Real Food is Awesome

So it's been an interesting bit of time dealing with the fallout of the surgery but I can happily say I am eating normally (well, not old normally - but normal food normally) and digestion seems to be going well. I've even been able to start adding back in Greek Yogurt and Sheep and Goat Milk Cheeses without too much effect. I cannot begin to tell you how amazingly happy this makes me.

I also cannot tell you what an eye opener this has been. I had my follow up with the surgeon today and he informed me that I actually had Necrotizing Cholecystitis (on it's way to gangrene). Which basically boils down to my gallbladder was dying and beginning to become toxic to my body. Which may explain a lot of the food issues I have been having. It also makes me feel really lucky to be here, because of the research I could find it suggested that what I had was mere steps away from becoming sepsis - which and often does kill.

So I have two options now - go back to the way things were and basically have IBS type symptoms my whole life or completely shift my eating paradigm and really heal. I (We really) have chosen the latter. To do what we've been trying to do all along. So far we've done really well. The most important steps I am taking are the following:

• Step 1 - Adjust Overall Diet
• Adjust portions - Smaller meals when I feel hungry and eating less at each meal. I feel like I am a bit more intune with my body now and can more adequately understand my full signals but I want to stick with it.
• Food Diary - I am going to make an effort for the next month or two to keep a food diary, starting today. This should allow me to monitor how my body seems to be responding to certain foods both at the time of eating them and over the course of the day. This is also how I plan to become more aware of my digestion as unpleasant a subject as it can sometimes be.
• Rethink my food pyramid - This one is going to take careful thought and planning. I know now that 'fad' diets and multiple juicing fasts aren't going to help my body truly heal. Instead I need to adjust the entire picture. 
• COOK! - This one is the most important both to changing and to this lovely blog. I'm also hoping it will help me increase my posting rate here. Cooking at home is the only way I am going to know exactly what is in my food, so it just needs to happen. Plain and simple.
• Increase Water - This one is by far one of the most important to me. I deluded myself into thinking I was okay drinking clear sodas, iced tea, and the like. They're fine but I need to be sure I am taking in water also. So I'm working on toting around a 3L bottle of water with me and it is my eventual goal to drink one full bottle (or more) a day.
• Step 2 - Adjust Meat Intake:
• No Beef - I have been cutting down on red meat intake anyway due to eating far more than I would/should ever have needed to in the first twenty nine years of my life.
• Little to no pork - I really shouldn't have pork but we have a local farmer who humanely raises and kills his animals with the help of a local butcher. So I will allow myself to occasionally (really, really occasionally) have leaner cuts.
• Fish - to be enjoyed abundantly but with caution of the overly oily varieties
• Chicken - boneless, skinless only - with preference to leaner cuts.
• Decrease total consumption - I have had nothing better to do than watch several (about five) food documentaries, read several nutritional related blogs, websites, and books since the surgery and have decided that instead of following the Standard American Diet (SAD) I am going to adjust and have meat be an addition instead of the main focus.
• Step 3 - Paying more attention to grains - 
• Wheat - I am aiming for gluten free, but if I have wheat it will be whole grain with as few additives as possible.
• Rice - I have been told it is better to do brown over white, so we have been cooking more brown rice. But I know white rice is still going to always be my favorite. Especially in sushi.
• Corn - This one is tough as it is in absolutely everything! But I plan to really ingredient watch and remove corn syrups from my diet.
• Baking - make homemade treats as often as possible using allergy free recipes. 
• Step 4 - The ongoing war with dairy - This one is by far the most exciting and tricky for me. I intend to continue towards a more vegetarian/vegan style of baking and cooking but some of the research suggests I need to include some items in to help my body process food.
• Yogurt - Begin eating Greek Style yogurt (one containing as few additives as possible and if possible also organic or at least stating no growth hormones or antibiotics were used). So far this has worked out well and I need the probiotics and live cultures to help my body break down foods. I have tried Goat's milk yogurt and could not eat it, but enjoyed baking with it. I also did not like soy yogurt. I will still be experimenting with Vegan alternatives.
• Cheese - Sheeps and Goats milk are preferred, especially aged cheeses. I will eventually try eating some Cow's milk cheese but I want to be a bit further down the road before I potentially tax my system so much. Still to be consumed in low amounts and avoided if possible. I plan on purchasing some Nutritional Yeast to use in place of cheese in most instances and experimenting with making Vegan Cheeses in the future.
• Milk - I have found I prefer Almond Milk to almost anything else these days, so I intend to stick with it. I also prefer Coconut Whipped Cream. I am however trying to avoid Soy as it can be bad for me so I will be working on alternatives for that as well.
• Step 5 - Super charge Vegetable and Fruit intake - 
• Vegetables - It is my intention to move towards making vegetables the majority of my meals rather than a minority. I also want to work towards consuming more raw vegetables and more dark leafy greens. In fact we made an amazing salad with kale and arugula last night. A Kale salad, who knew?! I have heard so many statistics and numbers about how much of your diet should be raw, and yet I have also seen so many areas that suggest you can't eat too much raw without your gallbladder. So I'm just going to increase my veggies (via raw, lightly cooked, and juiced varieties) and see how my body handles it.
• Fruit - I have to water down apple and pear juice. It blows my mind. The juice is delicious to me but is far too sweet so I am forced to water it down. A very good problem to have! Apple and pear juices seem to come recommended for gallbladder issues so I have no problem continuing to include them (both homemade and not from concentrate, additive free store bought). 

