Posting this up here cause it's soo not appropriate for my tech blog.

So Jay sends me a link to http://community.livejournal.com/wtf_nature/399189.html

I wasn't logged into LJ at the time, and when I clicked the link, it asked me to verify that I was over 14 because the post contained adult content. Knowing the sorts of links that get passed around work, I warily logged in and was surprised to just find a post about the largest stingray in the world.

I wondered (out loud) why this post was flagged adult, but then... I started reading out of context:



Quote from BWC in reply to my reading: "What is that, from Penthouse?"

The Medieval Faire is going to be the last weekend of Jan and the first weekend of Feb. Admission is $12/person/day, but I have a ton of $1 off coupons, so I guess it's really only $11. On Friday, Feb 1, admission is half-price, but I know Friday might be a tough day for some people. Either way, it's not that much.

Here's a bunch of info on it: http://www.gvlculturalaffairs.org/website/programs_events/HMF/medieval_index.html

Let me know when you guys want to come up and we'll figure out plans. My roommate is going to be in the Living Chessboard, so we have to make sure that we see it at least once. :)

I'll be down Deltona-ways for Christmas.

Driving down on Sunday the 23rd (maybe the 24th if I'm still really freaking sick on Sunday), driving back, I dunno, the 27th I think? Whenever my parents are leaving for vacation, its either the 26th or 27th.

So, comment, email, hit up my phone! I wants to see my friends!

Hey everyone, I know I suck at keeping up with LJ these days, but I have a favor to ask. If you have like 5 minutes, can you go to http://digg.com/music/Grooveshark_-_screenshots_and_Q_A and click the Digg it button?

If you don't already have a digg account, it only takes a minute to signup, and they don't spam you with anything.

Digg is pretty cool, so who knows, you might find having an account there useful anyway :)

And if anyone wants to sign up for Grooveshark, put in an account request and let me know, and I'll make sure you get your account faster. You can also just mention in the "how did you hear about us" that you're a friend of one of the developers.

Holy shit, remember this?

THE GUY WHO DROPPED THE FLIERS IS ONE OF MY NEW CO-WORKERS.

Man, I love my new job.

http://digg.com/music/Escape_Media_Group_Introduces_Grooveshark_the_First_Legal_Peer_to_Peer_On

Yesterday was the release date for the Nintendo Wii: the console that me and Daniel have been lusting after for over a year. I've never bought a console on launch day before. Heck, I didn't even get a PS1 until after the PS2 had already been released, and didn't get a PS2 until after the first price drop. If you've kept up with video game news at all (or heck, even the regular news), I'm sure you all know how crazy the launch of a new console can be. People camping outside of stores for days or even weeks, systems going for tens of thousands of dollars on eBay, people being trampled or even shot: in every way, the launch of a new video game console distills everything that is terrible about living in a capitalistic culture.

Yesterday, we got a Nintendo Wii. I only played with it for a couple hours before I completely passed out from exhaustion, and still haven't even seen Zelda or Red Steel (the two games we bought with it), only Wii Sports, but it is already the most fun I've had with a video game system in ages.

But as with any great endeavor, the journey was even more important than the destination. As you read my story, you may think what we went through to get a Wii ridiculous. "It's just a video game," you may say. Or, "If you just waited a couple weeks, you could easily walked into any store and picked one off the shelf." But I would not trade the experience (or expeWiience, hehe) I had this weekend for all the video games in the world.

( My Wii story starts on Saturday, at 5 pm... )

It was a long and exhausting weekend. My lips and face are chapped from the cold, my body is stiff, I still haven't had enough sleep, and have had a horrible headache all day, and in the end we had to pay a little extra to get our Wii on launch day. But it's all worth it. Every second.

We made new friends in Dana and Jenna. We enjoyed a night of camaraderie with our fellow campers. We met a crazy rich hipster who sold us a Wii, got to see his beautiful home, and gave him a birthday card. We got to explore the beautiful city of St Petersburg, and enjoy the view of the bay from I-275 (twice). We got two games we never would have been able to get in Gainesville or from Gamefly, and got an second controller for half-price. We drank delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice. We enjoyed a gorgeous day out and about together.

We got a Wii, on launch day.

Not much to say. Week 3 was really hard cause of my cycle - I was craving all sorts of foods, and I think water retention made the scale lie. High quality dark chocolate is a great way to take care of a chocolate craving btw, it takes only a small amount to satisfy. Look for a dark chocolate that actually states the cocoa percentage on the label, that tends to be a mark of a high quality brand, so you get very rich chocolate flavor without bitterness, but also without a lot of added sugar.

