Eggplant roll ups with cashew ricotta

Amazing stuffed squash blossoms.

Several factors played into the creation of this recipe.   First, I got an eggplant in my Relayfoods.com box this week which made two eggplants in the house that needed cooking.  Second, I had cashew ricotta 'cheese' left over from my stuffed squash blossoms experiment (which turned out amazing!). And third, I had made homemade tomato sauce in the fridge that needed to be used.  I browsed my Pinterest 'Primal Eats' board as well as searched for new and exciting recipes using eggplant.  After several hours of reading many various eggplant Parmesan recipes I decided to just use what I had on hand (the above list) and just come up with my own thing.   The birth of eggplant roll-ups with cashew ricotta.

Sweating out the Eggplant

I used my mandolin to slice the eggplant then I salted down each slice and let them sweat in a colander for about an hour.  I never used to do this step but I had read in so many recipes that this step is important if you don't want soupy eggplant dishes.  After the eggplant sat I sorta just pushed down on the eggplant to get as much water out as I could.  I ended up doing this process twice because I realized I had to rinse off all the salt otherwise we'd all be heading to the hospital to have our hearts checked. 

The next step was probably the most time consuming.  I used olive oil to fry up each slice.  I had a lot of slices!  I ended up using both of my fry pans so I could cook about 8 slices at a time.  As a side note, the slices cooked in my cast iron skillet had a much nicer golden crust than the ones fried in the non-stick skillet.  After all the slices were fried I set them aside to cool while I mixed up the filling that I was going to load into these bad boys.  When my mom used to make lasagna she used to add all sorts of yummy flavors into the ricotta cheese mixture so I loosely followed what I remember her doing.  She was a 'dump and pour' cook so there was never any written recipes anywhere. It always astonished me that she could whip of a batch of (insert food item here) without ever following a recipe!

I put about 2 cups of my homemade tomato sauce in the bottom of a Pyrex baking dish and got ready to roll each eggplant slice! This part went fairly quickly.  I didn't measure out exactly how much I put into each roll but by looking at the picture I'd say the dollop of awesomeness was about a tablespoon.  I ended up running out of filling before I ran out of eggplant.  I didn't have that much left and they were the smaller more narrower slices AND the pan was full so I threw the rest away.  Gasp!!  I know.  There was a land of possibilities unexplored with the last few slices of eggplant but frankly, I didn't want to have to worry about it. So now I have these bad boys rolled up and I had one final brilliant idea...heavy cream!!  I had just picked up some fresh, raw heavy cream and had read it in some recipe somewhere to top each each roll up with a spoon of cream.  Oh yes!  I did that!  After they were cooked I think the cream added a level of creaminess to the dish.  Definitely keeping that move for next time.  I sprinkled them all with some Parmesan cheese flakes and threw them in the oven for about 30 minutes.  Viola!  Rich, filling delicious eggplant roll ups!

Before the oven.

The Recipe
For the filling:
1 1/2 cup cashew ricotta cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp garlic
1 Tbl fresh minced basil
1 tsp salt
1 egg
pepper to taste

2 eggplants sliced about 1/4 inch thick, salted and sweated, rinsed and fried in olive oil
2 cups tomato sauce

Use about 1 Tbl of filling for each eggplant roll-up, then roll and place on top of sauce.  Once everything is rolled, spoon about a teaspoon of cream over each roll.  Top with additional Parmesan cheese.  Cook at 350 for 30 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbly. 

Enjoy the rich deliciousness!

On our finest china!  LOL

Homemade laundry detergent

Background
Thank you Pinterest for giving me ideas for just about everything!  Since John and I started our primal journey just over a year ago we have evolved on many different food and ways of living levels (well, I evolve and John is stuck following my crazy paths).  When I first started researching the paleo/primal lifestyle, I joined a closed facebook group called IPMG (International Paleo Movement Group) where people posted about the meals they cooked up, exercises and workouts they did, their weight loss progress, etc.  Well, one of the things that I would see posted in the group fairly regularly was on the topic of home made soaps, cleaners, shampoos, and toothpaste, deodorant, etc.  These were the posts that I pretty much skimmed right past because seriously, THOSE people are crazy!!  I had this image in my head that the only people who really do all that stuff are the Amish.  And I live very differently than they do so why would I ever need to go down that path?? 

