Facing Ourselves

I'm not sure what we ate last week, but it wasn't what was on our list! I know we had some beautiful salads a couple of days, and I think I've eaten a whole case of cantaloupe myself this week. Man, I can't believe how good it is right now. I wouldn't normally think it would be this time of year. I will usually eat melon as a mono-meal (only one food on the plate) anyway, but this week it has been my staple for many of my meals.

My brother asked me to make him some cashew cream cheese, so I did that on Monday. I make it a lot, but I usually mix it with raisins for queso dulce. I made it by itself as per his request, and I thought, hey, this would taste good on cucumber slices, so I've eaten that at least twice this week. (Make that three times; writing about it here made me hungry for a batch. Plus I needed a picture. Yeah, that's the ticket. I needed a picture!) One day Darius joined me, and we sliced up mini-plum tomatoes and olives to go with it. It was extremely satisfying and filling. Now when I think about it, cucumbers are related to melons, so there must be something in the melon family I'm really needing.

I think that is the extent of my meals last week, so it's not all that exciting, but my body is loving the simplicity of it. (Of course, I had my morning juice too as per Roger's tender loving care.) Oh, yeah, one night when I was eating melon, the fam had a green spaghetti with shredded zucchini and collards mixed with queso verde. They sliced some tomatoes into it, and it looked like a real feast. Who says eating veggies can't be satisfying?

I guess that means I'll have to move last week's menu items over to this week! Sorry about that. We'll be enjoying some Mexican meals with Elote con crema (corn in a spicy cashew cheese based mayo) and unfried no beans (sprouted sunflower seeds creamed with tomatoes and seasonings). Of course we'll make up tomato salsa and guacamole and crema to go with them. We like the elote stuffed in avocado atop ensalada. We'll probably roll the no beans up in some Mexi-Cali wrappers and make some arroz Mexicano to go with that.

Marinara is definitely on the menu this week. We never got to the Leaning Towers last week; maybe it's too complicated when we're into the work week. Maybe we'll just go with some shredded zucchini topped with marinara and some marinated mushrooms. Hmm. Those mushrooms are pretty good mixed with the zucchini and just about anything else. Think we'll have it with some cashew cheddar too.

Since we've got the cheddar, and we've got some marinated broccoli, we'd be crazy not to make Alicia's favorite meal: broccoli cheddar soup. If there's any salsa left, we can make some taco soup too. That's Darius' favorite.

That's about the whole week except for the desserts. This week we're gonna make some apple crisp because I've been craving it. That is my favorite dessert of all time even from before we were vegan. We also will have some pumpkin pie, and we ran out of key lime pies last week, so we'll make that again. We've started making them in that nice snack size (thanks again, Elizabeth for suggesting that), and they're just the right touch when we want a treat. Yolanda has already asked for cheesecake for next week, so we'll have that to look forward to.

For snacks we'll have some queso dulce around to dip apples and celery into. There's the ever-present honey almond butter for dipping as well. Queso verde and cashew cream cheese will both be great for cucumber dips. We actually use these dips with veggies and/or fruit for our evening light meal. We've got some great fruit which makes great breakfast fodder, but we love it throughout the day and for our evening mono-meal many days, so we're always glad to see the seasons when more fruits are available. We'll probably be having more smoothies for dinner this week too.

How about you? What's your favorite meal this week? I'd love to know what vegan meals you're eating this week. Many of our customers aren't 100% vegan, but they love the feeling they get from eating a couple of vegetable meals during the week, and that's a great thing. I've thought about this alot since I've been working at the market and exposed to so many different ways of looking at this. I know what works for me, and I love the unprecedented level of health that I enjoy now. While there are times when it is difficult, I cannot deny how much better I feel and how much energy I have.

Having struggled with bad health much of my childhood, it is a real treat NOT to be sick all the time. My health was better after I moved away from home, and we discovered I was sick so much because I was allergic to the cats we always had while living there. While not ill as much once I was an adult, I still suffered from obesity all of my teen years and especially after I started having children. Losing these 100 pounds + since being a raw vegan has been one of the most wonderful things I have ever done for myself - it gave me my life back. Eating the SAD (standard American diet) is NOT an option for me ever again. It destroys me in many different ways (just as all addictions do their victims). While I will always be an addict, I know I need to live my 12 steps and stay out of that pool of disaster.

Some people find it odd to think one can be an addict to food. It was Victoria Boutenko's 12 Steps to Raw Foods that really helped me understand why. I bought it originally because I thought it would be a 12 step program companion, but instead it really helped me understand why I couldn't stop eating foods I knew to be harmful to me. It was very easy to relate to them as having the same effect on me that alcohol would have on an alcoholic and drugs to a user. If there was a chemical effect taking place when these foods were eaten that solicited an emotional response, then of course I'd be hooked. Well, opiates tend to have that effect, so I no longer was surprised that I felt addicted to the foods that contain them. Then the struggle came to "beat" the addiction.

For me, the AA 12 steps help me do that. I have to ask God, my higher power of choice, to help me each day. I have to recognize that this addiction is bigger than me (no small thing when one weighs almost 300 pounds). Well, here's the 12 steps. I hope they can help someone else as they have me. I could write a whole book about each one of these steps and how it changed my life to implement them.

1. I admitted I was powerless over unhealthy foods — that my life had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than myself (God) could restore me to
sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God (as I
understood Him).
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
5. Admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature
of my wrongs.
6. Was entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove my shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons I had harmed, and became willing to make
amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do
so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when I was wrong promptly
admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with
God, as I understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, I tried to
carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all my
affairs.

Note the motto: "To thine own self be true." That's really the crux of it for me. I spent so much time lying to myself about what I'm doing that I can't see the truth. That scripture in Jonah really hit me: “They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy” (Jonah 2:8). I could not be the recipient of all the wonderful things the Lord had in store for me if I could not fact the truth about what I was doing. It is a very humbling experience...