We Talked About Food

I met with a young woman at Church on Sunday. She sat with her six-year-old and her twin babies of just three months. Slowly, she gave up the story of her also young husband that has contracted a near-fatal heart condition causing him to quit work and go on disability. His illness is so severe that he cannot pick up his newborn sons.

The wife now has three children and a extremely sick husband to care for full-time. Her concern? What to fix for supper. The husband is limited to red meat twice per month, fish and chicken once a week, no packaged or processed foods, with the elimination of fats, eggs, and sugars. We talked about food.

Our angel-of-a-Parish Assistant organized volunteers to bring vegetarian meals to their home. She looked for someone to help do a few chores.

I promised to bring recipes. I dug out my copies of Dr. Timothy Brantly’s book The Cure and Ann Wigmore’s The Hippocrates Diet to give to the young family. Wigmore’s book covers the basics of eating healthy, the curative powers of juicing, and provides some recipes, The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen also made it into the box. Though not wholly vegetarian, the cookbook offers excellent food choices and a wide variety of flavors. The couple stated they liked all types of food.

I decided to give them a starter pack of things I found valuable in my diet. From the health food store I included—powdered wheatgrass juice, mung beans for sprouting, and organic veggies. From Trader Joes—Daily Bread brand sprouted wheat-bread, organic peanut butter, soy butter, almond milk, raw milk cheese, Pure Maple Syrup, Agave Syrup, and Brewers’ Yeast. She said she had sea-salt at home otherwise I would have included it.

The items get dropped off tomorrow. Please pray for the family.

Oh and I lost a pound this week.

Figs…

I purchased a dehydrator. I didn’t plan to purchase a dehydrator. It started with a trip to Lodi to pick figs off of Pam and Bob, my friends’ tree—a huge twenty foot farmhouse fig tree. Filling two bags, while stuffing my face with sun-warmed gooey fruit, I hadn’t a clue what I was going to do with all the figs. On the drive home, I thought of sharing my bounty with family and neighbors. Which I did. Also I planned perhaps to find on the internet a few exotic recipes. Did that too. Still I had more figs than I could eat.

Aside from figs. Home-grown tomatoes arrived on my doorstep with alarming regularity. News of my raw diet has spread throughout the community causing an outpouring of free red-ripe and yellow-heirloom fruit offerings. Yes tomatoes are technically fruit. With my gleeful acceptance, the refrigerator now overflowed with tomatoes and the aforementioned figs.

What to do with all that fruit?
I tried drying figs in my brand new gas oven. Unfortunately the settings did not drop to the required 110 degrees so I burnt my first stab at dehydrating. I found myself that day at Fry’s Electronics and, to my surprise, a brand-new dehydrator sat on the shelf between coffee makers and vacuums. Marked down from $59 to $39, it seemed like a deal.

The three trays of skinned-sliced tomatoes and two trays of halved figs took most of two days to dry in the circular heating unit. After cooling the dried fruit, I packed them in plastic-freezer bags and popped them into the freezer where they will keep bug free for up to two years.

Now what do I do with dehydrated tomatoes and figs?
First the tomatoes—Sundried Tomato Pesto. My recipe.
6 ounces sun-dried tomatoes Soaked in water until soft. Set aside water.
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon crushed garlic
2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup crushed tomatoes
2 tablespoons red wine (optional)
¼ to ½ cup olive oil
Sea-salt to taste
Combine all the ingredients except the oil. Let rest for 1 hour in the refrigerator. Mix thoroughly. Add soaking water if needed. Mix in oil to taste. I like Cayenne Pepper for a little kick. Use on raw veggies. I like to pour over sprouted mung bean and grind hard raw goat cheese over the top. Tastes Italian to me!

Finally the Figs—A Christmas Figgy Pudding

Fig-raisin Pudding
2 cups 2-day sprouted wheat and rye
1-1 1/2 cups black mission figs soaked overnight
1-1 1/2 cups raisins soaked in fig water for 1 hour
Put all ingredients in a blender, and puree until smooth
- by San Francisco's Living Foods Enthusiasts

I lost one pound this week.

And the winner is…

Last week, I met a woman named Marie. She lost one hundred and ten pounds during the period January through July 2010 – that’s about four pounds a week. Modifying Weight Watchers diet, she cut carbs and fats then ate sensibly a diet full of raw vegetables, limited fruits, and barbecue lean meats. Marie is doing tons more exercise than I am.