Week 4 weight: 272 lbs

So that's a total loss of 8 lbs over 4 weeks. That's really good actually. 2 pounds a week is about as fast as you can go without it becoming unhealthy. Especially good since I cracked and ate a bunch of pizza Thursday night. Stupid commercials. Stupid triple-sausage, double-bell-pepper, and onion. I figured it was better to just go ahead and eat the pizza and get it over with, rather than be constantly thinking about that pizza and maybe wind up eating other crap to try and get rid of the craving. It was Papa Johns too, so it made me feel even more shitty the next day (for some unknown reason Papa Johns aggrivates my fibromyalgia). It tasted damn good, but I think I'm done with pizza for a while. Which was sorta the point of me getting it.

Ordered sushi again last night, which honestly, was even better than the pizza. I'm developing a serious sushi addiction. Especially since I've found a place that delivers good sushi for a pretty good price. They had a special last night, order at least $20 of sushi and get free mochi ice cream. Well, $20 of sushi is easy with 3 people, so I got some. I didn't know what it was, but the flavors (which it said you got one each of) were mango, green tea, and mocha espresso, so I figured I couldn't go wrong, lol. Apparently, mochi is sticky rice pounded into a sticky paste with sugar and flavorings. Mochi ice cream is a small (golf-ballish) scoop of ice cream coated in mochi, so you can pick it up and eat it with your fingers. It was delicious, especially the mango flavor. Not raw of course, but it was free! And I always like trying new things.

We got the coolest spam mail today in the support box. I'm pretty sure it's just random bits of things strung together to confuse bayesian filters, but somehow it almost makes sense. It's like a new form of poetic prose. So I thought I'd share. The title is the subject line of the mail:

Philanthropic Cocky

I find myself more and more at odds with it. When we live under a strict
code, we end up murdering each other in the name of God. Nothing like
snuggling by a fire with something to scare the hell out of you. As I
said, it is registered under the name, Corey Anderson.
Humanity continues to prove me correct. Case in point with this one.
So I enjoy the cool temperatures.
I drove down the dirt roads this morning and trees dropped bright orange
and yellow leaves onto the gravel.
No Peanut Festival in Fort Lauderdale. If you can only putt along in
First gear for a while, do it.
Everything resetting, recalibrating. I know, I know: the thought is far
worse than the event. I have to leave and get cash and come back.
The fair meant less, or so I thought.
The third installment was my favorite, but they all warranted a playing
or twelve. I also had a Columbian Boa for years named Zeus.
Easy to reach if you, for some weird reason, enjoy re-reading those
things over and again until your eyes bleed. I hope I can see it again
some day soon. I am in the evacuation shelter now, brickabrack and
various animals fly by the boarded windows. , a chronically depressed
person, tries a little of everything to make it.
Dude, you know I am to be spritzed liberally three times a day.
The Orkin man fargin killed my iguana, how do you like that? But I
suppose the last thing I should be doing is lamenting everything until I
become as depressed as ever. Tender the plastic once again and wait for
the return. Maybe some plants, a little waterfall, heck, maybe even a
jacuzzi.
I hand him my information, which he stares at for a moment. When we live
under a strict code, we end up murdering each other in the name of God.
I stepped in thinking Mom and Pop diner and ended up with a magnificent
meal. I am still, even in this age of pill-popping, nervous at the idea
of having chemicals altered. They are not easy to care for, and can be
hell to manage. I have changed my entire life. Oh, I was thankful for
him last night, no doubt.
The only time I can ever remember getting swiped at by him was when I
had my hand in between him and certain prey. I kissed a girl if not for
the first time, damn close to it at The Fair. That the only way to quell
my incessant need to worry, have anxiety and dive headlong into
crippling depression at nearly nothing is to numb me.

So it is at least partially PMS, I started like only an hour after that last post. I feel a lot better about my crazy cravings the last few days. And hooray for working girly bits, even if they are a bit reluctant. You know, I ovulated like a week after I started eating raw, after not having a period for 3 months. I think that says something.

And remember how I couldn't figure out what to do with the raw milk since I don't like to drink milk plain? Well I figured it out a few days ago. The strawberries at the store didn't look good and cost like $5/qt (not in season), so at some vague subconcious prompting I couldn't place, I bought peaches, even though I had no idea what they had to do with milk (for some reason, blending up a fantastic-smelling peach in the blender just to put it in a glass of milk seems sacreligous).

After I got home with the peaches I remembered a snack my mom used to make me all the time as a little girl. She'd slice a whole peach up into a bowl, sprinkle it with sugar, then pour milk over it. After you eat the peaches, the milk is sweet and just barely peach flavored as you drink it down. Go go subconcious!

