I’ve recently moved house again and the weather has been pants. Battleship grey skies make me miserable and aggravate my sinuses and a little moving stress has seen me out of sorts. So, I decided it was time for a service. Time to clean out this body of mine and get it firing on all cylinders ready for a great summer.
I’ve done a lot of cleanses over the years and they have all worked great, but one thing I’ve not done before is a completely raw cleanse. So, here I go into the unknown!!
First, I shopped. Organic wherever possible. This turned out to be in Sainsbury’s AND my new local Greengrocer whose baskets and shelves are overflowing with so much goodness I felt fit to burst just looking at them. Deliriously happy is how I would describe myself after reasling what an absolute treasure trove of a shop I’d moved 2 minute’s walk from.
Next? Well, I couldn’t really prep as fresh raw is best; so I arranged it all attractively in aesthetically pleasing bowls on my worktop and started to think about recipes.
Experimentation is really the only place I’ve got to go with this, so over the next 28 days I will be trying, testing, tasting and rating, as well as sharing any that are successful!
I started today and am pleased to report … I feel great.
Things I learned today
- This is time consuming
- Raw veg tastes better in smaller chunks
- Dressings save the day
- Spiralisers don’t like beetroot
- Use smaller garlic cloves
So what did I eat?
Well, I started my digestive day at 7:30am with 2 sticks of celery blended with a cup of water and I drank that on an empty stomach. This is along the lines of The Medical Medium who swears by drinking celery juice. I don’t have a juicer so my 2 stick blend is where I’m at.
Then I had a cup of my own blend of herbal tea. It’s a digestive blend and consists of
Green tea – Lemon balm – Dandelion root – Liquorice root
And in that I squeeze some fresh lemon juice.
For breakfast at 8:30am I had a smoothie. Smoothies are indeed delicious but I would never do a smoothie only cleanse as we were born to chew. When we chew, it starts the digestion process and releases enzymes that help break down our food. This is important.
Smoothie number 1 went like this:
- 2 bananas
- ½ small papaya
- 1 red skinned apple
- 1 pear
- 2 Medjool dates
- Handful of spinach
- 6 blueberries
- Grated ginger
- Cup of water
At 11:30 I had another smoothie, a much smaller one so I guess you’d call it a smoothie snack.
This little booster consisted of:
- 1 banana
- 5 grapes
- Handful of spinach
- 1 date
- 1 orange
- Cup of water
At 1pm I had another cup of herbal tea.
Lunchtime came at 1:10 ish, totally driven by my body clock.
Experimentally I made a raw mushroom pate. This is when I learned that less garlic is more. This recipe is an amended version of the one I made earlier:
- 1 punnet of mushrooms
- Half a small red onion
- Half a garlic clove grated
- Handful of basil leaves
- Pinch of Himalayan pink salt
Blitz in a food processor until pate consistency.
I put this into the 2 halves of my avocado and made a kale and tomato salad. Something else I learned today is that when eating raw veg, it tastes much better in smaller chunks, so I rough chopped my salad in the food processor.
- Handful of kale
- Large tomato
- Handful of spinach
- 2 inch piece of cucumber
After laying this all out nicely on a plate, I topped it off with sprouted chickpeas and alfalfa sprouts. Truly delicious.
More herbal tea this afternoon and dinner came about 6ish. It was:
- 1 small beetroot
- 6 stalks parsley
- 6 stalks coriander
- 2 inch piece of courgette
- Chunk of red cabbage
- 1 pear
- Slice of mango
- Topped with sprouts
Dressing:
- Juice of half an orange
- 1/4 teaspoon of horseradish powder
- Grate a little ginger
- Sprinkling of Himalayan Pink salt
When I was making this I was thinking I was not going to enjoy it as much as I had lunch. I kept thinking about chunks of raw beetroot and courgette but you know what? Chuck it all in a food processor and chop chop chop, the smaller it gets the better it tastes. I was surprised at just how good this was.
Tonight I had another cup of herbal tea and I’ve drunk lots of water throughout the day too.
All in all, a successful day and I’m looking forward to tomorrows raw adventure! If you’d like to discuss or have any questions, hop on over to my group here:/https://www.facebook.com/groups/Bellibones/