My friend Cindy B. is raw-canning cauliflower, beans, and cucumber with jalapeño peppers and garlic. Hot but oh so good. A new acquaintance discussed the value of sprouting seeds. Another friend, Jacki, sent me a link to a raw restaurant here in Sacramento http://www.thegreenboheme.com/ and one to a raw support group. The cover of the gardening section in Friday’s newspaper presented the trend toward more home organic gardens. It seems I am far from alone in this diet revolution.

Today, I met my transplant weight goal of two hundred and twenty five pounds. I could not have completed this goal without going raw. Over and over I have failed attaining more modest goals on the most popular diets ranging from Atkins to Grapefruit to South Beach to Weight Watchers and so many more. All diets talk about life style changes but until you stop baking, microwaving, boiling, fast-fooding, and frying that change cannot happen. Now a dietary cheat for me is a pasteurized all fruit smoothie instead of a homemade fresh one. French fries, candies, cookies, and baked goods are not tempting – an extra fig before bedtime is. That is a real change in my tastes.

Yesterday, I plowed through my closets and drawers trying on every piece of clothing I own. There is massive satisfaction in throwing garment after garment in to a pile intended for the Goodwill. The stack of over-sized rejects grew to my height approximately five-foot ten-inches high – a lovely sight that promptly fell over and covered the floor. It made me giggle.

Shopping at Eco-Thrift, a local used clothing outlet, I am purchasing smaller and smaller pants for ninety-nine cents apiece. This will do until I settle on a permanent size sometime after the holidays and the kidney transplant. My new goal for November 6th is to lose thirty-five more pounds and hit my healthy weight of one hundred and ninety pounds.

So, now I call University of California, San Francisco’s transplant nurse to let her know I have achieved the required weight. We will try to set our double surgeries for sometime in January 2011. Soon, Paul and I will have a healthy new life together. The winners are us!

Fasting Wednesday

It’s the first of September and I’m starting my fasting Wednesdays. The fast is not as easy as I remembered it. The mind plays cruel tricks sometimes. I did okay until eleven o’clock, when I tried to convince myself that a banana smoothie somehow fit a fasting Wednesday. Keeping occupied has helped move my thoughts away from food.

I now know how my skinny co-workers had so many new clothes. They spent money on themselves and not on food. Image if you didn’t eat once a week what that could do for your budget. What if your husband or housemate didn’t eat one day either? Could you afford a new blouse this month? Kids and pets don’t fast so drop that fantasy.

The cost of food for this diet has been for items I never had in the house – powdered wheatgrass, brewer’s yeast, seeds for sprouting, and containers for sprouting. The almond milk, kale, and coconut just replace other less nutritious items in the weekly shopping. What I normal spend on food for myself has dropped by at least half. In the long term, decreasing costs will probably continue.

For example, I ran out of lettuce a few days back. Rather than drive to the store, I used some sprouted sunflower seeds as a base and made my salad. The next day I used the sprouted lentils with a different mix of vegetables. I sprouted mung beans overnight for a wonderful new luncheon faire. I love the change in flavors and textures. The sprouted seeds cost pennies where the organic lettuce cost dollars.

Oh, I made my own pickles. Yes. Using a mandolin slicer, I trimmed up some cucumber, stuffed them into a clean used pickle jar – appropriate – added garlic cloves, pickling spices, and organic vinegar. Left it in the refrigerator for three days. Now I have raw organic pickles. Yum!

How did I get on food? So eight more hours till bedtime then sleep then breakfast. I think I’ll have that banana smoothie.

FIVE POUNDS TO TRANSPLANT WEIGHT GOAL!

Four pounds lost this week. Yea! I upped my exercise a tad with the help of an overactive puppy and ate close to the outlined diet. What I’ve been eating of late: a homemade version of V-8 juice, steamed veggies like kale, carrots, green beans, spinach, and mushrooms, soft-boiled eggs, seared tuna salad with balsamic dressing, tacos made of lettuce, raw-milk goat cheese, homemade salsa verde and seared beef, many salads, fresh fruit, fruit, and more fruit gleaned from our awesome overproducing backyard trees.

My latest experiment attempted Japanese cuisine. I picked up seaweed wraps at the local grocery store, grabbed fresh crab meat, raw ahi tuna, avocado, and veg for California rolls. Following the easy instructions for sushi on the seaweed package, I made two California rolls and two tuna rolls for Mom and Paul. Each roll breaks down to eight pieces of cut sushi. Then I ground up sprouted sunflower seeds and lentils into a paste to replace the rice portion of the recipe and made the same type rolls for myself. I served up salads with ginger dressing, edamame, and hot sake. This was a necessary break from the rut I created with the raw diet. The Asian recipes far exceed most European and American faire in variety of flavor and fresh ingredients.

