Raw Eats This Week - Part II

Highlights of my eats this week. I maintained about 85% raw with a couple of 100% days. 

Mission figs with bananas - Great energy snack

More Mission figs with apples and dates this time - delish!

Mango with red onions, heirloom tomato and lime juice

Yummy Apple Crumble w Maple Cream

Crumble topping and maple cream paired with Sierra Figs - great pairing! Sierra figs not as sweet as Mission variety but still very good

Plain Brown Turkey figs. Sweet and big! My fave variety

Protein-boosted green smoothie ingredients

The delicious and filling final result

Romaine salad with avo, hemp hears, red onions, cilantro and dill

Chia Pudding - I want to experiment more with this one and then I'll share the deets

Lastly, I was stoked to see that my favorite romaine lettuce was on sale at Sprouts

Made me smile 

 

That's the overview for this week. I'm really loving it :)

- Kareen, RD

p.s. you definitely want to follow me on twitter - thanks!

p.p.s. and I'm assuming you're already following this blog - if not you should! I appreciate it :)

Raw Vegan Apple Cobbler with Maple Cream

I had the 'pleasure' of working last Sunday which means that I had the opportunity to enjoy a rare Monday off. I had a long list of errands to finish but I made sure to save time to play in the kitchen.

My husband gave me this un-cookbook for my birthday all the way back in July. It's 'Going Raw' by Judita Wignall. Be sure to check out her http://www.rawjudita.com/.

You can only imagine how much I was itching to give the recipes a try

Judita's book is unique in that it offers a bonus DVD which features tutorials on raw food techniques such as using a dehydrator, a spiralizer and basic knife skills. She does a great job at teaching in these brief vignettes. The book includes discussion on the benefits of living raw and basically everything you need to start your own raw food diet (which happens to be the tag line of the book!).

Some recipes on my must-try list include Herbed Cashew Hemp Cheese, Sunshine Smoothie, Chia Pudding, Jicama-Papaya-Mango Salad, Mexian Spiced Brownies and of course the Apple Cobbler with Maple Cream.

To respect Judita's copyright, I won't list the recipe here but I will mention that I did not follow it to the letter. I chose to omit the agave nectar because of its high fructose content and used maple syrup instead even though it's not raw. Next time I'm going to try making a syrup with dates and use that mixture as the sweetener.

I also chose to omit the rolled oats. Ingredients I didn't have on hand were raisins and a vanilla bean. I used extract instead (I know, heresy) but next time I'll be completely ready. Lastly, I used walnuts for the crumble.

With all of those modifications, the final result was delicious!

In all, I took about 45 minutes to put everything together and yielded 4 servings. I need to practice my knife skills and get a better blender. I struggled with that cashew cream. For my first try, I was happy!

Have you tried any new foods or recipes this week?

- Kareen, RD

Raw Eats This Week

This past week was busy with the Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo (FNCE) in San Diego, CA. And then the return to work with all that email and voicemail waiting. So I was definitely out of my comfort zone but I managed to stay raw at least 80% each day. My stomach thanked me - the IBS flare-ups were kept to a minimum.

Here's a highlight of what I ate from my kitchen.

Mono meal of grapes. Not much effort required for this meal :)

Romaine with an heirloom tomato, radishes, red onions, dill. I used to HATE tomatoes :) I made this x 2.

And then came the figs! 

I've been searching since August so I could try Megan Elizabeth's Strawberry Bread Pudding Recipe

 The final result. Super duper good! 

 Most of my meals this week were from the free samples at the expo so I'm glad to be back on a regular eating schedule.

I'm on twitter - follow me @i_amEatingRight for daily updates on my meals, pics and general fun randomness! Let me know what you're eating by tagging your posts with #iameatingright.

What was on your plate this week? Let me know on twitter!

- Kareen, RD

Dining out at Nobu San Diego

Disclaimer: This post is neither raw, vegan or vegetarian but it is delicious! Hope you enjoy :)

Today was the last day of the American Dietetic Association's Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo (FNCE) and wow, what an inspiring time! I had the opportunity to attend FNCE 2009 in Denver which was also an inspiring time but I didn't know too many people. I certainly enjoy meeting new people but it's also nice to reconnect with friends, colleagues and the like. With FNCE 2011 being in San Diego, I was able to do just that! I even met-up with fellow Youtuber Afronique which was a pleasant turn of events since she's not an RD.

I was able to spend time with my right-hand bestie RD, Cindi. Even though we work together, we don't make time to chillax outside of work. Last night we headed across the street from the San Diego Convention Center to Nobu.

I'm a little embarrassed to say that Nobu entered my consciousness because of the frequent celebrity sightings at their Los Angeles location. Hey! When you live in Southern California, it's hard to completely ignore them.

We arrived during happy hour and ordered from both that menu and the dinner menu. We're both vegetarians and while we're not really into raw fish/meat, we are open to sampling foods outside of our usual dietary preferences such as cooked fish. The waiter did an excellent job describing and promoting the vegetarian options. Not only that, she had tried them all so her recommendations were based from personal experience. That's great service!

Without further ado, here's the fare we tried!