Dad gardening.

Well, let's fast forward almost an entire year.  I have discovered the benefits of eating 'good' food.  And what I mean by that is food that is local, seasonal, not processed from a box; animal products that are local, grass fed, pastured chickens (not on a vegetarian diet because chickens are not vegetarians), hormone free, antibiotic free.  We limit grains, specifically GMO (genetically modified) grains such as corn and wheat.  We use alternative flours like almond flour or coconut flour.  We eat more things that are raw like nuts, seeds, honey and maple syrup.  Well, this is all fine and dandy but to live this way, you pay a price. The cost of this stuff is for sure more expensive.  I buy a gallon of raw milk for $6/gallon.  I buy a dozen soy free pastured chicken eggs for $4.50/dozen (and we go through A LOT of eggs).  You get the idea.  It's a cost I'm willing to pay for mine and my family's health.  I pay the price now, and hopefully not in medical costs down the road.  Fruits and veggies aren't as expensive as the other items I mentioned, especially when I go to a farmers market.  I wish I had a garden like my dad's (see him working away above).  He is several states away so I can't take advantage of all of his hard work.

Being Frugal + Pinterest = home made stuff
So how does this all relate to home made laundry detergent?  Well, have you seen the price of it??  I started feeling like I was running to Sam's club way too often to buy the largest container of laundry detergent for $20 because when you have up to 7 people in the house at times, you run out of things faster.  It started adding up.  I like high quality things and it seemed as if I was depleting my disposable income at a quicker pace trying to buy high quality everything.  A decision needed to be made.  Where can I cut back?  What am I willing to give up?  As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the food group was NOT an option.  So where else is logical? I had put the intention out to the universe that I needed logical ideas as to what areas of my life I could be more frugal about.  Here enters Pinterest.  Maybe they were always there and I didn't pay any attention to them or maybe they appeared because I had asked for it.  In any case, I started coming across pins to boards on home made products.  HELLO!!  Pin after pin about home made laundry detergent kept popping up on my Pinterest page.  So I started reading them.  All of them.  I probably read 50 different blogs with recipes and they are all pretty much the same basic recipe.  I was unsure about the smell (or lack of).  I was unsure if it would clean my cloths.  I was unsure about a lot of things so I kept reading blogs.  Everyday.  About homemade laundry detergent.  I proposed my idea to John and his first reaction was "OH GOD!" But after I told him what I had read about making it, he totally got what I was trying to accomplish and was supportive of my new path.  I was ready.  I was going to do this.

Initial prep
So the ingredients are simple.  Borax, washing soda (not baking soda, but washing soda - their pH levels are different so I've read), and a bar of soap.  Some recipes said any bar of soap but many recipes called specifically for Fels Naptha Soap.  Yeah.  That's what I said too, "Fels, huh...what?"  So last Thursday was the day I was going to jump in.  I told John I was going to the grocery store after work to get my supplies.  I went to Safeway.  Nada.  The only thing you could buy at Safeway was mass produced, name brand detergents.  Crap.  Home Depot was my next logical place to look.  Again, nada.  (However a local friend of mine did tell me she got Borax at HD but she had to ask someone to help her find it.)  Well dang.  My son needed detergent ASAP and I was running out of time so I ended up running back to Safeway and bought the smallest bottle of liquid detergent I could find.  $8.99 plus tax. Wowzers. Yes, I'm aware there is probably cheaper (AKA store brand) but I bought Tide.

I posted on my facebook that evening if anyone in my area knew where I could find Borax and Washing soda.  One of my fb friends replied with, "Uhmmmm....1950?"  LOL.  So the next day I'm back to surfing the web to find where I could buy all this stuff.  I discovered you can make your own washing soda! How to make your own washing soda. So my plan was, if I couldn't find washing soda I was going to make my own.  On my way home from work, I stopped in another town along the way that has a Wal-Mart.  Not only did they have the borax, but they had the washing soda AND the fels-whatever soap.  I purchased a box each of borax and washing soda and 4 bars of the soap (you only need 1 for each 3-gallon batch but I figured I don't get to wal-mart that often so I may as well stock up while I was there).  Aside from the $20 3-gallon beverage dispenser I purchased for the said soap (another brilliant idea I saw on Pinterest) my purchase for detergent was a little over $8 and it will make probably 10 3-gallon batches!!  

