Grocery Escapades and Musings

Last night we went to the grocery store. My basket was filled with lots of greens -- kale, rainbow chard, Romaine lettuce, butter lettuce, dandelion greens, etc. I also had a couple bottles of G. T.'s Kombucha Tea because my mom is coming and I want her to taste it. Of course I also had lots of fresh fruit and some things like red peppers, cucumbers, jicima, cilantro, and dill. When we went to check out Phillip wanted to see the fish in the tank at the front of the grocery store (Yes, they have a huge saltwater fish tank inside the grocery store, this is Texas after all). I took Phillip over to see the fish and Wayne went through the checkout line.

I can see Wayne from where the fish tank is and the women who are running his lane are laughing and giving him a hard time about his grocery basket. One holds up the jicama and asks him what it is. He tells her and the other girl asks him how to "fix" that. Wayne is standing in the grocery aisle telling them how I cut it up like french fries and make my own ketchup (Thank you Boutenko's -- wonderful recipe), or how I make a corn salad with jicama, tomatoes, and cilantro and use it on raw tacos. The ladies are looking at him like, "Are you serious?" One of them finally asks, "How does your wife know how to use all of this stuff?" Then he explained that I was on a raw diet. They thought that was really cool, and they thought it was cool that Wayne really liked the food, too (all but the Kombucha, but I am still working on him).

The whole thing got me thinking, though, that before I decided to eat raw foods I had no idea what to do with this food either. I knew how to scramble eggs, make a pie or cake, grill a steak on the grill, and make a basic salad, but I had no clue how to really pick or prepare the things that are really good for me. I would pass by the greens section of the grocery store like most all of the other people I see at the grocery every time I go. Now, it is my favorite section to load up.

If you want to succeed on a raw diet it takes time to figure out what to eat, where to find it in the grocery store, and how to prepare it. It takes a little bit effort, because most of us are not taught the proper ways to eat (and there is a lot of temptation and pressure to eat things that are not so good for us). Once I started taking responsibility for what I was putting into my mouth, though, I found that I viewed food differently. I discovered tastes that had previously been foreign and learned to really enjoy my food because it tastes good and I know it is doing something good for my body. Now, it is not hard to shop at all. I know where everything I want is located and I don't even have to go into the interior aisles of the store. I do all of my shopping in the fruit and veggies and then skip over to the nuts and dried fruits, and finally to the almond milk and I am out the door -- much faster than the SAD shopping (Standard American Diet) I did before I changed my diet.

Let me assure you, there are LOTS of resources out there to help you along the way. When I started I googled raw food diet, raw food recipes, easy raw recipes and came up with tons of stuff! One of the websites that was extremely helpful to me as a complete beginner raw person was www.purejeevan.com. Check it out. It is very user friendly! This week, I will try and put one website up per night that I have personally found helpful. Hope you enjoy them as much as I have.