Cory Putman Oakes's Blog, page 3

My Raw Vegan Adventure: Day 7 (The Last Day and Reflections)

I started Day #7, the last day of my experiment, with a Sweet As A Peach Smoothie (from RAWESOMELY VEGAN).

 

 

The recipe called for two peaches, a cup of greens (I used spinach), parsley, lemon juice, and ice. But I was feeling pretty hungry, so I added a banana. It was very good.

I wanted to try eating out somewhere that was not a raw restaurant and not a grocery store salad bar. So we headed to The Grove, a lovely Austin restaurant with fabulous Italian food.

I ordered Beth’s Berry Salad, which is one of my regular favorites. I forgot to take a picture, but you’ll have to trust me that it’s a spinach salad with berries, goat cheese, candied walnuts, shaved red onion and raspberry vinaigrette. I asked for no goat cheese and for raw walnuts instead of candied ones (which they didn’t have, so they substituted cashews). It was still a very delicious salad. But I have to say, that knowing how close I was to being able to eat such things again, it was hard to take my eyes off of the pizza that my husband, father in law (he’s in town visiting) and daughter were eating.

For dinner, I decided to try my hand at raw pizza. And for this, I have to admit, I cheated a little bit. But hear me out. The raw pizza crust recipe from This Rawesome Vegan Life calls for the “dough” to be put in a dehydrator or baked on your oven’s lowest setting for 4-5 hours. I don’t own a dehydrator, and my oven would not go lower than 175. So I chose to use the oven and I left the oven door open slightly to vent some of the heat out.

 

So technically, this crust might have crossed the 104/115 threshold. But this was the best I could do and at this point, I’m inclined to give myself the benefit of the doubt. The crust is made of hemp seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, salt and pepper, dried basil, agave and onion.

As for toppings, I made the spinach pesto called for in the recipe and I also had another go at the tomato sauce from the raw pasta recipe I made on Day 1, but ruined with too much raw garlic. This time I omitted the garlic.

 

The pizza turned out pretty well, actually:

Oddly, the crust on the left turned out a lot better than the crust on the right; it really came together and even had a little bit of a crunchy bite to it. The crust on the right still had a good flavor, but it was very crumbly and I had to eat it with a fork.

For dessert, I made Choco Balls (from RAWESOMELY VEGAN):

They tasted just fine. But honestly, I had already started the pizza-at-midnight countdown in my head so it was hard to think about anything else. I only ate one.

REFLECTIONS:

From a writing perspective, I am very glad that I did this experiment. I think I will be able to write about raw veganism in a much more authentic way now. There are definitely details I would have gotten wrong, or missed all together, if I had not tried it for myself. I could not have foreseen things like the expense, the amount of work required, or the difficulty of maintaining it in the “real world.” These are all things my characters will have to contend with, and they will be all the richer for it.
From a personal perspective, I must say that I admire the heck out of full time raw vegans. It is difficult. And people who do this in their “real lives” must be extremely dedicated. My hat is off to them.
As for how eating this way effected me physically: over seven days, I lost at least five pounds (probably more – I didn’t start weighing myself until a couple of days in, since I wasn’t doing this for weight loss purposes). In “Biggest Loser” terms, I lost 4.5% of my body weight. Which is weird, because I can’t say that I was really hungry this week. In fact, I felt like I spent the entire week eating, preparing food, or thinking about preparing food. There were definitely moments when I felt deprived, but that wasn’t because I wanted more food than I had. It was because I wanted different food. But let’s just say that if I was a Victoria Secret model, this would be the diet I went on the week before the fashion show. It’s definitely the ultimate “flat belly” diet.
As for whether I will be adopting this lifestyle for myself, the answer is no. Even if I could afford it over the long term (and I can’t – mass quantities of raw produce is seriously expensive) and even if I could figure out a way to maintain a healthy weight on it, it’s just not for me. I am a committed lacto-ovo vegetarian, but my love of cheese prevents me from going any further up the alternative food spectrum.
That being said, I definitely agree with some of the premises of eating raw, especially the notion of avoiding/limiting overly processed food. And having to stay away from all things artificial for one week has definitely opened my eyes to how many unnatural substances I routinely put into my body. So I think I can say without a doubt that from now on, I will be making an effort to incorporate more raw food into my diet. But things like cheese, dairy, eggs, beans, chickpeas, and real chocolate will most definitely be back on the menu.

And thus, my Raw Vegan Adventure comes to an end. It has been quite an experience! I’d like to give a thank you and a shout out to the two sources of the raw vegan recipes that sustained me over the course of the week: Mike Snyder, the author of RAWESOMELY VEGAN; and “Em,” the blogger behind This Rawesome Vegan Life.

And a big thank you to those of you who followed along with me and encouraged me during this experiment. I really appreciate it!

Finally, if you’re wondering, my first non raw vegan meal will be pizza. At midnight. Right now, it is P-minus-four-hours-and-twenty-minutes. And I’m already drooling . . .)

 

My Raw Vegan Adventure: Day 6 (A Raw Vegan Date Night)

The Hubs was psyched to find out we would be having Date Night at a raw vegan restaurant!

Well, ok, not really. But being the magnificent man that I married, he was game to give it a shot. With the caveat that he could go through a drive-thru on the way home, if he needed to.

But before Date Night, I had a whole day of Being Raw Vegan.

