Organization

Arranging things in ways that make sense to make your life easier

Magick menu love

February 6, 2011
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I’ve been playing with the Magick Menu this weekend.   And loving it!

My background makes me predisposed to love this new service being rolled out by Natalie Lussier a.k.a. The Raw Foods Witch. I love raw food.  I love databases (part of my day job).   The Magick Menu marries a database of raw food recipes with an intuitive user interface for quickly selecting a week’s meals and generating a shopping list. It’s all my favorite things! How awesome is that?

I signed up for a free trial week.   And got too busy to test it.  I saw my card charged auto-renew when the trial ended.  Oops. I decided to keep it for a month and prioritize making time to use it.  The lovely wife is training for a 150 mile ride in Death Valley at the end of the month.  And she’s very interested in powering her training with green juices for her final weeks of training & tapering. I would like for us to do a 5 day green-drinks challenge.  Opportunity is knocking to see how the tool holds up to managing a 2-person 5 day green liquids diet challenge.

This afternoon I began planning.  I logged into my Magick Menu account, and started poking around.  The site is WordPress driven so it has robust open source software back-end.  Another bonus! I am ardent supporter of Open Source software and regularly make use of it as a matter professional principle.  My day-gig involves managing a team administering the Open Source ePrints repository for a major research university

I found it very easy to find recipes, drag and drop them onto a weekly schedule, save the menu to my account library (cool! save even more time by re-using), and print out a shopping list of ingredients .   The best part was saving to PDF.   The PDF is rendering in a simple, easily printable form which won’t drain my paper & toner reserves.  The layout is a plain menu grid at the top of the page, then a bullet-point shopping list, and, best of all, the full recipes for the week.  I made a menu of green juices & smoothies, plus some heavily green raw veggie soups.

I spoke to the wife, and she’s good to go with the juicing.  We need to do the grocery run, and make juices in the evening for the following day.  I don’t know if we’ll start tomorrow or Tuesday.  We have Superbowl social obligations today and time may not allow for shopping and juicing today.

You can contribute your own recipes to the Magick Menu data set and comment/review on recipes added by others.  There aren’t a lot of recipes in the library yet.  That’s not a totally bad thing.  Browsing is easier with less recipes to look at.  I can imaging spending a lot of time surfing recipes once a critical mass of recipes is available – they will look so yummy that  I’ll get happily lost in the food-porn.  The number of recipes will only get bigger once more people join the community and begin contributing.

I haven’t added any of my own recipes yet.  There is a form-based interface for typing in your information.  It accepts simple text and some HTML tags.  You use pull-down menus to do some basic social tagging.  The nerd in me ponders if the The Raw Food Witch has plans for optimizing tags.  I think about how social tags are combined with controlled vocabularies to optimize search engine results.  The search engine appears to be keyword full text indexing based.  I can’t tell if it includes any sort of ranking in the results set displayed.  There isn’t any advanced search available.   As the corpus increases, it would be rad to customize your recipe searches based on indexes of controlled fields.  Sorry…geeking out there….

What I would love is a batch ingest function so I could import all  of my MacGoumet recipes.  I’m a lazy data entry girl.

I’ve got my shopping list and menu in-hand.  Now what I need to test is my ability to apply the tool at hand.  It’s one thing to plan, it’s another to do.  If this menu helps me stick to a juice fast for 5 days I’ll be a total convert.  I’ll keep you posted.

Going to OHI San Diego!

July 26, 2010
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I’m so excited! I’ve booked myself for 2 weeks at the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego.  I’ve been wanting to go for years and finally saved enough money to make the trip.  I’m sure I’ll learn a lot.  I’m really interested in the wheatgrass sprouting classes.  I’ve never had much success sprouting my own.  It’s just too hot in L.A most of the year.  Hope to get some tips to overcome that.  I’m also stoked about the 3 day juice feast during the first week.  It will be sooooooo nice to have somebody else fixing the juices!

