Fruity Deals

      

     This morning my mom asked me if I could drive up to Rainbow and Farmer's Market to pick up a few things that she needed, but had forgotten to purchase the last time we were in that area. Since I didn't have any plans this morning and I never pass up the chance to drive my Ford Ranger truck a.k.a Harvey, I agreed. It turns out that my agreeing to go was in my favour, though I didn't know it when I said yes.


     At Farmer's Market, I decided to check out the fruit produce to see if they had any really good bulk fruit buying deals. To my great suprise and fruity delight I found Atfaulo Mangos being sold at $6 a box (26 in a box)!! I immediantly started piling the mangos into my cart; I now have 52 Mangos (only cost me $12) ripening in a box on a kitchen shelf at home! =D

     My good fortune for the day was not yet finished though. Waiting for me when I arrived home was a box of Florida Passion Fruit from Taylor's Tropicals! I am seriously addicted Passion Fruit at the moment and I run out of the delictable fruit far to quickly for my liking. When Passion Fruit goes out of season I will miss it terribly.

     Now for my health and fitness update. Today. . .

Sleep: 7 hours

Sunshine: 30 minutes

Water: 3 liters

Food: Watermelon, Bananas, Banana/Date/Coconut water smoothie, Mango and Papaya

Exercise: 31.5 miles biking at an average speed of 14mph (approx. 80% of the course uphill), 1 mile run 6.5 mph with a 1 mile cool down walk 4mph

Total Calories Burned from Workout: 1056

Workout Length: 110 minutes

     It rained this afternoon so I drove to the gym for the workout you saw above. This gym has a cycling machine that I love to use becasue its built with the peddles, seat, and handle bars built exactly like a real bike. By the time I finished my entire my workout all of my clothes were completely soaked through with sweat and my legs felt a bit like jello. LOL

     

     Emotionally I felt really really good after such a sweat fest, what with exercise being a major stress reliever for me. I would have kept working out for another 30 minutes if I hadn't gotten an awesful side cramp while I was running. The cramp was pretty bad, so I was forced to slow to a fast walk to cool down my muscles and call it a day.

    

Zonked

     Hello all! I almost forgot to post today!! After coming home this evening (5pm) and eating dinner (6pm) I passed out on my bed for a good solid two hours. I'm just about ready to climb back into bed and go to sleep again, however, I wanted to give you guys a breif shout out along with a summation of my day first. 

Today. . .

Sleep: 6 hours (plus my 2 hour nap)

Sunshine: 10 minutes (too hot & humid outside to get anymore)

Water: 2 liters

Food: Watermelon, Figgy Carob Pudding with sliced Banana on top, and a mango/coconut water smoothie with a bowl of Cherry & Grape Tomatoes

Exercise: 27.1 miles on bike (avg. speed: 14mph) mostly uphill, 1.5 mile walk uphill 4mph with random sprints 7mph, and some housework (e.g. sweeping, scribbing, laundry, ect.

Total Calories Burned from Workout: 815

Dinner!

     Good night and pleasent dreams to you all!

Happy Birthday Dear Blog!

     Today, my good people, is the very first birthday of my Raw Plant Based Living blog. On this same day exactly one year ago I created this blog and made my first post. I have to say, since that day my life, my world view, and my diet have changed more than I imagined it would. 


     This year has been such an amazing journey for me. Since I began this blog I have lived in Oxford, England for a month, discovered the 80/10/10 diet, run a half marathon, gotten back into martial arts, hosted a raw Thanksgiving, created numerous amounts of yummy raw recipes, and so much more! I can't wait to find out what will happen to me after another year of blogging.


     I want to thatnk all of you out there who have read, followed, and commented on my blog. Your support means the world to me and I hope that sharing certain aspects of my life has given you inspiration, things to think about, laugh about, and anything else in between that I can't think of at the moment.


     In celebration of Raw Plant Based Living's 1st birthday I prepared this lovely dish for lunch. . .

A parfait dish layered with sliced banana and Figgy Carob Pudding.

     In conclusion, in honor of this brilliant day I am giving you the recipe for the Figgy Carob Pudding. I hope you all have a wonderful evening and that you enjoy lot's of yummy pudding!  =D

Figgy Carob Pudding

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- 15 Black Mission Figs

- 5 large Medjool Dates, soaked in water for 10 minutes

- A rounded 1/2 Tbs. of Raw Carob Powder (feel free to add more or less according to taste)

- Just enough of the date water to blend.

- Blend until smooth and creamy.