Soap making

Suppose to let it sit overnight like this.

The moment you've all been waiting for.  The recipe said to grate the bar soap and put it in a pot on the stove with water and melt it.  Easy enough.  Threw the soap into my food processor and in about 5 seconds the soap was grated.    I pretty much followed this recipe: One Good Thing by Jillie.  After the soap was melted I poured in the borax and washing soda and cooked it on the stove until it was not quite thick like pudding but maybe like a nice gravy.  When it got to that state I poured it into the dispenser and following the recipe I poured additional water into the dispenser until it was half full.  The recipe said to let it sit over night until it was a thick glob.

This is what it looked like.  It has a very pleasant smell.  I actually really like it.  I did have to send my son a text message to let him know that it was not lemonade on the counter so don't drink it! 

Well, I'm not super patient when it comes to waiting for things overnight so I let it sit in this state for a few hours.  It was pretty darn firm so I went to the next step which was to fill it the rest of the way with water and stir.  It was a nice liquid detergent consistency.  One of the questions I got on facebook was 'does the dispenser get 'gooped up'.  At this point I couldn't answer that question.  We'll come back to that.

The finished product - next to the $9 Tide.

 So here's what the finished product looks like!  Isn't it pretty?  Oh, and pay no attention to the rust on the dryer.  We are renters so this is NOT our machine.  I could have covered it up I suppose but truthfully, I don't really care what it looks like. It works.  So let's back up to just prior to me taking this picture.  I had let the soap sit on the counter over night.  When I woke up the next morning the soap had separated. Someone on facebook (a seasoned soap maker) actually made that exact comment on my post so I wasn't totally surprised.  She said because there aren't preservatives in it, it will do that.  So I needed to stir it up.  Well, this is THREE GALLONS of soap.  A little spoon wasn't doing the job because the soapy part was congealed so it wasn't mixing in with the water.  Next up, Joan's hand and arm.  I was trying to squeeze each congealed chunk of soap but I wasn't getting it mixed well.  Next up, the immersion blender.  Bingo!!  We have a winner.  It mixed up to a beautiful runny soap again!  I gracefully carried this container to the basement laundry room, promptly took this picture and was ready for my first load.  The soap dispensed beautifully into the cup (after again sticking my hand into the container and putting my pinking into the spout because the congealed soap was stuck in there).  Success.  The clothes came out clean and without any sort of filmy residue.  And they smelled clean and fresh. 

Lessons Learned
So a couple days passed and it was Johns turn to do laundry.  Nothing dispensed.  Fail. That answered the gooped up dispenser question above.  I took the lid off and it's a beautiful soft gel.  So, instead of dispensing liquid We scoop from the top what looks a lot like lemon custard.  Next batch will be left in powdered form.  The woman who commented on my facebook page that said it separates was also the wise one who told me how to make it powdered next time (everything goes in the food processor!)

What's next?
Who knows but I'm sure it will be something!!  Hope you enjoyed my experience! 

Juice fast day - pickle juice?? Really???

So today is the one day a week that John and I do our juice fast.  He made our drinks last night and had them in the fridge for us to grab and go to work this morning.  The morning juice was ok. He put a grapefruit in it which I'm not a huge grapefruit juice fan.  It's just a little too tart for me.  It was drinkable at least.  But let's back up a bit to this morning.  I leave before anyone else is even out of bed so I went to the fridge to find that my two bottles of juice were in the fridge.  Both looked orange in color.  I couldn't figure out what he used that would have been orange since we're out of carrots.  But I threw them in my lunch bag and walked out the door.  Afraid of tasting either of them I texted John to asked which one was breakfast and which was mid-morning.  He didn't respond for a while after my initial text but as I was hungry I realized that I was going to have to taste each of them.  I took a sip of the first one and got the grapefruit taste but still wasn't sure if it was the morning juice.  So I opened the second one...took a sip...GROSS!!!  I knew this was the mid-morning right away.  I couldn't put my finger on the taste though.  Then I got a text from John.  He said, "the one that tastes like pickles is the mid-morning juice."  Duh.  Already tasted it.

