What Raw Detox Level Are You?

So yesterday I mentioned that I first thought the level I needed to start on a Raw Diet would have been level 4 of the 5 levels - 5 being most advanced in the detox process.  This didn't seem right since I my diet has been so clean and healthy for so many weeks.  I think the goal for this questionnaire is to make sure that someone newly venturing into a raw diet doesn't over reach and start on a diet that's too rigorous for the person to be successful.

So - where would you fall on the detox continuum?  Here's the questions to determine where you should start your transition to a raw diet.

1. Were you raised on sugared cereals, "TV dinners", and fast food? 
2. Are you a smoker or have you smoked for over eight years?
3. Are meat, potatoes, white flour, animal fats, cooked oils, and white sugar a part of your normal eating pattern?
4. Do you have a history of drug use or have you taken birth control and/ or other hormones, steroids, or undergone chemotherapy?
5. Do you have a history of IBS, constipation, colitis, or other bowel / digestive disorders? 
6. Are you over 40 years old?
7. Are you between 20 and 30 pounds overweight?
8. Are you more than 80 pounds overweight?
9. Do you suffer from asthma, bronchial infections, chronic colds and flu, or other mucosal conditions?
10. Do you have a sedentary lifestyle?
11. Are dairy products a mainstay of your diet?
12. Do you eat animal protein more than four times a week?
13. Do you eat soy products on a regular basis (soy milk, tofu, soy chips, soy meats, etc)?
14. Do you consume more than three sodas (diet or otherwise) each week?
15. Do you suffer from liver disorder, acne psoriasis or other skin disorders?

Score 2 points for every yes - 1 for every sometimes and zero for every no.

If you have 20+ points start at level 5 as you're probably not as into veggies as some of the rest of us.

14-19 points - start at level 4 where you'll make some changes but not terribly drastic.

8-13 points - start at level 3.  You are probably the type that is very interested in making changes and looking for a way to get started.

4-7 points - start at level 2 if you really enjoy primarily uncooked foods in your diet.  You have no problem eating raw all day or at least until dinner.

Less than 3 points - a level 1.  Usually eat raw and have cooked food possibly once or twice a week.


The book then goes on to lay out five different plans based upon the amount of raw food one should consume given the level you've picked for yourself.  My plan is to complete level 2 this week and move on to the level 1 menus next week.  I'll try and review some other areas of the book as we go on.  Let's get to yesterday's menu and the ratings.

Day 1:
Morning: Fresh Fruit
Mid-morning:Green Lemonade
Lunch: Raw Rainbow Salad, Carrot-Ginger Dressing
Snack; Green Lemonade
Dinner: Power Soup
Dessert: Raw Chocolate Ice Cream

At this level Ms Rose - who is a clinical nutritionist actually has you delay eating in the mornings until you are hungry.  I suppose on one level that is good that you are not eating if you're not hungry but on the other hand I think there's a lot of evidence that states that eating gets your metabolism going.  I try and eat some fresh fruit an hour after I take my thyroid medicine.

You will see that she recommends drinking a schooner of Green Lemonade every day.  So happy to get out my juicer again.  This consists of kale, lemons, apples, romaine and some ginger.  Not unlike green lemonade we've had on other diets sampled in the past month.  Very refreshing and the nutrients seem to feed the body so that cravings disappear.  Quite amazing, I think.  I give this a B.

The Raw Rainbow Salad with Carrot-Ginger Dressing was a nice slaw type salad.  For those of you that have been here for awhile - you know I'm not the biggest fan of slaw.  Typical with cabbage, carrots, and some yellow bell peppers on some mesclun greens.  What sets this slaw apart is the Carrot-ginger dressing.  This is a lovely dressing - made with carrots, ginger some vinegar, oil, garlic and sweetener.  This also gets a B.

I ended up not making the Power Soup since I had a wonderful dinner invite where my hosts - avid readers of my blog - made a spectacular vegan dinner of lentil soup and the best collard roll ups I've had in awhile. Two types even!  One with quinoa and the other with hummus.  Excellent friends!

