettuce and the left-over salsa.

Onto feelings…

I felt really quite normal today, neither good nor bad. Towards the end of the evening I went into a slight state of dazedness; when we went out for drinks with friends (I didn’t have anything, nor did I want anything) I really found myself without anything to say. You know when you want to be conversational but you’ve just got nothing to say? Yeah, that was me. So, I was the dull girl. Woo hoo!

Another thing worth mentioning is that I did not GO today. You know…go…I didn’t. So, that’s fun. Could be the bentonite clay but I am trying to drink lots of water!

Sigh…

Here’s me drinking my smoothie from the evening…

Glug glug…

Day minus 4 – Raw Food Blog Journal Thingy January 27, 2008

Well, day 2 didn’t start swimmingly because obviously having not had coffee yesterday I really, REALLY wanted coffee today. But, my friend Doosie got my out of the house and away from temptation (though then back into temptation later on) to meet as she was leaving the city. So, I had a big smoothie, again, quite a dull one as I had no fruit other than bananas, so my smoothie was another spinach, banana, coconut oil and water smoothie. Very dense and quite difficult to drink. Ooh, before the smoothie, I did some oil-pulling with sunflower oil (the kind you cook with) and afterwards I had a spoon of bentonite clay with water and flax seeds (is supposed to clear toxins out of the body).

I was to meet her at 3 but she was late! Oh my! It’s highly forgivable as I am currently senza mobile phone so she couldn’t contact me. Anyhoo, we went for a wee walk to a bar where she had a ‘clara’ (a mix of beer and seven up that’s very popular here in Barcelona) and I had nothing but the usage of the bar’s bathrooms because I had…things to do there. I had such a sore tummy! Could be all the raw food yesterday or it could have been the bentonite I had when I woke up. Dunno, but I was definitely in pain. After my bathroom visit the pain more or less went away.

Didn’t feel great today, really still quite spacey (my fuzzy head is one of the reasons I am trying the raw food diet…check out the ‘About Me’ page) which I guess is something that won’t go away so quickly. I did feel slightly fresher in the head today, less cobwebs, or so I think, I may be imagining it. Anyway, REALLY wanted coffee still at this stage.

Then, Doosie and I walked to the train station (I had a banana along the way which was really tasty) which is about a 30 min walk and bought her ticket to Nice. Then we went to a cafe where she FORCED me to have a cortado (an espresso with a shot of milk). I couldn’t be rude, so I drank it. Oh my, I really wanted it, I can’t lie, it was GOOOD.

Then walked back to the town centre and parted ways until we meet next in either Australia or London, or elsewhere, who knows? (Hi Doos!) Saw a funny sign on the walk from the train station; it was a big sign on a building, i.e. the building’s name, which was ‘Mutal Cyclops’…what can that even MEAN???

When I got home I had some freshly squeezed orange juice and this meal:

Buckwheat and Tomato Sauce

* Leaves of iceberg lettuce
* Rocket leaves (ruccola)
* Buckwheat sprouts
* Tomato sauce made of one tomato, 1/5 red pepper, walnuts, olive oil, salt, cayenne pepper and basil
* More olive oil drizzled on top.

It was tasty but I couldn’t finish it.

I then had another small amount of coffee with soya milk and a small piece of white chocolate.

Later on, I made another green smoothie which I just couldn’t finish. I made it cos I wanted something but really had nothing else to eat. Tomorrow I will buy more fruit and avocados, etc…

So, day 2 is more or less over. I’m not too happy that I had coffee but nor do I feel down on myself. I did well today and I really do believe that the coffee will fall away by itself. I may try to drink black tea every day, instead of quitting caffeine cold turkey. We shall see.

Day minus 5 – Raw Food Journal January 25, 2008

Well, this is my first post, and we shall name it Day 1. I’m highly imaginative, as you can see, with my naming, but hey, at least this way we’re all clear on the order of things.

This post is actually being written at the end of day 2 cos I never quite got around to starting my blog yesterday.

Here’s me:

(This is a rather decent photo of me but I have another one which was taken recently which is dreadful. I don’t want to put it up yet but in about a month I will post it beside a present photo so there’s a before and after scenario going on.)

Ok, so, day 1 went down as so…

Woke up, as you do.

Then…oh yeah, I had a singing class at 1 and woke up at 11 which didn’t give me long to get ready and out the door. This was good because it meant that I wasn’t sitting around wanting coffee or the likes. Actually, for Day 1 of a raw food diet, having a singing class was good because coffee is one of my main addictions (though really I’d only ever drink 1 per day) but I never drink coffee before practicing singing because it makes me sing awfully. So, instead of coffee or the like, I started my day with some oil-pulling (a practice of swishing oil around in your mouth for 15-20 mins; it gets rid of toxins and apparently also whitens teeth, something I need dearly…read more about it here: Oil Pulling) followed by juice of 8 apples with some ginger. This I drank way too quickly but it was very good nonetheless.

After my class I had a freshly squeezed orange juice in a bar.

Then, I cycled first to the city centre of Barcelona (a 2o min cycle), walked around a bit there, a-hunting for a-somethin’, then cycled home which is slightly uphill for another 20 mins. When I got home I ate a salad of: rocket leaves, buckwheat sprouts, tomato, avocado, red pepper and olive oil. (Sorry, didn’t take any photos of food on day 1)

Later on I had a green smoothie which was quite dull and consisted just of banana, coconut oil, spinach and water. Just before bed I had a salad with rocket, spinach, tomato, red pepper and guacamole, a.k.a. avocado mush.

What else can I say about day 1? I didn’t feel great, didn’t feel to bad though. I went to bed with a slight headache and a sore throat, could it be detox already? I wasn’t in a great mood but I really didn’t wake up in a good mood, was quite in another world, and also, I discovered I had almost no money in the bank, which always rocks, so wasn’t in a good mood because of that.

Slept like a baby, drool ‘an all.