Beginnings After Beginnings

After we left Pennsylvania and drove through the lush mountains of the northeast, across the central plains, stopped in Colorado where we went on a hike in high altitude and low humidity (and I got my first ever sunburn – not fun! Sorry all you fair skinned people, I feel your pain), then passed through breathtakingly beautiful and unique Utah, across more plains again, then up through mountains covered with ancient pines that can't be described as anything other than magical because of their misty shrouds and holy waterfalls, we arrived, finally, in Portland, with bright eyes and light hearts.

I had an entire blog entry ready to go to say farewell to this one. It had a link to our new joint blog that was to be all about our new life in Portland, where we'd been directed to go both through logic and through intuition, where everyone who had ever been there told us we'd belonged, and where it seemed to us like we would too.

So we arrived in Portland, and found an overcast city. No problem, we knew that Portland's weather wasn't the sunniest. But we weren't there for the weather, we were there for the people! For the relationships! For our fellow veggie lovers! For my new husband's education!

Except....

Portland has an amazing vegetarian culture, true. A culture that is artsy and creative and unique. It is a definite tribe, one that the world needs. But, as we found to our dismay, it wasn't our tribe. We didn't fit in at all. And our bright eyes met other eyes that politely turned aside, not recognizing any sort of connection.

And we realized, as we spent all of each day driving and searching, calling and touring, and finding random wifi spots to look up new addresses, that finding a place to live would be much more difficult than we'd expected. “Of course!” you may say, but no. I've done this before, moved to a new city without a place to live. I've done it more than once. And I'd ALWAYS found somewhere that fit the bill perfectly. Not here. Not even close.

And, for months now, I'd had those deep whisperings that said “you know, naturopathic medical school may not QUITE be what Terry will do.” And I'd told him gently that if he changed his mind, I'd be fine with it, knowing that he would. And he knew too, as it turned out, but both of us, feeling the need to stick to a “plan,” quieted these thoughts privately and pushed through.

But, as it turns out, you can't push through when there is a different path for you to tread. Your pushing gets more and more difficult until you find yourself against an impenetrable wall of rock that sends you back where you came from, bruised and heartsore.

So there we were, days in, still no farther along, confused, sad, and exhausted, wondering what to do with our lack of options and direction. Then, like a candle in the darkness, we made a joke about driving south.

“You know, we spend twelve hours in the car every day ANYWAY.”

“Are you serious?”

“No. ….. I mean, no. We couldn't do that, right?”

“.....”

And it marinated until when, a day later and in a scarier internal place where Terry was at a complete loss and I was questioning every gut feeling I'd ever had (which was a terrifying thing, considering that I've made just about EVERY major life decision throughout my entire adulthood based on that intuition), someone else suggested that we go south.

So we thought about it.

And we talked about it.

And, as we did, that knot in my belly started to relax, and loosen, so gently that I didn't notice it until I was feeling on steady ground again. And that constant threat of tears receded so I could see clearly. So I looked at Terry and he looked at me, and we decided that yes, maybe this WAS an option.

And the more we thought about it and felt it out, the more right it was until the next morning wound up with us checking out of our hotel and hitting the road.

That night the moon rose above us, full in an indigo sky and the sun set behind us over soft golden mountains of ripening wheat as we drove down Interstate 5.

Terry smiled for no reason for the first time in longer than he could remember, he told me.

And as we drove into Los Angeles, a single red firework went off just next to our car, filling our windshield, coming from a place where there weren't any houses and where there wasn't any traffic on the freeway.

We each looked at each other.

“Did you SEE that?”

Then, of course, after we parked the car I got out and immediately stepped in a giant mound of dog poo, which was less pleasant, but they say it's good luck so I'll go with it.

And here we are.

And we're still starting a new and awesomer blog, don't you worry. Here it is.

It'll be all about our new adventures, and they will be adventures, because what kind of hypocrite would I/we be, who tell others to follow their instincts, if we don't follow our own, even against all “logical,” “real-world” thinking? So here we go. Come along, if you like. It'll be a different ride though.

In Love and Light,

Charis

Adventures in Raw Cooking

This weekend we tried a couple of things.