This morning’s smoothie was The Best Freaking Chocolate Milkshake Ever (from This Rawesome Vegan Life):

 

One portion for me, one for the munchkin. In order to stave off yesterday’s spaciness, I added a scoop of raw protein powder. It was really good! Although the munchkin objected to the tiny pieces of date floating in hers.

Today was my first weekend day as a raw vegan, which meant I had to figure out a way to keep up the diet while keeping the rest of the family fed and entertained. It was not quite as hard as I had anticipated. We took the kiddos to Panera in the morning, and the smells were tempting, but I had just had my chocolate milkshake so I had no problem just ordering coffee (see for why I refuse to give up coffee).

We had lunch at Central Market. I hit the salad bar while the Hubs and the munchkin ordered at the cafe (the baby had his own food). Here’s the yummy salad I made:

The Hubs, perhaps in anticipatory retaliation to tonight’s Date Night, had this:

I’m pretty proud of myself for resisting the gooey, COOKED deliciousness. But it’s Day 6 and I am so close!

When Date Night finally arrived, I took the Hubs to Beets Living Foods Cafe in downtown Austin. Beets is a fully raw, sit-down restaurant with table service.

 

We both ordered Goji Lemonades to start.

We had the hummus appetizer which was in an entirely different class than the hummus I tried to make earlier in the week. It was delicious! (The Hubs thought so too!)

 

For my entree, I ordered the Taco Plate. The corn tacos were awesomely crispy (after a week of no crispy things!) and the veggie “meat” was nicely seasoned. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole plate.

The Hubs ordered the Pizza Rustica (with a Caesar salad on the side). It didn’t exactly resemble the pizza he had at lunch, but he was a very good sport and ate it.

Here’s the proof!

I had a bite and although I definitely liked the tacos better, I thought the pizza had a nice sauce.

For dessert, we snagged the very last piece of chocolate “cheezcake” in the dairy case and let me just say, there’s a reason why there was only one piece left. YUM.

 

After dinner, we had a glass of wine at a nearby hotel. Now, wine is a bit controversial in raw vegan circles. But from what I’ve read, I am satisfied that most red wine is almost certainly raw vegan. Sugar is a part of the wine-making process, but most of the sugar in wine appears to come from the grapes themselves. Wine-makers sometimes add sugar in order to adjust the alcohol content, but there is no way to tell if there has been wine added to a particular bottle because there are no labeling requirements for additional sugar in the US. But sugar is rarely added to red wine, and then only in cooler regions (where it takes grapes longer to ripen), so I made sure to order a Napa Valley cabernet. (For a good discussion of sugar in wine, check out this article).

Thus endeth Date Night, as well as Day 6 of my experiment. One day to go! Will I make it? Or will I cave on the last day? Find out tomorrow!

My Raw Vegan Adventure: Day 5 (A Raw Vegan In The Real World)

 

When you start your day with a concoction that contains pineapple juice, bananas, fresh mint, raw cacao powder, ginger juice (which I actually did not have) and cayenne powder, what could possibly go wrong?

 

A lot, actually.

Do not be fooled by its chocolatey appearance. This was nasty business. It might be the single most disgusting thing I have ever ingested. But ingest it, I did. And although it did give me a much-needed energy kick, it was not worth it. This was the first smoothie of the week that my daughter spat out.

For the past four days, I have been in sort of a raw vegan cocoon. My husband has been out of town for work and my regular baby-sitter for the kiddos was on vacation, so the kids and I have been pretty much on our own. And I have been emerging from my fully-stocked, raw vegan kitchen only to do essential tasks, such as take my daughter to school or go to the grocery store for more raw vegan supplies. Yesterday’s trip to Premiere Raw was the most out I have been.

Today, that all changed. I got a taste of what it means to be a raw vegan in the real world. And let me tell you, it was rough.

I have a revision due next week, and since I’ve been spending all of my spare time this week on my raw vegan meals, I haven’t gotten much work done. Luckily, my baby-sitter was back in town today, so I seized the opportunity for a Writing Day.

Escaping the house became an absolute necessity this morning after I caved to my daughter’s request to make microwave popcorn:

I had never before noticed how pervasive and intoxicating the smell of popcorn could be. It filled the entire house, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to have any. I’m not generally a huge popcorn enthusiast. I don’t know if it was the smell of the butter, the fact that I could see the steam rising off of the warm, popped kernels, or the fact that I knew I was absolutely forbidden to have any (no matter how I tried to rationalize it in my brain, I couldn’t come up with a magical way that popcorn was a raw food), but all of a sudden I developed a primal, immediate need to devour the entire bowl of popcorn.

I had to get out of there.

So as soon as the babysitter arrived, I threw the kids at her and ran to my local coffee shop, laptop in tow, hoping to get some writing done.

There, the smells continued. Honestly, I haven’t been this aware of smells since I was pregnant and I had a nose like a bloodhound. But the aroma of the egg sandwich the woman at the next table was eating was so distracting that I purposely fooled around on gmail and Facebook until she left. No way I could concentrate on my revisions with that delectable egg and melted cheese just staring at me like that.

I was pacified somewhat by the cup of coffee I allowed myself to have (see for why I refuse to give up coffee), and I managed to squash most of my popcorn and egg sandwich cravings by eating a handful of Pizza Flax Snax (my morning snack).

But I felt strangely vulnerable, now that I was out of my cocoon. There was non-raw food, and people enjoying it, all around me. For the first time since this little experiment began, I felt truly deprived and kind of weak. Weak, that I should feel this way after only five days. And also weak in that I was feeling a little bit light-headed. I felt a little bit slow, like I wasn’t operating on all thrusters. Basically, all day long I had that nagging feeling that I’ve left the stove on (which, obviously is impossible – at least this week!), or that I’ve forgotten to return an email or left the keys in the car ignition. Except that it was a constant feeling, rather than a momentary one.

