Menu Plan Monday

This is actually an old menu plan that I didn’t post back in April when I was traveling.  Right now I can say I’m eating mostly bananas, then bananas w/ frozen fruit in smoothie form and then sometimes the same thing for dinner or either rice noodles, vegan homemade pizza, potatoes w/ okra, rice w/ okra, green salad, etc.  Breakfast might also be datorade, watermelon or some fruit salad combo w/ peaches & plums.  Tonight I made a quinoa dish for dinner and ate smoothies all day before that.

Fruit salad made in April 2013.

Grocery List for this week:  Bananas, dates, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, potatoes, oranges or pears or berries(whatever can be found), apples, avocado, pineapple, coconut water, carrots, raisins.

Sunday: Breakfast: Banana icecream  Lunch: Salad w/ hemp seeds & citrus & raisin Dinner: beet/cabbage slaw & rice salad w/ citrus & pineapple

Monday:  Breakfast: banana icecream  Lunch: Salad w/ nuts & grapefruit & berries Dinner: cinnamon raisin rice  & beet/cabbage slaw

Tuesday: Breakfast: Banana icecream Lunch: Pine nut hummus w/ tomato/citrus maybe tahini Dinner: Rice in lettuce wraps w/ tomatoes & cooked veg soup (beets, carrots, zucchini)

Wednesday: Breakfast: Bananas & citrus Lunch: Grab & go snackies  Dinner: Potatoes & curry salad

Thursday: Fruit salad Lunch: Dates stuffed with berries & bananas in coconut water Dinner: Curry rice in lettuce wraps

Friday: Bananas in coco water Lunch: Pineapple/fruit in lettuce Dinner: bell peppers stuffed w/ berries & guac & cuke chips

Saturday: banana berry icecream  Lunch: Green salad w/citrus/hemp Dinner: Potatoes & cuke/tomato/citrus salad

Sunday: Mono fruit of choice Lunch: Dates & berries & mint Dinner: apple/cashew butter “sandwiches” Dinner 2: pasta salad

 

This is where you can check out more menu plans(tons more):

Summer Menu Plan Monday

What’s Ripe Where You Are? (Fruit of course) Pt. 2

Ripe fruit, is my favorite thing ever.  Ripe fruit, that was grown where I live and picked fresh that day or a few days ahead of time is even better.  I have moved to a place where more fruit grows compared to where I was living before.  

It’s not exactly fruit season here though.  There are melons galore, and I’ve seen huge ones for just $2 on the side of the road.  There are peaches and plums as well as berries.  But I’m not quite in the tropics.  The next few months will be better for variety.

However, I could very happily base 80% of my diet on the four fruits listed above!  

Could you base your diet on what’s ripe where you are right now?  What’s ripe in your 100 mile radius, at the moment?

Let’s Play…What’s Ripe Right Now!

I’m in the Southeastern United States.  I really, really enjoy having an abundance of one fruit to mono on as much as possible. So far this year has been bananas and pears for me…neither being domestic.  I really can’t stand to eat conventional produce, so this is organics that I’m talking about.  Naturally grown, farm-fresh stuff would of course do, but I personally don’t have that access at the moment.  So what’s ripe right now?

(Let me daydream for a moment about mangoes……..aaaaaaaaah)

Sliced Mexican mangoes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Okay, so right now…in the Southern U.S.  I can get dates from California.   Apples(that aren’t the bestest, being end of season) from North Carolina, I think or maybe Washington(above California) and some citrus(particularly minneolas) from either California or Florida.

Recently while perusing www.localharvest.org I saw that there might actually be a possibility of getting ripe persimmons from Indiana.  (I see your shocked faces…or maybe that’s my own shocked face)  In case you didn’t know, persimmons are my favorite fruits and I was pretty sure I dragged out their season as long as possible.   I will be looking into this Persimmons in April idea though and if you know anything about this, please feel free to enlighten me.   This link blew my mind yesterday: http://www.localharvest.org/american-persimmons-C11218

Now since we’ve gotten away from what I can get in my grocery store, let’s talk about some other “exotic fruits”.  I don’t order fruit in the mail much, but I certainly intend to do it more.  Apparently California avocados are ripe.  (I can technically get CA avocadoes probably, but I usually see them from Mexico, and also, avocodos don’t excite me much)

Guavas are in season.  I haven’t had really good guavas, but the pictures look really nice.  Feijoas(pineapple guavas) go up to the top of my list for favorite fruits, but they are not in season.

Kiwi is also in season, and I’ve gotten a lot of them(although the kids ate them and not me), I’m not really sure where they were from though.

Apparently passionfruit is in season, but again, not one of my faves.

Black(chocolate) and Mamey Sapotes are in season right now!  I’m looking into mail ordering these guys. 🙂

Diospyros digyna (Black sapote) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A bunch of mamey fruit in a market in Tepoztlan, Mexico, December 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course all sorts of citrus fruits are in season right now, but it hasn’t been the best season.  The quantity and variety of domestic citrus has been very low in my grocery stores, so I’m looking into mail ordering some valencias from the Orange Shop in Citra Florida.  I have very fond memories of eating bags of oranges from that shop 5 years ago, when I first started eating a high-fruit diet.

