A busy Tuesday as usual. I stayed pretty raw though, although lots of yummy fats were consumed. I made my first raw chocolates today- they weren’t the best, but they were far from lacking in yumminess. I have to order more cacao butter….
Today I ate:
fruit smoothie
cauliflower salad
bananas
carrots, zucchini, daikon pastas and pesto sauce
almonds
red wine
home made chocolates (cacao powder, coconut butter, coconut flakes, hazelnuts, agave)
Due to having gone to sleep at 5am, I didn’t move my but out of bed before noon. No, later, as I read in bed for a while before hitting the computer. The birds, kids, and tree mowers (no, no lawns here- a lot of tree-trimming and the like takes place, though) have been particularly noisy today. The sun’s not out, but it’s a pleasant day nonetheless. I like the fact that you can be indoors and still feel like you are outside in this apartment. All you have to do is open all the many windows. The air circulates nicely and sunbeams find there way in unobtrusively. Winter has passed and summer’s not yet here, so there is absolutely nothing to complain about. Noisy? No, more alive-ly.
I made a new pesto sauce today, but it didn’t turn out as well as the batch a few days ago. I think this is due to the lack of purity in some of the ingredients I chucked in. I used almonds, but I don’t think they were raw. I ran out of organic olive oil too, and added too much garlic. Added some wheat grass and maca powder to pump it up, but that didn’t do much for the flavor. Oh well, better luck next time. I also opened a pack to goji berries I picked up in Fuchinobe to munch on. Either they are a bad batch, or goji berries just plain suck, I’m sorry. I’ve eaten them fine in trail mixes, but seriously. Yuck. Maybe the pack I bought was intended only for making tea with? Goji berries, BTW, can be found readily in Japan, but they are NOT hyped up the way they are in the US. Far from it. Same goes for green tea, though most locals know it’s anti-carcinogenic. In any case, I’ll let you know when I taste the other pack of goji berries I ordered online form the US.
Today I had:
spinach, banana, and frozen tropical fruit smoothie with a dash of agave
zucchini pasta with cashew pesto
cauliflower salad with almond pesto
a few goji berries
dried figs
banana, cacao, date “ice cream”
milo hot cocoa
red wine
Good Lord- as many days raw as candles on my birthday cake. The days have gone by terribly fast. I have been gradually becoming more sensitive to foods. I had wine last night that was neither organic nor lacking in preservatives. I only had 3 small glasses, but I didn’t feel up to par this morning. In fact, I had unpleasant dreams. Feeling better now after being very raw all day.
I took about 25 students to see the Tokyo Player’s production of Oliver (as in Twist) last night, and it was an awesome success. The students all loved it, as did I! The unpaid international cast and crew put 9 months of practice into their performance, and it showed. Brought back memories of when I was in the Miyazaki Theater group (I played the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz) and the mum in Miyazaki Dreaming (spin off of A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream).
After returning home, I simply had to finish the incredibly funny and inspiring book, Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster, a memoir of her weight loss journey. Seriously, LOL material. In the end, I think ditching her sarcy attitude and apply positive thinking (think Law of Attraction) changed it all around for her. It was one of those “must read til end” books, so I stayed up until 5am. Thank God I have Mondays off (Yes, lots of time in my life at the moment- It’s great!)
Today I ate:
melon
zucchini and daikon “pasta” with raw pesto sauce
bananas
pistachios
chestnuts (cooked- yeah, I know…)
red wine
Today was an enjoyable Saturday of food preparation using my saladacco. I made 3 dishes of spiralized zucchini and daikon, with nutty green sauce and an avocado sauce. Awesome. Raw food has become spectacularly delicious. I also finally purchased a Cuisinart food processor. I paid about 6,000 yen at Costco for the mini-prep, after seeing the same item sold for 19,000 yen at the Keio department store. Almost 25% of the price at Costco. Unbelievable price disparities to be found in Tokyo. If you shop in Omotesando, for example, you can pick up a VitaMix for 70,000 yen. That’s as much as my bloody rent! (Haven’t seen one elsewhere so I can only compare to online ordering for half the price- still a tad out of my league. I am well over budget for spending this month….)
Today I had:
melon
banana
green sauce (pine and cashew nuts, olive oil, garlic, sea salt and pepper, tomatoes, and greens blended up)
4 sliced zucchinis, a chunk of sliced daikon
avocado and soy sauce
red wine
Stayed up late last night after watching a silly movie- can’t even remember the title. Absolutely buggered today as a result. I am at the office as I type right now, actually, but plan to head to a colleague’s office where I know there is an inviting couch- a nap could make all the difference.
