Parsley - It's Not Just a Garnish Anymore

Tomorrow is a big day, Tim will get a blood draw which will tell us if his CEA has gone up or not. We're hoping that perhaps it hasn't gone up too much and maybe Dr. Edenfield will let him stay on his current treatment for two more weeks so we can really get a feel as to if our clean eating really makes a difference. So if you think to, if you could say a quick prayer about Tim's CEA staying even at the very least (but a drop would be fantastic!) over the next few days we'd be really grateful (we should get his CEA back on Wednesday).

Yesterday we spent a good hour at Barnes & Noble trying to find some cookbooks that followed along with (somewhat) the new & stringent guidelines for Tim (& myself). Mrs. Haas gave us Crazy Sexy Diet awhile back and it is by a woman who has controlled her liver cancer by living on a raw vegan diet. We found two options (one complimenting Crazy Sexy Diet) and two more at Williams Sonoma today. So these are now our food bibles. Feel free to pass along any additional cookbooks or recipes you'd suggest if they will go along with our crazy new plan!

After quickly selecting some recipes from Crazy Sexy Kitchen and armed with the recipes for the required juices we headed to Whole Foods. $300 later (if anyone has any local sources for inexpensive local produce - preferably organic - we'd appreciate it!) we unloaded and started trying to figure out how and where to store our new produce section.

We made batches of the juices yesterday to get an idea for what all it would take. A head of romaine, 1 1/2 handfuls of parsley, a lemon, a lime, 6 granny smith apples and almost a container of coconut juice/milk? later we had our first 3 days supply of green juice. It actually isn't too bad but of course Tim had to be slightly overdramatic and gag his down :).

We made our second juice which is called a "blood builder" out of six carrots, a few sprigs of parsley (I have no idea what's so special about parsley but it's slightly ridiculous how much we're using these days), two leaves of lettuce and a red apple. The color actually slightly looks like blood...go figure. It tastes like carrots though (sweet) and I think would actually be good with an additional apple added in.

Tonight's dinner was a Kris Carr original, Garden Lasagna. We left out the cashews & pine nuts it calls for bc of my allergy but has soy sauce and olive oil soaked portobello mushrooms layered with sliced tomatoes and zucchini. ricotta and a mix of tomato and garlic.

You don't cook it so you can get the best nutrients from all of the vegetables (and this actually broke two of our rules or no tomatoes and no dairy). I was surprised and thought it was pretty delicious. Tim on the other hand did not as shown by the picture below...

Basically we have to cut out dairy, alcohol, wheat, meat (except 5oz. of fish a day), acidic fruits (oranges, grapefruits, tomatoes - for some reason we are supposed to use lemons & limes in the juice though...), coffee (so far Tim is refusing this one) and my biggest love, sugar. Whenever we get a craving for sugar (for me that's all the time) we're supposed to swirl peppermint oil around in our mouths. All it does for me is trigger the thought of Girl Scout Thin Mints....

Initially we are not going to be too strict (for example Tim had a tuna salad sandwich for dinner tonight) but are severely limiting the amount of any food that is "not allowed." Neither of us are quite ready to give up coffee so rather than Starbucks we will each be allowed one small cup from the house a day. Sugar is only allowed in small quantities in our coffee. We're each eating a little bit of chicken at lunch each day but are not going to eat any red meat or pork at all. Once the rest of our bread is gone (only 5 slices left!) we're not bringing any more into our house (and are not allowed to eat it while we are out). We each have a little bit of creamer in our coffee in the morning but that is all we're allowed for dairy even though we cheated a bit tonight (good-bye butter and eggs!). We did use some tomatoes in tonight's dinner and have a little bit for one other dinner but that is all we get and those will be out as well. 

We're going to be as strict as possible for the next two weeks in the hopes that just maybe it will help to bring down his CEA so he can stay on his current course of treatments. The nutritionist has good reasoning for all of these intense changes, cancer thrives in an acidic environment and lives off of sugar so essentially starving it and creating an environment that is not conducive to it living will hopefully help to kill it. 

In the meantime I will be constantly smelling like peppermints (My name is Jenny & I am a sugar addict) and Tim will struggling to swallow our juices and eat hummus as his snack (which he hates). We should make quite a pair!