So take all of that, add in that I will be watching what fats I consume (as in oil based) and trying to keep to a homemade agenda and things should go pretty amazingly. Already I have been feeling amazing with the meals Logician made me and the ones we worked together on. My first temptation since surgery was sugar. I craved sugary things. He had bought regular cookies for a study session and almost all of them came home. We ate them, but I felt bad about the additives and sugars in them. So when the craving came back I made homemade allergy free treats to help. 

The first were these Sugar Cookies. I tempted fate by making substitutions - Trader Joe's Gluten Free Flour Blend, Coconut Sugar, and almond milk - but they came out okay. Not great, but okay. I'm not sure if I made them too small or if I missed a step but they came out very flat and super grainy in the middle. Though once we dolloped on some coconut whipped cream they were just dandy.

The second turned out better - Vegan Blackberry Lemon Ginger Muffins, and by better I mean amazing. I did make a few substitutions here as well, again almond milk instead of rice; golden flaxseed meal instead of regular ground flaxseeds. They were still pretty incredible.

So everything was prepared and ready to go pretty easily. We were out of coconut sugar so I used regular white refined sugar (grumpy faces were made) but I am glad I did. If I had used a liquid sweetener (maple, honey, or agave) I think they would have been too moist. I used homemade young crystalized ginger that had been hanging out in the fridge for awhile, next time I might try fresh (in a smaller amount).

 I also chose to bake them in cupcake liners just to see what would happen. The result was they stuck just as much in the wrapper as they would have in the pan. You live and learn! I also used regular white confectioners sugar for the lemon glaze. However I look at it this way - we bought it and our pantry is full of stuff. We should use what we have instead of just tossing it because it doesn't 'fit the bill' as it were. These were not only amazing looking but they tasted great too. They were a little moist (I could have probably cooked them the extra few minutes) but I took them out as soon as the toothpick came out clean. With a little SF Earth Balance and the glaze they are one of my new favorite treats!

So far our other meals haven't been too exciting a lot of chicken, brown rice, and veggies. Though Logician did make a tasty curry soup, we had turkey tacos, and a few other fairly normal but more healthy version meals the last few weeks. Now to find more awesome things to cook!

Be well!

Little did I know...

I started off my last post discussing how I was having a food crisis. Little did I know, I truly was. I woke the next morning with terrible pain that I associated with bad dinner choices and a milk allergy. However that pain grew progressively worse within a short few hours and I ended up at our nearest Urgent Care clinic. I was sure I had food poisoning but Logician had none of the symptoms. Since we'd shared a pizza, it wouldn't fit that I would be sick and he wasn't.

So off I went to get an ultrasound and I learned that I had gallstones. This in an of itself is not a particularly frightening thing. According to most of the research I have done since something like 80% of people have these little buggers but only a smaller percentage (I think I read 20%) actually have what are called gallbladder 'attacks.' Lucky me....

I was told to I would have to have surgery and left the clinic awaiting a surgeon referral and staunchly saying I was going to try anything else (Acupuncture, Chinese Herbs, dietary changes, supplements, anything). I reread the report from the ultrasound technician and saw that a stone was overlying the opening to my gallbladder - I was concerned but certainly if it was a situation the doctor would have said... Or so I thought.

Now don't get me wrong here - I'm not bashing doctors of any form. They have reasons I will never know for what they tell me and don't tell me. I'm only saying that I likely should have asked more questions.

So Friday I developed a fever of 100.5. Now in my little brain I never before believed in going to the doctor unless you were dying (as I thought I was Wednesday) so a little fever was nothing to me. Thankfully Logician thinks differently and encouraged me to call the Urgent Care clinic for advice. The advice was to go to the ER. Hooray....

I was admitted to the hospital straight from the ER Friday evening and told I was going to have gallbladder surgery the next morning. The stone that was overlying the duct from my gallbladder was actually completely blocking the way and my gallbladder was working itself overtime to try to push passed the obstacle it faced (Sounds a lot like something I would do...). So it had to come out.