I didn’t take time to make a nice lunch today either. Just munched on raw nuts and fruit, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Today I had:
berry smoothie with agave
bananas
raisins
soaked pesto walnuts
green tea
zucchini pasta with tomato sauce (pepper, garlic, olive oil, herbs), ruccola, and spinach
I dug through 3/4 of the cacao bliss cacao-coconut butter, after my morning smoothie. As a result of ingesting all that glucose and fat, by 4pm I hadn’t eaten anything else. Too sugared out and full. Actually, I felt a tad sick. Looks like I still have indulgence issues, even after going raw. I know I shouldn’t even have stuff that rich in my home, no matter how healthy, as I just eat it. But then again, it is important for me to create a new psychology: it’ll still be there if I don’t eat it, so what’s the rush? Self control, baby, that’s what I need to work on.
I forgot to mention that my saladacco (vegetable spiralizer) arrived in the mail recently, so it’s time to buy some zucchini and make raw pasta! I also bought Alissa Cohen’s big, fat, and surprisingly heavy raw cookbook, and noted a pasta sauce recipe in it. The only problem is that I am too full to even think about food still, after all the rich cocoa. Maybe after I get home from this lecture that I am going out to see tonight…
Today I had:
green smoothie (spinach, apples, agave nectar)
cocoa bliss (was too much)
natto and kimchi
lemon, ginger, honey and water
banana
red wine
flavored seeds and nuts from livingnutz (after returning from lecture)
I found a great brand of kimchi, containing some new Japanese character combos that I have yet to decipher, but I’m 80% sure it has something to do with lack of heating. The kimchi tastes fantasic- not as spicy as other commercial brands, and really flavourful. Twice the price of course….
Four things I have noticed recently:
1) My eyelashes are longer.
2) I have managed to attain a state of post-sleep contentment (don’t know how to phrase it) that I have only ever experienced before near the end of a fast. Twice now, fairly recently, after waking up naturally, I have allowed myself to stay calm in bed, not asleep, just relaxed. At these times -gees, wish I could explain it better- I have felt complete and blissful serenity. Basically a peaceful, feel-good vibe. It must have s/t to do with having detoxed to a certain extent, is my guess.
3) Chocolate IS a sexual stimulant. No question.
4) My skin is looking and feeling rather fine once more.
The lecture at Sophia University was really interesting, BTW. A woman from U of California made a comparative analysis of the American Sex in the City vs. the Japanese Around 40 TV series - the cultures differences and similarities in the pursuit of happiness for women of a certain age (my age!) It was indeed interesting- made more interesting by the fact that it was sponsored by the German Department…. Cross-disciplinary indeed. The German Dept. at Sophia is having a series of lectures all related the the elusive concept of happiness, so that would explain a little.
This post too, is a day late, but I do recall what I munched on, because I was in chocolate heaven! I received 2 Gnosis chocolate bars from High Vibe, and with the help of my roomate, they lasted all of 5 minutes. Pretty darned good! I also opened up a jar of Artisana raw chocolate coconut butter, and that was a mistake. I’d planned to use it for “cooking” but that stuff will be gone by the end of the week due to a relentless spoon being periodically stuck into it… Also indulged in livingnutz’s mayan spice pistachios (awesome!), chocolate-covered mulberries and macademia nuts from Go Nutz, and a couple of pesto-flavoured walnuts. Wow, rather worth all the money, I must say, but I have to exercise control. There’s a heck of a lot of fat in these goodies, however raw and healthy!
I did eat my share of bananas, salads and smoothies today though. (Can’t recall the details, so no list today either)
After work I headed to Seiseki Sakuragaoka to check out the baking section, which, to my delight, sells raw nuts and seeds, though the selection is limited. I was very happy, though. The prices weren’t low, but way better than ordering online from abroad. I also found some chocolate heart molds, so once my raw cacao butter arrives, I can experiment at making my own chocolates. There’s a raw food picnic coming up soon in Tokyo, so it’d be nice to be able to make something by then.
Seiseki Sakuragaoka has changed a tad- there’s a new mini “mall” on the main street, but I didn’t get a chance to check it out. The organic health food store in the station building is looking good. I would never buy my produce there (insane prices) but it’s worth it for other stuff. I found raw honey, seeds, and Brenner’s soap. I also picked up some raw miso, though it did list salt on the ingredients. I learned that most miso produced in recent times is treated with heat. I am not surprised, unfortunately. Slightly related, there’s a dish in Taiwan called “smelly tofu” (understatement- it literally smells like SHIT- but tastes awasome) that is (was) an extremely healthy fermented tofu product, but over the past few years, producers have added chemicals to speed up the fermentation process….It’s really sad what is happening to food production around the world…
A raw banana-bender (maybe?) tells it like it is eating 80/10/10 in Greenland. LOL:
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