Finally - I did make the oh so yummy Raw Chocolate Ice Cream that consists of some sweetener, cocoa, bananas and dates and enough ice to make it of an ice cream consistency.  This is quite wonderful and worthy of taking to a gathering where you wonder if there's a dessert you are willing to eat and not completely blow your diet.    This definitely gets an A from me.

Here's the summary and a teaser... I had a soup for dinner tonight that's one of the best things I've ever made!  Be sure to check back tomorrow for the summary since I know I'll be making this one again and I'll bet you'll want to try it too!  Until tomorrow.

Recipes
Name	Category	Diet	Day	Page number		Rating
Green Lemonade	Drink	Raw Detox	one	48		B
Raw Rainbow Salad	Salad	Raw Detox	one	125		B
Raw Chocolate Ice Cream	Dessert	Raw Detox	one	164		A

 

I'm Baaaack!

Well - my intention was to get this first post back from my mini vacation done yesterday but some connectivity issues between my laptop and our Wi-fi gave me some difficulty.  Then it just got too late for me to bother with it and I gave up.  So...here's yesterday's back to business update and hopefully later today I can post about day one of the Raw Detox.

Hi all and sorry to any of you who thought I'd abandoned my resolve to eat well and follow my selected diet books.  I think way, way back when I started this project I mentioned that my sister was coming to town and that we were driving up the coast of California to see her son graduate from the prestigious military Defense Language Institute.  He's been there a bit over a year and completed their 63 week course where they cram Chinese into these active duty military folks.  It is tough to get into the school and even tougher to get through any of their courses.  Chinese is the hardest so we are understandably proud of his accomplishment.

Red Pepper Flax Crackers

Granola

Since we would be travelling I picked the dehydrator day to be the last day of the "Raw Revolution" book so I could fix some take along food and snacks to decrease the level of temptation we would face.  I made some Granola and some Red Pepper Flax Crackers.  I may have mentioned before that the dehydrating thing is quite involved due to the the lengthy time the food spends in the actual dehydrator as well as the occasional soaking and sprouting the occurs prior to placement on the dehydrator sheets.  However, despite the amount of pre-planning it takes to make these treats I do think it is a worthwhile way to keep yourself supplied while travelling or just to have some snacks on hand so that you don't succumb to the random vending machine in your path.  The granola recipe was delish with its raisins and sprouted oats.  The crackers where more of an acquired taste as there were a lot of flax seeds and flax meal in them that gave them the oily taste that is characteristic of flax.  The red peppers though were quite nice and gave the "crackers" a nice taste.  I put crackers in parenthesis since they were not exactly crisp despite a full day on the dehydrator.  Perhaps if they were truly crispy I would have enjoyed them more.  In addition I made some Spicy Sprouted Lentils to snack on as well.  They were pretty good although I put them on the dehydrator prior to giving them a full 24 hours to sprout so they were probably harder than Cherie wanted them to be.  They were ok but so small that it was hard to eat them as a snack.

The other thing I did to try and maintain my diet was bring along just about everything I had in the refrigerator as well as all the nuts, some raisins and the complete list of recipes from the Ani's Fat Blast All Stars I published prior to leaving for our little vacay.  In order to bring along all the produce that would require refrigeration I unearthed our plug in cooler the Igloo Koolmate from the garage.  This is a wonderful invention for transporting food.  It not only plugs into the lighter outlet in the car but it comes with an AC converter so you can plug it in a regular outlet in your hotel room like a mini fridge!  I love this thing!  Another cool aspect of this item is that you can flip the plug and turn it into a heater that will keep something like a cassarole for a potluck warm during transport.  Great invention!  I also brought along my newly purchased Cuisinart cup blender set.  Several times I was able to make smoothies or soups for meals in the room vs. going to a restaurant.  I did this several times during the trip so I could stay with my dog in the hotel room and let my sister have some private time with her son at dinner.  This was really win/win since each time we ate at a restaurant I just didn't feel as great as I did when I made my own food.

In addition to our drive and the graduation the other highlight of the trip was inadvertently walking along the beach in Monterey and noticing that there were people standing along the shore looking up in the sky.  It dawned on us that the space shuttle was scheduled to fly by soon.  I quickly checked Twitter and saw that it had just flown by San Francisco so I knew we were next!  I barely had enough time to switch my phone from Twitter to a camera before the awesome sight came into view!  Lucky us!  We not only got to see it but to get some pictures as well!  Sadly, the end of an era.  This is the second time I got to see the shuttle transported "piggy back" style since I saw it do a low and slow flight around the DC beltway sometime in 1982/83 when I was a student there and had an apartment in a hi rise building just south of the beltway.  It seemed so close I thought I could almost reach out and touch it!