Here's the deal - I don't eat food I don't like. For instance, a half hour ago we made my very favorite chocolate pudding for lunch, only we used arugula rather than a milder tasting green, so let's just say that the flavor combination is NOT my favorite. Aware of all the nutrients that are in this funny tasting smoothie, I'm eating it, but very very slowly. Maybe it's been more like an hour.


The point of that was to say that this raw food change we've made would not be happening if we (read that to be  I) didn't like what we were eating. It has to be delicious, or else I won't stick to it.


So, when we (I) have cravings for random food, I try to make it raw. And this weekend, I tried two things. The first:

source

I don't think I need to say anything more about WHY I wanted to figure this out, right?


So I thought about the ingredients: hazlenuts, oil, milk, chocolate, and a bunch of other stuff that's less important. Ok, I'll try it.


So I soaked some hazlenuts for one day, which turned out to be two days, to get them all soft and blendable.


(I also soaked cashews, which went a little fermented and I vetoed for the nutella, but I DID make a frigging amazing nacho cheese with - what do you think the milk does to make nacho cheese?)


And blended them up with store bought hazlenut milk, cacao, agave, a little stevia, and young coconut meat.


As far as nutella went, it was awful.


Really, it was very very bad. Horrible, in fact. The nuts didn't blend smoothly and it was chunky and not as rich as real nutella.


At the last moment before a trip to the trashcan, T and I noticed that the texture was very Wendy's Frosty-like.


So we put it in the freezer for awhile, and voila: DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM/FROZEN YOGURT STUFF.


Score!


The second thing was the nacho cheese, which I've already discussed. I adapted this guy's recipe by using the fermented cashews instead of macadamia nuts, and I don't know how much lemon juice I added, if any, but it was out and out AWESOME in the end. 


I've tried a cashew ricotta recipe that instructed you to leave the blended cheese mixture out at room temperature overnight, to make it ferment, and it ended up tasting JUST like ricotta, only more flavorful!


So score #2!


And finally, I tried the bread I mentioned a couple posts ago. Made with sun dried tomatoes, herbs, flax seeds and almonds, among other things. And it's dehydrated for an entire 10 hours, but lemme tell you it tastes just like bread!


Score #3.


We've made some staple recipes so far, and want to be finding at least one new delicious recipe each week.


I'm looking forward to living in Portland after the wedding and inviting friends to come stay with us, pig out on delicious albeit strange food, and go home healthier than before! Gonna be good times.


On another note, I'm going to start a gratitude list. It was mentioned today on one of my favorite blogs, which you can read here. It's written by an ex-teacher and current mentor of mine, who's one of the smartest and most compassionate people I know, and who has written two amazing books which you should immediately read - they'll make your life better. And they're short, which makes them all the more readable! Anyway, on the blog today he spoke of organ donors who cultivated a practice of spending 15 minutes a day writing a list of things they were grateful for. They recovered from the donations sooner AND with less complications. I'd be willing to bet that their internal happiness state elevated quite a bit too as a result. 


And as I'm healthy already (haven't donated any organs recently), how much more beneficial would it be?


(the same goes for everyone reading this. And I do think it would also work if you divided it up into three 5 minutes sessions a day, so for those of you sitting at your desks at work reading this, DO IT three times a day. It's 5 minutes. And it'll make you happier and more productive, even at your job. Scribble on a piece of computer paper and keep it in your drawer. Totally doable).


So, I'll be posting it from time to time.


Happy Sunday!

Greens

I was writing a post last night all about our day trip to Amarillo yesterday, and how we gorged on potato chips (decidedly neither raw NOR vegan ones), and how it put me in not-so-nice of a mood AND bellyache, but by the time the post was done it was really long and grumpy, and (gasp) a tad preachy, so I won't post it.

In fact, it's getting deleted as soon as I put this replacer up.

We like to focus on the goodies around here!

Which is why I will post the following picture, of when I was trying to offset the greasy delicious disgustingness of potato chips in my tummy on the ride home:And also why I'm now drinking a glass of forest green liquid, which is, to be specific, juiced celery, cilantro, and lime.

It's not very good.
Don't do it.

"I've decided one thing," I told T as we stood at the kitchen island, sipping our pond moss looking drinks. "I'm all about going raw. But I refuse to force myself to eat things that don't taste good."

He nodded.

