"Green" Day

In honor of St. Patty's day we tried to have a green day today. Not so hard to do when you are a raw vegan! We had grapes for breakfast (alas, they were red!) and deliciously yummy green smoothies for lunch. They were so simple but really tasty. I put in pineapples, spinach, frozen bananas, and fresh bananas, and a little agave. Very, very good! Then for supper I made the traditional Irish fare of boiled dinner for the SAD eating members of my family and for us rawies I made fetuccine alfredo. Now let me just state right here that I usually do not go for raw recipes that are suppossed to imitate their SAD counterparts. I would rather like it for what it is and not be comparing it to the SAD version because usually there just is no comparisson no matter how much we kid ourselves! I mean, raw pizza will never imitate SAD pizza. With this being said, I made the BEST alfredo ever, SAD or raw, it was so good!!!! I used a recipe I found on http://www.goneraw.com/. I had to use some cashews for the macs but it was mostly macs. I tweaked it a little and added in a little nama shoyu and some nutritional yeast and extra spices. I also used my secret weapon. Oh! It was so creamy and rich and well, just incredible. Ok nough said, here's the picture!

We also had a very nice salad to go with it but I didn't want the salad to take up room on my plate where I could have that yummy alfredo instead!! It was very rich and very filling.
My big helper decided she wanted to be all raw with me today and of course my little golden boy was as well. No one (except me) stayed raw over the weekend as we had birthday parties (SAD cake) and the Clifford thing, but they jumped back in this morning with no problems.
Ok, that's all for now. I hope you enjoy the picture. It does not do justice to how great this dish tasted though!

Raw Birthday

So today is our oldest daughters 11th birthday. I just can't believe that she is 11 already. Where did the time go? She is so grown up! Anyways we have a tradition that on birthdays the special birthday person gets to pick out what they want to eat for the day. It actually started out with just dinner but has somehow evolved to them picking out all three meals. It can be pretty interesting depending on which child is having a birthday!

Our daughter decided she wanted an almost all raw birthday. Here are some pictures of our raw food!


For breakfast we had Maraw's pancakes with orange cream sauce and blueberry syrup. These were so good and very filling. All of the children loved them! I made a double batch and they ate them all!



For lunch she choose to have a salad with "steak mushrooms" and creamy dressing. This was a very filling and super yummy salad. I love adding the steak mushrooms to my salads. It makes them so tasty!


She choose to have a SAD vegetarian supper but she did want a raw cake and here it is! She choose the crumble apple strudel bundt cake from Living Cuisine by Renee Underkoffler. It doesn't look too pretty but it was quite tasty!

So here is the low down on the day. A couple of really cool raw things happened. I was a little hesitant about having her eat mostly raw today. I know that sounds weird but I wanted her to be able to eat what she wanted for her birthday. I didn't want her to have a meal that she didn't like on her special day. After she had the pancakes I asked her what she thought of them. She said that she really liked the pancakes and that she actually prefered them to regular SAD pancakes because they tasted better, made her fuller and were just so much healthier. Isn't that cute?! Needless to say I was very relieved to here that. I know she likes the "steak mushrooms" those are one of her favorite things. I was a bit worried about the cake. I had never made it before, but it came out very good and the children all liked it. So it was another good raw day. I even made a yummy smoothie for supper fom the leftover frosting that was still in the blender. I just added two bananas, a little water and some of the leftover blueberry sauce and TaDa! a Yummy smoothie for supper!

There you have it. I hope you enjoyed the pictures! My little golden boy stayed raw with me in the face of a very yummy looking vegetarian dinner. He said he wants to eat what I eat. He is so cute and sweet. I have been back on raw for a week now and I am very happy. I have a rough weekend coming up so pray that I do well, stay focused, handle the stress, and stay RAW, RAW, RAW!

A trip to the ER

Today my 6 year old golden boy cut his hand with a knife while chopping carrots up and we had to go to the ER and he needed 3 stitches. He was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BRAVE!!!!!! I was soooooooooooooo proud of him I can not even express it. He didn't even cry when they stuck a needle in him three times!!! and wiggled it around!!!!! to make his hand numb to put the stitches in! He was just amazing and the doctor and the nurse could not get over how great he was. They said that they have seen adults more wimpy than he was.

After we left the ER I was very tempted to just go through the drive thru and get some donuts. The children were hungry, we hadn't had supper and I was exhausted from being in the ER for so long. Right as we got there three ambulances pulled in and so we had to wait for so long. All of the children were so well behaved and I was so proud of them. I had some money so I could have gone and grabbed some donut holes for them. I DID have the foresight to pack some bananas and apples before we left for the hospital though. So when we left the hospital, like I said, it was late, past supper time and we were all hungry and tired and I really felt like caving for donuts. As we seatbelted in the children were all saying that they were hungry and I said do you want an apple or a banana? Now I said it as a question as if they had a choice of having an apple or banana or something else. It was sort of an open ended question if you know what I mean. And they all answered with either apple or banana as if there were no other options so they were all content with that and I said to myself, you know what, I need to be the good example here and if they are all very content with apples and bananas then I can be too. So we didn't get donuts and we had raw chocolate banana shakes when we got back here. So, ALL of us were 100% raw today. Pretty cool!