It took me an absurdly long time to get into “writer-mode.” I was completely lacking in mental sharpness and focusing was difficult.

At lunchtime, I went to Whole Foods in the hopes of scrounging up a raw vegan meal. Thank goodness for the salad bar! I loaded up a plate with every single raw offering they had and covered it with a vinaigrette that a Whole Foods employee assured me was raw. I have to admit, I’m not quite sure he knew exactly what I was asking him, but it was my only dressing option so I rolled with it.

I felt a lot less spacey after the salad. So much so that I was able to grasp the sobering reality that even at Whole Foods, a place dedicated to healthy food and decidedly friendly to alternative eating habits, my ready-to-eat food options consisted of only one half of the salad bar. Dark times.

I ate every single bite of the Whole Foods salad, which turned out to be a good thing because in keeping with today’s theme, dinner was a bust. But this time, I have only myself to blame, as Battle Coconut (see My Raw Vegan Adventure: Day 2) came back to bite me.

Tonight’s recipe for Little Miss Green Goddess Gazpacho (from RAWESOMELY VEGAN) called for two cups of Creamy Coconut Yogurt. My attempt to make this ahead of time, on Day 2, was thwarted by a bad-tempered coconut and today I was forced to admit that my genius idea of using shredded coconut as a substitute for the fresh stuff did not exactly pan out. The bowl of dried out white-guck I pulled out of my fridge today had a consistency much closer to paste than yogurt. But I pretended not to notice, and I threw it into the food processor along with the other gazpacho ingredients . . .

. . . and immediately after I hit “puree” I realized that I had put in twice the amount of “yogurt” I was supposed to, thus completely dooming this recipe from the onset. See what I mean about being spacey? My mental sharpness at this point is highly questionable.

Anyway, here’s what the gazpacho looked like:

I had a bite just to say I tried it, then I threw together a salad of spinach, walnuts, and leftover raspberry and red onion vinaigrette.

So today was not exactly a stellar raw vegan day. I had some bad luck, recipe-wise, and venturing out into the real world was more difficult than I anticipated. I’m not going to lie, I am dragging. But I successfully completed Day 5, and I am determined to solider on through Days 6 and 7.

Another piece of good news: the Hubs comes home tonight! Tomorrow is date night. Won’t he be excited to find out that we’ll be doing it raw vegan style? (And by “doing it” I mean eating, people. Come on now . . .)

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Raw Vegan Adventure: Day 4 (Eating Out, Raw Vegan Style)

Good news: I didn’t dream of cheese last night! I wouldn’t say I’m exactly over my cheese craving, but it definitely helped that I didn’t start the day fixated on pizza. (Also, shout-out to the nice vegan cheese makers who, due to my whining, contacted me via Twitter and offered to “make my cheese dreams come true”: you made my day).

Anyhow, Day 4 started out on a happy note with a Blueberry Hemp Smoothie (from This Rawesome Vegan Life), which I apparently drank down so quickly I forgot to take a picture of it when it was in the glass. But here’s the blender shot:

 

It was delicious: bananas, blueberries, hemp seeds, spinach, and two dates. I enjoyed the little chewy date pieces that my blender couldn’t quite pulverize. They weirded my daughter out a little bit, but not enough to prevent her from drinking her share of the smoothie.

My morning snack was a lavender-moon flavored “pocket snack” from Wild Mountain, which I bought because I liked the name. The flavor was very nice, but I found it to be a little bit too chewy. I miss crunchy things!

After that, I decided to give myself (and my food processor) a break and eat the rest of my meals out. There are a number of restaurants in Austin that serve raw dishes or “almost raw” (95% raw) dishes. But there was only one place I could find where the entire menu is raw; Premier Raw Cafe. So that’s where I headed:

 

They have a large menu which is entirely raw, vegan and gluten-free (except for the bison burger). They have juices, smoothies, and even low temperature drip coffee! But I was there to try the food. After much deliberation, I ordered The Italian, which is olive tapenade, “ricotta” (made with a “macadamia” base), basil, tomato and arugula on an herbed flaxseed “bread.”

 

It was really good! The tapenade tasted amazing and the texture of the bread was really perfect – just enough bite so that you really feel like you’re eating a sandwich. The house-made pickle was especially delicious.

They had stopped serving breakfast by the time I got there, but they were kind enough to give me a sample of their Banana Nut Pancake:

It was definitely not your ordinary, buttermilk pancake. But I would have eaten a whole plate of them. The blueberry compote on top was to DIE FOR.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from a raw restaurant, but I was really impressed by Premiere Raw. The folks who work there were incredibly nice, the food was delicious and there was obviously a lot of thought put into each dish. I could definitely see myself being a regular here, if it wasn’t a 45-minute drive from my house. In fact, my only complaint (aside from the distance, which is obviously not their fault), was that they did not have high chairs. Which meant that my lunch date had to sit in my lap:

But he’s cute enough to get away with it. (Seriously though, I think this place could get a huge Mommy-lunch crowd if they got a few high chairs and maybe a kid’s menu. My three-year-old would go for the smoothies alone!)