We're in agreement. Lovely. (I'll start soaking the flax seeds tomorrow morning for some yummy flax seed crackers that just taste like really good tortilla chips, and this time we're adding the spinach pulp from these nasty drinks, to make things more interesting)

Happy Wednesday!

Today's quote:
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
~George Bernard Shaw

Body

...from my personal writings, usually separate from blogging...

Our bodies are changing. And I don't mean just because we're losing weight, which is definitely happening too. We arrived in Texas pudgy and unhappy, feeling stuck and stiff physically. Terry had terrible dark circles under his eyes, and my body had curves which it may never have had before and that I certainly did not want there. We began to eat healthier, quickly jumping back into a vegetarian diet (which had been compromised by dinners and lunches at Mom-mom's, Terry's maternal grandmother who loves via food's, house on Thursdays and Sundays), then into a vegan diet, which hadn't been particularly firm or consistent to begin with, and had flown in Richmond and Pennsylvania through pizza and french fries with cheese and ice cream and such. We discovered hazlenut milk (delicious) and are still working on the perfect cashew cheese, which is narrowing down. And we started nearly daily yoga.

That said, we were feeling healthier, but not losing much weight. Then, after more reading, we decided to go raw. And not only that, but we decided to do that adventurous apple fast/gall bladder cleanse of two weeks ago. And that's when the pounds started melting off.

Daily we'd lose weight, and during the apple fast, we weren't even exercising, to avoid overtaxing our bodies (we figured they were working hard as it was). Terry shed pounds and so did I. At the end of the fast, he was at about 153 and I was at about 92. I haven't weighed that much since high school. And I'm not even trying to lose weight!

When we eat, we eat living foods, ones that naturally have digestive enzymes that haven't gotten killed via cooking so that our bodies can convert easily to energy and that we don't store as fat. No dairy means none of the associated mucous production that was so obvious within ten seconds of when Terry had a sip of chocolate milk a few weeks ago.

Usually, when I would give in to my sweets cravings (which I have LOTS of), I'd bargain with myself, figuring out just how bad this was for my body, thinking of how I'd offset that. Today, after lunch, as I was walking back to our room where we were watching Star Wars (it makes much more sense to me now, and what creativity George Lucas had! He was on the mark about so many things!), carrying our dessert of two chocolate mockaroons and a big glass of creamy rice milk, it finally hit me. My mind started to do that bargaining and figuring thing, and I realized. This was GOOD for me. I was about to eat superfoods. The mockaroons are called that (instead of macaroons) because they're made with organic raw cacao powder, shredded raw coconut, honey and/or agave nectar, and coconut butter (there may be other things, I can't recall right now). The ingredients are formed into balls and dehydrated for a day or two, but Terry and I grab them out of the dehydrator along the way and have delicious gooey chocolatey treats reminiscent of half done brownies, which I've always loved. And not only do I not have to pay for it, my body THANKS me! Those are all good fats and beneficial nutrients! A completely different approach to food, this is. And I'm loving it.

Slowly, I'm beginning to not recognize things like bread and meat as food. Seeds and nuts and fruits and greens are food, and what is bread? Grass seeds cooked and ground into powder, then mixed with a bunch of other things into a goo, and cooked until tiny holes foam up and it stays frozen that way, permanently, and is considered yummy. Meat? Muscle tissue. Of abused and tortured and poisoned animals. Not exactly delicious.

And we're still losing weight. Today Terry weighed in at 148 and I weighed in at 90. I think we'll probably even out soon, and our bodies will form the way they're supposed to be formed – after all, I eat plenty of fats. Today, so far, I've had an entire avocado (loaded with good fats), a mockaroon, which is the same, and for dinner I'll have cauliflower doused in spices like salt, pepper, dulse, cumin, and dipped in organic barbecue sauce and vegenaise, followed by a dessert of chocolate pudding made from greens, avocado, organic coconut milk creamer, agave and/or honey, and raw cacao. It tastes just like chocolate pudding and it's a recipe that Terry and I came up with ourselves (and are very proud of!).

