Blog / vegetables

It's September 1st and I decided to switch things up again. For the last month or so I've wanted to do a fast but time really got in the way of that plan. I was looking at some food porn on a fruitarian website and really began salivating over the luscious fruit. So then I got to thinking about adding fruit to my diet.

I used to eat a lot of fruit in the early days of going raw and I got out of eating a lot of fruit because I began reading so many viewpoints. I remember a woman sounding shocked and shameful when I declared that I put 2 bananas in my green smoothies (serving 2 people.) She said 1/2 a banana per person was more than adequate. I allowed the shame of fruit being bad enter my mindset and I ate more and more greens with less and less fruit. I don't think there's anything wrong with eating more greens and less fruit, however, for me, I noticed that I felt badly if I ate fruit, particularly delicious fruits like mangos and bananas (the more high glycemic fruits.)

So, for some undetermined time, I'm going to eat fruit along with my vegetables. I said that I would start this on September 1st but I've been doing this for a week now and you know what I've already noticed? I feel very grateful for fruit. I feel happy to let some sweetness back into my life. The colors and the flavors are amazing and from eating all the greens, I don't need to add any sweetener to the fruits like I did when I first began a raw food diet.

I've also noticed that when I'm in doubt as to what to eat, eating fruit is very easy, quick and satisfying. I used to do a green juice in the morning and loved it. I added green apples and oranges sometimes to the green juice to make it sweeter and I didn't add much in the way of carrots or beets. 1 or 2 if I had them but the green juice was a green juice with some apple to sweeten. Then I'd have a big green smoothie for lunch and I felt very satisfied. Dinner was a big green salad with no dressing but maybe some cooked veggies and a small bit of brown rice and/or beans of some sort. Dinner was always delicious. I found that over time, I started increasing the amount of rice and I was craving desserts. As life got busier, the mornings were spent exercising vs. making a green juice so sometimes I wouldn't have breakfast because life got in the way. I've noticed that eating fruit in the morning is a nice way to start the day. And it's easy to pick it up and just eat it. I don't have to do anything fancy with it.

This morning I cut up a small yellow watermelon (local and organic!) and shared it with Matt and the kids. The kids didn't have much so Matt and I basically ate 1/2 a small watermelon each. I also had some tea just because. I didn't really crave it but the kids wanted some so I made some for me as well.

I went to the cafe and somewhere around 1 or 1:30 I made a big green smoothie. It had 3 small bananas in it and some strawberries and local kale. I did add some of the protein powder and maqui powder because I really like the way it tastes. I had 32 oz of this smoothie and it filled me up and satisfied me for hours.

While at the cafe, I was experimenting with food and made up these bite-sized chocolate drizzled cheeze cake drops. I tasted a bit of the recipe but didn't have a desire to eat more. (Maybe the fruit really does satisfy a sweet tooth!) I also cut into some lemon cheeze cake that Colleen made so that smaller pieces are ready to order. I did lick a bit of that bowl because lemon cheeze cake is my new favorite. I drank 32 oz of water and went home.

For dinner, we all about about 1 lb of greens between us. Matt and I had the most. We had a local mesclun mix that I got at the food stand that happens on Saturdays in front of the cafe. I also cooked up some local corn that I got from the food stand, too because it's just too damn nice to eat local organic corn in the summer. Bonnie gave me some artichokes so I steamed them up too for Matt and the kids. I'm not a big artichoke fan. I ate the cooked corn with some umiboshi paste - a new favorite way to eat corn, thanks to Colleen for that tip! I ate the HUGE green salad with homemade salsa and guacamole on top. The salsa was wicked hot and the guacomole was amazing.

A coupla/few hours later, Matt made some raw ice cream with frozen bananas and bing cherries. Very simple and very delicious. I drank another 32 oz in between the time I got home and the time I decided to be done with eating/drinking for the night.

So Day 1 was a success. We'll see what transpires for me for Day 2. Good night.

xoxo,
Linda

So the past few nights I've been enjoying wraps for dinner. *STOMACH GROWLING* I'm excited to have this tonight again. I'll include ways today to make this 100% raw although the wraps I've been eating these wraps that AREN'T 100% raw the past couple nights. (OH NO! Hopefully the raw policeman isn't out there reading this blog post!) hahaha - just joking really. I vary between 100% raw and like 90% raw. I don't really care too much about the details. I am 100% vegan though and for me, that's what works the best. So here's the ingredients for the wrap: sprouted grain tortillas - (or collard leaves if 100% raw) whole dulse micro greens sunflower sprouts cooked lentils (or sprouted lentils if 100% raw) green olives RAWking A-1 sauce fresh basil fresh tomatoes (optional) Now follow the photo assembly instructions

