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I’m so sorry that Mr. Linky seems to have disappeared on all my old posts. Hopefully it will work for us this week.
Word of the Day
Flexitarian – a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat
I guess we must be Flexivegans since we are vegans who occasionally eat meat and dairy.
The Problem
The biggest struggle I am having on my new diet is getting enough calories. If you ask my friends and family I appear to be eating constantly. According to Nutritiondata.com I need 3,000 a day to sustain my height, weight and active lifestyle. 3,000! To get enough calories I could eat 8 Burger King cheeseburgers or I could eat 25 pounds of raw spinach a day. It takes two minutes to inhale a cheeseburger. It takes a long time to chew 25 pounds of spinach!!! Luckily I eat other things like nuts and grains so I don’t have to eat 25 pounds of spinach but you get my point and my difficulty.
Not only do raw vegetables take a long time to chew but they also take a lot of space. I don’t have to fit 25 pounds of spinach in my refrigerator but it has still been a struggle to find room for all this food. This winter I kept a big cooler in the garage for things that wouldn’t fit in the fridge but now that it has warmed up its a battle.
The Solution
The very bottom drawer in my fridge is temperature controlled for meat. It is a tiny drawer that barely fits 4 big oranges in it. Not very useful.
Finally one day I had the idea to just take the drawer out. That left me with a lot more room. Then several days later I sat and looked at the space again. If I removed the housing and all the temperature controlling equipment I would have even more room. So I did! Now look at how much room I have in the bottom of my fridge. I can fit an entire watermelon down there!!!
The other thing I found was that my fridge was using a lot of energy keeping that drawer cold. Once I removed it I was able to turn the temperature way down, saving us money.
Plus the fridge doesn’t have to be kept as cold for fruits and vegetables as it does for meat and dairy. Fabulous!
It’s the little things that make life so dang exciting, isn’t it?
It seems I am always trying to figure out ways to rearrange and be able to cram more in my fridge, but I’ve never thought of removing a drawer. I’m definitely understanding why my mom had an extra fridge in the garage when I was growing up!
That fridge is gorgeous!! What a lovely pile of stocked veggies. About the completely raw diet, I know Sally Fallon says that a raw diet can be done seasonally, but it is hard to keep up year round. I’ve never tried it, but I think it would be inconvenient to have to eat..constantly.
So Lara, do you think your grocery budget has gone up or down on your Raw diet?? Also, we ate our first salad out of our garden!! Yep, we had Chard and Kale come back from last year! I didn’t use it once last year, but I’ve been picking the nice little young leaves as soon as they are about bite size. DH didn’t even notice a difference from the Romaine lettuce we usually eat! I hear that kale will winter over well, and some other leafy veggies, so I’m going to try and keep them protected over the winter so we can have fresh veggies all year long! Woot!
I’m always battling with my frig too. Thanks for hosting!
~Liz
Tell me your fridge didn’t look like that when you got home. Where’s the left over pizza and nachos?
Very nice! Now I’m inspired to go clean out my fridge, too. We have one in the garage and since hubby cleaned it out last weekend, I have a nice clean space to put our other items. I haven’t started putting anything in there because I haven’t cleaned out the main fridge yet.
Better get hopping!! Maybe I’ll even take pictures.
We do the same thing in our fridge with the plastic containers for condiments, jams, etc.
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Wow! Who knew a fridge could be so inspiring?!? I’m off to re-do mine! I’m converting me & my family (yikes, is that even close to grammatically correct?) to a more raw/whole foods diet and I love your site. Thanks for the fun reads!
Can you tell me a bit more about your Raw Diet? I’m headed that way and need some inspiration!
What a beautiful fridge! Thanks for sharing your great ideas!
Thanks for the Nutrition Data website- I’ve been starting to use it and it’s definitely informative. I love the recipe calorie counter! It tells me my spinach smoothie is something like 67 calories. Rock on- more green!
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