- Let sit in the refrigerator for an hour to thicken and cool or pour out and eat warm as is.

Fruity Friday

     A few weeks ago, my mom and I were at Sears when we stumbled across a refrigerator on sale for $175 ! This was an amazing opportunity since I had been on the lookout for a refrigerator for my fruit. In the winter time it was ok to leave half of my fruit out on the counters when we ran out of space in my mom's refrigerator, but in the summer fruit can rot and/or fruit flies and spiders come into the house to get at them. Most refrigerator with any sort of decent storage space had been way out of my price range. 


     In the end I bought the refrigerator and about two weeks ago it arrived safe and sound. However, in all the joy of finding, buying, and recieving this refrigerator, I had forgotten in considering where I was to put the thing! Up So up until last Friday, my poor refrigerator sat in my mom's kitchen, laying dormant, awaiting to be used. 


     Last Friday was Farmer's Market day and there were lots of good deals in bulk buying organic fruit this time around, so I really stocked up. When my mom and I got home I knew that we weren't going to be able to fit my groceries and my mom's groceries into her refrigerator. It was then I convinced my mom to let me get her to move the refrigerator into the garage. 


Behold my brand new refrigerator and its first load of fruit and veg!! 

     It didn't take me long to devour all of this! My mom and I split the figs and oranges between us, but the rest was all me. Sunday is whe I get to replenish my supplies. Luckily my Mango and Dragon Fruit order came in over the course of the week. I also bought a watermelon today at my local Publix so I should be good until Sunday.

The fridge was filled with:

- A large Yellow Watermelon!

- Organic Black Mission Figs

- Organic Navel Oranges

- Organic White Cherries

- Organic  Georgia Peaches

- Organic Strawberries

- Belize Papaya

- Organic Grape Tomatoes

- Cherry Tomatoes

- Organic Iceberg Lettuce

- Organic Asparagus

- Organic Radishes

     As for today I had a completely clear schedule! I was so excited at the prospect this morning and decided to use it by spending most of the day exercising in whatever way I felt like! I didn't have to rush through the workout because there wasn't anything I urgently needed to get done and there was no one that I had to meet at a specific time. 

     When I finished working out, I was able to take my time in the showers and getting dresses, and I even stopped off at Starbucks to buy a water and eat my lunch (a bunch of bananas) in the sun! During my lunch, a few people looked at me as if I were mental! However, I might have misread their facial expressions and they might just have been jealous of my yummy bananas! LOL.

My lunch set-up (from left to right): Garbage baggy with banana peels inside, organizer, yet to be eaten bananas, journal, and Runner's magazine.

In summation of my day. . .

Sleep: 8 hours (getting better) 
Sunshine: 2 hours 
Water: So far 2 liter (working on my 3rd liter at the moment)
Food: Dragon Fruit, OJ, Bananas, and a giant Mango/Banana/Peach smoothie
Exercise: 22 minute run 6mph pace, 20 minute 3mph walk with my mom and the dogs, 10 minutes lifting weights (tried a new routine and felt muscles I didn't even know I had!), 18.5 mile bike ride (approx. 80% of the course being uphill) at an average 15 mph pace, and 22 minutes swimming laps freestyle as hard as I could!

I hope everyone enjoys there weekend and that it is filled with warm sunshine, a cooling breeze, refreshing water, and juicy fruit!! =D

Back from Chattanooga!

     Hey everyone! I just got back today from Chattanooga, TN. My mom and I drove up there this Sunday to visit my friend and his family. We never met eachother before, only knowing each other through email (a mutual friend thought we might hit it off), and we wanted to get to know each other better in person before the school year started. Let me tell you I had a blast!


     Sunday morning I woke up super early to get in a 30 minute run before coming home to pack up my stuff for the trip. My mom and I headed out at 11am, leaving my brother home to watch the animals. Despite running into some traffic, we managed to arrive at the La Quinta inn in Chattanooga by 2:30pm. We spent a couple hours driving/walking around to get to know the area better before setting off to Collegedale to meet my friend and his mother at the Southern University campus.

Isn't this car crazy?! Found it while exploring.

      That evening we had dinner at my friend's family's house. Sadly I forgot to take pictures, which is a shame because they have chickens, goats, some fruit trees, and a beautiful vegetable garden! Dinner was a lot of fun with great food. I brought some Florida Mangoes that I had left over from my last fruit order from Taylor's Tropicals and my friend's mom gave me a bunch of Heirloom Tomatoes from their garden to have with the mango. 