The surgery itself was short, sweet, and according to plan. I have four little holes (not really sure how else to describe them) with three around my gallbladder's former home and one in my belly button. I was released from the hospital the same night (partially I think due to the fact I desperately wanted to be home) and am now home. I can't work for two weeks and then I have to start back on light duty to see how that goes - the last thing I need to be doing is pushing my poor little abdomen around massaging people when it's been so traumatized! I can't lift over ten pounds and I am exhausted - all the time.

But this has given me so much time to consider how things were and a sort of fresh place to start from the change them. Having surgery on your 30th birthday is a hell of a way to break in a new decade if I say so myself. So now's the time to make changes, especially since my poor digestive system can't tolerate some of the abuses I used to throw at it! And I can promise that pizza Wednesday night will be the last chain restaurant pizza I ever eat! No more cravings there and if I do get some I'll find a way to make at home GF/DF/SF pizza that will be delicious!

Though this also poses a harder problem for me as I cannot quickly fix this. There is no magical quick diet that's going to help my body recover from what has been done. Instead now is the time I HAVE to make dietary changes.

The main changes I will be focusing on are:

- Going completely Gluten Free (GF): Logician can't have it and I have seen in my recent research that going GF can help with digestive issues moving forward from surgery. So this is a happy direction to go.

- Going completely Dairy Free (DF): I know, I already was supposed to be here. But I wasn't. I cheated (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot) and my body suffered for it. But I CAN'T have anything full fat dairy since surgery anyway. The only exception here would be if my body can tolerate some sort of low fat, possibly Greek style yogurt. I have not been able to find a non-dairy yogurt that I like to eat on its' own. So for baking definitely sticking with DF/Soy Free options but eating will be a trial and error experiment in a few months.

- Going completely Soy Free (SF): This one is going to be the biggest challenge. We are already avoiding it as much as possible but we love Asian food and one of the staples of many recipes is Tofu. Tofu will likely be the only exception I will make but with limits. I will only buy organic (to ensure it is not genetically modified) and I will not eat it frequently. However soy milk, soy protein shakes, soy creamers, etc - out!

I'm going to have to relearn my body now. I almost feel like a child learning what is good and what is horrible. It's an interesting place to be sitting at thirty, that is for sure!

I can't do any sort of decent cooking for the short term future - but rest assured I will be trying new products and as soon as I can be back in the kitchen I will bring you more GF/DF/SF goodness!

Be well!

The Difficult Task of Food

No apologies this time. I've been gone and part of it has been because I have been having a personal crisis with food. And I do believe it qualifies for the word crisis.

Since discovering that I do have a dairy allergy it has become one of the biggest battles for me. I love cheese and there has yet to come across my taste buds a worthy alternative (though I'm currently beginning experiments with nutritional yeast). So I am easily tempted. Especially when it comes with bread. Seems like a pretty common weakness.

But it's driven me to gain back almost all of the weight I had lost between the Reboots and exercise. So that in turn makes me depressed, which of course makes me crave comfort foods... I think you can see the pattern starting here. Now add in some insomnia, a increasingly common sort of restless leg feeling, and fatigue and you have a monster of an issue. I can make excuses all day long about how I can't do this or that, but that's all they are.

So I have done a little branching out in the last few weeks, in the attempt to curb this nasty food habit that is creeping back up on me - and I've made the decision to go ahead and try another (much shorter) Reboot in a few weeks.

I can tell you one thing Maangchi is a life saver! We have recently made a new batch of Kimchi (and by we, I mean I. It was so much fun!) and tried out two new recipes. Though I was disappointed when I found out that the rice cakes I bought contained wheat.

First and foremost I kept promising pictures of the Kimchiguk and I finally have one for you! I may have more pictures but they are on Logician's phone and I don't think waking him for it is very polite.

It's not exactly a pretty picture but it shows the soup quite well. I usually make a double batch of Maangchi's recipe (Kimchiguk) and being the people we are we added in extra pork belly this last time. Though the next time I think we might try it with some fresh chicken (from our local farmer). Our newest batch of Kimchi is the best yet and it's already quite spicy even though it's been keeping in the fridge. I think it's going to make a really tasty soup!

The thing I love the most about using the Kimchi in this way is that it allows me to make more! I have way too much fun cutting up the cabbage, salting it, and making it into delicious fermented joy.


I bought two new items just for making Kimchi this time also. I bought a large plastic bowl (with cute teddy bears on it) and a large strainer. This made things SO much easier! I used the Easy Kimchi version of the recipe, though I have been wanting to make whole cabbage Kimchi also. I am going to try to get my hands on one of the clay pots here in the next few months. But it was so much easier to salt the cabbage, strain it, and rinse it with my two new kitchen helpers!

 The left picture is the cabbage soaking in it's cold water bath prior to being salted. The right hand picture shows the cabbage shortly after being salted. I like how the green stands against the pretty red of the strainer!

I tried to stay as close to the recipe as I could this time (finding 10 lbs of cabbage without a scale or patience is somewhat challenging) but I think I only ended up using about 6lbs of cabbage and I only had a cup and a half of pepper flakes left! I had to buy more for the next recipe I made that same day, but it was too late for the Kimchi.

That night I decided to keep going with the spicy theme and made Ddeokbokki. Which is a snack recipe on her website but was easily transformed into a meal with the addition of pork belly and lots of delicious vegetables. I could not bring myself to buy an entire bag of dried anchovies (which is about $20 here) as it's such a large bag and I wasn't sure if I could bring myself to use them. So instead I used five dried shitake mushrooms and the kombu. It was delicious. So much so I thought Logician might gobble it all up in one go! It's definitely something we will make again, likely in a vegetarian version (and maybe if we're lucky we can find/make rice cakes without gluten).

The last recipe I tried of hers (which will certainly not be the last ever) was for fried chicken. I choose to make this on a day we were both definitely needing comfort food, because I knew I could make it gluten free and dairy free. It turned out amazing (way better than expected) and even though it was fried it didn't taste like it at all! The recipe is called Yangnyeom-tongdak and it's a sort of sweet and spicy coated fried chicken. We ate it with kimchi and vegetables and it was perfect! I used only drumsticks (for ease) and for the gluten free flour replacement I used Bob's Red Mill Biscuit and Pie Crust mix (as we will never cook with it otherwise). I tried following Maangchi's method for breading the chicken and it didn't go well for me (think scramble egg and a bit of mushy flour) so I pressed what I could on the chicken, added another beaten egg and coated the chicken with the gluten free flour mix. It was so good. I want to make it right now and I'm not even hungry!

You'll notice some cupcakes hanging out there in the background - it was a new product we tested out. Betty Crocker has come out with boxed GF cake mixes and this one was on sale (likely on it's way out). The cupcakes are Devil's Food Chocolate Cupcakes with Funfetti icing (because there needed to be some badness involved). All in all it was a tasty comfort food dinner that allowed us to cheat a bit (with all the not so pleasant ingredients in the icing) and yet have a GFDF dinner and dessert.

The cakes were good, though a little dry and Logician reported that had I not told him they were GF he might not have known they were anything other than slightly dry cupcakes.

His birthday is in a few weeks (it will actually be right after my intended Reboot) and I am going to use Cybele Pascale's Red Velvet cake recipe to make Blue Velvet Cupcakes (which, interesting note I have found that Trader Joe's GF Flour mix is actually a very nice substitute for the blend she uses and it's much cheaper even if the end result is a hair grittier than it would be otherwise). I will likely also try my hand as some sort of dairy free mock cream cheese style icing for said cupcakes.

With the chicken being such a big hit I may make it again or I may try my hand at making a sort of veggie tempura coated with this same batter. I'll have to see how I'm feeling at the time!

Either way I will have some more kitchen adventures for you soon, including a daily update of my Reboot (I am planning on starting on the 20th of July as I have a long weekend (It will be a five day Reboot, with me only working on day 1). I intend to do just straight juice and protein shakes (we've been using a Raw GF/DF/SF powder mix) and we will see what happens! Hopefully if nothing else it breaks this vicious cycle of cheese craving!

Eat well!

Worst Promise Ever

So we did again make the Kimchi Soup and I did again forget to take pictures. I also made Gluten Free Matzo and Matzo ball soup. It was my second time making it and for some reason the recipe I used for the Matzo didn't work quite as well as before.

I have been trying to get my hands on Cybele Pascal's book from the Library again, but every time I look for it it's at another branch. A conspiracy I wonder!

We had a 'shrimp boil' of sorts by cooking shrimp and fish in a metal pan on the grill the other night. To which I added a roasted root vegetable medley. I have never roasted beets before, but we had some from our last CSA pick up a few weeks ago that I wanted to use so they wouldn't go bad. So I cut up six beets, ten short carrots (just slightly longer than my middle finger), a sweet potato, two Japanese yams, and a white potato, drizzled them will olive oil and sprinkled on pepper, garlic, and Bell's seasoning. I baked them in the oven at 375 deg F for 45 minutes. At about 35 minutes I drizzled them with more oil and mixed them around to make sure they baked evenly. The Japanese yams got dark spots on them as they oxidize almost immediately after peeling, so next time I think I would try to leave the peel on. But I wasn't sure how well I could scrub them.

This got me thinking and inspired me to get out into our 'garden.' Spring and summer are coming, I planted a head of garlic that was happily growing in the kitchen, an onion that we let sit too long (I don't know if it will make it, but I'm hoping), and spruced up our pepper plants. Our basil looks half dead and half ready to go wild so we will see what happens with that as well. I'm looking forward to finding some ways to use up the last of our Kimchi. After which I am going to experiment with making whole cabbage Kimchi. I couldn't do this before because our container wasn't the proper size to do so, but now we have a specific one.