The program really emphasizes goal setting and life-balance. The provide lots of tips on how to organize one’s life to incorporate this eating style as a permanent habit.  Plus, it’s a spiritual mission.  I’m planing to renew my long-stagnant meditation practice and spend lots of time cycling (moving meditation).  You can bet I’ll be in the hot tub a great deal too. Knowing I get to do two weeks worth of extremely cleansing eating is a big motivator for me.  I’ve been doing the 11 week initiatives at Raw Food Rehab since April.  Consistently! So far I’ve lost a few pounds and I’ve made biking to work a daily habit and I’ve increased the number of days I spend 100% vegan per week.   I’m more psyched about sticking to it now that I’m going to OHI.  I’ll experience less detox reaction if my diet before the trip is clean.

My long term goal is to reduce (or eliminate!) my use of prescription medications.  The program will be an excellent launching point for that. Only 6 weeks until vacation time! I’m counting the days.

Happy D day!

July 25, 2010
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I’m in the midst of a dehydrator day a.k.a “D-day.”  D-day is for making treats & staples.  These are the things which make staying raw easier and more pleasurable.   On the agenda today: macaroons (chocolate & blond) and almond flour.

I use the macaroon recipe from “Raw Food, Real World” by Matthew Kenney & Sarma Melngailis.  I love their books.  When it comes to food porn, they rule.  All of their recipes are tres gourmet and the photography only increases the drool-worthy quality of their recipes.   Everything I’ve made from their books tastes awesome.   It’s not everyday fare because their recipes take time and effort.  Not surprising.  They did open Pure Food and Wine in NYC which Sarma Melngailis still owns and runs — along with One Lucky Duck, a take-out and on-line raw foods store.

These macaroons remind me of my favorite flavor of Timbits and take me back to my childhood in Canada.   They are mouthful of happiness.

Wet Almond Pulp

Wet Almond Pulp

Almond flour is a basic staple and an easy item to incorporate into one’s raw routine. It’s a great way to use up pulp from making almond milk.  I keep a gallon zip lock bag in my freezer and throw my leftovers into it every time I whip up a batch of milk.  When I’ve accumulated  about 4-6 cups, I defrost the pulp, spread it on teflex covered dehydrator trays, and pop it in the “D” until it’s bone dry.   From there, I throw it into my BlendTec and grind it to a very fine consistency.    I store it in the freezer when it’s done.

Dry Almond Flour

Finished Almond Flour

It keeps for months.  They dehydrating helps keep the nuts from going rancid.  It’s especially gorgeous when you’ve removed the skins from the almonds.   The flour is versatile: use it for cookies, cakes, breads, crackers. It’s simple and takes virtually no time to make – spend 30 extra seconds throwing it in the freezer when you make nut milk.

Making other recipes is quicker if you’ve got the flour on hand.

Menu planning – Asian Week

June 19, 2010
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I’ve been quite remiss about sharing my weekly food prep. Quite shameful of me really, since this blog is about getting organized to make eating raw vegan as easy as possible. My goal is to someday get my food prep time down to less than 4 hours per week. It may be a bit ambitious. I think I sometimes make too much stuff and my life would be simpler if I repeated more meals. Fortunately, things like sprouts and dehydrates are low on the “hands-on” time even though they take a fair long while to get ready. I decided to go Asian this week. Here’s the plan (note: the re-use of items from day to day). The pate will keep for 2 weeks, so it may end up being Asian fortnight instead of Asian week.

Weekend prep

  • Sprouting  (I’m going with lentil)
  • Dehydrate kale chips for snacks
  • Dehydrate some gingered almonds
  • Make pates
  • Make salad dressing
  • Wash greens
  • Cut up sturdier vegetables (carrots, bell pepper, etc.)
  • Marinate some veggies (mushrooms, bell pepper, zucchini, etc.)

Breakfasts

  • Miso soup
  • Veggie scramble
  • Green juice or smoothie

Lunches

Dinners

  • Sushi
  • Pad Thai
  • Stir un-fry on parsnip rice
  • Spring rolls

Snacks

  • fruit
  • kale chips
  • veggies with asian pate dip

Making life easier

February 6, 2010
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I’m a big proponent of planning ahead – as you could probably tell by all of the menu planning posts I’ve done.  Doubling up on recipes whenever you make food makes leftovers for easier week night noshing.  Laina over at Eat to Live has written a couple of great posts about making life easier.  Her tips are things that I do myself, except I don’t have the same kitchen gadgets.  And I couldn’t have said it any better.  Kudos Laina!