I also ordered the Quantum Sliders to-go, to eat for dinner later:

The patty is sunflower seeds and veggies, and it is served with raw ketchup, cashew “cheese,” and another of their yummy pickles. The buns were interesting (gluten-free!). I gave my 10-month old a little bit to taste and he happily chewed away on it for quite awhile! Overall, I think I like the sandwich better but I definitely enjoyed the burgers too. They look small, but I was incredibly full after eating both of them – so full, that I didn’t even make it to the salad.

Dessert tonight was two chocolate truffles, also from Premiere Raw:

One was black-forest cake flavor and one was Nutella-flavored. I can’t honestly say which one was which, but they were both delicious!

So today was definitely better than yesterday! I enjoyed my break from not-cooking, but I’m ready to dive back in tomorrow! I hope my food processor is ready too, because I have saved some really great recipes for Day 5 . . . stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

My Raw Vegan Adventure: Day 3 (Dreaming of Cheese and The Terrible Tragedy of the Non-Raw Chickpea)

 

Last night, I dreamed of cheese.

It was fresh mozzarella. It was sliced into perfect little disks and put on top of a pizza. And as the pizza cooked, the cheese melted into gooey puddles of awesomeness that oozed over the crust and stayed melted even when the pizza was cool enough to eat. I was just about to take my first bite of a perfect, bubbly, warm piece, which had strings of mozzarella still attaching it to the rest of the pie . . .

. . . when I woke up to discover that it was Day 3 of being a raw vegan.

I’m not going to lie; Day 3 was pretty tough.

But I was determined to soldier on, so I pushed the gooey mozzarella to the back of my head and made myself a morning smoothie.

 

Since I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself, I went for the Chocolate Berry Protein Smoothie (from This Rawesome Vegan Life). My daughter and I both agreed that this was the best-tasting smoothie yet. It’s a mixture of kale, blueberries, a banana, and a scoop of chocolate vegan protein powder. I’m pretty picky about my protein powder, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really liked this kind:

It made the smoothie very chocolatey.

My morning snack was a blueberry granola bar from Two Moms in the Raw. I was excited to try this, since the check-out clerk at Whole Foods told me that it was her favorite thing in the entire store, and she buys a case of them whenever they go on sale.

But I have to admit I didn’t like these very much. The texture was weird. I found the bar very hard to chew, which was weird because it was very moist. I blame the cheese-dream. I just wasn’t in the mood for these.

Lunch helped. I had the Sweet and Hot Sunset Salad (from RAWESOMELY VEGAN):

 

It was a very refreshing salad, with pineapple and red bell pepper. The dressing was raw, diced jalapeños in pineapple juice and apple cider vinegar. I went easy on the jalapeño, putting in only about half of what the recipe called for. But if I make this salad again, I’ll definitely use the full amount to make the dressing a tad hotter. But it was a very nice middle-of-the-day meal.

For my afternoon snack, I entered the world of vegan hummus.

When I first considered doing this little experiment, I distinctly remember thinking; no problem! I could totally be a raw vegan for a week. I’ll just eat a lot of hummus! The chickpea is basically the reason I have been able to stay a vegetarian for twenty years. I eat a lot of chickpeas in salads, I eat them ground up in hummus, and I even sneak them into chocolate chip cookies so that my protein-phobic daughter will eat them and be none the wiser. So boy was I disappointed to find out that canned chickpeas are not a raw food! (They have been cooked! Who knew?).

It IS possible to eat chickpeas on a raw vegan diet, but in order to do that you have start with raw chickpeas and sprout them. And as I mentioned in my first blog post on this topic, I am not ready to take the step of sprouting my own food. I find the process weird.

So there will be no chickpeas for me this week.

There is no shortage of raw vegan hummus recipes, so I decided to try two of them.

Both were basically a mixture of zucchini and raw tahini (ground-up sesame seeds). The one of the left also contained olive oil (1/3 of a cup, which I thought was a lot for such a small portion size), lime juice and salt (also raw garlic, which I omitted). It was practically liquid when it came out of the food processor and although the flavor was okay, it was hard to make it really stick to any of the dipping vegetables. The second recipe recommended that you shred the zucchini and squeeze the water out before processing (like when you make latkes). This created a slightly denser texture, but it still was nothing close to the denseness of traditional, chickpea hummus. I was pretty disappointed by both of these hummus recipes, to be honest. I think that calling them “hummus” sets them up for failure; if they had been called “zucchini veggie dip” I might have happily eaten the one on the right. But since I had an image of chickpea hummus in my head, they just weren’t able to measure up.

Dinner was Lasagna With Cashew Cheese and Broccoli Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto (from This Rawesome Vegan Life), and it is definitely the coolest-looking thing I have made yet:

The “cheese” was cashews, nutritional yeast, lemon juice and dried rosemary. The “pesto” was broccoli, sundried tomatoes and olive oil. The “noodles” were thinly sliced zucchini.

If I had made this on the first day, I think I would have eaten it enthusiastically and exclaimed over it. But since this was Day 3, and I have been dreaming about cheese, I was much more excited to look at this than I was to eat it. Which is not to say it wasn’t tasty – it was. It just didn’t do it for me today.

But it is really pretty, isn’t it?

Dessert tonight Chocolate Covered Bananas (from This Rawesome Vegan Life). They were a HUGE hit with the munchkin; I could barely get her hands out of the mixing bowl long enough to actually get the chocolate onto the bananas:

The “chocolate” is actually just agave nectar, cacao powder and coconut oil. And it was really delicious. Kiddo-approved and everything! We added some chopped walnuts and goji berries to the bananas and froze them.

