life with booyaa

the background

a long time ago there was a young student - let's say she was called lou and was studying french at the polytechnic of north london - who got all stressed out and suffered from something which at the time was a relatively new phenomenon and unmonikered but we now know as IBS and CFS or ME, but that was the yuppie flu way back then, so nobody used the term anyway.

right, so the heroine of our tale was distraught and distressed by the illnesses that threatened her final exams and had completely obliterated her life as she knew it. she barely ate as food never stayed inside for long and whichever way it came out was painful. she couldn't remember her phone number or her address. she left the house on rare occasion to go to the unhelpful GP for a sick note. and the rest of the time was spent in bed and attempting to study between headaches. she was miserable, to say the least.

right, are you with me so far?

enter doctor latto, naturopath

a helpful young man suggested a visit to a doctor who had miraculously cured a friend of the family from similar complaints. this doctor was a naturopath who worked from his house in a rather nice area of reading (yes! there are nice areas of reading) and by all accounts a bit odd. so our fair heroine was plonked in a car and driven off to visit doctor latto.

yes, yes, i'm getting to the point.

doctor latto prescribed a revolting herbal drink to be taken each morning on an empty stomach plus strict adherence to a raw food diet, as set out in leslie kenton's raw energy book. neither of these things were easy but she did as she was told and within 3 weeks was back on her feet and going in to lectures and remembering things she'd been studying. truly amazing. around about this time she also, thanks to her mum's sponsorship, started learning autogenic therapy to keep the stress levels down. another few weeks passed and she was almost back to normal. stick thin, it must be said, but very nearly mended.

skip to the end...

so... after 5 weeks of being unwell with bronchitis i've decided to return to what i know. i've given up on the doctor's persistent response of "it'll take time. your immune system is very low" and taken my health into my own hands.

we splurged on the best food processor we could find, shopped around for the best small juicer (some of these things are mammoth and we just don't have the space) and stocked up on kilos of apples, carrots, pears, kiwis, mangos, herbs, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, ginger etc. started growing alfalfa sprouts and chick pea sprouts, too.

i started off gently. i did a 36 hour juice fast and felt unwell, headachey tired etc. this is normal on any type of fast. but having felt so ill for so long i wasn't really up to the full-on cleansing extravaganza. this should have its own post, but briefly and simplistically. when you do a fast your body starts eliminating toxins. this leads to a phase of headaches, tiredness and, on prolonged fasts, spots, bad breath and many other unpleasant side effects. then, once the "cleansing crisis" is over, you feel truly fabulous in body and mind. but, as i say, that's a bit much for me to deal with right now

so what i am doing is attempting to eat at least 75% raw, with the other 25% being live yogurt and the odd nibble of cheese or cereal. days like today, it'll be something like 90% raw as i have the time and ingredients to make nice food that i enjoy that just happens to be raw. i've bought a juice recipe book and a raw gourmet food book to guide me. more on each of those later.

i've started doing my autogenics again too. i think back to when this was all just a part of life, i took it for granted. it's sad that i gave it all up. i let things slide until i was no longer doing any of it. but it is hard to keep up in these days of not having much time, where much of our social life revolves around drinking and eating. where a sandwich for lunch is standard procedure. it's hard to go against the grain, swim against the tide, contra-corriente. working from home means i can do this easily and as we hardly ever go out the whole eating out thing won't be an issue. but when i start working from the office again it is going to make things really difficult. if only there were a juice bar i could drop into...

i was going to make this into a daily diary post of what i'd juiced and what i'd eaten. but that's unrealistic. i'll post good recipes and give you all a run down on the juicer and recipe books for if you're interested in having a go yourself.

several weeks down the road. how are we doing?

the juicer

i chose a L'equip compact juicer from a specialist online shop, as i needed to know it would deal with several kilos of carrots a week. lots of juicers struggle with hard vegetables. i'm happy with it, it looks quite cute (it's black and the top looks like darth vader's helmet) and juices very well. it's a bit of a pain to clean - as are all juicers i've come across so far - and on days when you're making three or four glasses of juice it seems like you've spent half the day washing the juicer. i've heard very good stories of the "champion" juicer which, apparently, will last forever and is a dream to clean. the reason i didn't choose that this time round was the price. a champion will set you back £250 while we paid £99.

the juices

i've tried a few recipes from super juice by michael van straten. he certainly knows how to sell you the good-for-you but slightly out there flavours. and he does make some great tasting drinks. they aren't always quite as awful as they might seem. plus, you really get used to some of the odder flavours. my favourite has got to be orange, lemon, carrot, apple and ginger. fab stuff. but i'm trying hard to have more vegetable juices. so, as i type, i'm sipping a beetroot, lettuce, cucumber and apple juice. the earthy flavour of the beetroot is calmed considerably by the watery cucumber and the apple juice helps make it more palatable. tonight i'm going to have one with tomato, radish, red pepper and greens. if i add some garlic it'll be just like gazpacho.

so why have juice if you're not that keen on it. and how weird is that? drinking beetroot juice?! well, it's good for you! i'm choosing fruit and veg with specific quallities to help me get over a prolonged bout of bronchitis and ensuing post-infection fatigue. i'm not just drinking juice, i'm eating 90% raw, too. between the two of them i reckon it'll boost my chances of recovery faster than anything the GP can suggest.

90% raw

why 90%? well, cos i pinch a forkful of saute potatoes off boo's plate or have a biscuit with my tea, or add some cheese to the not-pasta and pesto we're having, toast some sunflower seeds and so on. i find it's easier to aim to be completely raw and then allow some treats, than to go for the 75% raw which seems to be what most raw food advocates, er, advocate. i did try it, but it's like going on a diet where they allow a tiny amount of treats - it sometimes works. but it can have the opposite effect, in other words, it tempts you more. one biscuit is never enough. the taste reminds you what it's like so you sit down and eat the whole packet...it's sometimes just easier not to have any at all. that's how it seems to work for me, so that's why i'm doing this the same way.

treats for the raw fooder in london

woo hoo! number 1: there's a raw food cafe in primrose hill (doh! of course. where else?). the little earth cafe is in the triyoga centre and has a juice bar and small selection of raw snacks. already have it on my 'wants' list to go and visit. check it out

woo hoo! number 2: i'm loathe to share this really... but there's something called the raw food dinners which i'm excited about. but as it's fairly restricted numbers i don't want too many people to find out or i'll never get a ticket for the next one! it's only just started, the first one happend last month. they have a theme for each. last month was italian and the next one is mexican. we won't be able to go to that as it's next weekend and we have things arranged. but i'm trying to get sorted for the following one - which is indian. yum! read all about it

feel the benefit

so far i'm all about getting better. i noticed after only two consecutive days on this almost 100% raw regime that i was feeling considerably better. i have more energy and i don't need as much sleep. these are two things i've particularly been struggling with during my convalescence. a month ago i was struggling just getting through the morning routine (get up, make tea, shower and hairwash, breakfast, tidy up, dry hair, get dressed, do makeup, get packed lunch ready - actually that's sounding like quite a lot) and i'd have to have a rest at least once in that process. now, though, i can get through a day - though only just. it's still a vast improvement. i've also lost weight. i don't know exactly how much as my scales are at best unreliable and at worst useless, but i think it's about half a stone since i started three weeks ago. that's a very positive side-effect.

when we got the juicer we also bought a magimix food processor and a few bits and pieces to make food prep easier. it's all very well having gorgeous risotto pans but for raw food you need extra salad bowls (tip: small salad serving bowls are just the right size for one person to eat dinner out of!) and big chopping boards, jars for mixing dressings, lettuce spinner, spiraliser, sprouting trays, mesh bags...

i already had a couple of books from last time, both by Leslie Kenton (try this one) but I wanted more ideas. it's hard not to get bored when you're using nothing more than raw veg. with juices, it's easy to go for the obvious carrot and apple mix. well, with raw food there's even more of a case. if you don't want to feel like you're eating salad every day then you need some inspiration from somewhere.

so i read the amazon reviews and chose the raw food gourmet. unluckily the majority of the recipes rely on a dehydrator so it's not much use. besides not having the equipment i don't have all day to make dinner either. impractical to say the least. however, we have managed to find a couple of interesting recipes. getting completely away from the reworked salad recipe is the not-spaghetti and sauce. quite groovy. you make the spaghetti using courgette and a nifty machine called a spiraliser (or a veg peeler if you want tagliatelle) then you make a raw tomato sauce. lots of basil and garlic. we used some real parmesan, too. just didn't seem right otherwise.

since then i've bought a bunch more books (more about them in a later post) and added not-meatballs to the spaghetti spectacular. i also tried using butternut squash instead of courgette for a change. and to replace the parmesan we have the not nearly so tasty, but not a bad rip-off, nutrional yeast flakes. see photo courtesy of booyaa

one of my favourite recipes so far is the romaine wraps. easy peasy. take some avocado, apple, mango, peppers, spring onions, fresh corn, alfalfa sprouts and chop everything finely. add some fresh herbs (my fave is basil) and make a creamy dressing with natural yogurt (not strictly raw vegan, ahem. but it provides good bacteria and B12, which is notoriously difficult for vegans to get in their diet) garlic, soy sauce, spices, mustard... whatever you fancy really. then you mix it all up and spoon onto romaine leaves, then roll. stick a cocktail stick in the middle to hold together. really yummy!

another really easy one is based on an old warm salad recipe that anna introduced me too aeons ago. break a cauliflower into tiny florets, chop red pepper, chunky grate or julienne carrots, finely chop green beans (i use 'helda' beans, which i knew as vainas in spain) and some spring onions. make a dressing (this is the good bit!) with a dessertpoon each of oil (try walnut and sesame) honey and soy sauce plus crushed garlic and ginger (the more ginger the better, as far as i'm concerned) and shake all that up. you can add a bit of finely chopped chilli or a drop of hot sauce, too, for more zing. toss the salad and leave it to marinate for a while. sprinkle with flaked almonds or sunflower seeds and eat.

