Cooked food

Well, one of my favorite coworkers is moving on to a new company so today we went out to lunch with her to her favorite vegetarian restaurant and I had a cooked lunch.  It is a Chinese restaurant called Veggie Heaven - they make traditional Chinese dishes but without meat.  They use mushrooms and other veggies to mimic the texture and flavor of their "meats" in the dishes.

It was actually one of my favorite places for a long time:
http://www.veggieheavennj.com/

I have to confess that this restaurant did have a carrot/beet/apple/kale/celery juice I could have had, but I told myself before that I'd have a cooked meal so I did.   I got eggplant with garlic sauce with brown rice.  (I nibbled at the rice but didn't eat it all).  It also had a little baby bok choy which was very nice.

Well, here's the interesting thing ... it tasted good but not amazing and that is really my favorite chinese dish.

I ate almost all the eggplant in my lunch sized portion and I felt so heavy and sluggish after lunch!   It occurred to me that I never feel that way after eating a raw meal.  NEVER.  Even if I eat a largish raw meal, I feel satisfied, and I know when I don't need to eat anymore, but I never feel full and sluggish like I did this afternoon.

I'm just going to have a simple light RAW dinner tonight and then plan to make an early night of it - my poor dog was crying out in pain at 3:30 am so I didn't sleep well and need to catch up on my sleep. 

It's interesting though - the cooked lunch after 24 days raw really reinforced for me how much better I feel eating raw. I even have a little headache this afternoon - not entirely sure if that is the lack of sleep or the cooked food, but I noticed it after the food.