A Solution To The Morning Rush Problem

As I type this, I'm sipping on some delicious Cherry Limeade

The recipe:

1 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
2 cups pitted cherries
Agave nectar and stevia to taste
Ice and water

Blend and add water and sweeteners to taste.

This makes about a gallon of limeade, although it can be made stronger or diluted more.  I can't say how much agave nectar and stevia to add.  If you are 100% raw you can omit the sweeteners and add juiced cherries instead.  It would probably take a lot of cherry juice to offset the sour flavor of the lime juice - maybe 3 or 4 cups.  If you just blend the cherries you get a drink with more body and a foam on top.  If you don't want the body and foam, juice the cherries instead.

Served over ice, it reminds me of what Kool Aid never quite tasted like, no matter how hard it tried.

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My beloved husband revealed that he hasn't been eating at work.  Gah!  Instead of eating the donuts his coworkers bring in, he's been fasting on water.

Me:  "Why don't you go out for healthy food or go to the store and bring some back?"
He:  "It's too hot at lunchtime to leave work!  And I keep leaving too late in the morning to stop on the way in."
Me:  "Okay, why don't you fix something here before you leave?"
He:  "I'll be late for work."

So, last night we got everything together so that our breakfast and lunch could be fast and delicious.

We broke out my old beat-up Champion juicer from 1984 and made the "new coffee," so it would be cold and ready in the fridge in the morning:

Green Juice A la "The Life Regenerator"

1 whole bunch celery
1 whole bunch kale
1 whole bunch of spinach
1 whole bunch cilantro
1 whole cucumber
1 cored apple

It's not black and bitter like coffee.  It's green and sort of sweetly bitter, a bit like wheatgrass.  It's an acquired taste, but wonderful and energizing.  We drink it in coffee cups, symbolic of its new role as the drink that gets us moving in the morning.  When I jokingly said to Beloved, "This is the new coffee," he interpreted as a cue that we can remove the Mr. Coffee from the kitchen.  I stopped him.  I'm not quite ready yet.  Although, strangely, I don't feel like drinking coffee this morning, for the first time in practically forever.

Of course, our beloved almost-12 year old is having a hard time choking the green juice down.  Right now he's trying to make it more palatable by blending it with grapes and cherry limeade.  He knows it's good for him and his doing his best to go along with it, bless his heart.

Last night the old Champion took a long time, didn't get all of the juice out of the pulp and got stuck a couple of times, so we are contemplating a new Breville.  It's an investment, but this is our life.

For breakfast, we dusted off the old recipe for the oat shake.   This time we made it without the almond milk or almond butter, relying on one banana for creaminess and a bit of vanilla and cinnamon for flavor.   We placed the oats, water and dates in the blender and left them there to soak until morning.   We are still using up our supply of quick rolled oats, but when they are gone we'll be looking for a reliable source for truly raw, sproutable oats.

After prepping the green juice, Beloved cut up a pineapple and a cantaloupe and placed it in a bowl.   I washed some grapes and kale, removing the stems from the grapes.  We left it covered in the refrigerator until this morning.  This morning, we blended it with some ice and poured it into portable shaker cups.

That  was it.  In minutes, Beloved was ready to go to work nourished and equipped to face a day filled with SAD (Standard American Diet) temptations.

We want to try this for about a week and see how it makes us feel.  Right now I'm thinking about how we can do it more efficiently. While he was on the road,  Dave The Raw Food Trucker made 3 gallons of raw juice at a time, drinking a gallon a day.  So tonight I'm going to experiment with making a 3-day supply of juice.  I'd also like to try prepping all of our juice, smoothie and salad veggies for the whole day all at once to cut down on prep time.

As of this morning, I've lost about ten pounds.  It's been slow, partly because we started off on a high-fat raw transitional diet with lots of avocados and nuts.  For most of this week, we plan to eat low-fat with mostly raw juices and smoothies.  We'll make an exception on Saturday, when we plan to celebrate a special occasion with a special raw vegan meal with nuts, olive oil, avocado and a raw vegan dessert.  This isn't a fad and it's not a rapid weight loss gimmick - it's a way of life.  I still don't care about the weight, but about being healthy.

Note:  We quickly abandoned the idea of making a 3 day supply of juice.  In our opinion, fresh juice is better if you drink it as soon as possible after making it.  Some people may still need to make three day's worth at a time for personal reasons, and that's better than no juice at all.  But fresh is always best.