Jan 2012 - 30 day raw food challenge JOIN ANYTIME OF THE MONTH

[speltrong]

Yes, I believe that jerusalem artichokes are the exact same thing as sunchokes. Sunchokes look kind of like a mangled gnarly ginger root.

Bok choy and mushrooms sounds fantastic!

[donnyandcathy]

Thanks everyone for your prayers and thoughts about my appt.
Well, he ended up doing more labs today to check on a few other things.
We are not sure what is going on, but a few of my test came back abnormal, but it doesn't give a certain diagnosis.
They are still thinking that it could be a secondary problem that could be attacking my thyroid levels. I'm not sure if they will do a MRI to check for a
Pituitary Tumor. My iodine uptake test was REALLY low. My percentage was 1.8% after 6 hours and it should have been around 15%
I went back in 24 hours later and it was only 3.2% and it should have been around 35%
This would show that I am HYPOthyroid, BUT my TSH is 0.039 which would show HYPERthyroid. He doesn't really know what to make of it. My scan also
showed a nodule in my thyroid gland measuring 4mm, and the gland itself was enlarged too.
I am wondering if I should ask for a needle biopsy of the nodule just to make sure it is not cancerous.
He told me he would call me once he has these labs back, and he will then know what to do.
It's not that I want him to put me on medication, or tell me what to do. But, I would like to know what I'm dealing with so I can treat it on my own with
nutrition and herbs. It's just hard to know what to do when one test shows hyper and the other shows hypo because I would need to treat each one
different. As for now, I will wait and just keep doing what I'm doing, and let the raw foods continue to do what they are doing ;)

Chia Pudding, Lucuma Powder, 1 Banana
Fresh Green Juice with Apple, Kale, Celery, Pear, Ginger
Homemade Kale Chips
HUGE Salad with a head of Bibb lettuce, red lettuce, and baby romaine, celery, avocado, apple, orange, pecans. YUMMY!!
Some cashews
Chia Pudding, Lucuma Powder, 1 Banana

One of my daughter's friends are over and I was making homemade almond milk for my new chia puddings, and I was able to show her how to
make it. She was really excited and said she wanted to try that at home. They have a VitaMix so I know she will be able to do it. I also showed her
both of Alissa's books, and she was really interested. She is in college right now to be a nutritionist, and I told her not to believe everything she hears
about protein and calcium ;) She has watched Food Inc. and Fat Sick and Nearly Dead. She is a believer in a plant based diet.

Night!!
Cathy

[Traceyraw]

Speltstrong YUMMY,
Cathy Hoping for good results.
Welcome to all of the NEWBIES. this is a wonderful place.

Yesterday I didn't even eat dinner. I made guacamole with baby bok-choy for my lunch I can't wait. This morning Im eating a bananna and apple. Plenty of water today thats my goal. Im getting excited about my juice fast Monday may start early before my hubby. I got wonderful results last week. I am enjoying eating food this week though. My skin is looking fantastic.

Have a rawesome day. :)

[Jeannie]

Traceyraw, glad to hear your skin looks great, and that you are getting good results! Keep at it, you are doing well!

Cathy, sorry to hear about your health issues, I hope you find out what is going on, soon. There is so much info out there about people
healing themselves of many health issues by going raw, you have certainly taken a step in the right direction of taking control of your
health!

Today it was an apple, guacamole and a massive salad for dinner, and some dried fruit and nuts.

[speltrong]

Hi everyone.. I'm so glad to see that everyone's staying on track!

Today I had a banana and some cantaloupe for breakfast. Then for lunch, I wanted to use my new Benriner spiralizer again, so I made a zucchini pasta.



So, this was zucchini noodles, mushrooms, diced heirloom tomato, sweet peppers, asparagus tips and broccoli. All topped with a spinach-basil pesto containing the following:

-50 grams raw spinach
-90 grams raw basil
-juice of one meyer lemon
-10 grams pine nuts
-1/2 tsp salt
-1/2 tsp black pepper
-1 cup water (could probably use less water next time)

blend until a smooth consistency and toss with the "pasta" and veggies. Devour.