In his Superfoods book, Wolfe says that at some point it's a good idea to go on an extended (two weeks or a bit longer) juice fast to clear out ALL toxins. That would also clear off all body fat, because that's where toxins are stored, so we'd be looking pretty emaciated. But afterwards, once you reintroduce fats, your body builds itself again from the bottom up, the way you SHOULD be. So, there are 7 weeks til the wedding. If we do the juice fast soon, we'll have a month to put back on healthy fat and not terrify everyone at the wedding by looking half starved. I like it.

Yesterday we walked through the grocery store and I saw a headline on one of those check-out rack magazines that said something about celebrity diets, ones that REALLY work. I laughed, thinking of how many women try and cry and weigh and measure, when they could just be on a raw diet and see the pounds fall off, as they ate delicious and satisfying food. Lately I've been stuffing myself every night, around 9:30pm, when my hunger kicks in if I don't go to bed, and I'm still LOSING weight. How far we've come from what the Heavenly Father and Earthly Mother intended for their children...

added note: you may be alarmed by my pound report. However, we don't look unhealthy at all. I'm 5'3" and Terry's 5'8". We look lean, thin, and toned. Because there's a shortage of info about raw eating from people who aren't already extremely well versed in it, we plan to start blogging pretty soon and posting pics of our weekly bodies, to show the changes. Wolfe says that, after all toxins are removed from the body, the bone structure of the face may even change as potentials for health and form turn into realities in health and form. So we'll see. But don't worry. We're not anorexic :) And we feel amazing. More energy and joy than ever before experienced, for my part. Maybe there's something TO this stuff, huh?

Awesome Apple Fast: Days 4 & 5

Alrighty so let's discuss how this went.

On the morning of Day 4, which was Thursday, I woke up filled with energy and optimism.

It was a great day.

The sun was shining (or would be soon...I get up early).

My body felt amazing - I've never felt so clean and good!

Today was the last day of the cleanse, so, after some unpleasantness in the afternoon,

I'd be able to eat tomorrow.

Awesome.

So I went on my merry little way, preparing for the wedding, sending out emails, working on lots of new and very VERY exciting changes going on around here (stay tuned, lots of posts to come), drank some apple sauce/juice (which is what you get when you juice apples yourself), and then 3:00pm rolled around.

It was time.

(scary)

T and I filed into the kitchen. I meticulously measured out our olive oil - 6 ounces for me, and 8 for him (he was optimistic).

He squeezed lemon juice for us, the same amounts for each.

I went and got his computer to video record this momentous occasion (which video promptly deleted itself - weird, but true, and I'm kinda glad about that).

We tried to wrap our arms wedding-toast style, but were too paranoid about what we'd do after taking the first sip of olive oil, so we just faced each other instead.

After a clink, and a count down, bottoms up.

Oh.

My.

GOSH.

Seriously? Seriously. I am all for cleanses - with how amazing this one felt, I'm all about doing a different cleanse a month til all my body organs are spic and span, but I will not lie to you.

It was probably the worst thing I've ever experienced.

If I believed that Hell was a place where you have to do the most unpleasant thing imaginable forever, I'd be sitting there with a never-ending glass of amber olive oil.

It was really THAT bad.

I can't even describe it. It isn't that the taste is terrible, I mean, it tastes like olive oil. If you've ever taken a tequila shot (guilty, of course) then this is child's play. The problem is the TEXTURE. Your throat doesn't like it. And after 3.5 days of only apple juice, your stomach isn't a fan of the incredible richness either.

Really, it was horror of horrors horribleawefuldisGUUUSting. I asked Terry (only half joking) whether he thought David Wolfe put that in the book just to make his readers feel inadequate compared to him - I mean, he didn't even warn you about the terribleness, does that mean he can just sip it with a smile? If so, I suck in comparison. Maybe this is his raw foodism scheme to take over the world, psychologically.

I don't believe that. But, if he can drink that with no problems, he's a better human than I. Or a worse one. Depends on how you look at it.

We tried straws. (which worked better for me than T)

We tried to, since we were filming, pretend that we were doing a commercial and that the drink was delicious. I mean, I'm sure people have to do that sometimes. What about cooking shows? They ALWAYS look like that stuff tastes amazing. And I know from experience after trying their recipes, that those faces are faked at least some of the time.

That didn't work.

In the end, Terry downed his entire glass (I'm getting queasy just typing about it). I, on the other hand, could only get 4 ounces down. We figured that since I'm pretty small and light (under 100lbs), this was probably fine.

