Introducing RAW FOODS

You can feel the cool air coming; you can sense summer is winding down! It's wonderful!! I love summer, one of my favorite seasons but living in North Carolina it gets so incredibly HOT!! I mean over 105 degrees plus = HOT, HOT, HOT!!

With the anticipation of fall coming, I am opting for more warm foods as well as introducing RAW FOODS into our diet.

Today I started with breakfast which consisted of oatmeal with apple and peach slices! So yummy and warm and comforting!! The kids are really coming around to oatmeal and it's a great start to our day!  For lunch we had LUNCH BUNCH at the office; which is all agents that are available to attend a lunch date on Tuesday at the end of every month. It's really nice; we get to mingle, get to know agents who we haven't met before or get to know agents on a more personal level!  We went to a restaurant called Pie Birds. It's a gorgeous restaurant down town and the ambience is wonderful. Original brick to the building is exposed; they have cool but funky furnishing. It reminds me of a hippie place. But very sophisticated as well.

Of course everything on the menu is pies! Tomatoes with basil pie, curry vegetable pie, chicken curry pie etc. For sides; butternut squash, sweet potatoes fries, sweet potatoes soup and so on. Absolutely delicious. Unfortunately there wasn't anything truly vegan and I've learned a lesson from this lunch date today. Check out the menu in advance and depending on the menu is whether or not I'll go in future. I ended up selecting the vegetable curry pie with a side of butternut squash. The pies, were very small and called "hand held pies". The squash came in the tiniest side dish I've ever since in my life. It looked as if it belonged to a little girls tea party set!  I had asked if the pie came with any creams or milk products etc. (obviously the crust must have egg and milk) but I really had no other choices.  The waitress informed me there wasn't and once my pie arrived, right in the middle was sour cream on top! So that didn't make me too happy but I took pity on the waitress as I am waitressing now and you could see she was very much overwhelmed by our big number of agents.  I ate it and the vegetable curry pie as delicious minus the sour cream part; which I scraped off. The squash was sooo good I wanted to have a bowl of it!  One of our agents who attended had her birthday today! The majority of everyone ordered dessert and I had great will power and declined.  I wasn't going to add insult to injury with adding more milk, egg and sugar to my system! I must admit all the pie's looked gorgeous!! From honey and sea salt, banana pajama's, chocolate, coconut, and there was a key lime in there as well. I was actually asked if I had ordered the "will power pie!” Very cute! No just being as strict in my new Vegan diet as possible. I just informed the table I was full and don't normally eat desserts and that is true to the most part. I didn't want to cause a "21 questions" with them all by informing them all that I was vegan. This happened the last month with "LUNCH BUNCH".

Trevor is out of state in Texas right now and so I am in charge of dinner yet again. I have been trying to keep our diner's light, filling and as vegan as possible. So tonight I added raw food in there to mix it up a bit. We ate, brown rice, steamed corn on cob and broccoli, raw cucumbers and carrots and for dessert left over fruit salad from the other day made by Britain!  The kids ate it all and Luke even asked for a sliced up apple as well! The kids are really enjoying our choices of foods. I just need to whip out some vegan cook books on the weekend and really start making some amazing homemade soups, casseroles, pasta dishes, pies, etc. I really want the kids to feel like I am putting the effort into our new diet. Much easier said than done but I am determined to have our new Vegan lifestyle to a fine system come a year's time!  I felt today compared to the almost 2 months has been a great effort into "Going Vegan" for 3 full meals!