So - now on to our next diet!  Today we start the first day of two weeks with the The Raw Detox Diet by Natalia Rose. There are a lot of things about this diet that I really like.  First off - although it is raw there is no sprouting so the time constraints and need to do a ton of prior planning is less than with some of the recipes we encountered with the Raw Revolution.  Secondly, she meets you where you are and gently guides you to a more raw, healthier way of eating vs. declaring that all meals all the time must be raw.  At the beginning of the book she asks a series of questions to determine where in the five step plan you should place yourself. We'll go thru the questions tomorrow to see where you would fit in the steps.

Based upon the questions - given my weight, age and history of eating boxed cereal, and caffeine, etc... I placed in the second group.  Those with the farthest to go or "worst" diet start at step one of the five so I was a bit surprised to see me in the second group since I think I've been eating pretty responsibly for quite some time in addition to our recent diet adventure.  In reading the more detailed description of who should be in this group I felt I was much more suited to group four on the five steps due to my current adherence to a raw, completely vegan diet.  This works out for the schedule as well since this week we'll follow step four of the five and then next week move to the last step.

Unlike my usual posts in the past where I give a summary of the day's adventure with food I'm going to switch to a summary of the previous day starting tomorrow for today's food.  This week is a bit chaotic with evening obligations and I've noted my writing get's more sloppy when I'm tired.  I'm hoping to make up my guitar class I missed last week tonight.  He teaches two classes of beginners and luckily for me the Monday class recapitulates the one I go to on Thursdays.  I then get to run home, pick up my dog and go have dinner with some dear friends that I haven't seen in a long time.  I figure it will be too late to write much after I get home so I'll check back here tomorrow to let you know how the day went.

Let me know if you've ever heard of Natalia Rose and this book before.  Have you tried eating a raw diet?  How do you feel when eating this way?  We'll talk about some of the things she also advocates and my take on them as well in future posts.  I'm looking forward to hearing your comments and getting back on track.  Oh- by the way - I'm now down 7 pounds since MSB headed off to Africa!  Yeah!

Oops!

Hey there to all you folks in blogger-ville!  I guess my brain took a bit of a vacay last night when I normally put up my blog posts.  So...here's what happened.

Yesterday was kind of uncommonly busy and one of the blessings that came my way was I belatedly remembered my personal training session was cancelled so I regained nearly an hour of my day.  I say Total Woman Gym nearly an hour since I wasn't with it enough to remember she had a conflict until after I went to the gym and wandered around looking for her.  Fortunately the gym is only a ten minute drive from my house so a minor investment into the recurring realization that my senior moments are appearing more and more frequently.  Perhaps I will avail of the senior citizen discounts at some of the places I frequent.  Yes! Can you believe it - I actually qualify at some places.  It is sobering but all the more reason to dedicate ourselves to taking care of the parts God gave us so that they work as well as possible into our golden years.

Speaking of sobering.  In the past week I received news that two men I know - both younger than me - have had heart attacks!  Yikes!  As I said - take care of the parts God gave you.  Until there are decent bionic alternatives we have to make do with the originals.

So - In addition to my aborted gym outing I had my first French class with a somewhat squirrel-y little French lady.  It was two hours - so  significant chunk of the day.  At first I was all panic-y that I'd bit off more than I could chew but she was very accommodating and the sweet woman who also is in the class with me is pretty much at my same level so I'm feeling really good about maybe finally learning some French.  Why French?  Well - since MSB is a first generation American with many relatives in Europe its not that unusual for us to go to France.  But even more importantly - the mission work we do is often in French speaking Africa and it would be such a benefit if I could at least speak enough to get around on my own.  Even better if I could be fluent enough to understand some patients.

Then in the evening I had my monthly get together with my dear church lady friends where we play a goofy game that's very popular in So. Cal - Bunco!   It's a dice game and we play once a month and have for many years.

