Day 4: Organized thoughts

As the past few posts have been done at the end of the night while sitting in bed while Husband is attempting to sleep, they haven't been really well thought out and were quite rushed. I'm slowing things down.

For starters. Here are the books I purchased yesterday:

Becoming Raw: The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets

This book is amazing. It handles everything from the history of the Raw Diet to all the nutrients you need and where to get them all, and discusses the problems that a lot of people have while on the raw diets, especially those who are deficient in nutrients (which can take years to show up). This is considered the bible of eating raw, and I'm very very glad to have purchased it.

Raw Food Made Easy For 1 or 2 People

I bought this book because I saw a lot of comments on the other books I had picked out that stated the recipes made too many servings. I also have this problem when I cook at home, because I really only know how to cook large family-sized meals, which then gives you about 10 days of leftovers, which gets really really tiring after a while. I've tried making a few family sized meals so that we have some variety, but Husband and I just don't have enough room in our fridge for all that food. I felt this was a good option, especially if Husband decides to continue eating meat and not-raw, then I can just cook for myself and whip him up something small.

Total Juicing: Over 125 Healthful and Delicious Ways to Use Fresh Fruits and Vegetable Juices and Pulp

I bought this book because juicing vegetables is common/important in the daily life of a raw vegan, so I thought it would be good to have a book on how to juice vegetables, since I'm totally clueless.

And finally, I bought:

12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food

I thought this book sounded good, and it got good reviews on Amazon so I went ahead and got that too.

I discovered a neat trick while in Barnes and Noble. I have an iPhone and for some reason that I cannot remember I thought it would be a good idea to download the Amazon.com app. I use Amazon for my reviews of books that I want to buy, and other products, because generally that are lots of informative comments that you don't find on other sites. Well, the Amazon app lets you search for things either by name, scanning the barcode of the item or by taking a picture. I went with scanning the barcode- and it worked great! I had originally pulled about 15-20 books off the shelves and wanted to know what other people thought just do I didn't buy a dud, so I'd scan the barcode in the Amazon app, and it would take me to the item and I'd read the reviews! Pretty nifty.

I haven't really started reading anything other than Becoming Raw, and it's such a good read that I have a really hard time putting it down. There was one more book that I wanted to buy, but that wasn't at Barnes and Noble, so I'll probably just download it for my Kindle- Raw Food Controversies: How to Avoid Common Mistakes That May Sabotage Your Health.

So that's that. Now, on the 31st I posted about a bunch of dinners I made that were absolutely amazing, and boy were they, but I'd just left it at that and didn't go into any detail about what they were. As I did not include the recipes, because I felt rushed to get the post done I didn't go into details, so here they are:

1) Sherried Tomato Soup (delectable- I've never had tomato soup this good before)

2) Prosciutto and Caramelized Onion Pizza (I don't think I've ever eaten so fast in my entire life, I just wanted more and more and more)

3) Mozzarella, Chicken and Pesto Pizza (delicious, I used too much mozzarella so that didn't go over well as it leaked onto my pizza stone).

4) Greek Salad (way easier than I'd expected)
5) Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing (this had a lot of bacon grease in it, but it was so worth it!)
6) Autumn Chopped Salad (so easy to make, and so delicious!)
7) The Best Enchiladas You Will Ever Eat (I messed up in the middle, but it was 100% worth it. Husband cheered these as easily the best enchiladas he's ever had, and I have to agree).
8) Mandi's White Chicken Crockpot Chili (My mother got this recipe off pinterest and sent it to me in a word file, but I managed to find it online. It's amazingly delicious. Some notes my mom added: 1) Chili can also be cooked on stove top on med-high heat until cheese is well-incorporated. 2) 5 cups of chicken is equal to 1 1/2 rotisserie chickens. 3) This chili does not need embellishments, as for chili pie 4) If you can't find pepper jack cheese, you can use jalapeno salsa and plain monterey jack cheese.

Now- when it comes to making pizza crust, no matter what the recipe tells me to do, I use my own pizza crust recipe (which I got from Williams-Sonoma) that is absolutely perfect. Link to the post with the recipe is here. I would also recommend that you buy a pizza stone. Those things have saved my pizza's life.

So there we are. All organized! What a productive day it's been for me indeed.