Monday, April 25, 2011

Week 9, Day 4 - Making my own Manna bread!

I seem to be quite enamored with Manna bread, lol. I knew it was healthy but I didn't know that it is *just* made of sprouted wheat berries! The loaf I bought from the health food store that is a good 20 min drive away, was $4.99. For a small loaf that lasted me 2 meals.

So of course I had to google it and see if I could make my own, and turns out it's super easy! I already know how to sprout wheat berries - in fact, I like their sprouted taste so much that sometimes I add raisins & honey, and it tastes similar to oatmeal raisin cookies with a little crunch.

Edited to add: the Manna bread did NOT turn out like I'd hoped! It was all dried and crusty on the outside and gooey and not cooked on the inside. I'll have to figure out what I did wrong...I cooked it for 5 hours on Warm.
Today I finished my loaf and upon looking at the package, it is made of sprouted rye grain. So we'll see how I like the regular wheat berry kind - I have 2 cups of them sprouting now. This time I added tobasco sauce to my "sandwich" and as I looked at it on the plate, it occured to me that it looked an awful lot like a raw pizza. I had 6 small pieces centered on the plate and then topped with tomato, fresh ground pepper, avocado, baby bell pepper, avocado, and lots of alfalfa sprouts. I'm looking forward to experimenting with some spices and maybe coming up with a pizza flavored bread that I can use for my fave pizza toppings.

This weekend we spent much of our time at our church's retreat center - Bret took the five older kids and slept there, while I came home at night & naptime. I feel much sicker at night so it worked better for me to come home after dinner time.

I found out that it's much harder to be raw when you're sick, when you're away from home. Here at home my fridge is really stocked right now, with all of my favorite standbys. When it's time to eat and I start feeling nausea waves, I go through my stash mentally and can almost always come up with something that sounds good.

But when I'm on the go and I throw some bananas, soaked hazelnuts, and dates in a bag....urgh. It may or may not appeal and then I'm sitting there at lunchtime staring at these bowls of lasagna soup + garlic mozzerella bread that my toddlers have decided to turn their nose up to...and I'm hungry for THAT. Ugh.

So yeah, I didn't have a successful weekend at ALL and I also, interestingly enough, felt much more sick as well.

I'm curious about my theory of eating raw for 24 hours and seeing a bump up in feeling better. As of right now I have eaten raw for 24 hours - I fasted for 17 hours kind of on accident, just ate an early dinner and didn't eat breakfast until late. We'll see.

Cool news, we now qualify for WIC since I am pregnant (the program allows you to count the unborn baby as a member of the family, so our family of "10" now qualifies =)! I am excited about that - it's a program for women, infants, and children under 5 years old here in the US. They give you vouchers each month for certain "healthy" food - and it's quite a lot. Especially for us, since I have 3 children that qualify + myself.

The main staples are cheese, milk, cereal, peanut butter, veggies/fruit. There's more but I can't remember. They really push the milk as healthy for the children which I don't agree with, but they do eat cereal regularly for breakfast and usually go through 4 gallons per week at the least. WIC combined with going to the food bank once per month should really help with food if I can be frugal and creative.

What I ate today:

32oz of fresh squeezed OJ
4 cups of broccoli "coleslaw" salad
2 cups of cooked corn
half a Manna bread loaf w/sprouts, tomatoes, avo, tobasco, bell peppers
half a pineapple

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