Slight raw modification: raw honey drizzled over the peaches, and raw milk poured in the bowl. It's like a bowl of cereal only sweet and juicy. You know how people always call the "land of milk and honey" a paradise? Honey-sweetened milk is too good for words. I'm eating a bowl of this right now, and it completely kicks the pants off the stupid burrito I had for lunch.

I wanted to hang out at the farmers market this afternoon. I brought a sketchpad and I was gonna sit and listen to the music and people-watch and sketch. But it was raining off and on all day, and when I went to the market it was so HUMID that it nearly set off my asthma. It's been like breathing pudding out there today. So I had to just get some milk and veggies and come straight home to the A/C. Sucks, cause I really wanted to get OUT of the house today. Meh.

And thank you everyone for the hugs and wellwishes. I'll prolly respond to comments on last post better tomorrow, I'm gonna go to the bookstore now.

I didn't sleep well at ALL last night. It was kinda hot in my room (I love fall, except for the bit when it suddenly becomes summer again), and I wound up having nightmares, and the alarm had trouble waking me in the morning, in that particularly maddening I-hear-a-constant-annoying-sound-in-my-head-it-won't-go-away-oh-god-I'm-going-mad way.

The nightmares sorta ran together, but in the first part, we had a new roommate, who was an adult baby (like the fetish) for some reason. And somehow Smudge had had kittens (she is fixed in real life). The new roommate poured something on the kittens, oil or gas or something, and set them on fire. I found out and saved them before they actually died, but they were very very hurt and the possibility of their death was still really high. I confronted him about what he'd done in front of the other roommates, but he just acted like he was a baby, and didn't understand the consequences of what he'd done. And the other roommates (not my real life roommates, but the ones I had in the dream), just all went along with it. They still all thought it was horrible, but that I shouldn't hold him so responsible because he didn't know what he was doing. And I was just like, "He's a fucking adult, I don't care what he wants to pretend about himself, but underneath he is still an ADULT and understands what the fuck he did."

There was a little interlude between the nightmarish parts, but sorta all the same dream, because I was still in the same apartment with these roommates, where one of the roommates was doing some sort of weird sex game, where he had this checklist of types of guys he had to hook up with. He brought home some really stereotypical redneck trucker and they went off to his room. He sent the trucker guy to his room first, and then pulled out his list and marked one off, and was like, "Haha, got one!" The rest of us just kinda rolled our eyes. I thought the game was really stupid, and that he was going to get sick of men by the end of his list, despite the fact that he was a total slut. He was also bisexual, and I knew he always got bored of too much of the same thing.

So I went back to my room. Now for some reason, the birdcage was in my room too, as well as the rat cages which were set up like they are right now in real life (Mal and Jayne in the secondary cage, Haru, Sheeg, Yuki in the big cage - ugh rat drama). I was sitting on my bed reading for a bit, and then I saw movement where there shouldn't have been any. I got up to discover that Mal and Jayne had chewed a hole in the plastic base of their cage, and then chewed another hole in the big cage. Mal and Jayne were still in their cage, but the big boys had gotten out, and somehow into the bird's cage. I freaked out and got them out, but all the feathers were ripped out of Sprite's head, and I was really worried he was going to have a heart attack or something, because he is already the most paranoid bird in the world. I wasn't angry at the rats, because that's the sort of thing that would happen with rats and a parakeet stuck in the same small space. Rats'll eat small birds if they have the opportunity. But it was still horrible, and now both my cages had holes in the them, and where was I supposed to put the rats? And I couldn't put them all together, cause since they'd been living apart for about a week, they'd almost certainly fight unless I did re-introductions, especially since fighting is why I separated them in the first place.

And of course to top it all off, the alarm was going off, but it wasn't enough to pull me out of this horrible dream, so I'm standing there, holding rats, trying to figure out what the fuck to do, with this beeping sound in my head that won't go away, and isn't being caused by any known outside source, so it's all in my head and won't go away and oh god I'm going crazy, this is it.

So that's how my day began, once the alarm penetrated enough for me to actually wake up. I haven't had coffee since I started eating raw, but I may have to make an exception today. Some things can only be fixed by a caramel-vanilla latte.

I have been lazy about posting, sorry. Been doing fairly well eating raw over the past week, though obviously can't remember exactly what I ate every day. Cooked food over the last week was veggie lasagna on two occasions, sushi on three occasions (the rice and nori are cooked, though the fish was raw), three packets of Alaskan salmon (I was seriously craving fish all week, I must have been getting low on some nutrient somewhere), and a bowl of miso soup with one of the sushi meals.

