Lasagna Dinner

Paul made a great lasagna tonight for dinner. 

It's amazing that a faux meat sauce and zucchini can make such a tasty dish.  Layers included thin sliced green olives, minced red bell pepper, a thin layer of raw chevre goat cheese, faux meat (made of soaked ground walnuts, fennel seed, basil, garlic, oregano and olive oil) and lots of marinara. And it was beautiful too!  Who would have thought that a raw/cold/vegatarian diet could be so good?  Not us!

Plateau No More!

Okay it's only a pound a piece but that is something after nearly a week and no budging. So Pam has lost 6 pounds and I have lost 7. We were tested yesterday for our Resting and Active Metabolic rates which gives you a ton of information on your body's ability to work and what you burn for calories just by doing what you do everyday without exercise. I burn 2200 calories while doing my thing everyday and Pam burns 1400. I wouldn't have thought that the difference would be that great.

Paul testing with Annelise from infitness (www.infitnessforlife.com)

The test also gives you information on where you go from aerobic to anaerobic or how your body utilizes fat versus carbs for fuel during activity. That information allows you to target your workouts to your needs. You would think that if you work out as hard as you can work all the time that you would get the best results, but that is not so for most people.

We found some organic raw crackers to eat with guacamole we made to watch the Seahawks game. Where was that team all year? Those guys seriously looked like a football team. But I digress. The crackers (made by GoRaw) are dehydrated instead of baked so they maintain their essential food quality and enzymes and they were good. They were mainly made of seeds and had different flavors from spicy to pizza. We could have stuck with plain because the Guac was really good.
Tonight we will have the lasagna made with thin sliced zucchini for noodles and some raw goat cheese along with some faux Italian sausage - made like the "meatballs" and marinara. If it's pretty I'm sure Pam will take a picture for you. More soon....

One Down Three To Go

Today is the last day of the first week of our little food adventure. We have been maintaining the weight loss from the fast while eating solid food for the last 5 days. Pam remains -5 and me at -6. Other than spending time looking for what else is raw on the Internet, we have been doing great through this week.
Plateauing sucks and the regular yapping about how that's good because it's your body resetting itself at the new weight doesn't make me feel better. I'd like to plateau at my goal weight yesterday. Patience, Paully, Patience.
Our refrigerator is the greenest place in the Northwest. Every time I open it I am blown away. We have gone through more carrots since we started this than we would have in 2 or 3 months normally and 5 times as much celery. There is a good 3 dozen apples on the bar and I have no fear that some will spoil. I no longer think beets are for other people to eat. They are fantastic in juices. Other veggies that you wouldn't normally think of when you think juice include fennel and collard greens. Some of you are saying "Collard greens in juice? Yuck!" but I swear in the right mix they are great.

BP numbers for the end of the week are Pam 114/68 and me 115/69.  Heart rates are Pam 61 and me 59.

The last couple of days we have had big salads for dinner so nothing in the way of great recipes to share - they are coming. You can only eat so much salad.

A picture of our "spaghetti" dinner

The color is a little off, but the faux spaghetti and meatballs are really quite good!   It was so pretty that I had to take a picture for you to enjoy too.

Surprisingly Good Fake Spaghetti

The recipe for Spaghetti and "Not" Meatballs called for me to make a marinara in a blender which was easy for me. It was a mix of Sun dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, olive oil, water, herbs, garlic and spices. Virtually the same as you would cooked but you do it in a food processor. The "spaghetti" is just zucchini ran through the julienne blade of my mandolin slicer. Meatballs were made of walnuts soaked for 4-6 hours and then processed with the appropriate combination of herbs and olive oil to make a paste. You ball them up and serve them with some marinara. I didn't like the recipe in the book so I made mine ala Paully. If you can make ground chicken or turkey taste like meatballs, why not walnuts?
The whole recipe was very tasty. It is a little weird eating room temperature food, but it was good.
Along with the Spaghetti I made their Muesli recipe which I had to add more oats to as it was way too sweet for us, and I made mixed nuts with salt and pepper without cooking them by squeezing lime juice on them - tossing them with the salt and pepper, and putting them on a drying rack to dry. They taste great but lack the normal crunch.
I also made almond milk for the muesli which requires soaking almonds and blending them with water, raisins and a little vanilla. It is good but a little thick.
All in all we are hanging in there. We'll post some weigh in and BP stuff soon.

The First Numbers

I am going to try to keep this in perspective, but it will be hard. Pam lost 5 lbs and I lost 6 since our weigh ins on Friday. If the only side effect of this was some minor headaches while fasting - which are gone now- I'm thinking this fasting isn't so crazy after all.
It was cold at the coast as it was all over Washington last weekend so we were somewhat limited by that and further limited by my broken foot and Pam's planter fasciitis so we walked a grand total of 4.2 miles on the beach in 3 days. That hour and a half of exercise likely wasn't a factor in the weight loss.
Yesterday the juice fast was broken and we moved on to a breakfast of banana, apple and pear - snacked on some more apple and some carrots on the drive home, had a big salad for lunch, more snacking in the afternoon and a big salad for dinner. So far the great thing about the fast is the change in appetite.
We are having juice for breakfast today. Salad for lunch and a Faux spaghetti made from zucchini that is more or less julienned and a blended tomato sauce.
More soon.....

The Two Day Juice Fast/Detox Is Over

We just finished the last of our 5 juices for day 2 of our juice fast. We can report that we both had minor headaches- me both days and Pam mainly the second day. The weird thing is that we have not been hungry even though the total calorie count for both of us for the 2 days is 3200 calories. So much for side affects.
The juicer worked like a champ. The hardest thing to work through the machine is spinach. It wants to cause a log jam - especially when I try to do it too fast. Only the afternoon snack juice was less than great. It needed some Tabasco to spice it up and we didn't bring any - Bad Bad, Bad.
We are really looking forward to fresh fruit for breakfast and we have some carrots and cukes cut up for the drive back from the ocean tomorrow. Next weigh in on Monday....