Janie's
August 2004 Journal
Friday 8/6:
I haven't kept track exactly, since I just decided
to do this, so things aren't as exact as my previous ones..
Had ~ 9 oz of romaine lettuce on way to work - from Organic pkg
w/3 'heads' of them (actually mostly the center). Have been really
getting into the imported romaine lettuce lately 'cause it's soooo
good. I can actually eat this stuff plain! It's almost as good as
the stuff we used to grow, probably started out as good but isn't
anymore due to importing. It's still better than any of the stuff
I can get that's been grown here though, sad to say, but true...
The stuff here's too bitter to eat straight, but this stuff imported
from California's sweet enough - yay! Wish it were local and fresher,
but it's still fairly fresh...
Anyway, on to the other stuff...
I had 2 Filipino 'cooking bananas' at the beginning of my lunch
and then got interrupted, then my son wanted me to get him some
fruit from the HFS, so I took the opportunity and went right away.
;-) It's close to my work, so it was quick. When I was gathering
the fruits he wanted I heard the 2 produce managers talk about champagne
grapes - oooh! my favorite! They had them in a box, hadn't put them
out yet, so I got some. Then I saw that one of them was also cutting
a jakfruit apart into sections for sale. I got so excited because
I love it, but only like it the same day it's ripe (not refrigerated
or frozen, etc.) and can't eat a whole fruit (as they are big and
filling). He gave me a terrific price on it too, as they are in
season right now & I buy lots of stuff there & he knows
I'm a raw fooder & likes to support that and all... I got 1/4
of a large organic jakfruit for 59 cents! Wow! It was delicious
too! I gave my son his fruit & ate it right away for the rest
of my lunch.
It's dinner time now & I've been munching on the champagne grapes
for a bit - couldn't resist! I think I'm gonna have a salad from
the HFS salad bar with my tahini-lemon-tomato dressing on it, but
I have to go soon 'cause it's gonna' close!
See ya'! :-)
I'll come back and say what I had yesterday...
Continued...
So I did get the salad tonight - about 60% of a pound, and added
6 roma tomatoes, some lime juice and a pkg of alfalfa sprouts (4
oz). They didn't have the jars of raw tahini so I got their salad
dressing (supposed to be from raw tahini, raw ginger and Shoyu).
I haven't had it in a long time and found the Shoyu and ginger annoying,
but interesting for a change as well. I know I'll probably regret
it later and tomorrow morning (thirst, bad breath and all)... I
wanted salad again though & there wasn't anymore of the imported
romaine left. I should have just done without. Oh well. Live and
learn. It's one of those things done rarely that I think I can recover
from afterwards.
Yesterday here's what I remember having
to eat:
About 12-20 large Jamaican lilikoi, 5 or so strawberry guavas, 10-ish
fuzzy blueberries - my hubby and I got up early and went on a quick
hike to forage breakfast. It was fun! So yummy! Wish they were in
season all the time...
1 large hand of Filipino 'cooking bananas' for lunch = ~12-16 or
so
32 oz. fresh orange juice from Jamba Juice - hubby's present
3 heads of imported romaine lettuce - not full heads, small ones
~9 oz
1/2 basket of large cherry tomatoes, yum!
a bite of an overripe avocado and a bite of an underripe avocado...
a tinsy bitty bite of a small part of one of the black olives that
my hubby was eating, just to see what I thought of it - ick! Too
salty. LOL - used to be such a salt fiend.
I used to be really into the Jamba Juice orange juice as it's new
here and it's about the only fast food that I still like to have...
but I'm not really so into it anymore. They're not organic and I
think my body's not into that, as I think it's been giving me a
bit of gas... oh well, future $$ saved and all. ;-)
I remember how nice it has been in the mornings of the days I don't
eat overt fats in the evening before. - much more energy. I was
noticing that just this morning, but had some fat tonight anyway...
oh well. I've been doing no overt fats for many days now that I've
gotten a fairly good supply of the imported organic romaine that's
tasty enough to eat straight. Too bad they ran out. :-( Maybe I'll
order a case of it from them so I'll get a bunch next time. I wonder
how much a case of it is & if I can fit it in my fridge... heh,
might not last much longer as my hubby and son would probably eat
lots of it too.
I did some exercise on these days too, but need to post this and
do some other stuff, so I'm gonna skip that part.
Monday 8/9:
My Current Favorite Dinner:
My current favorite is some fruit (whatever I have
around that's ripe and appeals to me), followed by a package of
organic hearts of romaine lettuce. It's from California and isn't
bitter like the lettuces here, so I can and do eat it straight.
Soooo yummy - and fun to eat too!