Morning Juice
Since I had a brief sip of the pickle juice I decided that the grapefruit juice wasn't that terrible.  It had some chunky things in it which always grosses me out.  I hate pulp in my juice and when there's chunks (even if it's an apple chunk) it makes it harder to drink.  It sort of reminds me of drinking vomit.  Sorry for being so explicit but maybe now you can understand why it grosses me out so much.


Mid-Morning Juice
I was getting hungry but I knew what I was going to have to drink in order to not be hungry.  I was seriously opting for hunger!  Just so everyone is clear, I LOVE pickles.  Right out of the jar.  On a hamburger.  In tuna or potato salad.  You can pretty much put a pickle in most anything and I'll eat it.  But drinking a pickle is nasty!  It was another one of those 'close your eyes, hold your breath, and chug' drinks!  Bl eh!! It was waaay too salty.  I am absolutely thrilled that he made the juices last night for us so I wouldn't have to wake up extra early to make them.  And I'm also thrilled that he's getting gutsy in the kitchen and experimenting with new flavors.  But this one was an epic fail.  I was only able to choke down half of the drink (which was still about 10 oz's!).  Went and got a salad for lunch.

Food Snobs
The more and more John and I get into all of this Paleo/Primal lifestyle stuff the more and more we are turning into food snobs.  Let's give you all an example: last week we traveled by bus to and from Myrtle Beach from Maryland.  The 'lunch stop' was at this placed called South of the Border.  This place is a run down dive.  It sorta feels like being in Mexico with a red-neck twist.  There was one lunch option.  It was a place that served burgers, hot dogs, burritos and tacos.  Oh...and chili!  I ordered a bun less burger.  They didn't have lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole or even salsa (I thought this was a Mexican joint??).  So here's what I got: a small 2 oz disc shaped piece of gray matter covered in melted processed cheese, a squirt of mustard and about 5 onion pieces.  GROSS!!!!  John ordered the chili.  He had about two bites and he threw it away.  None of it had anything 'real' in it.  Ground beef shouldn't be a pale gray color!  Another example was at our hotel.  Part of our hotel package was the free breakfast buffet.  Everyday it consisted of the same items: flavored yogurts, canned peaches, pale orange cantaloupe, dried out country fries, super greasy sausage links, baby soft yellow scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, and french toast with syrup that I'm sure was pure high fructose corn syrup.  John and I ate eggs and bacon every day but in total disgust. We are so used to our free range chicken eggs fresh from the farm that are bright orange when you crack them open.  These pale eggs were lifeless and unsatisfying.  The sausage link actually burst a shot of grease in our mouths when we bit into it.  YUCK!!  We love our fresh breakfast sausage we get from Polyface Farms that is so lean and delicious that we actually have to add coconut oil to the pan to cook them!!    So as we move more and more toward buying local, buying fresh and in season, the harder and harder it is to travel and be too far from home.  At least on a bus full of people.  Had we our own car we could have tried seeking out restaurants that served local produce and meats.  But we were limited.  Don't even get me started on the cafeteria style place we stopped for dinner one night.  Carbs, carbs, carbs.

Cooking more, eating out less


Dinner
We had an awesome dinner last night.  We grilled two portabello mushroom caps (drizzled with EVOO, salt and pepper) and two bison burgers.  Put burgers on top of mushroom cap, topped with guacamole and salsa (that I had freshly made) and romaine lettuce.  YUM!! 

Day 11 - present...

Day 11 - modified plan begins...
I still had my herbal tea on the way into work which is probably something I will continue to do because I've come to really enjoy it.  I missed my morning juice though.  It is really easy to 'drink' your breakfast.  My routine at work had been to log onto my computer and check emails while drinking my juice.  No dishes to wash.  Nothing to heat up in the microwave.  Easy.  On the other hand, this morning's breakfast was some cut up strawberries and banana with some of the chocolate dip I talked about in a previous post along with some scrambled eggs and a piece of sausage.  I think those were the best eggs and sausage I've ever had!!  No joke.  They tasted amazing!  The longing for the morning juice quickly disappeared.  John ate eggs too and agreed that they taste amazing!

