more food logs: a really busy day, and a weekend day

I want you to get a sense of what a day looks like when I’m just not at home, no time to prepare.   And a weekend when we do have extra time.   A couple of people wrote me (or posted) last time I wrote up a food log: oh! I guess that’s not really so hard!   It’s really not, and this super-busy day was even easier.   Unfortunately, I ate all three meals that day IN THE CAR!

You can read raw-food recipe books and end up thinking that eating a plant-based diet is only for people who love cooking.   The pizza recipes: dehydrating a crust, making a raw, nut-based sauce, shredding a bunch of toppings.   Ugh.   Most days, I just don’t have time for that.   I did that in my early days of trying to go all raw, and burned out fast.

This crazy day started at 6 a.m.: squeezed my hour of yoga and my tennis match in, before racing home to get ready for work and then taking off to teach.   Then I didn’t even come home from work–went straight to parent-teacher conferences.   I got home at dinnertime.   So here it is:

Breakfast: Hot-Pink Breakfast Smoothie, driving to yoga

Lunch: Green smoothie (made at 7 a.m.), and a baggie of almonds, driving to work

After work: Picked up a hummus wrap packed with greens and veggies at Pita Pit next to Brigham Young University where I work, and ate it in the car on the way to parent-teacher conferences.   Kids got home and had green smoothies from the fridge.

Dinner:   I warmed cans of vegetarian chili that I keep in storage for busy nights.   My 13-year old daughter made a big salad with romaine, the still-ubiquitous yellow squash, cukes, and bell peppers.   I tossed some apple cider vinegar and olive oil on it.   I put about 1/3 cup homemade sauerkraut on each plate next to the salad.

I didn’t eat the dinner because I wasn’t hungry, having eaten earlier.   But I finished the last piece of Raw Key Lime Pie that I made last night.   (It’s yummy, took about 15 mins. to make last night, and it’s in Ch. 11 coming up!)   The other day at Costco I got a whole bag of limes.   I set up my $20 electric citrus juicer, which is VERY worth having if you’re a 12 Stepper.   Lime juice is one of those ingredients that transforms raw or whole foods into gourmet.   I use it in lots of salad dressings and quinoa dishes.   I cut all the limes in half and had my 8-year old juice them.   (He loves doing it.)   I put them in an ice cube tray to freeze for later.   Later tonight, I’ll twist the ice cube trays into a gallon freezer bag to save them all for later, in convenient 2 Tbsp. portions.

Total time spent in the kitchen today: 20 minutes (not including two kids helping out), a 75% raw day.

A WEEKEND (Sunday) food log:

Breakfast:   A big blender of Hot-Pink Breakfast Smoothie (Jump-Start recipe collection) for everybody, in a hurry, before church.

Lunch: Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes (from Ch. 10 coming out, soaked the buckwheat the day before)–no gluten, really easy, sprouted, everybody likes it.   I don’t like things made from buckwheat flour, but I love these pancakes.   I whizzed up some berry topping in the BlendTec (also in Ch. 10), berries and peaches, agave, and a little water.

Lunch: Zucchini Carpaccio to use up zucchini in the garden (Jump-Start recipe collection), and Raw Avocado Soup (coming out in the 100 Quick, Healthy Lunch Ideas recipe collection).   Plus some Homemade Raw Sauerkraut (Ch. 8 recipe) I made a year ago.   While we were eating, I had The World’s Best Chocolate Ice Cream going in the ice cream maker, just three ingredients, super easy.

I made six different recipes today, lots more than usual.   I spent maybe an hour in the kitchen making food.   No green smoothie!   That happens, maybe once every week or two on a weekend.   We still all had about 7 servings of vegetables and 3 of fruit, all of them raw–about a 75% raw day.

Posted in: Lifestyle, Whole Food