So by the time I got home and vegged out with the sweet doggy watching TV I completely forgot about my nightly writing ritual until I came across some food pics I'd e-mailed to myself!  No kidding!  I actually forgot about the writing despite spending most of the day chopping and dehydrating stuff and thinking about what to say about it all.  But since I discovered the pictures after midnight I figured too late to try and be coherent.

So what did I eat yesterday?  Rather than some of Cherie's special Green Juice we had a lovely Blue-Green Smoothie with a banana, blueberries, kale, and an orange.  The smoothie was perfectly portable and it was the perfect drink to fuel me as I took the little doggy out for a morning walk.   It is interesting to me how different these various raw vegan cookbook authors interpret something as generic as a "Green Smoothie".  Since all one has to do is throw a smidgen of kale or spinach into the mix you will always get something green.  It's the other stuff that really lend the variety to the drink.  She tends to throw an orange in just about everything which really sweetens up the drink.  The citrus is always refreshing so this is a nice, very drinkable morning pick me up.  It gets a B.

I was glad I got the gym reprieve because lunch was really pretty involved.  This is at least the second day I noted she had us have two things for lunch - like a soup AND salad.  Or salad and a roll up.  Seems like a lot of food to me but if one has a larger meal in the day having it at mid day makes way more sense than at night before bed.  Just something to think about.

For lunch we have Mexican Burritos and Mexican Style Cabbage.  As I'm making these complex dishes I remember why I stopped following her plans in the first place.  Kind of too involved for me.  So - first with the burritos.  This dish is basically just a variation on guacamole.  Since living in So. Cal for nearly 20 years I'm feeling a bit like a guacamole snob so it takes a bit to impress me.  In addition to a nice mushy avocado this dish has zucchini, tomato, cucumber, green onion, cilantro, jalapeno, cabbage and a dash of cayenne pepper.  This was nice and once rolled up in a leaf of romaine made a nice sort of burrito but it was not spectacular.  Like I said - a guac snob.  I'll give it a B.

As our side dish we have the Mexican style cabbage.  In addition to the cabbage there's peas, green onion EVOO, chili powder, cumin and garlic.  The really surprising item that she apparently uses quite a bit is Sun Dried Tomato Powder.  Not only have I never heard of such a thing I have to wonder how she dreamed this up?  Fortunately I had some very dry sun dried tomatoes on hand AND I have my wonderful vita-mix with its Dry Processing container.  This is great for grinding wheat berries into fresh whole wheat flour, etc..  I don't use it much but for this it was perfect.  This powder is used as a pungent flavoring that came thru very nicely.  Once all of this was stirred together with some chopped up tomatoes I was stunned!  This really looked like rice.  It looked like Mexican style rice!  Genius!  What is even more impressive is all of this together was just amazing!  It was hard to stop eating this stunningly good looking dish that tasted even better than it looked.  So - an involved process, using up nearly every kitchen appliance I had and a fair amount of clean up time as stuff was strewn all over but certainly worth the effort.  This absolutely gets an A in my book.

Finally - after French and before bunco my dinner was a green soup called  Garden Blend Soup made of kale, orange juice, cucumber, cilantro, miso, lemon juice, garlic, jalapeno, green onion and sunflower seeds.  This deep green soup is quite luscious in its creaminess due to the avocado but with a sweet taste due to the orange and apple.  The pepper gives it enough kick to keep it from being too breakfast-y.  Along with this soup - which gets a B we had a few of the flax crackers that have been slowly drying out in the dehydrator since Sunday night.  I thought I had a picture of them on the dehydrator but I didn't find it.  I'll look again and post it later if I can.  They were quite good too but have the flax seed oily taste that I'm not a huge fan of.  In addition to the flax seed and flax meal there are peppers, zucchini and onion, lemon juice and garlic all processed together and spread out on the dehydrator sheet and slowly dried at a very low heat - enzyme protection plan - for 8 hours.  After the initial 8 hours the mixture is peeled off the sheet and placed on the drying rack / screens and dried for another 12 hours.  Since the drier goes forever and forever it makes sense to load it up with all the stuff you'd ever want to make to maximize the electricity being used and because it takes up so much time.  Fortunately - unlike the rest of our raw diet the dried food last for a very long time so making things up way in advance is very sensible.  It's the way in advance part that has always gotten me hung up so I've tried very few of her dehydrator recipes before.  These get a B from me, too. 

