How I Stuck To a (Mostly) All Raw Food Diet While Visiting Family

mango delight (vitamix) (Photo credit: vigilant20)

Actually, it was easy. Mostly.

The last week or so has been a particularly difficult time for me and my family. We’ve been going through some tough stuff. I decided Hannah and I needed to get out of Dodge for a little while, so we drove to Las Vegas and stayed with relatives for a few days.

Before we left, I threw some sprouted nuts, some raw almonds, green tea, raw cacao, a few bananas and a big green smoothie in a bag.

While on the road, I chowed down on the sprouted nuts and drank the smoothie.

Upon arriving I noticed our hosts owned a VitaMix! This was very good news. I figured they would have a blender and that I could “make due” with any old blender, but it was nice to see the VitaMix.

I drank a lot of banana and Cacao shakes. I am battling melancholia, so I have had a hankering for chocolate. The shakes are super satisfying and the perfect comfort food. And they’re easy. Just throw the following in a blender:

• One heaping tablespoon of Raw Cacao Powder
• One banana (or mango)
• A little sea salt
• 8 ounces of water
• A handful of nuts
• A tablespoon of agave
• Some ice

I also made fruit smoothies with fresh fruit and frozen fruit.

I ate a lot of Flackers. Flackers and an avocado make a quick and easy meal. I bought some raw organic almond butter and ate a spoonful of that on a few occasions. Travis and Lynette also took me out to an awesome raw food restaurant in Vegas on Monday and the leftovers provided dinner the next day as well.

I did slip up, though. We all went bowling one night and I hadn’t eaten enough that day. I was suddenly ravenous. I ate a bunch of corn chips and jalapenos. I also helped myself to some of my daughter’s cheesy nachos. I don’t feel too bad about it, though. I’ve been saying that I am committed to a “90% all raw food diet” for just such an occasion. I’ve been pretty religiously sticking to all raw food, aside from that incident and a cup of vegan stew a couple of weeks back. I’d say, so far, I’m holding at 98% all raw food.

Which segues perfectly into…

I know these videos are getting old, but seriously, I’ve said almost every single thing in them. You will watch them now:

• Shit Raw Vegans Say
• Shit Vegans Say
• Shit Yogis Say
• Shit New Age Girls Say

151 Things I Plan To Do Before the Year 2073

My 30th birthday and first skydive!

1.    Live on a small houseboat, docked at an affordable, friendly and beautiful marina, modified to accommodate my piano.
2.    Let go of the past
3.    Learn to speak French
4.    Ride a camel
5.    Meet the Dalai Llama
6.    Write a truly beautiful poem — no more rants!
7.    Truly commit to a man I love
8.    Greet each day with love in my heart
9.    Write a book
10.    Support myself financially as a writer
11.    Go back to Indonesia

I love the mosque we built for this little village.

12.    Re-coat the domes of New Ngelepen with a better elastomeric coating or stucco
13.    Retrace Darwin’s voyage around South America and to the Gallapagos
14.    Learn to Scuba Dive
15.    Sell a song to an artist I admire
16.    Grow a small container garden on my patio
17.    Whiddle down my possessions to just 100 things
18.    Wander the streets of Rome with my sweetheart
19.    Get published
20.    Run ten 10k races
21.    Own and live in an Airstream or other very cool caravan, when I’m not on my boat — it has also been customized to fit my piano
22.    Dust off my guitar and re-shape an hour-long set of songs I’ve written
23.    Develop a habit of sending letters to my mother
24.    Stick to a mostly all-raw food diet
25.    Get a “high five” from Barack
26.    Learn to sketch
27.    Learn to sail
28.    Learn and memorize an hour or two worth of piano music I love

29.    Own a Honda Rebel
30.    Live in the moment
31.    Play at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville
32.    Ride a motorcycle across the Andes
33.    Kiss Ewan MacGregor
34.    Design and successfully market the perfect wardrobe for a hip, minimalist woman on the move.
35.    Help ex-members of the LDS church to recover their sense of self worth
36.    Go to Nepal
37.    Get close enough on a clear day to see the peak of Mt. Everest (base camp?)
38.    Visit Antarctica (maybe work at a research station)
39.    Sail the Mediterranean with the one I love
40.    Take my daughter to Greece
41.    River Raft again
42.    Snowmobile again
43.    Camp out under the stars with NO PHONES for a week
44.    Go on an African Safari

45.    Revisit Morocco, but make it to Marrakesh this time
46.    Go to the top of the towers in Kuala Lumpur
47.    Own an iPhone 4 and an iPad with loads of memory and wifi (so I can get rid of everything else)
48.    Get everyone to calm the f*ck down about everything
49.    Spend a month in Cinque Terre
50.    Spend a month in and around Cornwall — where most of Rosamunde Pilcher’s books are set
51.    Learn to paint roses
52.    Stop biting my nails
53.    Sing with my guitar in an English pub
54.    Have my teeth whitened
55.    Own a small guitar with a deep and round sound
56.    See my daughter become a healthy, happy, educated and capable adult
57.    Go on a cruise
58.    Drive from Alaska to South America
59.    Throw caution to the wind
60.    Make-out with someone at the Great Wall of China
61.    Visit Jerusalem
62.    Visit the Dead Sea and Petra
63.    Get a degree
64.    Hang out with Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart and Bill Mahr
65.    Dig my toes into the sand of the Sahara
66.    Visit Walden Pond
67.    Talk to a Jain Monk
68.    Go deep sea fishing
69.    Learn to knit or crochet for realsies
70.    Go on a whale watching cruise in Alaska
71.    Finish those 20 or so song “zygotes” I have in the folder by my bed
72.    Somehow help facilitate a system of education of basic health care to all the women in remote villages of Java, to start, and then refine the program to make it replicable world-wide.
73.    Scuba dive at the Red Sea Reef

