Green and Unabashed

Click here for Part I
Click here for Part II
Click here for Part III
Click here for Part IV
Click here for Part V

I’m so excited about this post I can hardly sit still. The most exciting part is at the end, but I want to detail my whole day from start to finish.

Last night I tried the goji berries again, but they still didn’t wow me. When I went to bed I put them in one of my tupperware dishes with just enough water to cover them. I figured they might taste better if they weren’t dry and shriveled. I was wrong. They aren’t really bad, just not a taste I’m keen on. I refused to let good food (aka expensive food) go to waste, so I used some of them in my smoothie with the soak water. So my breakfast smoothie was 1/2 cup goji berry water, 1/2 cup OJ, 5 strawberries, about 1/4 cup soaked goji berries, two bananas, and 1/8th of a cantaloupe. As a smoothie attitive, I LOVE goji berries.

Lunch was my usual: 1 head romaine, 1/2 lb grape tomatoes, 1 avocado, juice of half a lemon.

My snacks were one apple, and two home-made energy bars. All of my food for the day so far was made from previously-purchased ingredients, so no expenses to report until supper.

After class I went to the grocery store to pickup another head of romaine for my last salad tomorrow. It was on special this week for 99 cents, what a deal! My plan was also to pickup a bunch of parsley and some mangoes and make my favorite green smoothie, but I was hit by a wave of inspiration.

What kind of example would I be setting if I just made all my own food? Is that what all raw vegans would want to do when they’re travelling? Would they want to order nothing but salad everywhere they went? I doubt it. So I decided to take a chance and seek out something a little different; sushi.

I had walked by this cute little sushi takeout twice already when getting groceries, and both times that nagging voice came on in my head… “oh sushi would be good”, “sushi isn’t all raw, but it’s not bad for you either”, “you could have a little cooked food”. It was no good just denying the craving altogether, especially since I knew they would have fresh veggies and avocados on-hand. When I entered the restaurant, I found that it was much more than just a small takeout. Inside it was a full fledged fancy Japanese restaurant! A nice waitress immediately sprung up infront of me offering to help me to a table; I just looked at my feet and asked for a takeout menu. Finding a quiet corner and glancing over the menu, I saw that they had a huge selection of tempting Japanese foods: Tempura, soba, udon, teriyaki..mmm. My belly was yelling “Itadakimasu!” (that’s what Japanese people say before they eat, at least in the cartoons anyway).

I screwed up my courage and asked the lady behind the counter if I could order some “special” sushi. She gave me a smile and asked “what special?” I tried to keep my answer simple, something like “no rice, just a vegetarian roll with carrot, cucumber, avocado, and a little miso.” I thought I was going to suddenly hear plates crashing in the kitchen and see every head suddenly turn and gawk at me. I obviously watch too many cartoons; it didn’t happen. She repeated what I asked for to me, with emphasis on the “no rice”. I smiled and said yes, and said that I would pay whatever they thought was fair. She thought for a moment, looked over her shoulder, and said “ok, we make you a california roll with no rice, with miso, same cost as california roll”. Yipee! Oh my gosh I don’t think I had been breathing the whole time I was in the restaurant until then.

It’s easy to ask for something from a menu without cheese, or with a different dressing, but to ask for something completely original like that is very intimidating. You worry that they’re going to say no, that they’ll think you’re a freak or a prima-donna. Really; they’re just people running a business.

With my “special” hand roll being made, I also ordered the seaweed salad. I devoured my miso-veggie sushi as soon as I got to my room, and I’m still nibbling on my salad while I write this. I am happy to say that my cravings for Japanese have been satisfied, and I didn’t have to cheat on this raw-food experiment.

Here is the cost breakdown:

• California roll made “special”: $5.95
• Seaweed salad: $3.95
• Total (with tax): $11.30

Disclaimer: I know that some would argue that the seaweed in the sushi and the salad might have been cooked, but this is about me and how I do raw. I would go crazy if I worried about one ingredient, that made up 2% of an entire meal, and whether or not it was really “raw”. This is about adapting to being away from home, it is not about being a raw fanatic/nazi/cultist everywhere you go.

Click here for Part I
Click here for Part II
Click here for Part III
Click here for Part IV

Wow, here I am already on Tuesday, my second full day away from home. With just two days of healthful raw foods, exercise, fresh air, and rest I’m feeling very light and vibrant!

