No more master cleanse... FOOOOOOOOOOD!

So, I completed 16 days on the master cleanse! I lost 10 lbs, not as much as previous times, due to the time of the month, but I lost 2 inches from my waist, an inch from my hips, an inch from each thigh and an inch and a half from my boobs (bit gutted about that last one!). Feel a lot trimmer and my jeans are now too big!
I had been planning on doing 20 days, but I got up on the morning of day 17 and could not face one more lemon/ cayenne/ maple drink. So I made fresh orange juice and damn it was GOOD! I haven't put any weight back on since I came off the cleanse (5 or 6 days now I think), in fact I've lost another pound and I am eating tons! All raw of course. I feel amazing, so much better than I was before the cleanse and am so glad I did it. And it feels so great to be eating raw again. I've had loads of delicious stuff.

The first couple of days I stuck to juice then eased my way back into raw. Last night I had a friend round for dinner and made courgette pasta with my spiraliser and fresh raw vegan pesto.

Courgette pasta and pesto

I put loads of fresh basil, a clove of garlic, olive oil and pine nuts in the food processor, blitzed it all up and mixed it in with the courgette. It was lovely! I also made loads of salads to go with it, as well as flax crackers, macademia cheese, and chocolate mousse for dessert.

I kind of made up the recipe for the flax crackers, based on the ingredients from a packet of crackers I bought from Inspiral the other day. I soaked 250 g of flax seeds in a litre of water for 12 hours. Then I processed up a 225g punnet of baby plum tomatoes, a red pepper, 1/2 cup of sundried tomatoes, a clove of garlic, a scotch bonnet chilli, loads of fresh parsley and 1/4 teaspoon of himalayan crystal salt. I put the gloopy seed mixture in, whizzed it all up then spread it over 4 dehydrator sheets and dehydrated it for about 12 hours. Then I flipped it over and did it for another 6 or so hours. And they turned out pretty good!


Flax crackers, mashed avocado,
macademia cheese & alfafa sprouts

The macademia cheese was amazing! I got the recipe from Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow, and I really recommend this. You wouldn't believe a mix of macademia nuts, peppers, lemon, a pinch of salt and nutritional yeast would taste so amazing. This is dehydrated too, and comes out with a great texture. I just had some more of it now for my dinner, on flax crackers with mashed avocado and alfafa sprouts and it was gorgeous.

Chocolate mousse

The chocolate mousse is an old favourite from Raw Food Made Easy For 1 or 2 People. It's so quick and easy and tastes delicious. It's made with avocados but you would never know, it just tastes really rich and creamy and chocolatey but is totally dairy free! As well as the avocado I put in some medjool dates, raw honey, vanilla extract and raw cacao. The photo is never going to do it justice as it just looks like a dollop of brown stuff but it is soooooo good. I had the leftovers for lunch today which is why it's in a tupperware!



Today's packed lunch

So with all the leftovers from last night, I had the best ever packed lunch today! The yellow/orange stuff round the outside of the salad (picture on the left) is carrot and ginger dressing from Natalia Rose's The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-Step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Loss. The salad has red cabbage, mixed bean sprouts, yellow peppers, pea shoots, spinach, grated carrot and marinated mushrooms.
I am so delighted to be eating real fresh raw food again! I've been having green juices for breakfasts too- this morning it was apples, cucumber, celery and ginger. Beautiful!

I'll try and keep this blog more up-to-date now, as I am totally re-set and back into the raw for good. I promise you I feel really amazing and will continue to keep it up!

Apple pie, chocolate mousse, sunny dill cheeze, taco nut meat, sour kream, jalapeno burgers and possibly wasabi peas!

Well, I've been busy uncooking today, getting loads of things made up for the week so I've got no excuse to be getting unhealthy snacks! My crisp fetish is over and I am fully back on track with the raw. I had to go out for a few drinks after we wrapped the film on Friday night and followed that with some not so healthy food and I definitely don't want to do that any more... so all that unhealthy snacking is out of my system now and I'm back in the zone!

I was going to make Ani Phyo's Tomato Chili for my dinner tonight but because I've been tasting everything else I've been making all day I had no appetite left for dinner! Still I've got the taco meat and sour kream that go with it made up now, and they'll keep a few days in the fridge, so I'll make the chili fresh tomorrow night and have it for my dinner then... looking forward to it, I've never made it before and it sounds delicious.

Apple pie- it tastes better than it looks here!

I made All-American Apple Pie today too, from Ani's Raw Food Kitchen which is one of my favourite ever desserts. It was one of the first raw dishes I made, about a year and a half ago, and at the time it convinced me that a raw lifestyle was possible, after much umming and ahhing and my first few not so successful attempts at making raw recipes. It's so good, I really recommend it- even my dad loves it (who usually stays away from my raw stuff on principle!) and ate about half of a pie when I made some last time I was staying with him. I only made half of the recipe this time as it makes a lot, but doesn't keep too long. It's really delicious, you'd never believe it was raw. I think that you should definitely make this- I promise you will love it.

I also made chocolate mousse from Raw Food Made Easy... ok, so this photo makes it look a bit like poo, but believe me, you would never think this was a raw, vegan dessert. It tastes just like a regular, rich, chocolatey mousse. The secret ingredient is avocado! But I swear you can't taste it in the mousse at all! It's also got raw cacao powder, dates, agave and a bit of water in. Its such a nice treat to have a chocolatey dessert like this and it tastes way better than the non-raw version with dairy etc in. It's gorgeous!

I made more jalapeno burgers too, the same ones I mentioned before, which I think might be my favourite raw thing. Definitely the best raw burger I've had. I make them slightly differently though- I don't put in any hamburger seasoning (what is that??) and I made twice the recipe, which makes about 10 good size burgers for me, and I dehydrate them for about 6 hours instead of 1. Oh, and I only put the temperature at 105 degrees as that's generally felt to be the max temperature for the food to remain raw. They are SO good that I already ate 4 of them which wasn't supposed to happen... just a good job I made double the recipe. They are really tasty and full of flavour, I love them.

I also made sunny dill cheeze from Ani Phyo's book (the same one I linked to above) which turned out ok, but not amazingly delicious. It'll be nice on my crackers with salad and burgers for lunch. But I have say, to not packed with flavour- quite mild but it's not bad.

And finally, I am attempting to make a raw version of wasabi peas! I'm not sure if it's going to work as I just made up the recipe, but they're in the dehydrator at the moment, I'll let you know how they turn out tomorrow. I coated the peas in a mixture of raw wasabi, ground sesame seeds, apple cider vinegar, olive oil and a little water... I'm hoping if they work they'll be a good alternative to my inexplicable cravings for crisps and bombay mix! We'll see... watch this space!