Back to work tomorrow. Gosh, those return to work dates come around with immense alacrity. Not so the dates for heading off on breaks, they seem to crawl towards me at tectonic plate speed. Ah well, so it goes. The world of work – please leave your rose coloured glasses at the door!
Still. I have this day. This one last day, to savour and enjoy. How shall I spend it? I’ve already been “up” for an hour or so. When I say up, well – I got up just after Tony left for work and went to the kitchen and made a green smoothie, which I promptly brought back to bed! Most of the rest of the time between then and now was spent, yep – you got it – on Facebook. Oops.
So it goes. Facebook is such a great time monster. Still – it’s also an amazing way to keep up with people’s lives and to find new information about this and that (groups). So, ‘it is what it is’ I guess. I forgive myself.
What next? Well, there’s the not so gripping stuff, like the bathroom floor needs a clean and downstairs needs vacuuming again. I swear, I only just did it the other day – but I guess it’s been pretty high traffic with all of us around a fair bit over the break.
I’ve got an appointment this morning, over towards Erina. In fact, I’d better watch the clock or I might be late! I’ve got a bit of time yet, but it’s amazing how it slips away. I’ve got parcels (yep, more than one) to pick up at the LPO (local post office) – they might be exciting. I’m guessing perhaps eBay winnings. Some of my other parcels probably won’t come until next week. I’ve ordered a few things from Raw Pleasure (if you are thinking raunchy thoughts, go ahead and click the link! LOL!) but they aren’t ‘back at work’ and posting until the 10th, which is Thursday. That’s the stuff I’m the most excited about, but I’ll just have to wait.
I decided to purchase a Tribest personal blender. They can work with mason jars, straight on. I’m hoping it’s as compact as it looks and sounds. I’m thinking I might be able to take it to work with me and do raw smoothies, rather than fruit and nuts at morning and afternoon tea times. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the time constraints of my working day make the prospect of needing to consume a lot of bulk raw fruit, veg and nuts seem really daunting. It’s so easy at home, on my own time, just grazing and munching. I really am one of those people who is happy to eat pretty much all day long. It’s a darn good thing I’ve committed to changing my dietary patterns, at least for a while.
So I’m going ahead with it. Yep. 30 days (mostly) raw. I’ve downloaded the plan and I’m going to use it as a basis for what I (and those around me) eat for the next 30 days. I got mine from Laura Jane, the ‘Rawtarian’ but I think there’s lots out there. I just wanted something simple, as a guideline – written with raw beginners in mind. Structure is helpful sometimes.
I’ve drawn up a list of exceptions I’m willing to make, in fact intending to make even. These include coffee, in the form of flat whites, in the morning on my weekday commutes. So *bang* already neither raw nor vegan. Sad face? Not for me. For me it’s easier to go easy on myself, to be gentle. I’m not going to force myself to drink that coffee if my palate starts to shy away from it – but to give myself the comfort to wade into unfamiliar waters – I’ve given myself a few anchors/life buoys that have become trusted crutches over time. I felt like if I declared outright war on my entire diet and lifestyle as I knew it, I would just crumble and refuse to take even the baby steps to beginning something new.
Coffee. I used to get a large flat white every morning when I changed trains. I’m already thinking a small might do. I haven’t drunk much cow milk at all over this break, just the little shots I tend to put in my tea and coffee at home. I’ve been putting nut or hemp milk on my cereal and in my smoothies – if I use milk at all in those – some of the smoothies I’ve been making are water based.
I’m making exceptions for tea too. I drink tea pretty much all day long. I put milk in it. Cows milk. Not much, about 30ml. I think I have at least two, maybe more like three, during the working day. Tony and I usually have one at home too, as we are getting ready to leave in the mornings. We often have another while we are getting dinner ready in the evenings. I guess that’s a lot of little 30ml shots of cows milk isn’t it? Oh well – for now, they are staying.
So why bother labeling this 30 day plan as *raw vegan*. Well, I’m not, really. But the basis is. I guess my rationale is that having clean, raw, healthful foods as the backbone of your diet has to be better than seeing meat, eggs, severely processed grains and dairy as the backbone and sprinkling a few fruits and veg around the edge, almost as a garnish. It’s just a bit of paradigm shifting. What we focus on the most strongly in our lives – tends to grow. If I focus the mostly strongly on clean, green and raw – it should grow. Hopefully I won’t grow. I’d like to shrink a bit – waistline ways anyhow.
My breakfast this morning was a green smoothie. I had to improvise and use a mango instead of a banana (what a tragedy!) because all the bananas I bought yesterday were, and still are, really green. That was all there was at Woolies yesterday. I have fruit and nuts on the menu for my morning snack and then a beet salad for lunch. Fruit and almonds for afternoon tea and raw nori rolls for dinner. I’m going to make a raw pad thai tonight as well. Yesterday I told Rose and her boyfriend Jake to come over if they like – they are both doing raw and have been for a while. I’ll be using kelp noodles, I bought some the other day from this incredible raw vegan cafe at Bondi Junction called Earth to Table. Wow – their food is out of this world! Kelp noodles are raw, they are soft and just need to be rinsed, then can be used in any dish. The don’t really have any flavour of their own – so they take on whatever they are combined with. At the cafe, Peter (Rose’s dad) had kelp noodles in a thai style coconut dish – it was really gorgeous!
Anyway – I’m just blathering on now. It’s time for me to get out of bed and go play!
Have a great day wherever you are. Eat well, sing in the sunshine, swim in the sea and listen to the birds. Whatever rings your bell!
Be well.
This is a smoothie I made yesterday. Yep – it’s raw. It was delicious! I used maybe a third of a frozen banana; a half cup of frozen mixed berries; a very heaped tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa (my raw cacao is ordered, but not here yet); about a cup of almond milk; a tablespoon of maple syrup and enough water to bring the whole thing to a consistency I could drink from a glass. I recommend it. For a hot day it was the most amazing lunch snack. There was enough of a punch in it that I didn’t really go looking for anything else for ages afterwards and it was an absolute taste sensation!
