I need to get back in the habit of updating here, again. :-/

I've been doing well. I'm not having much of a problem at all with excluding dairy, wheat, soy, and sugar. Last night we had some soup and everyone else had bread with theirs. I realized it wasn't the bread I was wanting, it was the taste of the Earth's Balance "butter" that I usually loaded up on the bread whenever I ate soup. So, I did something crazy--put a big dollop of the "butter" in the soup and got to have that taste with the soup. It was yummy and I didn't need, or even want, the bread!

Speaking of bread, though, I just finished making some of Rawvolution's Famous Onion Bread! It's so yummy!! It took 36 hours to dehydrate, though, and I'm wishing I would have made four times the amount since it took so long to make it. I'll know for next time. It was super, super nice of a very dear friend to let me borrow her Excalibur dehydrator. She's going to be eating more raw foods, too (yay!), so I'm going to buy a dehydrator--then we can both be making new things! :-D I dried some basil leaves while the onion bread was dehydrating, and I also made some cinnamon almonds and pecans. They are still dehydrating, though. All of this was done on only 100 degrees, so that's probably why it's taking so long. That's what the onion bread called for, though, and I wanted to make sure I followed the directions at least once. ;-)

So, I can't remember everything I've eaten since I last updated. I had some completely raw days, followed with days of more energy and happiness. I also had some very cooked foods and found my system feeling sluggish and gurgly. :-P I don't know if it's too soon to know for sure, since it's only been a short time with my transitioning, but I think I'm starting to like the tastes, smells, and look of raw foods better. I had Indian food a few times and it just isn't as tasty to me. It's still good, but just not *as* good.

My daughter and I made some raw sushi the other day and that was fantastic! We didn't have pickled ginger, so we just sliced fresh ginger very fine and it was perfect! We used the raw nori rolls, cauliflower as the rice, and filled it with lots of carrot, cucumber, and avocado. It was great! I also have been eating a lot of salads and had a fresh veggie juice last night before going out to a movie with my husband and eating some fries that were completely gross and made my tummy not too happy all night and morning long. They didn't even taste that great, so I don't know why I ate them.

I'm having a tough time cutting back on the coconut shakes in the morning. They've become a habit, a fast and convenient breakfast that is so unbelievably yummy. I do think it's probably not a good idea to eat the same thing every day, though, so I'm going to have to think of new breakfasts to incorporate.

It was member appreciation day at the local food co op, with a 10% discount on things. So, I am now stocked up for at least a month (I hope!) on nuts and seeds. It was sickeningly expensive, but I'm hoping as I get closer and closer to 100% raw that I won't be buying as much because my system will be better able to utilize the fresh foods. We'll see. For now, even though it costs me almost as much as my mortgage each month to buy fresh, raw organics, I'm going to make it work with the budget. I deserve this, my family deserves this, and as a friend said to me--the planet needs this.

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FEELING:

I'm feeling like this is really a path that is right for me. I don't have any doubts or hesitations about what I'm doing. I feel internally happier these days, more optimistic about my future (body, mind, spirit) and I feel like things are falling into place faster and faster. I'm not at the point where I'm meditating every morning like I planned, but I still have a sense of that great joy and feeling of loving everyone and everything. I think I'll be back to that point sooner, than later. It's the most blissful feeling and I'm hoping to keep myself in that state of blissful love for longer and longer periods of time, until it's just part of my everyday existence.

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LEARNING:

I'm still reading a lot of info from Karen Knowler's site and also reading through a lot of raw food prep books. Other than that, I'm mostly trying to be more conscious about what it is that I'm doing, and why I'm doing it.

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EATING:

* Carob coconut shake (young coconut and water, date, almonds, banana, ice)

* Raw Sandwich! (Rawvolution's famous onion bread with seed cheese spread, lettuce, tomato, cucumber)

* Raw sushi (nori roll, cauliflower rice, pok choy, scallions, carrots, cucumber, avocado, fresh ginger, soy sauce)