Our March Break Cleanse Extravaganza!

Last post I told you we had already begun our March Break cleanse.  I left off telling you for some added motivation I was heading to the big city to take in the sites while we all continued our intention to do a cleanse.  My reasoning is that even though we eat a very high-raw regime while at home, because the kids are in school and socializing with friends and attending birthday parties, etc., it isn’t always as ideal as I would like. 

So, every school holiday, we take several days to wind down, to re-connect, and tune-in to each other, and ourselves.  Using food is a great tool to help this process along.  And this year, after the usual yoga sessions, tubing, hikes, bike rides and visits with friends, we all thought it would be so fun to take a trip 1 hour south to the city to round out our little holiday with some cultural stimulation to go with our cleanse.

I like to occasionally do little water or green juice fasts and in the Spring and Autumn longer ones, but with children, that isn’t really necessary or practical.  So instead, what we do is have days where I only serve fresh fruit, green juices, green smoothies, and big salads.  This way, the kids aren’t really hungry, and they are getting great nutrition, plus, a little rest from the nuts and mixed combinations of usual raw gourmet fare like raw burgers or nori rolls, etc.

We completed our 3 days at home just doing juices, smoothies and bitter salads (arugula, radicchio, dandelion greens with avocado) and the morning of our trip, we all juiced and packed enough green juice (dandelion, romaine, cucumber, celery and apple) and salad for the whole day.  On the 5^th day, we ate fresh mangosteen and coconut and drank coconut water plus our usual lemon-ginger water.  For a late lunch at 4pm, we headed over to our fave raw restaurant- LIVE!  Ohhhhh, I just love Jennifer Italiano’s food!  To be perfectly honest, I am reeeeeeeallt picky!  Yet, I have enjoyed everything I have ever tried at her foodbar.  My kids were so hungry by the time we got there because we had been to the museum for 5 hours looking at dinosaurs and ancient Egyptian exhibits, and the smells were so tantalizing!  Jennifer also offers a few healthy cooked food options like brown rice dishes, and my boys nearly caved and went for those- but I firmly reminded them that we were still on our cleanse and they really had to choose something raw.  One chose the large mixed green with kale salad and a ginger garlic dressing, and the other chose a veggie wrap with a dehydrated burrito that was a dark red color.  My husband had a wrap and I had a salad.  And we all had desserts- Ok, that was NOT on the cleanse menu LOL!

We all wished we had ordered about double that amount of food as everything tasted sooooooo good!  But actually, by the time we were finished, we were full and satisfied.  We had an Art Gala of 300 International artists to attend at 6, so off we went very happy indeed!  We must have all been radiating a lot of joy, because when we attended the gala which was PACKED with people, just as we were standing in one of the lines to pay, my husband was tapped on the shoulder and a gentleman handed him FREE TICKETS for our whole family!  We couldn’t believe our good fortune!  I looked around in the crowd and found this man walking with a woman, and realised she was the lady I had assisted in the parking lot several minutes before…it was all so sweet!  I even bumped into several people I hadn’t seen in ages, and a client who had attended 2 of my raw recipe workshops with her husband.

When we returned to our hotel room at 9:30, we had all worked up quite the appetite…so although this isn’t the best idea because of how late it was, we broke open one of our DURIAN and had a little feast!

(Our young photographer Liam shot this little vid of us all feasting away: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eZoRQ5VWwc )

I find when one is raw, going with the flow and meeting your body’s needs and desires is healthier than constantly stifling them…

The next day we visited a Raw Market Fair at super Sprouts and saw our dear friend Wayne Gendel from foreverheathy.net who had a booth there, a little raw waldorf girl who was selling her wonderful poetry books for $3, and Groovinda from Aum My Goddess- she has the coolest clothing line made of hemp and cotton original designs- and several other raw friends and had a wonderful time!  We nibbled on bags of sunflower sprouts and green juices served there until the kids got bored about 3 hours in. After more fun going to the HUGE super health food store THE BIG CARROT and buying some raw honey and organic apples and bee pollen and nori sheets (my kids LOVE to nibble on them) we headed back to the hotel around 8 for a salt-water swim.  Our 3 day holiday and 6 day cleanse was fun, refreshing and a wonderful bonding experience that my family all really enjoyed.  Bless!