Week 1 menu & prep schedule – post-Thanksgiving leftovers

November 28, 2009
By
Arranged Vegetables Creating a Face

Arranged Vegetables Creating a Face

I’m going to go with “holiday leftovers” for week 1 of this raw challenge.  It’s what I’ll have on hand. I guess the theme is “American traditional comfort food.”  I wasn’t going to go raw for Thanksgiving, but I realized I needed to do prep for week 1 anyway.  Might as well take advantage of all the holiday recipes abounding on the raw food blogosphere. And yeah, they’re not leftovers per se, since I didn’t actually make this stuff for Thanksgiving.  But they would have been!

I’ve already got a few staples on hand :

  • raw parmesan
  • flax crackers
  • tortilla chips
  • gRAWnola
  • chocolate macaroons
  • chai spices

Plus I made some cranberry relish the day before Thanksgiving.   There is still a fair amount of prep work to be done. The trick is to think a bit about when I’d like to eat what while considering how best to space out the work.

Here’s the menu with a rough prep schedule.  One can assume I’ll be eating other things besides these menu items. Those would be staples and/or simple salads which don’t require a recipe.  One can also assume that I prep stuff the night before I eat it if the recipe requires more than 10 minutes of preparation.   I do perishable staples a couple of times per week.  That means things like nut milk and washing and cutting up fruit and vegetables.

I probably spent about an 90 minutes doing the thinking today.  That means looking at recipes, writing shopping lists, and thinking about scheduling.   I’ll report at the end of the week how much hands-on time I actually spent preparing stuff.  My ultimate goal is to spend less than 4 (non-consecutive) hours per week making food and less than 2 hours per week shopping for it.  Raw can not become routine if it takes too much time .

Breakfasts

  • Green juice (Monday)
  • Orange and cranberry smoothie (Tuesday)
  • Pumpkin bread with nut butter (Saturday)
  • gRAWnola with nut milk  (already done, almond milk made twice each week)

Lunches

  • Marinated collards with spicy yam chips (greens Sunday, chips Saturday)
  • Waldorf salad (Monday)
  • Green smoothies (Wednesday & Friday)
  • Green bean almondine and flax crackers (Wednesday)

Dinners (all served with a big ass greens & sprouts salad)

Snacks

  • Veggies and dip (wash and cut veg twice a week)
  • Kale chips (Sunday)
  • Macaroons (already done!)
  • Fruit (cut up night before if juicing or making smoothies)
  • Almond milk chai (Saturday, more almond milk on Wednesday)

It seems like a lot.  Too much really.  I need to simplify more.  I think I get carried away with wanting to try out recipes.

Menu planning

November 28, 2009
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I’m beginning to think about what I’m going to eat on the December challenge.  I like to plan menus in advance because (a) raw food can take a lot of pre-preparation that needs thinking ahead (b) I’m anally organized and (c) I do better at sticking to a plan when there is a plan in place.

menuThe biggest thing I’ve learned about menu planning is to incorporate left-overs into the planning.  It eliminates waste.  I don’t want to be throwing away expensive organic produce thank-you-very-much.  It also adds variety.  Huh? How do you get variety when you’re eating leftovers?  By using them differently.  Given that I’m the only person in my family eating this way I do end up with a lot of leftovers.  I need to switch it up so I’m not bored senseless.

The easiest way for me to deal with left-overs is to do theme cuisine.  Regional/ethnic themes work best since they have the same flavor profiles.  Italian food, for example, makes use of garlic, oregano, basil.  A marinade from one meal can transform into a dressing for another.

A sample week of dinners might go something like this:

  1. Cesar Salad, zucchini angel hair pasta and marinara
  2. Antipasto with bruschetta
  3. Lasagna
  4. Minestrone, greens with vinaigrette
  5. Pesto-stuffed portobello mushrooms
  6. Pizza
  7. Fettuccine raw-fredo

And one could alternate some desserts like: gelato, biscotti, pine nut cookies.