there's loads of information out there on teh intarweb, some of which one should probably not trust... so i'm checking stuff out carefully. here's a summary of what juice fasting is all about.

the human body is not set up to digest much of what we eat these days. our physiological make up and lack of appropriate enzymes make for a tough time of it when a load of pasta, meat and dairy hit your gut. bad food combinations also add to the mess, where only one set of enzymes can work on digesting food at any one time but different types of food require different enzymes. and there's the depleted enzyme situation to remember. so, over time, we end up with badly digested food sitting in the, um, lower end of the digestive tract. these denatured foods are treated by the body as toxins and the story goes that these toxins remain in the body, trapped in cells. especially in the liver. to make it easier to understand think about cellulite. what you're seeing there are the visible effects of cells full of toxins, trapped under the skin. massage and lymphatic drainage can help shift the toxins, but you do have to make sure they all get out or the toxins will end up floating around in your blood again and make you very ill indeed.

obviously that's a very simplistic version of things but basically we eat the wrong stuff to be healthy. the only stuff our body is equipped to digest are raw fruits and veggies and living foods (sprouted or fremented seeds, grains and pulses) and that diet will maintain optimum health. however, having followed a crappy diet for years you have all this fat and toxins and what leslie kenton refers to as meso-health: 'just gettting by' health. so you need to rid the body of all the built up toxins, clean out your colon and start afresh on a raw vegan diet.

still with me? so, to get rid of all that stuff you drink only fresh raw fruit and veg juices. the idea here is that you are getting tons of vitamins and minerals so you have all the nutrients you need (and loads more than your average diet would provide) but you get no solid food so your digestive system can shut down. the nutrients from the juices go straight into your bloodstream and your stomach has no solids to contend with. so now your digestive system has some downtime and all the energy it usually saps from you can go into cell repair. and that's it really.

you need to juice fast for a minimum of five days for your body to start the repair work and you'll get quite unwell from time to time as toxins are released from the cells they've been trapped in and flood back into your bloodstream. headaches are the most common ailment but as you go on for 8 days or 2 weeks you'll get weirder things happen. for a start you'll start to expel the stuff that's been stuck in your colon. nice. you won't be hungry, amazingly, after ten days. but old injuries will come back and hurt and your skin will be dry with such a lack of fat in your diet. you'll get spots or boils, go dizzy when you stand up too quickly and more. then, at the two to three week stage you'll have bags of energy and not need to sleep as much as you're used to.

to come off a juice fast, which is normally recommended as a 30 day programme, you need to be careful too. no good going down pizza express and scoffing everything in sight, plus a bottle of their finest pinot grigio. you need to eat very lightly for the first two or three days. lots of people recommend eating an avocado or a mango, with nothing else for your first meal. then maybe an apple or some tomatoes. after that start shredding some lettuce and go for a light salad. then build up. if you plan to return to your regular diet then take it very slowly with no cooked food/dairy for a week and even then have a tiny amount of cooked/dairy compared to the raw fruit and veg.

so that's what i've been doing. i didn't want to post this until i'd finished the fast, so family didn't get worried. i know it's not considered normal to most of the world. i've read up on it and i'm convinced, it makes a lot of sense. next few posts are little updates of my journey.

so, having tried a four day juice fast and coped considerably better than i'd expected, and, even, with very few side effects, i did some more research and found that to really get the benefits you should juice fast for 30 days. *gulp*

it seems that 30 days is pretty much the standard. further reading proved that two weeks is fairly doable and most people get considerable health benefits from it, and the minimum fasting period to achieve tangible results is 8 days. so, i'm going to aim initially for 8 days but then try to get to 14. then we'll see how things look and consider another week. once i'm at 21 days i'll make the decision whether to go for 30 days. step by step.

what follows are the notes i made on my palm pilot every day for the first ten days of the fast. *warning* some gory personal details will be shared

day 1 slight headache started midday but was bad enough to send me to bed at 6pm

day 2 headache was very faint and didn't bother me much. was fairly hungry but not so much that i worried i might cave in

day 3 woke up feeling hungry and had a headache. felt a bit sick after juice. all symptoms disappeared soon afterwards

day 4 supposedly today is the day my digestive system shuts down and hunger pangs stop

day 5 woke up starving! so much for day 4 being the end of hunger pangs

day 6 bit snotty. getting fed up of washing the juicer two or three times a day

day 7 ewww. stuff coming out. loads of energy compared to other days

day 8 still hungry headache on and off all day and tongue furry. period started. don't want to get weighed until that's finished for more accuracy

day 9 ...

day 10 had a bit of a headache in the afternoon, but it never got to the stage where i couldn't cope with it. used a bit of temple balm and had some chamomile infusion, massaged my neck and got on with work. it's amazing how dependent you get on painkillers. now that i can't take any (they're counterproductive to detoxing) i just find a way around using them. i'm quite impressed. so maybe i've broken my reliance on ibuprofen to get me through the week...

also had a long chat with boo about what i'm doing. now that i've passed my first mini-goal, and can't really tell whether i'm feeling better than a few weeks ago because time is passing and i'm recovering or because this is really helping me, well, i need to know if i'm doing the right thing. back to my fasting resource, curezone, and i found there was a blogger there with a very similar situation. until she got past the three week stage she was not really convinced it was doing her any good. and at around day 32 she finally hit the high.

posts are every two or three days from now on. there wasn't really that much to say.

day 11 got weighed. still a bit bloated from period so not sure how accurate it is, but lost another 3 pounds. that's a total of 8 pounds so far, which is a little disappointing, it has to be said

day 14 tiredness mostly gone, back to normal weekday tired. no extra energy as yet. occasional hunger pangs but mostly craving for egg mayo and salad on granary! got weighed today but only lost 1lb since saturday. very disappointed

day 15 got oxypowder in the post but will wait till friday to use it so am near the loo! tongue icky again plus have some big spots on back of neck - luckily they're above the hairline. have noticed in general my skin is feeling smoother. face is still quite dry

day 20 ent appt meant i spent most of the day at the hospital, which rather messed up my schedule so when i got home had a mug of bouillon. it's comforting and tasty, really quick and no juicer to clean afterwards, plus i get some oil for my poor dry face

day 21 headachey all day, was worried i'd get a migraine but it cleared in the evening. various aches and pains, little bit tired. trying hard not to wimp out and have bouillon for dinner. had veg juice for dinner. weight loss now 1 stone and that's over 2 stone total since i went raw - only another 2.5 stone to go...

day 23 well, i'm still waiting to feel the energy & find god (jk) but i have got one breakthrough to report - i finally got the whites of my eyes being whiter and the blue bluer. it's not so much that they're bluer rather that they're clearer. if you check out shazzie's before and after snaps (scroll down to august 2001) i'm sure you'll agree that the eye colour in the after pic looks like someone's been playing with photoshop. nevertheless, clearer eyes and smoother skin are big plusses in my book

day 27 lost 2 pounds in 2 days just by increasing my greens - as revolting as they are, i'm going to have to go green these last few days. although i was hoping to get the 'high' i don't think i want to keep going much longer. i'm bored of juices, bored of washing the juicer and it's time to get to the gym and exercise my flabby belly into submission but i really don't have the stamina at the moment

i do think i've achieved a great deal so far but there's still a long way to go and i think exercise is a big part of that - to lose more weight and get more healthy.

weight loss yes, it's a great side-effect! everyone is different and we all react differently YMMV etc. there are bloggers out there who lost 30 lbs or more in 30 days, then there are those who just scraped 20 lbs, so it really does depend. it seems that the more you have to lose (the more overweight you are) the more you'll lose, and quickly, on a juice fast. if that's true then i should be shedding pounds like there's no tomorrow but that's just not the case.

skin brushing using a soft, natural bristled brush you brush from extremities towards the lymph glands (groin, underarms). this a) removes dead skin and allows toxins to come out through the skin and b) shifts toxins to the lymph glands where they can be processed and excreted

psyllium husk this is what you get to eat in hell, i'm sure. the version i have is a mix of fine and coarse powder. it contains ground plant fibre and probiotics. the powder expands in water to create something akin to wallpaper paste with sand in. if you can drink it without being sick it makes its way to your colon and gives you a good internal scrubbing. necessary for fasters as you're taking in very little fibre and loosening lots of stored toxins into your system so you need to poo the toxins out and also need bulk to replace lack of fibre

oxypowder having given up on pysillium husk cos it's just too revolting for words, i've decided to try oxypowder instead. again, the reactions from the world of doctors and quacks out there on the internet are mixed. but most juice fasters reckon it's the dog's wotsits. so i'll be giving it a go. rather that than go for colonic irrigation! it's just another way to shift stuff that is very definitely better out than in. and boy does it make stuff come out. gross. and i won't go into detail, but if i tell you i lost three pounds on the day i took it, well, i think that will give you an idea.

so, vitaorganic (pretty rubbish website, unfortunately. if i had time i'd offer to redo it for them) has a buffet of gently cooked and totally raw foods. in the evenings they have an a la carte menu with half a dozen completely raw meals on offer (among others pizza, lasagne, kofta) and juices, desserts etc. it's a bit confusing when you first go in and you don't know whether to sit down or just point at stuff for one of the chef/servers to fill your plate. but it seems fairly chilled and you can't really do it wrong.

