Day 29: Water Fasting

May 24, 2008

my water, next to chive flowers and dandelion

Yesterday evening I sat down with the book Fasting and Eating for Health by Joel Fuhrman, MD(mentioned in David and Katrina's Day 71 video.)

Here is a quote from page 58:

"It is not aging that makes us sick; it is the stresses we place on ourselves that continue their insidious work over the years and eventually cause damage to the body."

After reading through some of the book, I was motivated to do a water fast today! Tomorrow I'll go back to juicing. One day of just water is sufficient for me for now. I'm quite hungry right now...but it's 5 pm and I made it through the day relatively easily (though I did drink a lot of water! Over a gallon, but I didn't keep track so I'm not sure how much exactly.)

I jogged slowly for 20 minutes today, and soaked up as much sun as I could. I have really missed the sun, and have been so cold lately (I'm usually a "hot" sort of person.)

But right now I'm inside, winding down, and it'll probably be an early evening so I can wake up bright and early tomorrow and have some juice!

Day 30 + Garden pics

May 25, 2008

harvesting comfrey from our garden - to dry

Day 30! For me that is monumental because I am often unable to stick with positive dietary changes for very long. I actually have quite a bit to write, but I am soooo tired. Last night (water fasting), I slept from 6 pm until 9 pm, and then was awake all night! I finally did fall asleep from about 4 am until 7 am, but wow, I am tired.

Today I wasn't into my juices at all. Nothing tasted great to me. I decided to go a week without nightshades (tomatoes and peppers) to see if that helps my joint pain and stiffness (more on this tomorrow). I did juice the last 2 of my tomatoes today, but I made another green juice without tomatoes and it was just yucky. Carrots, celery, beets (orange beets), garlic, lemon, greens....

I also made a quart of watermelon juice and a couple quarts of apple, pineapple, strawberry, mints and greens with chlorophyll. That was more palatable (as was the w'melon juice.)

The final quart was squash, tomato, garlic, greens, celery, lemon...and even that did not thrill me. I didn't drink all the juice for today and I am hungry now. Dave is squeezing me orange juice and adding bee pollen right now.

I'll write more about the tomatoes tomorrow, but now I'll leave you with pictures from our garden:

I never realized that sage flowers look like this:



Here is one section of our garden...see the cilantro in the close row:



Our fig bush (maybe we'll get figs this year!) with our blackberry bush in the background:



the bed of greens - lettuces, spinach, collards, chard:



Look at all the mulberries getting ready to ripen:



Our peach tree's first year for peaches! I hope they get big and ripe:

Day 31 - first tomato-less day

May 26, 2008

Teeny tiny tomato plant from our garden. Why isn't it growing? Maybe it's saving me from myself...

A day without tomatoes.

After 31 days of juice feasting, I still have quite a lot of joint pain: right ankle, left elbow, low back. Plus stiffness still in the morning as I get up and get going. I do plan to increase the MSM and I've begun to take enzymes now, but I decided to forgo the nightshades for a bit.

Here is what Frederic Patenaude says about tomatoes on pp. 62-63 of Sunfood Cuisine:

"The tomato is the most famous member of the nightshade family....but with all members of the nightshade family, it is wise to not eat too many tomatoes, or at least to not eat them everyday, because of their oxalic acid content.....people suffering from arthritic conditions should avoid foods from the nightshade family completely. This includes eggplant, potatoes, tomatoes and peppers."

And in Juicing for Life,Calbom and Keane say this on pay 52, under osteoarthritis:

"Try eliminating the nightshade family - tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplant and tobacco. If symptoms improve even slightly, continue to avoid these foods."

So, of course, bummer. But, hey, once I am totally healed and free of all pain and conditions, I'm sure eating a tomato or two won't bother me!

Today's juices so far:

• juice of one orange and 2 apples plus chlorophyll and bee pollen
• 1 1/2 qt cucumber, celery, apples, orange, and garden baby greens and weeds (kale, collards, lettuce, spinach, lamb's quarters, lemon balm, brocolini.)
• peppermint tea (from a tea bag) with honey
• about a quart of butternut squash, celery, sprouts, cilantro, garlic, ginger, lemon with salt, pepper (oops! shoot), kelp, dulse, spirulina and hemp oil.
• red roobios chai (oh, does that have pepper I wonder? I'll have to check) and honey
• I'll add the rest tonight or tomorrow, probably some watermelon juice or some beet/carrot/apple...nothing made yet.