 

So despite it’s bummer of a beginning, the day ended on a very sweet note. And tomorrow, I am excited to venture into the exciting world of dining out, raw vegan style! Let’s just hope I can steer clear of all things dairy in my dreams tonight . . .

 

 

My Raw Vegan Adventure: Day 2 (Best Dessert Ever + Battle Coconut)

Today, I’m starting with dessert first because, well, it was awesome.

I give you the Lavender & Lemon “Cheesecake” from This Rawesome Vegan Life:

When I originally read this recipe, I assumed the blogger was exaggerating when she said that “angels might start singing” when you taste it. But she wasn’t. Sing they did. This was an absolutely mind-blowing cake.

And to make sure it wasn’t just me, and that my brain hadn’t already lapsed into some weird, protein-craving hunger state that was causing me to hallucinate amazing flavors, I asked my friend Kim for a second opinion. She is neither raw or vegan, and I knew she would tell me straight.

Here’s what she said:

“Oh my! It is so good! It reminded me of a spa dessert; delicious & satisfying but you don’t feel overstuffed afterwards.”

So you see, it’s not just me!

I should mention that this cake is not, strictly speaking, healthy for you. The crust is made from crushed walnuts, almonds, and dates. The filling is mostly ground up cashews, sweetened with agave nectar and coconut oil and flavored with lemon juice and ground-up lavender.

(Actually, the lavender was why I originally chose to make this recipe. Because it gave me a chance to finally use my newly acquired mortar and pestle):

Anyhow, being composed of nearly five cups of nuts, this cake is not low fat or low calorie. But believe me when I say that after tasting it, I could not care less about that.

But going back to the beginning of the day: breakfast this morning was a Green Ocean of Life Smoothie from This Rawesome Vegan Life.

 

 

Since it’s Day 2, I went a little bit more extreme than yesterday. This one has a lemon, an orange, kale, a banana, half of a cucumber, and a little bit of ginger.

I have to admit, it was a little bit harder to get down than yesterday’s blueberry smoothie. I had to kind of down it all at once, rather than sip it over the course of the morning. But afterwards, I felt really good! Very energized and full, but not stuffed. And seriously healthy.

I figured that the green color, although lovely, would be just the thing to scare my daughter away, but nope! She loved it. I have created a smoothie monster.

My morning snack was some orange cranberry granola from Hail Merry. It was the perfect mid-morning pickup. Nice flavor.

 

Lunch was Carrot Pasta With Creamy Cashew Sauce and Avocado.

I learned my lesson on the raw garlic yesterday, so I omitted it from this recipe. And it was delicious! It tasted just like pad thai. The sauce (a mixture of cashew butter, miso, tamari, nutritional yeast and hemp seeds) is definitely a recipe I will keep around, even when I start eating regular noodles again.

I had lunch so late in the day that I decided to skip my afternoon snack and go right on to dinner: Hemp Heaven Stuffed Peppers from RAWESOMELY VEGAN:

I was pleasantly surprised to find that hempseed has a texture very similar to quinoa. Along with the hempseed, these peppers are also stuffed with a mixture of pecans, red onion, lime juice, jalapeño, taco seasoning and salt. I thought they were very good, although I’ll admit to spending a little bit of time imagining that they were covered with melted cheese . . .

Mhmmmm, cheese . . .

But I digress. My other raw vegan task today was making my own raw yogurt, which I’ll need for a recipe later in the week. I chose to attempt the Creamy Coconut Yogurt (from RAWESOMELY VEGAN) because it sounded delicious and had only three ingredients.

I neglected to realize that one of the ingredients was raw coconut.

Here’s what the coconut looked like when I started:

 

Here’s what it looked like twenty minutes, two stab wounds (well, two for me – the coconut had more), a lot of swearing and one really scary knife-flying-across-the-kitchen incident later:

I took a break to regroup, at which point I realized that going forward with this coconut (not to mention the SECOND one that was lurking in the fridge), was:

a) very likely to result in serious injury; and

b) was not making me feel healthy, closer to nature, or spiritually enlightened in any way.

And furthermore, there is no way that my main character would put up with such nonsense. There had to be an easier way.

Then I remembered that I had a bag of shredded coconut in the pantry, meant for a recipe later in the week. And since shredded coconut presumably started out as coconut meat at some point, I figured I would give it a shot. So I dumped it in the blender with the coconut water.

 

 

A few minutes later, I had a creamy substance much like what was described in the recipe book. I stirred in the probiotic powder, covered the bowl with cheese cloth, left it out on the counter at room temperature as instructed, and hoped for the best.

8 hours later, this is what I had:

 

I’m not really sure how to tell if it worked or not. The recipe book said only that it was supposed to taste “tangy.” Which it does. Well, tangy-ish. I guess we’ll see what happens later in the week when I use it in a recipe. The important thing is that Battle Coconut is over, with no permanent injuries and I think it’s safe to say that I won, by figuring out a way to avoid having to massacre the stupid thing any further. I didn’t even touch coconut #2. Too bad I can’t release it back into the wild . . .

Check back with me tomorrow for Day 3 where I explore the single greatest injustice in raw vegan cuisine: the fact that canned chick peas are not considered a raw food.

My Raw Vegan Adventure: Day 1 (The Adventure Begins!)

Day 1 of my Raw Vegan Adventure is a rap!

Here’s what happened:

For my first raw vegan meal, I chose a Blueberry Smoothie (recipe from This Rawesome Vegan Life).