I only lost 1 pound this week, probably due to eating more cooked and also a lot of fruit. I was hungry a lot this week, and as mentioned above had MAJOR fish cravings. I couldn't find lox at the grocery store, and their salmon filets looked meh, so I wound up buying a couple packets of cooked salmon (from the tuna aisle). I need to scope out the local fish markets, I know there's a couple. I didn't eat much guacamole this week, might have contributed to me being more hungry in general.

I ate a lot of very tasty fruit salads made with fresh pineapple, a banana, and an apple. It works well together cause the pineapple stops the banana and apple from going brown. The apples I had this week were Galas, and they weren't really the best. Very mild flavor and softer flesh, especially compared to all the granny smiths I ate the week before. The granny smiths go better with the almond butter than the galas.

I was able to get a half gallon of raw milk at the farmers market this week. It's good, as milk goes, though I've never been much of a fan of milk on its own to begin with. I need to get some strawberries or something to blend into it and make flavored milk. Maybe I'll hold off on the raw milk again until strawberry season. I'd put it in my smoothies, but the yogurt already takes care of the dairy part. I guess if I want a runnier smoothie, I could add a little milk too. I don't know what else to do with it.

I tried making an "apple pie" from a recipe I found on fromsadtoraw.com. The crust is supposed to be made with chopped pecans and walnuts blended with dates to form a sort of paste you can spread as the crust, then the filling is apples, a little lemon juice, cinnamon and nutmeg also all blended together in the processor. I didn't have dates, so I used raisins. The crust was really good, sticky and sweet and nutty. The filling was meh. Again, those gala apples didn't really have the flavor or texture to compete with the crust, and the specified amounts of the spices in the recipe were too much for my tastes (and again, overwhelmed the bland gala apples). It seems Galas are really only good for eating plain and by themselves. I've been considering making the crust again, only rolling it up in little balls and then rolling the balls in more chopped nuts or something to make little sweet nutty treats.

I might start writing down everything I eat, but only posting it once a week in a sorta roundup form, both so I don't get burned out posting every day and to spare your friends pages.

( Raw Week 2 Roundup )

Is LJ being totally stupid for anyone else today? Half the posts I click on are getting weird database errors. I hope this post goes through ok.

Day 7 (Sat, 10/7/06)

Today is a measurement day! Took all measurements when I got up. 6 pounds lost! And it must be real weight, not water weight, because my measurements are smaller too. That's a bit much for a week, I really hope I'm not throwing my body into starvation mode, cause that's bad. Though looking through some other raw journals online, it looks like 6-7 pounds in the first week is pretty normal for people diving into high raw, especially when starting out very overweight. So maybe I don't need to be so concerned.

Looking back at what I ate over the past week, I guess I was pretty sucessful at being high raw, despite the couple cooked things I ate. I'd estimate it was probably at least 95% overall, if not a bit higher, with some days at 100%. That makes me feel a lot better about the cooked things I did eat (Subway sub, McDs asian salad, crockpot chicken). They were fairly healthy cooked things, and they accounted for very little of the food I ate. I don't feel guilty about them now, and that's good. Guilt and food are a very bad combination.

So for now on, I will try to not guilt myself out of eating something cooked, as long as it's something I truly want. I doubt I'll be eating any more Subway subs, but a little roasted chicken is not the end of the world, and maybe I can have a slice of Nathan's broccoli-squash lasagna next time he makes it. And baked sweet potatoes are ok, and if there is another vegetable I need to steam or bake in order to eat, I'll try to be okay with that. I have to remember that I'm not eating cooked food because I choose not to eat it, not because I'm "not allowed" to eat it. In fact, it would probably be even better to say that I don't eat it because I choose to eat something else.

I'll come back later tonight or tomorrow to edit in the day's food, but I wanted to post now about measurements.

( Raw Day 7 Stats and Week 1 measurements )

Day 6 (Friday, 10/6/06)

Slept in til 2 pm, and then played Okami all day. Banana smoothie once I got hungry, and two bananas later as a snack. Then in the evening decided to make a salad, since I had that greenleaf lettuce, spinach, and arugula to eat. I've never had arugula before. I'd heard it was bitter, but I like spinach, so I figured it couldn't be too bad. I was only going to add a little bit at first anyway. Washed and tore up some lettuce and spinach (the spinach I got is soo pretty, dark green on top and rich purple underneath), then got out the arugula. I could smell it even in the bag, and once I started tearing some up, I could REALLY smell it. Nathan was in the kitchen, and it made his eyes start to water like I was cutting onions. Faced with such powerful leaves, I decided to try a little taste before I ate my salad. Seriously, all I put in my mouth was a bit the size of a postage stamp. OMG it was horrible. It was hot like radish, but not sweet like radish. Hot and bitter. So I picked it all out of my salad (though I discovered while eating that I missed one!). Cut up two small tomatoes and added them to the salad too. Made a dressing with olive oil, my raw cider vinegar, and some italian seasoning (dried oregano and basil). Delicious salad, except for the piece of arugula I missed. Then had another banana smoothie later on.

