last night, mama de pooka dropped by to pick up some stuff and she started telling me about this restaurant she went to last week in tacoma that has the calories and grams of fat listed for each menu item. she and her food-companion sat down, opened the menu, dropped their jaws, and left to get food elsewhere. what surprised her were two things 1) that a burger/nachos kind of restaurant in tacoma would have nutrition information and 2) that the aforementioned nachos contained somewhere north of 1000 calories. holy shit.

this made me wonder what would happen if all restaurants had to list calorie counts next to each item on the menu. would people stop going out to eat? if not, would they change how they ate? would it be bad for business for restaurants to label? would they simply change the way they cook to use less fat? or would they lobby the fda to increase the total recommended number of calories again?

a few weeks ago, against committee orders, i made a contentious impulse purchase of the queen mother of all juicers, which has darkened a corner of our kitchen counter and drawn stares of rage and unlovely comments from my better jewish half. i thought that this rage against the juicer was permanent, but then came soft-serve banana. mia took one bite, looked at me and said, ‘you might have just redeemed this purchase.’ it’s that good.

recipe:
frozen bananas (pre-peeled)
raw cacao (or regular cocoa powder)
raw dark agave syrup

with the blank in place, feed the bananas to the juicer, which will play-doh-fun-factory them into an awesome-textured cream. whip in the chocolate until brownish; whip in the agave until sweet. can be refrozen. next attempt: minty vanilla.

i do love me some tough winter greens. i’ve been working on this kale salad recipe for a few months. i don’t think it’s going past this point, so here’s where i share.

1 head of green kale
1 avocado
juice of 1 lime
6-8 sundried tomatoes (soaked for 30min and then diced)
habanero pepper (diced)
6 olives (i rinse the salt off and then dice them)

de-spine the kale. put it in a salad bowl. pour the lime juice over it and tear the kale into small pieces, this will soften it up and ‘cook it’ (similar to the way ceviche works). dice the avocado and mash it into the kale/lime mixture with your hands. drain the soaked tomatoes, dice them, and dump them in. same with the pepper and the olives. let the whole thing sit for a few minutes so that the kale softens a little more. devour. this salad is so good. i’ve been craving it lately.

not much to report today. drank about 900 calories of fruits/veggies. am ready for this to be done because drinking everything is getting super-boring. i’m also losing a bunch of weight. when it’s all said and done, i may have lost 4-5 pounds this week. it was fun while it lasted, but i kinda want a big giant salad.

break-the-fast plan:
- banana/cucumber smoothie for breakfast
- salad for lunch
- bunch of fruit/veggies during the day
- some kind of soup/salad for dinner

apparently you’re supposed to ease back into solid food. i’m sure it’ll be fine. and i won’t be writing these boring entries anymore after tonight. yay.

i drank around 900 calories today and still feel slightly euphoric. one day to go. i’m not so into drinking every meal and i think my mouth is somewhat bored from not chewing. if it wasn’t for the slight euphoria making me such a chatty motherfucker, i’d be afraid that my jaw muscles would atrophy.

i think the reason i’m feeling so good is because i’m back to 100% fruit and veggies. i strayed pretty far from my 95% low-fat raw diet of 2006 to about 70% moderate-fat raw diet of 2007, which i think is why i felt shitty a few weeks ago. so now that i’m back, i just have to make sure to stay off the nuts. heh. and lay off the big vegan brunches. i could probably stand to eat smarter and more simply.

so yeah, whoo. one more day. i think it would be pretty easy to do this for a month, except that i really want to get back to running and stuff. ok, that’s it.

i feel so much better today — full of energy (maybe slight euphoria), no headache, my mind feels pretty sharp, and i feel weirdly open. i don’t know how to describe this feeling of openness, but i feel it. maybe somewhat emotionally expansive.

notes:
- took in fewer than 1000 calories today
- am sure that i can make it to friday
- day 3 is about a 100x better than day 2

hunger, headache. these are the things that i read would happen on day 2. these are things that happened on day 2. day 3 is supposed to be easier. i drank ~1300 calories. i have no idea how many calories one is supposed to take in during a fast, but i think i went over today.

thoughts (of self-doubt) from today:
- i’m really good at getting in over my head and then figuring out what i’m doing later.
- i’m shit with theory but am really good at getting the gist and then getting the details wrong. i am 91%.
- i already have tomorrow’s liquids ready to go. i think i’m doing this wrong. i should be juicing not blending.
- i hope tomorrow goes better.

turns out that when you’re planning a fast, you should check your work calendar first. i have two work lunches this week. first work lunch was today and i only drank a cup of tea, much to the chagrin of the surly waitress. i don’t think you’re ’supposed’ to drink tea on a fast but i was cold.

