May 28, 2008Oprah and MeThis isn't a statement I have cause to make very often, but Oprah and I have something in common right now: we're both on a cleanse. Starting on May 15 and going until the end of June, I'm eating a gluten-free and primarily raw vegan diet. The timing couldn't be more ideal: my weekly organic produce box has been replete with salad greens, stone fruit, and citrus, and Food Fight has inexpensive, perfectly ripe organic avocados in their produce section every time I go there (some days, I buy every last one of them). In preparation of this cleanse, I added a few more raw uncookbooks to my collection, and I've really enjoyed just looking through them for inspiration, even if I don't end up making many of the dishes, or at least not as they're written. I know that there are a lot of people who can't conceive of how anyone could eat a vegan diet without getting bored. "I mean, what do you eat?" is something that I was asked a lot a few years ago (and is one of the reasons that I ended up writing a cookbook, partly just to prove that I eat whatever the hell I feel like eating). But a raw vegan diet is a completely different beast and is, in a word, challenging, especially with a full time job and a five month old baby. I'm not sure if I could do it in the fall and winter months, but I'm having a great time right now eating two avocadoes and at least a cup of nuts and seeds per day and still losing weight. Everyone in the vegan community is wondering if Oprah's cleanse will lead to her becoming a vegetarian. I'm not so sure. It would be wonderful if a decision that was almost certainly motivated by weight loss led to her choosing a more cruelty-free lifestyle, and from her blog entries, it does look like she might choose to reduce her meat intake on a more long-term basis. So will my diet be making a permanent change? Should you be expecting my next book to be called "Yellow Rose Stops Cooking?" Doubtful, dudes. Yes, I feel great and yes, it's much easier to lose weight and keep it off when your food is digested and metabolized immediately. But the thing about raw foods is, well, there is no cooking, just a lot of prep work, and prep work is what I hate about cooking! I don't really enjoy the peeling, chopping, processing, and blending. That is just what I have to do to get to the good part. I like standing over a pot or my cast iron skillet (my skillet! How I miss you!), stirring, tasting, reducing, deglazing, adding a pinch of this and that. Sure, I love a good salad, but I love throwing the salad together while the entree is in the oven, do you know what I mean? Having said that, I know that as the weather heats up here, I will be glad that this experience has added so many oven-free dishes to my arsenal. I would love to hear from you guys about how your diet changes in the summer, or if you like to go on cleanses from time to time to press your body's reset button.
posted by joanna @ 7:24 PM
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