Last day in Berlin

I have to retract my advertisement for the Arugula salad at Borschart – I must have just made up in my head that it was raw. I ordered it last night, and it has parmesan cheese on it, and a probably not raw dressing. But, I also ordered a tomato salad there, and it was fantastic. Juicy plum tomatoes, sliced and sprinkled with diced onions and garlic, with a little sprinkling of salt and pepper. Very simple and delicious.

I had a realization about bread. It has long been my favorite cooked food. Like, since I was a baby, probably. And a couple of days ago, I had eaten raw all day, and then went out for dinner. I had a nice big salad with raw dressing. Feeling great. And the bread on the table looked so fluffy and good that I had a piece. Or 2. Or 3. Or 4. So, a couple of things about this: First, it was not good. It was dry and flavorless (not saying that all bread is, but this definitely was). Second, I am compulsive with food to the effect that I can never eat just one of the food that I am addicted to. And third, I felt horrible all night afterwards, and didn’t go out with the rest of the group after dinner. Like gassy and stomach pain-y.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I had made up that bread is a less-harmful cooked food. I don’t know where I got that from, but clearly it’s not true. I was totally ill. So, that’s it for bread and me for a while.

It’s my last day in Berlin. And I had wanted to have lunch at my favorite restaurant, a Vietnamese place. I had kind of planned it for the last week, knowing full well that it wasn’t raw but what the heck. And then this morning, I woke up and just want to eat raw today. And I am so happy about that. That restaurant will be there another time. Vietnamese food will always be here. But today, instead I choose what makes me feel the best in the long term, short term, and medium term.

Love,
Marissa

Back on the train

I can’t say enough how much I love the way I feel when I eat raw food. And how much I love it even more when I eat exclusively raw food. Why, then is it so hard for me to actually do that? Since Friday night’s cookedfoodextravaganza, I’ve been having a little (or a lot) of cooked food each day. Saturday night was sushi. Yesterday was chips and pizza(!) at night. Today, pizza for breakfast(!!).

I feel tired and gross, and have 2 new pimples. Awesome.

However, I’m doing a few things to help me out:
I’ve removed all the non-raw food from the flat that I’m staying in.
I’m sitting in a cafe enjoying an organic carrot/celery/ginger juice. Usually, I don’t like ginger so much, but trying to expand my palate, and I now love it in this combination.
Heading to the organic market to load up on fruit and veggies for these last few days in Berlin.
Having a green smoothie before I go out for dinner tonight with friends.

Sad me, I passed by Grasshopper, the juice bar that I like by Hackescher Markt, and it looks like it’s closed permanently! Boo. As far as other juice places: I’m at St. Oberholtz right now, on Torstrasse at Rosenthaler Platz. It has fresh organic juices (not a huge variety, tho), some raw salads, some vegan food, free wi-fi and are playing Bob Dylan right now.

One love,
Marissa

Honesty

I ate cooked food last night. I want to pretend that I didn’t, and certainly don’t want to share on this blog about it. But the truth is that I’m only as sick as my secrets -- a recovery slogan that resonates with me a lot. And I don’t want to punish myself. Part of my path is finding a new self love. Factually, though, these are the things that happened:

I had low grade anxiety, that I didn’t even realize.
I woke up from a nap, and before I had time to think or debate about it, I ordered some room service.
I ate the sandwich and fries and didn’t feel great, but didn’t feel horrible.
Then I called room service again and ordered desert.
And ate it, and felt nauseous.
I fell back asleep, woke up a few hours later. Felt like crap.
Felt like such crap, bloated, spacey, full, totally unsexy that I blew off the party that I was going to go to – a goodbye party for all of us in Berlin for the last 5 months. So, missed the chance to enjoy a party and say goodbye to the friends I’ve made.

Ugh.

All I can do is learn from this, hopefully the lesson sticks.

I am ecstaticly happy that today is a new day (well, medium happy, looking toward ecstatic). I’m off to the farmer’s market and to London Juice Co for some breakfast.
And full of wonder about how much better I feel when I am raw.

Love,
Marissa

Oh, the vanity.

