D's Raw Food Detox

From travelingcupcake.blogspot.com

I'm a little piggy. My buddy Kit lovingly calls me a fatty. I think we've all got a little fat kid inside.

I don't diet. And I don't portion control. Which means once in awhile, I start bloating up like beached whale. Whales are cute because they're round. Me? Not so much.

This is where raw food detox comes in. I started doing it about 3 years ago, and it's super simple. It goes like this:

1/2 cup of fiber cereal in the morning with soy milk (recipe below)
all the fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts you like throughout the day
1/2 cup of fiber cereal in the evening with soy milk
8 glasses of water throughout the day

The problem with a lot of cleanses is that (1) if you do a store-bought detox, the pills and fiber drinks can be harsh on your stomach and body, and (2) you're so damn hungry all the time.

One year, I tried a co-worker's 24-hour fast, lasted about 7 hours, felt starved and wanted to eat my own face. Another time I tried the lemonade/cayenne pepper/maple syrup thing. That sure tasted bad, so I dumped it, too. Suffice it to say, I'm not a great candidate for cleansing.

What I like about this detox is that you're not starving yourself. Mostly it's the nuts-- it helps keep you full. Also, this particular detox utilizes all-natural fiber to help aid digestion. And you're not limited as to what fresh fruits and vegetables you can eat (some cleanses forbid bananas or tropical fruit, etc.).

Pretty much, you're eating a vegan raw food diet for a week to cleanse yourself of all the meat, dairy and processed foods that tend to weigh down a person's system.

Cons include headaches for the first day or two and regular (VERY regular) bowel movements.

Bonuses include feeling lighter, having more energy and (for many) glowing skin and hair.

There are tons of raw food recipes online. So you can mix up your diet. Just be careful with the salt. And here are some great raw cookbooks:

Raw Food Made Easy
Ani's Raw Food Kitchen
The Complete Book of Raw Food

And, of course, if you live in a city where there are raw food restaurants, you can still go out to eat! Last week I went to Pure Food in Gramercy and had an oyster mushroom "scallop" that was to die for. You can check out this raw food directory for a complete listing on detox-friendly restaurants.

If you like the cleanse, let me know! And if you have tips on how to improve it, please share!

Happy noshin',
The Traveling Cupcake



RECIPE: FIBER CEREAL (courtesy my buddy alexia)
1 cup wheat bran
1 cup oat bran
1 cup milled flax seed
1/2 cup wheat germ
1 cup dried fruit (blueberries, cranberries, whatever you like)

sugar: it's for kids

Yesterday, during a long stretch on the 6 train from Spanish Harlem to Chinatown (I wasn't feeling great, so I thought maybe some noodle soup would straighten me out. It did), I watched a woman feeding her two kids a series of snacks:

Oreo cookies
(then) peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
(followed by) fruit roll-ups
(ending with) apple juice

Which, in my mind, translated to:
Sugar
(then) sugar
(followed by) sugar
(ending with) more sugar

I don't judge this mom. This is how we're taught to feed our kids in the U.S. Pre-packaged food-like products that give our kids "energy." Stuff that our kids "will like."

Growing up, I ate two kinds of food: stuff that was tasty, and stuff that grown-ups put in my bowl and told me to eat. Things like: spicy fermented tofu, salted egg and pickled veggies with rice porridge for breakfast. Chicken curry with fried rice for lunch. Sauteed veggies and braised pork with noodles for dinner. Mangos or lychees for dessert. My diet ran the gamut. I was healthy.

After we moved to the U.S. and started assimilating to the lifestyle here, I was introduced to a different kind of diet. Big huge portions with lots of fat and sugar. A kid's dream come true. When I first tasted a croissant, I thought I'd discovered heaven. Mmm, fat carbs. Love fat carbs. Still do. My skinny jeans always complain.

