And So It Begins - Personal Arthritis Regime

Saturday 19Aug06 12:40pm

Last night I walked with my big red grocery buggy to the Price chopper and then to the Fresh Obsessed to stock up on all the goodies for my new food regime for the arthritic toes. Spent $160.00 on veggies and fruit and couscous and wild rice and brown rice and nuts and the like. I'm making the vegetable stock now that I was supposed to start at 4am but my eyes had another idea and didn't bother to open until 7:30.

I've got a list of about twenty recipes to get me through the next week or two. If I'm going to do this right I'm going to need a large variety of things to eat.

Recipes I got from the Book, the Mucusless Diet Healing System, include:
1- Raisins, nuts and raw green onions mixed together... sounds gross but is surprisingly tasty
2- Cold Slaw salad - with Cabbage, lemon juice, onions and cold cooked carrots
3- Mexican Cold Slaw - with Red Cabbage, red kidney beans, onions, chopped red peppers, olive oil and lemon juice
4- Carrot and Apple Salad - with onions, sliced dates, olive oil and lemon juice - you soak the apple cubes in lemon to stop them from turning brown
5- Asparagus and Cauliflower
6- Carrot and Spinach - with the Cold Slaw Salad
7 - Sauteed Sweet Potatoes and Carrots in Olive oil

Recipes I got from the Book, Slow Cooker Recipes no 8, include:
1- Vegetable Bean Soup
2- Butternut Squash - Apple Soup
3- Mushroom and Barley Soup
4- Pea Soup
5- Red Cabbage and Apples with carrots
6- Spinach Spoonbread with cornbread mix, cottage cheese, red peppers and green onions

And Recipes I got from the Book, Robert Rose's Favorite Meatless Meals, include:
1- Fried Zucchini
2- Tzatziki Sauce
3- Red onion and Red Pepper Soup
4- Spinach Salad with Oranges and Mushrooms
5- Caraway Carrots
6- Wild Rice with Sauteed Oriental Vegetables

I bought spring mix, radicchio and dandelion for my green salads. Dandelion is a great system cleanse as it has both diuretic and laxative qualities. Plus bitter food such as radicchio is a good liver cleanse. I've got Renee's Ravin' Raspberry dressing for most times and will try a salad using the homemade tzatziki sauce.

I've managed to drink the Apple Cider Vinegar and honey in hot water both in the morning and in the evening and have found that I haven't been overburdened with the acid reflux-y feelings that I regularly get.

This week, I'll be starting on the Raw beet juice and the raw white potato juice daily. The potato juice should prove interesting. The beets I've done before and mask the taste by adding apples and carrots. It really does flush through the system and it's amazing how often it is mentioned in my Herbal notes, for Cancer and arthritis and all sorts of stuff, so I'll probably drink beet juice for the rest of my life.

I'll probably just do the raw cabbage juice on the weekends for now. I've got a lot of stuff and I don't want to stress myself out with all this crazy-ness. I doubt that I'll be able to do the raw food cleanse as I really don't like vegetables all that much to want to eat them raw. A diet of carrots won't cut it for me because frankly, carrots are pretty much the only veggies that I like raw. ha! I may save my juice cleanses for the weekends and days off because it's too hard to do a juice cleanse and work full-time with the urge to pee every two seconds plus it's better to drink the juice just after I've made it, rather than carrying pre made juices and worse yet making all those juices at 4am each day. I'd have a nervous breakdown and I do lots at that hour.

And so it begins, unlike diets one starts to lose weight, I'm organized and prepared to restrict all the fun stuff that I like to munch on. Since it's not just about my weight, although losing some will be a happy perk, I'm motivated to forego the restrictions because well, walking without pain is a bigger carrot than eating that ice cream or chocolate or whatever.
That's it for now, I'll keep you posted on the results, the tastes and the weirdness. I am weird aren't I?

EY