I’m becoming a Raw Foodie.  Yes, I’ve been holding out on you.  Around the first of December I began a juice fast that evolved into a raw food program.  Many of you will remember the 40 day juice fast I crashed from last February.  The effects of that crash are still plaguing me.  An overall feeling of weakness has settled into my system and a stubborn cough that will not clear.

To recap, last February, on day 37 of what I had planned to be a 60 day juice fast, I received a massage.  Neither Darlene, my massage therapist nor I had any concerns.  A massage on day 37 of a juice fast, I discovered, is a really bad idea.  I had lost 47 pounds which was taxing to my kidneys.  (A weak point in my body). The massage was on Sunday afternoon, by Monday evening the pain in my back was so intense I could hardly walk.  To make a long story short, I used the herbs to support my kidneys enabling them to clear the waste and return to normal function by early Wednesday morning.  The real crash arrived on Friday when I woke up with thick green puss coming out my eyes, nose and mouth.  The stuff coated my vocal cords preventing talk for several days.  The puss seemed to fill my entire body, gumming up my liver, Kidneys and bowel function.

Since February I’ve done several liver flushes and used the herbal tonics in an effort to clear this awful mess from my body.  Some success has been achieved but it has been slow.  Starting in December I decided to do a full out battle to clear this goop from my system once and for all.

Exactly what have I been doing?  The first of December I juice fasted for a week.  After five days of nothing but juices I felt worse.  All the waste was trying to flush out all at once.  I had a headache, felt very weak and could not get enough sleep.   I did an Elf and cleared a lot of the toxic symptoms.  I should have done two or three in a row but didn’t.  Instead I decided to go raw for a while.  My body simply did not want cooked food.

I did nothing but salads for two weeks before I realized I needed a better plan.  Google provided an excellent raw cracker recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups ground flax seeds
• 2/3 cup whole flax seeds
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons red pepper (chopped very small)
• 2 tablespoons parsley (chopped very small)
• 2 teaspoon chili powder (or your favorite savory spice)
• 2 and 2/3 cups of water
• 1 and 1/3 cups of sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup black sesame seeds (or regular white sesame seeds will do fine)

Directions:

• Mix everything together in a mixing bowl.
• Spread batter on parchment paper or a teflex sheet.
• Remember that the above recipe should make two dehydrator sheets worth of crackers. Spread the batter out evenly. Using the back of a spoon works well.
• Score the crackers. Use a knife to score the crackers along wherever you want the crackers to separate. This will make them easier to break later on.
• Start dehydrating the crackers. I generally dehydrate everything at 120 degrees for the first hour, and then reduce the temperature to 105 degrees for the remainder of the cooking time.
• After 8 hours remove the parchment or teflex sheets and place the crackers directly on the dehydrator tray.
• Set timer for 12 more hours and finish dehydrating. Some people like their crackers a bit moist. I like them to be very dry. If you plan on keeping them for a few weeks or more in storage, then you must ensure that there is no moisture left.

Hint: A good way to make sure that they are really dry and dehydrated is to pinch them hard. If all of the moisture is gone, you should not be able to feel any movement. If you pinch a cracker and it gives a little, it needs to be dehydrated longer.

 These crackers are great!  You can put nearly anything on them.  Tomato, Avocado, onion, ect… just build up a great cracker.

And so the story continues…. More to come…