we opted for the 3 scoops option where you choose, rather evidently, given the name, 3 scoops of different dishes for a fiver. that's the smallest size in the buffet range. boo had sprouted lentil dhal, 'top chakra' which was a lovely creamy tasting purple thing and a sweet pepper ratatouille without tomatoes. (there appears to be a theme in the world of raw food to avoid nightshades. potatoes, raw, are an obvious thing to avoid, but i'm not yet sure why tomatoes are so bad for you. i know they're horrendously acidic when cooked, i get that, but raw... no idea.) i had salad buffet. they have a dozen or more bowls of salad. some already mixed (like a coleslaw type thing, greek salad sans feta, mixed leaves, sprout combinations) and then chopped brocolli, cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumber etc in separate bowls. you're allowed to have various different things make up one scoop which was cool, so i had about seven different things with three different dressings on! they also brought me some raw hummus and the woman who seemed to be in charge (and spoke good english, the chefs were a bit hard to converse with) came over and talked me through the menu and explained how things work. she asked me if i was a raw foodist and i was so excited to be able to say yes. how nerdy am i?!

we had pudding too. boo had a vegan passion cake which was served with a rich coconut cream and i had a raw strawberry not-cheesecake, with fresh coconut and almond milk for the cheese bit and crushed hazelnuts for the base. it had swirls of a chocolatey syrup (i suspected raw chocolate powder blended with mango) it was yummy! and really beautifully presented. it took them a while to serve it, but then when it arrived i could see why. fabulous. none of this sitting in the fridge for a week nonsense. and as boo said as we were leaving no worries about food poisoning.

i was really happy we'd gone. and i'll try to persuade booyaa to take me there on the occasional friday evening after work. i can't wait to try raw pizza or black bean burritos. oh yeah :D

first, where to buy raw products in the UK

i went shopping in our local tesco at the weekend and was cursing my bad timing and hating seeing hordes of fat people buying jam doughnuts and families with trolleys piled high with sunny delight... when i came across something that totally made my day. i found some cool oil (cold pressed, organic seed oil, emphasis on seeds high in omegas) and nākd raw fruit and nut bars. i got two varieties of nākd bars, the apple pie, which is ok, but doesn't stand a chance against berry cheeky, with strawberries and raspberries, mixed nuts and seeds and apple juice. i've been using the cool oil on my salads at work. i got fed up of preparing a small jar of dressing every day so unless i want something special, like orange juice, honey and grainy mustard (mmmm) then i use my little set of oil, apple vinegar and maldon salt which i keep in my drawer at work. i even have salad sprinkles (crushed flax crackers) there for emergencies. how organised am i?

you can also get raw coconut oil in 'ordinary' shops nowadays. try source or fresh n wild. the guys who make cool oil also produce agave nectar and sell it through tesco, holland & barrett and waitrose. and everything else can come from shazzie's online store and the fresh network.

painless raw recipes

this morning i made some nut milk for the first time ever. i don't know why i haven't done it before, it was delicious! to be honest, i didn't think our little blender would do the trick and i thought i'd have to wait for the mythical vita-mix but it was fine. in an homage to heidi and justin's raw recipe challenge, here's the nitty gritty:

the recipe came from raw food, real world, by sarma melngailis and matthew kenney. it's based on their almond milk recipe but with my own twist. so, i used a cup of almonds, soaked overnight (i used half with and half without skins) and 3 cups of water. i blitzed the almonds then poured the mix through my nut milk bag. i added a pinch of salt, fresh vanilla (i cut about two inches off a pod and scraped out the powder, the left over pod went into boo's coffee jar so he will get vanilla coffee eventually) and a tablespoon of light agave nectar. it was a very rich milk, you could certainly add more water, but i loved it that way. it was quite sweet, too, so perhaps i'll add less agave next time, but all in all it was really lovely. i drank the lot, straight, for breakfast. i have more soaked almonds in the fridge so i think i'll be making some more for dinner, too!

you know, it was really easy, there was no prep (other than throwing a handful of almonds into a bowl the night before) and minimal washing up. just make some. any nuts you like - i fancy brazil and pecan myself. add vanilla, maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg... whatever you fancy. it makes such a change when we're stuck, especially over here in the UK, with water, herbal tea or expensively imported coconut milk as our only drinks. getting hold of truly raw nuts is hotly debated and i won't go there just now.

support on your journey

let's face it. it's tough being a social outcast raw in a society where food and drink are the cornerstone of socialising and there's not enough support in the UK compared to in the states. no pot luck meet-ups, very few juice bars and even less raw cafes (there are two that i know of in london) and we're not really the kind to develop communities, we're all too introverted. but it is getting bigger in the states and i'm sure things will grow here eventually. it does generally work that way. but there are other ways to get a feeling of community. i do this by reading other people's blogs, subscribing to a magazine and newsletters. i find it does make you feel more involved, especially if you post comments and get a conversation going. i've been slowly 'coming out' to people i trust, too, and that opens my opportunity to talk about it and get feedback. so that's my suggestion for all of you here in the UK. get involved in the virtual community until the real life communities evolve.

here's who i read/listen to:
we like it raw
raw food, right now
karen knowler's blog & newsletter
get fresh magazine
raw vegan radio podcasts

i used to read shazzie's blog, but she no longer updates it. her journals are definitely worth a look, though. i am still working on encouraging boo to take me to her christmas do (it's on my birthday, so it would be a great pressie!) and that would be a fabulous way to cross from the virtual into the real world.

i've been on a juice fast for the past week.

this time around i'm not suffering so much. i do get headaches. they're quite frequent but not debilitating and they fade fairly fast. so far i haven't noticed excessively dry skin, which was my major criticism last time, and that started two weeks in. but i feel good in general, with plenty of energy. i've lost some weight, too, we'll see what the scales say in the morning when it will be a full week's worth.

update 25.11.06: i've lost 9 pounds. very, very happy!
update 26.11.06: i think the scales are wrong. they say boo lost 11 pounds in two weeks which is highly unlikely, and i just got weighed again today, for a reality check, and they now say i lost four, not nine, pounds. disappointed after yesterday's euphoria, but that's much more realistic.

one thing i've noticed is that my teeth are a bit sensitive. i've read about this, when you have too much fruit. i'm adding two leaves of 'greens' or a handful of spinach to every juice so i'm quite proud of myself for that. it's not problematic at all this way. if i try to add four or five big green leaves then it tastes horrid and i can't drink it. but last time i barely used greens until nearing the end, so this is a step in the right direction for me.

i wondered if i was feeling better this time round because i don't have as many toxins in my system to get rid of. since my last juice fast - five months ago - i've been off and on raw. although some weeks were almost all cooked and i've had wine, beer, pizza... i've been more raw than not. also i did have a big 100% build up to this one and the previous fast was straight out of my six week illness and its associated medication, so there was a lot more to clean up back then.

it struck me today just how much we overeat. considering how much i've had to 'eat' today, and yes it's mid afternoon and i'm peckish, but i would be even if i'd had a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a mid-morning snack and then a big bowl of pasta for lunch at 1 o'clock. i can survive perfectly well on the 2 litres of juice and litre of water that i've had so far today. i'm really no more hungry than a day full of stodgy cooked food. or raw, for that matter, though i generally burn off raw food more slowly than cooked. i worked out how many calories i take in on an average juice fast day and it works out at 700. the UK's dept of health recommend around 1940 calories a day for women. i bet i exceed all other good RDAs and fall below the bad ones. certainly no added salt, sugar or fat has also got to be off the scale in comparison to even my usual daily intake, never mind the rest of the country.

i think this one will be a two-week fast. i had originally wanted to go for three weeks but i'm not convinced i'll cope for that long. nothing to do with finally getting a dehydrator and dying to use it! no, though man am i looking forward to that! it's really a combination of things. i'm bored of thinking about buying veg or prepping veg or washing the juicer already. last time i spent the first two weeks at home, which it much easier. and then there's the work's christmas do. i can't imagine there being anything suitable for a juice faster and it's way too posh for me to turn up with my flask. well, we'll see. perhaps sparkling water in a champagne flute will fool enough people for me to get away with it ;)

why am i on yet another juice fast? well, partly because my good intentions for sticking to my raw regime after the last fast went all a bit wobbly. no, i'm not beating myself up over it, i'm just being honest. i feel really good when i'm 100% raw and i'd like to try to stick to that. that's partly why we've just ordered the dehydrator, so i can have heavier food, a wider range of food and even *shock* slightly warmed food, now that winter makes a salad in the evening possibly the least appealing dinner ever.

couple of raw food links for you to waste spend your time on

diet tv dot com

diet television was quite good fun. you can find your perfect diet by using the sliders to specify your preferences. so how much dairy/meat/veg you eat, how important ease of sticking to it, tasty food, feeeling good, losing weight fast etc is for you. mine came up with the raw detox diet at number five so they weren't too far off ;)

tofu666 and raw food wednesdays

mr tofu666 is a big hit in our house. he describes and photographs everything he cooks on his "what the hell does a vegan eat anyway?" blog and on the "raw food porn" set on flickr where we've both befriended him.

make sure you eat before following any of the links or you will start to drool and hallucinate. trust me. booyaa has already been thinking up ways to kidnap him...

blimey, so much to tell and it's only 11.45!

long gone, the days when we didn't get out of bed (other than to make tea and turn the radio on) until well past midday.

and here endeth the fast lesson
so i've decided to break my fast today. i'd said two weeks or maybe three but i'm bored and fed up of juices now. i have very few detox syptoms now so i think i must have got rid of most of it or it's just not the right time to be doing it. i do have "detox tongue" but my fleeting headaches have mostly flit. i have to say i decided last night and i've now got a tiny headache and three spots so that's a sign i am still detoxing, but my mind is made up anyway.

in total i've lost 9 pounds (that's in two weeks) so i've done really well. and now i'm going to try to be very low fat raw for the next two weeks and then i'll be a bit more lax over the xmas period.

