I’ll keep this one short and sweet because I have lots of little kitchen-based experiments to share instead! *girly squeal*
Eliminated foods:
Things I used to eat regularly but have not eaten these last 4 days.
- Sweet potato
- Rice, pasta, grains, lentils, quinoa
- Meat/fish
- Dairy (Greek yoghurt and cheese)
- Eggs
- Tinned items (including chickpeas!)
- Bread (in fact, all Gluten)
- Alcohol (beer or wine!)
I have actually lost all interest in starchy vegetables. Eating raw restricts my vegetable intake to mostly salad greens. I don’t take to eating raw potato or squash, so I have not included those in my diet these last few days. And actually, I’m not that bothered. I have eaten a shed load of broccoli, which seems to hit the spot. As an aside, whenever I eat broccoli alone, I feel like a kid again. I morph into this pre-historic herbivore, who spots a series of fallen trees. My dinosaur self then swoops down, and in one flail chomp, devours the leaves of the broccoli tree. I then proceed to devour the trunk of said tree as a cheese string. You know… those fake-cheese-rubbery-sticks that allow you to peel bits off and make lassos out of them? In a nutshell, broccoli bates the inner-child in me. Not that my inner-child requires all that coaxing…
Craving:
The foods I want to eat and consequently the only difficult part of doing TED
- Meat/fish
Yep. I miss meat. My guess is it’s exceptionally hard right now because it’s still early days so 1) I’m adjusting and 2) I can’t see the end. But for real… It feels like I’m in this meatless void forever. And what is it about giving something up and suddenly smelling it everywhere? I gave up caffeine for 46 days and for the entire 46 days, I smelt coffee e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. Each morning when I woke up (before I’d even left my bedroom) – coffee. Now, all I smell is cooked bacon. Again, the smell starts from before my feet have even poked their weary toes out from under the bed covers. Just this morning I had to poke my head out my window to make sure someone wasn’t just standing on the ground floor, grilling bacon for their own amusement. “Heard she’s goin’ Vegan. Well bless her heart. I’ll knock some darn sense into that there whippersnapper’s skull fer sure, Earl!” If your inner-ear (phonological loop for the Psychologists out there) did not hear that in the most Southern Hill Billy accent… And I’m not sure who Earl is, or why he has joined the taunting Hill Billy bacon-griller, but quite honestly, I don’t like either of them. If you see them, kindly ask them to stop grilling bacon under my window. Thanks.
I know that pregnancy heightens your sense of smell, taste and sensitivity in general. But I’m not pregnant. If I were pregnant, I could guilt people into buying me things like bacon. “I’m eating for two, you know”. Contrastingly, this meat-deprivation and subsequent meal-craving is self-inflicted so… no sympathy, no I’m-eating-for-two excuses and certainly no bacon, for me.
But even as much as I miss eating meat, I really don’t see it as a staple. It bothers me most when I’m dining out because most vegetarian alternatives cost the same but have less… stuff. I feel like I’m being cheated. I do miss it, but it won’t be something I will go back to eating lots of. I just like having the option there, should I want it.
Other than meat? Nada. I like not having all those options. Eating raw is actually my favorite thing. It will be nice to add some cooked pieces to my meals but as a rule, I think I’ll stick to raw where possible.
Foods I love:
Put all of it in my face right now.
- Almond/coconut milk (oh God. The 50/50 stuff – I’m not sure why the combo works, but it bleeding does. I never drink dairy milk anyhow, but this is the one from here on out. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE.)
- Dates and figs (instead of granola bars for energy)
- Coconut oil (tastes SO much better than olive oil/vegetable oil in my salads. I can’t explain why. Just does.)
- Lemon water (wakes me up in the mornings)
- Homemade muesli. I will never buy muesli ever again.
nomnomnomonomnom
No more. Please. No more:
Too much of a good thing…
- Chickpeas. For Pete’s sake. I bought a bag of Organic chickpeas at the local farmers’ market this Saturday gone. The farmer selling them to me mentioned how locally grown, organic chickpeas are best. Mostly because a recent outbreak of E.Coli had been pinned on non-organic chickpea sprouts. He seemed very earnest so I believed him, bought his explanation and his chickpeas. A bit of research later, and I discovered that the outbreak of E.Coli was in 2011, in Germany… caused by human excrement found in an organic farm. They tasted fantastic, don’t get me wrong. And I would still opt for Organic. But a whole bag of chickpeas for little old me? I am sick of chickpeas.
No more chickpeas for at least a week.
So.. Kale Me Maybe? 