A Good Day!

Yesterday was so awesome! My children all one by one decided that they wanted to eat raw with me. All of them!!!!! So we had smoothies for breakfast, apple salad for a snack, and blueberry smoothies for lunch with apple pie for dessert. At first they were just going to eat raw during the day and then eat a regular vegetarian dinner. But my three youngest decided that they would rather have a salad with me instead and didn't eat the SAD meal I made for my husband. So four out of our six children (counting the baby who is nursing exclusively) were all raw all day yesterday and the other two were 75% raw. This is very good!!!! The really cool thing is that they all just decided on their own without any persuading from me. In fact I wanted to make it clear to them that they didn't have to eat raw and that if they wanted to have regular dinner they certainly could.

We have been all raw today as well. they want me to make raw burgers for supper but I don't have enough time to have those tonight so I'll start them for tomorrow to have. I think I will make nori rolls for supper tonight to give them a change from salad, even though they like it, it is nice to have more variety for them.

This weekend I don't expect them to stay raw. Friday is our oldest daughters birthday and she has requested raw pancakes from Maraw for breakfast and a raw apple cake from Living Cuisine by Renee Underkoffler. She is having a cooked vegetarian supper, but hey, not bad right? I don't want to push them, I want it to be their choice. I definately don't want them to have the food issues I have dealt with for so long! Then on Saturday we are going to a childrens event at a local college. We have gone the last two years and it is quite fun. They pick a character (this year it is Clifford the Big Red Dog) and that is their theme. They have coloring contests, cookie decorating, story time, movies, book sales and a person dressed up like their theme character to take pictures with. It is really fun and they have always enjoyed going. If they want to eat cookies I will not tell them no. Also we are going to the in-laws on Sunday to celebrate two of our childrens birthdays and they will eat whatever is there probably. If any of them stays raw through the weekend I will be very surprised (pleasantly!) Like I said though, I don't want to
push it on them and be legalistic about it. I am sure that after eating cookies and cake this weekend they will notice a difference in how they feel after eating mostly raw all week. They are very smart children. Even my meat loving son has declared to me that he only wants to eat raw, vegan and vegetarian. I thought that was cute! And this was all unprodded by me. I just tell them why I eat what I eat and let them figure things out themselves. Our oldest daughter said that after her birthday she thinks that she would like to eat all raw too. She is having her favorite SAD food for supper on her birthday and I don't think she wants to miss out on that!

So, things are going good here. It definately makes it easier on me to not be the only one raw and having them eat raw all day with me helps so much!! The pie I made yesterday came out really good and I just basically threw things in.

Ok, thats it now. I need to go start the burgers if we want to have them for supper tomorrow!

I made it!

Hello!

Today marks my second day being raw (again!) I am happy to have made it through. One thing that really helped me today was that our 6 year old son wanted to eat raw with me. He told me to make sure I remembered to feed him just "healthy raw" as he said. Too cute! So we both had a great raw day today. He especially wanted to have my homemade dressing. I am not sure if he will want to eat raw again tomorrow, but, one day at a time right? I even made it going out shopping which is usually a hard thing for me because of all the goodies, but I was good, and I really feel like my sweet little guy helped me through. I didn't want to let him down.
Here is what I ate today:
smoothie with bananas, pineapple, and stawberries
smoothie with bananas and pineapples
orange
salad (loaded with tomatoes, cukes, 1/2 avocado, sunflower seeds and homemade dressing with apple cider vinegar)
2 dates
a bowl of strawberries with coconut

Another good thing about my little guy eating raw with me is I didn't eat the whole avocado because we shared it. I bought a bunch of dates today. I want to make some goodies to help encourage all of the children to eat more raw. We are going back to fruit for breakfast too. That was a rule we used to have and now I am bringing it back. We have apples, bananas, oranges, and I can make smoothies. No more cereal!
That's all for now!

Starting over

Ok, I know that I have been gone for a really long time. I am sorry. I totally fell off the healthy raw way of eating and I just cold not face getting back on here and fessing up. But here I am. I have regained almost all (if not all, our scale is broke which may be a good thing) of the weight that I lost. I was doing so well too. I did a 7 day fast and got down to 175 and was able to fit into some new clothes. So I am upset with myself to say the least. But I need to just begin again and stop beating myself up.
The good news is that I am excited about eating raw again. I had gotten to the point where I felt trapped by raw food. It is very hard to be the only one in the house that eats 100% raw. The children do love to eat fruits and veggies, but they are not all raw, and of course my hubby eats SAD. So it is tough. But I just need to overcome my cravings and focus on being healthy while trying to get the family to eat as much healthy food as I can. Our oldest is now a vegetarian. My meat and potatoes husband agreed to go vegetarian for a month starting at the beginning of January and we are still pretty much adhering to that. The two times we have had meat with a meal my oldest daughter has not had any and she told me that she doesn't want to eat meat anymore!! :) Our three year old doesn't eat meat either. And our 6 year old son told me tonight that he wants to eat raw with me. I'm not sure if that will stick or not, but it made me happy and I told him that he certainly could. We need to buy some more fruit though!!
So anyways, I'm back. I will be updating. I apoligize for neglecting this so long. I am glad to be back on raw again.