OK - so I'm running late - gotten post this and run.  Hope there's no typo's.  More later!

Cooling Off Just A Bit

Happy Sunday to everyone.  Not quite the oven here today that it's been for the past three days, but still too hot to do much of anything outside.  My poor doggy hasn't had much exercise except trying to convince me to chase her around the house or play the unending game of catch.  Oy!

There's only a few days on this plan.  She has a day that is geared more toward having to travel.  I picked this for the day that my sister and I will be on the road to her son's graduation.  I sure hope she doesn't mind eating this sort of food.

One of the days is all about the dehydrator.  I've had one of these - naturally - for many years but have not used it much. The biggest challenge, as I see it is all the prep time that one has to plan for prior to eating foods from the dehydrator.  Given the jam packed week I've got coming up I figured that Monday is the only day I can do the dehydrator meals so that means getting things all prepped up and ready to go on Sunday.  So - today is actually a day where I get to cook double.

Cooking extra on the weekend is a frequent trick that working mothers have done for years in order to avoid the drive thru on the way home from work.

I wasn't as prepared as I should have been for breakfast since the menu said we were to have Cinnamon Oatmeal.  I thought for sure I had some oat groats in my pantry but could not find them.  I did have some gluten free grain cereal so I thought I'd go with that.  When I started scooping the cereal out of my rice maker it dawned on me that it was HOT!  Such a revelation that I'd not had anything that had been cooked for three whole weeks!  Oops!  But so happy that I really have not missed eating cooked food.  The cereal was good as it was mixed with raisins and walnuts.  Very nice.

So for lunch lets get back to business and adhere a little more closely to Cherie's recipes.  We're to make two things for lunch.  First a Zucchini Hummus.  This is a nice dip made with some zucchini, garlic, tahini, sesame seeds and some lemon.  This is quite nice but a little more loose than the hummus I am used to.  This makes sense since chick peas are much more dense than zucchini.  She suggests eating this rolled up in a romaine leaf but I think it is not stiff enough for this but it makes for an excellent dip.  I give this a B.

In addition to the dip we have a nice green soup named Creamy Kale-Apple Soup.  This is a surprisingly sweet green soup.  The addition of an orange and an apple to the kale, onion, tamari, garlic and pumpkin seeds really sweetens this drink.  Since it has been so warm I've really not had much of an appetite so I apparently put this drink down in the kitchen and forgot about it for awhile.  What came as a huge surprise was my first sip after finding my drink - it had congealed!  Not quite as bad as the blueberry drink we had in the Fat Blast a few weeks ago but reminiscent of a child's art project again.  Needless to say the remainder was fed to disposal.  Sadly - we had a contender for a high scoring soup but I think I'm forced to give it a C after seeing how it turned into silly putty.  I suspect the high amount of apple pectin - often added to gelatin and in canning is the reason that this soup set the way it did.

For dinner we have a salad with home made salad dressing.  The dressing, called Liquid Gold Dressing is quite involved with multiple ingredients: zucchini, lemon juice, oil, tamari, flax seeds mustard, agave, garlic and some cumin.  This dressing is a really winner!  Totally worth the effort to put all these ingredients together.  This definitely gets an A.

The salad we're having is called Green Garden Salad Bar which has greens, romaine, avocados, tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper, olives, sunflower seeds, onion and carrots.  So a busy but lovely mixed salad that was quite inviting to dig into.  It was at least a B prior to adding the salad dressing.  Truthfully - with my first bite of this salad I said WOW!  No kidding.  The variety of fresh veggies with this knock it outta the park dressing is probably one of the best salads I've had in a long time.  And I eat a lot of salads.  I will definitely be making this dressing - at the very least - many, many more times in the future.  Simply great!