Not hungry...
I am happy to report that my breakfast has 'stuck to my ribs'.  I ate around...8-ish and I was just starting to get hungry for lunch around 1.  Amazing!  I am working on getting back in touch of my true sense of hunger and not eat out of boredom.  I'm certain those days will still exist but with all of the bad carbs and refined sugars out of my body  I haven't craved chocolate, sweets, bread, pasta, chips.  Do I want those things? Well, honestly, on occasion it would be helpful.  Helpful?? Yes that is what I said.  I don't crave them but I could use them.  For example, I made a huge bowl of salsa and a lot of it is left because we don't eat tortilla chips. But now that we can eat steak I'll be putting a hefty helping on top!  And since we're back to eating eggs, I will be putting some on those as well.

The other days...
Sorry I stopped posting daily after we started modifying our juice diet.  We have been busy with kids. I mean LOTS of kids!  We had a birthday party for my step son and there were 10 kids over for that.  As soon as the majority of the partiers left my son had 4 of his friends stay with us for a couple days before they left for a week at the beach.  But we still had four of our own kids plus two other sleep over guests for a couple more days.  Now we're down to 5 kids.  It's hard to get computer time with all those kids in the house.  No, I don't have my own laptop.  Well I do, but it's an old apple mini and I really don't like it.  It's hard to type on.

Birthday Guilt
I feel really guilty about all the birthday food that we provided for all the kids.  I bought two different sandwich platters from Subway.  Bread!  I served bread!  Then we bought a box of Sun Chips and slim jims.  Did you know that one of the ingredients on slim jims says "mechanically separated chicken"?  WTF is that??? Then we of course bought a big ole birthday cake and a tub of Neapolitan ice cream.  The second ingredient was high fructose corn syrup!  And all that was washed down with mini bottles of Simply Lemonade.  I served all those kids a big heaping helping of...of...I don't even know what to call all that garbage!

JT's HFCS cake & ice cream

  
Kids are slow to adjust
It's challenging feeding all five of them Paleo/Primal meals for a couple reasons.  1) it's more expensive to buy organic, local foods and I have to buy things in large quantities, and 2) they don't understand the science or the political reasons we don't eat bread, rice, pasta and grains.  I did make a big pot roast the other day that they all devoured!  It was a grass fed roast I bought from Polyface Farms (that's Joel Salatin's farm in VA - he was in the movie Food, Inc and Fresh) I threw in the crockpot with some green beans and potatoes and onion I got from the farmers market.  I put fresh sage and fresh thyme, salt, pepper and chicken stock and just let it cook until the meat fell apart.  Delish!  Last night I made meatloaf (ground beef also from Polyface Farms) with sun dried tomatoes, feta cheese, basil (from my garden!), almond meal (in place of breadcrumbs), salt, pepper, garlic and an egg.  We served it with steamed broccoli and cantaloupe I also got from the farmers market.  Yum to me and John and JT (who pretty much will eat anything you put in front of him).  My daughter, Makenzie only ate broccoli.  Her friend, Hannah ate it but wasn't super excited and our daughter, Kennedy ate a little of everything but then made a bag of popcorn (which I will never buy again as soon as we're out). Z ate it but commented that he really only liked the broccoli.  I ate his melon.  He tried it but said it wasn't sweet like a mango.  True that!  Later in the evening, John and I were on the porch watching a movie and we could see Hannah and Makenzie raiding the fridge.  They had to be creative because there's only fruits, veggies, eggs, sausage and cheese for the most part in there.  The less and less 'crap' we have around and the more and more healthy options are around the more they will just have to eat healthy.  There are still some bad things lingering around and I'm not throwing it away because the kids will eat them.  For example there's nuttella in the cabinet and there are some cheese and cracker things. 


