Day 5. Weekend!! :)

9.20am: Hot water + juice from 1/2 lemon.

My guy pointed out that "hot water isn't raw". OK. So it's not 40-something degrees Celsius and under. But it's a good wake up for the body and flush through my system - giving the digestive system a nice kickstart.

10am: Breakfast. Buckwheat-Oat-Chia Porridge. Portion size here serves 2. 1/2 cup Buckwheat 1/2 cup Oats 1/2 cup Coconut Flakes 1 cup Coconut Milk 1 cup Coconut Water

Soak all overnight.

Before serving: Add 2 medjool dates, 1/2 grated apple, cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla.

I'm liking the soaked morning porridges so far and decided to do a combo of oats and buckwheat. Added more naturally sweet fruit like medjool dates and the apple, as my guy wanted some of my breakfast too and I figured he'd probably like something a tad sweeter.

Checked on my green tea kombucha scoby. It's day 10 of the fermentation process, and Scobydoobydoo is looking good! I tried some of the kombucha and it's coming along nicely. Just a couple more days and I'll transfer some over to make a second fermenting batch to attempt a fizzy version - flavoured with lemon and ginger. Can't wait!

This is the mother Scobydoobydoo sunk to the bottom, and the daughter Scobydoobydoo Junior forming at the top, with all kinds of beautiful alien trails coming out of her. It's so alien, weird and mesmerising at the same time. The entire cupboard I've put her in STINKS of vinegar, so I was half-dreading what it would taste like and was holding my breath at first sip. Surprisingly, it tastes nothing like how it smells - it's a sweet, tart green tea... kinda like if Yakult or yoghurt had a green tea flavour. YUM. :)

1pm: Lunch. Raw lasagna. Adapted from This Rawsome Vegan Life's original recipe.

I layered it with her cashew cheese (OMG, her cashew cheese is THE BOMB, I'm using this in other recipes from now on!). I didn't have broccoli like in her original recipe, so used spinach instead in the sun-dried tomato pesto. And since I had some leftover red repper marinara sauce from Day 3's dinner, I used that as one of the layers too.

I don't have a fancy mandoline to slice through courgettes/ zucchinis, so I used a regular vegetable peeler instead. That works just fine.

I had a conference call for work around the same time, and also had to run off to help a friend out in the afternoon. So I literally scarfed these down and ran out of the house. I have some leftover cashew cheese, spinach sun-dried tomato pesto, and red pepper marinara sauce that will have to be turned into something else like a dip for lunch tomorrow, as I didn't have time to finish all of my lunch today.

I felt like a girl scout when I left the house - in my backpack, I had a bottle of water, a green smoothie, Rawlicious raw crackers, an apple and some almond brittle. Gotta be prepared! I was off for an afternoon of manual labour at the shipyard. A bunch of friends were getting together to help another friend sand and paint his boat to prep for the summer (boating along the canals are an awesome Amsterdam past-time in nice weather).

All afternoon I was chipping away at rust, paint and sanding the boat down. Was covered from head to toe in black dirt by the end of the day, and my arms got a good workout too! Was glad we helped out as Oli said what we did in 1 day today took him 10 days to get to on his own the last time he had to repaint the boat. We've all had good times on the Don Lee, and were only too happy to help out. :)

3.30pm: Green smoothie at the shipyard (prepped before leaving the house).

- Parsley, celery, sprouted almonds (almonds soaked overnight, then skins peeled off and rinsed), leftover buckwheat-oat-chia porridge from this morning (I wasn't going to be home the rest of today, so figured I might as well chuck the breakfast leftovers into the smoothie), milled flax, hemp seeds, maca powder.

5pm: Snack. Red apple at the shipyard.

Got home at 6pm and scrubbed myself down, and resisted snacking on anything too heavy as I was going out for dinner (I was peckish by this time).

7pm: Snack. Handful of raspberries.

8.30pm: Dinner at De Bolhoed.

This vegetarian restaurant is a bit of a hippy-dippy place (the waitstaff tend to have body/ face piercings, with dreadlocked hair usually dyed a myriad of colours. You know the cliche I'm talking about). It's got a good selection of vegan/ vegetarian dishes on the menu, and usually even have a bunch of raw cakes in their fridge for dessert.

I was super excited to finally be eating out (the first time in 5 days, since I've been on this raw week), and to have a meal that I didn't have to think about making. Finally!

Well... it was a bit of a letdown to be honest. Hahaha.

We ordered a group starter, which had a selection of mixed starters. Out of this entire plate, the only thing I could eat was the guacamole. And I was eyeing those corn chips the whole time. Oh man, everyone was saying how good those nachos were. But I was good and just kept to the guac.

Then I ordered the only raw thing on the menu. Uh huh. The salad. It was... Well... a raw salad. This thing was HUGE. Like, bigger than my head kinda HUGE. I'd gotten about halfway through it when I was full. It was a bit disappointing as there wasn't anything special about it. Don't get me wrong, I've had their cooked veggie/ vegan dishes and they're all generally good... I'd just never checked out their one raw option before. Oh. Probably because it sounded as unexciting as it eventually turned out.

A couple people got desserts - they were vegan, but no raw dessert options were available tonight. All had been baked. DAAAAAMN. Second disappointment. I cheated and had 1 spoonful of each dessert just to try them out.

When we got home, I was full but unsatisfied (I could've made a better meal than that!) So decided to treat myself. It's the weekend after all.

11pm: Strawberries and raw chocolate.

WOOOO! Raw chocolate exists! Real dessert! I know I know, it's too late to be eating at this time. But I feel like I needed a treat since my night out in the food department was a bit of a letdown. Had 2 pieces of raw chocolate and a couple strawberries (my guy finished the rest). :p

Before bed: Soak tomorrow's breakfast.

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THOUGHTS ON DAY 5:

1. How would one do this raw thing if eating out? You'd be stuck with the salad option the whole time, like I was tonight. Life would become totally boring - coz you'd generally want to stay in, eat at home and not want to chance it by going out. Don't get me wrong. I love staying in and cooking up a storm... But not ALWAYS! There's gotta be a variation between being social and being a hermit. This would be one of the challenges.

2. Eating amongst other people who are not eating raw. Eyeballing their food, and like me - reaching over and tasting "just one spoonful of dessert", to taste-test. Fail. Yet another challenge. If this diet had to be incorporated over a longer period of time than a week - what other kinds of psychological cues can be used to overcome this?

3. I haven't been hungry, and I haven't had a dip in energy today. Today is probably a better marker than during a stressful work day in terms of energy levels - even with the intense manual labour working on the boat, I've felt fine. I can't say that I'm feeling particularly good or bad on raw food so far - although I definitely feel a lot lighter and "cleaner", if that makes any sense.

That wraps up Day 5 of my raw week. I'm just flying through the days now... soon Monday, the last day of raw week will be rolling around. :)