wakame soba salad

so as this is the first recipe i'm posting, let me give you guys a little disclaimer. when i cook, i have a hard time not making TOO MUCH food, so be prepared to share! that or cut the recipe in half or something, because this will make a lot of seaweed salad!

one package of dried wakame

one package of 100% buckwheat soba noodles

one/third cup of brown rice vinegar

three teaspoons 100% organic, unrefined sesame oil

two tablespoons of 100% organic, unrefined extra virgin olive oil

one tablespoon organic agave nectar

two tablespoons organic sesame seeds, toasted

sea salt, to taste

red chili pepper flakes, to taste

put the wakame in a bowl and rinse it well. fill the bowl back up with water with an inch or two covering the seaweed and let it soak for about five minutes. mix the ingredients for the dressing, sans sea salt, red chili pepper flakes and sesame seeds. once you're done soaking, you want to drain your wakame bowl and then remove the excess moisture. i ended up just wrapping it in a few paper towels and the wringing out the water. then just toss the wakame with the dressing and add in your sea salt, chili and sesame seeds.

as far as the soba noodles go, i only mixed them together with the wakame in the bowl before it was ready to be eaten. your call if you want to mix everything together right off the bat.

i've mentioned before that i was getting into researching what my foods were doing for me. so,

in this food...

wakame contains more than ten times the calcium that you'd get from milk as well as four times the iron you'd get from beef, while buckwheat is  a good source of magnesium which relaxes blood vessels, helping to lower blood pressure and improve blood flow!

#2

i have four days left of master cleanse number three.
remember how i wrote about ten days (even though i'm only doing 7 days this time) without food being the easy part? so while i still know that eating and staying healthy after you come off the cleanse is much harder, there is nothing easy about this. my headache won't go away and i want to eat food. and surprisingly (unfortunately), i'm not as grossed out by everyone in the breakroom at work eating lunch from mao's kitchen.

i also ran into a problem this time that i've never had before. apparently it DOES make a difference if you start your cleanse off with the tea as opposed to the salt water flush. i totally went into it this time feeling like a champ, and actually with a little bit of arrogance since i completed 10 full days, twice. but i learned that each time is brand new, each time is just as hard and just as challenging. doing it twice before doesn't mean shit. so when i downed a quart of salt water after my last meal and it didn't come out, i felt like a complete asshole. and super bloated.

everything is back on track now, and with the end approaching, as far as it seems to be, i am getting more excited about cooking when i'm back to eating again. i can't stop thinking about roasted beets.

#1

i'm gonna start the master cleanse in a few days. you know, salt flush. smooth move tea. lemon juice, cayenne pepper, maple syrup. except i personally don't use maple syrup. i use agave nectar instead. i'm not a huge fan of maple syrup unless it's on pancakes or french toast but i don't want to drink it and i don't want to smell like it (gross). also i read somewhere before i did the cleanse for the first time that agave, too, has a low glycemic index and thus has a low impact on your blood sugar levels.

this is the third time i'm doing it.

the first time i did it, i really was just curious to see if i could not eat food for ten days and how much weight i'd lose.
i could, and i lost 15 pounds.
halfway through i was getting fascinated by what it was doing to me psychologically.
it made me kind of kooky, which was fun but i was also totally changing the way i felt about food.
i wasn't craving junk food after like the first day, and watching other people eat junk food really grossed me out. i craved avocados and had dreams about swimming in a big bowl full of avocados and heirloom tomatoes.

i also started buying books about superfoods. i got really into knowing what the foods i was eating were actually DOING for me. and i started developing a real appreciation for good food.

the second time i did the cleanse, i was focused more on being able to get the salt water flush down. 32 ounces of warm water and 2 teaspoons of sea salt. i couldn't do it the first time, i would throw it up everytime i tried to drink it. because it's disgusting. whoever wrote that it tastes like flavorless chicken soup was a LIAR. not even dude, it's fucking gross. so this time i was determined to do it (and i did, each day). i was also curious to see how long i could go without eating things like gluten, dairy, (refined) sugars and meat. i went about 3 months. the first time i ate a piece of bread, it gave me a bad stomach ache. the first time i had dairy, i broke out in hives.

but it's tough, once i started eating those things my body readjusted. it didn't make me sick anymore. and it just became easy to eat that stuff. but it doesn't make me feel good. and when i know that i can feel REALLY GOOD, from eating super-good-for-you foods, it makes me feel bad :(

so now is round three. at this point i know i can go ten days without eating. that is the easy part, it's what comes after that's the hard part. but i mean really... TEN DAYS, NO FOOD. i have willpower, i'm just lazy.

my ultimate goal with it this time is to eliminate gluten, dairy, sugar and most meat from my diet when i start eating again. not for three months. but eliminate these foods for real. it's easier not to miss certain foods when you don't eat for this period of time. but i can do it. and realizing that i can do it has made me decide that it's time to get healthy. i'm 25 and i'm overweight. and i also live in los angeles.