Raw food all week, gourmet style

In the past we were able to pick and choose our foods. If I ate cheese last night, then got sick, there were two options, I either had rotten cheese or my stomach was telling me I did not like cheese. Today, everything we buy, from food to furniture, is already prepared. We never see the ingredients in our food, we only know it tastes good.

Going through the cleanse process was not an easy process. The hardest part was figuring out which process worked for me. On the first day (Wednesday) I tried the lemonade and cayenne pepper diet. That failed miserably.

 I am an active person and burn a lot of calories in the day. When I decided to go out to Burbank to browse around IKEA I realized by 5:00 p.m. when I was loading all our finds into the car that this diet was not going to work for me. The next day I woke up (Thursday) and thought, “this next week is going to be aweful if I don’t think of something else.” Luckily I had promised to write this next blog post so I kept going. I then though, “well I guess I have this goal to remove the gluten from my diet, while I’m at it lets see if there are any other allergens I can work out of my diet.” So I said, “why not do the raw diet.”

At first, eating only raw fruits and vegetables sounded disgusting. I imagined myself eating raw broccoli all day. But I actually found that I was feeling better and making better food choices. What I liked about the raw food diet was that the food I picked up had less steps in processing, therefore, I had less need to look up the ingredients. I was also finding that cooking fruits and vegetables often masked the flavor of the fresh produce rather than improves it. Not to mention that produce loses a significant amount of its nutritive value when it is cooked.

Despite a few setbacks, (I have a weakness for cheese), I am on my way to my gluten free diet. I decided that, starting today, I will allow myself to have cooked fruits and vegetables as well as fish to my diet. But I will continue trying to eat raw when I can. I discovered a great cookbook for the raw food diet. It’s called RAWvolution by Matt Amsden. Don’t be put off by his bizarre writing style, these recipes are delicious and fresh! You can find more recent recipes he’s posted: http://www.thedailyrawcafe.com/2010/03/matt-amsdens-recipes.html

That’s all for now folks. Next week I’ll be back with some more stories. In the meantime, you can add me on Facebook “Nogluten Trip” where I post interesting articles and more resources for living healthy and gluten free.

See you next Wednesday!

Gluten free living is a chore… at first. A diagnosis of celiac disease or a gluten allergy means having to focus on and remove from your diet all of the things that may cause discomfort, from food, to vitamins, to beauty products, even certain fabrics. But there are also good things to focus on. This is my first post and I wanted to include some interesting books I have encountered in my quest to become more interested in the subject.

Some other common allergens include dairy, eggs, and soy. I’m going to start with gluten for now but I plant to visit bakeries that showcase both gluten free and vegan friendly options. Going vegan has become popular because by focusing on a plant-based diet we could greatly reduce our carbon footprint. Gluten free cooking uses such alternative flours as spelt, barley, and oats, along with brown rice flour, quinoa flour, garbanzo bean flour, corn flour, and cornmeal. You can read more about gluten free baking in Flying Apron’s Gluten-Free ad Vegan Baking Book by Jennifer Katzinger and Kathryn Barnard. You can get a free preview of the book on amazon.com which goes into the expansion of a small Washington state bakery to a blooming company with multiple locations, all gluten free!

First step, tomorrow I begin “the cleanse.” Sounds terrible, but basically I am going to flush my digestive system of gluten. This means, supermarket trip!

Stay tuned, next Tuesday I will fill you in on the details!