Last night, I saw a colleague who I hadn’t seen for a couple of weeks. And she said, ”Marissa, you look amazing! Have you been doing tons of yoga or something?” It made me deliriously happy, because I know that it’s this detox and my 100% raw intake. I’d heard about the amazing physical effects, and seen it happen with other people, and though I hoped that it would happen to me, I didn’t necessarily believe it. So, yay.

Also last night, I went out with some friends. To a bar. And while I don’t think that I’m addicted to alcohol, it ALWAYS triggers me to be messy with my food. I don’t know if it’s a physical trigger that makes me crave salty fatty greasy food, or if it’s just a lowering of my inhibitions that makes me eat salty fatty greasy food. Even with one drink. Either way, right now in my life, it’s trouble for me. So, what to do? I had sparkling water. It took a lot of deep breathing and praying and focusing on the amazing things about being raw before I was willing to order it. And yeah, I had to answer some questions – mostly with just, Oh, I’m detoxing. This morning when I woke up, I was proud of myself all over again, especially when I thought about how I would I have felt with a food hangover.

Aside from the emotional cravings and a few pimples, this detox has not been particularly hard. And every day that I’m 100% raw, the next day is easier. Like, this is what I do now.

Still in Berlin, and looking forward to the next 5 days of holiday. An addition to an earlier post about which restaurants I like here for their salads – Borschart. There is a really lovely, simple, huge arugula and pine nut salad with a light vinagrette. It’s the only raw vegan thing on the menu, but I’ve been there several times with cooked-food eating companions, and they love it too.

Honestly, though I’m looking forward to the free days, I do sometimes have a hard time with unstructured time. I’ve been known to lie in bed all day watching bad TV and eating crap. My plan? To make a plan. Though I love the idea of free-wheeling and taking the day as it comes, I have to take steps to protect myself from old habits. A lightly structured, social week with time to go to my favorite raw places in Berlin and hopefully find some new ones before I leave.

On this detox, I’m avoiding all overt fats like olives, avocado, nuts and seeds, and just been fruit/veggie/sprouting it. And I love it, love the way I feel, love that I can eat without overt fats for a period of time (makes 80/10/10 seem doable). When I miss savory stuff, I’ve been having sundried tomatoes. They are sooooo good, I’ve always liked them but find them slimy when they’re reconstituted in oil. Doing it myself, in water, is easy, cheap and very tasty. I bought a giant box of them at the supermarket in the Friedrichstrasse UBahn station, and have been grooving on them for days. (side note - I find it so interesting the amount of shops and stores in Berlin’s train stations. They’re like malls, it’s amazing).

Love and all,
Marissa

Organic in the ring with Conventional

In the fancy schmancy hotel that I am staying, they leave a little tray of snacks in the room each night. When I first moved in, they would leave 2 chocolate truffles (not raw), 2 jelly candies, and a piece of fruit. They were very accommodating when I asked if they would JUST leave fruit, and so now every day I get 3 fresh pieces of fruit. This is a giant help when I can’t make it to the market because I’m working crazy hours. It’s conventional fruit, though, and when I put it side by side with the organic fruit that I buy, I am impressed with the differences all over again.

For instance, the conventional fruit lasts much much longer. An apple that I bought from the bio store about a week ago is starting to get a little mushy and has some brown spots. The apple that they left in the room THREE WEEKS ago still looks exactly the same. Some people would argue that this is a great thing, longer shelf life leads to more time / energy saved for a myriad of reasons. But really, gross. I don’t want the same thing that preserves twinkies and cereal in my fruit. Plus, the whole point of fruit (all food, actually) is that it’s supposed to break down and digest. If it won’t break down naturally, imagine how much harder my digestive system is working to break it down and get the nutrients.

Also, I have long been of the belief that there is a specific amount of flavor allocated to each variety of fruit. And whether the grapefruit is the size of a tennis ball or a volley ball, it’s the same amount of flavor, just spread over a larger or smaller area. Know what I mean? That’s why smaller fruit tastes better. When I did a side by side comparison, the conventional apple dwarfed the organic apple.

Weirdest of all, the conventional fruit didn’t exactly smell like fruit. The orange, for instance, smelled like orange-scented something. Like a fake version of itself. Like orange flavored gum. Strange.

Anyhow . . . the banana-date-romaine smoothie that I made last night to drink at lunch today? Not good. Bordering on revolting. Way too sweet. I was really hungry, and could only choke down about half.

