Recipe: Josiah's Simple Gazpacho

Jess and I stuck to a raw diet for a few week period. We've gone back to cooking some of our foods, but our brief raw experiment allowed me the opportunity to make one of my favorite soups that I usually only make in the hottest months of summer. This gazpacho, we found, is just as tasty even in the chilly months of winter!

Ingredients:

5 medium tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
1 small onion, finely diced
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely diced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
1 medium cucumber, finely diced
1 large carrot, grated
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp cumin
3-4 dashes hot sauce
3-4 drops liquid smoke (optional)

Cut the tomatoes into large pieces (knife precision will not matter on the tomatoes). Place the tomato and garlic into a high speed blender and blend until silky smooth.

Transfer the mixture into a large bowl. Stir in the remaining ingredients.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least an hour for the flavors to meld together.  Serve and enjoy!

A Change in Direction...

After two weeks, I've decided to change my course slightly. This week was pretty rough in a few areas. Work has been crazy so that hasn't helped my stress levels at all. And then there's the food.... We used the dehydrator a lot this week. It's really nice and it works wonderfully. However, a majority of the food that we prepared in it, was nut and seed based. We made bread, burgers, and pizza crust that all had a lot of flax meal in them. Very rarely have I felt any worse than after eating these types of food. They make me absolutely nauseous. In fact, I took some pretty good pictures of the burgers and I don't even have the stomach to include them in here. They all tasted fine, but they did not make me feel fine. Maybe it's just my system and I don't have a good tolerance for large amounts of these foods. I also wonder, if a majority of my protein is coming from nuts and seeds, how much do I have to eat to meet my requirements? I am drinking a Vega smoothie daily, but I still need a lot of protein after that. I just feel gross. I never got that marvelous feeling that is supposed to come from a raw diet.

So, like I said, I've decided to make a change. I'm still going to be eating a large amount of raw fruits and vegetables. I'm just going to allow myself to eat whole and cooked foods. I guess you could say that I'm going to stick with an Engine 2 type of diet, with large amounts of fresh produce (For more information about this just Google "whole plant based diet", "Engine 2", "Caldwell Esslestyn", or "The China Study"). Oh and I'm going to continue with smoothies because I think that the Engine 2 idea that they are unhealthy is ridiculous. Basically, I'm not going to be eating processed foods with no nutritional value. I'm also going to be cutting oil down to a minimum. The raw diet allows for oil, but I just can't get on that bandwagon.

I also just got Brendan Brazier's new book, Thrive Foods. He doesn't necessarily call for a 100% raw diet, so there is a good mix of raw and cooked recipes in there. I'm really excited to try out the raw banana bread that is made in the dehydrator. It doesn't call for any nuts or seeds! I promise I'll take pictures of some of these recipes and actually post them.

I have accomplished a lot in the past two weeks, though. I've kicked my coffee and diet coke habit most importantly! I'm going to have to make sure to stay on track with this one. I know how easy it is to start up again. I also have no desire to eat fried and processed junk which were some of my biggest weaknesses before. I'm also craving kale and black eyed peas like you would not believe! If I had some in the house, I'd make it up right now and it's only 10am. So, I'd dare say that I did "reset" some things in my body.

Overall, I'm not disappointed with this experiment. I learned some things and I don't think that it's a failure. I'm just going to keep the fresh produce and add in other healthy plant based meals. I'll continue to post about this adventure but I'm not doing it for a set number of days. I'm trying to make that healthy lifestyle for myself so that I can continue to work on my food issues.

Thoughts From the First Week

I'm a little short on time, so I'm not going to type out everything that I've eaten since the last post. I just want to share a few thoughts from the week.

Overall, I'm feeling really good. I haven't been overly hungry or feeling deprived at any point. There have been a few times where I have eaten foods that definitely aren't raw, but I haven't let that derail me like it would have in the past. I feel like the mental fog is going away slowly. It's still there a bit in the mornings. Oh and not counting calories? It's the best thing that's ever happened to me! I feel so much better about myself and I don't feel like I'm in a constant state of panic.

I've also had some really amazing food over the past week. I tried kelp noodles for the first time yesterday. They have a strange texture, but they are really good! The dehydrator arrived on Tuesday and so far we have made rye flat bread, buckwheat granola, marinated vegetables, kale chips, and we marinated and dehydrated some tofu. We also made our first batch of chocolate blueberry energy bars from one of the Thrive books. We have been so busy and I forgot to take pictures! I'll try to get better about that next week!

In more important news, my mom is turning into a veggie! She has read some of my favorite books and is horrified at the meat and dairy industry. So, she is trying really hard to transition to the vegan lifestyle. She and I went to a vegan cooking class on Saturday (I'll get into that further in a separate post) and tomorrow we are going grocery shopping in Ithaca because they have a better selection of vegan options. I'm so proud of her!

We slacked a little in our exercise this week, but today I ran 4 miles after a raw breakfast and I felt pretty good. Within this next week, we are going to make an effort to go to the gym more. Although, even with the small amount of exercise, my body fat percentage is already down 1%. I've tried the raw thing before, and I've always given up after a few days. This time it feels differently. I'm still motivated and I'm feeling really good. I'm still getting into the swing of it with preparing all of this food, but I'm having fun doing it!