So we followed up with the lemon juice, during which T made faces I've never seen on a human before and that were highly entertaining, and put on our inventive liver compresses, which consisted of cloths with warm castor oil on them, against our livers, under a layer of plastic wrap that wound twice around our torsos. Awesome. (and sweaty, ew).

We laid in bed, on our right sides, with the mattress heater on, and watched movies - a little of Alien, then some of As Good As it Gets - about then T got sleepy so I watched some Gossip Girl and videos on wedding hair (very interesting, notsomuch, but necessary).

As the sun went down, we got lethargic and weird and T got downright sick. He was bad off. Just goes to show you, listen to your body! Don't force yourself to finish the doggone olive oil! Be like me, and once you start dry heaving, PUT THE GLASS DOWN.

Anyway.

And, as for the passing of the gall bladder stones, did it happen on the morning of Day 5?

Yes.

No, it wasn't painful at all. I won't go into specifics cause that's a little TOO much detail for a random googler who's ended up on my blog, but feel free to email me if you have questions.

We spent the day Friday in the city, going to a dress fitting for me and running errands and breaking our fast with Mexican food over at Ruby Tequilas -

-NOT a good idea. I felt so polluted after I left that place. No offence to RT, I just think I'm off cooked food.

I've been so spoiled with my mental acuity and mood and energy and physique, and now that I've successfully formulated a delicious flax cracker recipe to curb my tortilla chip addiction (for a later post, that), I'm on my way.

I will miss that quinoa bread though. Make a loaf, have it with honey for me. YUM.

I'm off to google raw bread recipes....

Happy Weekend!

Awesome Apple Fast: Days 1 & 2

image source

I don't know if y'all would automatically know what a fast is, at least in the sense that I'm doing one right now. Of course, Lent is upon us so I'm sure some of you are familiar with the concept of fasting (which isn't why I'm doing it, but it is a charming coincidence).

Just in case, answers.com defines a fast as simply "abstention from eating." (that's an awfully hard core definition, and no, obviously cause of the picture above, I'm not going that far...). Antonyms, according to the same site are "binge, eating, engorgement, and feast." So there you go.

So back to the fast. T and I have been reading an excellent book by David Wolfe (a nutritional guru) when it comes to raw, living, and super foods. Here's the link on Amazon.

This particular fast, which is officially a gall bladder cleanse (which supposedly supercharges liver function and other things that are healthily awesome), consists of first, three days of eating nothing but freshly juiced apples and water.

That's it.

We're currently on Day 2, and so far, it's not that bad. Of course, gorging on Mexican food and chocolate chip cookies (gluten free, of course) on Sunday night due to a fear of the cleanse's start on Monday morning probably made yesterday an easier day than it might have been otherwise. Our bodies were still going off of the huge overeating Sunday. That's cheating, by the way.

But back to the cleanse - yesterday and today I spent all day (and I do mean All. Day.) working on wedding invitations and reception invitations - all in all, I have to make roughly 200 total, and there's lots of ripping and gluing and stamping and embossing and ribbon tying and such involved, so my fingers are tired and the rest of me is slightly cranky.

For me, right about now is the hardest part. My clock reads 7:23pm, and right now is my "hungry time" because I ordinarily do my major eating at dinner time. In fact, that's usually my only real meal of the day - the rest is made up of grazing here and there - a handful of sunflower seeds or pine nuts, a date, an apple, a handful of spinach, that type of thing.

You may be wondering WHY in the heck we're doing this, but actually I'm pretty excited about it. We're mostly raw anyway already, and this type of cleanse helps you get out the yuckies in your body that have accumulated over a lifetime of eating meat and dairy. In this case, it's gall bladder stones, that should be eliminated on Day 5, or Friday, morning. On the afternoon of Day 4, the fast is broken by a glass of olive oil followed by a glass of lemon juice. I'm thinking that'll be the hardest part. But eating raw food makes me feel amazing overall (as it will you too, after the initial struggle) and I'm painfully aware that these feelings I'm having about potato chips and guacamole and cookies are basically drug withdrawal. (If I sound crazy, buy the book - it explains everything).

All in all, it's a good thing. I just happen to be in my hungry time. Ask me again tomorrow morning :)