Spent a lot of today fantasizing about certain cooked food. It was very weird. I’m pretty sure that it’s part of the detox process. Interestingly, though, I took the fantasy far, like actually imagining the taste and texture of the foods. And it didn’t make me want to eat them any more, such a vivid fantasy actually satisfied some of these cravings. Makes me think about how much of what I eat I taste with my brain and not my mouth. Cool, right? By the way, I was fantasizing about raw food also, specifically the sunflower pate tacos from Pure Food and Wine. And I also realized that everything I was fantasizing about was all in New York. Seems like equal parts homesickness and food cravings, huh.

One love,
Marissa

Mmmm . . . detox

I found my way into the Raw Diva’s 7-Day Detox a couple of weeks ago. For a few (not very convincing) reasons, I didn’t start right away. But I appointed last Wednesday the day I was going to start. Wednesday was great, I water fasted and felt light and free and happy and a little hungry but powerful and clear. And Wednesday night I broke my fast with melon, as recommended. And I felt perfect! And then later that night, I ordered room service, and ate decidedly non-detox-friendly cooked food. Fine, I thought. I woke up Thursday and started again. Water fast. Yay! Break the fast with a green smoothie. Smooth sailing! Pack my lunch for the next day! Eat my delicious organic grapefruits for breakfast on Friday! I feel so great that I have to punctuate everything with exclamation points! And then. I had admitted to myself that I need to steer clear of the catering tent at lunch, but found myself having a conversation with my boss, walking over there. And all of a sudden, I’m standing in front of a buffet of yummy-smelling cooked food, and all of the raw-goodness that I’d built up over a couple of days seemingly evaporated, and I was having this out of body experience watching myself eat the pasta, not wanting to eat the pasta, but still doing it. (NB – my food / eating issues extend way beyond raw vs cooked, of this I am entirely aware. Not right for this post, but later on at some point).

After a weekend of more cooked food (if I ever doubted my addiction to them, I sure don’t now), I re-committed to the detox on Sunday night. It’s now Tuesday night, and I’m beyond grateful that I’m still working it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

As promised – my forays into green smoothies with no blender! At home, I have the all-powerful VitaMix, and I love the smoothies. They were all fruit or fruit/nut milk combinations, as the idea of adding greens into my fruit made me want to barf.

But as I’ve been reading and reading and reading some more about the goodness of green smoothies, I found some willingness to try them out. Side note – I hadn’t had NEARLY as much resistance to juicing greens, I’d been happily (if infrequently) doing that for months and months. Anyway. Everything I know about smoothies requires a blender, right? Hence, the “smooth” part of “smoothie”. I’m sure that I could have found a relatively inexpensive standard blender, but I was more concerned about the precious real estate it would take up in my luggage when I moved onto the next location.

I’m not sure where exactly I read it, but the idea of an immersion – or stick – blender came up. Now that I can easily toss into my luggage. Back I went to Galleria, and bought an inexpensive immersion blender and excellent knife. By the way, the immersion blender is exactly the same as the one I have at home except that it has a European plug at the end, not a US one. I then biked over to IKEA (much much much farther than expected), and bought some nice-sized Tupperware containers that I can blend my smoothies in. And Voila! Smoothie without the blender. Well, at least without traditional blender.

The immersion blender works fine. Not perfect, takes a bit longer and I haven’t been able to get anything totally smooth, but chunky is ok for me right now. AND, I love me some green smoothie. I’ve been making the smoothie at night, putting it in my adorable red thermos, and taking it to work the next day. Yes, I know, I’d be better off making it fresh, but for now this works for me. What I have noticed, which possibly everyone else in the raw world knows, is that letting the smoothie sit for 12 hours makes it get very VERY thick. So I’ve learned to make it quite a bit more liquidy than I might actually want at the time of preparation. Tonight’s smoothie for tomorrow is bananas, dates, romaine.

Rock on with your raw selves,
Marissa

Raw in Berlin

Raw around the world.

Well, maybe a bit of an exaggeration. Not like I’m in Sri Lanka. And not like I’m traveling around the world with the purpose of spreading the raw gospel. More like, my lifestyle and my work take me around the world (for which I am grateful) and I’m going to blog about the adventures and challenges about being raw when away from home.

