Return to the RAW!

After what has seemed like an interminable absence, I'm now getting back on track. My excuse has been that I moved from my apartment into a darling house! I wasn't exactly planning to be AWOL for 2 months, but that is what it has taken to find the new place, pack up, move and then unpack. And, I'm still not totally done with the unpacking. I expect a few more weeks of cleaning, pondering and re-organizing before I can heave a sigh of relief and get back to a normal schedule.

And of course, (well, not of course, but in my case it was inevitable) I ran my diet off into a ditch and have been slowly getting it back on track. Not quite there yet as I'm still fussing over a few issues and having icky withdrawal symptoms from cooked and non-organic foods. I still haven't open up my juicer and Vitamix either. I intend to remedy that this afternoon. I hope to pull the kitchen together TODAY!

My sister came across some very interesting information from this guy named Truth Calkins about bringing candida issues under control, which I'll be trying out and sharing with everybody as soon as I can get myself under control and back on track. She gave me her notes on his lecture and it's full of good information on how he managed to rid himself of a candida infestation. Check him out on YouTube talking about his flu virus tonic and all sorts of other raw and health related goodness.

Truth has a tonic bar in the Erewhon Market in LA and now also has a company, Jing and Co. selling a yummy chocolate and jing herb brownie that helps give you energy. Lord knows I could use more of that! I hope to try them out and see what they're all about soon. You can pick up a 12 pack (with free shipping) for $57.95 (that's $4.80 a piece).

Have a groovy day babycakes, I'm off the organize the kitchen!

Recipe Archive

The following is a complete list of all the recipes I've made and put up on my blog so far. I'll be adding to this list as I go along. Please note that not all these recipes are raw, as I'm only about 80% raw and still eating some animal protein and cooked food.

Appetizers

• Spicy lemon hummus
  

Marinades

• Thai style fish marinade
  

Salads

• Italian style tomato and avocado salad
• Greek artichoke and zucchini salad

Shakes and Smoothies

• Breakfast shake with tonic herbs
  

Soups

• Vegetable broth

Fermented Foods

• Kombucha Tea

Carnivore

• Greek Chicken Bake

Off the cleanse and back on to food

A few hours after my lunch salad yesterday I had to run to the bathroom. I guess my stomach couldn't handle the greens because I spewed forth with a fiery green sewage that could only have been my lunch. Never has anything gone through me so fast in my life!

There's no doubt that my intestines have been cleaned out...

The fiery green sewage lasted until this morning when it finally petered out. I have decided to pull back on greens for a bit and stick with fruit and soup for a few days until my bowels have had a chance to normalize. In the meantime I'll be working on a few recipes that I'll be posting here to cheer me up on my Rawvenge adventure.

I found a couple wonderful raw food blogs that I want to share with you. The Sunny Raw Kitchen is written by a very lovely woman named Carmella Soleil who is living near Quebec with with Don, Kylo (puppy dog) and DaPuss (kitty). She has filled her blog full of enticing photographs and yummy recipes that inspire me to drool every time I visit. I simply must buy myself a dehydrator so I can try all of her recipes.

Her Super Caramel Chocolate Tarts, Cheddar and Smoked Veggie Pizza, Garlic and Dill Cheeze, Basil and Black Olive Pasta, and Black Forest Cherry Cake look heavenly! I'm hungry now just writing this.



This yummy nut cheese may get a try in the next day or two...


Next, there's a charming bloke from England, Russell James, who's a professional chef and is gracing us with mouth watering recipes like Maca Ice Cream and Cacao Crackle Sandwiches, Vegetable Samosas with Cucumber and Mint Raita, Pesto and Carmalized Onion Pizza, and Mushroom Curry with Parsnip Rice & Spiced Mango Chutney . Oh Lordy, I love a goumet meal and his recipes look just wonderful. I'll have to wait to get my dehydrator to try some of them though.

These killer ice cream sandwiches will have to wait for another day, as will the samosas and the pizza...

The Mushroom Curry below may get a try soon...


All these photos were borrowed from their respective sites and are not meant to infringe on any copyright laws. Each one links back to it's original page.

Many, many thanks to Carmella and Russell for inspiring me with their delicious recipes!

Rawvenge bowel cleanse - Day One

So, here is the first day of my bowel cleanse in great detail.