[verbena]

wow, speltrong that looks fantastic!

today was huge green smoothie which kept me full for hours thanks to the chia!
carrot ribbons, green pepper strips and brocolli in a creamy tomato sauce
a few raw cookies

i went for a longish 5 mile walk today in the beautiful winter sunshine. it felt so good to get outside and be active, been cooped up indoors recovering from a chest infection for 2 weeks. i took me ages to warm up once I got home though, I had to get into bed with a thick blanket! i find in the beginnings of eating raw that I get cold easily, anyone else find this?

I'm aiming to start doing regular exercise again, with intentions of walking for at least an hour a day. i did start running last year, however I was reading somewhere that we are not physiologically built to run a lot, walking is more natural exercise for us.

[donnyandcathy]

So excited about the package I received in the mail today!!
I had ordered some raw food items that I can't find around me.
I bought 3 flavors of the "Rawtella" which is like the Nutella but raw and healthy ;)
I ordered some raw almond butter, and raw hempseed butter.
Kelp Noodles, which I have never tried. If anyone here is an expert on preparing these, let me know.
Rawmesan which is a Parmesan Cheese Replacement. Here are the ingredients... Organic Brazil Nuts, Nutritional Yeast, Organic Herbs and Spices, and
celtic sea salt. Sounds yummy!!
I didn't open any of them yet. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stop eating the Rawtella ;)

Chia Pudding with Lucuma Powder
Apple, Grapes
Bibb Lettuce, Red Leaf Lettuce, Baby Romaine Lettuce, Celery, Avocado, Apple chopped up, Raisins, Walnuts.
A few cashews and raw sunflower seeds.

Tomorrow I'm going to a Raw Food Potluck. I've never been to anything like this before, and I'm very excited. The lady is having it at her house, and she
had 45 people to RSVP!! Everyone is going to bring a raw dish to share. There should be a lot of good food, and good advice from the raw foodies that
have been eating raw for a long time.

I hope everyone is staying warm wherever you are. Here is Georgia it is COLD!!! The winds last night got over 30 mph and the temps. dropped into the
20's.

Cathy

[changeisgood]

Wow! 45 people. I don't even think there is 45 people in our small city (feels more like a small town) that are raw. (our day temps are in the 50s, but cold wintery mornings)
A regular HF restaurant didn't even make it. What place did you order from? Hemp butter sounds good. Our HF stores have very little raw food products to choose from.

Kathy, I hope the best for you and that it all works itself out. Many people rave about how health issues have healed for them due to raw food lifestyle.

Has anyone tried coconut sugar? how is it? besides expensive.

Another very early start to the day. Had apple juice to start the day. That's all I had time for. I made sure I drank a couple of glasses of lemon water before I left home.
I went shopping for the sundried tomatoes, I saw the sunchokes, but didn't know how to prepare them, shred, chop, ? so I bought olive tampanade.
I put them on the garlic bread I made from the recipe going around. It was delicious. Only, the garlic was overpowering. And I would make each loaf much thinner.
Although as I'm writing, it never dawned on me to slice it, instead I opened it as a roll. I need to make more almond milk, so I'll retry recipe with less garlic or
maybe make it into a raisin/walnut bread with some sweetner instead. That sounds better. I'll use raw crackers for the sundr tom/olives. Give it some crunch.
I also had an apple and a coconut date dessert later in the evening. The store had another new variety of apple to try. Not bad, but I prefer crunchy then the softer varieties.

I notice I am eating less as the days go on. Want to experiment more with using the dehydrator.

[verbena]

it's good to hear everyone is doing so well and enjoying raw

Today is day 8, I weighed myself this morning and i've released 2lbs, to be honest I was hoping for a little bit more, but it's still positive! And eating raw is so much more about giving myself a healthy vital body than it is about losing weight.