Myrtle Beach trip
We leave for Myrtle early Monday morning.  We're considering taking the juicer with us.  I'm off this Friday so my plan is to make a bunch of paleo/primal snacks that John and I can take on the bus.  He says usually the elder family members bring snacks for everyone on the bus but it's things like bags of chips and cookies.  I made some 'crackers' last night.  I put a cup of sunflower seed in the food processor and made it into a butter consistency then added a cup of sesame seeds in.  Then while blending I slowly poured 1/4 cup water until it made a dough.  I put it between two pieces of parchment paper and rolled it out real thin, scored them into crackers, sprinkled them with salt, pepper and herbs de provence and baked them until they were golden brown and crispy.  Quite tasty!  We didn't have any last night (other than to sample them) because we were full from dinner but at least they are on hand.  Makenzie thought they were gross.  Our kids' taste buds are so conditioned to enjoy sugar laden, or salt laden foods they don't know what real food is suppose to taste like.  It will come with time.  But back to the bus trip, we got the itinerary the other day and there are three planned shopping days.  One to a flea market, one to some outlet shops, and the other is to what is called the boardwalk but it's not like a normal boardwalk to me.  It doesn't have rides and it's not along the ocean.  It's more little shops.  So we're skipping that one and we'll spend the day at the beach.  There are some planned dinners too.  One is to a big seafood buffet place so we should be able to stick to our paleo/primal eating.

Juice Fast day
So today is our juice fast day.  Our morning drink was only ok and they are usually my favorite. It was raspberries, black berries, plums and cantaloupe.  The mid morning juice is not the worst one we've had but not that great either.  I had to use up the kale in the fridge so it's mostly kale but then I had some zucchini that needed to be used and a carrot, a lemon and 1/2 a pineapple.  It gave John hot flashes after he finished it.  As I mentioned before, it is amazing to take in so many vitamins and nutrients at one time.  The boost of energy is unlike any caffeine I've ever drank!

Soup For lunch
We still had a couple servings left of the squash and pear soup so that's what lunch was made up of. Tonight the plan is to have a big salad with tuna!  I think the kids might even eat that!  We shall hope anyway. 

Day 10 - Can we start the countdown yet??

So as I re-read the Day 9 post I discovered that an entire paragraph about pizza was missing.  How does that happen?  I guess Eblogger didn't like what I had to say about coming up with alternate pizza crusts like those made with almond flour, or mashed cauliflower, or mashed eggplant.  If you're interested in hearing more about that let me know and I'll retype what I think I said.

But the other thing I realized I left out from yesterday was the chocolate fruit dip I made!!  Yes, you heard me.  I follow the blog Everyday Paleo http://everydaypaleo.com/ and she had posted a fruit dip that she made.  I followed the recipe (only made 1/2 the recipe though) and I thought it was an excellent substitute for hershey's syrup which has always been a yummy treat for me when poured over fruit.  So the reason I couldn't eat all of my soup last night for dinner is because I had dessert first.  Yeah...didn't listen to my mother about that rule either.  So I had a big bowl of bananas and strawberries with the Paleo chocolate fruit dip.  And what made it even better was knowing that I wasn't putting anything terrible in my body AND it fit into our fasting diet!!  Ok, maybe the teaspoon of coconut flour isn't allowed, but at least I didn't eat the pizza!!!

Morning Juice
Do I even need to say it??  DELISH! John thinks the best yet.  It was apples, pineapple, and raspberries.  Pretty plain and simple.

Mid Morning Juice
Well against my own advice, I again threw random things into this juice.  We've got a sweet potato, a beet, a baby bok choi, an orange, a lemon, some ginger, and I can't remember if there was anything else.  Suffice it to say, I was SCARED to drink it.  Ten days in and one thing I've learned is I don't like bad tasting juice!! And I had every right to be.  It was AWFUL!!  I mean, close my eyes, hold my breath, swig it fast, chase with water bad.  Whew...glad that drink is behind us!!

Nasty Juice = huge energy??
The strangest thing happened about 30 minutes after I drank the god-awful mid-morning juice.  I was sitting at my desk and started feeling like I had just ingested 2 cups of strong coffee!!  Almost a little jittery even!  I had read in my juicing book that one of the benefits of juicing is that since the vitamins from all the veggies are liquefied our bodies don't have to digest them so they go directly into the blood stream.  That must be what happened!  Amazing what 'real', fresh, local food can do for our bodies!  When I mentioned to John what I experienced he said it did the same thing for him.  And we won't have a sugar crash later!!!