Other symptoms I'm having are strong pain (much less today, though) in my left armpit, and left outer ear pain (to the touch.)

Exercise:

I've been doing yoga in the morning for about 3 mornings in a row, now. Just a few minutes of cat/cow, down dog, plank, sun salutes, warrior, twists, squat, and then I end with handstands.

I ran (well...slowly jogged) for 30 minutes today.

So...how long is this feast going to be?

I still haven't decided how long to go for! I made the 30 day mark which was my first goal, because David Rainoshek says on juicefeasting.com that every day after 30 days doing juice feasting you go back 120 days. So, now I've started to go back in time!

The end points I'm deciding between are:

60/61 days, (two months) and then going into a modified feast, with pretty much the same amount of juice but adding a salad or other raw meal here and there (after the prunes and feast breaking, of course.)

92 days: the traditional end. The catch is that my mom will be visiting days 88 - 92. So, we'd drop her off at the airport and I'd come home and eat my prunes. Her visits are go-out-to-eat-every-meal type visits, so it may be nice to still be juicing, so as not to have to deal with temptation at my favorite restaurants.

100 days: because that's a nice round number, and it would end on August 3, and a week later is my birthday.

Possibly going to my birthday (107 days.)

Right now, the 61 or 92 day mark seems right, but, I'm not troubling myself too much about it just yet.

Day 32 - fruit juices yum, veggie...not so great

May 27, 2008

Cacao Tree at Phipps (surrounded by some kind of brilliant ferns)

Today I haven't been overly excited about my juices. Well, that's not entirely true...the fruit juices have been out of this world!

Juices:

• 1 quart: pineapple, orange, strawberry, carrot and mint
• 1 quart: borscht - cabbage (I'm not a big cabbage juice fan, as it turns out. I'm planning to make raw sauerkraut out of the rest - for after my feast), beet, ginger, garlic, scallions, celery, parsley, greens, apple, hemp oil
• 1 quart watermelon juice
• 1 quart celery, cuke, apples, cilantro and greens, hemp oil
• juice of three oranges with water, chlorophyll and bee pollen

I'm still waiting for my coconut oil! I really thought it would arrive today. And - you'll notice - no longer are avocados gracing my menus.

Edit: It's here! I'm eating it now with honey and spirulina. It's so good! Hooray!

It is not good when you notice while making juice that the juicer is smoking! I turned it off and opened it up - my pulp was burning hot! The engine was so heated up by the fiber on the celery and all the greens. So, I assume most of my juice was raw, but some of it certainly was heated above 105 degrees, sadly. Tomorrow Dave will pick up those jelly bags when E and I are at yoga and hopefully they'll work out. Oh, I can also sew the hole of the nut mylk bag closed. Then I can use the blender and squeeze method again for celery and greens. That worked quite nicely.

Here are some more picture of my day at Phipps (where we go so often that the cafe workers come up and ask me what juice I have today!)

close up of the cacao pods growing on the tree - they look like delicata squash:


there is a chocolate exhibit going on now (at Phipps):

Monsieur Mousse is a lucky fellow...imagining, of course, those are all raw ingredients: ;-)



And from the butterfly room:

Side note:

Maggie (our dog) is totally grooving on her new diet! She loves it, we love it, it's awesome. While not all raw, she is now vegetarian and she loves her meals. Tonight I made some white bean/mung bean pancakes for E and D. I left out the onions (substituting garlic, which is supposed to be ok) and so I was able to give her some of those. Also: lentils and rice mixed with chopped raw bean sprouts, yogurt and olive oil. In her earlier meal she had other supplements: nutritional yeast, kelp and egg shell for calcium.

Day 33

May 28, 2008

this is a beautiful salad I had made once for Molly, before I blended it for her to eat

Today is a rough day in that all I want to do is eat. And not just fresh beautiful salads...potato salad, the bean burgers my family is eating with melted cheese on bread.... It's 6:30 and I feel too tired to go for a run (but maybe I'll go take a walk). My energy has actually been quite low. I go to bed early and don't feel much like getting out of bed in the mornings. And my juices don't seem fantastic to me anymore.

