Amazing “cheese” sauce

19 days to go!  I’m the first one to admit I haven’t been perfect every day.  The juice fast has slowly morphed into a raw/vegan “fast.”  I do not eat every day or every meal, I just have had some things like beans and rice and nuts.  I still feel amazing and don’t feel like I’m “cheating.”  I made Hubby some corn bread and some cookies, I tried really hard to justify eating them but resisted.  Once I started to eat a little food I found myself trying to justify other things, but I didn’t eat them, I actually felt guilty and thus I knew I needed to not eat them.

I am a cheese-a-holic.  I just love that creamy goodness!  I always have, probably always will.  I’m thinking a lot about my food choices lately and dairy is one I need to address.  When I was a baby my Mom told me that I could not tolerate dairy and she had to give me and my brother goats milk.  For some reason, that “changed” but I don’t think it really did.  I think we didn’t have as many signs (diaper rash etc) when we got older and cows milk is readily available in the grocery store.  My Mom was a single Mom just trying to get by with two kids.  It was the 80’s and her child support was really small and she was not allowed food stamps because she owned a home.  Basically the state said they would help if she sold the only house we’d ever known and move us to a small cramped apartment.  My Mom said “I don’t need your help then.”  We just made things work.  I don’t fault my Mom for being poor, but I don’t think we should have had milk.  So I grew up on milk and dairy and loved every minute of it. 😉  A ND I saw for several years did a “food intolerance test” on me, I say it with quotations because I’m not exactly sure how she “tested” me because it wasn’t a send away to a lab type of thing.  In whatever she did she said I should not have dairy and I should not have fruit and sugar together or within 8 hours of each other.  When I tried to follow that in the past I failed miserably, how could one give up dairy and sugar!?

I bought a raw food cookbook a couple of years ago and tried a raw mac & cheese.  It was horrible.  I don’t know what I was expecting but I didn’t get it.  I put the cookbook on a shelf and forgot about it.  Then this whole juicing thing and Fat Sick and Nearly Dead… my taste buds have changed and I have been eating raw food, a lot of raw food.  I’ve tried some raw tacos that are out of this world good and once one thing went well I tried for more.  This weekend I made some raw “cheese” and coming from a cheese-a-holic, trust me this stuff is GOOD!  Even Hubby said he could give up real cheese for this nut cheese.

I searched all over for a recipe.  I’m a simple girl who doesn’t like to buy extra stuff to make things.  That is one of my pet peeves about recipes, seriously who has pimentos or capers just lying around to use one time in a recipe?  Not this girl and I’m certainly not going to buy them just to make something.  So I found a recipe on youtube and modified it.

Using my magic bullet blender (this didn’t do well, you really need a high-speed blender or food processor.  My birthday is next month and I’m asking for a food processor!) I added 1/2 c of soaked cashews, 1/4 c Brewers Yeast (most recipes call for nutritional yeast, we have brewers so I used that) and 1-2 TBSP of olive oil.  I did that, blended and it was pretty plain.  The girl in the video said you could add some Miso to it to give it a sharp “cheesy” flavor.  At the store buying groceries I picked up some Miso, so I added probably 1-2 TBSP, but it was kind of taste as you go type of thing.  Then I added some lemon juice (again to taste but probably 1-2 TBSP) and blended.  It was a brown paste.  It did NOT look like cheese but this stuff tastes like cheese!  Hubby and I couldn’t get enough.  You get the fat that you are craving with cheese, it’s rich in flavor, and we put them on some homemade pulp crackers.

I got a pulp cracker recipe from Hallelujah Acres’ website.  It’s called Pulp Fixin’ Bread and here is the recipe:

• 2 cups pulp from juicing
• ½ cup almond pulp (optional – great use of pulp from homemade almond milk)
• ¼ cup flax seeds
• 1 clove garlic
• ¼ cup nutritional yeast
• ¼ to ½ cup sesame oil or olive oil (use more if mixture is too thick)
• 1½ Tbsp tamari
• 1 cup water or almond milk
• ½ tsp salt

You blend everything until smooth then put on your food dehydrator (or in an oven) they suggest 125 degrees for 8 hours.  I modified the recipe it a bit.  I didn’t use almond pulp, the nutritional yeast was brewers yeast and the tamari we used some Braggs Amino Acids.  My poor magic bullet REALLY got a workout.  I had to do this in sections and they say if you add too much water the crackers will be leathery.  So I would put some pulp in my container blend, put it in a bowl and repeat until I was done with my pulp.  I just added more oil  and water to help blend easier.  We used some parchment paper/freezer paper to line our dehydrator and let it go over night.  The next morning they were crisp and crackery!  Top them with some raw cashew nut cheese and you have some amazing cheese and crackers!!  Hubby like them!  He even asked me to make more. 😀  He’s my “Mikey likes it” test, if Hubby says it’s good then it’s good, he doesn’t lie when it comes to good cooking.  If it’s bad he will tell you so. LOL