The rest of the day
John said he is in charge of tomorrow's juice's LOL.  Two days in a row of awful juices he's ready to take the wheel.  I told him "PLEASE do!" However, as I was driving home from work I got a text from him saying "tomorrow is my last day.  I'm going to start implementing our modified plan of juicing two days a week and eating paleo/primal the rest of the week."  We both miss meat and as I mentioned in a previous blog we feel cleansed.  We don't have sugar cravings or carb cravings since we had cut those out prior to this reboot anyway.  We didn't do this fast to turn ourselves vegetarian.  We have no desire to do that.  We just want to get back to our historical eating roots.  Clean out the junk and start fresh.  It makes sense really to end tomorrow because we will have all 5 kids starting on Friday and we have to feed all the troops.  I am prepared though.  I ordered lots of grass fed beef from Polyface Farms (if you've seen the documentaries Food, Inc and/or Fresh you are familiar with Joel Salatine).  The beef is ready for pick up on Saturday.  I ordered our fresh fruits and veggies and some local fish, bison, elk and venison from my local CSA which will be delivered Sunday and Monday I will pick up our order for raw milk and cage free, soy free eggs and some raw cheeses from my amish farmer.  I have gone through the Paleo cookbook "everyday paleo" and have earmarked all the recipes I'll be making for the family.  Let's do this.  Bring on the eggs and MEAT!!! 

Day 9 - still on original plan...for now

We woke up this morning and decided that we are going to keep going for now.  Today's lunches and dinner is already planned out and it's all plant-based so we're in it for another day.  One thing we discussed last night was why are we doing this for 15 days?  Where did that number come from?  I found that 'Reboot' website and plugged in a few answers to their generic, on-line questionnaire and the answer popped up that we needed to be on the 15 day plan.  But what are the benefits of 15 instead of 8?  What's so magical about 15?  It takes 30 days to form a new habit so that can't be it...hmmm....

We originally started this fast to do an internal cleanse.  And the first couple of days we felt we were getting 'cleansed'.  But we haven't had all the horrible flu-like symptoms that some people experience during a fast.  Our conclusion is that we were eating pretty healthy before we took this challenge on.  We had already stopped eating bread, rice, pasta and beans.  We rarely eat fast food and limit our processed foods.  I try to buy organic whenever possible, and I read labels.  If there are too many ingredients on the label I don't even put it in the basket.  My weakness in that area is when we have all the kids. It's so much easier to throw a box of eggo waffles in the basket.  Or a big pizza. We know they'll eat all of it.  We know they won't complain about the food for dinner.  And they cook it themselves (most of the time).  John and I just hope that they are also observing our eating habits and some of it soaks in with them.  We have 5 kids ranging in age from 18 - 8.  Four of them are teenagers who can eat us out of house and home!

Morning juice
Today's morning juice was back to being awesome!  This had plums, strawberries, blueberries, apples and a banana.  Yum!!

Not for weight loss
My dad asked me the other day if I was doing this to loose weight or for nutritional purposes.  My answer was 'nutritional purposes.'  I did step on the scale on day 1 and I took my measurements.  But that is not the reason I'm doing this.  At the end of 15 days I will step on the scale and take new measurements just to see. John on the other hand, has a number in his head that he wants to reach.   I threatened to hide the scale during these 15 days because he steps on it every couple of days against all of my preaching.  There was an article I read recently about a woman who weighed 155 lbs and the picture of her was very flabby.  Then she hired a personal trainer, cleaned up her diet and a couple months later she STILL weighed 155 but was down two dress sizes and she looked great!!  It's not always the number.  I remind him of that story but it doesn't register for him.  I told him to take his measurements but he says he doesn't need to because he's happy with all of his body except his stomach.  So we have agreed that I will my diet my way and he will diet his way. 

Mid morning juice and lunch
Today went a lot better than yesterday in the land of food.  The spaghetti squash didn't sound so yucky to me today and actually was a delicious lunch.  However the mid-morning juice was only so-so.  John reported that it was the worst one yet.  He said he didn't like the beet and lime combo.  But I can say with much certainty that I didn't put lime it in!  It was beets, carrots, zucchini, radish, ginger and 1/4 pineapple.  That's what I get for not following a recipe and just throwing things in at random!