I'm looking forward to coming up with some other things to do with spring and summer crops. I'm really hoping that by my birthday I'll be able to treat myself to an Excalibur Dehydrator and a Vitamix blender. Not that we honestly need more kitchen appliances (seriously, our kitchen is tiny) but I want these to make fruit jerky, smoothies, cashew cheese, and other raw food applications.

I have a theory that Summer in Florida is a good time for raw food. Simple, low heated foods that don't add to the insane heat of the scorching sun. But theories are just that!

Today marks the beginning of my work week, so it's likely the kitchen finesse will not be happening again until next weekend, but we will see!

Amazing Food Everywhere!

So while I have been slacking off in posting, I have not been slacking off in the kitchen. We have been cooking up a storm of gluten and dairy free amazingness that I am going to try to explain to you. The sad thing is I keep forgetting to take pictures!

So first up - GF/DF Fudge

We needed a sweet treat that was going to satisfy my intense need for chocolate. Something I sadly had been having to do without because almost all chocolate you buy in the store has dairy in it, unless it's for baking. Enter Trader Joe's (Thank goodness!) who sell dairy free chocolate chips and delicious dark chocolate bars that are both cheap and dairy free. So inspired by this I again consulted Pinterest (which seems to house a lot of inspiration).

I found this pin from the Once a Month Mom that was for fudge. As always I didn't have exactly what was needed (really the only thing I didn't have was a conventional sifter and an 8 x 8 pan) so I made it in an eight inch round cake pan. We used this tea strainer we have as a sifter, which takes longer but worked just as well. I have since purchased a nifty three cup sifter which I will be using today to make another batch of fudge. I used carton coconut milk and found it to work surprisingly well. This fudge was amazing. We kept it in the fridge and it lasted a long time because one or two pieces is dark and rich enough to satisfy even the strongest craving.

I am still on a mission to find a more natural replacement for powdered sugar. I killed our blender attempting to make coconut powdered sugar for a cake several months ago and haven't tried a second attempt since then. I'm sure a good hour on the internet will solve that problem!

I also made another Allergy Free Red Velvet Cake using Cybele Pascale's recipe. I used a "rice beverage" as opposed to Rice Milk and I'm not sure it didn't negatively effect the cake (Logician says it was the best yet, so there is that). I also only have one eight inch round pan so I ended up using two springform pans. Which resulted in a thicker layer that caved in a bit while it settled. Since I had a new surprising indent I put some Trader Joe's Monticello Cherries in the middle, which was quite tasty. Again this is another recipe where I would love to substitute the powdered sugar with something else, but the coconut 'powdered' sugar gave the icing a strong molasses flavor that the vanilla extract then made too strong. So adaptation in progress!

That same night we also tried out a new Korean Dish - Kimchi Soup (Kimchiguk) made by Maangchi. Who by the way - if you haven't tried her food. Do it. It's incredible! We've only had one recipe Logician and I didn't agree on and we had to use different ingredients (I'll explain a bit further down!).

We started making her Easy Kimchi sometime last summer. The first batch we made was okay but we increased the spiciness and added more vegetables and such the second time and it's so much better! Logician first discovered Maangchi on YouTube watching one of her BBQ Pork videos, which got me hooked. So we turned to her when we made the kimchi. We had finished off almost all the old kimchi but had bought a new container specifically for making kimchi (plastic, not the beautiful clay pots. That comes next) so we made a new batch. So sitting lonely in the back of the fridge was this older, more sour kimchi. So I decided to make Kimchi Soup after seeing one of her newer videos (Recipe and Video here).

It was delicious! I picked up a new type of tofu which turned out to be really weird to me (Logician found that it grew on him) and it was my first experience cooking with pork belly on my own. But the soup was incredible. We had company so I made a double recipe which allowed me to use all the remaining older kimchi and some of the newer batch. It was so good we decided to make it again this week.

However, as we were on our way to the more Chinese based market to pick up what we needed, Logician became inspired by a different recipe for Braised Saury. I knew we had seen this canned fish somewhere before so we set off to find it in the market. As it turns out that particular market does not stock Saury so we opted to try Jack Mackerel instead. The recipe looked and smelled beautiful but was way too fishy for me! I couldn't eat it. I went to the Korean/Japanese influenced market this morning and found the exact brand she used in the video. So I am thinking in the next two weeks or so, we'll try it again.

Maangchi has so many recipes I want to try, but I am absolutely addicted to her Kimchi recipes! I want to get a clay pot (I saw a smaller one today for about $20.00) and make whole cabbage kimchi. But only time will tell if I get to!