They come as 3 'heads' of romaine that have been stripped down a
bit - it's about 9 oz. I prepare it by tearing off the bruised portions
at the top (gets a bit squashed to fit in ziplock bag) and any brown
areas, while leaving it together as a head. I then rinse it in running
water, spreading the leaves apart and looking at the base to see
that any dirt has been washed off. After that I put each one upside
down in a colander I have in our dish draining rack so the water
runs out of the base more while I'm doing other stuff (like eating
my fruit). Then when I'm ready to eat it I just take the heads and
hold them by their base and eat the lettuce off of it from the outside
in, occasionally pulling off each leaf and eating it that way. It's
the perfect snack while watching movies - has become my favorite,
actually. I also eat it that way on the way to work in the morning
sometimes (so then I'd have more at dinner or just fruit or just
an avocado (rare these days as I don't like the ones that are in
season right now).
I resisted buying imported lettuce for some time as I prefer to
grow it myself if possible (but that wasn't working 'cause I'm hardly
ever home & it gets too bitter otherwise) or get it from others
who have grown it organically locally (but that was too bitter too).
I finally decided to try some imported and just loved it. Evenso,
I hesitated to buy it much before for the same reasons. I finally
came to the conclusion that it was heathier to eat even the imported
lettuce than the local lettuce since I could eat the imported stuff
plain and ate it more often than the local lettuce I had to put
dressings on and all. I got a case of it last week and am just loving
it! I think I'll keep getting cases of it every week until it's
no longer good tasting or they don't have it. Yum!
Thursday 8/12:
Someone posted a link on the VegSource Raw and Sports
Nutrition discussion board to a site that talked about the food
from the nightshade family (potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant,
etc.) as being harmful to our health with symptoms people get from
them and a suggestion to test yourself with one month without any
and then have a meal of them. Here is my response:
I haven't noticed any problems from tomatoes &
have actually been eating them almost every day for the last 2 years
or so. When I ate cooked I ate potatoes a lot - it was my favorite
cooked food.
That said, I did get diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that
many people with Lupus get...
I'm dubious, but think I might give the test a try. Shouldn't be
too hard now that I've got my yummy imported Romaine anyway. I know
I've made quite a few meals of just tomatoes in this time (without
any perceptable problems), so the test should be quite revealing.
It has occurred to me before that if I came across a tomato plant
in nature and did not know what it was, I might not even try it,
as the leaves and stems and all smell so toxic and all.
I am not particularly interested in eating eggplants or potatoes
raw, so they're no problem. I also have rarely been into bell peppers
so they'd be no big loss. I have been waaaay into the tomatoes most
of the time, but it's actually been waning a bit the last couple
of days for some reason so that I've been unsure about whether I
wanted to get them and all. It seems like it's a good time to do
the test. If I actually follow it for a month (no promises) I'll
report back at the end with the re-introduction results.
Friday 8/13 - the Great Tomato-less Challenge Begins:
Okay, yesterday was day 1, we'll see how long I last...
going for one month as the test suggested. I figure going without
tomatoes, if they're not harmful wouldn't be harmful either, so
why not?
I do have to admit that I'm skeptical, love tomatoes, and have not
personally noticed any adverse reactions in connection with them
in the past, so it should be revealing indeed. I've heard of the
'deadly nightshades' thing before, but never placed much weight
on it, but then I was the same way about dietary fat before... so
why not try? It's easiest to tell about one thing in particular
by omitting it and then trying it again...
I'm going out on Sunday, which could be the biggest challenge for
me, as most of the salads come with tomatoes and all... I'll have
to remember to ask for them to be left out.
I'm armed with my trusty tasty imported hearts of romaine, and a
nice variety of fruits, so I'm ready! :-)
No perceptible differences yet.
Water from 1 coco on way to work
~15-20 apple bananas
2 heads of hearts of romaine
3 nectarines (1.11 pounds), champagne grapes (1.15 pounds)
3 heads of hearts of romaine on drive home from work
exercise: not much today, just some random, fun jumping around;
more focused squat jumps; jumping pushup things; and my reg. jiggling
and bouncing of my legs practically all day as I sit, getting up
& down to help people, walking around, etc.
I spent a lot of my in-between & spare time trying to get the
cable company to connect my TV service sooner than next Wed., so
I could tape the Olympics again. Then, when we weren't able to do
that, I spent some time trying to figure out who had one of those
digital cable recorder things (so recording is easy) and would be
willing to tape things for me until Thursday... unsuccessful. :-(
I taped the 2000 Sydney Olympics and love watching and re-watching
them - inspiring and all. We got rid of our TV service since and
I was a bit late in getting it hooked up again to tape the Olympics.
