Raw food June mid-month report

OFFICIALLY halfway through my 30 day raw food challenge.

It has been surprisingly easy, I've allowed myself one cheat day during the challenge but, as of day 15, have managed NOT to use it. Work colleagues have been really helpful. I have had two people offer me juicers to use, and one also lent me their food processor which I used for the first time today to make really delicious raw carob brownies.

There was a period where I went for about five days without a bowel movement but that department seems to have well and truly resolved itself now. As Dr Oz regularly says, "it's not how often you go but what your poop looks like" that's important. But I won't go into any more detail there.

One thing I've noticed is my so-called budget has gone through the roof this passed week. Some of the "flashy" ingredients needed to live raw can be quite pricey, carob powder and chia seeds I'm looking at you, especially when you also want to make the extra effort to buy ethical and organic. Nuts are also expensive and raw cashew nuts seem to be a staple in most raw meal recipes. I managed to reign my $40 budget back in again this week by returning to the Gisborne Farmer's Market today, as well as Pak'n Save for the cashew nuts and Down To Earth Health 2000 for some coconut oil and walnuts (needed for the brownies).

My shopping for the third week of my challenge, $39 so under budget

I've also been keeping a food diary for this challenge so will leave you with a few excerpts from my day-to-day raw living:

• Day 1: End of day one and I've just realised I've actually eaten less than I normally eat. I'm not hungry now, just a little bit headachey - not sure if this is from the caffeine and sugar withdraws or general detox from the shit food
• Day 2: Went to bed early but slept well, woke up busting to mimi due to drinking over a litre of water before bed
• Day 3: Queen's Birthday weekend so went back home to my grandparents' - it was hard when I arrived and they had a pavlova and two chocolate cakes on the kitchen bench but I just grabbed a banana and got through the night
• Day 4:  My first day at work (on the challenge) and in the real world. It was good. Drinking water helped stave off hunger and I found I snacked way less than usual. A colleague offered me some of her persimmon - great 3pm snack
• Day 5: Raw cream of zucchini soup for tea tonight, it was nice but in my opinion more like guacamole. It was much nicer than my lunch though, I detest salads
• Day 6: I tried to make raw carrot cupcakes today but EPIC FAIL. I didn't have a food processor and thought I'd chuck it in the blender but what a disaster!
• Day 7: Prepared a watercress salad for lunch today. It was delicious
• Day 8: (house moving day) I watched my nan, cousin and nephew eating their McDonald's while I quietly sipped on my orange juice. If that isn't willpower then I don't know what is
• Day 9:  Got me some scales today. I'm doing this for endurance rather than losing weight but it was a bonus to discover I had lost 5kg in the first week
• Day 10: Made chia seed and coconut pudding. Added some raw carob powder. DELICIOUS
• Day 11: First go at banana ice cream today, added carob powder and coconut for extra flavour and sweetness. Ended up more like slushie but still good
• Day 12: Splurged Invested in a food dehydrator and made chilli-zuchini chips. Not as crisp as I would've liked and took ages to make but tasted good dipped in raw hummus
• Day 13: Adding chilli to raw soups really does trick your taste buds into thinking the food is warm. Actually feeling darn good now, I guess my bodies acclimatised
• Day 14: I made hummus with celery, carrot, and zucchini sticks to take to work today for a shared lunch for a colleague going on maternity leave. So much scrumptious food and, worst of all, someone bought hot chips (my vice). But I was fine with that. The sushi on the other hand I kept looking at and trying to justify to myself that while the rice was cooked, everything else in it was raw so it wasn't really cheating. But no, you only cheat yourself and I didn't want to use my cheat day on something so superficial, if I use it at all.
• Day 15: Made raw brownies today with the food processor a workmate brought over last night. Oh my gosh! so delicious:

And I will leave you now with pictures of my brownies and yours truly enjoying said brownies:

A global movement against climate change

GISBORNE people will get the chance to hear one of the pioneer campaigners for action on climate change as he tours New Zealand’s main centres.

Straight off the back of a sell-out US tour, well-known American environmental author and activist Bill McKibben, is presenting his Do The Math Tour at venues in Auckland, Dunedin, and Wellington next week.

A video link has been arranged at the Gisborne District Council on Tuesday (SUBS June 11) night for Tairawhiti residents to tune into his Auckland presentation. Doors open at 6.45pm with the presentation starting at 7pm.

Mr McKibben is the founder of 350.org, an international climate change movement - the number 350 being taken from the calculated safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere believed to be 350 parts per million.

Gisborne woman Melua Watson, who arranged the local livestream, said there was a lot of interest in Gisborne in building a resilient community so people here would be interested in hearing Mr McKibben’s message.

"It isn’t everyday we get to hear from someone of this calibre, live, at the leading edge of arguably the most important issue facing us all," she said. So when she found out some regions were offering a live stream of Mr McKibben’s talk and Gisborne was not on the list, she gave the organisers a call.

In November 2012, Bill McKibben and 350 hit the road in the USA to build a movement strong enough to change the maths of the climate crisis. The Do the Math Tour sold out shows in every corner of the US and now 350 Aotearoa, the New Zealand branch of 350.org, is bring him to New Zealand next week.

Do The Maths is described as a climate change maths lesson that might just change the world. "It’s simple maths: we can burn less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2 degrees of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The only problem? Fossil fuel corporations now have 2795 gigatons in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they’re planning to burn it all — unless we do the maths to change our future." 

In the USA, 350 is involved in the Fossil Free campaign calling on institutions to divest from fossil fuels and reinvest in solutions to climate change.

Mr McKibben has been described by Time magazine as the ‘world’s best green journalist and the Boston Globe called him "probably the nation’s leading environmentalist". He has been leading the fight against global warming for the more than 20 years, since he wrote his first book for a general audience on the subject, The End of Nature, in 1989. The End of Nature was the first book to warn the general public about the threat of global warming.

Mr McKibben is an active writer on the climate crisis and other environmental issues. He is a frequent contributor to various magazines including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. He is also a board member and contributor to Grist Magazine. He has been awarded Guggenheim and Lyndhurst Fellowships, and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in the year 2000.

350 Aotearoa, in conjunction with Generation Zero, are behind the national 100 Percent Possible campaign launched at the end of last year that promotes the message to New Zealand leaders that "a safer climate future is 100 percent possible".

Bill McKibben's Do The Math's Tour has been made into a feature documentary which you can view online, or check out the trailer below to see what it's all about and help change the math on climate change:

Get Involved (clicky links)

 - Fossil Free divestment campaign

- 350 Aotearoa

- Generation Zero

- 100% Possible

Reality check

SO turns out my $20 budget is probably a little unrealistic. Leafy greens and fruit are cheap but other foods required for a raw diet, such as nuts, seeds and fish, soon add up.

This budget is manageable when I'm eating a cooked semi-vegetarian diet where cookable foods like potato and leek and broccoli are cheap in the winter. I'm going to raise my budget to $40 from next week - didn't want to raise it too much as one of my missions is to show people can do this on a budget. In future I'm just going to write a proper list, maybe even go as far as a weekly meal plan if I have time, to help me stick to the $40 budget. 

I might have to bite the bullet and go back to the supermarket to because for some items it is actually cheaper.

One question I'd like to know: Can I have natural yogurt, the real plain stuff not dairy food like calciyum, in a raw diet?