Let there be salad!

Veggie soup, boiled to oblivion is now probably my least favorite thing to eat.  The prospect of getting to eat semi-solid food was great when finishing the liquid portion of this plan but oh how quickly a new norm is established!  My food dreams started to bleed over into daytime and thoughts of cheating rose ever higher in my thoughts.

Day 8 - 147.8
Trucking along.  Nothing remarkable symptom-wise but still not feeling up to snuff.  Developed a wicked sore throat that has slowly been creeping since Day 5's first tickle.  Now if I dare talk more than fifteen minutes my voice starts to go out.  Fantastic.

Day 9 - 147.4
Rough mental day.  Cravings for tasty food were so intense the only way I kept myself from going crazy was scouring my pantry for anything that smelled delicious and inhaling deeply.  The winners were truffle oil and cumin seed.  This was a report day and I made sure to write in first thing in the morning in the hopes that they would write back by evening.  My dream was to hear the new plan that involved more veggies and then run off to the store (more like slowly meander) to rejoice in all the choices.  It was not to be.  By 20:00 I was trying to decide, not whether or not I was going to cheat, but with what food item I was going to cheat.  I walked to the store just to stare at things.  I refrained, miraculously, from buying any cookies.  I did buy some sausages and crackers because I could freeze the sausages and store the crackers until later.  It just felt good knowing they would be nearby.  And I didn't cheat!

Day 10 - 146.8
Veggies be praised!  The email came in about 08:00 and I began to plan the rest of my day around what to buy and how to prepare it.  The new plan is continuing the supplements, veggie soup, and berries but adding ANY non-starchy vegetable in raw or steamed form.  Salad dressing can only be lemon juice and olive oil. And 1/2 avocado per day.  Hehehehehehehehe!  Giddyness swept over me.  I abandoned my cookbooks quickly after realizing that they were all going to include some form of carbohydrate or protein.  As much as I adore lentils, beans, eggs, and cheese, they're not on the list.  The Flavor Bible, on the other hand, was great.  I love that thing.  It's like an encyclopedia.  Food ingredients are listed in alphabetical order and it lists all the things that go well with them, super tasty combos are in bold print. Most of the time I've forgotten the links between a lot of foods and this is a helpful reminder.  So I ended up making a more complicated than necessary salad based on my favorite from the PCC deli, the "Emerald City Salad".  Mine didn't have rice or garlic but did have avocado (of course!), beets, dill, cilantro, chives, red onion, and I think that's it.  Broccoli slaw is next on the agenda.  Stomach is protesting lightly at the new introduction but the same thing happened the first day of squishy veggies.  Hoping it's just a transitional thing.  So far so good!