Busy weekend!

This weekend has been crazy busy! It started Friday night when I had dinner with Misha and our friend Jes at the Steeping Room here in Austin. This place is great, huge selection of tea and a wonderful menu that is veggie and vegan friendly. I had some tea sandwiches and nappa rolls while we talked  girl stuff and real estate. But Jes wanted ice cream so of course we had to head over to Amy’s Ice Cream! Ok Misha and i both cheated a bit here. It’s Amy’s…which is a wonderful establishment but yeah they use white sugar and milk and all that

But how can you pass up Honey Habanero ice cream? Turns out, we should have. Don’t get me wrong, it was tasty…for the first 5 bites. But after that it was a little much. It’s a bit like eating sweet icy hot…you take a nice cold spoonful and then the burning begins, so you take another cold spoonful and the burning intensifies, rinse and repeat!
Fun! But I didn’t even eat half of my tiny.

Saturday I got to do one of my favorite things in the world, though, massage! 90 minutes of deep tissue wonder! If you’ve never had a deep tissue massage, I highly suggest it but be warned, you will not want to do anything after. It’s like a workout and you can feel just as sore after but it’s a good thing. It was overdue for me though, I’m pretty sure I pulled my hamstring. Movement has been difficult since Thursday.

Anyway!! I took my friend James to Beet’s! He had the burger and I had the ELT! It was delicious stuff and he really enjoyed it, including the banana walnut ice-scream, so yay!!

We followed up later that evening at Galaxy cafe where I snagged some polenta (delicious!)and a strawberry shortcake (pass it up)

PHOTO DUMP!

Today, though, I got to try another recipes from engine 2 and my order from greenling.

Vegan spinach and mushroom enchilada stack! Overall, it’s good, even without cheese. The spices are great and it was super simple. The recipe instructions are pretty much: mix spices with tomato, layer everything and stick in the oven. This isn’t bad but I think next time I’ll caramelize the onions with the mushrooms before layering since neither have time to really cook down in the oven. Still, tasty and vibrant

It’s two servings and the whole recipe is about 550 calories so you really can’t beat it. I’ve been really impressed with the recipe kits from greenling so far. Tomorrow I think I’m going to make the mac and cash, vegan mac and cheese!

Ugh…so full. I think i’ve spent most of this weekend eating lol

awesome.

Viva la Rawvolution!

Wow, 20 days without the following:

Beef

Poultry

Goat/lamb

Wheat/Gluten

Various grains

Soy

Salt

Eggs

Alcohol

Artificial coloring

Artificial flavoring

Preservatives

White sugar

a microwave

That is momentous.

I’m two steps from being vegan and that has been literally three instances in the past 20 days: saag paneer (see when I caved), sashimi dinner, and my raw cheddar made from local whole unpasteurized milk.

Crazy, right?

What I have eaten in abundance?

Chocolate!! Wow chocolate!

Aside from the most wonderous Rox Chox I’ve also had my own cacoa nibs for munching and blending in almond milk and the super food clusters from Beet’s cafe that are amazing!

I’ve had so many desserts, Merry’s tarts, super cookies, raw macaroons and fruit all kinds of fruit!

I have never eaten so many nuts and seeds in my life combined as I have this past 20 days.

Flax, chia, almonds, cashews, macadamia, brazil, hazel, pine and more! Delicious guys, delicious.

It’s kind of awesome.

Now, I know this isn’t for everyone but I’d like to challenge everyone to have one raw day, or even maybe a weekend and try it. See how it is.

Now I have to warn you, if you’ve been on the conventional American/Western diet you might experience some discomfort at first. I didn’t. I don’t know if that’s because I started with a juice fast but I’ve seen some people struggle to suddenly digest that much fiber and plant matter at once.

So Challenge! maybe a juice fast day, maybe a raw day, maybe a weekend, try it.

Here’s how easy a raw day can be:

Breakfast: Fruits! either all chopped up or maybe just whole one at a time. A banana, orange, apple, whatevs, as much as you’d like

morning snack: try flax snax or super cookies or chopped veggies like cucumber or carrot or Go Raw’s products are available in even HEB and ship easily

Lunch: big salad! spinach and tomatoes with onions and cucumbers and whatever your little heart desires. Dressing? oil and vinegar, maybe balsamic? or I like to use stone ground mustard and apple cider vinegar, or you can even use avocado as a creamy dressing and if you’re super cool, toss on some chia seeds

dinner? Easy peasy go for some sashimi or if you want to stay vegan whip up some raw alfredo (it’s ridiculously easy) and zucchini noodles or use sea tangle kelp noodles

dessert? Uh…ROX CHOX  ;p But if you’re not feeling chocolate and don’t have access to Merry’s tarts try any of the dessert recipes from Rawmazing

or, great idea– get out your blender or food processor, get some almonds, some dates, a little honey, dried coconut flakes, and blend it all, then take that and roll out little balls in cacoa powder. BOOM delicious.

See? Ridiculously easy. Not a whole lot of prep, that alfredo? The longest part of it is soaking the cashews if you so choose. You don’t actually have to but it makes it smoother. Super easy.

Yeah sure you can complicate things with your dehydrator and sprouting and all that but you don’t have to.  And I bet if you look locally you can find a raw restaurant or a grocery/farmer’s market that has prepped raw products. My friend James even sent me a txt today that there’s now a raw restaurant in Denton, Texas. DENTON!

viva la Rawvolution!

Raw-mazing!

First off–Today I weighed in at my lowest weight in a LONG time!  BIG honesty coming!

So from day one til now this is where I stand so far. Not bad eh?

BUT from my work weigh in I am down a total of, drum roll plz:

FIFTEEN POINT EIGHT

15.8l

bs. Yup. So I’m hoping for another 15 by March? That’d be cool. But more realistically, a total of 20-25 I think would make me a contender for my work competition.

Anyway! Today I had an awesome experience at Beet’s Cafe!

Picture avalanche is a coming! I went with my dear Misha, her husband and my friend Megan for some good gourmet raw delights and wow! It was really great. I’ll let the pictures do the talking now, although I TOTALLY forgot to get a shot of my own burger before chowing it hahaha I have no idea how I managed to do that, but it was delicious!

 

Spinach guacamole with corn chips

Nori rolls with mock tuna

Tim’s tacos with wild rice and sprouted beans.

Pizza rustica and ceaser salad

Raw reuben, veggie chips and beets

Orange vanilla cheesecake

chocolate cheesecake

super food chocolate cluster. Not photogenic but DELICIOUS

 

I tasted everything! And it was all delicious. I decided on the tacos for takeaway for tomorrow’s lunch and they were quite helpful giving me a broken down takeaway box

some assembly required

So thanks Beets for an awesome lunch! Not a single thing was less than awesome.

Did I mention that aside from being raw, Beets is also vegan? You know what’s awesome about this place? My Meg is a real meat and potato kind of girl. She was a little wary of this place at first, opting for a salad before we talked her into a Ruben that she ended up enjoying quite a bit. But this was her and the cheese free cheesecake

I think she liked it.

( I had to nibble off Misha’s slice, Meg’s was spoken for ;p)

Beets, you’re my new favorite spot!