Many thanks to all of you who have approached me offering your support & condolences. :-)
I have made it this far and I am doing pretty well.
Several people have asked for MORE RECIPES. And I have crossed some new thresholds in the last 3 days - so I am happy to share that with you. The recipes I am using currently are either from the internet RAW sights or from a book I bought called: Raw Food Made Easy for 1 to 2 people: by Jennifer Cornbleet
I really like this book because it has only a few ingredients per recipe and they generally are ingredients that I can identify! With RAW 'cooking' I have had trouble running into books or recipes that have 20 or more ingredients & I have no clue what half of them are or where I would ever be able to find these mystery foods.
So this book has really been great.
MY Big accomplishment in the last couple of days has been that I have stuck pretty well to the RAW diet AND I made my first batch of homemade "Almond Milk" and "Walnut Pate".
The really amazing thing is that it actually tastes pretty good. Whew!
Almond milk is a basic item it seems in most RAW diets. This book says: "Homemade almond milk is more nutritious than boxed nondairy milks, yet it takes only minutes to make." So I thought...why not, I'd better give it a try. Especially if it only takes minutes to make! I can do that. :-)
Here's how it all went down:
ALMOND MILK:
2.5 cups water
1.5 cups RAW almonds (soaked over night in water)
3 dates (which I didn't use because I forgot to get them at the store)
1/2 teaspoon of real vanilla extract
IMPORTANT: SOAK THE ALMONDS PROPERLY
- Put the almonds in a container (preferrably not plastic) the night before and soak for at least 6 hours - up to about 10 hours.
- The next morning: drain this water off of the almonds - and rinse them with clean water (you will be amazed at how brown & cloudy the almond water is) Soaking gets a lot of the starches out of the almonds & softens them for blending!
- Now you're ready to make the milk!
Put all of the ingredients (almonds, water, dates, vanilla) in a blender & blend em up.
Take the mixed up ingredients and strain them through ONE of the following:
- a find mesh strainer
- or a "nut bag' - it's a bag you can get at a health food store that is a fine mesh strainer
- or in my case - I didn't have either of these things - so I asked Andy for an CLEAN white t-shirt that I could quote "destroy". I cut pieces off of it and strained my almond milk through that.
Whichever 'strainer' you use - just squeeze your almond milk into a seperate container and save the powder/flour that you will have left over. There are things you can make with this flour (I don't know what yet - because I haven't gotten that far in this adventure. Mine looks like it might make good crackers or maybe even a pizza type crust...mmmmm).
Oh, and almond milk will keep in the fridge for about 5 days. It will seperate - so you will have to shake it each time before you drink it.
It's good on granola (yes there is RAW vs non-RAW granola as well).
I hope this helps you see that although Raw is a pretty far stretch for our 'typical' diets - it can be done.
But my biggest thought right now on all of this is that: I can't help but end up healthier & learn a few 'cooking' tricks along the way.
I am planning a blog post on exercise and how this all fits in to life in general. :-) because I have had a TON of people in the last 3 days ask me about health & fitness - not just losing weight - althought that almost always comes with the territory!
For those of you who don't know - my first job ever was as a personal trainer. Dating myself but - I worked as a personal trainer from 1987 - 2002 pretty consistently.
I have some great ideas on pulling all of this together - as it may seem a bit disjointed right now. Diet/Exercise/Friends/Family/ There are a few key ingredients that add up to success. But I'll get to those soon (maybe even later today).
If you have questions - please feel free to facebook me.
I'm off to make my breakfast shake (more on that later too)! :-))
ttys,
Jen
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