But then something started happening to me. I started gaining weight. Lots of it. So much my siblings started calling me "The Blob." I didn't understand why. And I would cry in between large bites of Whopper with cheese. Why am I fat? Why are they calling me fat? Why does this Snickers bar taste so good? Gobble, gobble.

It was a difficult, confusing time.

Fast forward and here I am on the 6 train wondering how we can get moms to replace the oreos and fruit roll-ups with, say, bananas and whole wheat crackers.

One concern, obviously, is access to nutritious food. Many communities don't have that. The other is nutrition education. Many parents don't have the information they need to feed their kids a more complete diet. And then there's the underlying cultural desire for gigantic portions (the snacks this mom fed her kids probably had all the calories contained in a meal) and the fear that parents have of making their kids eat something "they don't like." Come on now.

Had I been calling the shots as a kid, I would have just had a giant Pixie stick funneling blue sugar directly into my gullet 24/7. Which, come to think of it, is kind of what we're doing now to our kids. It's hard being a mom. And it's hard to focus on health when an entire culture and industry is built around exactly the opposite. I want to know: how can we make it easier for everyone?

-the traveling cupcake

quote of the month

"A diet based on quantity rather than quality has ushered a new creature onto the world stage: the human being who manages to be both overfed and undernourished, two characteristics seldom found in the same body in the long natural history of our species."

-Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

food incarnations

Few people know my personal food rule. I eat an 80/20 diet. 80% veggie. 20% omni. I treat meat as a side dish.

Back in SF, it used to be 80% raw food and 20% cooked food. But then I got way too involved in the raw food scene and started feeling cultish and had to stop hanging out at Cafe Gratitude all the time. I was *this* close to drinking the raw Kool-Aid.

Before that I didn't eat beef for religious reasons (don't tell my mom I sneak galbi). And then before that I didn't eat four-legged animals. The latter was because at a banquet one year an uncle chased me around with the whole tongue of a roasted piglet. Charming guy.

As a kid, however, I ate everything the grown-ups would put in front of me. There were 14 kids in my family. I was the youngest one. I either ate what there was or I didn't eat at all. It's a wonder how selective I am about my food as an adult and how many different food rules I've imposed on myself over the years.

I wonder a lot about that privilege-- the luxury of choosing what I will and won't eat. 854 million people worldwide are malnourished, and I'm pushing a chicken breast off my plate because it's overcooked. Something doesn't seem right about that. Though I'm reminded of a story about Thomas Keller that I will remember forever.

When Chef Keller first opened The French Laundry, he personally slaughtered a dozen live rabbits. They screamed. One rabbit broke its leg trying to get away.

The chef says he now treats every piece of meat that passes through his kitchen with the deepest respect because he understands the extraordinary sacrifice of animals.

One thing is true. We all want to live. But we don't all get to live.

Perhaps that's why we must respect our food. When we do, we honor where our food comes from. And we honor the incredible privilege it is to eat when others cannot. Maybe that's why slow food values appeal to me. It's something to strive for. It's a good way to give back through eating (to the earth, to those who labor, to those in our communities, etc.), rather than just taking from others through our food.

So next time you see me noshing on a box of 6-piece Chicken Mcnuggets, you are welcome to bitch-slap me a little. I never said I was perfect. Though I blame it entirely on that sweet and sour sauce. I can't prove there's crack in there. But I do allege.

-the traveling cupcake

cheddah

These days I've been losing my battle against cheese addiction. Everyday, a hunk of cheese. Sometimes two or three different kinds. Everything from your standard grocery store muenster to hand-crafted Ascutney Mountain cheese.

At work I've been seen hacking off chunks of cheddar and smearing all kinds of things on top--apple butter, fruit spread, mustard-- and just gnawing on it like a ravenous monkey. At home I've been a little more graceful: delicately slicing gouda, gruyere or goat cheese over fresh baguette with honey or quince paste or seasoned nuts.

The other day, I shaved off 1/3 cup of parmigiano reggiano and threw it into my butternut squash soup with cubed avocado. Tasty. Earlier today I ate all the cheese off of my tuna melt and then left the tuna on my plate.

