Week 2 in Review - Results as a Raw Foodie

So we have completed 14 days eating raw food only.  We have 7 more to go.  How did it go this week?

Juices and smoothies from Kristina's book were really good!  There were a great deal of salads as well.  The Chef AJ dressing ran out at the first of the week.  We tried two new dressings:  strawberry vinaigrette was yummy, lemon creme was not.  We also had a couple of challenges to overcome:

1. We go to a vegan potluck one tuesday night a month and typically there is nothing but cooked foods there.  We brought a giant spinach strawberry salad and watermelon just in case there was nothing else there for us.  Lucky for us there were some GREAT raw options there:  peanut butter/coconut stuffed figs, raw carrot cake and raw mini blueberry cheesecakes.  There were other salads as well so we had no issues.  I will be sending out the recipes that I have found for these because they were really good.
2. We were having friends over for dinner Friday night.  Fortunately they are health nuts and were interested in our raw food options.  We made a Zucchini Fettuccine and raw chili and it turned out really good.  Of course we had to follow it up with peanut butter chocolate nice cream :)

Cool tricks we learned:

• Garlic - you can't get enough garlic in fettuccine sauce when the noodles have very little flavor
• Hummus makes a great dressing!  When out at Jason's Deli on Saturday I wanted a good thick salad dressing, not the balsamic vinegar.  Their roasted red pepper hummus made a great dressing!  I'll be keeping that trick.
• Fresh juices can be made 2 days in advance but that's it.  
• Salads keep well in a mason jar.  Stuff the greens in jar and top it with a folded paper towel and screw the lid on tight.  Turn it upside down in the fridge to store for the week.  
• Cliff requires his food to taste really good or he's super cranky.  He found that to be disturbing that it irritated him so bad so I will let him blog about that later...

Struggle:  Time

The struggle continues with the amount of time it takes to prep all of these meals.  Especially when you are doing it for two people.  I feel like it has taken over my life and every spare minute is figuring out what I have to chop or juice or have ready for the next day.  Once the kitchen gets cleaned up for dinner it's time to prep the juice for the next day.  There is a reason I typically make my meals on Sunday for the whole week.  I don't have TIME during the week to make meals every night.  It will be nice to get my life back.  

Struggle:  Money

It continues to be a bit more expensive than I want it to be.  This week did come out to less than last week.  I think I came in around $200.

The POSITIVE results are in:

Denise:  lost another pound.  Didn't measure this week.  Will at the finale :)

Cliff:  lost 5 more pounds.. Yes that's right 15 pounds in 2 weeks!!  :-o

We are getting blood work done next week to see how it affected the numbers.  Stay tuned!

RECIPES from this week coming soon!!!!  Thanks for hanging in there with us.  I know some of you may not care at all about going raw but I know others have and hopefully we can make it "real" enough for you so you can decide.  Or maybe you just want to add more raw meals and not go 100%.  Either way, I thank you for checking in and if there is anything else I can do to help, let me know!