So now I have a whole bag of arugula and don't know what to do with it, since there is NO WAY I'm eating it as is. Does anyone have any experience with arugula? If I throw it in the juicer, can I drown the taste in carrots, or will it just ruin the carrot juice? I should probably ask that question in a raw community instead, heh.

( Raw Day 6 Stats )

Stayed up too late again, oh well, I guess it is my weekend.

Day 5 (Thursday, 10/5/06)

Had my usual banana smoothie for breakfast. Took some apples and almond butter to work as a snack, intending to come home for lunch, but Andrew called in sick, so I didn't take a lunch. Ate 2 apples with almond butter when I got hungry. Had guacamole with cucumber slices when I got home. Got hungry later in the evening, and decided to try to make a soup. Looked up a whole crapload of gazpacho recipes online, and have come to the conclusion that you can put ANYTHING in a cold soup and call it gazpacho. Decided to try one of the recipes I found, that was made with avocado, cucumber, tomato, hot pepper (didn't have any so added some chili powder), and lemon/lime juice. To give it some extra texture, I sliced up a green pepper and two mushrooms and sprinkled them on top. Meh. It was... edible. I only ate about a third of it, mostly just scooping out the green pepper bits and eating them. I tossed the rest.

I was still hungry, and Nathan had made a whole chicken in the crockpot. I had been resisting the smell coming off the crockpot while it cooked, but once the lid came off to serve it, it just smelled too good, especially after my soup failure. I had a drumstick and some breast meat, and took off the skin.

I stayed up way too late.

( Raw Day 5 Stats )

I did not get enough sleep the night before yesterday, mostly due to rat drama. Jayne has been getting into fights with someone, and coming out with bites. Never happened when I was there, of course, so I can't tell for sure who's doing it, but I suspected Yuki, since he has a history of biting me, and none of my other rats has ever bitten anyone. I'd moved Yuki to the old cage, planning to check Jayne everyday and make sure he wasn't getting any more injuries to confirm it was Yuki that was doing it. Just as I was going to sleep though, I heard peeping from the rat cage that I recognized as Jayne. So I turned on the light, put on my glasses and lay on the bed so I could watch the rats while I dozed, and be able to see what was going on if any fighting woke me up. Sigh. Jayne kept bugging Shigure while Sheeg was trying to sleep in the hammock. It looked like he was trying to box with the hammock. If Jayne's been picking the fights that are getting him injured, I'm gonna be really pissed. And this morning (thursday, not wed like the rest of this post), Sheeg had a bite on his butt. Dammit, I never would have thought it was Sheeg, he's usually such a sweetie. Sheeg has now joined Yuki in the old cage, at least until both him and Jayne heal up. I'm probably gonna have to get some neuters done. I was already thinking of neutering Yuki to see if it got him to stop biting me so randomly, and if Jayne really is the one picking these fights, I might have to get him neutered too.

Had my usual banana-egg smoothie for breakfast. This was the last of the non-fat yogurt, so now I get to try the whole milk yogurt. Had an apple with almond butter as a snack around noon, and took a late lunch at 2. I knew the kitchen at home was a mess, and I didn't have the energy to try and prepare food around it, so I went to McDs and got an asian chicken salad. Not very raw I know, but still fairly healthy. The chicken was pretty tasty (real chicken breast, not like that crap at subway), the lettuce was mostly iceburg (meh), and the mandarin orange slices were WAY too sweet. They tasted like candy. I guess that's more of my tastebuds changing with the raw food.

After work I went to the Union Street Farmers Market, which is right in the middle of downtown. It was pretty awesome. Much better than the one I went to that one Saturday. Lots of booths, some with produce, some with jewelry or clothing, some with fresh baked goods, live plants, and even live music. One booth was from a local farm offering both pastuerized and raw milk and meat from organic grass-fed cows! Hooray I found it! Except he was already sold out of the raw milk when I got there. :( Hopefully I can get some next week. The raw milk was $5 for a half gallon, which was expensive but probably worth it, and the beef was REALLY expensive. I don't remember all the prices, but I do remember that one of the lowest was ground beef at $9/lb.

