apenney
07-21-2008, 06:35 PM
Hi,
My name is Ashley and I'm a 26 year old male from the UK who moved over to America a year ago. I work in computers, and used to work nights, and before this my daily diet mostly consisted of Pizza and Burger King and about a million coffees a day.
My wife gave birth to our daughter last month, and last week we found out that she has 'MSPI' which is an intolerance to milk proteins. As a result, as our daughter is breastfed, my wife can no longer eat anything with dairy or soy.
This led to me doing lots of searching around online looking for recipes and foods that were acceptable for my wife, and along the way I stumbled over the raw food sites.
I had previously brought a blender for whipping up smoothies, so I was easily tempted into the whole green smoothie thing. I was surprised when I actually felt pretty good after drinking them, and I've decided to at least make an attempt to slowly move my own diet towards raw food.
My wife is willing to settle for part way, but doesn't want to give up meat, so hopefully people can share some good tips for how I can cook meals for my wife and the (two step)children we have, that allow me to eat raw still.
I don't know if I'll ever go 100% raw, but this has definitely helped in some ways because my body seems to be unable to get enough! I have cravings for fruit and nuts that I've never had before, and earlier I attacked an apricot like they were going out of style.
I also went to my first farmers market (actually, market in general) today and picked up all kinds of delicious things that normally I would never touch. I do have a few minor questions, and I hope that they aren't disallowed or taboo subjects!
1/ Why should I avoid dairy? I understand that, obviously, part of a raw vegan diet is not drinking dairy, but I'm a real rational kind of person and it would be nice to hear from any kind of health aspects that might relate to reasons to avoid dairy products.
2/ What on earth can I do with the giant bag of basmati rice that I have? Obviously using my rice cooker makes it 'non-raw', but that's what I did tonight along, then just added raw broccoli, carrot and summer squash.
3/ Other than farmers markets, what's a good way to get good prices on vegetables and fruit? So far, this seems to be a fairly expensive way to eat, compared to what I'd pay before. (Before I could just buy a box of cereal, some milk, throw a pizza in there.) Now I have to consider all kinds of fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, other stuff I haven't even come across or dabbled in.
4/ Is there a good list of Vitamins I would need for a supplement. I must admit it seems less than ideal that a supposedly healthy raw diet would need supplements, but some of the stuff I read seems to suggest that. As I'm not really a strong vegan, is there anything special I could do to get the missing vitamins in force? (This may be inappropriate, so feel free to tell me just to stick to pills).
5/ How will I ever cope without delicious, delicious, coffee!
My name is Ashley and I'm a 26 year old male from the UK who moved over to America a year ago. I work in computers, and used to work nights, and before this my daily diet mostly consisted of Pizza and Burger King and about a million coffees a day.
My wife gave birth to our daughter last month, and last week we found out that she has 'MSPI' which is an intolerance to milk proteins. As a result, as our daughter is breastfed, my wife can no longer eat anything with dairy or soy.
This led to me doing lots of searching around online looking for recipes and foods that were acceptable for my wife, and along the way I stumbled over the raw food sites.
I had previously brought a blender for whipping up smoothies, so I was easily tempted into the whole green smoothie thing. I was surprised when I actually felt pretty good after drinking them, and I've decided to at least make an attempt to slowly move my own diet towards raw food.
My wife is willing to settle for part way, but doesn't want to give up meat, so hopefully people can share some good tips for how I can cook meals for my wife and the (two step)children we have, that allow me to eat raw still.
I don't know if I'll ever go 100% raw, but this has definitely helped in some ways because my body seems to be unable to get enough! I have cravings for fruit and nuts that I've never had before, and earlier I attacked an apricot like they were going out of style.
I also went to my first farmers market (actually, market in general) today and picked up all kinds of delicious things that normally I would never touch. I do have a few minor questions, and I hope that they aren't disallowed or taboo subjects!
1/ Why should I avoid dairy? I understand that, obviously, part of a raw vegan diet is not drinking dairy, but I'm a real rational kind of person and it would be nice to hear from any kind of health aspects that might relate to reasons to avoid dairy products.
2/ What on earth can I do with the giant bag of basmati rice that I have? Obviously using my rice cooker makes it 'non-raw', but that's what I did tonight along, then just added raw broccoli, carrot and summer squash.
3/ Other than farmers markets, what's a good way to get good prices on vegetables and fruit? So far, this seems to be a fairly expensive way to eat, compared to what I'd pay before. (Before I could just buy a box of cereal, some milk, throw a pizza in there.) Now I have to consider all kinds of fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, other stuff I haven't even come across or dabbled in.
4/ Is there a good list of Vitamins I would need for a supplement. I must admit it seems less than ideal that a supposedly healthy raw diet would need supplements, but some of the stuff I read seems to suggest that. As I'm not really a strong vegan, is there anything special I could do to get the missing vitamins in force? (This may be inappropriate, so feel free to tell me just to stick to pills).
5/ How will I ever cope without delicious, delicious, coffee!