90 Days of Organic Raw Vegan-ness: week 13

I am writing the last week of our raw organic vegan-ness diet a few weeks after we finished. In a way this allows me to reflect upon the entire experience as a whole and include further insight on coming off the diet which I feel everyone should know after completing such a long journey. Just as there were benefits and drawbacks of the raw diet, coming off it had many of it’s own.

To begin describing the last week I felt this kind of mute feeling. I had mixed emotions of not really excited about the end and being able to eat cooked food again, only to turn around and have a huge craving for a bean and rice burrito. Maybe this was my bodies subconscious way of telling me that it enjoyed the diet we were on with the occasional craving for something cooked? All I knew was how excited I was to be able to cook rice again. Although our Sunday food prep was extremely efficient by now, it still took a good chunk of our weekend. I was looking forward to getting part of it back.

Everything is a cycle. even our food waste is turned into compost for our garden now.

Recycling waste for new uses was one of the many lessons learned.

Along the last week Cameron and I toggled back and forth about what we were going to do after the diet. What were we going to eat? Should we just jump back into eating whatever we felt like? What about meat? What about dairy? There were so many unknowns it almost seemed like we needed to plan an exit strategy. Looking back now, I think if we ever complete such a task again we will do just that.

We know exactly where our foods are coming from now. what better way to connect?

The final week came, went and was celebrated again with Mexican food. After the 90 days I jumped right into a bean, rice and cheese burrito. Not such a good idea. I later paid for this unfortunate dairy mishap. Cameron on the other hand was just fine eating a vegetable burrito. A week of playing around with meats and diary ended suddenly after watching Food Inc. It was again a reminder of the main reason we embarked upon this journey in the first place — a desire to reconnect with our food by knowing where it came from.

The final meal. The unfortunate dairy ingestion.

It has now been three weeks since the diet has ended, and although we do not eat completely raw, we have incorporate many of the practices we learned into our routine. Cameron and I still have our day of food preparation on Sundays after going to the farmer’s market to pick up our CSA share. We then move onto our Co-op to pick up the rest of the grocery list. Our jars of basic raw ingredients are still maintained, providing us instant ingredients for our newfound skill of creating meals on the fly with what we happen to have around.

A great new resource for grocery shopping, our local co-op.

Creating meals on the fly is no problem with our new skills.

When you first begin a journey onto a path like this (an extreme diet or a lifestyle that isn’t quite understood), most everyone wonders how anyone could eat organic vegan, let alone raw. Though, halfway into this diet I realized the journey wasn’t just about food. As a couple, Cameron and I learned invaluable skills such as problem solving, planning ahead, where to get new sources of food, new ways of recycling our waste and finally that ideas or journeys aren’t always black and white. Yes, this journey was more than just raw organic vegan-ness for 90 days. It was a good habit forming, life-changing experience that lead us into love.