I bought a bunch of tomatoes, some arugula, some spinach (Yes! I found spinach! It's weird purple spinach, but still!), some eggplants (I have no idea what to do with them, but they were 3 for $1 and looked really good. They must be in season at that price. I'll figure something out), and this really weird looking squash. It's pale green and like 3 feet long. The guy called it an Italian squash, and was giving out free samples from one he had cut open (probably the best way to get people to buy something so weird looking, hey it worked on me!). He said it tasted like cucumber raw, and that most people cook it like zucchini. It really does taste like cucumber, only a little sweeter, and the texture is more firm and fleshy like a zucchini. Then I went to Albertons and bought more bananas and avocados, since neither was available at the market (I think Haas avocados are from California anyway).

Went home to find Bobby cleaning the kitchen (which was good), but realized I still have no place to put the huge squash. Got fed up with lack of counterspace in our otherwise huge kitchen and went to Walmart to buy a folding table. WTF they cost a lot more than I thought they would! Found one that was 2' x 4' for $30. It actually fits nicely in the kitchen, and can be my own personal counterspace for all my raw stuff (like juicer, food processor, blender, etc), since the main counter is covered in cooking stuff (like microwave, toaster oven, foreman grill) that I don't use anymore.

Between lack of sleep the night before and walking around the farmers market and walmart, I was hot and sweaty and tired, and my back and ankles were hurting. Went to take a shower, then lay on the bed to cool off in front of the fan. Fell asleep for a bit, then woke up enough to set the alarm, hang up my towel, and take an aleve and then went back to bed for real.

( Raw Day 4 Stats )
Wow, I didn't eat much, I guess cause I went to bed so early.

Got up and had a banana smoothie as usual. I had to buy new bananas, so this time they weren't already brown when I froze them. The smoothies were better with the brown bananas, probably because they were sweeter. Still really good though. Had an apple as a snack at about 11, then went home for lunch at noon. I made a bowl of guacamole and sliced up two yellow squash, and used the squash slices to scoop up the guacamole. The guacamole was really good, couldn't really taste the squash under it. After I got back to work I started feeling really nauseous and bloated again. At first I thought maybe I just ate too fast (was in a little hurry so I could get back to work before my break was over), but as it got really bad, I realized it was the same way I felt the other night when I had cucumber and squash. Both times I had eaten the squash that I had bought at the farmers market. So I think the squash made me sick. I have two left, I don't think I'm going to eat them. Made myself a cup of mint herbal tea to try to calm my stomach down.

After work, I drove Nathan to Micanopy to pick up his car. It was a really nice day, on the way back I opened my car window and enjoyed the fresh air and all the nature that surrounds 441. Between that and reading urbpan's urban nature posts all the time, it really inspired me to get my camera working again, and take pictures of the nature that surrounds me. Gainesville (and Alachua county in general) really is a gorgeous place to live. How convenient that I check my friend's list today and find that urbpan has just created a community for everyone to post their urban nature pictures! Is that a sign or what? Check it out: urban_nature. I picked up a new CF card on the way home, just gotta dig out my camera and get the card formatted right.

Bit after I got home I got the munchies, so had some cucumber slices with the raw apple cider vinegar I bought the other day. Good but strong! Usual evening, hung out, played video games (FFXII actually, and yes, that game is not supposed to be released until the end of the month, and no, we're not playing it in Japanese. Hehe). Nathan made steak, man it smelled good, got me really hungry. So I sliced up an apple and ate it with my raw almond butter. That was really tasty. Then before I knew it, it was bedtime. Oh yeah, and in the interest of full disclosure, Nathan brought home a huge tub of honey roasted peanuts from his parents. I ate one.

( Raw Day 3 Stats )

Here is a collection of my raw recipes. This post is going in my memories, and new recipes will be added whenever I find or create them! Each recipe will also have it's own cut, to hopefully make linking to a single recipe easier.

Note for anyone who doesn't know me: A lot of these recipes won't be vegan or even vegetarian. I eat raw eggs, live dairy yogurt, raw fish, raw beef (if I can find organic grass-fed), and raw milk and cheese (or at least I plan to if I can find it, it's sold for "pet consumption only" here in FL).

Smoothies

( Banana-egg Smoothie )


Dips

( Guacamole )

So, got up yesterday morning about about a quarter after 7. Not so bad, only the usual "I just woke up" sleepiness. Made a banana-egg smoothie for breakfast, though I left out the nutmeg and cinnamon this time, and it was actually even better. The first 4 hours of work went by really fast, and I didn't start to feel hungry at all until about 11:30ish. It was kinda amusing when I glanced at the clock around 11:40 and briefly thought it was almost time to go home. Ate a small granny smith apple at about noon. I was the only lead on duty, so no lunch break. I didn't really have anything useful to bring to work with me for food, so I just brought a bunch of the granny smiths I had bought for juicing. They weren't the best for eating, they were just a little too tart, and their flesh was fairly hard. Had another at 1:20 and 2 pm, by which point I was sick of apples.