I actually thought it was going to be starting next month for some
reason... I'm kinda' bummed that I'm gonna miss so much as the beginning
stuff was some of my favorites last time. :-( Oh well, at least
I'll catch most of it after Wednesday - it's better than nothing.
There's still lots of stuff to grab then - hope it works! :-)
[BTW - I didn't report back on the results from this
challenge until January 2005,
heh, yeah a bit late.]
Saturday 8/14:
¼ of med. Watermelon – organic, yay!
(~5-7 cups or so) on drive into work ~8:30am
water from 1 coco at work (opened & into Jamba
mug before leaving house – meat to dog) ~10:30am
lunch: 3 large nectarines (1.34 pounds), some cherries
(.43 pounds), & 10 apple bananas (2.5 pounds) – all from
HFS ~1:30 or 2-ish
snacked on thin green beans (.35 pounds) before dinner
~6:30pm
dinner: 3 hearts of romaine lettuce heads on way home
in car ~9:30pm
exercise: carrying case of lettuce out and away from
my body at chest level slowly from store to car – good upper
body workout & fun (also good for not getting white shirt dirty)
~5-10 min, stretching before bed ~15 min, private athletic fun w/hubby
~1 hour
Sunday 8/15:
breakfast: 2 papayas from our yard :-) before the
beach ~9am
water from 1 coconut after the beach ~11:30am on ride
to town
brunch: 1 container of cut up cantaloupe (non-organic)
from grocery store ~12:30
snack: ½ cantaloupe (non-organic) from grocery
store ~2pm before doing taxes
lunch: 10 large apple bananas (non-organic) from grocery
store ~5pm after finishing Fed. taxes
dinner: 2 side salads at restaurant with dressing
I brought… (~ 6-10 cups of organic lettuce, sprouts, grated
carrot & beets=salads, ~2 Tbsp. tahini & 3-4 Tbsp. lemon
juice = dressing)
Exercise: hike down/up trail to/from beach ~1/2 hour
, down/back on dry sand ~ ½ hour, misc. jumping around, stretches
in morning ~15min., stretches before bed ~10 min., reverse curls
and misc. stuff ~1/2 hour
Today was a challenging day for my hubby and I, but
we were both successful at sticking to our plans. We had to finish
our taxes, since we had extended them in April…didn’t
feel like it, as it’s our only day off and all. We managed
to get to the beach in the morning before needing to take our son
into town by noon though and the beach looked so perfectly beautiful.
There was hardly anyone else there so that we didn’t even
see anyone else once we settled down in our favorite spot to go
swimming from. Very nice.
After we dropped off our son we went to a few restaurants
in town to see what kind of salads and salad bars they had because
we were going out with the friends we saw last weekend tonight.
Our kids (theirs and our son) didn’t want to eat at the same
place we did last weekend, and neither did my hubby or I actually.
It was kinda’ fun to go around and see what other choices
there were and we found that there’s actually a pretty well
stocked salad bar in that town at a restaurant that has quite a
variety of food. We also found out that Pizza Hut’s buffet
has a salad bar with romaine lettuce, carrots, cucumbers and celery
which was more limited for my hubby and I than the other salad bar
but encouraging, as that’s where the kids really wanted to
go. We were surprised that we couldn’t find anything at a
shopping mall that had lots of restaurants and food carts, etc.,
but were not bummed, as the other two choices seemed good anyway.
I reported back to my friend who admitted that she really wanted
to go back to the place we ate last week because the friends she
was bringing hadn’t ever been to a vegan restaurant before.
She said that maybe they could go a different night and we decided
to decide later.
On the way into town my hubby realized that he had
forgotten his bananas and avocado and didn’t feel we had time
to go back so didn’t. I didn’t think it was much of
a big deal since we could go to the grocery store and get something
and we had some lettuce and my dressing fixings with us. He didn’t
want my dressing**
When we got together later it was apparent that he
friend’s kid wanted ‘meat’ and was not interested
in a vegan restaurant, and that she seemed to be looking for us
to be the excuse of why they needed to go there – trying to
get them to try vegan food. We were saying that any of the 3 restaurants
would be fine and that the one that served a large variety (including
meat) had the largest selection for us too. In the end we ended
up going with what she wanted ‘cause she had arranged it mostly
anyway. I remembered to order the 2 side salads this time instead
of the big salad with the pate – and to get them without tomatoes
in keeping with my tomato-less challenge and all. Good thing I brought
my own dressing (which was no big deal BTW) as the 2 side salads
weren’t much.
Next
-- >>>
