Day Two on the Fiber Train...

Once again, thanks to all of you that have been reading my blog and especially to those of you that have taken the time to comment on anything I've written.  We are on day two of Ani Phyo's book 15 Day Fat Blast   As I mentioned yesterday I'm not posting the exact recipes as this is copy written material.  I hope you are getting enough information regarding the recipes despite not having the actual amounts of each of the ingredients.  

Ani's book has a lot of other information besides the recipes we are eating these next two weeks.  She talks about the benefits of eating a vegan diet as well as the benefits of eating raw.  It is hard to argue that eating food in it's most unadulterated form can be anything other than great for you.  She mentions the fallacy regarding those that profess eating a vegan diet but primarily eat heavily processed, often boxed foods. There are many vegans who are junk food junkies despite never eating a hamburger. Like any other processed food anything that is manufactured and rendered shelf stable for more than a few days must contain chemicals that you would not find in nature.  

To illustrate how processed foods are not only full of mystery chemicals that are actually designed to create cravings while you are eating them!  60 Minutes did an amazing story about how food chemists take desirable flavors and smells (apparently research has shown Roasted Chicken has the highest appeal), break them down into their chemical compounds and add them to foods that you would never guess just to increase appeal and create cravings!  It's actually quite diabolical, I think!  Here's a link to the written story where you can also watch some of the episode if you would like. Flavorists Create Cravings 

Knowing exactly what you are putting into your body is worth the effort.  

Here's today's menu:  

First up this morning we have our Simple Strawberry Shake. The recipe as written has not only strawberries and cashews but also some sweetener and the same coconut oil as yesterday's morning smoothie.  No surprise, I left the oil out since there were nuts in the smoothie.  I also left out the sweetener since I figure a cup of ripe strawberries is plenty sweet enough for my taste.  Even though I left out the extra fat I still felt that the cashews gave the smoothie a sense of extra fat that I wasn't crazy about.  It's probably just me - but I would probably halve the number of cashews I put in here the next time around.  Otherwise it is a nice morning drink.  It's probably worth a B the way I prepared it but I think as written I'd easily give it a C-.  

The second shake of the morning for a snack is what she named an Apple Green Mar-tea-ni.  This unusual  and inventively named drink is part green apple - check, part green tea - check and the rest is your greens of choice.  I chose spinach and after yesterday's smoothie with little bits of kale I made sure I chopped up the spinach into itty bitty pieces in the Vitamix.  Then I added the rest of the ingredients and gave it a long time to process in hopes that everything was pulverized so it was drinkable.  This helped some - the bits of spinach were small but still noticeable.  

The problem with going crazy with the processing is that a LOT of air gets pumped into the smoothie.  This is also a problem with drinks produced by the juicer.  My juicer gets around this by having a wonderful pitcher with a piece in the spout that keeps out the foam that floats to the top.  This smoothie wound up having so much foam that it was nigh on to undrinkable.  Yuck!  I poured it into my juicer pitcher and was able to drink it after ridding it of the foam.  Even with this intervention I felt as if it would benefit from being run through the juicer.  I like the idea of using green tea as the liquid of a smoothie to add the benefits of green tea but I'm not terribly excited about this smoothie.  I give it a C.  

   

Moving on to lunch we have our first of two savory soups for the day.  First up is Ginger Soup. I was actually surprised that it was called ginger soup since the ginger taste was very subtle.  I might add more then next time I make it and there will be many, many more times in the future that I will have this soup.  It was divine!  In addition to the ginger there is miso, a half an avocado as well as some thyme.  This lady really knows how to dream up some yummy soups.  I'm sure this would be good warm, too.  A clear winner and an absolute A or even A+ give how quickly I gobbled it down and went back for the left overs.  No mid day snack for Ann today!  

I finally had my dinner soup late this evening after I went to my very first Xtend Barre class that my sweet babooh gave me as a groupon gift a few months ago.  Love, love, love this work out.  Was much more "dance-y" than the other barre type classes I've tried out before. Even though I was one of the older people there I made it through the entire class and still feel pretty energetic later in the evening.  I didn't even have my usual guilty pleasure of a mid day diet coke.  This is pretty major for me - so I'm thinking there is something to this extra energy rumor when eating a raw diet.  I may not be able to walk tomorrow but I will definitely go back in the very near future. Here's a link to a video about .Xtend Barre  For those not interested in the exercise you'll probably enjoy the hot looking women in leotards.

Last savory soup for the day is Marvelous Minestrone.  No surprise there are tomatoes in this soup.  This time I actually remembered to put them in!  Hence the light red color.  In addition to the tomatoes we have miso, celery and garlic as well as some cayenne and oregano.  At first I thought I went way overboard with the pepper but it really, really grew on me.  One thing I tried with this soup to avoid was having a bunch of little bits floating around unemulsified, was to let it settle for a bit and then reprocess.  I don't know if it really had a huge effect but I didn't find anything at all chunky in this glassful of tomato-y smoothness.  So - I would give this a solid B, you might like it better if you love having a spicy after taste.


Here's today's summary list:

Recipes
Name	Category	Diet	Day	Page number	Column1	Rating
Blueberry Blast	Smoothie	Fat Blast	one	116		B-
Pineapple  Green Shake	Smoothie	Fat Blast	one	124		B+
Spicy Bok Choy Soup	Soup	Fat Blast	one	144		A+
Tomato Bisque	Soup	Fat Blast	one	150		A
Simple Strawberry Shake	Smoothie	Fat Blast	two	125		B
Apple Green Mar-Tea-Ni	Smoothie	Fat Blast	two	113		C
Ginger Soup	Soup	Fat Blast	two	102		A/A+
Marvelous Minestrone	Soup	Fat Blast	two	147		B

Have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend!