Adding more fruit to my life.

I started incorporating more fruit into my diet a few weeks ago. I was not used to eating mostly fruit so as a filler I would grab a raw bar or two to keep me full.  Thunderbird makes a very tasty bar!

Then at night I was enjoying a “Raw Till 4” high carb dinner that consisted of a large raw salad, (Hippocrates) soup and rice pasta with no salt or oil tomato sauce. I am using Raw till 4 to hopefully transition into a more raw diet.

I started realizing with the nifty “My Fitness Pal” App, that I needed to make sure get more calories in, so I upped the fruit count. I realized that my best bet for getting in easy calories was bananas & dates in smoothie form. A typical smoothie that I will make consists of 4 bananas and 10 dates blended with coconut water which = 1105 calories! Gets my belly full and keeps me totally satisfied until my next meal of fruit.

Banana Mylk-shake

3 frozen bananas

1 ripe banana

8 oz. coconut water

pinch of vanilla bean

10 dates

BLEND!

Another winner is banana nice cream for breakfast!  Frozen bananas blended with carob powder and a little water. Topped with chunks of dates.

I began introducing more and more fruits and less raw bars. I always keep my meals mono-fruit meals because its much easier to digest. I tend to graze all day rather then eat 3 seperate large meals. For example, I will have a melon breakfast, a few hours later snack on a few apricots, then an hour later graze on a bag of grapes, then wait a few hours until eating berries or dates.

A good rule of thumb: Melons should strictly be eaten alone and away from other foods (or with other melons) because they digest so quickly. Proper food combining is key!

After a few days of adjusting with high fruits, I started incorporating more melon and more black/red grapes. These fruits, along with berries and lemons are super astringent and really good lymph pullers. The whole basis behind the healing detox I am doing is to clear and move stagnant lymph/inflammation/acidosis. Fruit is what the body utilizes as it’s fuel to heal.

I am loving organic grapes!

Smoothies really help with smashing in lots of calories and fruit into one sitting. Again, keeping it more simple seems to be better for my digestion. It keeps the gut from working overtime when there are only a few items to sift through. My other favorite smoothie right now is Datorade. It tastes like liquid caramel. So Yummy!

DATORADE

10-20 dates, soaked

water that you soaked dates in

1 liter water

*optional: add banana, cinnamon, mint, carob or vanilla bean.

I added frozen strawberries above!

BLEND

You can even mix in frozen blueberries – my favorite are the frozen wild blueberries at Trader Joe’s!!

For dinner I love to eat soups. This is buckwheat noodles in a miso broth with bok choy and pickled ginger.

My favorite Lemony Lentil Soup. This time I didn’t add lentils and instead upped the vegetable content.

This pre-made raw sushi (jicama replaces rice) is AMAZING. I need to go buy my own sushi making kit so I can replicate this at home.

…and sometimes you just need the real thing. My honey and I LOVE our sushi date nights. My favorite is avocado, cucumber and mango roll!

Beyond Sushi in NYC has some of the best damn Vegan sushi you will ever eat. I salivate thinking about it.

Their salads are out of this world too! Those tube things are sauces. Each roll comes with its signature sauce or you can mix and match. The sauces really make the meal!

I have a ton of new raw dishes that I have been preparing and I will share more of those with you soon. The more I get into this detox, the more I want to eat raw foods. I love to indulge at times though, so I’m sure you will see some rice and soups thrown into the mix every now and then. 

Be back soon with yummy recipes!