boo's first bushy park time trial
there's a bunch of nutters who voluntarily get up early on saturday morning, come rain or shine, and set out a 5km course through bushy park. they time everyone with some fancy gear and put the results on a website - and all for free!

then there's the nutters who do the running. through mud and fallen leaves, with deer wandering about the place. and boo decided it would be his first public race. there was a fabulous vibe and people were really friendly. complete strangers wishing him well on his first race and then asking how it went afterwards. will post his time later, once the results are published. in the meantime, this is the website to look at: Bushy Park Time Trial

i saw this place from the misted up windows of the R68 bus on my way to work in the zombie-town period between christmas and new year. on the ground floor of a new red brick and utterly unattractive building there's a big banner announcing a farmers' city market. i checked out the website: www.farmerscitymarket.com and it really is what you'd expect it to be. it's a modern day co-op of sorts - ignore the marketing blurb, it's just a few moneyspinner types providing a dry area for a permanent farmers' market for those who are disillusioned with the hit and miss experience of your usual farmers' market.

i have yet to check the place out but i'm tempted. my slightly jaded side thinks it will be disappointing while the optimistic side thinks i'll be able to get yummy organic veg whenever i want it, just like going to waitrose - only better!

i will update once i've been and tried out the tomatoes.

i stumbled across these guys via some serendipitous raw blog linkage and boy did this make me smile!

www.freshtopia.net

the latest vlog is a great recipe for kale and collard salad but the best bit was the explanation and diagrams about why it's so good for you. great stuff!

and here's a rather yummy carrot cake with coconut butter frosting. yum!

the videos are lighthearted, fun but informative and the presenter is a feisty ball of energy, who just oozes raw goodness and enthusiasm for what she believes in. in fact i was so impressed that i felt moved to drop the freshtopians a line and tell them how much they rock and they proved themselves by writing back too. go on, they deserve some support!

i've been feeling unwell for a few days with a stomach bug. i've been very un-raw for weeks, ok months and keep saying to boo that we need to get me back on the wagon. this brief but unpleasant illness has served to reinforce that. and then i was reading my newsfeed and read this on the fresh network blog:

Some people say they "just don't have the time" to prepare raw/live food; their lives are toooo busy. But when they get sick, they'll be spending time at home feeling ill and they'll find the time to go to doctors and hospitals, if necessary. So it's just a matter of choosing where you want to spend your time. The time WILL be spent....either in the kitchen or at the doctor. You choose.

*gulp*

thanks to the wonders of delicious i've discovered and re-discovered a few sites worth a mention.

the sunny raw kitchen
a bright and cheerful blog with gorgeous photos to make your mouth water. the blog's owner, Carmella, is creating an e-book, so that's one to watch out for.

the raw table
the recipe collection here is just fabulous. they tend to have more desserts than mains, but i'm not complaining!

pure raw cafe
man, i just wish someone would do this in the UK. they will send a week's worth of raw, organic meals to your home. yes, it's going to be pricey, but i would be happy to pay for it to keep me going during the tough weeks.

and here's another one for luck. this amazing woman is losing pounds and pounds by drinking green smoothies. read it and be overawed: the green smoothie experiment.

i've been all over the place for the past year and a bit. i've done juice fasts, eaten near-as-dammit 100% raw for months and in between gone on complete benders of very rich, cooked food and lots of wine. over the past few months i've been pretty rubbish. not just not raw, but not even up to my usual 'fairly healthy' standard. and it certainly shows. i am struggling to recover from the stomach bug i had at the end of last week. though my skin is not as bad as it was 18 months ago it has also been better. my energy levels are low. i get tired and have sugar crashes. i've put on most of the weight i'd lost, too. all in all, i just don't feel great. and when i'm raw i really do feel fabulous. and i miss that feeling. so i've decided to keep the bar fairly low, so i can't really miss it, basically. if i aim too high i'll disappoint myself, but if i have an achievable goal then it should keep me motivated. so here's what's going on.

boo has said he'll join me for a couple of weeks, as moral support, which is very groovy of him. makes the temptation to say 'let's have a take away' much hazier.

also, i've circumvented my usual biggest failure. i tend to think 'i'll start after [insert big social event here] cos otherwise i'll undo the good work and it's not worth it..." but we're going away this weekend and i won't be eating raw for three days, then there's the summer party where i will undoubtedly drink far too much veuve clicquot and madeira... but i've started anyway. i just decided after lunch today and here i am, committing to it in public.

today's tally
home-dried fruit with muesli and rice milk, coffee (this is my usual not-raw breakfast)
big green salad, mustard dressing, nuts and seeds, shredded cabbage, pepper, various veggies
apple, banana, two dates
white tea (lots)
biccy at work
green smoothie (banana, chocolate, romaine, spinach, misc flavourings)

so other than breakfast, that's pretty good going.

had a splitting headache by 10.30am. it's either caffeine withdrawal or detox from almost a day's worth of clean food. can't decide. later went for the easy option and had a small coffee. sure enough, the headache subsided - though didn't clear up completely. i can feel the stress around my neck and shoulders, so let's put that in the pot of possible causes, too.

but aside from the coffee it's been an almost all raw day. yippee!

i'm having green smoothies because they're tasty, especially with maple syrup and/or raw chocolate in them! but also because it's an easy way to pack in lots of nutrition with fairly low calorie intake and it's easy to make. anything can go in, any type of fruit and any greens. i've used baby greens (like spring cabbage) romaine lettuce, spinach, watercress, parsley. you don't notice them, but they are really nutritious. i've also, having checked out smoothie shelf-life on victoria boutenko's website, the guru of green smoothies, made two glasses at once, so there's only one lot of prep and cleaning up afterwards per two meals. which is just great news, as i'm so busy at work these days. fast, prepped in advance food is where it's at.

i'm trying to eat lots of 'straight out the bag' fruit at work. no effort required prepping a mixed fruit salad, so i don't spend half an hour every morning getting my day's food ready. it all helps make things easier.

wednesday's tally
pineapple, mango, bramble smoothie
big green salad, avocado, carrot, sweetcorn, spring onion, red pepper, seeds with dollop of newly discovered posh mayo
apples, banana, dates, few macadamias
green smoothie with dollop of cashew butter
so far, so fabulous.
small cup coffee with dash milk. oops.

ah, the joy of prep in advance. well, it's also the scourge of variety in your food. it means you eat the same two days running. i've tried to change the dressings, chop things slightly differently and add the odd thing to make it feel like it's a different dish.

there's also the wimp out on the green smoothies. i add maple syrup (neither vegan nor raw) and vanilla, coconut butter and sometimes nut butter (raw) to make it more palatable. haven't quite got to the victoria boutenko stage of loving pretty much neat kale purée.

good thing today was that i wasn't as hungry as usual. if i have my standard non-raw breakfast i'm frequently starving by 10.30 but today i just didn't get that mid-morning hunger attack. i had a pumpkin seed bar around 11.30 so i wasn't hungry enough for lunch until after 2. i didn't even eat all my dates and macadamias which is a first! this is good news for me, i'd like to eat less and feel fuller for longer. i like getting enough nutrients to keep me going but staying spare on calories. (note to self: dig out link about low calorie intake being super good for you)

so today i've eaten way over 50% raw. yippee!

thursday's tally
pineapple, mango, bramble smoothie (as yesterday)
small cup coffee with dash milk. yes, yes, i know.
big green salad (different leaves from yesterday) avocado, carrot, sweetcorn, spring onion, red pepper, seeds with mustard and mayo dressing
non-raw pumpkin seed bar
apple, few grapes, 1 date
green smoothie with romaine, spinach, mango, blueberries and dollop of cashew butter

so that's four days eating over 50% raw.

but how do you calculate x% raw? lots of people go the 80-20 route. how do you know? is it by weight, volume, what? i had some mozzarella with my lunch salad today and by weight it was about 50% of my salad, by volume less than a third, so i don't know if that means my lunch was 50% raw or nearer 70%. and surely you need to consider nutrional density. i mean, if you ate carefully selected, raw vegan food, really healthy, optimal nutrition choices, for 4 days then ate at pizza hut/mc donald's/kfc on the fifth day... surely that's worse than adding a little cheese or yoghurt or a jacket potato to your daily food. but it would still be 80-20. there. one to ponder.

there's definitely, for me, a downside to eating raw. you end up having to eat the same thing for three or four days because it lasts so long. one head of romaine lettuce and a bag of spinach have lasted me all week. it'd be great to have more variation but eating raw for one (boo joins in occasionally, but not enough to make that much difference) means i get bored. for all the wonderful recipes out there, and i have a big pile of fabulous raw recipe books (my first ever, from 1990, Leslie Kenton's Raw Energy, and since then: Karen Knowler's ebooks, Shazzie's Detox Your World, Sarma Melngailis and Matthew Kenney's Raw Food, Real World, Gabrielle Chavez's The Raw Food Gourmet, Jordan Maerin's Raw Foods for Busy People....) as well as the wealth of info out there on the www (Freshtopia, WLIR, multitude of blogs) you know, you're only able to make recipes with ingredients you have to hand. I just can't have something different every day without having to throw away unused produce at the end of the week. i do try to dehydrate leftovers, or fruit that's going to go soft before i get round to eating it but that's not always feasible. dehydrated carrots anyone?

then there's the time it takes to make everything. making nut milk, which i love to drink, is a painful process. it takes a lot of cleaning up afterwards, but the milk disappears in seconds. sprouts require lots of attentionm so it's more worthwhile sprouting in batches, from a time point of view. but they need eating in the space of two days, and i find there's always too much.

so a solution is definitely needed. and i can't work out what it might be.

i've got three days of eating out coming up, but then i'll spend a few weeks trying to answer my own questions. getting that mix of variety and speedy meals.