Went home at 5, totally starving. Made the mistake of not eating right away and my blood sugar started to drop. Ate a mango, it was really tasty. Realized I didn't have much other useful food in the house, and was even out of bananas and low on yogurt for smoothies. I decided to take a calculated gamble so I could get some more food before Wednesday. I had an outstanding check I sent to my mom (car payment) that hadn't cleared yet. My parents left for vacation on Thursday, and aren't getting back until well after I get paid. I doubt they'd deposit my check while on vacation, and if they deposited it Thursday, I should have seen it clear either Friday or Monday, and it hadn't. So I took some cash out (also minimizing risk if my gambled failed, with a single withdrawal I should only get one overdraft fee if the worst happens, whereas several small debit transactions would all get charged, especially since Wachovia uses evil "hold" math when you use the debit card), and went to Mother Earth market, hoping I could find some of the stuff I couldn't find at Wards there.

I bought:

jar of raw almond butter (expensive! but after my sunflower seed disaster the other day, probably worth not trying to make my own, especially since raw almonds are over $8/lb anyway)

big bottle of raw apple cider vinegar (the vinegar I used on cucumbers the other day was cooked red wine vinegar. now I can have it on my cucumbers raw, and also good for salad dressings)

packet of untoasted nori (also expensive! basically it's raw sushi wrappers)

tub of whole milk plain yogurt (for my smoothies. I haven't seen whole milk yogurt in years! it's always low-fat or no-fat. anything that packs more nutrition in my smoothies is cool with me)

big jar of raw wildflower honey (sorta expensive but not really cause the jar is pretty big and I won't go through honey that fast. they also had orange blossom and tupelo honey, but the wildflower had the darkest richest color, and the darker the honey, the more antioxidents it contains)

some green lentils and whole oat groats (I'm going to try to sprout these)

Then I went to Albertsons and got more eggs, some celery, a couple avocados, some more bananas, some broccoli, some greenleaf lettuce, a couple red bell peppers, and some roma tomatoes. Then I went home because I was starving again! The mango was wearing off and my blood sugar was dropping again.

I made guacamole, with one Haas avocado, a medium-small tomato, about a quarter of a small onion, a small spoonful of minced garlic, and some fresh cilantro, with a little (non-raw) lemon juice to keep it from browning. It was fantastic! I think the cilantro is what really makes it for me. It's one of my favorite herbs, adding a little kick without adding heat. I ripped one of my nori sheets up into little squares, and ate the guacamole wrapped up in each one. The nori was really good too. You don't usually taste the nori much when you eat sushi. I'm not sure if that's because it's toasted or what, but the untoasted nori tasted just like the seaweed crackers I used to snack on as a kid.

A bit later I decided to try the almond butter, more to see what it was like than because I was all that hungry again. I got a celery stalk and spread the almond butter on it like you'd usually do peanut butter. Consensus: almond butter = delicious, almond butter on celery = not so much. Maybe next time I'll try it on apple or something instead.

It was weird getting sleepy so early. I started feeling sleepy around 10, and by 11 I could barely keep my eyes open. Took a shower and was in bed before midnight.

( Raw Day 2 Stats )

I should make a single post to start collecting recipes for stuff. Then I can link to the recipes, and put it in my memories, so if anyone else wants them, they're easy to find. I think I'll work on that next. I should also make an icon just for these types of posts :)

Technically Day 1 was yesterday, but I can't write out the whole day until I've lived it, so my postings will just be a day behind.

Got home Saturday night at midnight, and was absolutely starving. I made myself a smoothie with a banana, approx half cup of plain yogurt (not measured or anything, but looked like it was around that much), dash of vanilla extract, and two raw eggs. It was pretty good, but would have been better if it were colder and more smoothie-like. I put my remaining two bananas in the freezer to help this out for future smoothies (they were getting brown anyway, I wouldn't have eaten them plain).

KATE'S RAW FOOD TIP OF THE DAY:
If you want to freeze bananas (like, for smoothies or sorbet or what-have-you), PEEL THEM FIRST, don't just shove them in the freezer whole. Otherwise, you'll end up like me, standing over the garbage can holding a freezing cold banana, using a knife to peel it like it was a carrot or something. LOL, as you can tell, I've learned that the hard way.

