Raw Vegan Diet - What's in my pantry?

Yesterday I bought for the first time Raw Vegan wraps, I checked online where to find them and I found out that my local health store had them so I went there and I bought 3 different types: one dry Raw Vegan wraps made with Spirulina and vegetables, two different types from the live organic brand – a new healthy restaurant that sells also products in various stores in the city – the wraps are one type with spinach and other ingredients and the second one with sundried tomatoes, contrary to the Spirulina ones, these wraps need to be stored in the fridge. I think they are handy to prepare a good snack to bring with me; I can use it with some dressing sauce like guacamole or tahini and mixed vegetables. I noticed that there was also one with coconut, maybe I could do a sort of crepes with that – but I didn't buy it yet, just wondering how they taste first and if I really like it then I'll experiment new flavours.

Before starting my Water Fast I frozen a lot of food, even sliced lemons, so I would not waste anything – well apart of half cucumber that I really could not save. I have already planned a defrosting time for all this food I frozen, well not for all really, I might need to go slowly in the process and maybe use some of the stuff for smoothies; in the past weeks I never prepared smoothies, not that I don't like them – quite the contrary – it's just my crazy idea that I feel I eat more food if drinking and not chewing. I also saw a YouTube video that was negatively commenting on drinking rather than chewing food, since the digestion can start in the mouth when we chew food, if we drink this doesn't really happen so we lose this important step for our digestive system, giving it extra work basically. Not sure if this theory is really true but somehow makes sense, maybe I could start with eating a small amount of solid food and then proceed with the smoothie. Too complicated though…

I'm thinking on buying a food processor, to make those dates dough that I've seen in many recipes, still dreaming about food and desserts! This coming Friday is Black Friday so I'm hoping to find good deals and buy a new food processor with a good price. I don't want to spend too much money but also I don't want to buy anything that will result on being useless. Talking about kitchen accessories I'm also thinking on buying a smaller wet container for my Vitamix, either the 32 or 48 ounces, not sure yet. Actually I've seen it the Vitamix Dry Container as well, but if I buy the food processor I think it will suffice for whatever dry food I need to process. The smaller Vitamix could be useful, I usually do small batches of food, since I'm cooking just for myself. Sometime I do bigger portions but for ice cream for instance, I really don't need any extra amount. At the moment I'll hold on all these purchases though, I'm spending too much money in food!

I'm also fully stocked on dry food; every time I see those Organic Pitted Dates at Winners I buy a little bag. I also have dry organic figs, organic raw almonds, organic raw cashews, organic cacao powder, shredded coconut, organic sundried tomatoes, and I even found the organic dry mulberries – I bought two bags since I don't find them often. I bought few days ago in Chinatown a couple of little bags of goji berries to mix in my salads or in any smoothies, I thought they will be with a lower fat content than any nut I can buy or eat and they're sweet. Yesterday I bought a bag of Raw Organic Kale green chips, made with kale and a mix of vegetables and spices; they're very low in calories and great for a quick snack. I got tempted and bought a bag of my favourite Raw Organic Chocolate macaroons, made with all Organic ingredients and coconut, the only thing I don't like tis the agave in it, but if I'm disciplined once in a while is not a big deal. I still have some white sesame seeds that I can use to make tahini, but I also want to buy just a small quantity of black sesame seeds, to use on top of my dishes, or to make black tahini who knows. Other seeds that I'm storing in the fridge are: chia seeds, hemp seeds, grounded chia seeds and Organic Flax seeds; I also have Raw Organic Almond flour, Coconut flour, Vegan Chocolate Protein powder and Spirulina powder. You would think that I should not shop for weeks now, but I'm always looking around and thinking of something that I miss and I need to buy it!

Taking care of my Fruits & Vegetables - Getting ready for my 7-Day Water Fast

Today I just want to give few updates on how I am doing with my Raw Vegan Diet and my cravings. I'm working from home today so it is generally bad when I do it, because it's just me and my kitchen temptations. I love cooking and I always look forward to find a new gourmet recipe that I want to try, new flavours to taste and so on. So in short I ate like a pig all day basically.

Since I planned to start a 7-day Water Fast very soon, I wanted to be sure I will not waste any of the food that I bought in the past few days, so I started to organize all my fruits and vegetables. Let's face it fruits are very easy to freeze comparable vegetables. So I cut all the ripe fruits and stored in the freezer, so they can be ready to thaw or to use in any smoothie, at the end anything that is frozen does not expire and can be used any time in the future – I'm sure I will have plenty of opportunities, so I'm not worried when I can freeze produce. For the vegetables it's a little be tricky, I had to do a sort of preparation, especially for the tomatoes that I really don't feel confident on just freeze them like a do with the blueberries. To avoid wasting my Roma tomatoes I prepared my first delicious Marinara sauce; I found an easy recipe on Pinterest and turned out very tasty. I used the Roma tomatoes, some extra sweet cherry tomatoes and my organic sundried tomatoes (with no oil). At the end I filled 2 containers that could be used for my zucchini noodles in the future, plus is a very low fat sauce and I like low fat so far.

For the huge amount of carrots that I have a had a different solutions, I saw a recipe of a Raw Vegan carrots cake that I would like to try so I shredded all my carrots and stored in plastic bags in the freezer, so they're ready for the recipe once I'm good on doing it, the only thing I regret of not doing is taking note on how much carrots I had in each bag, I should have weighted and labelled each of them so I had an easier way using it during the recipe execution, oh well I guess I will figured out once I'm doing it the cake.

The 2 odd zucchini that I bought at China Town the other day I just washed and put them in a bag, I didn't want to do noodles really, I might just use them for sauces or something like that, to make the sauce creamer as I do with regular zucchini sometimes. I do have also some chopped carrots and zucchini in the freezer as well, I can always use for smoothies or other blended recipes done with the Vitamix, if I thaw them in the fridge for a couple of days I'm sure they'll be ok….hopefully.

Today I prepared for the first time the vegetable wraps that I always see on those Raw Vegan recipes, I had a bunch of organic red Swiss Chard and I used my veggie-cheese with some carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini noodles, it was delicious! It is really not easy to eat them since they were falling apart but overall the taste was great, I might not do often though, not because they're complicated to do it but just for the general mess while eating, well unless I improve my skills as wraps-eater.

I still need to take care of some of the fruits left behind; I have mangoes, apples, pears, bananas and three persimmons. Once they're ripe enough I'll chop everything and freeze, ok maybe I'll eat a couple of apples or bananas before then. The persimmons are in season right now and although I always hated this fruit growing up, I wanted to give them a second chance this time and use it for my pumpkin pie recipe. I might cut them and freeze for now though since I'm not planning to do any pie before I complete my 7-Day Water Fast; maybe I'll prepare a good pie to bring for my Christmas dinner invitations, let's see – this year will be a challenge eating Raw Vegan in an Italian dinner family setup!