today's tally
pineapple, blueberry, mango and spinach smoothie
coffee with milk
grapes, apple, mandarin, date, few macadamias
big green salad with radish, sweetcorn, turkish green pepper, tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and balsamic vinegar dressing
green smoothie (mango, spinach, bit of chocolate)

well that's the end of raw for a few days, just a quick round up.

did i lose any weight over the four days that i was mostly raw?
yes, i lost a kilo (two pounds)

do i feel better now after four days mostly raw?
i think it's too short a timeframe to really get the benefits. i feel better than when i first started and have a bit more energy but there hasn't been a phenomenal difference. i haven't cut out coffee which i would need to do to stabilise my mental energy and my ability to focus. i haven't increased my exercise levels which i need to do, too. still, four days of healthy food can't be bad.

what did i learn?
i can eat a lot less without being hungry. i get bored easily, but a little willpower goes a long way.

will i do it again?
hell yeah. next week, after the party by the park (work's do) there will be more green smoothies for dinners and raw lunches going around. i'm so into getting fit, slim and healthy.

oh wow.

there were some big, fat, deep purple cherries, which are locally in season, in the supermarket yesterday and i couldn't resist buying some.

tonight i made them into a cherry-chocolate smoothie and it is so delicious i just have to spread the word!

i used:
one small banana
a punnet of pitted cherries
two teaspoons raw cacao powder
two teaspoons grated solid cacao
one teaspoon lecithin
one teaspoon green superfood powder
glug of light agave syrup
pinch ground cinnamon
pinch salt
half pint water

whys and wherefores:
the lecithin often helps blend things in, i find, and i was hoping it would help particularly mix in the solid cacao, but it's definitely optional. you could add a few green leaves without it affecting the taste. if you don't have the solid cacao you could substitute some coconut butter or raw almond butter to keep the creaminess. i personally like a bit of salt in my food and the extra sweetness of the agave is just plain decadent, but the really healthy among you should just scratch them from the recipe.

good things:
it is just like drinking a blackforest gateau, i kid you not. but no refined flour, sugar or dairy to mess you up. i'd say that's a win-win.

bad things:
i found the cherry skins did not want to blend completely away to supersmoothness and the cacao stayed a bit grainy despite the lecithin, but i have a crappy little blender so those vita-mix owners out there should have no problem.

or should that be raw treat?

i've signed up, after much dithering, to go on a weekend course courtesy of karen knowler.

she runs scheduled weekends, telecourses and lots of raw food coaching sessions but this is the second time she's announced a short notice 'transformation' weekend.

i read her blog and generally keep an eye out for her. she is very much the voice of reason of the raw food world, and much as i love shazzie's hippy vibe, karen's methodical, practical and pragmatic approach is much more helpful to me and the way i try to involve raw in my life.

so when i saw the blog post i spoke to booyaa about it. he can't come as he's on call - and i'm not sure he would come to this kind of weekend, perhaps a festival rather than a learning weekend. anyway, he was adamant i should do it. i haven't been able to go to any of the other retreats that have dropped in my inbox recently and this seems serendipitous right now. i've been struggling to stay raw for months now and i need to work it out and sort it out and some good old-fashioned motivation, a support network and time to focus on why i want to be raw will all be very helpful.

so, that's it, i've booked my place. i'm going on friday after work and will be there until sunday afternoon. it will be awful to be away from boo for a whole weekend but i feel like it's the right thing to do for me. and it means he'll be able to eat what he likes, kill lots of monsters and hack code for hours on end without me nagging him to step away from the screen...

karen knowler's raw retreat

last night boo again said he would smoothie with me for dinner. we were both late getting home last night as he'd been out for a run and i went to the beauty clinic and supermarket after work. so it was late, i was tired. i asked him what kind of smoothie he wanted, using the pile of ingredients on the kitchen worksurface for inspiration. despite the raspberries, two varieties of strawberries, blueberries and more, we somehow came up with caramel. this is how it went.

i used:
one banana
one maya mango
two leaves romaine lettuce
one hugely overflowing dessertspoon of raw cashew butter
two teaspoons coconut butter
one teaspoon lecithin
glug maple syrup
small teaspoon raw chocolate powder
one teaspoon maca powder
drizzle vanilla essence
pinch salt
half pint water

now i know not all of that is strictly raw and it could be a lot healthier, with less fatty stuff and more fruit and greens. but you know what? it was very very nearly an ed's butterscotch milkshake, so, like, who cares?!

on a slightly less flippant note, i'd also had big green salad with sprouts and seeds and tremendous piles of fruit today, so i think it all balanced out.

so, having pin-pointed some issues which are the likely causes of me yo-yoing over the past year and a bit, it's time to face up to them and decide which way to go.

i've done some thinking about what karen said in our one-to-one session at the retreat and talked through it with boo. i explained that him feeling sorry for me and thinking that take away food and a glass of wine will help, because i'm tired and don't want to cook, is all very nice but... in fact it's just undermining my efforts and allowing me to slip back into the old ways. i'm not blaming him, i should have the willpower in those situations.

i've also learned enough about how my body works to know that it's an all-or-nothing situation for me. trying out 50% raw worked for a week, but i don't think it's sustainable in the long run. i'm going for 100% now.

boo said if what it takes for me to stay raw is for us both to eat raw at home then he'll happily do that. he can still eat what he wants for breakfast, cos that's easy, it's just cereals, and for lunch while he's out at work, and he says he's happy with that arrangement. he didn't falter, he came straight out with it. i didn't ask him to, he offered. he only said if i asked him to go completely raw with me then he'd have to think about it - but i would never ask him to do that anyway. so that's a pretty good gig, i reckon.

so that's very good news, if not entirely resolved. we still need to work out how to approach the lack of dining out options and social events.

so my plans are to aim for 100% raw and allow myself some small treats, which will always be less than 10% of my daily food. that means i still can't go out for pizza... but i can have yoghurt in my coleslaw dressing and i might even be able to have a salad and doughballs at pizza express, so all might not be lost.

i aim to reduce my fat intake by using less oily dressings and restrict my nut intake.

aim for the 'clean burn' by eating when i'm hungry, to make sure everything gets fully digested before the next lot goes in.

have more green in my green smoothies and have green juices a couple of times a week.

try two new recipes a week. one simple during the week and one more complex at the weekend.

do more exercise. so that involves sorting out the second bedroom so i can use my rebounder and gym ball at home.

do more yoga. boo is currently only running twice a week, so i'm going to try to do my yoga when he does his runs.

to help out, for the next couple of weeks i'm going to keep a food diary, to track my progress and help me remember my goals.

i haven't had any coffee since friday afternoon. i've had a headache for three days now. i'm getting through as best i can with a headache roll-on, lavender oil and in extreme cases i'm getting the nurofen out. i can't align raw food and caffeine intake. it just doesn't make sense. much as i love coffee i know it's bad and wrong in lots of ways. and then there's the sugar and milk i have with it. so i'm going to get the monkey off my back this week. oh yes.

other than that i am taking on karen's advice and thinking more consciously about what i eat. i'm going to add in a couple of things each week to be more conscious of and see if i can't train myself into better habits. so, drum roll, please...

my two aims this week:
1. don't eat if you're not hungry
2. reduce fat intake

i'm writing down everything i've prepared or think i'm going to eat in the morning and the plan is to try to not eat all of it! that doesn't mean starve, it means i won't graze all morning, as i usually do, and to choose not to eat the things i'm trying to cut down on, like nuts, and choose better options if i really do need to eat.

i also read a short article recently on life changes which says that by changing 75% of your lifestyle you achieve what you aspire to but don't completely change your life. i think that's a good goal. realistic, achievable and pragmatic.

food diary

quarter pineapple, few blueberries
white tea throughout day
apple
big salad (spinach, peppers, romaine, onion, tomato, sprinkle of seeds, oil-based dressing but less oil than usual)
1 date, 1 pecan and 1 macadamia
banana
carrot & almond pate, zucchini hummus with flax crackers, green salad with oil-based dressing
white nectarine pudding (made this up, yet to be officially christened. 2 nectarines, 2 dates, few macadamias, few cashews, vanilla. blended as smooth as we could get. next time needs chilling)

not bad, fairly balanced, less oil than usual but then you get to dinner and see all those nuts. the pate and pudding made for a fairly heavy combo, too, we found about an hour later, as we were going to bed. must learn to think about that more carefully. particularly good, though, is that there is no coffee on that list and i was 100% raw! (tea doesn't count, it's sundried, not fermented, the water's hot but, look, i just don't care.)

my headache has receded, it's still floating about but is very much in the background and isn't stopping me from concentrating, so hopefully that's caffeine cold turkey phase over. i was hungry again today, despite the heavy nut dinner we'd had. but still trying not to graze. if i can do breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, with gaps in between, then i'll start cutting out completely or reducing the amount i eat for my snacks. sounds easy.

food diary
mango
apple, dates, few nuts
little bit of the pate, hummus & flax crackers from yesterday, spinach & romaine salad with tomatoes, fresh corn, lemon and oil dressing (less oil than usual) no seeds
cucumber soup and almond & carrot scones (i made the pate into little rounds and dehydrated for just over 8 hours - truly yummy)
one square raw chocolate

i often read other raw blogs and think 'why would anyone want to read everything some total stranger ate on a day-by-day basis?' but then i think back to when i first started out, way before the blog was born, and i think it would have been useful to see the immense variety of food intake, recipes etc that raw foodies eat. so for those of you who find this boring: skip it, it's easy. it's for me to keep track and those n00b raw foodies out there who might find it useful.

