As mentioned previously, I’ve been reading The Raw Food Detox Diet by Natalia Rose after buying it second hand at ABC Books. I’m at the beginning of part 3 of 5 in the book. I won’t go into details about the book right now (I’d like to do a more dedicated post in the future), but I intend to put it into practice short term as a cleanse and then decide how much of the principles I want to adopt longer term. The book reminded me about starting the day with fruit and the quick digestion time of fruit. Usually my breakfast routine consists of bringing oatmeal ingredients (oats and additives such as nuts, seeds and dried fruit) to work in a container, nuking it around 9:30am and eating it throughout the morning. Today I decided to forgo my usual oatmeal breakfast and begin my day out with fruit.

Problem is, I don’t have much fruit at home right now. It’s on my shopping list. What I do have, are apples that I bought in the fall and stored in Debbie Meyer Green Bags that I bought at Canadian Tire (most of the apples were still good months later), and frozen bananas.

This morning before work I made a fruit smoothie and drank a glass. It gave me lots of energy until hunger set in and I drank the second cup, brought to work in a Magic Bullet cup with lid. Smoothies are great. They’re easy and super-nutritious. Meghan had her Green Smoothie Cleanse last week, and my buddy SDM of In the Weeds has been blogging about his daily concoctions at work. I’m envious of his access to fruit, and the varieties of it.

Here is what I made this morning:

In my Magic Bullet (using the blender) I combined

• 1 apple, cored and chopped but mostly unpeeled.

• 1 frozen banana thawed a little bit because frozen bananas are solid (I know, one once attacked my foot and won).

• Half a lemon peeled but not juiced, as much pith removed as I could.

• 1 heaping tablespoon of Barleens Greens (also see product info – PDF)

• A couple tablespoons (or however much I poured in) of Vega Antioxidant EFA Oil Blend.

• Approx 1 tablespoon of ground flax seeds.

• Coconut water (bought in a tetra pack).

• Regular water.

• A squirt of hazelnut agave nectar.

The nuttiness of the agave provided great flavour. It was an awesome smoothie, one I’ll repeat until I buy more fruit. I correctly guessed that the coconut would taste good with apple and banana but I didn’t realize how much flavour the hazelnut would impart or how good it would be. I could use less next time.

I’m a fan of Vega products.  The Barleens Greens are new, bought  on Saturday after scrutinizing product labels. I tried drinking it in water on Monday and didn’t like it, so I’ll keep using it in smoothies. When I run out I might try the Berry version. I had a bottle of Barleens cinnamon-flavoured flax oil last year. While I found the taste too strong on its own, it was good on oatmeal with honey.

I did bring oatmeal to work today but didn’t eat it. I drank the first smoothie around 8:15am, the second in mid-morning (10? 10:30?) by 11:30 I got hungry. I don’t get hungry at noon like other people because I graze on my oatmeal all morning and the slow release carbs get me going. However, it’s almost 12:30 and I’m ready for a salad.

Smoothies are definitely a way to help stay hydrated and keep things easy on the digestive system, which I taxed on Tuesday evening with breaded tofu fingers (like chicken wings) and a grain-based veggie burger that was more dense than expected. By making little changes to what we eat and drink, even if they don’t become habitual, we can change our health. Going back to the Raw Food Diet, and I’ll get more into this another time, I’d like to try eating all raw until dinner time or mostly raw, with salads topped with sprouted grains or eggs and/or cheese (but not grains and one of the others because they’re poor combinations for digestion, while vegetables can combine with anything). I think I could do quinoa on my salads even though it’s technically cooked.

Lunch today is what remained in a box of salad (a box of Earthbound Farms salad appears to yield 4 meals worth of salad), the last of my cucumbes and baby carrots from the fridge at work and the last of the can of sliced beets that I opened yesterday. I figured that if I was using up the salad I may as well use up everything that goes on it and on Fridays I like to eat out so I’ll stock the fridge again on Monday. As per my usual this week, the dressing is a squeeze of lemon (used that up too and there wasn’t much left) and a drizzle of walnut oil.