One thing we have discovered is that the more Asian influenced food we cook, the less likely we are to run into Dairy and Wheat, our two biggest foes. However this does leave some room for GMO soy, MSG, and other nasty chemical things. However, it seems like the more we read labels the more we find out that there are less of these chemical bad guys in the things that are imported! Seriously! It seems awfully odd to me, but it does make me very happy.

I promise to take some step by step pictures of the Kimchi Guk tonight and a finished picture. It's going to be awesome. I will likely make a one and one half time recipe of it, since I have such awesome looking pork I want to have stewed in the broth and I also bought some Enoki mushrooms to place into the pot! I'm looking forward to dinner so much I'm hungry now!

Happy Eating!

Rebooting/Hard Truths

So the Reboot sort of tapered off as you might have noticed. Basically I learned one very important thing.

Rebooting isn't going to work for me. Doing a juicing fast/cleanse for a short period of time has the effect of creating a negative mindset for me. It got me back to the point where I am so desperate for 'normal' that I begin to pick up old behaviors I thought I had banished.

I'm sort of food soul searching right now. Trying to come to a place where I eat healthier, more locally, and more ethically. I just finished watching a Documentary called Vegucated. It was an interesting documentary that showed me a lot more than I thought I was getting in to.

The fact of the matter is this - I'm almost thirty and I hate my relationship with food and my body. It's that simple. However, the more I look around and try to find information on what will work best, what's a more mindful diet - there are so many information sources that I have no idea what to try or what will work.

I know the most important thing for me right now is to STOP CONSUMING DAIRY! Especially Cow's milk. I seem to have a better time with Goat's milk, but I can't let that become a crutch. Otherwise I'll end up in just as much trouble. I know what I need to do, but I am having trouble making those steps because of any list of excuses I'll call reasons.

1) Not enough money - this one is the hardest to fight right now. It's so much 'cheaper' to go buy two dollar menu hamburgers than it is to go buy a salad. Yes I know all the reasons this logic is wrong. In the long run it's not cheaper, the nutrients are better from the salad, etc. But when you have four dollars in your hand, it makes a difference.

2) Time - this is a personal lie I keep telling myself. That I'm so busy. It's been working on me for exercise lately too.

3) I need protein - this one is hardest for me because I can feel my body craving animal based protein. Though I have turned away from red meat and am trying to find alternative sources. But this hints at a bigger problem I am facing.

- My body is programmed to need carbs (especially bread/potatoes) and meat (chicken is a big one). Especially to need them in improper ways like processed freeze dried instant potatoes and chicken fingers.

I am fairly certain I have had a dairy allergy my entire life. I can remember symptoms going as far back as when I was four years old and cream cheese gave me horrible headaches. But I grew up with parents who grew up in an era where drinking milk with dinner and clearing your plate were important concepts. I was kept well fed, never hungry, and am not complaining.

I can remember how sometimes the kids in the neighborhood would ruin our appetites for dinner by eating the citrus fruit off the trees that were abundant around us. Oranges, white and red grapefruit, kumquats, cherries, tangerines, and the list goes on. But something shifted as I got older and I moved into this dietary place I am now.

Fast food, processed packaged foods, and a generally hate/hate relationship with food and my body.

Now don't get me wrong, things have gotten much better over the course of the last few years. Thanks in no small part to Logician. I came to this college town from living with someone whose diet mainly consisted of Pepsi, red meat, fast food, and potatoes. A diet I easy adopted and had trouble breaking.

So things I really want to change (Or Goals for the next 3 months) -
1) Consume less meat - I want to consume less store bought, inhumanely gotten meat. I know sometimes this isn't the easiest thing to change. $3/lb for chicken versus the $1/lb is hard when crunching numbers.

2) No more soda - at all, zero. I've gotten myself to this place where clear soda is acceptable. It's time to nix that idea.

3) Have juice at least three days a week alongside or in place of breakfast.

4) Educate myself on how to get protein and nutrients from FRESH food - I see all these processed replacements for 'normal' food, veggie burgers, tofurky, etc. I want to learn to make my own options from the actual foods themselves. Dried, canned, or more enjoyably fresh.

5) Get outside - more often. I need to, period.

6) Cut down the food budget.

Thoughts on how to do this?

1) 'Chili' Sunday - With Logician's help (and really at his suggestion) begin preparing things to be cooked through out the week on Sunday. I can remember Dad and I doing this when I was younger. The entire stove would be covered with pots and pans preparing all sorts of things. A huge vat of tomato sauce that would then be divided to be spiced with Spanish spices for Stuffed Peppers and Italian spices for Spaghetti; goulash, etc. This will also help us beef up our freezer with option to cook for lunches and the like.

2) Meatless Monday - this is a trend that I am seeing all over the place, but I enjoy seeing the recipes Reboot With Joe comes up with each week. Monday nights are a good night for us to do this, especially if we prep some of the ingredients on Sunday.

