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 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.