Two more Monday’s then I’m done!  I will not be a solely raw vegan, but I will base probably 80% of my diet that way.  I have some shrimp in my freezer calling my name! 😀

 

 

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Pros & Cons to a New Lifestyle

Hubby and I have been juicing since last week but really changed everything on Sunday.  Don’t get me wrong, we have been doing smoothies every morning and we eat fairly healthy as a whole, but Sunday was a turning point.  We started juicing as our main source of nutrition, have eaten very little else, and have been starting to feel the goods and bads along with it.  This will not be a glamorous list, but it’s true and if you decide to get into major juicing then these are some things you can expect.

First off let me give it to you straight as far as what is going into our mouths.  Every morning we start out with a smoothie, that used to be made with raw milk, now I’ve been using water.  I add a banana, kelp, spirulina, dulce, carob and wheat grass powders to it, with a little stevia and blend.  I drink this on my way to work and it fills me up.  We wake up and juice as well.  We juice what we have and right now we have abundance because we wanted to not feel “deprived.”  We juice most of these things together: kale, chard, celery, cilantro, parsley, broccoli, carrot, apple, ginger, beet, kiwi, strawberry, pineapple, jicama.   We don’t always add everything, the kiwi, pineapple and strawberries are eaten when we want something sweet.  Last night I cut up pineapple, kiwi and a banana and it was so good, plus it got rid of that sweet tooth.  We have had bone broth soup, I ate the last of some organic crackers I had at work, we’ve snacked on nuts, drank tea, even have peanut butter (all these are mainly organic too)… so we’re not going “crazy” but we are also not eating a whole lot other than juice.  We also just got an order of Teeccino in, oh my goodness this stuff is my favorite!  We are not drinking raw milk, we aren’t eating much meat in fact I haven’t had any since Saturday, we do plan on eating our eggs, and big huge salads!  I think the main thing here is staying off processed foods, processed meats and sugar and increasing juicing and fresh raw veggies and fruits.  Ok so that’s the lifestyle, I almost called it a “diet.”  It’s not…it’s a lifestyle.

Lets jump right into the positives, well positives so far that is.  First off I notice my body is actually wanting the juice.  You actually feel it energizing your cells and I think my body likes that. 🙂  When we juice I get a weird giddy energy, I want to drink the juice really badly.  Second, I notice higher energy levels.  That said, today I don’t feel that as much.  There is a certain detox period, that will be covered in the cons section.  The energy levels are super high after drinking the juice.  Hubby and I spent tons of time outside Saturday, came in and juiced and all of a sudden we were back up cleaning our house.  I also feel happier, I don’t know how to describe it, but I do feel a bit “lighter” in the head and heart.  My craving for sugar is reduced drastically.  I’m a sugar-aholic, Hi I’m Corri and I’m a sugar-aholic.  I actually remember a doctor telling me to try to stop eating sugar in high school, I laughed… oh if I would have listened!  Anyway, I notice that I am not tempted like I use to be or would be if I went on a “diet.”  A patient brought in some thank you caramels yesterday, they stare at me every time I walk in the break room, but I don’t have the urge to grab one like I used to.  I mean I can stop the whole positive section with this alone!  This is huge, especially for me.  I think this can prove that my body is getting all it’s nutrition and it doesn’t have to crave something, because it’s getting all it needs.  I am also having very regular bowel movements.  I consider this a plus.  I am satisfied, I’m not generally hungry, there are some occasions this is not the case but for the most part I’m full.