I am still only two weeks from my last three-day fast so I will start my one-day fast next Wednesday, September 1st. For those who think fasting destroys the muscle, I talked with a health professional who says you must fast forty days before destroying muscle tissue. One day ain’t going to hurt and I know my digestive track can use the break – not to mention what it is doing for the food budget.

July 2010

August 2010

Down the Rabbit Hole

When I started this diet I had no idea what new worlds I would find. Did you know that fruitarians exist? They eat only fruit. This is new information to me but part of an amazing labyrinth of raw-vegetarians juicing wheatgrass, dehydrating sprouted seeds to make raw breads, composting, and organically growing – refugees from the communes I read about in the Sixties that became successful all-natural entrepreneurs. Since this quest started, I have found organic wheatgrass farms in New Zealand and a Californian raw “baker” that ships overnight just about any healthy food craving you may have. “Curiouser and curiouser!”

The really bizarre stuff is found in the last half of each book. Just check the chapters on cleansing. You will find page after page detailing the joys of a clean and healthy bowel. How do you obtain such a thing? Glad you asked. The answer is by fasting, enemas, and high colonics. The detailed pages usually include sketches of someone on a slant board inserting a bulb into the underside of well you know. After flushing out the offending items from your system, you are to insert wheatgrass juice to hold for twenty minutes or so then expel. Apparently, this is the key to curing disease.

Now if one book mentioned it in passing… Ha! Sorry. If one book mentioned these procedures, I could have ignored it but all the books including The Cure talks about clearing the intestines. I visualized Steve Martin and Sarah Jessica Parker leaving the colonic spa in LA Story, Parker jumping up and down, reenergized and Martin walking funny, violated.

I am trying to be enthusiastic about juicing and have successfully sprouted lentils and sunflower seeds. But try as I might the idea of someone else or me, for that matter, inserting a green-water-filled bulb in my fanny is repulsive at best. Don’t let this scare you away from some really good health tips and information. The Hippocrates Diet states that specific cleanses are needed for those who are ill. Perhaps if I had colon cancer, colitis, or ulcers, maybe my desire – scratch that – my need could overcome the repulsion. I’m only seeking a lighter weight body through good nutrition...

 "and it really was a diet, after all."

Attempting the Fast

This past month ranks as a practice run for the true diet. Today, I attempt the near-impossible… the fast. My goal is to fast with lemon flavored water today, followed by two days of watermelon to cleanse. The three days of cleansing will, supposedly, jump start my immune system, clean out my urinary tract, and give my half-century old digestive system a much needed holiday. The question is – can I do it?

I prepped. First I visited one of Mom’s friends, Annette, the local sage on raw diets. She graciously invited me into her beautiful home full of handmade crafts so lovely I felt blessed to be there. Her creations included delicately carved emu eggs, woven baskets the size of a robin’s nest, and surprisingly comical beaded pebbles.

She gave me hands-on lessons in sprouting and juicing – two areas in which I am clueless. Annette had stacks of book for me to thumb through and borrow. I picked, The Raw Food Revolution Diet by Cherie Soria, Secrets of Power Juicing, Jack LaLanne, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Raw by Mark Reinfeld. Annette's patient instruction in sprouting far surpassed the choppy information found in the Idiot’s Guide. I munched on sprouted sunflower seeds as Annette expounded the virtues of mung bean and hemp seed (legal not the other hemp).

I think sprouting helps your system by increasing helpful enzymes and nutrient intake. Annette says the starch normally found in these seeds change to proteins in the sprouting process -- more digestable and better for you. If it adds a bit of variation in the diet, I will be thrilled. I tire of the same flavors my current faire holds and look forward to some change. Thankfully, the recipes in all three books I read were inspirational. According to these guides you can make most cooked foods in a raw version if you have time, patience, an expensive dehydrator, a good food processor, and money. Okay, I don’t have five of the five but I can see where I can enhance what I am doing with some juices and a few sprouted seeds.

In a way, I feel I have dropped down the rabbit hole. Juicing, fasting, sprouting, dehydrating, raw; all so retro-hippie and not-so-much me but I feel great. I have lost 1.6 pounds this week alone. My stomach muscles are tightening on their own. Honestly, I have never had such daily positive affirmation of a diet change as I do with this one. I find myself dancing for no reason, singing to the dog, and thanking God each time I pick a ripe apple off the backyard tree. I must be doing something right.