Dinner
John loved the veggie soup that we made last week so he wanted that again. He was just going to cut up the veggies again and let me do the rest (so I thought), but when I got home he had the soup totally made already!  Good job baby! I was flipping through the recipes for our 15 day fast looking for what juices I wanted to make for Day 10 when I came across a butternut squash and pear soup.  It sounded awesome so I started making that along with our juices.  I was in the kitchen for about 2 1/2 hours making juice, cleaning the juicer, making more juice, cleaning the juicer, answering text messages, chopping up pears and onions for the soup, cooking the squash, cleaning up, etc, etc.  I love to cook and there's nothing on tv right now that I'm watching so I'm not being pulled out of the kitchen and sucked into tv so it gave me something to do.

PIZZA...
Things were going just fine until Parker, my 18 year old, cooked a pepperoni pizza.  The soups on the stove were smelling sooo good.  Then he pulled out this cheese bubbling, saucy, round piece of deliciousness from the oven. It was so tempting to just have one bite.  Just one.  It smelled and looked amazing.  I am proud to say I didn't have any but I will have to say that I'm not going to totally rule out eating pizza after we're done with our fast.  I have tried a Paleo

Company
So we had a friend come over last night who's in town for work.  He originally suggested to John that we just go down to our clubhouse to grab a bite to eat.  First we weren't sure if they were open on a Tuesday night, but more importantly John and I didn't want to walk in there and be tempted by crabcake platters, french fries, burgers, etc.  So we offered him some of food (non-juiced of course).  He thought the veggie soup looked good so we gave him a big bowl of that.  He was surprised John made it and he kept asking if it wasn't just a can of Progresso!  I had purchased a loaf of bread and some ham sandwich meat for Parker so we didn't totally punish our guest; we gave him a sandwich too!  John made the sandwich and was salivating over the meat!!  I was just finishing up the butternut squash soup and I asked our guest if he'd like to try it.  He passed when he heard it was 'squash' soup.  However, I had made myself a big bowl and it was too much so I gave it to John to finish.  He thought it was delicious!  The exact phrase was, "Baby, you really put your toe in this one!"  He got a little more pushy with our guest and made him try some.  We have a squash soup convert.  He was amazed how butternut squash could taste so good in the form of a soup.

We faced many temptations last night and we made it.  Day 10 here we come!

Day 7 & 8 - Chicken, fish, cheese, steak...

Yes, I'm thinking about food.  Non-plant food.  I'm not sure what our first meal will be when we're done fasting but it's going to be great!!  Grilled chicken breast on a salad sounds lovely about now.  And cheese....oh how I love cheese.  I would like a grilled steak with some Gorgonzola cheese crumbles on top and some sauteed mushrooms.  Mmmmm....I'm making myself hungry.

Snacks
We've been having to be creative with our snacks.  We have found that plantain chips are delicious either plain or with salsa and guacamole.  I found some seaweed snacks but haven't tried those yet.  I'll let you know what we think of those.  We also like banana chips and dried green beans.    I haven't had success making good baked kale.  It's always soggy.  Whole Foods sells some awesome baked kale but it is really expensive (like $7 a box!).

Morning Juice
Another not so delicious morning juice.  It had mango, blueberries, kiwi, apples and coconut water but it just didn't have that sweet delicious taste.  It wasn't terrible but not one of my favorites. Oh, it was better than the one I made the other day though with the grapefruit.  

Mid morning juice
Usually the mid morning juices are my least favorite because it's more veggie based but today's juice is tasty!  However, I'm hungry.  I brought spaghetti squash for lunch but that's not really dinging any bells for me.  Maybe I'll get a salad instead.  

Lunch
Decided on a salad, however, I didn't put enough vinegar on it so it doesn't really taste that great.  Bummer.  Today the cafeteria was serving roasted turkey with your choice of steamed veggies.  I wanted it!!


I'm hungry today...
And I want MEAT!!

Dinner
We struggled today.  Both John and I were about to throw in the towel and eat some meat.  But we hung tough.  I had a bowl of tomato soup and he pretty much just ate snacks (guacamole, salsa, plantain chips, carrots, green beans).  We had a serious discussion about whether or not we want to continue on this plan or should we start incorporating meat  back into our diet.  We're going to anyway, right?  Why not do it 5 days before we were planning to??  We went to bed both saying to each other "let's discuss it tomorrow....we're weak right now."