Now the cons.  I’m going to start with the most unpleasant, gas.  I don’t know what it is about eating raw food, but when I started looking around at people eating a new raw diet, the big complaint was gas.  Yesterday was worse than today, and I suspect it goes away, but maybe grab some lavender oil in some type of spray bottle if you work around others. 🙂  Diarrhea, really do I have to say much more?  It’s not horrible, and it didn’t start right away but there is generally a day or two where this might be a time you want to have a bathroom close by.  Headaches, I’m starting to get them more.  I think it’s from the sugar honestly, but it could be a number of things.  See when you go through something like this, there is most certainly a detox period.  In the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, Joe says that he wanted to stay in bed the first two days of his juice fast.  You feel a disconnect from the world, but also you are going through some major body changes.  Especially if you ate pretty rotten up until the point of the fast.  Hubby and I ate pretty well, sure we still enjoyed a treat here and there… but we didn’t live on McDonald’s and Taco Bell before doing this, in fact I can’t remember the last time I’ve even had them (in my 20’s I lived on that junk).   If you do, you might want to take a couple of days off and allow your healing to begin, alone.    Today I’m hungry.  I don’t know what it is, but I am.  I am also pretty tired today, again this could be a detox thing as well.  So combined with a headache, hunger and the tired I’m a little grumpy.  I want to stress A LITTLE, I’m in no way shape or form the type of grumpy I used to be (which is a huge pro).  OOPS! I forgot to mention I have a bit of a foggy head by the end of the day, that happened to me yesterday too.  And I’m dealing with some body acne, again I’m sure this is detox, this stuff has to get out of my body some way.  I guess my skin is taking the brunt of it for now.

I think that getting the right nutrition packed into juice, my body is finally on a path of healing.  God‘s way of healing, not some voodoo or some pill.  God’s creation is allowing me to become healthy again and I am forever grateful for that.  Over all I feel absolutely amazing!  I’ve been telling my coworkers all about it, I want everyone to hear about this.  I feel renewed, I feel healthy and oddly enough I keep thinking the weight has already dropped off because I just feel lighter.  Can’t be a bad thing!

Related articles

• Juice feast day 4 (including a “V17″ juice!) (iusedtobefatter.wordpress.com)
• Juicing, juicing, and more juicing. (aakissmygrass.wordpress.com)
• Joe Cross, Juicing & Joe Cross Juice (williams-sonoma.com)

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I am the 51%

The “occupy movement” is really popular up here, so I had to chuckle when I thought of the title of this blog.  Several years ago I probably would have been on board with this whole thing, but God really has humbled my heart and this once liberal is fairly conservative now.  This blog is not about the occupy movement but 51% is important…

In the last few days I have been really getting into the film Food Matters, which in my last blog I said you could sign up and watch the first 40 minutes (of an 80 minute movie) for free.  The same company that put out Food Matters is coming out with a new film on March 21 through March 31 you can watch it for free.  I love free!  Nutrition has really been my passion for the past few years.  I have been doing a lot to learn about things that I wish I had known my whole life.  My body would probably not be in the shape it’s in (hormone imbalance, insulin resistant, over weight) had I learned these things a long time ago.  But, I didn’t and I’m not going to let that hang over my head anymore, I’m learning it now and I’m grateful.

I used to go to a naturopathic doctor, she was giving me homeopathy to help with my PCOS and my symptoms.  I saw her for two years and paid every cent out of my own pocket, my health insurance didn’t cover her because she is not a MD.  I since learned that homeopathy is really not of God, in fact it’s opposite of.  I won’t get into that here if you want to read more about it you can go here  or simply search “homeopathy and Christianity/God.”  When I quit seeing her I went to another ND who did an ultra sound on me to discover my ovaries are COVERED in cysts!  It was very traumatic to see, this guy wanted to put me on Metformin, which I was totally opposed to, I never went back.  Then I got to feeling that God wanted the credit to getting me healthy.  Sure the doctors could have probably done something for me, and I probably would have been better by now, but I truly feel that God wants to heal me and when I am healed by His way, then I can shout it from the roof tops!

A side note on PCOS, when I was diagnosed (by a saliva hormone panel) I did a lot of research on how to reverse this.  There wasn’t a lot out there, pretty much Metformin was the answer, just not my answer.  I did find a lady on youtube with a channel, she posted a video about how she reversed PCOS.  I was not at the time ready for the diet she suggested, which was a raw food diet, and how she reversed her PCOS.  Times change though… 

Now, I think I have figured out what it is that He wants me to do in order to heal my body.  After watching the first half of Food Matters, it was like the light went on.  Eureka! I got it!  What I learned in the first half of Food Matters is that basically our bodies see cooked food as an invader, not only does it cause our bodies to go on the defensive and white blood cell counts climb, but cooking also makes food lose nutrients.  50% of protein is lost when meat is cooked, did you know that!? I didn’t.  Am I advocating eating raw meat? No.  Although a rare steak is quite tasty, we also have chickens and I am not afraid to eat a raw egg from them.  In fact I’ve made raw eggnog with raw milk and some of our home grown chicken eggs and it is FANTASTIC!   There was a study done that people who ate 51% of every meal, raw, were healthier and the body didn’t go into defense mode after they ate.  So the first major thing to change in our diet is to eat 51% of each of your meals in raw food.  I showed Hubby the first 40 minutes of Food Matters and he also was changed by it.  Every morning since we have woke up and had a green raw smoothie for breakfast.  The smoothie is filled with stuff we already had, banana, raw milk, stevia, kelp powder, dulce powder, protein powder (we have pea protein), carob powder, wheat grass powder,  and a super food spirulina powder.  I am a coffee-aholic.  This week I have had coffee one time, which happened to be today because of two really rough nights of sleep.  I actually woke up this morning, turned of my alarm thinking it was Saturday… reality was not my friend this morning.