Warm Mushroom Salad

This salad is definitely a 'perfect bite' dish. Alone the mushrooms were a bit salty for my palate but with the lime juice, lettuce and chives, wow - the salad was transformed. A definite re-order next time. 

Black cod in Butter Lettuce Wraps

So this was the non-raw vegan, non-vegetarian dish and it was delicious but very rich! Cindi and I each ate one and that was enough. Since I don't eat fish on a regular basis, this was a one-time delightful sample.

Here's Cindi enjoying her first bite of the Black Cod wraps.

Cut Avocado Rolls

The avo rolls were my pick. I love vegetarian sushi especially with ginger and wasabi. I was not disappointed!

Me! I need to work on a raw version of these rolls

We ordered one more dish but could only sample it. My husband was the lucky recipient of the left-overs which he enjoyed.

Tofu Tobanyaki

Eating a high raw diet has increased my sensitivity to salt so I could taste it quite distinctly in the tofu but the rice helped. I would re-order this dish but limit my portion size.

Cindi and I laughed and laughed for a couple of hours over good food. What more can you ask for in an evening?

- Kareen, RD

Back to Cooking or Uncooking That Is

The ants are gone...for now. It's been two weeks since I've seen a live one and while I don't think we're completely free from the their return, I'm at least happy that they're not crawling everywhere for now. The benefits are a super-clean kitchen and family room :) No one likes ants so we're all pitching in to keep our place as spic and span as possible. 

With the elimination of these little pests, I've brought back the fruit, veggies and other groceries into the mix. My body has been craving a high raw low fat vegan diet. Here are this week's eats in pictures.

I visited my favourite local grocery store, Henry's, although the sign has now officially changed to Sprouts.

The pineapple was a good pick and made for a great breakfast Wednesday morning! 

I spent a lot of time in the Los Angeles area last week attending meetings so I made sure I had snacks ahead of time. The best part of following a low fat raw vegan diet is the ease of food prep. I need to get a better lunch bag - the grocery bags just aren't cutting it. Fortunately I have already picked up a couple of the re-usable variety at the Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo, i.e. the annual RD conference. 

I digress. Here are my eats for the rest of the week.

Mango Avocado Salad on Wednesday

Surprised at the selection of fruits and veggies at one of my conference last Friday. This  was plate 1 of 2 :)

Giant zooks from a co-workers garden. I chose to start with the biggest one.

I used half to make this delicious Zook Salad Friday evening.

The other half was used in my first 'oven-as-dehydrator' experiment.

The results: over-dehydrated zook chips but they were still very tasty as a Saturday treat. I'll be trying again with one of the remaining zooks.

Another mango salad on Saturday afternoon.

Cucumber Radish Salad for FNCE today.

Mango Ginger Salad for FNCE. Yes, I love mangoes!

On the weight loss front, I am happy to report that my weight has remained stable! Well, I've actually lost 0.6 lbs which is good considering my diet has not been on point the past couple of weeks. Getting back on track feels so good!

Hope you enjoyed a fun and healthy weekend!

- Kareen, RD

New Pants . . .

. . . well, new to me anyway :)

Last summer I purchased a pair of beautiful white linen pants from Dillards at a super-great price. While living in Arizona, I discovered Dillards and their amazing sales. I wore the pants two or three times before my weight began creeping up. You can imagine my dismay when on the fourth time I chose to wear the pants, they were too tight. Like, way too tight.

This gorgeous pair of pants was ready to be given away in this post on donating clothes, but when it came down to it, I couldn't. I did donate most of the suitcase contents recently (I couldn't part with three of the items yet!). With this recent move, I've made five trips to my local Goodwill's Donation Center so I felt okay with keeping some items.

And I'm glad I did!

If I had given them away, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to feel the sweet success of slipping comfortably back into them. I shouted in glee startling my husband and I thanked the Lord. This weight loss journey is difficult so I enjoyed the moment thoroughly!

There's more to lose and I'm motivated to keep moving in the right direction.

- Kareen, RD

30 Days in the Raw - Update

As I sat down to write this post, I realized I don't even know what day of the 30 that I'm on. I lost track after day 7 but not in "bad" way.

I haven't been 100% raw but I have been high raw - usually eating one cooked meal or snack a day. The benefits are still noticeable.: less bloating, no nausea and weight loss (1.4 lbs the first week). With the recent move almost everything is still packed so I have been off of my usual schedule. 

I am thankful to be living on the first floor so that I can exercise at home; however, there are ants so I have been reluctant to unpack until the situation is resolved. There's not a stream of them (thank you Lord!) and they likely (hopefully) came in during the move when all the doors were open but I'm uncomfortable. A pest control company will be out soon. Just one of the joys of living in Southern California.

I am on Day 4 of the Turbo Fire Inferno Plan. One more day to go! I'm not sure I lost any weight but I have lost inches - my clothes feel so much looser and my face looks different. I didn't take measurements (hey! I just moved) but I won't be discouraged by the number on the scale.

The regularly scheduled Turbo Fire program begins on Sunday! 90 days of punching, sweating and dancing. Good times.

What are your plans this long weekend? Maybe I'll be unpacking.

- kareen