work today was great until just gone 11 when it all went to the dogs for a while and got me extremely riled. but i regrounded myself eventually after venting with a friend, and the rest of the day passed by so smoothly. a colleague said at the end of the day - she gave me a lift home - that my weekend retreat must have really worked because despite the midday chaos i was an oasis of calm. heh. not how i would ever describe myself! but i thought about it. by this afternoon i was feeling so good about everything that i had my first glimmer of hope that i might regain my raw food bliss soon. i'm sure it'll ebb and flow for a while before it settles in for good, but i'm enjoying these golden moments.

the cucumber and avocado soup is even better for lunch today. it was easy peasy to make, from jordan maerin's raw food for busy people. you blitz cucumber, avocado, fresh herbs, lemon juice and seasonings in the food processor or blender and you're done (for exact quantities you'll have to buy the book!) last night we had it with a few of the 'scones' that i'd made by dehydrating pate and today i had the same for lunch. the soup's flavours have come through a bit more and the scones are completely addictive.

food diary
green juice (apples, oranges, carrots, kale, mint, spinach, ginger)
two apples
soup and scones
1 square chocolate
sesame vanilla shake

i had intended to make romaine wraps tonight, but our blender arrived (more on that tomorrow, when i review and rave about it) so we had to try it out. the sesame shake recipe caught my eye in karen knowler's 'how to get started with raw foods' ebook, so we had a go of that. personally, i found the sesame a little bitter, so i'll put some nuts in to soak and try pecan or almond milk tomorrow.

today was a good food day. i enjoyed everything and felt full of beans! or full of greens, more likely :)

now i don't normally think to blog individual recipes that i've come across, otherwise i'd be linking to every single recipe from freshtopia on here, but today there are two italian food posts out there on the ether and i thought, given my pizza and pasta cravings, that merited a mention.

first, then, the very wonderful freshtopians have created an allergen-free, vegan version of fettuccine alfredo which sounds delicious. they add lively fresh herbs to make this a fresh, zingy dish, instead of the usual - to me, at least - over creamy, heaviness of the traditional recipe. i'll certainly be trying this one out for a saturday or sunday special dinner treat. no video, alas, but see the recipe and photos here: vegan alfredo with marinated spagini

next up, raw food, right now got permission from carol alt (not so famous on this side of the atlantic, but she's a model who follows a mostly raw diet, but includes raw fish and dairy) to create a recipe from her latest raw food book, and, overwhelmed by the choice, they asked the blog readers to choose which they'd like to see. i, like lots of others, voted for the pizza recipe, so they made it and divulged the ingredients and how to here: raw pizza from carol alt's the raw 50 i've been dying to try raw pizza for ages and this recipe is easily doable from home, so i'll be creating this one soon. thanks to heidi and justin for their recipe tips too. most helpful!

of course it will!

the latest addition to our household is *not* a blendtec. man i was so disappointed to find the will it blend? stuff on you tube is viral marketing and not just some nutter in the style of the coke and mentos dudes. and if you don't know what i'm talking about, check it out here.

but back to our lovely new toy. it's a breville professional grade blender. not a vita-mix, i decided they're too damn ugly to pay that much money for (two speed version is £450) but our baby has 1000 watts of pulverising power, looks pretty and cost considerably less at £125. more details here.

we've tried it out on a couple of recipes and two things we've learnt are: one, it sounds like an aeroplane is about to crash through the roof. no wonder tanja wears ear protectors. and two, we're scared of really going for it and wimp out with little prods at the pulse button. but i'm sure we'll get a feel for it and learn to use it with confidence.

best thing so far was recreating karen's wonderful raspberry sorbet from last weekend. we had seconds and all. what a dream.

right, so booyaa has been joining in on raw dinners all week. today he had green juice for breakfast, too, and he's bouncing around like a mad thing. he has officially re-certified himself as being 150% more booyaa!

it's amazing, the difference, it really is noticeable. no sluggishness, no lazing around after dinner with no desire to do anything other than watch tv. he's up and about, washing up and cleaning the mess i've made in the kitchen, really, well, 'bouncy' is definitely the word. in the mornings he's been up before i've taken tea in, which usually is a two step process to get him out of bed, and he's done household chores he doesn't ever think to do, i always have to ask him to help, before he's left for work in the morning. bizzarro!

best of all, he's really enjoying the food, it's not a chore or a sacrifice. he's loved everything we've eaten this week and he snarfed extra large seconds of the raspberry sorbet and chocolate sauce tonight and even likes the green juices.

so raw is doing him lots of favours, it would seem. and the transformation is so fast! it's only one meal a day for five days and he's thriving on it. i remember a long time ago reading the question 'ok, you were ill and got healthy on raw foods. so what happens when a healthy person tries it?' here's your answer. they become little dynamos of energy and packed full of feel-good factor :)

food diary
green juice (kale, apples, oranges, mint, carrots)
banana
lambs lettuce & tomato salad with 'scones' from couple of days ago, 2 squares chocolate
romaine roll-ups (chopped peppers, spring onion, sweetcorn, apple with creamy mustard dressing piled onto romaine leaves, vaguely rolled up. then the filling splurges out as you eat it)
raspberry sorbet and chocolate sauce a la karen knowler

for booyaa's food diary replace lunchtime salad with a chicken sandwich and scotch eggs (yeah, i already rolled my eyes so hard they squeaked)

i took some notes during the weekend and i've just tidied them up a little to put down here. i don't want to give away any of karen's work, as this is how she makes her living, after all, nor do i want to go into any detail of my personal issues which came up, and i won't name the other raw retreaters either, so parts will be vague.

i arrived on friday evening. karen and one other attendee were there. we chatted briefly but they both went to bed early and left me to my own devices.

we had some yummy stuff this weekend. the dehydrator is back in pride of place on top of the hob (annoying for boo to make his weekend fry up but he's coping) and i've been maxing it out all weekend.

food diary

saturday
breakfast - me: half a pineapple boo: half a pineapple plus bacon, egg, sausage & toast
lunch - none to speak of, we both had some dates and 'tested' the drying 'feta' cheese during the day
dinner - garam masala gobi, mango salsa

sunday
breakfast - me: banana and apple on the run, boo: same as yesterday!
lunch - couple of dates, i think boo had cheese and crackers
dinner - both: big greek salad with 'feta', banana-cherry ice cream

and we made pizza bases ready for monday night's feast!

i notice that there's a lot of dense foods; nut and seed based things and dehydrated foods, so i need to lighten up. i can sense it too, i feel a little heavier. i also feel i'm being to drawn to a juice fast. i'll have to wait for that one, though, too many things going on to be able to do that, unless i just do a week. *brain whirs, consults calendar...*

well, that didn't quite go as planned. our dehydrator (it's an excalibur) doesn't have a built-in timer, so we rely on a timer plug. when really we shouldn't, since it failed to do its job yesterday. when your only purpose on the planet is to do one thing, you really ought to do it properly. but no. i set the timer plug for four hours, but it didn't stop at that, it just kept going. so our pizza bases were somewhat dry :(

i made the tomato sauce based on carol alt's recipe, too, but adapted it to use the olives in the sauce, not make a separate tapenade. and finally, i added our 'feta' as topping.

tuesday night we'll have mashed avocado and basil on top, as well as some of the leftover tomato sauce. i'm really looking forward to that variant.

food diary

monday:
pineapple
greek salad
two dates
raw pizza and green salad

tuesday:
two white nectarines (gorgeous!)
two bananas
garam masala gobi and salad
raw pizza with avocado topping, basil, bit of real mozzarella, green salad, cherries

i figured that we needed something different on day two which is why i bought the mozzarella. i buy a very fresh organic one and despite the whole 'raw vegan' concept, i don't consider myself vegan. i eat honey and cheese from time to time. and it felt a bit naughty eating the pizza tonight, but you know what, it totally made the experience. it was extremely yummy. and i got a bit of B12, so it was definitely a Good Idea.

as an extra bonus, we have photos! boo said, 'ooh, that looks great' and took some snaps. here's my chosen one:

mostly raw pizza: flax and pecan pizza base, fresh and sundried tomato & olive sauce, mashed avocado, basil, mozzarella

had a truly awful day at work. i have some deadlines which are slipping. i'm finding it hard to get other people to do what i need them to do and get it right first time. i'm finding i'm having to hand-hold and that's getting on my nerves, slowing things down, making it more expensive and meaning i get behind on my own non-project management tasks. so i'm a bit on edge about that at the moment.

luckily there are good things going on elsewhere, like we're getting some stuff shifted out of alphonso the third (deceased) (that's what booyaa christened the spare room) so i can tidy and clean it ready for my parents' visit. and there's a handyman coming over tomorrow to fix a few bits and pieces, too, so that's cool. this weekend there's a music festival in the neighbourhood, looking forward to hearing some local bands play and mooch round the stalls and wotnot. should be fun. hope it's nice weather.

i don't know quite how this happened but there's been loads of stuff in the news and blogs today of interest. maybe i'm the only person on the planet who doesn't know that wednesdays are, like, *always* nerdy news days...

so , in partisan order...
the x-files are back! new movie almost definitely going to happen. read the article on reuters

some dudes at the radio times thought it would be a great idea to have a poll on the best sci-fi tv programmes ever. doctor who was not in the running, apparently, so guess what came first? red dwarf! i can't find the original poll results, so here's a second hand version from shiny shiny (popunder alert). and, as boo said, it's nice that craig charles is in the news for something other than his crack habit.