Juices:

• 1 qt pineapple, carrot, strawberry, orange, mint (OK, this one was quite good, but now we're out of pineapple. If we had more I'd have drank only that all day.)
• 1 qt beet, carrot, celery, apple, greens, ginger, garlic
• 2 qts watermelon, lime, ginger, apples, greens, chlorophyll
• water of 1/2 young coconut (shared with Ella) and also ate about half the very young pudding-like flesh (shared with Ella again)
• Tbsp coconut oil with honey
• red roobios chai with honey

Though "bigger picture" motivation usually doesn't work for me, today I did think about "the big why" (as Karen Knowler says) ...about my past miscarriages and ill-health and my desire to have another child, that kept me from eating all sorts of things.

Day 34: Another rawking pulp idea - fermented veggies!

May 29, 2008


Today I had another idea for using the pulp: include them in fermented veggies!

I had decided to make fermented veggies so as not to waste the beautiful organic cabbage that I bought but did not like in juice. I LOVE making (and eating) fermented veggies. I even got to see Sandor Katz recently at our coop: I love his book Wild Fermentation.

I cut up the cabbage, added some of the pulp from my beet, carrot, green juice from today, added some broccoli from the fridge and some arugula from the garden (I love arugula in salads, and it is at its peak right now in our garden, but it tastes too overwhelmingly spicy to me in juices. Yesterday I gave most away to a good friend, and today I chopped some into the fermented veggies.) I mixed it all up with salt, kelp and some unpasteurized mellow white miso (which I have been craving!) and water. I've never used miso before in fermenting veggies, but I've heard of it being used. Then I stuffed it into a couple of jars (picture below), and it'll ferment on the counter top for a few days and then I'll refrigerate it until after my feast.



My juices today:

• 1/2 qt: watermelon, apple, ginger, lime and greens from yesterday
• 1 qt: strawberry, apple, celery, cuke, mint
• 1 1 /2 qts: beet, carrot, celery, apple, ginger, garlic, cuke, parsley, cilantro, sprouts with hemp oil and spirulina
• 3/4 qt: apple, orange with water and bee pollen

I haven't drank all the juices from today yet, and I'll possibly make more of green something later. I'll add if I do.

end of week 5! (Day 36)

May 31, 2008



I didn't get to post yesterday, but above is a picture taken this morning: after 5 weeks of juice feasting! You can visit here for "before" and "week 4" pics.



A couple days ago I learned about Black Locust Flowers from Anthony (The Raw Model)'s blog, and we had to go out in search. We found one just down the street, overflowing with ripe flowers! We harvested them and of course I had to try them (or I'd have to wait until next year.) They were sweet and delicious and would be lovely in juice. The one we found was really just past it's prime, but driving around we see them everywhere, so if another opportunity presents itself, I'll harvest a bunch more for juice and report back.

Here is a closer view of the flowers:



They look like pea flowers and the tree is in fact a legume. Here is more information about Black Locust Flowers.

My juices today:

• 2 quarts watermelon with 1 Tbsp chlorophyll
• 1 1/2 quarts beet, carrot, apple, garlic, ginger, celery, cucumber, parsley, cilantro, greens with hemp oil, kelp and spirulina
• 1/2 quart orange juice with water and bee pollen
• 1 qt tomato, yellow pepper, onion, garlic, cilantro, celery, basil, olive oil, lemon, salt - I decided to add the nightshades back in because a week without them didn't make any difference in my achiness

And back from grocery shopping, so I did chop up a bit of avocado with DULSE (which I was absolutely craving...still am) and fermented veggies. I wonder if I'm craving salt/sea veggies because I haven't been quite getting my full bunch of celery in every day? That would put me lower in sodium and probably craving it.

Oh, a special note: those jam/jelly bags from the kitchen store work brilliantly! Really, really well (dare I say better?) They are nylon, but don't have the tie string, instead they have an elastic band around the top. So I couldn't hang it up, but it didn't really matter - I hooked it around my big measuring cup and held it open, poured in the blended juice (yeah! The blender is sooo much easier to use and clean than the Champion!) and squeezed it through. So easy! So sturdy! I'm so happy about that! They were: Fox Run Kitchens (TM) 2 Jelly Strainer Bags for $3.99 at "In the Kitchen" - a kitchen store in The Strip (Pittsburgh.)