For these first 3 days I cannot have any dairy products, fried foods, sugar, iodized table salt, or meat. All of these items clog, congest, slow and depress the elimination process.

Breakfast

• 2 blood stabilizer pills, 1 policosanol and 1 chromium picolinate pill taken with freshly juiced fruits and veggies (about 2-3 oz. thinned with distilled water). I use the extra 64 fl. oz. that I'm supposed to be drinking to make this drink.
• 2 egg omelet with 1/2 sauteed onion and 1/2 organic avocado sliced.

I threw the salt in the picture because I wanted to show what brand I use. This is a really tasty sea salt that I get at my local health food store and have been using for years now. Rock and sea salts have lots of trace minerals and are good for you in reasonable amounts. Yes, I salted my omelet just a little. I also burnt it a little...oops. It was yummy anyway.

I set my timer for 3 hours. I'll be making my lunch then and taking 2 more blood stabilizer pills.


Lunch

• 1 apple, (organic granny smith) peeled.
• 2 pita breads, grilled and cut into wedges.
• 1 C. spicy lemon hummus.
• 2 blood stabilizer pills and 1 policosanol pill taken right before I eat.

Note my trusty feline helpers lurking in the background of the photo above. Too bad Miss Chloe and Mr. Snicker can't run the juicer. I could use a sous chef.

Timer set for 3 hours. I'll be having dinner then and gearing up for my first toxin absorber.


Dinner:

• 1 and 1/2 C. Greek artichoke and zucchini salad.
• 1 pita bread
• 1 digestive stimulator pill taken right before I eat.
  

Timer set for 2 hours. I'll be juicing apples for my first toxin absorber then.

O.K., here's my opinion of my first toxin absorber. A trifle too gritty and it swelled up like a sponge in my stomach especially after the extra 16 oz. of water. Very bloating, but the feeling dissipated in about a half an hour so it was alright. I can already tell that the 5 days juice fasting will be very intense.

The first day in now done and I'm going to bed.

The Ugly Truth

Hello and welcome to Rawvenge!

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Emily and I'm a 49 year old, mid-western gal graphic designer trapped in the body of an alien. I mean it! I no longer recognize myself when I look in the mirror. I see myself and wonder "Who the hell am I anymore?". I look like I'm wearing a gigantic fat suit, only it's not a suit. Ahhhhhhhhh......... wake me up from this bizarre reality game show I'm living in!!!

But I digress....

As you can see from the pictures above there is a VERY ugly truth happening here! And there's no surprise how I got this way. The same way everybody gets here; bad food choices, lack of exercise and a lifetime of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, food colorings, preservatives, additives and refined junk I've either ingested or inhaled.

As for the picture above, it's an easy guess that I'm the one on the left. On the right we have my lovely sister, Miss Priscilla, who has been raw for 8 years now! Eight YEARS!!!! I took these photos to give you a clear idea of the urgency of the situation and as a good comparison for how I should look. My sister is five foot eleven inches tall and I'm five eight. There should be three of us standing there though, because I weigh enough for 2...

Uh, it's time for a change.....

So I have a plan. A rather involved plan with several steps to get me back on the path to heath.

Step 1: Modify my diet and do a bowel cleanse.

Step 2: Make the switch to a 80% raw organic diet and STICK to it. Take daily herbal supplements to ease my hypoglycemia so I CAN stick to it.

Step 3: Do an internal cleanse of all my elimination organs and channels (think lymph glands, liver, lungs, skin etc.).

Step 4: Do a sustained parasite protocol to rid myself of yummy things like candida, worms, flukes and other nasties.

Step 5: Reestablish my immune system with a probiotic protocol (the specifics of which I'm still working out)

I'm just now setting up for my big first step, the bowel cleanse! I found a very nice product online from the people at Blessed Herbs. The kit arrived in the mail a couple days ago and I'm very pleased with it so far. This is a 9 day cleanse with 5 juice fasting days. I'll be juicing my own organic apples for the fasting part of this cleanse and promise to report honestly on the effects of the cleanse (including relevant photos) in gory detail.

I don't believe that varnishing the truth does anyone any good. If it doesn't work, is expensive or complicated, then you might as well know it from the get go! And trust me, there is nothing cheap about the health industry, including high quality food.

For now, and until next time....

The Rawvenge is on!