3) Leftover nights built into our schedule - this will help keep us from going out to eat. We've cut back a lot on our dining out, especially in the last month; and usually when I do convince us to go out we end up regretting it. So this will provide quick and easy nights where we don't have to worry about what to cook.

4) What's on Hand Thursday - I had this great idea, did it for two weeks and flopped out. Now I want to make it a habit. This will allow Logician and I to get back in the kitchen together and take prepared things (from Sunday), leftovers, and whatever else we might have on hand and flex our kitchen abilities to make something delicious.

5) Start using my library card to its' full potential - I live in an amazingly educated and read city. The libraries have an amazing variety of books. So I need to start actually reading the ones I check out, and checking out more.

So grand plans aside here's how I'm really going to try to get this going -

I want to start April 1st. A clean month.

I plan to start having some of these things now, like Chili Sundays. Then in April what I will do is start collecting our food receipts (all of them, even the ones from me at work) while trying to make healthier choices. This will give me a baseline to go from.

This also gives me time to build up a bigger collection of Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free recipes. I have some good ones but I need more. That way we can get clear of allergies in this house!

What are your grand plans for Spring?

Reboot 2013 #1 Day 6 & 7

Unfortunately no pictures today. We had a very interesting day yesterday as we ran all of our errands in the morning (going to the Farmer's Market, shopping, etc.) and then I came home and needed to prepare some of the food we needed for dinner yesterday.

Yes dinner. We've adjusted our meal plan to include a solid meal a day for both of us and allowed it to include protein. We both found we needed the nutrition of having some meat based protein and allowing ourselves more freedom with our solid meal.

So yesterday we didn't really eat (time got away from us) until dinner time. Where we had homemade Kimchi and Hot Pot. It was amazing and delicious.

So far today we have not had our breakfast juice, but we opted to have a solid meal for lunch. So likely we'll make a juice around dinner time. I'm thinking something with grapefruit and cucumber. We'll see!

Reboot 2013 #1 Days 4 & 5

We're feeling a bit better today but I think part of that is because we had to make a switch to our Reboot plan. We've switched to Juicing and Eating, where our one solid meal is a bit more flexible. I had to do this as I was simply too hungry and I felt like junk.

I also weighed myself yesterday and hadn't lost anything yet. Which makes it hard to want to continue. I wasn't feeling better, I didn't have less cravings, and I wasn't losing weight. Arg! Enter an idea and dinner with friends.

We went to Jason's Deli - which has an amazing salad bar for dinner. During which time we discussed that this juicing three times a day for him, and two times (three when working but I bought store bought juice) and eating once just didn't feel right for our bodies. We're a lot more active now than we were during the last Reboot and I felt like my body was starving.

So Day 4 - we're still fasting but we're amending it to include a healthy meal. This didn't go great this morning as I slept in and we went shopping before we made our breakfast juice. But first things first - Day 4.

Yesterday was Logician's last day of school for the week and my early day at work. Which shifted our schedule quite a bit! So we again made enough juice at breakfast to have enough for his lunch juice. I decided I would by a store bought for my work lunch. We had decided to go to dinner with friends so I was saving my solid meal for that.

The night before we had both been pretty hungry at the end of the night so we went for a smoothie and I got a veggie wrap. I felt a bit guilty for doing it but I had been very tired from working and felt pretty bad. So I felt like I needed some more solid food. Our juice for breakfast yesterday was another hodge podge of what we have at home.


We used Papaya, Carrots, Kale, apples, ginger, celery, and of course some orange juice. It was very tasty.



Logician had this for lunch as well and I had a Bolthouse Blue Goodness. Then we both had salad and soup from Jason's.

Then this morning we again went through what we had and put together a brunch juice. I did pick up some cucumbers, apples, grapefruit, and oranges yesterday. But we didn't use much of those.


As you can see it was a bit greenish yellow and the glass came out the same way. But it was still tasty. So tonight we're having either a juice or another solid meal, we haven't yet decided. Then tomorrow it's juicing and hot pot!

Reboot #1 2013 - Day 3

Today sucks.

Plain and simple. I have a huge headache, my body is angry at me for doing this, and I am really tired. Even Logician is feeling a bit sore and tired today (though he isn't sure it's the reboot that's doing it). Today is the type of day you want to curl up in bed and stay there.

But there were things to get done. Logician has class today and since getting up early immediately following my latest night at work isn't always easy, he opted to make a "Quick Juice" this morning. Essentially it is store bought Green Juice (in this case Trader Joe's Green Juice), with Rice Protein powder, and Amazing Greens powder mixed in. We try not to make these too often but it's nice to have a fall back item in case we're tired, busy, or both. As he has a very busy day at school he also will have a second one for lunch.

