Falling Off the Raw Diet Wagon

After getting back from San Francisco last week, I was ready to get back on track with my raw diet.

I started on Tuesday and made it all the way to Saturday when I broke down at a birthday party and had a few beers, a veggie taco and some buneulos. Then on Sunday, I kept the party going with more cooked food and champagne at brunch, and finished the weekend off with a giant bean burrito from Santana's.

And last night, after eating raw all day, I broke down at the Padre game and had wine and a whole bunch of cooked stuff...

This raw thing is harder than I thought it would be!

But, even back on Friday, after four days of eating raw, I didn't feel that great. In fact, I felt kinda funky all week.

So, I'm a little troubled... I was all excited to start eating raw and enjoy all of the benefits the book promised. And the first week I tried it, I really did feel amazing. So, what the heck?

The worse part is that since I started trying to eat raw, when I've fallen off the wagon, I've fallen pretty hard. I've been consuming way too many empty calories in the form of alcohol - and just too many calories in general. It's like each time I fall off, I try to get it all in before I start again. Not good.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to make this work for me. I'm sold on eating more fruits and vegetables, but avoiding alcohol and coffee (and all cooked food) is proving to be more difficult than I thought. And cooked food is so good! Once I cross the line, it's really hard to come back.

But I haven't totally given up. I think I'm just going to try to eat raw as often as I can within reason and see how that works for me. Maybe that will keep me from going too far off the deep end when I'm cheating.

But besides all the struggling to stay on track, I have made some fun stuff!

Coconut milk
I made coconut milk from a coconut - with Pat's help. He had to break the coconut open and scrape all the meat out. Good thing he was there - there's no way I could have done that myself! Then I blended the coconut water with the meat and strained it through a cheese cloth.

I've been using the coconut milk in my smoothies and my raw vegan soft serve. 

And, I used it in a raw panang curry. Kate and I had shared a delicious cooked panang curry at a Thai restaurant in San Francisco and I kept thinking about it, so I wanted to try and make a raw version. I saw some raw recipes online, but none of them sounded good, so I based mine on a cooked recipe I found. I had to make a special trip to the Asian market to get a few of the ingredients.

The flavor of the sauce was really close, but eating it over raw veggies, was just not the same. Regardless, it did the trick!

Here's how I did it:

Raw Panang Curry

Sauce:
1/2 cup chopped red onion
2 tbsp diced and peeled ginger
3 garlic cloves diced
1 Thai chili diced
3 kaffir lime leaves
1/4 cup raw almond butter
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp agave syrup
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
2 cups coconut milk

Just put it all in the food processor and pulse until creamy.

Veggies: Assorted veggies cut into bite-sized pieces.

"Rice:" 2 yellow carrots pulverized into rice-sized bits in the food processor.

Mix some of the sauce with the veggies until coated and serve on top of the fake rice.

Well, no matter what, I guess it can't hurt to get more fruits and veggies in my diet, right? And, this week I am feeling pretty good again, So, I'll keep trying!