"Follow Me"

I recently had this refrain running through my head over and over again to a variation of a traditional Irish tune called The Chanter's Song. While I was hearing it, I kept picturing being surrounded by children somewhere in the Middle East, I think, and they were all vying for my attention, trying to pull me to their village to help them. I finally jotted down the lyrics in an effort to get it to stop repeating, so here you go:

There's a way 

through the wind and the sea.

All around they cried, "Follow me! Follow me!"

And I heard them laugh 

and I heard them scream.

All around they cried, "Follow me! Follow me!"

"Why," they ask,

"are you caught in a dream?

There's a world out here and we have many needs."

And they took my hands

and pulled me through their streets.

All around they cried, "Come with me! Follow me!"

And I said to them,

"It's not as easy as it seems.

I have school and debt and not many means."

And they faded fast

receding into dreams

and they called to me, "Come with me! Follow me!"

Saying:

There's a way 

through the wind and the sea.

All around they cried, "Follow me! Follow me!"

And I heard them laugh 

and I heard them scream.

All around they cried, "Follow me! Follow me!"

Raw Vegan Desserts

As you may know, I've been playing with the idea of going to a raw vegan diet and thought I'd test the waters a bit with some dessert recipes I found while doing a stellar job of procrastinating... ;)
The first is brownies and the recipe is here:
http://uncooking101.com/site/raw-food-recipe/caramel-fudge-brownies/

I didn't have lucuma so the frosting isn't caramel, but it is still very good! I ended up spreading the brownies into an 8x8 pan instead of 6x6 and then cut them into 36 squares and garnishing each with half a red raspberry. :)

The second recipe was Baby Blondies (recipe here: http://almostveganchef.com/2011/01/22/the-5-minute-single-serving-raw-vegan-blondie/ ) with chocolate ganache (recipe here: http://almostveganchef.com/2010/10/04/reviews-tropical-traditions-xagave/ )

Instead of making a single serving with the recipe, I pressed the dough into five smaller servings. I also took the vanilla option versus hazelnut in the ganache based on what was in the cupboard!

First attempt at intentionally raw vegan desserts has been deemed a success! :) I highly recommend the recipes and hope to pursue raw vegan foods in general (slowly transitioning from my cooked vegan diet, of course!).

Mission Accomplished.

Well this wraps up my fourth and final day of the juice reboot. Why not ten, you ask?
My purpose for this reboot was two-fold:

a) I wanted my mom (who has been doing this with me) to feel better from various ailments and adopt a healthier life style. I had told her that I would do it if she would do it and she has for three days (I started a day before her). At this point, she says she needs to have more than juice in order to do her jobs up to par, but has realized how unhealthy her diet was and wants to center her diet in the future around fruits and vegetables- which I'm thrilled about! :) She also plans to cut down her meat intake to once or twice a week (also fantastic!) and cut out white flour and refined sugar! We (I'm going to continue to eat what she eats, hence stopping the just juice portion) are going to continue to juice once to twice a day and to still just eat fruits and vegetables for probably around another five days, at which point we'll add in nuts, seeds, beans, etc. and then after that she can add back in moderate animal products if she wishes (I will not be eating the same as her in that case, though!).

b) I was impressed in the movie Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead by the need to give your digestive system a rest, which given our typical American eating patterns, we don't tend to do much. So, I'd say that four days qualifies for that. I do still want to do a ten-day reboot at some point (hopefully after I have a wide variety of really yummy juice recipes to live on!) but that will be slightly postponed for now.

From this mini-reboot:
- I've enjoyed clearer vision.
- My resting heart rate has come back down to 54, which is what it was when I was training pretty hard over two years ago.
- My body feels healthier in general and more ready to resume training (yay!), less sluggish, etc.
- I've learned some important lessons in nutrition and really experienced the difference on how you can feel on great fuel.
- I've also learned that it's okay to feel a little bit hungry. This is a very important lesson as I was starting to pick up a pretty nasty habit of diving into food given the slightest excuse of hunger, boredom, need for brainpower, etc. On the reboot, I was rarely not hungry, and learned to be okay with that.
- And yes, I also lost a little bit of weight. :)

So! I recommend to all of you to focus on fruits and veggies and experiment with how to make healthy living work for you! (And maybe you'll even do a little reboot yourself!)  :)

Going Green

Okay, well maybe not quite like that... ;)
This is more like it:

This is a green smoothie that I've been drinking for the past few weeks to phase myself in.
You can make it too! :)
- Start by putting a banana and a cup of water in a blender and blending until smooth.
- Then add some spinach. I started up with a small handful and worked my way up to about 3-4 cups. Blend that until smooth. The awesome part about this recipe is that you really don't taste the spinach, so it tastes like a fruit smoothie, but you get the nutrient load of all the spinach!
- At this point you can add in 1/2- 1 whole cucumber, but you don't have to at first. Be warned that you can taste the cucumber a tiny bit, but it isn't overwhelming. If you do decide to add it in, cut it into 2 inch segments and blend until smooth.
- Add frozen fruit. I like a mix from Sam's Club with strawberries, peaches, mango, and pineapple. Add however much you want. I usually go for about a cup. Blend until smooth.
- Add water until you reach desired consistency, blending it through.
- You can also add ground flax seed and hemp protein powder for added nutrients if you want.

So that's what I've been drinking the past few weeks. (Well, not just that! I've been using it as a supplement to my vegan diet and then started using it as a meal replacement smoothie.) Now, though, I just successfully completed day 2 of a 10 day juice reboot. And what I'm drinking looks more like this:

This reboot was specifically inspired (I've generally wanted to do one for a little while now) after watching the movie Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. Here's a link to that trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv3vEXy_EwU
It's a documentary about an Australian guy, Joe Cross, who does a 60 juice reboot while going across the United States. It is a very interesting look at what we eat and what it does to us and I would HIGHLY recommend everyone watch it, regardless of whether or not you are interested in ever doing anything similar, just for the informational value on a side of medicine that we often don't think about. (And he's pretty funny, so it's not like it's a super dry and boring way to spend an evening! :) ) And if you decide that you might want to try some juicing, there are some good recipes on his reboot website:
http://jointhereboot.com/

So far the oddest thing I've noticed in the past few days is that colors are brighter and everything is more vivid. Kind of like when I go from not wearing glasses to putting on my glasses and suddenly the world is in focus. It's like that, but I'm already wearing my glasses, so it's like a step beyond that! Kind of cool! :)