I still felt hungry after the smoothie, but I waited 20 minutes to see if it would go away before eating more. It didn't go away, so I sliced up a sweet potato, seasoned it with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a little italian seasoning, and baked it for 20 minutes. It was good, though I hadn't tried the italian seasoning on them before, and I actually prefer them without. Unfortunately, the potato was a bit too much, and I wound up feeling kinda bloated. I put some of my raw almonds and raw sunflower seeds in some filtered water to soak before I went to bed.

Went to bed around 4ish, got up at 10 am (go me!), and was REALLY thirsty. I've actually been a lot thirstier ever since I started eating more raw, even though my food has had higher water content than before. I guess my body is trying to flush stuff out. So I drank a few glasses of water, figuring my body would let me know when it was ready for food. Also, weighed and took measurements (see below). Started getting hungry around noon, and made another banana-egg smoothie. It was MUCH better with the frozen banana. I also added a little cinnamon and nutmeg to it, but you couldn't really taste it very well.

Started getting hungry again around 3:30 and decided to make something with my raw nuts (since they had been soaking about 12 hours). I wanted to try to make a nut butter with my sunflower seeds, and spread it on some yellow squash or something. I figured the seeds were too small for my big food processor to handle, so tried to use my blender. Ugh. I'm not sure exactly where I went wrong (do I need to dehydrate the soaked seeds first?), but it was nasty and I threw them out. The blender wasn't very good at chopping the tiny seeds either, and it made this sorta cold grey sunflower seed flavored chunky paste. The nut butter recipes I've read say to add a little oil, so I tried adding a little olive oil and it got even worse. The sunflower seed taste was not enough to overpower the olive oil taste, so then it tasted like both at the same time. I also tried eating a soaked almond, and it was kinda bleh. I liked them better before soaking and that's not saying much. And I wasn't the biggest fan of almonds to begin with, even before trying them raw. I dunno, maybe I need a dehydrator to really get any use out of soaked nuts. I was still really hungry, but I remembered that I had a few ears of corn in the fridge. I cut the kernels off two ears of corn into a bowl, and ate it with just a little salt. It was really good! Sweet and juicy.

Picked Daniel up from work @ 6:30. We had this Subway coupon that was expiring that day, that we had meant to use all month. It was 4 6-inch subs for $10.99, and since 4 people live in our apartment, we had planned to all use it together. I didn't want to get just a veggie sub, since that would defeat the point (a 6 inch veggie sub would be cheaper without the coupon), but I know their deli meat is really processed, so I got a grilled chicken sub. Well, the meat was overprocessed anyway. Oh well. Apparently my taste buds are changing already. The cheese (which I always used to love) tasted way too strong. The bread was actually really tasty, but the meat had no flavor. The tastiest part of the whole sandwich was the bell pepper. Wow, was it good. I didn't feel that good after eating it, bleh.

Nathan made lasagna with broccoli and yellow squash later in the evening, and dear lord it smelled good. I said no thanks to it though, but the smell still made me hungry. I was hungry a lot yesterday. I need to learn how to make all those cool raw dishes I see on the interwebs! (getting paid would help too, man, I can't wait til Wednesday). I sliced a cucumber and put a little vinegar on it, and sliced a yellow squash, and (since I love yellow squash sauteed, but not quite into the taste of it raw yet) put a little soy sauce and sesame oil on it. I was hoping it would remind me of how it tastes stir fried, but it wound up being a bit too strong. Sigh. I'm not very good at this yet. Plus, I guess either my eyes were bigger than my tummy, or something, because I felt very bloated and nauseous after. It was getting late, so I took a shower and went to bed.

Oh, and I played Okami all day. Man, that game is awesome.

( Raw Day 1 Stats )

I was hungry all day, and looking at what I ate, I'm not surprised. I think I need to work out some sort of menu, like a standard breakfast, a couple easy-to-take-to-work lunches, a bunch of snacks, and some good solid dinners. I do better with routines, and it will make shopping easier too. I really like the banana-egg smoothies, and they make a great breakfast that's easy to make and drink before work, so breakfast is covered, but then I'm lost the rest of the day. I want to lose weight because I eat healthy food, not because I'm only getting like 500 calories a day. Sucks that so many of the really cool uncooking requires a dehydrator. Nice ones are expensive!

So yeah, taking ideas on good recipes that I can make without a dehydrator, that will make sure I get enough calories in a day.

Oh, and this stupid spinach e.coli thing is starting to piss me off. When I first thought about going raw, I was really looking forward to eating a lot of spinach salads, and now I can't find spinach anywhere. Not even non-bagged spinach. It's like spinach has been wiped from the face of the earth. I want spinach, dammit. And spinach looks really funny after typing it so many times. I had to spellcheck it cause it looked so wrong.