Grilled Deliciousness

Dear Diary,

What do you do on a Friday afternoon at 3 o'clock when dinner's still a few hours away and breakfast was entirely too long ago? Here's what you do: Scavenge the zucchini out of the crisper, find the goat cheese hanging out behind the kale and fire up the grill. 

Head on over to Naked Recipes (You know about Naked Recipes, right? The tab in the green band above? Right next to The Constant In-Between?) Click over to check out Dara Michalski's spin on one of my favorite summertime foods. I know it's not summer yet, but a girl can dream, can't she?

I'll give you a little hint ...

Click here for grilled deliciousness.

So, what are you waiting for? Go check it out!

Have a great weekend!

deborah

Dear John ... I Mean, Stress

Good morning, Diary!

Wow, I missed you last week. The end of my week had me a little overloaded. Friday morning, I had an interpreting assignment; Friday afternoon, a teaching assignment; Friday night, a trivia night (in which we took first place!) and followed that up on Saturday morning with another interpreting assignment. Yikes. I would have done well to leave at least one of those things out as my work on Saturday morning was not my best. It's not a bad thing to be reminded that I must take care of myself  - which is sort of what this adventure is all about, right?

Speaking of adventures, I received my copy of Crazy Sexy Diet on Friday. (Thank you, Becky!)  HOLY COW! I just don't even know where to begin. Way back when Maggie first mentioned it, I was a little skeptical over the title. (Yeah, big surprise there, right?) I didn't think I wanted a diet book. But a crazy sexy diet? Well, that might be a book of a different cover. And it is! There's just something about Kris Carr and her honest, forthright way of writing. There's nothing stressful or overwhelming about the idea of eating healthy in the way that Kris lays it out. Love this book and I'll undoubtedly write more as I make my way through it.

Back to trivia night. What a blast and we rocked it! We all had such a great time and the food this year was better than ever. Every year, we each bring a dish or two and have a feast that begins before the questions and lasts until we just can't eat any more, but this year, we had some rocking food! Two of our teammates are vegetarians while two are observing Lent, so there were five of us who contributed food that was fair game. We had savory corn muffins with quinoa and goat cheese, two big trays of fresh vegetables, a bowl of Natalia's raw peanut sauce, and an absolutely divine savory cheesecake with pesto and red peppers. Top that off with almond tortilla chips and whole grain crackers and we had a feast. Yes, there was some miscombining, but I thoroughly enjoyed all the delicious contributions and came home without that junk-food-induced headache, which has historically been a part of trivia night.

I'm beginning to realize something and here's what I'm thinking. Wading in to this new way of eating seems to be working a little better for me than diving in head first did. I don't know the reason, maybe it's not important to know the reason, only to acknowledge the reality. I'm still juicing every single morning and it has become an easy part of my life. I can't even imagine going back to beginning my day without it. And the processed food? I don't even shop for it any more. Not having it in the kitchen is a big part of not eating it, but really, the more important part is that there are so many other delicious recipes to try that I don't even miss it. I'm eating more real food and I just don't crave the 'junk' anymore. 

Free Printables from Green Submarine

I had originally hoped that being 'on the juice' and eating raw would immediately allow me to eliminate the vitamins. Last year, I began taking Standard Process vitamins as a part of a three-month cleanse and have continued taking them ever since. They're bloody expensive and I loved the idea that I could lose the expense and still feel great without them. It turns out that even with the juicing and eating more and more raw fruits and veggies, I just feel like crap without the supplements - sooooo, I'm back on them and I'm feeling pretty good. Not trying too hard to understand it at this point, because for me, that's a little too much like deciding if it's good or bad. I'm just accepting the reality that, for whatever reason, my body still needs those extra essentials, so I'm just going with it. 

Despite my jam-packed life on Friday and Saturday, I really caught a break on Sunday. We had no assigned coursework last week - no additional reading to speak of, no papers to write, no written text to interpret - yesterday was just completely blissful. Mark and I went out for breakfast and talked about how long our respective to-do lists have gotten. In the ease of our conversation, we talked about how to get some of those items knocked off that list, then we came home and actually got a couple of things done! We also had time to just hang out together. We had a fabulous dinner, cleaned up the kitchen and had a great night's sleep. 

Amazing what the absence of stress can allow us to create in our lives.

Okay, that's all for me for now. Talk soon.

Love,

d

Super-Size It!

Dear Diary,

Rather than write what I planned to write today, I think I'd like to respond to what my little sister Maggie said yesterday.  In the last few days, I've had all these thoughts spinning around in my head with regard to our mom's illness.  About how I've vacillated for years between an extremely healthy diet and a laissez faire attitude as a result of my feelings towards the fact that she battled - and lost! - brain cancer.

I think about how I bought this Champion juicer right after Mom's diagnosis, a couple weeks after my own wedding, determined to change our diets, convinced we could save her life.  I think about how I tried so hard to get Mom to do a 14-Day juice fast/cleanse with me and how mad I was when she didn't.  (I understand now that she just couldn't.  It was too foreign.  She was too scared.  It was too much, too fast and she didn't have the time to PAUSE.  Read, think, explore, decide.  She just had to act.  Fast.  To try to save her life in the best way she knew how, by listening to the "experts" and not second-guessing.)

In the meantime, I went on my own 10-month-long vegan journey until...and this is the sort of horrifying part...I got pregnant.  HORMONES and severe nausea had me craving "comfort food" and my first foray back into meat and cheese was (and I'm not kidding...) McDonald's.  That #2 combo meal.  Oh, those little cheeseburgers from my youth were just what the doctor ordered.  I felt good.  For about 5 minutes.  Then I wanted to barf.  And cry.  But I kept going back for more.

And so began the tick-tock of the pendulum.  Uber-healthy nothin' but organic because I WILL NOT GET CANCER.  Then, I don't give a shit, this is ridiculous, bring on the hotdogs and Miller Lite.  I KNOW HOW UNFAIR LIFE IS: I'LL SACRIFICE, EAT NOTHING BUT PERFECT NOURISHING FOODS AND EXERCISE...THEN GET HIT BY A BUS.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.

So...what have I learned from this?  One, that what we eat really, truly does affect almost every part of our health.  From the goofy (eek, my orange skin from carrot overdose) to the eyebrow raising (that eczema that not doctor could cure is miraculously GONE) to the amazing (my freight train husband no longer needs "help" sleeping, sleeps snore-free all night long without waking), IT DOES MATTER.

What else have I learned?  I CANNOT go over the top.  I CANNOT insist on perfect.  I CANNOT hold myself to an unreachable standard (aka, diving into the "deep end of the Raw Pool," as Natalia Rose would say) because if I do, I'll fail.  And I might just console myself with an entire box of Thin Mints.  Or Oreos.  I'm working on GOOD ENOUGH over here (you have no idea how hard that is for me).  And right now, with the exception of a rare night out, we are 100% unprocessed, unrefined, whole vegetarians.  It's not raw.  I'm certainly not perfect.  (Some days (um, last Monday), I have a I Miss Baked Goods Crisis and consume more homemade wholegrain muffins than I care to admit.) But it's pretty darn good.  GOOD ENOUGH?

Thanks to Chocolate-Covered Katie for this Recipe!

Darn it, now I can't stop thinking about Thin Mints...maybe I better make that healthy "Shamrock Shake" sooner rather than later to ward off the cravings so I don't find myself weeping in the drive-thru lane.  I'll try it (with mint leaves instead of extract).  And if my palms turn green, you'll know I drank two!

Sweetly,

Rebecca