90 Days of Organic Raw Vegan-ness: week 3

Hmmm, how to start the story of week 3? How about, expensive! The third week was indeed a bit pricey, but let me go into greater detail on why it was. Chugging right along, Cameron and I woke up bright and early for our third Sunday morning of raw organic vegan-ness. We feasted upon our oat groats, packed our reusable cloth bags and made our merry way to Whole Foods. Now everything about this was routine, except, we didn’t really pay attention to the quantities of items that the recipes of the week called for. Bad news kids, this is where it hit us. Because we didn’t plan ahead and prepare (there is that success word again, prepare) our bill came to a big fat $400. The worst part of this is that we had extra food that week that we did eat, but didn’t really need.

One of the hardest hitting costs of this diet is nuts, spices and butters. We learned rather quickly these ingredients are all staples in most of the recipes in Raw Food/Real World. Organic butters and oils can run in the neighborhood of $15 to $20 for a midsized jar. Add three or four of these and you’ve got yourself a diet so costly that even someone with an above average income might consider ditching it. The best advice I can give to put you back on the frugal track is to spread these staples across multiple weeks. Although you will need them constantly, you won’t use your entire investment in just one week, meaning you won’t have to purchase everything anew each week. Choose two items a week to restock, make smaller expensive purchases and you’ll do great!

Some of the staple items that can be a bit pricey.

The local Whole Foods supplies us with all the organic ingredients we need for the week.

In conjunction with spreading out your costly items, another tip to help you stick to the frugal track is to try and get your green thumb going and grow your own varieties of vegetables and spices. Indoor window gardens are amazing for smaller items such as tomatoes, herbs, spices and smaller rooting veggies. Not only will you eventually be able to savour them with the satisfaction that you just grew your own organic foods, but you will save money and get to use your waste for composting. Plus, how cool is it to see these little guys sprout and grow right before your very eyes!

Sprouting Basil. These babies get watered with reclaimed water from the oat groats soaking water.

I do realize this may seem overwhelming for most, to the point where you may want to shut down, crawl into bed, turn on season four of Lost and devour some raw chocolate chip cookie dough. It is key that you allow yourself to experiment and practice self-forgiveness. Most raw vegans consider themselves as such if they stick to an 80/20 rule. For Cameron and I, we allowed ourselves wine, hot tea and dark chocolate (Green & Blacks organic dark chocolate bars are amazing and could be considered vegan for the most part). Having these small pleasures helps tremendously when craving those crap snacks.

Allowing yourself small pleasures will keep you from eating those crap snacks.

I’ll end week three finally by stating we did have a few days in which we were overly tired. After analyzing our diet we realized we were lacking protein and took that into consideration when planning our food for week four. Realizing the importance of keeping a balance of proteins, vitamins and calorie intake will help you succeed going raw vegan. And succeed we will, with patience, creativity and a will to change habits inherent from years prior.