Meanderings...

PHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW, well, the last 48 hours have been rather an exciting time here…Friday I went to visit the ENORMOUS Natural Health Products Expo West show and was quite amazed at the scale of the whole event – thousands and thousands of booths and products and samples and vendors…an absolute head spin of stimulus ;) It was amazing to experience...
I started the day at the fabulous Terra Bella restaurant in LA, with YUMMY green Norwalk juice, then some apples at midday and after that it all kind of went downhill in terms of optimal intake…

This is what I had:

1 litre water
400ml green juice
2 fuji apples
1 litre water
Bits and pieces of different raw samples – oils, flax crackers, raw bar samples, crystal manna, etc
500ml water
Bowl of VERY spicy blended green soup, very simple all-veggie spring rolls with a nut-based dip, bits and pieces of other dishes like a curried sprouted wild rice dish, broccoli stacked with a tomato-ey sauce and young coconut meat and so on.
A couple of bites of frozen raw desserts.

The expo was bursting with free samples and that, in my past, has been a true danger area for me…when I used to live in Iceland, I would literally walk from one shop to another through the town pre-Christmas time, when the shops all have free cookies and sweets and so on out for the customers, just so I could get the free snacks – I didn’t need anything in the shops – I was just obsessed with the food. So, this is definite scar tissue territory for me, but I negotiated it pretty well. I drew my boundary at cacao and didn’t overstep it at the expo, despite there being numerous vendors of amazing looking raw choc products…I did actually have a tiny piece of cacao right at the end of the night though, after we ate at Au Lac restaurant nearby…the buzz effect didn’t really impact me, as I’d just eaten many different things that my stomach was working on, but I did notice an instant feeling of ‘sharpness’ in my stomach and a slight bloating, which I recall happening in the past for me at other times when I have not had cacao for a while, then have some…it interested me to hear recently that no other animal in the wild eats cacao...not sure if that's true or not, but definitely 'food for thought' for me...
Au Lac was absolutely HEAVING with raw peoples from the expo – it was great fun and we shared lots of yummy dishes…silent chef Ito truly is a wonder and his love-infused food is just divine ;) By the end of the night though, this had easily qualified as my messiest food intake day since breaking the feast and my stomach was telling me about it…

Today I have had:

1 litre water
800ml tea
450ml amazing green juice with coconut water
1 cup of spicy green blended soup from last night, hemp seeds and flax oil
2 bananas with a tbsp almond butter
1 litre water
3 little raw bar samples from expo
500ml honeybush tea
1 medium bowl of kale salad – chopped kale, tomato, olives, dulse leaves combined with avocado and lemon.
500ml water

I woke to a slightly sore throat – yep, my body definitely wanted to tell me all about my food from yesterday and how it doesn’t really appreciate that kind of intake…I took the message, made some nice soothing tea and set out to have a lighter day for my stomach. It turned out more or less well…still not as clean as just a few days back, when it was just juices, mono-fruit meals and simple salads, but…I knew this slow journey back into more complicated things would unfold and am grateful that the pace of that has been gentle thus far…
I am also back in the land of the ‘dried plum’ and am putting some to soak tonight to enjoy tomorrow morning – excited to get back to that kind of simple yumminess…here in Southern Cali in particular, it is very easy for me to get distracted from simplicity by all the incredible raw creations, but I am still only recently out of feasting, so my connection to that is still strong and I can use that to help me ground and focus on simplicity more…
The kale salad this evening for example was GREAT…simple, tasty, clean, easily digested, packed with minerals and flavour…YES…gimme more of those greeeeeeeeeeeeens ;)
Back at the expo tomorrow...hope to meet more of you there...the raw food area is bumpin' ;)
All love,
Angela. xxx