I'm totally out of control.
And lactose intolerant.
And sadly lacking in omega-3.

Given my complete obsession with cheese, I was pretty upset to find out that because of the new 300% luxury tariff on French imports, U.S. supplies of Roquefort cheese will fall as prices skyrocket from $7.90/pound to $31.60/pound. This is where we gasp collectively in horror.

According to this article, the tariff was George W. Bush's "great retaliation for the European Union ban on imports of U.S. beef containing hormones. Not explicitly, of course, but when the EU continued to refuse our feedlot-raised, corn-, hormone- and antibiotic-stuffed beef, we lobbed this taxation their way."

Trade wars. How dare they protect their citizens from our disgusting, steroid-ravaged meat? Let's show 'em who's boss. Freedom fries!

Stuff like this gets me thinking about how political food can be. That piece of American cheese I nibbled off of my tuna melt at lunch? That was the result of long-standing American food policy driven by corporate interest. So "American cheese" is just that.

The turning point was 1973, when the food industry was able to lobby the U.S. government to lift a federal regulation requiring all imitation food be labeled as such. Now, with decidedly lax regulations in place, we are so inundated with frankenfoods that (1) it's affecting the general health of Americans and (2) many people can no longer distinguish between food and, well, not food.

Perhaps that's why I have a bag of Kraft singles in my fridge. Sitting right there next to a $12 wedge of imported artisan comte. As much as I appreciate actual food made with real ingredients found in nature, I still can't stay away from wannabe foods created entirely by evil geniuses in their climate-controlled laboratories.

And thus, I leave you with this: Chemical No Apple Apple Pie. Is it strange that I want to try it?


- the traveling cupcake

hello, from the traveling cupcake...

I've started this blog not just for a love of food—of cooking and eating—but out of a fascination with what food represents, what it means and how it makes us feel.

We all know that food is never just food. Wherever we look, food is there in our forever memories and once-upon dreams. Food tells us who we are, how we got here, what we hope for, how we live. Sometimes it keeps us anchored to a certain place. Other times it sends tingling nostalgia down our backs and into the warm center of our bellies.

Sometimes food, it fills us. Other times it leaves us desperately empty. Food is powerful that way.

What do I remember? I remember the first time my father tried to cook me dinner. It was fried pompano. It tasted terrible. But he made it and that made me love him more. I remember the first time I discovered I could chop something up and put it into a hot, oiled pan with seasonings and things would happen to it --it would fill with flavor-- and fall onto a plate aside a set of wooden chopsticks or a ceramic spoon or a metal fork and knife. Presto. A meal. Sometimes it was delicious, other times…not. But I made it. I made it myself. And I felt capable.

How do I feel about food? The anticipation of waiting for a favored meal at a favorite restaurant. The sensation of “I can almost taste it...” If I could smell it, feel the heat of it, hear the sounds of the kitchen, my body would react. An excited tensing forward of the shoulders, a drumming of the fingers, perhaps a little dribble at the corner of the mouth.

But just as (if not more) important than the pleasure of eating is its context. Were you in the company of people whom you loved? Did you share laughs with good friends over a plate of stewed oxtail at that one Cuban place with the great music? Was it over a bowl of cucumber gazpacho that you realized, nope, there would be no second date? Did you dine to celebrate the birth of a sister with whom you fought endlessly as a child but who later became your closest confidante? Did that empty carton of Chunky Monkey say to you, hey loser, get off your butt and go do some stuff? Mine did.

Everywhere you look, there’s food. Wherever you go or hide, you need it. And every single one of us has our own unique way of needing it, wanting it, even fighting it.

This blog explores needs. Desires, also. And fascinations, disappointments and everything in between. Sometimes it will ponder political or ethical questions. Other times it will burst with the emotional, the visceral. Other times it will simply be a declaration. For as complex as food can be, sometimes it’s as simple as the simplest joys could ever be.

-the traveling cupcake