Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Weather

The weather's been bizarre lately. It's been vacillating from warm sunny days to cold nights, from suffocatingly hot afternoons to freak storms in the evening. I planted out some of my seedlings and the last survivors got killed in a freak hail storm yesterday. I don't have a picture of the mangled plants, but here's one of the birds enjoying the weather.

I realized another side effect of my Palate Experiment. Afterwards, it occurred to me that after eating raw things for a week, I hadn't had to do any dishes! Just had to rinse the occasional knife and cutting board. It's almost worth it just for that.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Palate Experiment

Day 1 ends fairly uneventfully. I'm eating a lot more fruits and veggies than I usually do. I forget to keep good notes, but I ingest at least 5 celery stalk, 2 mushroom, baby carrots, 1 pear, and probably more of the same.

Day 2: I think my palate and body are really starting to get cleaned up today, and it feels good to eat lots of healthy fibrous foods. Ingested: carrots, 2 celery stalk, grapes, 1 fig, 1/4 orange pepper, 1 tomato, 1 mushroom, 2 pears, 1 apple.

Day 3: I'm feeling more hungry and eating small meals or snacks about every 90-120 minutes. I suppose I don't really think of a piece of fruit as a meal. Ingested: 2 celery stalk, baby carrots, 1/4 orange pepper, grapes, 1 pear, 1 tangerine, more grapes, 1/4 red pepper.

Day 4: Today is tougher, more hunger. Starting to lose my concentration to fantasies about other foods. I stick with the raw fruits and veggies for most of the day -- and I'm happy to get both birds into the baby carrots! -- but I weigh myself and appear to have lost 5 pounds. Losing about a pound a day sounds a bit scary, and I realize that a week might be too long for me to go on just fruits and veggies. I figure that if I'm fantasizing about food, my body probably needs something it's missing. So I break my raw plant diet that night // and add some protein and fat. Brown rice never tasted so good!

Ingested: 2 celery stalk, baby carrots, 1/4 red pepper, 1/3 orange pepper, 3 tomato, 1 mushroom, 1 grapefruit, 1 fig? // brown rice, mixed salad greens, carrots, 1 mushroom, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, walnuts, 1 pear, apple cider vinegar, black pepper.

Day 5: I wake up feeling full and satisfied instead of hungry, so the oils and brown rice protein were a good idea. Much happier today, no longer consumed with food fantasies. I get hungry while I'm out with the birds, and I have a granola bar on me, but I don't want to break into the sugars too hard, so I'm sticking to the fairly whole foods. Ingested: carrots, 2 mushroom, 1 normal carrot, brown rice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar, black pepper, 1 celery stalk, mixed salad greens, 1 tangerine, walnuts, 1 pear, red wine vinegar.

Day 6: Today is Day 6 of My Palate Experiment, and I have lost about 7 pounds since before the experiment started. This is a bit much, even if it's mostly water. Ingested so far: baby carrots, 1 celery stalk, 1/2 orange pepper.

After talking to my friend who's a dietician, I realize my body probably needs a lot more protein than I've been giving it, so I decide to visit her for dinner and stop the experiment today intead of tomorrow. Not quite a week. I think my palate is pretty clean, since celery, mushrooms and peppers taste good and juicy to me. Fruits are just scrumptious!

Results: Palate feels clean. Weight lost. Muscle lost, probably. Body a bit hungry for different foods, but mostly craving healthy flavourful foods with spices, rather than utter processed crap. Probably lacking in protein, B12, Calcium.

Positive Side Effects: Birds are eating much better! They now attack organic baby carrots and celery (sometimes) with gusto. Take a look at the photo: Celery is today, Day 6, and carrot attack on the right is Day 4.