Today is Monday, February 15, 2010. The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of chaos. We were moving out of our house into a two bedroom apartment in order to get on the GOOD plan. Get. Out. Of. Debt. Yes, the GOOD plan. Let me rewind a little bit...

I finished my bachelors degree in Management on February 1st. Up until about a month before, right around the Christmas time frame, my whole goal was to take as few classes as I could in order to get a degree. A fancy piece of paper that would let the world know that I completed something.

That was, until I decided was gently nudged by Jess, to follow my life-long dream and become a Veterinarian. Unfortunately, a degree in Management gets me absolutely nowhere close to that when it comes to pre-vet requirements, other than the general classes that get my first two years out of the way. I still have to take ALL my science classes [Read: Holy Crap! That is a lot of classes].

Of course, I know that my wife has dreams of her own and one of those is to become a certified Doula/Midwife. I have been a bit selfish in my schooling endeavors lately (actually for the last 3 years) and now it is her turn. Hopefully she will start her Doula training in either April or October, which will get her started in the right direction to becoming a certified Midwife.

On top of all this, and the biggest reason we are downgrading living arrangements, is because we bought two new cars. I use the term "bought" loosely as we still owe on them before we own them. Our plan is to have at least one car paid off and the other within throwing distance by August, 2011 (wow, that feels weird to type) so that I can start my pre-vet courses.

About two weeks ago, on top of all of these new "discoveries," we decided to toss in an extra challenge as a bonus point. A Golden Retriever puppy will be making her debut within a month. Her name is 'Rosebud' as our little princess has determined, so we played along with it and will register her with the AKC as 'A Rose by Any Other Name.'

And because we don't like to make it easy on ourselves, the puppy will come about a week after we move into our new place. AND, we have decided to take the month of March and try a modified RAW diet (see, I told you we don't like it easy.) We will not be 100% RAW, more like 75% or so, with the remainder coming from whole foods. We are doing this for a number of reasons, first off to eat better and be in better health. As a side note, I am curious, aside from all of the up-front expense of equipment, is eating RAW cheaper than normal?

My personal experiment is going to be how to keep a diverse palate while staying within the budget. With that being said, here is what we have to start with for our modified RAW month.

Excalibur 2900 - Apparently from what I understand, this is the beast of all the food dehydrators. I am not really sure why, but it may have something to do with the 12-15 square feet of dehydrating space, or the fact that it has a yogurt setting. We picked this up off of Craigslist for $100 today, which is just under the half way mark when it comes to prices, the lowest I saw was $209.

Living RAW Food by Sarma Melngailis - This, currently, is the only RAW cookbook that we have. We are looking to pick up another one, but I would like to try and work through as many of the recipes in this one as possible during our monthly trial.

Well, that is pretty much it. We still have to get a blender and a couple ceramic knives, but I think we are pretty much ready to go.

Oh, one last thing, tonight we made the RAW chocolate syrup from LRF. I am usually not a fan of coconut, and I was hesitant to try this because it has coconut oil in it...let me tell you - I. Was. Blown. Away. That chocolate syrup over my ice cream was better than anything I have had out of a bottle, can, jar, whatever you want to take it out of.

Alright, time to wrap this post up. If I forgot anything, I will mention it at some point in time tomorrow.


~Sal & Jess

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