Whew, what a busy Saturday! One thing that has been tricky since taking on raw recipes is tracking down all the ingredients, I find myself bouncing from Trader Joes, Whole Foods, WinCo and Costco on a regular basis. The Shopper App for the iPhone and iPod Touch has been a great tool for maintaining multiple shopping lists and being easily accessible for adding items when I think of them or see a recipe I want to try. It even tickles my uber geek side by allowing me to store prices on items to compare at other stores. To check stuff off the list, simply touch it and move on, it helps me effortlessly glide through stores using one hand to go through my list and the other to grab items and navigate the cart, no more finding a place to stop and juggle a pen in one hand and the list in the other. Plus, it significantly reduces the loose paper floating around my purse and me digging through them to find my car keys :-)
I made it to a great raw dessert lecture and sampling by Jennifer Cornbleet and ended up buying both her books, Raw Food Made Easy and Raw for Dessert, kind of the point of the lecture I guess :-P I’m looking forward to trying the recipes, she made raw desserts look so much easier and more decedent than traditional desserts and seemed like great ideas for potlucks and family gatherings. One that really impressed me is the pumpkin pie recipe that is actually carrots and avocado that tastes exactly like pumpkin after some spice magic, great because that’s one of my husband’s favorite treats and a must for family gatherings. I also got to meet a lot of other local raw enthusiasts and learned of a local raw club that has monthly potlucks I might look into. There were also many people new to raw, kind of cool to see their reactions to the tasty samplings and ease of preparation. I was surprised to discover Whole Foods offers a lot of free classes and lectures, they have two more raw classes this week alone and are a great way to see more recipes in action and meet and share info with others into the diet.
Afterward, I headed over to Costco and found a Vita-Mix demonstration going on for the 5200, which they were selling for $395. Tempting, but I was just not ready to buy and think I want the 1363 when I am ready. I enjoyed the presentation and was actually able to wrangle a few samples which is not an easy task at Costco on a Saturday. Plus I think the food processor needs to be my next big purchase before I kill my KitchenAid blender with nut grinding.
Another reason I love October so much is that it’s the month I met and fell in love with my husband – 12 years ago! Today is our 12 year anniversary from our first date and we celebrated by going to my favorite french restaurant. Unfortunately, the vegetarian options were limited to 3 dull choices and I ended up having the amazing crab cakes as seafood and poultry are the primary meats I eat when I eat meat. I’ve been avoiding beef and other red meats for awhile and have not missed it.