Howdy! I wanted to post up a bit of the newsletter I got from my CSA last week. For those that don't know what a CSA is, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture and we've been into it for about 9 years now. How it works is that you pre-pay for a share of vegetables from a local farmer. It helps the farmer greatly and it helps you get some of the freshest veggies that you could get aside from picking and eating directly from your own garden. It's a way to get back in touch with seasonal eating from YOUR region as well as getting back in touch with your local farms/famers. You can easily find a CSA near you by going to this website: http://www.localharvest.org/csa/ - there's a box there to key in your zip code to see what CSAs are in your neck of the woods. When we started using a CSA, we got a super great education on what it means to eat locally and seasonally! I totally took for granted getting any/all veggies that I wanted any time of the year in the supermarket and my eyes started to open on how much expense and fossil fuels are spent to fly/cart/drive/ship veggies from all over the world to my supermarket. While I'm super grateful for that accessibility and abundance, I also realized that it really helps the local economy to support local agriculture and particularly the small farmer who works SUPER hard to try to make a living. The other thing AWESOME that I learned about using a CSA was what exactly I was missing in terms of taste and quality by going to the darn supermarket! For example, it was mid-to-late-summer in Maryland when we were having fun with our first CSA shares (for this CSA, we had to actually work on the farm which was totally awesome and again, I learned a LOT.) We were getting some tomatoes in the share and I'll never forget looking at these different colored heirloom tomatoes: brandywines, green zebras, cherokee purples, sungolds, to name a few. (I don't think sungolds are necessarily heirloom but BOY do they taste good! Like candy! Also, what are the names of the large orange tomatoes? GOD THEY ARE SO GOOD!) Anyway, I took them home and ate the freshest, ripest, juiciest, plumpest, sweetest, most amazing tomatoes EVER! Now my uncle used to grow Jersey tomatoes back home and they were tasty - nothing beats a good beefsteak tomato, but OMG! These tomatoes were unreal! I made a vow that I would never buy a tomato off-season ever again. I totally went to the store and looked at the colorless tomatoes that get picked before they're ripe so they'll last the journey to the store and which are sometimes wrapped in plastic and placed on a styrofoam tray and I asked myself, "where's the life here?" "where's the vitality of this fruit?" And trust me, the heirloom tomatoes they have in the stores don't taste ANYTHING like what you get from the CSA, farmer's market or your own garden. :-) I'm totally big on doing the local thing. Raw food localvore, that's me! So that's a bit of my own personal CSA experience. I wrote a bit more about CSAs in my little e-book on how to make eating healthy work on a budget: http://vt-fiddle.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=11 Now for what our wonderful farmer, Seth, wrote last week. It's a wonderful ditty following along these lines of why it's good to eat more local foods and support your local farmer... Enjoy. (And write your comments below. Would love to hear what you have to say on the subject... Seth, by the way is part of a dynamic duo that operates Worcester Woods Farm CSA...

.... I really believe that cost is ultimately the major obstacle for a local food production system to overcome in order to be a serious supplier to the majority of people. These days convenience might run a close second, but that seems an easier issue to address. I am fully aware that farmers deserve a decent income (believe me), and prices should reflect that, but if the guy making ten or twelve bucks an hour can’t afford the food, what does this say about the viability for the small- to mid-sized farm? One should not need a college education to have quality food be the staple of one’s diet. I would suggest that an over reliance on the terms “organic”, “gourmet”, “sustainable”, and “enviro-friendly” to justify charging ever-increasing prices is going to result in too many farms competing for a finite amount of people willing to pay 3 bucks for a head of lettuce or 20 bucks for a chicken. I’m sure I’ve touched on this subject in previous newsletters, but I feel it’s worthy of additional consideration.

The trick is for local food to be able to compete directly with the mass-produced stuff. If it could be made cost-effective for Shaws or Price Chopper to carry, or better yet, feature truly fresh food, then I think we could more optimistically use the word “sustainable.” One of my favorite ironies is to be in the produce department of some big super market, looking at a bunch of parsley that is pale, wilted and lifeless, and all of a sudden an automatic misting or “freshening” system comes on from above and sprays water over a bunch of crappy, two week old vegetables. No wonder you see a ton of fat people with carts full of Fig Newton’s and Lucky Charms and frozen pizzas. At least you know that stuff is gonna taste good. The fruits and vegetables are, for the most part, tasteless and unappetizing. If you had day old bright green, crunchy, vibrant, perky vegetables under that same nice misting system, at the same price or just a few cents more, people would walk by and actually smell food. They would feel good putting this beautiful green stuff in their carts. Maybe you could sell 50 heads of lettuce for 3 bucks a piece at the farmers market, but you could probably sell 500 head for $1.50 at Shaws. Somehow we have to find a connection between the two philosophies, thereby the downsides of each (i.e. over-priced vs. cheap crap) are lessened or eliminated. It seems the word “organic” has driven a wedge where one needn’t be. I use compost to grow broccoli, some other guy uses a bag of 10-10-10. It’s still broccoli, and the one you should buy is the one that tastes better and makes you feel better and hopefully fits into your budget. Five bucks is too much even if it’s top quality, and 99 cents isn’t worth much either because there is no joy in eating flabby, lifeless food. ....

I totally love receiving the perspective of others, particularly my local farmer dude on this subject.

Take care and have a lovely night. Go outside and view the stars if you can.

Blessings,

Linda