I'm going to try my best to drink a lot more water and also drastically reduce my salt intake. I do love salty things.

breakfast : 2 oranges, a clementine and an apple washed down with 1 ltr of water
lunch: banana and date shake
dinner will be a big romaine salad and i've make up some chocolate chia pudding to eat later on yum!

been for an hours walk this morning which was just over three miles

[pelikay]

Hello Everyone,

Sorry, but I was so busy and then tired at the end of the day, I did not log in. Anyway, I was raw all week. I had orange juice, apple juice with ginger, honey dew juice (delicious), cantaloupe juice, carrot juice with beets, and celery, cucumber, and kale juice. I ate a pound of grapes this morning. I feel good except for a runny nose. I don't have a cold so I feel it may be just part of the detox. I hope every is doing great! I'll weigh in tomorrow. Oh, yes it is getting cold. Can you drink hot tea and still be raw? Thanks!!!!

[pelikay]

Donnyandcathy,

I'm sure you will do great!!!

[BlackKat]

this morning I had juice for breakfast and lunch (apple, carrot, celery, beet, kale, spinach, heirloom oranges that were to die for!)

I also had a smoothie- banana, berries, spinach, collards, maca, goji berry, and chia seeds

Tonight I am going to have a salad with avocado,and alfalfa sprouts. Not sure what dressing i will make but since it's a day off from work I have plenty of time to make something yummy. I also am going to dive into someone of my raw dessert recipes to make things for when I'm craving sweets at the end of the day.

[cnlangr]

Hi everyone!

I would like to recommit to the 30 day challenged starting tomorrow. Thanks BlackKat, I needed to read the Genesis 1:12 verse again.

-C

[donnyandcathy]

changeisgood, I ordered the products from "Raw Food World" I've never ordered anything from them, but had a really good experience with them. They even sent a note of thanks for the order and a coupon for next time. Everything was packaged really good. Bubble wrap around every jar and packing paper heavily laid in box. I was very impressed.

The raw food potluck was o.k. I won't go into details, but I didn't really fit in with anyone there, and there were only about 4 other people that really eat raw out of the 35-40 that were there.
I still had a good time, and it was nice to hear their stories.

My 9 year old daughter bought me the coolest thing, and I thought I would share. It is called "Yonanas" and it makes ice cream out of frozen bananas and other frozen fruit. We tried it
tonight, and it was soooo yummy and creamy!! I know that you can use your juicer to make this type of ice cream, but this is a small little machine, and much easier clean up than the
juicer. You can find them at Target, or Bed Bath and Beyond. I tried to paste a picture of it, but it won't let me, so here is the website so you can see it work.
www.yonanas.com

Chia Pudding, Lucuma Powder, Banana
4 Dates
Orange
Chia Pudding, Lucuma Powder (I know, I'm going to turn into a chia pet HA!!)
Yonanas Ice cream made with frozen bananas and frozen pineapple YUM!!

I didn't end up eating as much today as I thought I was going to since I didn't eat anything at the pot luck except oranges. There was plenty of food there, but I was not hungry at the
time and I was more busy talking than eating.

Night,
Cathy

[speltrong]

wow, the yonanas thing looks really cool.. I might have to pick one up!

Today was a weekend day, so no cooking (or, uhh, no not-cooking.. no preparing food in our kitchen, ha!). The hubby and I drove down to Half Moon Bay with our dogs. It was gorgeous and the waves were really big today! We mostly just munched on fruit (watermelon, bananas, clementine oranges), though I also had some sauerkraut and a Gopal's nori stick. Have I posted about the raw nori sticks yet? If not, you should all ask your health food store to order them.. the Texas BBQ flavor tastes almost like beef jerky, yum! I first found them in the raw foods section at a health food store in a little town near us. Here's the link to their website: http://gopalshealthfoods.com/texas-barbq-powerwraps