Day of Raw Food

 I had the day off work today and we had nothing special planned, but we wanted to make it a special day regardless. We chose a few fun activities to do, and in addition, we decided to see if we could go the whole day eating raw foods! The outcome was awesome!

I started the day with my wheatgrass shots, because I'm still trying to go without coffee. So far, so good! :)

I'm getting used to thawing them, drinking it as a shot, and following it with a sip of water to wash it down.  Not bad at all.

 I like to wait until I'm good and hungry before I eat breakfast. That way I'm really listening to my body and not just eating out of habit or boredom. A few hours after my wheatgrass shots I was good and hungry, so we made some raw oatmeal:

The thought of raw oatmeal, at first, was unappetizing to me. I thought it sounded gross. Yet I forced myself to make it because everyone in the blogging world makes raw oatmeal. After the first bite I was hooked! I spoon-fed one bite to The Boyfriend while he was eating his cooked eatmeal, and he quickly tossed his and made a bowl of raw oatmeal. That's how delicious this stuff is. Not sure if it's the almond milk, the chia seeds, or what, but you have to try it.

Raw oatmeal ingredients:
1/2 cup to 1 cup raw oatmeal
enough almond milk to cover the oats
1 tablespoon chia seeds (these will thicken the cereal and absorb some of the milk)
1 tablespoon brown sugar or other sweetener of your choice
today I added a teaspoon of peanut butter. This made it taste like a snickers bar. I could have ate this all day.
The Boyfriend added strawberries and bananas to his while I rolled a little more plain with mine.

 I've been researching the benefits of eating raw oatmeal vs cooked oatmeal, and while I can't find tons of evidence saying raw is better, as long as it's good for me and I like it, I'll eat it because in general I think raw is better than cooked, and cooked oatmeal is such a turn-off for me because it makes me feel like I'm eating mush baby food.

After breakfast we went Uptown to visit a museum called The Light Factory. We enjoyed walking through the exhibits and looking at the artwork, and I especially liked the self-portraits from teenagers which depicted how they thought they were perceived in the world. We even popped into the main library Uptown to take a look around. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be, but it was nice.

 The Boyfriend and Sophie, our beloved cairn terrier, walking around Uptown.  We couldn't stay too terribly long because we only had so many coins for the meter, and we didn't ride the tram uptown like we did on this day:

So we headed home! Unfortunately, when we got home from Uptown I had developed a headache. The first headache since I gave up caffeine, so I'm not sure if it was the lack of caffeine or from squinting against the sun with no sunglasses. Either way, I was craving carrot juice, so I listened to my body and broke out the juicer:

 The carrot juice was delicious

and my headache was gone minutes later. Thankfully!

 The Boyfriend made a smoothie:

Which consisted of:
frozen strawberries
almond milk
chia seeds

 Smooth, refreshing, raw! Still going strong with our "raw day" and it was already 4 pm! For an early dinner before The Boyfriend headed into work I made cauliflower mash with this recipe I got from Andrea:

This really came out really well!


Raw cauliflower mash ingredients:
 1 head of cauliflower
2 tablespoons hummus
1 teaspon minced garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
lemon juice squeezed from half a lemon

 Throw all ingredients together in food processor and blend until creamy. I wanted mine extra creamy, like mashed potato creamy, so I put a tablespoon of vegan sour cream in it, and then I put some nutritional yeast in it to make it cheesy.
Here is a bite of my cheesy, creamy mashed cauliflower:

And then another with even more nutritional yeast:

So, what are the benefits of this for me? To start with, I'm not a huge fan of cauliflower so it was an easy way to get my intake of cauliflower, which is rich in Vitamin C and folate. Vitamin C is an antioxidant, which keeps your immune system strong, and folate is necessary for proper tissue growth and helping to prevent anemia. Cauliflower also helps prevent heart disease and certain types of cancer (especially breast cancer for women and prostate cancer for men)

  While The Boyfriend was at work, I had to study riveting and exciting critical care lectures for three hours and then take 3 tests which took another two hours. I could think of about twelve other things I would have liked to do with those five hours of my time, but unfortunately this will be my life for the next three months: working night shift and studying/taking tests on my days off. Some of the test modules are 15 hours long! The payoff is that it will (hopefully) be a great indepth review of all four years of nursing school while making me a better nurse in the clinical setting! It is hard getting back into the studying mode after being out of school for so long, though.

 For dinner, The Boyfriend made a salad beast:

 Cliche, I know, to have a salad while eating "raw", but I was taking a timed test and he didn't want to wait for me to cook (or uncook) anything, so salad it was. This one just has radishes, celery, carrots, romaine lettuce, and snow peas. Quick and easy, lots of color and lots of crunch!

 So there you have it! Our day of raw was a success! We feel great and plan to incorporate at least the shakes, smoothies, juices, and raw oatmeal into our daily regime. The challenge (and who doesn't love a challenge) will be coming up with more raw food entrees and possibly even desserts! It shouldn't be hard, there's tons of blogs out there, including:

Raw Food Nation
Choosing Raw
Raw Twins
Rawmazing
rah-raw
and so many more that I didnt even add!

If you're just now tuning in, please feel free to browse some of my other posts, located on the right hand side under Blog Archive, or you can click on the following links:

Welcome to my blog
Green smoothies
Vegans & Christians
Recipes
Wheatgrass
Chia Seeds

Feel free to ask questions, post comments, or just say hi! You never know what kind of connections you could make or the friend base you could build on just by introducing yourself! Have a wonderful evening, and until next time, take care!