So - that's our Sunday.  Now on to the dehydrator!  Here's the summary:

Recipes
Name	Category	Diet	Day	Page number		Rating
Broccoli-Tahini Pate	Dip	Raw Rev	one	144		C
Green Giant Juice	Juice	Raw Rev	two	119		B+
Banana Blueberry Smoothie	Smoothie	Raw Rev	two	102		B
Garden Blend Soup	Soup	Raw Rev	two	188		A
Figgie Nut'ins	Dessert	Raw Rev	two	212		A
Zucchini Hummus	Dip	Raw Rev	three	145		B
Creamy Kale-apple Soup	Soup	Raw Rev	three	186		C
Green Garden Salad Bar	Salad	Raw Rev	three	177		A
Liquid Gold Dressing	Dressing	Raw Rev	three	151		A+

Greetings from the Oven!

No - we're still eating raw these days.  The oven is the atmosphere I live in these days.  Yikes!  Southern California is setting heat wave records all over the place.  Since it is usually so cool and temperate here a lot of people do not have air conditioning in their homes so the lengthy heat wave we have had is certainly taking its toll.

This morning the little dog and I had obedience class outdoors so that was rather hard in 100 degree weather.  I tried to not venture out much after we managed to complete the class.  One thing I did notice was that I had a bit of a dehydration type headache by the time I got home.  Most of these diet books that I've been reading tout the wonderful electrolyte benefits of coconut water. Nirvana Coconut Water  I've bought several different types of coconut water and some I've really hated but fortunately the one I tried today was really wonderful.  There is a subtle sweetness to this drink so it was quite enjoyable.  The real reason I'm including this in today's narrative is because soon thereafter my headache went away.  I was totally surprised that I didn't have to take any medicine.  I think I will have to stock up on this type of coconut water.  A drink is better than a drug, hmmm?

The Raw Revolution diet plans are much less prescriptive than the ones we've followed thus far.  The variety that each recipe offers helps clean out the fridge of accumulated veggies from prior meals. And there's no running off to the grocery store nearly everyday for the one or two things you have to have for a recipe.

For breakfast there's a fruit smoothie called Banana Blueberry Smoothie This fruit filled smoothie has bananas and blueberries as well as an orange, some kale and flax seed.  Very yummy.  I'm giving it a B.

Later in the morning we have veggie juice.  So excited to get the juicer out again.  Just amazing the difference in the amount of produce one uses for a juice vs. a smoothie.  Cherie's menus feature this Green Giant Juice pretty much every day.  This juice has kale, romaine, cucumber, an apple, lemon and some celery.  The apple, lemon and cucumber in this juice gives it a light, refreshing flavor.  This nice green juice deserves at least a B+ in my book.

For lunch we got to repurpose yesterday's Broccoli Tahini Pate'.  Although it's nice to try out as many recipes as possible I also like that she shows how to use something that we've already made in a few different ways.  So today we use the pate as the basis for some veggie rolls with some onions and avocados thrown in.  We're doing this two different ways.  First, we smear the pate' on a collard leaf, add a few onions and avocado and roll it up.  Then repeat with a sheet of Nori sea weed.  Slice the rolls like a sushi roll and enjoy.  I thought this was a great use of the pate'.  I actually liked it better in the roll than I did as a dip with veggies last night.

It was actually kind of hard to make myself eat dinner given the heat!  How rare is that!  So, late tonight it's about time to make some dinner which consists of Garden Blend Soup.  This soup consists of some kale, cucumber, basil, miso, lemon juice and orange juice, some jalapeno chili, avocado and some green onions. I really loved this soup.  The citrus juices give this some tang.  This soup is worth an A - I'd like to have it again.

The plan was to have the soup with a large salad - but I just couldn't eat that much.  However I thought I'd give her dessert idea a try.   So tonight we have Figgie Nut'ins.  These sweet little nuggets are made from soaked figs and walnuts with almonds all processed together and then rolled into little balls to be either chilled or eaten right away.  Personally - I ate them up right away.  These are very nice, sweet but not too sweet and I'll definitely make these again.  They get an A from me.  Wish the picture looked more appetizing.

Here's the spreadsheet:

Recipes
Name	Category	Diet	Day	Page number		Rating
Broccoli-Tahini Pate	Dip	Raw Rev	one	144		C
Green Giant Juice	Juice	Raw Rev	two	119		B+
Banana Blueberry Smoothie	Smoothie	Raw Rev	two	102		B
Garden Blend Soup	Soup	Raw Rev	two	188		A
Figgie Nut'ins	Dessert	Raw Rev	two	212		A

Welcome to the Raw Revolution!

