Some fabulous food!

So, as I mentioned in yesterday's post I've been eating a most raw (or lightly steamed) diet of healthy foods. The "Eat to Live" diet is free of processed foods, free of added sugars, free of dairy, free of animal product, limited in grain and gluten (And only then it must be whole grain sources) and full of healthy legumes, vegetables, and fruit. Here are a few of the things I've cooked up the past couple of days to help my family on our journey toward better health, better stamina, and a healthier colon (I couldn't help myself with that one ;-))

Asparagus, green beans, and veggie patties. The patties are made with carrots, mushrooms, onions, anise, green pepper, pepper, eggplant, flax seed and a few other salt-free spices. They're actually delicious cooked, or raw. I enjoyed them!

The picture to the right was served as a supper dish. Steamed carrots, broccoli and delicious iron-rich kale! Mmm. KAle tastes a bit like raw broccoli, so if you've never tried it before and are partial to the taste of raw broccoli I recommend it highly.  The 'hamburgers' are made with black beans, garlic, pepper, mushrooms, and green peppers. They cooked up nicely, although they gave me some trouble in keep them together. After they had cooked long enough, though, they seemed to be perfectly cooperative in keeping themselves in patty form. The burgers, a bit bland with lack of salt, were served with a homemade salt-free salsa made with tomatoes, onion, a bit of fresh garlic and a healthy heaping of cilantro.

Pictured left was a rather impromptu pumpkin soup made after cleaning out the inside of a pumpkin in preparation for Halloween.The pumpkin I was scraping out was coming out in strings, and the pumpkin itself had almost no "guts". Curious monster hybrid pumpkin! Anyway, the strings (about 3 lbs of them) were mixed with a bit of coconut meat and boiled in a homemade salt-free vegetable soup stock. After everything was cooked it was all blended in the stock, to ensure that no vital nutrients were left behind in the water everything was cooked in. Yum yum!

Pictured right is a simply a quick snapshot of my fridge after doing a round of shopping at the supermarket. What formerly was a fridge of shame for me (full of meat, processed foods, processed condiments..pretty much death in an ice-box!) is now a flourish fridge garden of joy and excitement. I love closing my eyes, reaching inside, and pulling out something new and fabulous to snack on. Eating is exciting, where before it used to be the bane of my existence, the lowest point of my day. Eating should be fun, and this diet is amazing for me. I love it! My husband is struggling a bit (he's so very 'typical American' in his meat and potatoes kind of way) but he's persevering and already seeing substantial weight loss and energy results.  This leads us to a new form of substance abuse: Food. I think more than food though, people become addicted to the chemical garbage that is put into them to make them taste better and last longer. Hubby is definitely having salt/MSG/preservative withdrawals, but thankfully we both know that once it is over and his body has healed from the toxic crap, that he'll start feeling much better. Life is worth living without the kind of foods that cause cancer and make us sick..it just takes a big set (if you'll pardon the use of that phrase) to stick with the 'medicine' we all know is best for us.

I hope everyone reading will commit today to either their 5 fruits and veggies (at least!), and promise to take the stairs instead of the elevator. At least once, just for me. ;-)

Eggs out.