The marinara sauce does quadruple duty in the pasta, bruschetta, lasagna, and pizza.  There is rawmasan in the cesar salad, bruschetta, pesto, and fettuccine. The antipasto becomes a layer in the lasagna, or it can be chopped finer and thrown into a minestrone.

You get the general idea.  Now, making 7 different meals is way more work than I can realistically handle.  I’m ok with repeating things so I try to do only 2-3 meals per week.   For an Italian week, I’d make a Cesar dressing, a vinaigrette, a marinara sauce, a pesto and hope like hell that I already had rawmasan and seed crusts on hand from a monthly prep session.

Guess I just started planned one of my weeks.

Another oops

August 25, 2009
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I didn’t get to make raw corn tortilla chips last night.  I didn’t have enough corn in the freezer :-( .  And I’d gone to the store on my way home from work! I’d forgotten my list and shopped from my head.  Figures that I’d forget the one most important thing.  I blame exhaustion from getting only 3 hours of sleep the night before. I definitely felt it at the end of the work day.

The trick is to keep on keeping on.  I did start sprouting my buckwheat.  And, I’ll stop by the store again this evening and get the requisite corn.   How can I avoid this type of forgetfulness in the future?  By sticking to my regular organizational habits.   I’m a big fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (a.k.a. GTD).  I use a GTD plug-in and Outlook to manage my schedule.  Everything is synchronized with my Blackberry.  Usually I write my shopping lists as an Outlook task.  If I want it on paper, I can print it out before I go to the store.  I tend to read my list right on my Blackberry though.  No need to waste the paper.

I haven’t been able to synchronize my Blackberry with my desktop computer as often as I’d like.  I’m a Mac user, but run Windows in a virtual machine (VM) on my workplace Mac.   I’ve been having many, many, many problems with the VM.  Blackberry software doesn’t play well with it.  So, I’ve not been using my GTD as much as I should.  I’m not offering this as an excuse, but as an explanation.  If I know how an obstacle presents itself, I can avoid those obstacles.  In this case, I can make sure to use the tools I’ve already got.

Of course, my computer has been crashing a lot today.  Just because the solution is simple, doesn’t mean it’s easy.  It will resolve itself soon however.  I’m getting a bona fide PC from my tech people at the office.  Once that’s installed it should be a bit easier to stick to the GTD habit.

Meanwhile, I’m planning another juice fast for tomorrow.  And, this is really exciting, M. has agreed to do the fast with me!  And she’s agreed to help me with the juicing and clean-up.  How rad is that?  I think this is M.’s first juice fast.  My goal, as usual, is to make it the entire day on beautiful green and fruity juice.  I’ve broken my past two mini-fasts at the dinner hour.  It’s difficult for me to resist the food M. and Z. are eating for dinner.  It will definitely help to have M. doing the fast with me.  Once I make it through one 24 hour cycle, my next goal will be to make 48 hours, then 72 hours, and so on.  I’d like to build up to one full week.   The idea of that is kind of scary right now.  I’m going to focus on just one day.  It’s just one day! And I know I can do three days – I’ve done that much in the past.  And I know I find it easy to do 3/4 of the day.  It’s only the evening that trips me up.  The key to success will be (a) keeping full on nutritious delicious juice and (b) finding things to do in the evening so that I won’t focus on food.   Perhaps a yoga class.  More likely that I’m going to be making  raw granola – the buckwheat sprouts I’ve started should be ready by tomorrow evening.   Good thing I don’t find the pre-dehydrated mixture very appealing as a snack.  I won’t be tempted to eat it while I’m fasting.  Oh! I can also post all the recipes and photos from all the things I’ve been making this week.  I should have enough to do to keep myself busy and fasting tomorrow evening.

