Friday, April 27, 2007

Master Cleanse Action-Day of quitting :P

This was supposed to be posted a week ago. But I have been busy with catching up work that I lagged behind from the previous week.

I quit and broke out of my cleansing on Day 6. In the morning, I felt a bit energetic, so I went out running for about 40 minutes. During the first three days of breaking out a fast, I wasn't supposed to eat any solid food. So I started from orange juice bought from Trader Joe's. I made a huge pot of vegetable soup that night and also some rice milk.

I had to say that when I first tried my home made rice milk, it felt like the best food I had ever had. :P It was actually nothing but the juice drained from brown rice water blends. Then when I progressed to the vegi soup, it was even better. It tasted so sweet and full. Anyways, that's what happened when you didn't eat for 5 days.

The next day I went to a workshop for teacher development at UCLA extension. During the lunch time I shared a table with other teachers, talking. I didn't dare to try meat but I still dished out some lettuce, a slice of tomato and a spoonful of guacamole, because I didn't want to stand out when people were all happily enjoying free Mexican food for lunch. By that time I hadn't had any solid food yet.

In the end I only got to swallow down the guacamole and perhaps two leaves of the salad. It felt like I forgot how to chew and it took forever for me to chew and swallow down the guacamole. Man I must have looked anorexia to the people at the table, because I barely touched the small pile of my food. I guess it's a touchy topic about eating here so one would be blatant enough like most Chinese people would by asking me out loud, "why didn't you eat?" But I wish some people did so that it wouldn't seem so awkward for me to explain myself.

I stumbled upon this great raw food recipe and I tried it on the third day and it was a blast! To me it looks like a variation of Gazpacho soup, and it's really healthy and yummy. What it requires is a lot of fresh tomato, red and yellow bell pepper, dried tomato, raisin, onion, garlic, basil and some dill.

The source is here, from "The Master Cleanse and Raw Food Bulletin Board", under the "Raw Food Life Style", "Vegetable Soup Recipes" thread:

Abeba and Anna's It's Really Soup:
serves 8 to 10 people

10 to 11 fresh Roma tomatoes, chopped
1/2 red or yellow onion, peeled and chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled
fresh basil to taste
fresh dill to taste
2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice
Celtic sea salt to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/8 to 1/4 cup raisins
1 to 2 red bell peppers
1/4 jalapeno pepper (optional) (i used habenero because i love spicy!)
1 cup sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped then divided
1 avacado cubed
1 ear of corn cut from the cob
1/2 sweet yellow pepper
finely chopped parsley for garnish


In a blender combine 6 of the tomatoes with the onion, garlic, basil, dill, lemon juice, sea salt, olive oil, raisins, red bell pepper, jalapeno, and 1/2 cup water.
Blend well.

Add 1/2 cup of the sun dried tomatoes, a little at a time. Blend well.

In a large bowl, combine the avocado, remaining fresh and dried tomatoes, corn and the sweet yellow pepper. Pour the blended mixture over the chopped veggies and stir well. Garnish with parsley.

(My own note: let the soup sit overnight in the fridge so that the ingredients can blend together).

This soup I happily enjoyed during the third and fourth of my post-MC days.

I also found another recipe of Gazpacho that doesn't require dried tomato, which I found it a bit expensive to buy. It's from Simply Recipes, a food blog that I really like.

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