I just got out of my last seminar of the day, and it’s about four-thirty. I haven’t decided what I’m going to eat for supper, but here is what I’ve had so far today:

• Fruit Smoothie
• Energy bar
• Big Salad
• Apple

My fruit smoothie was almost the same one I make at home every day (click here for recipe). Instead of using frozen fruit, I used four strawberries and about 1/8th of a large cantaloupe. This is the first smoothie I’ve tried making with a hand blender, and when I started it didn’t seem like it would do the job. I had to mash the blender up and down into the fruit a lot before it finally blended smooth, but with a bit of patience it turned out just like my smoothies at home!

My salad was just romaine, grape tomatoes, avocado, and lemon juice. This might sound a bit too boring and tasteless for some people; but this is exactly how I make my salads at home so I’m not making any “sacrifices” just because I’m travelling. People with more elaborate tastes would simply need to pack thier own salad dressing, or salad dressing ingredients. I think if I were to do anything differently next time, it would be to bring my own salad dressing; I would be a lot less weary of restaurants.

I haven’t spent any money yet today, but I think I might go out for supper. I’m going to go workout first, then see how I feel. I’ll try to update this post before bed with my last meal of the day.

Update: I wasn’t terribly hungry after my workout, so I just stopped in at the Italian restaurant and got the greek salad to go (without cheese). The salad was huge; made of romaine, green peppers, olives, tomatoes, and a lemon/oil/vinegar dressing. The olives might not have been raw, but they were good!

My workout was just 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer.

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here, but staying raw vegan while travelling is not proving to be hard at all. I’m at the end of my first day and I haven’t been in a situation yet where I’ve been hungry or out of food.

Let me back up a bit and talk about the pre-planning and preparation I did for the trip. I knew that rather than trying to eat at restaurants, it would be easier for me to find a grocery store and prepare my own food. These are the items that I packed for food prep and eating:

• 2 naglene water bottles (with measurement markers)
• 1 tupperware juice container (appx 4 cup capacity)
• 1 large round tupperware (appx 4 cup capacity)
• 1 large square-ish tupperware (appx 4 cup capacity)
• 1 small/medium tupperware (appx 2 cups capacity)
• a hand blender
• a citrus juicer
• a fork
• a spoon
• a 3-inch paring knife
• a 4-inch paring knife
• straws
• a dishcloth and dish towel

I spent some of my trip money on a few food items before I left. I bought two Lara bars, and small pack of goji berries, and ingedients to make a dozen energy bars from “The Thrive Diet”. I want to track how much it cost me to stay raw while travelling, so here is the tally of what I bought:

• Lara Bar x2: $6.00
• Dates: $3.50
• 1 Mango: $2
• Dehydrated organic coconut: $2
• Macadamia Nuts: $4
• Goji Berries: $2.50
• Total: $20

All of my food prep items, and my homemade energy bars were packed in my suitcase. They only took up about 1/6 of the room in my suitcase, about the same amount of room as my shoes actually. In my carry-on bag I had my two Lara bars and goji berries.

Stay tuned for my next post in this series, where I’ll talk about staying raw while flying, and eating a restaurant meal.

This past week has been a total bummer. Do people still say bummer or am I really lame?

Last weekend we went looked at our spending and realized we were over-budget for groceries for the month of February. So my boyfriend started spewing on and on about how we can’t spend money on my “fancy” food. Good grief; I have a smoothie for breakfast, a salad for lunch, apples for snacks, and sometimes throw in a green smoothie. My ‘cooked’ suppers are beans and rice, so not expensive in the least. I do what I can to eat cheap, but I’m still the one to get blamed if we go over-budget.

Long story short: I’ve been eating crap all week. Pasta, bread, eggs, peanut butter sandwiches. I tried to stretch my greens out over the week, but I even ran out of olive oil and kale is pretty gross with nothing on it. Eating crap food put me in a bad mood, and being in a bad mood made me want to eat more crappy food. Bad spiral.

I didn’t weigh in Thursday; no way am I stepping on the scale until I turn myself around. Nice weather is right around the corner, and I’m going to have an ugly jiggly muffin-top hanging over the top of all my pants. Ugh.

I can’t seem to shake this feeling of despair and self-loathing. I need to set some goals and turn myself around.

Here are some positive things I can try to think about:
1. I received my copy of the Juice Feasting handbook, and my first impression is very positive.
2. I pre-ordered “The Thrive Diet” and got a notification that it shipped Friday. I have big expectations for this book.
3. I took the first step to starting my own business the other day.
4. I’m taking some time off over March break. I can spend more time with my daughter, and spend time on my new business venture.
5. I think I’m going to move my blog to it’s own domain name and hosting! I need to pick a good domain name, maybe I’ll put more than just my blog on it. Does the internet already have too many raw vegan message boards?
6. I ordered “Green for Life” and “Eating Without Heating” from www.rawfamily.com a week ago; I hope they get here soon.

I feel better already!