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!

I didn't fall off a cliff, well not physically

Another big gap in blogging. I could say a lot about intention and how I intend to update this more regularly starting in January but I can't promise that will happen.

What I can say is that eating properly is becoming something that NEEDS to happen in my life. I have been eating pretty poorly (not all the time but I have been consuming far too much dairy) and I have gained back a lot of the weight I lost during the three Reboots I did last year.

Starting in January we're planning on Rebooting again. It will likely start on the sixth as we will be out of town a bit before that and it would be really difficult for us to haul everything we would need to do so.

I've been really happy with some changes we have made however - like joining a CSA. We joined Swallowtail Farms, a local CSA that is relatively new (this is their second year I believe). So far we have had  a lot of greens (perfect for juicing), some amazing jewel yams, and all sorts of interesting things happening in every weekly pickup. This has also encouraged us to purchase hormone and antibiotic free, free range chicken and pork, along with whole hog sausage, free range eggs, and for him some goats milk fudge (it has butter in it so I didn't venture to try it).

I've been getting back on the wagon this week as far as working to cut out dairy again. I have made up my mind that next year will be the year I kick Cow based dairy for good. I still need to experiment with Sheep and Goat based dairy items to see if I have issues with them but as far as Cow based dairy goes, I'm done. I simply cannot stand to continue to consume something that makes me so ill.

I'm hoping once we've done the juicing fast/Reboot in January I will be able to test some other possible food allergies/sensitivities by using an elimination style diet. It may be that next year is the year I go commercial meat free if I can avoid it. It's a lofty goal, so we will see where I end up.

I can't wait to juice it up, as such I am already working on preparing my body to hit the ground running! We're starting tomorrow with Mean Green made with organic apples and carrots, and CSA greens. Woo!

Happy Holidays!

A Missing Blogger

So it's been ages again since I updated. Things have been crazy with work, the war on cleaning the house, and Logician starting Acupuncture School (yep a massage therapist and a acupuncturist in the same house!).

I made him a few Bento for the first few days of school, but it became so much easier to pack a bag of instant Vietnamese Soup (ramen but with rice noodles) and send him to school with that and a Lara bar. But not exceptionally healthy...

So now we're trying an alternate plan of making things in the slow cooker (or on the stove) which we can eat for several days in a row. We made a quick chili last week that took us three days to finish, followed by a beef stew/pot roast contraption that took two or three more days. We sort of fell off the wagon a bit this weekend as I was on vacation from work for a few days, but today we're getting back in the grove with some homemade veggie broth which will become chicken soup.

I checked out Cybele Pascale's Allergy Free Baking cookbook from the library and tried several different recipes from it over the course of the last month. The Red Velvet cake is always wonderful, though the second time I made it I attempted to make homemade powdered sugar out of coconut sugar.

It turned out moderately well, though the icing was a soft toffee brown from the sugar rather than white. It also tasted a bit maple syrup like. Next time I will leave out the vanilla in the icing. Using the coconut sugar however allowed me to make a white sugar free version of the cake, which was amazing!

We also made the Vanilla Scones, though we did not like the way those turned out as much. We're a bit low on the baking flour at this point, so I had to stop while I was ahead. But I did use her recipe for Matzoh as an inspiration to make homemade Matzoh and Matzoh ball soup (GF, DF, Soy Free, but contained egg). It was just as deliciously wonderful.

Vanilla Scones, while cooling

So all in all, fun adventures in cooking are still happening just not making it to press. The Farmer's Market we go to has been dwindling down as summer pressed on. We're hoping it will start to pick up again now that the cooler (supposedly cooler) weather is coming. I leave you with some Bento and Onigiri pictures!

A friend asked for Onigiri instead of Birthday Cake. She also got homemade Kimchi!

This was for school one day, steamed carrots, pork sung filled onigiri, and homemade kimchi.

More pork filled onigiri, plain rice balls, cherries, raisins, snow peas... Oh my.

I am hoping to get back into the Super Secret and What's on Hand challenges, so check back soon!