 

With its familiar ingredients (banana, strawberries, blueberries, kale and water), it looked innocuous enough. A perfect introduction into raw veganism. And it was delicious!

The problem was, I wasn’t the only one who thought so. My three-year-old also decided it was “so yummy, Mommy!” and promptly drank about 1/3 of it. I hadn’t really anticipated sharing my raw vegan meals with my “if it’s not mac and cheese I’m not touching it” daughter. We’ll have to see if this continues. I had a handful of raw granola to compensate for the 1/3 of the smoothie I missed out on.

Anyway, so Meal #1 went off without a hitch. I had to grab my morning snack on-the-go, so I choose these:

 

 

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been checking out various raw food snacks to see which ones I liked, so I knew these ones were good. They are basically quarter-sized disks of dehydrated nuts with pizza seasoning. I could eat these all day. They are crunchy and very satisfying. And they have a nice flavor.

Next up was lunch: Spinach Salad with Raspberry and Red Onion Vinaigrette (from RAWESOMELY VEGAN)

 

This meal was a total home run. I’m a fan of spinach salads in general, and the vinaigrette on this one was amazing (and also a very pretty color). One thing I am starting to notice about raw food in general; it is pretty. Lots of the recipes I have come across make an effort to jazz up their raw ingredients by experimenting with color and texture. Definitely a plus for this way of eating.

This salad is dressed in raw raspberry and red onion vinaigrette (made with coconut vinegar and spices) and topped with raspberries and raw walnuts. (The recipe actually calls for the whole thing to be put in a dehydrator so that the spinach wilts, but I don’t own a a dehydrator so I skipped this step). I was a little bit concerned about the raw walnuts; I’m the kind of person who prefers my walnuts roasted and candied. But the vinaigrette was so flavorful that these walnuts were quite tasty, even totally raw.

The salad filled me up quite a bit, so for my afternoon snack I just had a nectarine. They are in season now, here in Texas, and this one was absolutely perfect:

 

For dinner, I had Raw Pasta with Tomato Sauce, Spicy Nut Balls, and “Parmesan Cheese”  (recipe from This Rawesome Vegan Life).

 

The “pasta” was thinly sliced carrots, zucchini, and red bell pepper. The sauce was a raw tomato sauce with garlic, sundried tomatoes, mushrooms and spices. The nut balls were ground up almonds, walnuts, garlic, spices, and a bit of olive oil. The “parmesan cheese” was soaked walnuts ground up with some nutritional yeast.

I have to say, I think this meal would have been a lot better if I had gone easier on the garlic. The rawness of the garlic gave this meal a bit more of a kick than I liked. My three-year-old did not care to share this one (she had her own, more conventional, spaghetti), but my 10-month old really enjoyed playing with the carrot noodles (without the sauce).

A note here on the preparation involved in raw vegan cuisine; obviously there is no “cooking,” but there is a great deal of cutting, chopping, blending, processing, chilling, and arranging. I used my food processor more today than I have in years. In fact, I spent all of my spare time today prepping food, for today’s meals and tomorrow’s. Part of the issue is that I am new to this style of food preparation, so everything takes longer. And part of it is that my kids are deathly afraid of the food processor so I have to do all processing while they are napping, which requires planning ahead. But still, I definitely spot an emerging theme of “tedious food preparation.”

Ahhh, dessert! Living Raw Truffles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very yummy. They taste like bitter dark chocolate truffles with a little bit of a chewy center.

So that was Day #1! I’m happy to say that I am not going to bed starving. In fact, I’m really looking forward to Day #2! I’m very interested to see what happens in the days to come, now that the excitement of the first day is behind me. Will I make it all the way through to Day #7? Only time will tell . . . At the moment, I’m liking my chances. This is do-able. Fun, even. Definitely something new and different for me. And I’m pretty sure tomorrow’s dessert is going to blow my mind, so there’s that . . .

Check back tomorrow as I continue on my Raw Vegan Adventure!

 

In The Name Of Writing Research: My Raw Vegan Adventure (Day 0: Preparation)

Like most writers, I like to be knowledgable about what I write about. But since I write fantasy, this isn’t always technically possible. I will never actually learn to fly, turn into a dinosaur, develop telepathy, or do a lot of the things that my characters get to do.

Well, probably never. I’m still kind of holding out hope on the flying thing . . .

Anyway, that’s probably why I tend to focus on the food that I write about. I like to develop my characters’ personalities through the food that they enjoy and I get a great deal of pleasure getting to know them better by cooking what they cook.

Or, in this case, not cooking what they cook.

The main character I am writing now is a raw vegan. And in order to get inside of her head, I’ve decided to adopt her diet for one week.

What does this mean? First, let’s define some terms. There is some controversy over the precise parameters of both “vegan” and “raw,” but for my purposes, I define them as follows:

VEGAN: consuming no animal products of any kind (This means no meat, no fish, no dairy, no eggs, no honey, and no animal fats.)


RAW: unprocessed, raw plant foods that have not been heated over 104/115 degrees. (There appears to be a split in authority as to the exact temperature. But basically, it means that nothing is cooked.)

Why Would Anybody Want To Be A Raw Vegan?

I’m not going to attempt to lay out the arguments for and against raw veganism in any detail. But, in a nutshell, people adopt raw veganism for a number of reasons, ranging from spiritual/ethical/environmental concerns, to weight loss and overall health improvement (through the elimination of commercially processed food, strict raw vegans consume no trans fat and much smaller quantities of things like sugar, saturated fat and sodium). There is also an argument that cooking food above 104 (or 115) degrees destroys valuable nutrients.