So, here we are. I’ve been in Berlin since June 12, and have been about 50% raw during this time. I guess. I’ve only been keeping a consistent food journal for the last 6 weeks, and within that time, it’s 50%. Which is quite a joy for me to realize, actually. When I’m not 100% raw, I have a habit of thinking that I’m not raw enough – or at all. But 50% is quantifiable, and a starting place, At least.

I’ve been reading Raw blogs and websites a lot since I’ve been here. Angela Stokes and Philip McClusky, and We Like It Raw and Raw Divas and Pear Magazine. Just yesterday, though, I was turned onto Heidi and Justin’s Raw Food Right Now blog, and was simply inspired with their honesty and imperfection (and I mean that in a really positive, loving way). I want to be raw. I am raw. Imperfectly. And though I admire and love reading about people who are 100% raw and seemingly perfect at it, that’s not my path right now. Being able to read about people who I identify with, their struggles with cooked food and weight gain/loss, and the joys of new raw recipes and a raw life, that’s what is accessible to me. That is why I love Raw Food Right Now.

Back to Berlin. Germany? Though I’ve spent quite a bit of time here in the past, it still conjures up images of wurst and potatoes (not necessarily inaccurately). I remember being in the south about 5 years ago, a vegetarian, and explaining to a waiter in my shoddy German that I just wanted potatoes. No meat. Eventually, we understood each other, and out came a giant plate of about half of a dozen potatoes, boiled, sliced in half, and slathered in butter. I think that I was surprised, but happy enough to eat it at the time.

Berlin, though, is a very international city, with restaurants and food from all over the world. Quite a big handful of traditional vegetarian restaurants, plus zillions of Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Japanese, Middle Eastern places as well. But not so much raw food, actually.

What I have found here, raw-eating-out-wise: My favorite salad is at Assel (Oranienburgerstrasse 41, Mitte). Really beautiful, lush greens, crispy vibrant crunchy veggies, and depending on the season, juicy strawberries and kumquats thrown in. Nothing else raw on the menu there, but I’ve had some other delicious meals there.

I also really like a couple of the juice bars here: Grasshopper (on Oranienburgerstrasse also, close to Hackescher Markt) is beautiful and green inside, cute people behind the counter, and they make this terrific juice with dandelion greens, kiwi, grapefruit and lemon. I also like London Juice Co., in Prenzlauerberg. I had a kiwi-cucumber juice there a few weeks ago and loved the beverage, the presentation, and the Molten Brown soap and hand lotion in the bathroom.

Now, during the week, I work, and there is an excellent caterer who serves breakfast and lunch buffet. It’s almost all cooked, but it is certainly possible to eat raw. But right now, I am still very tempted by cooked food. And I can walk into the catering tent with the best intentions of heading directly to the salad bar, and making up a pretty salad of greens and cucumber and tomato with a squirt of lemon, but sometimes it’s like an invisible set of hands actually propel me to the cooked food line and I eat it. Oy.

I’ve realized that I need to take my rawness into my own hands. First, that means staying out of the catering tent. Until I’m in such an emotional/spiritual/physical place that I’m not aggressively tempted to eat cooked food in mass quantities, I’d best avoid it (particularly if it’s free – another trigger for me). So, where does that leave me?

About six weeks ago, I bought a juicer. I had been thinking about it for months, since I arrived here, but hadn’t. Didn’t want to spend the money when I had a perfectly good one waiting for me when I got back to NY. And felt like a jerk juicing in the super fancy hotel that I’ve been living in. Then I did it, and have been pretty psyched about it. I found one at Galleria at Alexanderplatz for about 35 euros. So, most days (well, at least some), I wake up 10 minutes early (well, 5, and then scramble around to get out the door) and make some juice from the bounty that I’ve bought at the farmer’s market in Hackerscher Markt or by Wortherstrasse in Prenzlauerberg, or at the bio store.

This morning, I woke up early (-ish) and made apple-celery-lettuce juice, put it in an empty glass bottle that originally had sparkling water in it, and now it waits in the mini-fridge in my trailer to be an afternoon pick-me-up. Yay on me.

Coming next time: My adventures making green smoothies with no blender!

Love,
Marissa