and then there's the shocking and yet utterly unsurprising news that despite the internet bringing information to the masses, the american public know less about the real world than they did a decade ago. read wired's article: Despite the Web, Americans Remain Woefully Ill-Informed

and last but not least, it appears that the owner of whole foods - who've just moved into the UK with a mammoth store in central london, amid much furore that they're purveyors of junk food for the thinking classes (it might be organic, but it's still got over-refined oils, sugars etc in it and flown halfway across the world, not good to the suppliers, i could go on...) - has been upping the company's financial reputation by posting anonymous messages on yahoo's financial message boards. basically, he's been promoting the company as one to watch as a non-interested party. and they're about to slam him for it. the reg has the down and dirty: Whole Foods CEO sorry for message board trolling

food diary

green juice - watercress, spinach, rocket, apples, carrots, mint, ginger
half a kilo of grapes, banana
mixed leaf salad with peppers, onion, tomatoes
green smoothie - banana, nectarine, mixed greens and pinch of chocolate (definitely some comfort eating here!)

i've had a few things on freecycle to try to, er, recycle and they just haven't moved, so what a relief that finally two large bags of stuff have now gone to somewhere they'll be used, instead of taking space up in alphonso the third (deceased). and it also means we have a little more room to manoeuvre while we get ourselves ready for mum and dad's visit.

the handyman came round today and ploughed through his long list of small jobs which will make things so much better. for instance, the runners and handles on the kitchen drawers now work - i'm sure you can imagine how evil it's been with drawers that slide off their runners all the time. he's replaced the bathroom door handle as the old one had stopped working and i was worried that one day i'd get stuck in the loo (to uproarious laughter from my family, as i managed to lock myself in the loo as a kid and they won't let me forget it.) and he's done a few other bits and pieces. progress. huzzah!

a couple of months ago, boo and i realised we'd left it too late - yet again - to plant seeds to grow our own tomatoes. i'd already raked through heirloom seed catalogues looking for something to grow in pots on a not-always-sunny windowsill. i must have spent hours, and all for nothing. but i decided not to be defeated and persevered. and it was worth it. i managed, miraculously, to find a uk company who supply organic plant plugs. they're small plants, just two-three months old, raised organically and ready to pot on. hurray!

when they arrived we were just about to go away for the weekend and only had enough compost for one of the large pots, so boo potted out the two strongest looking plants before we left and a week later he sorted out the rest of them. and now, three weeks on, we have two fabulously fat plants overtaking the whole windowsill from the first lot he planted, while in the other bedroom the other four plants are looking about two weeks' behind. the ways of nature, eh?

so, here's a pic of the pretty papery yellow star flowers...

and here's a close up of the first tomato. isn't that sweet! i'm so looking forward to eating it :)

food diary

strawberries
salad, same as yesterday, and mashed avocado with herby flax cracker (reinvented pizza base)
italian praline chocolate (couldn't resist. it was yummy!)
big fat mango, pear, watercress, parsley and hemp smoothie

what bizarre weather.

it was so dark this morning it was like winter. dark grey skies, no light coming through at all. then torrential rain, thunder and lightning for half an hour. it's now breaking, there are bits of blue in the sky, and it's stopped raining. it's very warm, though there's no sun yet, so the huge puddles are shrinking and there's almost steam coming off the pavement.

food diary (friday)

half galia melon (very sweet and tasty)
non-raw flax-hemp-carob bar (which previously i've really enjoyed but it sat heavily in my stomach today, perhaps because i've got used to raw now?)
big green salad with carrot, peppers, tomatoes, spring onion, flax, hemp, sunflower and pumpkin seeds
salad and dough sticks, two glasses wine, half cheesecake (you're right in assuming that wasn't raw and we went to pizza express for dinner)

i've had a really tough couple of weeks at work and decided i wanted a glass of wine with my dinner, so we went to pizza express and i chose the best option i could for my dinner, shared a pudding which was probably a bit too much, frankly, and had way too much wine. i was very tiddly. it was funny, though. i used to be able to drink two bottles of wine and not get drunk, but two glasses and i was away with the fairies. i giggled and tripped most of my way home. great fun :)

saturday started early, as boo had some work to do at 8am. luckily it went very smoothly and he was back in bed, with the tea tray by the bed, by something to 9. we'd planned to shift some stuff over to the storage place to make room for mum and dad, and jo, boo's sister, offered to come over and do the driving. unfortunately the storage place is suffering flood damage and was closed. we were gutted. we'd done loads of work getting ready for this, and organised our weekend round it and we're stuffed at the last hurdle. no idea how we're going to move the stuff now. *grumble grumble*

in the afternoon boo went off to a family gathering while i did some work helping out a friend who's got a start-up company. and i've made grawnola (drool...!) which is now in the dehydrator, getting sticky and crunchy ready for breakfast on sunday :D

i don't use twitter and don't plan to get a twitter plug-in, but i do feel the need to twitter right now. so i'm doing it anyway.

munching the yummiest snacks in the whole world evah!

got my delivery of one lucky duck orange candy pecans (soooo sweet and crunchy!), spicy cashews (mmm, spicy, light curry flavour), buckwheat crispies, grawnola and cherry almond bars (had all of these before, so i know they're delish) and i'm very happy!

if you're in the UK you can get hold of these yumminesses via the fresh network.

another great find in the local health food store! situated near the checkout, along with the gillian mc keith hemp seed bars and the ubiquitous flapjacks that are (i'm guessing) laden with sugar and fat, are these little balls of yumminess. they're big, dense balls of dates, various seeds, nuts, raw cacao and agave along with spices or herbs or goji berries, depending on the variety. very tasty and handy treats. it's so cool to still be able to succumb to the 'by the till' naughtiness.

find out more at pulsin.co.uk

there's some great stuff out there on the ether for faw foodies, and as raw food creeps mainstreamward, you see a fair bit on the ubiquitous YouTube. I'm not a fan of the site and don't spend any time there other than when a blog i trust points me in that direction. so, dutifully, i followed a link which has been causing some controversy...

duriasm: shazzie gets steamy

be warned part one: this has an over-18 label, which means that you have to log in and prove your age. god's sake.

and be warned part two: when it says you can log in with your gmail account you think it's nice and easy so you'll do it, but once you've done that, and they've got your email address, they then insist you create a YouTube login anyway, drives me mad that sort of stuff. blatant lies. hate hate hate it. oh dear. i should have some chocolate, see if i can replace those feelings with loved up bliss instead.

so now i have a friggin youtube account. sorry. i was supposed to be letting that go...

while i was there i found myself watching this, which freaked me out. totally. i don't care if that makes me closed-minded and conventional.

urine for a treat: people drinking pee, but not for sexual gratification, no. for health. now i'm all for peeing on nettle stings when you're out walking but, warm pee for breakfast? no thanks. i'll have to go and watch the shazzie video again to take my mind off it.

i enjoyed this so much i decided to blog it.

it's a lovely hot, sunny day here in suburbiaton [sic] and a fresh, light lunch was in order. i mulled over it all morning and you can see in the photo my latest creation.

the houmous recipe is adapted and adulterated from jennifer cornbleet's zucchini hummus recipe in raw food made easy. i used two small courgettes (zucchini), the juice of one lime, two cloves garlic, crushed, salt, ground coriander, ground cumin, chili powder and two large dessertspoons of seed butter. blend the lot in a food processor.

then cut two bell peppers (orange works really well here, but yellow or red are also great. don't use green, green bell peppers are unripe so they're bitter) along their natural curves to make three or four 'canoes' and pile the houmous in.

i made a little topping of one fat spring onion (scallion), two cherry tomatoes and a sprig of parsley, chopped finely, tossed in lemon juice and sprinkled over the top.

i dressed the plate with the last of our windowsill microgreens. tiny, tiny leaves of rocket (arugula), tossed in walnut oil and balsamic vinegar (truly yummy!)

i served it with a few greek black olives and some feta (neither raw nor vegan, but i was too busy yesterday to make the cashew/macadamia version) and a green salad. booyaa had some chorizo and jamon serrano with his.

all in all it was a lovely, light and very tasty lunch. full of luscious flavours and super juicy. even the lettuce seemed to be getting that much-needed hydration into our cells to keep us cool in the heat. perfect!

this is the first full recipe i've made from ani phyo's lovely book. lovely because her approach is practical and caring. it's a very gentle book, and she comes across as a really loving person but with drive, verve and enthusiasm. i admit that i think she rocks big time regardless of the book. she's an information architect and a raw foodie. you just don't get sexier than that in my book, baby!

so, back to the recipe. i planned the week ahead's dinner around making at least two new recipes per week, which is my general aim, to not get into too much of a rut and eat the same kind of foods all the time. i chose this cos it sounded fun. i don't feel the need to have raw versions of standard food, but, just as when i first became a veggie i emulated meat-based dishes because i didn't know where to start, well, i think cooked food classics turn into raw food delicacies and they're great for a treat on a weekend. lord knows i eat enough salad the rest of the week.

i've been feeling for a few weeks that i need to do some clearing out, cleaning up. a wonderful new friend who serendipitously came into my social circle is helping me with the emotional clearing and i'm going to juice fast to deal with the physical clean.

my goal is to juice fast for between two and three weeks. my boundaries are to allow the occasional green smoothie and bowl of miso when i need the weight or warmth. it's getting chilly in the evenings now, with autumn drawing the nights in, so hot miso will be very welcome from time to time.

i decided to do this about a month ago, but i've been postponing it for one reason (excuse?) or another, and today was still considering postponing for a few days. i recalled reading something about good times to detox being around the equinox and of course that's later this week. so i think my body has been holding me back, waiting for the 'right' time to detox. fabulous. i love it when everything flows.

via we like it raw, i read a full frontal attack on the health care strategies of the us presidential campaigns. here's a snippet:

We won't stop being sick until we stop making ourselves sick. Because - because there is a point where even the most universal government health program can't help you. They can't outlaw unhealthy food or alcohol or cigarettes. Just pot, sadly.