Raw veganism has its critics, particularly in reference to this last claim, about food losing nutrients when cooked. A good summary of the pro/con arguments can be found HERE.

My main character is a sixteen year old who “goes raw vegan” for spiritual reasons.

My Reference Texts:

My raw vegan recipes have come from two main sources:

1. RAWESOMELY VEGAN (by Mike Snyder)

 

2.  This Rawesome Vegan Life Blog, a raw vegan blog which hooked me with its gorgeous photographs, its comprehensive recipe index, and the blogger’s obvious love of desserts.

My Goal:

To experience the raw vegan lifestyle for one week, in order to gain character insight.

My Plan:

Using the aforementioned references, I have compiled a week’s worth of raw vegan recipes. Each day I will have a blended drink for breakfast, two full meals, two snacks, and one dessert.

I have chosen a week when my husband will be out of town. The good man has put up with my vegetarianism without complaint for the ten years we have been together, and I just can’t ask him to take this next step with me. My kids will necessarily be here with me during this experiment, but I will not be asking them to join me either. They will continue their kiddo-diets as normal.

My Preparation:

Instead of focusing on what I can’t eat on this diet (and believe me, the list is vast), I am instead going to focus on what I can eat. This includes unlimited quantities of raw fruits and vegetables and luckily, it’s summer here in Texas so my choices are many and varied.

I am blessed to live within driving distance of a Whole Foods, a Central Market, and a Wheatsville Food Coop, all of which turned out to be necessary in order for me to check everything off of my grocery list. Even though I made an effort to steer clear of recipes that required unusual and costly ingredients, it still took two days of shopping to round up everything I needed. And the total cost . . . well, let’s just say this little adventure of mine is costing me roughly $45 per day. So, right off the bat, I can say for sure that this way of eating would be cost prohibitive for me in the long term. And it certainly would not be practical for my main character (at least in real life).

Here are the ingredients for my raw vegan week:

 

 

As you might expect, it is mostly fruits and vegetables, plus nuts, seeds, and other dry ingredients (the kinds of things you find in the bin section of any grocery store). The oils are all “cold pressed” and all of the juices are raw. In the weeks leading up to this project, I also amassed quite a collection of packaged raw food products (like Pizza Flax Snacks, raw granola, etc). These products are all raw and have been commercially dehydrated in order to achieve a crunchy texture (they’re basically the raw equivalent of crackers and chips). Since I am unwilling to invest in a food dehydrator myself, or to delve into the somewhat unsettling business of preparing “sprouted” food on my own, I will be counting on these products to add a little “bite” to my diet.

My Caveat:

COFFEE. Coffee is not considered a raw food because the beans used to make it have been roasted. Nevertheless, this is one area where I am unwilling to compromise. My main character does not drink coffee. But she is a sixteen year old kid. I am a thirty-two year old woman with two children, one of whom is ten months old and does not always sleep through the night. I have to have coffee.

I justify this in the following ways:

From my informal research on the subject (blog-reading, etc), coffee appears to be the #1 cheat in the raw vegan community, so I am in good company here.
Raw veganism is all about doing what is good for you. And going cold turkey on a hard-core addiction for one week would not be good for me. Or anyone else around me.
I’m a writer. I have fictional characters in my head that I’m pretty sure would die if I cut off their caffeine supply.

So, long story short, I will still be drinking coffee. But I plan to do so with more moderation than usual, since given my other dietary restrictions, the caffeine will probably hit me with more potent force than usual.

[Interesting side note – I am gratified to learn that wine is, apparently, a raw food.]

My Forseeable Impediments:

-Hunger: I love food and I’m not good going without it. Or surviving on limited quantities of it. I’ll admit it, I’m weak. And I’m scared I’m going to be hungry on this diet.

-My Love of Cheese: I love cheese. I really, really do. And a week without cheese is going to be tough.

-My Children: They will not be going raw vegan with me. (Although, interestingly, it could be argued that my 10-month old is pretty much already on a raw vegan diet, given that he eats mainly mashed up vegetables and fruit). My 3-year-old daughter is an almost constant snacker, and I’m worried that her crackers, granola bars, mac n’cheese, etc will prove too great of a temptation for me.

-My Workout Schedule: I am worried that I will not have enough energy to work out.

My Disclaimer:

I have been a vegetarian for over twenty years. In that time, I have encountered every possible reaction to my dietary preference, from total indifference to militant disapproval. So I know better than to judge anybody else’s eating habits. So any conclusions I may come to during my raw vegan adventure, and any offhand comments I make, should not be taken as commentary on the raw vegan diet in general. This experiment is only about how the diet works for me (and how I hypothesize it might work for my fictional main character). I’m not attempting to draw general conclusions about how this diet might work for others. I am not nearly knowledgable enough to make generalized statements like that.

On a similar note, I do not purport to be an expert on this food philosophy – I am merely an author undertaking a research project to better inform her writing. And no one should take anything I say here as anything more than that.

And with that, I give you my last cooked meal before my experiment begins:

 

A chiptole/queso burrito from Trudy’s Tex Mex Restaurant. Not a single thing on this plate is raw. Or remotely healthy.

Check back tomorrow to see how my first day went! I will be blogging every evening for the duration of the project, with details about what I ate that day and how everything is going. It might get crazy. Or it might be surprisingly undramatic. I can’t wait to find out!

CPO

YAB Fest 2013 – Picture Recap!

