The best thing I have ever made

http://www.choosingraw.com/raw-spinach-burgers/comment-page-1/#comment-88208

When I was in Hong Kong, I ate out at a raw restaurant.  I was disappointed, for being just veggies it sure was a heavy meal.  I ordered a raw vegan burger and fries with high expectations.  I could only eat about half of it, and I had the sinking feeling I had unknowingly just ate 2000 calories.  At least that's the criticism I hear about raw food restaurants- disregard for calories in favor of making raw food exciting for non-raw people.  Today I was thinking it would be nice if I could revamp that meal.  I was already dehydrating stuff, so I started hunting for recipes.  I found the website above, it's totally new to me, but I have now bookmarked it as a favorite.  The food isn't all raw, so I thought I would share.

So the raw burger recipe is pretty simple, pulp from the juicer, spices and nuts, pulverized in the food processor and then dehydrated for 8 hours or so.  The recipe calls for spinach pulp, but I didn't have that.  I juiced parsley, cilantro and carrots and then used walnuts instead of sunflower seeds.  I had to cut the recipe in half because I didn't have enough pulp, and now I'm wishing I'd doubled it. 

For now I'm dehydrating by putting my oven on the lowest temperature (170) which is too hot.  I'm looking forward to buying a proper dehydrator in the January sales, even with the sales it's going to be an investment.  I'm also toying with the idea of buying a used video camera and starting my own youtube channel.  I knew that the channels I watched were somehow making money with every view, but I didn't really know how or how much.  The blog The Simple Dollar recently spelled it all out and the math was pretty surprising.  I'm tempted to give it a shot.  I'm thinking of posting videos of my smoothies, juices and raw food stuff and make a bit of extra banana money on the side.  I think I'd need to clear it with 'the work' first.

Just like I'm 10 years old

Hi!

I just called in sick, it sucks, but you all benefit from an unscheduled blog post. 

So on the "diet" front, I stuck pretty close to the 80/10/10 low fat fruitarian way of eating since vacation.  (Side note- while on vacation I hit my realistic weight goal.  My unrealistic weight goal remains not even in sight).  At first I struggled with hummus withdrawal, but once over the hump, I found most days I was actually eating around 5% fat when I could have been eating roughly double that.  But then I also have had a few days totally off plan.  I had a couple of days when I ate a lot of rice because the fruits and veg in town were awful or too expensive.  Since then my stomach has been really upset.  I figured it was sushi sickness- the sickness my sisters experience immediately after eating rice. I thought if I went back to my usual diet, it would go away, but it didn't.  It was also about this time that I ate fruit at my staff breakfast party.  It dawned on me this morning, that maybe my real issue is that I got glutened from that breakfast.   I haven't been glutened in more than a year, I had a good run.

This morning I was getting out of my pj's and into some comfy I'm-staying-home sick-clothes.  I recently went through all my clothes and got rid of a bunch of clothes that were too big.  I also found some new clothes that I had never worn or had forgotten about.  Today I'm wearing a Camp Olave t-shirt that I got when I was a Brownie.  I think I was 9 or 10 years old when I got it.  I always liked it and now I'm really glad I kept it.  I didn't ever think I'd be able to wear it again though!  Thrilling. 

Note to self, figure out how to undo the "take a crappy picture" setting on your iPhone.

Getting down to it.

Tickets are booked! In roughly 40 days I'll be on vacation.  About a year ago when I went raw, I thought it would be nice if I could be in shape enough to wear a bikini.  Don't we all think that?  I'm a long way from that being a reality, but it is still the dream.  I've noticed that I've hit a plateau, maybe because I haven't been working out as often.  Or maybe it was the cheezies.  So now it's the big push to the finish line. I had thought about doing a juice feast (not eating, just drinking a ton of fresh juices) but the thought of cleaning my juicer multiple times a day, and peeing 20 times a day just isn't speaking to me.  If I'm not pumped at the start, I won't last long.  So instead I'm going to try a different version of the raw vegan diet, maybe it'll give my body the jolt it needs.

I'm going to try following a fruitarian diet for a while and see how it goes.  The name is deceiving, fruitarians eat fruits, veg, nuts and seeds, just like other raw vegans. It's just the proportions that make the difference.  The goal is to get 80% of calories from carbs (fruit) 10% from protein and 10% from fat.  I have been doing a modified version of this for a while now.  But today I calculated it. I've been doing 60/20/20.  To compare, a standard American diet is 50% carbs, 35% fat and 15 % protein.  It doesn't sound like I'm that far off, and by American standards I eat a low fat diet.  But upping my carbs by 20% and reducing fat and protein by 10% is really hard!  100 calories of nuts is like 1/4 cup, and 100 calories of watermelon is almost 3 cups.  Eat more to lose more?  Let's see. My morning coffee with soy milk, takes up 1/4 of my fat intake for the day.  My coffee!  16 grams of fat a day is the goal. Can I do it? Who knows, I didn't think I could make the switch to vegan, and it turned out to be a breeze.

If you are worried, it's too little fat, don't worry.  My inner thighs will be able to supply my body with enough fat for a long while :-) Plus in 40 days I'll be falling off the bandwagon.