Woah!

It’s been over two weeks since my last entry?  Oops!

Well, not a whole lot has been going on in the cycling world.  It’s been a wee bit warm here, so I haven’t been out.  I also took full advantage of my week of at the lab too.

In the weight loss world, as of this morning I was down to 233.  A little less than 30 pounds lighter than I was just 2 short months ago.  Woo!  My weight loss has also not stopped or even really slowed since my exercise has stopped too, so that’s encouraging for me at least.

Now onto the raw arena.  Unfortunately, 2 days ago I had to come off being raw.  It wasn’t quite my choice.  I completely ran out of money until my next paycheck.  That means that I can’t afford to buy food.  And all my fruits and veggies ran out.  So really the only option I have is to eat all the rice and pasta I have lying around the house.  Once I get paid again though I will jump right back on the raw wagon.  This one paycheck a month thing is killer though.

Well, that’s it for now.  Hopefully it won’t be as long until the next entry.

Awesome dinner

Today was a pretty productive day in the kitchen. The first thing I made today, other than my morning smoothie, was a nice big batch of tahini. That stuff is so expensive at the store and so cheap to make at home. Then I made a huge thing of almond butter. I needed it for a recipe later, and I’m sure I’ll use it in the future. This stuff is usually more expensive than the tahini is. Both of them are really simple to make. Add a whole bunch of either almonds or sesame seeds to a food processor. Flip that sucker on until you get a powder. Then add some oil until you reach your desired consistency. Then add enough salt to your liking and voila! So easy.

After all that was done, I made raw pad thai. OMG. This is the best meal I’ve had since I moved to Bloomington, I think. I won’t get into the recipe exactly, but basically you slice a lot of veggies thin and then put this pad thai sauce on them that has a ton of ingredients in it.

The first one shows all of the pad thai sauce ingredients pre-blend:

Then we have the sauce post-blend:

And finally we have everything all together:

It was so good. I hope you’re all jealous.

The final thing that I made today was a strawberry-banana “pudding.” I completely made this up, so I don’t know what to call it. I just blended 6 bananas, a package of strawberries, some water, some sugar, and a pinch of salt. It tastes more like yogurt, but it’s not dairy or have active cultures in it. That’s why I’m calling it a pudding. Either way, it tastes great. I made a ton too, so it should last a while.

That’s it in the raw kitchen today. Hopefully in the coming days I’ll whip something else up that is good.

It’s my blog and I’ll do what I want to

My intention for this blog was to chronicle my progress with cycling and weight loss.  I planned on having only articles related to these two topics.  Well, I think I may have changed my mind.  I figure in order to help explain where I’m coming from, it helps to explain things that are important to me.  So I’ve decided that I will regularly feature content on veganism and raw foodism.  I don’t plan on doing stuff in a preachy way, but just basic things like what I made, how I’m feeling, and food related things.  I hope everyone from BikeForums is ok with this.  I also hope that you VeganFreaks don’t mind a cycling post every once in a while either.  Oh, what the hell am I saying?  Who is going to read this anyways. :p

I don’t have any real stories for now, but check back real soon and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to ramble on about.

No riding today

Today was probably the worst that I’ve felt in a very long time.  As I mentioned in an entry a couple days ago, I’m trying the raw vegan thing.  Along with that comes the wonderful detoxing process.  Apparently it’s a lot worse if you quit cooked foods cold turkey, so to speak.  And, well, that’s what I did.  Today I was nauseous and had a headache most of the day.  This is only the second day since I started riding that I didn’t even touch my bike.

Around 5 though, I started feeling better and made a trip to Border’s so I could get a raw cookbook.  Cookbooks are much easier than internet sites for me for recipes.  I got “The Complete Book of Raw Food.”  Since I wasn’t feeling up to eating a whole lot tonight, I made lunch for tomorrow, because I couldn’t wait to try some of these recipes.  So I made “raw chow mein.”  Instead of noodles, you slice up butternut squash real thin and then add a whole bunch of stuff like mushrooms, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, cilantro, scallions, and probably a couple other things I can’t remember.  I had just one “noodle” before I put the meal in the fridge and oh my god was it ever good.