I will never forget the taste and fragrance of the oranges from that fruit stand and I think it’s a good time to spoil myself(and my kids) and renew my love of citrus.  (this has been a disappointing season, see how excited I was with my valencia picnics every morning last year!)

So…that is basically what’s in season right now in the U.S.

I’m patiently waiting for melons and peaches and plums and more tropical fruits to come into season.

What’s ripe where you are and what are you sadly saying goodbye to, or excitingly waiving through?

I’d love to have some fruitalini daydreams about it!

~ Sat Nam and May the fruit be with you!

Citrus fruit slices (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

• For Fla. citrus crop, it’s been a tough year (miamiherald.com)
• Master Gardener: Which fruit trees need pollinators? (redding.com)
• Persimmons and “New” Fruits (flourchildrenblog.wordpress.com)
• Guest Post: Instilling a Healthy Love of Fruit (table4five.net)
• Guava Fruits: Rich in Antioxidants (expertscolumn.com)
• The Secret of Black Sapote (paleochik.com)
• The Persimmon Fruit (timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com)
• Guava (vermicompostprice.wordpress.com)
• Pay more for ‘ripe and ready’ fruit? Don’t be soft, they cost up to 300 per cent more – but as our tests revealed, they’re often rock hard (dailymail.co.uk)
• Fruity Friday – Mango (stuffedyetstarving.com)

What I Ate Raw Vegan, Early Spring 2013

bananas (Photo credit: Fernando Stankuns)

As you can see…the last few weeks I haven’t written anything.  I’ve been much higher on the fruity spectrum and it becomes more difficult for me during those times to want to write about what I’m doing.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe it’s the blog format.

Anyway, I’m just going to let you know what I’ve been eating this week and how I’ve been feeling. The past couple weeks, I think I had salt maybe 1 or 2 days.  So I’m eating much less salt than usual.  Which is a great thing.

I’ve been eating really simple for the most part and I’ve been eating mostly mono-meals and mostly, like even more than usual…raw.   I may have had potatoes or cooked veggies for about a week, during the past 3 weeks.  I also had some cashew butter recently.

I am low on fruit right now and I am trying to stick to a budget, since I spent a lot this month already. (I bought a lot of nuts which I don’t usually do)  I’m just speculating about what I’ve eaten because I haven’t really recorded all this, but since I’ve eaten really simply.  It’s pretty easy to remember.

Sunkist oranges, bananas, pears, apples, and a watermelon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sunday: bananas all day, probably a little over 20…haven’t had a huge appetite

Monday: bananas all day; salad at night…ditto

Tuesday: bananas for breakfast & lunch(approx. 18), grapefruit/cucumber/tomato salad, cucumber w/ cashew butter

Wednesday: bananas for breakfast & lunch, soup: cooked broccoli, zucchini, carrots, sweet potato

Thursday: bananas/pineapple, grapefruit/cucumber/pineapple salad, cucumber/cashew butter

Friday: banana/strawberry icecream, salad w/ beets, spinach, who knows what else, salsa & raw vegan hummus w/ zucchini chips

My kids don’t exactly eat what I eat.  They snack on or eat a lot more nuts/seeds than I do.  I actually don’t eat nuts at all. They also require shnazzy exciting meals sometimes, if it was just me, I’d be on some fruit island all the time.

They also prefer to eat potatoes for dinner most nights, because in our house, there are much worse cooked food scents buzzing around, so I give them cooked potatoes or sweet potatoes most nights.  Things have changed a lot this week though, I haven’t really needed to make breakfast or lunch for them.  They’ve been mostly feeding themselves with bananas, apples, kiwis, citrus, dried fruit- and nuts/seeds.

English: Different potato varieties. – The potato is the vegetable of choice in the United States. On average, Americans devour about 65 kg of them per year. New potato releases by ARS scientists give us even more choices of potatoes to eat. Deutsch: Verschiedene Kartoffelsorten (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My nose was snotty and I was sneezing a lot on Sunday and Monday I think.  Now I am a tiny bit sniffly.  I think it is from decreasing my salt to zero, but I can’t be sure.  It doesn’t matter…I feel fine.

I did have a slight fever for a very brief period one night.  But I went to sleep and I was fine the next day.  So all in all this is a pretty satisfying way to eat although I tend to love the way I feel a little more without salt and with more fruit and less cooked stuff…also more juicy fruits usually equals more fun…but again, overall, I’m satisfied.

Related articles

• Raw vegan salad (whatwillweeatblog.wordpress.com)
• High Carb Vegan Menu Plan (fruitaliniyogi.wordpress.com)
• “Whatever’s On Hand” Salad (lfrancois.wordpress.com)
• Raw Veganism (mysummerofselflove.wordpress.com)
• What is raw veganism? (fcoronin.com)