I was lucky to capture this quintessential Parisian moment on film!

74.    Take my daughter to see my favorite parts of Paris
75.    Figure out what dark matter is. <– that one might be tricky
76.    Find a cabin near a stream, surrounded by pine trees and live there for a month or two
77.    Visit Myanmar
78.    Travel to Tibet
79.    Never get married (again)
80.    Spend a month in Ireland, take Hannah there
81.    Start hiking again
82.    See the pyramids
83.    Check out that crazy shit at Easter Island
84.    Go salmon fishing in Alaska
85.    Rent a house in Idaho, along the Snake River, and invite all my favorite people there, once a year, to catch up
86.    Swim in the Mediterranean again
87.    Visit the tree that Buddha sat beneath when he became enlightened
88.    Touch the River Ganges
89.    Take a boat down the Nile
90.    Bathe in a waterfall
91.    Go to Istanbul again
92.    See the running of the bulls in Spain
93.    Pay my respects at Auschwitz, et al.
94.    Drive the 101 from Washington to San Diego
95.    Retrace the steps of our Founding Fathers
96.    Drive from Maine to Key West
97.    Go back to that awesome Irish Pub in Key West
98.    Visit Gandhi’s ashram
99.    Get the chance to explain to Jimmy Fallon why he and I really would be best pals
100.     Ride in a hot air balloon
101.     Observe a vow of silence for a time
102.     Go paragliding
103.     Write a beautiful and uplifting song
104.     Figure out WTF Marxism is
105.     See “the Book of Mormon” musical on Broadway
106.     Learn to manage my finances
107.     Stay present
108.     Meet Amy Poehler and see if she thinks I look and sound just like her
109.     Memorize more of my favorite poets’ works
110.     Develop a daily meditation habit
111.     Learn to waltz and do the tango
112.     Make money as a lounge singer in a swank jazz club
113.     Plant a new euphemism into pop culture — something so specific that I’ll know it was me
114.     Have a portrait of my daughter and I painted

115.     Learn my favorite Jethro Tull flute solo from “Thick as a Brick”
116.     Skinny dip
117.     Learn the names of at least SOME of the bands I love so I wouldn’t have to constantly be asking my daughter, “Now, who sings this again?”
118.     See Prague
119.     Ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad across Asia
120.     Write a song for my daughter that conveys the breadth of my love for her
121.     Drive from Salt Lake City to New York City, cut across to St. Louis, then New Orleans and back to SLC
122.     Ride that plane that astronauts use to train for weightlessness in space
123.     Visit Montauk
124.     Spend some time in a monastery
125.     Find a trampoline in a backyard somewhere in Idaho where the owners will always let me sleep out under the stars
126.    Traverse 3 different sections of the Amazon by boat
127.     See the Red Sox play in Boston
128.     Have an IRA that I consistently fund
129.     Drive a race car
130.     Go to Stonehenge
131.     Drive that winding road in Monaco you always see in the movies

Proof I Am a Road Warrior

132.     Drive on the autobahn (I really love to drive!)
133.     Go to Carnival
134.     After Carnival, go skydiving again, but in Rio this time
135.     Join the mile high club
136.     Rent a beach house in South Carolina for a season
137.     Go spelunking in an impossible cave
138.    Take my Airstream to live in Baja California for awhile
139.     Visit the Forbidden City
140.     Look for clues
141.     Cuba. Must see Cuba

142.     Travel in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park
143.     Spend a week in Tokyo
144.     Santorini
145.     Go to a topless beach
146.     Enter a “beat” poetry contest and win
147.     Stay one night in an actual castle
148.     Take a week-long phone vacation
149.     Learn how to do that thing the fancy ladies do that combines yoga, dance and long strips of fabric hung from the  ceiling. You know, the thing where you see women performing acrobatics while flying through the air
150.     Make a similar list of all the things I’ve already done
151.     Find a shack on a beach on an Island somewhere and spend a month alone with a boy I love

I Want To Go To Here…

Striking Silver: ‘Airstream Sterling’ Revisits Classic Trailer | Designs & Ideas on Dornob.

If I Won Free Plane Tickets…

I would take my daughter, Hannah, to Greece. I have been lucky enough to have traveled a little and I’ve spent some time in Turkey. I fell in LOVE with the Mediterranean. I’m a sucker for ancient ruins, open air cafes, sailboats and clear waters. She has a desire to “see everything.” It’s a good place to start.