Well, the Young Adult Book (“YAB”) Fest 2013 is a wrap! This was the very first year for this festival, and I for one am REALLY hoping that they decide to do it again next year! I had such a great time, and everybody I saw there seemed to be having so much fun, I really don’t see why they wouldn’t! Here are some photos from this weekend and some random remarks which may or may not relate to the photos they are near . . .

 

Mark (the Hubs) and I hanging out at the Author Reception at The Book Spot, the night before the Fest.

Me and my girl, Krissi Dallas! (With an adorably pregnant Jessica Lee Anderson in the background!)

Later, Krissi and I made a Cynthia Leitich Smith sandwich! Just ’cause.

P.J. Hoover (and her super cute shirt!) provided a safe harbor for this pup, who was visiting the two Book Spot pups for the evening!

The next morning, we headed to Round Rock High School to kick off the fest! Here I am in the green room with Madeline Smoot (kudos to Madeline, by the way, for all of her organizing and MC-skills this weekend!), P.J. Hoover, Jessica Lee Anderson, and Jessica’s cute baby bump!

I got to meet Ernest Cline before our panel! He was super cool, even though he was flying under the radar in his Camry on Saturday (the DeLorean was in the shop!). It was very fun to be on a panel with Ernie – his answers were unfailingly witty but, at the same time, very informative. He gave us some very intriguing glimpses into his writing process and some great teasers about his upcoming book, ARMADA.

Speaking of our panel, here we are! Doing Blue Steel. Because I made them. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was all Ernie Cline’s fault. From left to right: Ernest Cline, Sharon Bayliss, Krissi Dallas, Rachel Harris, Greg Leitich Smith, and yours truly. This was the first panel I ever moderated, and I am so grateful to my fellow panelists for being super awesome and making me look good!

I had a great time getting to know Rachel Harris (author of MY SUPER SWEET SIXTEENTH CENTURY) and Sharon Bayliss (author of THE CHARGE)!

P.J. Hoover, Mari Mancusi, Jo Whittemore, and I anxiously awaited the afternoon keynote address.

The keynote was given by (excuse me, ROCKED by) Andrea Cremer and David Levithan (co-authors of INVISIBILITY). I started this book the day before the festival, and now that I’ve heard Andrea and David act out a small part of it, I can’t wait to read the rest of it while picturing the two of them in my head!

Not to brag or anything, but I did get to sign at their table afterwards. E. Kristin Anderson and I were duly starstruck I was honored to share my chocolate with them!

I learned some important button lessons on Saturday. 1) Buttons about cute boys (the Luc buttons) go faster than buttons about cool cats (the Sonya buttons), so I shall order the next batch accordingly. 2) You can never have enough buttons. The second after I gave out the last “I CAN SEE SONYA” button, a girl ran up who was a big Sonya fan and she was really bummed that I had run out. I felt terrible! But I got her address and I’m going to send her one as soon as the new order comes in. As a side note, Sonya has fans! SQUEEEE!

It was a great festival! I’d like to give special thanks to Danny (pictured above) and Julie from The Book Spot for making the festival happen! The Book Spot is such a special place and I’m delighted that YAB Fest brought them some visibility. If you’re ever in Round Rock, stop in to say hi to them, the Book Spot pups, and their awesome book selection. They totally rock

Spotlight on YAB Fest Author: ERNEST CLINE

YAB Fest (the Young Adult Book Fest) is this Saturday (May 11) in Round Rock, Texas! I have the privilege of moderating the OUT OF THIS WORLD Panel, which is appropriately named because there are such amazing authors on it! (Also, our books all feature fantasy/sci fi worlds). My fellow panelists are so cool that I decided to feature one of them every day until the start of the festival. (Also, this is my first time moderating a panel. I’m slightly nervous about it, so I’ve decided to error on the side of overachieving).

Today’s featured OUT OF THIS WORLD Panelist is . . .

ERNEST CLINE

 

It is impossible to top the funny (and very informative) bio on Ernie’s website, so I will direct you THERE and just give you the basics here. Ernest Cline is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, READY PLAYER ONE. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s awesome. My favorite thing about it is that it’s almost impossible to define – I mean, yes, it’s a dystopian. But there is so much more to it than that.

And there is more to Ernie than just books – he also wrote the screenplay for FANBOYS.

And, he owns a DeLorean. AND he was Austin Poetry Slam Champ in 1998 and 2001. So he’s pretty much awesome I am pretty much terrified/excited that he will be a part of the OUT OF THIS WORLD Panel. Maybe I can get him to tell us something about his newest book, ARMADA, which was sold to Crown Publishing Group (a division of Random House). There have been tantalizingly few pieces of information released about ARMADA . . . Ernie’s website has this to say about it (and I quote):

“COMING SOON”

 

That’s it! Seriously! So maybe if we’re REALLY, SUPER nice to him on Saturday, he’ll give us some details! Fingers crossed!

For more on Ernie, visit his website. You can also find him on TWITTER and FACEBOOK.

Come and see Ernie, his fellow panelists on the OUT OF THIS WORLD Panel, and all of the other amazing authors in attendance at YAB FEST this Saturday in Round Rock!

SOME INFO ON YAB FEST:

When: Saturday, May 11 from 9:30am to 5pm

Where: Round Rock High School (in Round Rock, Texas)

Admission: FREE

Who Will Be There?: Complete List of Authors and What Panel Each Author Is On

When Will Cory and/or My Other Fave Authors Be Speaking?: Schedule Of the Day

Other Questions: See the YAB Fest Website