and this is coming from a 'regular guy' not one of my usual raw food bloggers. having recently read both fast food nation and diet for a new america (next on the list? the china study) this stuff is just par for the course for me these days. but it is fantastic to hear this in the mainstream media today. it's not some 'health freak' or vegetarian evangelist, or someone with a nutritional axe to grind. it was bill maher, who is an american political comedian-commentator. he gets round to having a go at everyone and everything, since it's his job to do so, but it's fabulous that he's attacking the root cause of burgeoning epidemics and not just blaming big pharma for everything. yes, they've got a lot to answer for, but every person in the states - and here in the uk, as we're also following in the footsteps of our trend-setting american cousins - can take their health into their own hands and get out of the 'feel unwell - take meds - feel unwell' cycle.

it's really not that hard. do some exercise. eat fresh fruit and veg. cut down on meat, alcohol, caffeine, sugar and dairy. feel better.

i decided this part of the day deserved its own entry.

i've mentioned before that i'd asked russell james, the uk's foremost raw chef, to make my lunch on wedding day, as the prospect of having the "oh my god, what we can give the veggies" option on the caterer's menu just wasn't doing it for me. it did cross my mind to make my own food but then, cool how these things happen, i was on a weekend retreat with some great women and karen 'awesome' knowler and they all said "why the hell should you have second best on your wedding day!" and my mind was made up.

the we like it raw squad have opened up their community networking site, called Give it to me Raw. it's a facebook-myspace type place, but for raw foodies. and it's now been rechristened, thanks to YummyHubby (tm). welcome to RAWFACE!

he's really happy i've got a place to share and make friends and i think is feeling quietly vindicated now, since i've never shown any interest in facebook other than to tease him for being on there!

so, what's it like?

well, not being a social network type means i don't yet know how 'good' it is in terms of a social network. i have no way of comparing it to facebook or myspace. but for raw foodies so far it's looking promising. almost one hundred people have joined since i did, about 36 hours ago. there are groups being created - mostly regional so far - and forum threads are on the go.

the raw royalty are turning up, slowly but surely, and i'm sure it'll be a great opportunity for them to network and promote their products, but it's also cool that they're all so 'normal' and just join in with everyone.

what do i hope to get out of it? well, i think for the time being, mostly inspiration. at times like these, where my halo has slipped, it reminds me, in the most powerful way, why i love raw food. all these people are so amazingly vibrant, full of life, energy, enthusiasm... it's not a myth. it's absolutely the only way you can be when you follow a raw food diet, and each time i look at a profile or read a message all that positive energy comes through and pushes me back in the right direction. and, as i get back on track - we have big plans for our health and fitness regime in 2008 - there'll be ongoing support, recipe swapping, potlucks. who knows. the possibilities are endless!

so... i started the beginners' training plan about 3 years ago. ok, so it wasn't quite that long back, it just feels like it. i started a 9 week plan in september last year, and i've just completed week 6. no, my maths is fine, i've just been stuck on week 6, groundhog day-style, for what seems like months. and probably is...

i've repeated one off sessions here and there where there's been a bit of a lapse in training, so that slowed me down. then two weeks in november were crossed off while i was on honeymoon. and in december i got my annual chest infection so didn't run for most of the month. in january i started again, repeating the whole of week 6 to try to get back to where i was in terms of stamina and speed. i have to say i'm really struggling. and mostly it's my own fault. i have really noticed my asthma's worse than it has been for months. it had dramatically improved during spring-summer-autumn last year, and we all know why...

... most of december i ate cooked food, not raw, and now i'm suffering the consequences.

it really is that simple.

tomorrow i'm going to sit down and work out a transition regime for the next 3 months and get a menu plan sorted for the next few weeks, where i can mix and match and be flexible, as i need that if i'm going to stick to it. then i'm going shopping to stock up for the week ahead.

right. i've said it in public, so now i'm committed to it.

oh yes, and i'm going for a run in the morning to try out week 7, run 1 (2.5 miles in 25 minutes) for the first time!

just to let you know that i'm charting my ups and downs of the global juice feast on a separate and dedicated blog on cheapskate blogspot. so if you don't hear from me much round here, that's where you'll find me.

http://juicyloulou.blogspot.com

(warning: some topics on the other blog might put you off your dinner.)

philip mccluskey is in town, thanks to the machinations of suki zoe. he's speaking at new horizons tomorrow (tuesday 20th may) about his raw journey and how he came to be half the man he once was. in the two years since he started eating a raw food diet, he's lost an astonishing 200lbs, from his max weight of 400 pounds. now i've been overweight but they are the kind of numbers i find hard to relate to. philip has also transformed in other ways and you can see what a gentle, giving and loving soul he is. and i'm going to meet him tomorrow!

so, thanks to crazy suki for doing the new horizons thing at the inspiral lounge and then for persuading philip to come over from the states to share his story. great stuff.

more info:
philip's website is lovingraw.com
suki's blog is qito.wordpress.uk
new horizons features on the inspiral lounge website

see you all there!

i'd hate to say raw food is becoming mainstream because the word conjures up thoughts of things becoming diluted and losing the pioneering optimism when they hit the 'almost normal' point on a weirdometer. you know what i mean. the music i used to listen to that came on a flexidisc you got with a handmade fanzine. it was special then. inspired by a burning fire in the artist's gut. once the band became more popular the quality of the music somehow diminished. for me, the studio production erased the beauty of the earlier stuff, which was so rough around the edges, with off-key singing and no backing vocals. three tracks at most. that was the beauty of it.

so now i'm torn. first, there's somewhere like vitaorganic, the flexidisc of raw food restaurants. it's quaint but the service is slow, the surroundings could do with some tlc and you have to wait forever for a table at lunchtime. oh yes, and the really great raw stuff only comes out in the evenings. and the website's pants. so along comes SAF and elevates raw food eating out to a whole 'nother level. smart designer interiors, groovy cocktails, and the food is definitely cuisine - refined, elegantly presented and more than just a little bit clever.

then, apparently, there's to be a raw food range in waitrose later this year thanks to one of the guys behind london's raw food cookery school. i'm sorry, i'll say that again: RAW FOOD RANGE IN WAITROSE!!!

i am so excited i can hardly contain myself. there's chris and zoe at purely raw and anya's raw faeries doing raw menu home deliveries and now this. can it be true?

i can buy raw cacao goodies at my local health food store. shazzie has a chunk of whole foods' shelving all to herself. it's growing. people have heard of raw. juice bars everywhere you look. so, can there possibly be any reason to fear the loss of integrity as raw food moves through the 'totally off the scale' to 'a bit dodgy' on the nation's weirdometer?

independent article on the inexorable march of raw (though note the rubbish broken link to the cookery school, which i'm sure you can work out how to fix yourself.)

i went to new horizons at the inspiral lounge on my own, after work. i was a little bit nervous but not as much as i would normally be to go somewhere on my own. i knew there'd be like-minded souls there, and quite possibly a fair few other people showing up on their own. of all the places i could go alone this was going to be one of the least scary!

as soon as i got there i ordered juice, a bowl of raw salads and a raw chocolate truffle *wicked grin* and sat down at one of the few seats left. i spotted suki zoe who i recognised from her blog photos, not to mention her appearance on health food junkies on C4 a few months ago. she wandered from table to table, taking photos, chatting with people, being a great hostess. then, aha, the star of the show arrived... and disappeared almost immediately.

i've been meaning to post about this for a while, and watching "bunny" berry's day 46/100 video on vanity was the prompt i needed to get it written.

when i was about half way through my juicefeast i stopped wearing perfume. i've always worn perfume and quite a lot of it at that. i wear very good quality perfume, and i'm fussy about it. but then my sense of smell became so acute that i found it too much of an assault to my poor nose. i couldn't face perfume first thing in the morning. even the fragrance from my make-up was too much for me. so, i went out and bought some relatively gentle solid perfume from lush that i can keep in my bag so that if at some point during the day i fancy a waft of scent then i am armed and ready.

since then i've worked out - and there are no surprises here, really - that i still enjoy smells and scents, i just don't like artificial fragrance or overpowering perfumes. the smell of body deodorant on the train has got to be the worst. i have been using low-scent products myself for a while now, as i've migrated gradually towards more and more natural products around the home and toiletries and cosmetics too. i have stopped using hair styling products, bar the odd special occasion. and, though it's taken me many years, i have finally weaned myself off deodorant. i stopped wearing anti-perspirant first. the fear of damp patches soon left as i realised i don't sweat that much. then for several years i used "natural" deodorants. and recently i've been using a crystal stick and am happy to report that it's perfectly fine. no sweat, no smell and no carcinogenic chemicals either.

as for make up, well, i'm migrating there too. i've packed away my foundation and am using a tinted moisturiser. i'm hoping to move to suki color if i can get some testers (it's way too expensive to buy without testing it first) or another groovy brand. this is all good progress.

heh.

disclaimer: this has been sitting on my hard drive for aeons. i kept forgetting to upload it for your viewing pleasure.

i was reading carrie's blog and her watermelon day struck me as something i should do. lots of reasons. i love watermelon. monomeals appeal but i never seem to build them into my weekly food plan so a day set aside would make that easier. i know i'm eating too much dense and fatty food and waaaay too much cooked has slipped in the past two weekends. a one day cleanse sounds just the ticket.

at last, i got my chance to go to saf restaurant. i've been subscribed to the life co (saf's parent company) newsletter for a year, now, waiting for the opening date announcement... only to find out a couple of months back thanks to the raw food community grapevine instead. and poppy's blog post way back in march (the post has since been edited, as it upset the saf management *rolls eyes*) got me drooling. and confused, but that's all about poppy's blog and not relevant here.

by then of course i'd started my juicefeast. so we said we'd go when i finished. but booyaa was on call for three weeks. then we had my parents visiting for the weekend and on it went, until finally we could go. hurray!