 

Have I been perfect this week? Absolutely not!  Every meal (other than breakfast) has been cooked for the most part.  Although I have been eating a lot of salads for lunch.  I make a conscious effort to eat more raw food though, a banana as a snack, some pineapple,  some nuts.  Last night I made raw “ice cream” with frozen bananas some raw milk, a bit of stevia (and I added a bit of maple syrup, the real stuff) cinnamon and vanilla.  It was a tasty treat!  The next goal is to add fresh juice daily.  We have a juicer…somewhere that I need to pull out and put in a prominent place in our kitchen.  I am not to a place where I am giving up meat, we are having a slow cooked roast for dinner, oh yum!  I do feel though that adding a large portion of raw foods to each meal is a good place to start.  Especially in the morning starting out with our smoothie, anyone can start the day with a fresh smoothie it’s actually faster than cooking eggs.  I haven’t added a raw egg to the smoothie yet, but I am going to now.  I eat my own eggs raw, I don’t advocate eating store bought eggs raw, because you never know where they are coming from and what went into raising them.  Read more about the health benefits of raw eggs here.

As I sit here at work sipping my morning smoothie, with a banana and pineapple on my desk, I’m ready for the raw day.  I don’t know what’s up ahead, but I do know I feel like I’m on the right track.  I highly recommend you take the 40 minutes out of your day and go to http://www.foodmatters.tv/ simply add your name and email address to have instant access to the first 40 minutes, I intend on paying $4.95 today to finish the video.  And on March 21-31st you can watch the whole new movie they have out called Hungry for Change by going here  you can sign up to be invited to watch the movie for free during those days.  They have some teaser videos on the website too so you can get your interests sparked like I did mine.  I promise it will change your life if you allow it to.

 

 

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Hungry for Change

I subscribe to a lot of different people who have different philosophies, some of them are raw food people.  My opinion?  I don’t think I have one.  I have tried to be raw, but it isn’t as easy for me, maybe I wasn’t ready, or maybe I just love a steak every now and then.  One of the raw food people I get blog updates on is Kevin and AnnMarie at http://renegadehealth.com.  I started out watching their youtube channel, and I highly recommend them.  I do learn a lot from them.  They just suggested a movie called Hungry for Change you can watch the trailer here   WOW WOW and more WOW!  Hungry for Change is really what our world needs.  There are many different speakers in this film even Jamie Oliver who’s Food Revolution has really sparked an interest in my heart to make good changes in cooking food at home.  I do have a love/hate relationship with food though.  I learned at a very young age to make it comfort rather than nutrition and necessity.  I remember being a kid and eating my heart out when no one was around, it made me feel better… it still does sometimes.  In fact I was pretty sure my cat was dying Sunday and Hubby took me out for fried food.  My tummy paid that price later, but the food was comforting going in. (And my cat didn’t die, Praise God! But she doesn’t have years and years left that is for sure)  I “know” a lot but there is still part of me that is broken, a recent blogger “friend” posted a book review on The Obesity Epidemic and I think that is something that I really need to get on reading.  Another yahoo group I belong to just posted about weight loss and many were chiming in that most people who have weight issues also have emotional issues that they “comfort” with food, often time sexual, physical and mental abuse occurred to them and it’s safer to be in a “fat suit” than to be real and healthy and attractive.  I can relate.  Although I don’t want to be here anymore.  I want out of this fat suit!  I want food to be nutrition for me, not comfort.  I think MANY people struggle with this, or it wouldn’t be an epidemic.  I also think that many people don’t know how to start, and don’t know the truth about real food or the truth about fake food.

Hungry for Change is offering a free viewing of this film if you go to their website and sign up, sign up is easy: just your name and email address.  The free showing is March 21-31 2012.  Go here to sign up http://www.hungryforchange.tv/.

I urge you to take a look at your own life, are there things in what you are eating that you can’t pronounce?  Do you live on sugar or diet sodas?  Is there something that you can do to change your health?  Are you always tired?  Do you have trouble sleeping? Are you on so many medications your head spins?  God didn’t intend for us to live this way.  I believe there is a better way, let’s find it and change this destructive path, if not for us then for the next generation.

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