today’s menu:
- breakfast: 2 bananas, 4 dates = 320cal
- lunch: 1 head lettuce, 1 head broccoli, 2 tomatoes = 150cal
- snack: 2 apples, 1 pear, 1 navel orange = 330cal
- dinner: 2 bananas, 3 dates = 250cal
total: 1050cal (probably not enough)

notes from day 1:
- i feel a little hungry, but overall i’m fine.
- i really need to try to fit in another ~400 calories tomorrow. so i guess one more calorie-dense blended drink.
- the veggie dimsum at lunch and the the eggplant that mia baked herself for dinner both smelled awesome.
- i had a pretty intense massage tonight. my massage therapist is also doing a fast for the next two weeks. his is less restrictive. this week is no red meat/dairy. next week is vegan. dude has it easy.

this year i’ve decided to put my post-holiday fasting plan into action. i know that most fasts are undertaken in late winter/early spring (maybe to coincide with nature’s stingy season?), but that’s when i start putting on lots of running miles and fasting and high miles probably can’t coexist.

i was already looking forward to this fast before the deeply troubling amount of food i put away in december. over the past six weeks, i’ve felt sort of gross, logy, and apathetic. really not myself. i’m hoping that this fast is a magic bullet for feeling better. i usually feel a mild euphoria from prolonged caloric restriction.

the plan is to blend and drink only raw fruits and vegetables for 5 days, probably in smaller quantities than i usually eat. if i only go 3 days, that’ll be ok but i’d prefer to go 5. i’ll be posting during the week to keep a log of how it’s going. wish me luck.

i was playing with google search suggestions (on firefox2) and wound up at the chipotle fan site. i was and wasn’t surprised that there was a fansite for the mcdonald’s taqueria. also, i’m going to spare you my internet-is-a-timesuck rant.

anyway, i noticed the nutrition information calculator so i decided to give it a ride. one 13″ vegan burrito (rice, beans, lettuce, corn salsa) with guacamole and grilled veggies = 1075 calories. holy fuck. that’s the VEGAN version! sin queso! con queso = 1200 calories! con queso y pollo = 1400 calories! dios mio! this isn’t thanksgiving dinner, dude. it’s fucking lunch. that shit should be illegal.

i have only had one chipotle burrito in my life (maybe four years ago) and it was mediocre at best. i mean, i ate the whole thing, because i am a bottomless pit american. i know that most people say that they save half their burrito for later, but i’m calling bullshit. it’s never as good later and they know it.

i wandered into rainbow natural remedies the other day with one simple request: i’m looking for a mild face soap that is so natural i could eat it if i had to. the woman behind the counter didn’t look at me like i was insane, which i took to be a good sign that she understood that if i’m not putting chemicals into my body, i didn’t want to put them on my body either.

the most natural one they had there had honey in it (not vegan) so i asked her if there was a way to make my own. her eyes lit up and she said that she’d run and get me a recipe (and then sell me the ingredients, of course). apparently she makes her own face stuff, too.

i’ve only used it for one night but so far so good (mia decided not to try it until she saw that my skin didn’t erupt in a massive breakout).

the recipe:
2 cups white clay
1 cup steel-cut oats
1/4 cup chopped almonds
1/8 cup chopped rose petals
1/8 cup chopped lavender

combine them all together and store in a mason jar. take out a little at a time and combine with a little olive oil and enough water to make a paste. then scrub away.

i’m hoping that the olive oil and chopped almonds (which also have a fair bit of oil in them) will keep my skin from drying out so that i won’t have to use a moisturizer.

next up: edible toothpaste and shampoo.

about once or twice per week, i’ll eat some cooked food. this usually happens when i go out to dinner with friends. last night it was sushi, so i got some veggie rolls and a seaweed salad. without fail, the morning after i eat a cooked meal, i feel incredibly hungover and today is no exception: lethargic, somewhat off-balance, and pretty intense pressure behind my eyes. feels awful. and it means having to wait a bit until it passes so that i can go for a run. maybe i should drink some water. it’s the only cooked-food hangover remedy i can think of. it’s weird, right? sux.

i think that in the old days when i was drinking alcohol with a big meal, i’d blame the crappy next-morning feelings on the drinking. maybe it was the food after all. does anyone else get this?

look what i almost drank as part of tonight’s post-run pond-scum smoothie:

close one, huh?

in case you’re wondering:
1 head of spinach
1 huge tommy atkins mango
1 red pear
~400cal

oh, and 1 small bug: negligible calories.