Since I have the morning here at home I decided to invent some juices for myself. I usually prefer recipes as I have no idea how to make enough juice for a serving just by guessing. I ALWAYS end up adding something after the picture is snapped.

Reboot #1 2013 - Day 2

Today is rough for me. I'm feeling really tired and sapped of energy, my skin feels like it's staging a coup, and I am just in general feeling achy. Logician seems to be having a better time with this, but he always does. Juicing seems to make his body happier more than anything else.

Lucky bugger.

So last night for dinner I got to have my solid meal for the day. I did 'cheat' a bit as I had white rice, but it was left over and didn't want to waste it. He invented himself a juice out of what we had available, since we try to leave room in our meal planner to use up our fresh veggies and fruits.

He created a concoction using cranberries, two carrots, papaya, sweet potato, butternut squash, and a variety of choy. He said it was too sweet (likely because of my addition of the potato) but it made just about 20 oz of juice so it was perfectly sized for his dinner. He was having a wonderful time and really enjoying having only liquid food yesterday. Meanwhile just about dinner time I started to slump. My body was confused and wondering just what in the heck I was doing to it.

Reboot #1 of 2013 - Day 1

It's 2013 - time to get healthy and back on track (I know we all say that every year don't we). We have now reached a point where our schedules are stable enough to allow us to launch into our first Reboot of the year. We have really gotten away from our focused healthy eating habits as this last year drew to a close and we want to make sure this year is different.

We've been cutting out things over the last two weeks to prepare for this fast, including red meat, dairy, and grains as much as we were able to. We had some social engagements so some of that got lost in translation but we did our best. This morning we woke up ready to get juicing!

We inventoried the contents of our refrigerator went through what we had left from the CSA this weekend. That way we would have an idea of what we had and what we needed. We then sat down last night and looked over a collection of recipes from juices we like and picked the ones we wanted to make for the next few days.

For breakfast we decided to make a juice we'd tried a few weeks ago called Cranberry Citrus. It comes from the Reboot with Joe website (formerly JointheReboot.com), and we modified it slightly. The recipe calls for:

1 cup diced butternut squash
1 orange
1 cup cranberries
4-6 Collard Green Leaves (aprox 1 cup)

We opted to use kale instead as the stuff we receive from our CSA is some of the most delicious we've ever eaten. We also didn't have any oranges in the house as we don't normally keep citrus on hand - so we opted to use from fresh squeezed juice we also purchased at our local farmer's market. We drank our morning lemon and ginger "tea" as we prepped the juice and then enjoyed it for a few minutes before juicing our breakfast.

 See the picture of the glass after the jump -

A New Food Find

We received a very generous gift card to our grocer over the holidays and decided we would let ourselves wander the entire store and look for new or exciting things we wanted to try, or things we love but don't normally splurge on. During our wanderings we came across a new breakfast product - Good Food Made Simple's Frozen Steel Cut Oatmeal. We were intrigued and decided to purchase a few boxes (it was on sale which is part of how we discovered it). 

The ingredients are simple and wholesome - Steel cut oats, water, sea salt - and then of course a few other things depending on which flavor you get. So far we have tried the Vermont Maple Syrup and the Berry. Both are delicious, easy to make in the microwave, make a huge bowl of oatmeal, and for a processed food are very simple in ingredients. 

They're website does not say they use GF oats, but Logician ate them without any troubles that I know of. So GF-ers be cautious. There is however no dairy, no artificial sugars, no soy, no sesame, no corn syrup. It's lovely and delicious with a cup of tea for breakfast!

Happy Eating!

A New Year

It's 2013. Which sort of blows my mind, but means a new start!

Our plan is to do a Reboot/Juicing Fast here in the next few weeks. A lot of great juicing items are about to come into season so it will be the perfect time. I'm also hoping to get into doing some more crafty things around the house (Pinterest is addicting...). It's my goal during our juicing to post daily updates including juice recipes and new ideas.

I'm also going to work at getting back into my food challenges. Though my work schedule has shifted so it won't be Tues/Thurs. Thursday will still stick, but Tuesday might shift to Sunday or Monday. I'll work out the details soon.

Everyone is posting about their resolutions for 2013, but I'm going to set goals this year.

1) NO MORE DAIRY - well, no more cow's milk based dairy. It seems my digestive system can handle goats milk. But we're going to experiment with that some more after we do our juicing.

2) Cut back on white, refined, processed foods - this one is important to me because Logician cannot have gluten. It gives me the opportunity to expand my horizons more and to eat more natural wholesome foods. So this year my goal is to cut down on breads, potatoes (white), and to try to eat more brown than white rice.

3) Juice at least three times a week - this one is important as I need to continual shot of nutrients!

4) Lose weight and get fit.

5) Get outdoors - helping bring a farm into fruition (more on that later) will be really helpful for this goal!

So there's some, we'll see how I do!

Namaste!