Hey there Veggie fans!  Here we are at phase three of my journey through some of my veggie cookbooks while MSB works hard in Guinea, West Africa.

For the next five days we'll be following the meal plans in Cherie Soria's book The Raw Revolution .  In addition to the menu suggestions and the recipes for the menus and other recipes she has several chapters on the theory of the benefits of eating raw food.

Most of us have heard about the theory regarding enzymes in raw foods are beneficial for our health. Enzymes are very sensitive to heat.  Therefore raw foodists contend that food should not be warmed beyond 107 - 125 degrees.  I encourage you to read some of the ideas behind this and let me know what you think.  I know I feel great when I eat raw food and am not sure if it has anything to do with enzymes or just that the food is jam packed with all sorts of nutrients.

Since enzymes are proteins and all proteins are pretty thoroughly denatured (broken down) in the stomach when exposed to the digestive juices there that is primarily Hydrochloric acid - a pH of about 2.  Highly, highly acidic.  I've never put a huge amount of stock in the intact enzyme theory.  You have to decide for yourself.  That's just my take on it all.

So - this program is much less scripted than the ones we've done thus far.  I'm happy about this now for a lot of reasons.  First - I'm hoping to clear out some of the accumulated produce from the past two weeks that I've purchased and not had recipes for.  And...it's nice to have some leeway when it comes to finding something to eat, especially when confronted with having a meal away from home.

MSB and I eat out a lot!  Making so many meals at home has been a real change for me but I've really enjoyed making the recipes thus far.  What I've really enjoyed most though is knowing exactly what is in each thing that I've eaten.

For breakfast this morning we were told to have a piece of fresh fruit so I had the last banana in the basket.  Then for lunch I was able to get together with a lovely woman that I met while serving in Africa last spring on the Africa Mercy .  Her husband is the head surgeon on the ship and is world renown for all the brilliant Head and Neck surgeries he's done.  They are here this week for an Oral Surgery meeting where he received yet another major award.  His wife and I enjoyed lunch at one of my favorite restaurants - True Food Kitchen

I not only had a terrific raw salad I also had some kale, carrot, apple and celery juice.  Almost as tasty as the veggie juice I make at home. They are chain restaurant headquartered in Phoenix, with several here in So. Cal.  If you have the chance to eat at one I think you'll be very impressed.

But I did make a meal today.  It was a bit of a struggle since we had record breaking heat here.  Yes, even near the ocean where it almost never gets hotter than the mid 70's and it was well over 100 degrees here.  Thousands and thousands of people could be heard doing their best Wicked Witch of the East impression of  "I'm MELTING! MELTING!"  So, once again - I'm so very, very glad that I didn't commit to blogging about a series of meals where I would be slaving over hot pans and ovens.  That would not have gone over well today at all!

Broccoli Tahiniiiiii

For dinner Cherie suggests a Broccoli-Tahini Pate with Crudites with a simple salad with some walnuts.  I made the salad with the walnuts but used some of the left over salad dressing I had from our previous menus.  The pate' took some effort as there was blanched broccoli which was then plunged in ice water so that it didn't really cook. Save the enzymes, you know. This broccoli was then added garlic, flax, mustard, soy sauce (tamari) and some tahini and pulsed to a fair thee well in the food processor.

Simple Salad

Tahini is a sesame paste that is frequently used in middle eastern cuisine.  The pate' is served as a dip for a variety of veggies.  It can also be used in a roll up as we've seen before.  Since there's quite a bit of pate' here I just opted to put a plastic cover over the plate I arranged everything on and it should be a good insurance policy for any upcoming munchies.  Keeping with the grading scheme I think this dip suffers by comparison with all the terrific dips we experienced on the Fat Blast diet.  Given the need to make a dip in the future I won't be looking for the dog ear page in this book.  Sorry Cherie I'm giving this a C.

Tomorrow should have more recipes to try.  Here's the very abbreviated spreadsheet for today.

Recipes
Name	Category	Diet	Day	Page number		Rating
Broccoli-Tahini Pate	Dip	Raw Rev	one	144		C