TAMARIND, GUAVA, PUMMELOS, OH MY!

I had the BEST day!!! Erin stayed over last night, and she woke me up at 10am after like 4 hours of sleep to go to the gym. Not exactly a standard move for me. I like the gym, don’t get me wrong, but actually getting up and GOING there has always been my problem. I do much better with a buddy, even if the headphones are on while I’m running and I’m ignoring them.  :)

First I feel I should update. So I’ve been raw for almost 6 weeks. I’ve lost 20 pounds (down to 127 from 147). With little to no exercise. I’m just so busy and really bad about making time for it. But that’s my new goal. :) After about week four I started allowing myself to eat the FoodForLife sprouted grain tortillas (no flour, no yeast, all sprouted grains, baked at low temperatures, but I am unsure if they are actually raw) just because I was getting a little bored with things due to my very on the go lifestyle. But while I feel FULL after eating them, I’m not sure I feel that wonderful, so I’ve been making it a more occasional thing. When I first started letting myself have them I was just tortillaing it up all day every day. Lol

Okay, back to my awesome day. The main point of that blurb was to mention that I am not much of a regular exerciser. Unless you count dancing around my kitchen in heels while I do dishes late at night. Yes, I am a dork. So today Erin wakes me up at 10. We get dressed, go to Wawa, I grab an orange for breakfast. We go to the hour long yoga class. It kicked my butt but I still think I did an awesome job! There was only like one pose I couldn’t do! After class ended I did a half an hour on the treadmill and Erin did the elliptical. Then we did weights and spent some time in the room with the exercise balls. By then we were done with the gym. Got in the car and inhaled a mango. After this we went to Staples. I printed some flyers for my raw food meetup group! (http://www.meetup.com/AtlanticCountyRawFoodies) Also printed some Rosetta Stone workbooks and tests for myself. Teaching myself Spanish. :) Well, Rosetta and SpeakInAWeek are anyway. Haha. I also got the kids some fun educational stuff and some organizational tools for me. My daughter got a pink stapler. She’s going to freak. She likes to make books all day long and she lost her stapler. Then we went tanning. Came home, showered, got dressed. Made myself some juice. Not so sure about this juice. It was fennel, beet, apple. I’m not a big fan of fennel. Or black licorice, which is what fennel tastes like. BUT I have heard that fennel is good for combating depression, which I was battling pretty severely before I started this raw food adventure. So I sucked it up and drank the juice. It is making my tummy make crazy noises. Hehe. Munched on a couple of cacao covered brazil nuts and some kind of berry. Goldenberries maybe? I’ll have to look. THEN. Here was one of the best parts of the day….It’s getting it’s own paragraph…

We went and explored the Asian supermarket. I have been venturing around to the little ethnic grocery stores lately in search of new and interesting produce. Mexican, Indian, and now Asian. The Mexican grocery store produced an amazing find, one of my new favorite snacks, TAMARIND. Tastes like a sour warhead candy. They are kind of a pain in the you know what to eat, but SO tasty!! We went there today actually before the Asian market to get some more. There was a funny situation there. I had some kind of cactus leaf, and wanted to know if I could eat it raw, but nobody had any idea what I was asking and they didn’t know enough English or I enough Spanish to effectively communicate my question. The guy told me it was not to eat today, it was to cook for tomorrow. Or something. Hahaha THEN some customer in line nodded yes when I asked if it would be poisonous to eat it raw. So I put it back. For now. I will find out for sure eventually. Oh gooooooogle…… :)  So we made our way to the Asian supermarket and ohmygoodness was I in LOVE with the produce section. SOOO many unfamiliar things!!! I just realized I never did find what I went there for, which was a Durian, but then again I didn’t ask anyone, so who knows, they could be there. I did however, find GUAVA!!!! Anyone that is friends with me on FB knows I have been hunting unsuccessfully for guava for like months. So this was extra special for me. I bought a pummelo. Whatever that is. Winter melon? Who knows, but I got some! I took pictures of the signs for a million things to look up on wikipedia later.  :) Such a fun day so far. I came home and danced around the kitchen some more. Took a video just so that I could watch it and have a good laugh. hahaha

WELL, I have a million things to do. I have lots of pictures I have taken that I will upload soon, I promise. :) Maybe later tonight I will google all my crazy produce and upload pics.  :)

Much love, Kelli. <3