I’ve had a few set-backs this week so far.  I know I can turn it around by thinking positively and by remembering that I have all the time in the world to nurture myself.  I don’t hurt anything by shifting my schedule up a day or so. Flexibility is key.  I always tell myself, “start the good work today.  Tomorrow never comes!” Which is true.  But it’s also true that I can’t stress out over timing.  I need to trust myself that things will happen.  The universe unfolds as it ought to … as long as you’re prepared, you can take advantage.  I will be prepared.

Oops

August 24, 2009
By

I forgot to start soaking buckwheat groats this morning.  It’s ok.  I’ll start them tonight.  They’ll just sprout for a little less time.  Fortunately, they don’t need to get to the point of having tails.  And, I had a little wiggle room built in. You only need to soak the buckwheat for about 8 hours and sprout for another 8-12 hours.   If I start tonight, I’ll still be ready to make a rocking batch of raw granola tomorrow evening.

My excuse was that I didn’t sleep well last night.  I probably only got about 3 hours worth of shut-eye. It made for a very grumpy morning.  I was so tired, I forgot my vow to be vegan all week and had a few sips of the princess latte that M. brought to me in my bed (yes, I’m very spoiled).  The rest of the day has been the most vegan-y of vegan eating. I’ve made a 5 cups of pro-biotic packed green smoothie.  Enough for breakfast and afternoon snack.  Lunch was a big-ass salad with .25 cup slivered almonds and some fat-free balsamic vinegar dressing.  Dinner is going to be leftover carrot/cauliflower/tarragon soup and some steamed veggies done up in my own stir-fry sauce. I’ll post the recipes for all of those separately.

Weekends are relaxing?

August 23, 2009
By

JuliusOy! It’s been a busy day. I have washed, dried, folded AND put-away seven (yes seven!!) loads of laundry. I have washed Julius Seizure, our half-blind epileptic little doggie.  I have swept floors.  I have tidied.  I have cleaned and organized.  I started some alfalfa sprouts.  I made carrot, cauliflower and tarragon soup.  I shredded and marinated some collard greens.

M. and I have been eating a lot of recipes from Donna Gates’ Body Ecology book, including the carrot/cauliflower/tarragon concoction mentioned above. I’m still feeling utterly wretched in the digestive realm so I’m sticking to vegan-ism this week.    The best way to do that is to make sure I have good yummy food handy.  Keeping it anti-candida a la Body Ecology help the tummy troubles.  Fortunately the soup recipe yields an abundant amount of food.  M., Z., and I will be eating this all week.  Add a few salads or steamed veggie sides and it’s a full meal.  No need to think or do much when it comes to the food I’m eating this week.

That leaves me time to focus on some longer term prep.  It’s easier to stay raw when I have some staples stashed away in the pantry.  I try to make  a big batch of this type of food each quarter.  On tap this week: “Golden tortilla chips” , “Pizza flax crackers” , and  some “Grawnola.  These recipes are time intensive, although little of that is hands-on.  There’s soaking and sprouting to do.  And I need to consider the amount of space available in my dehydrator plus how long each recipe is going to be taking up space inside. It’s a little tricky to have things ready-sprouted in time for the dehydrator opening.

This is the food prep schedule I’ve planned on top of everything else I’ve accomplished today.

Tonight :  raw chocolate macadamia ice cream, peach cobbler, and my green smoothies for tomorrow’s breakfast & lunch.

Monday a.m.: rinse sprouts, rotate fruit, soak 2.5 cups of hulled buckwheat groats

Monday p.m.: drain and rinse buckwheat, start sprouting it, rinse alfalfa sprouts, make golden tortilla chips and put them in dehydrator for 24 hours.

Tuesday a.m.: rinse alfalfa sprouts, rotate fruit, rinse buckwheat sprouts, soak 1/4 cup each of sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, and flax seeds.

Tuesday p.m.: take tortilla chips out of the dehydrator, cool, and put into ziplock freezer bags, store in the fridge.  Make grawnola, put into dehydrator for 24 hours.

Wednesday a.m.: rinse sprouts, soak 2 cups of flax seed.

Wednesday p.m.: make pizza flax crackers, put into dehydrator for 24 hours.

I’ll decide what other staples to make on Wednesday.  By that time I’ll need a night or two off from food prepping.

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