     Monday morning cam around and it was raining, so I headed downstairs to use the hotel gym. I ran 2.5 miles on the treadmill at 7mph with intermitant 8mph sprints, and 20 minutes on the elliptical on the hardest setting. I can tell you I was assured that I had a good work out with my humming muscles and drenched t-shirt as good indicators.


     I arrived back up to my room to get ready for the day and was famished, but my mom was still sleeping, so I had leftover chopped up papaya from yesterdays lunch to tide me over. When we finally did get out, we came across a grocery store called Greenlife, which turns out, is owned by Whole Foods.


     We walked in and I immediantly fell in love! They had fresh squeezed fruit and veggie juices, fruit smoothies aka Froozies, chopped up fruit, and lot's of yummy locally grown tomatoes to offer. Throughout our two day stay I consumed three Froozies, a large container of pineapple, a bag of medjool dates, a bunch of bananas, a bag of chopped apples, and loads of tomatoes from their store!

You can bike to work. . . I love it!

This one was my favorite, I had it twice. It's called a Mango Lassi: mango, banana, rosewater, fresh apple juice, cardamom, and coriander.

My mom's Froozie, The Bumble Berry: blueberry, banana, fresh OJ, and local honey.

     Monday afternoon rolled around and my mom and I headed back to my friend's house. The plan was to meet there at 6:30 so that my friend and his brother, could take me to a nearby park to play Ultimate Frisbee with a group of their friends (if you don't know what Ultimate Frisbee is just google it to see a game). The game started close to 7:00 (I decided to play barefoot. . .fun!), and we played for two hours through both the heat of the sun and the wet of the rain. The game ended when to many people had to head home for us to make up two teams with enough players for the field. 

My Dinner before my first ever Ultimate Frisbee game. Some organic apples and The Earth Shake: strawberry, blueberry, peach, banana, local honey, and fresh apple juice.

     This morning, before we were due to head back home, my mom decided to join me in the hotel gym. She went for a two mile walk on the tread mill with some short sprints thrown in occasionally (go Mom!) =D I did the same workout I did Monday morning, but it was harder this time due to some muscle soreness from last night. I'm used to running at a set pace for long distances, however, when you play Ultimate Frisbee, there is a lot of sprinting, twisting, jumping, and zig-zagging. I used parts of my leg muscles I forgot I even had, but no worries, I remembered them this morining. LOL!


     We stopped off at Greenlife one more time for Froozies and water before heading out. An hour later though I got hungry and devoured the last of our Tennessee tomato stash, whoops!

I had two packages of these on the way home and. . .

This sucker here + a large Cherokee Purple tomato as soon as we got home.

     We got home at 1pm and I spent the next 4 hours unpacking, house cleaning, breaking down boxes, and hauling said boxes off to the dump. I finally crashed on the couch a couple hours ago with a giant mango/banana/passion fruit smoothie and a good movie.


     It's always a wonderful to meet and hang out with people whose idea of fun isn't going to the mall, or the movies, or eating out at a trendy restaurants, instead preferring to go hiking, biking, running, play Ultimate Frisbee, ect. It was so nice for me to be around real and sincere people while enjoying the outdoors. I may have only been away for a couple of days, and most people wouldn't consider what I did on this trip to be anything special, but I saw it as the best vacation I have had EVER!


     I hope all of you out there have at least one or two people in your life that you can find that sort of pleasure in their company. The area of Tennessee I stayed in might not be viewed as the most exciting place to be, but it became that for me because of the people that were with me. Just remember, it's not the place your at that makes you happy, it's the people in that place that do.


     Best wishes all!

Fun in the Sun

Today. . .

Sleep: 7.5 hours
Sunshine: 4 hours
Water: 2 liters
Food: banana/fig/carob smoothie, LOADS of watermelon, and a big salad!
Exercise: 4 miles of hiking (ran some of it to race my friends), 30 minutes of paddleboat racing followed by a water fight, and a 20 minute walk.

Today I realized just how high my energy levels are in comparison to some people. All the excercise I did today, I did with my brother  and his two friends.  We got to Stone Mountain Park at 9:30am and left at 2pm. We were planning to stay longer (until 4pm) but everyone but myself was tired so we called it a day. I still had loads of energy and was sad to leave. I hope that when I go to college in the fall I can find some people with as much passion for exercise and energy as myself!


Despite leaving sooner then wanted to, today was absolutely wonderful! It was so nice to get outside, move around, hang out with some awesome people, laugh, and eat sweet and juicy watermelon! I didn't realize how much I needed to do something like this until today and I hope have another day like this again soon.