Blog 2.0: Gather 'Round for Story Time

Hello friends!  How have you been?  First of all, thanks a bunch for letting me take my little break.  Not that you gave me permission per se, but if you're reading this right now, you haven't dumped me from the very busy schedule of your eyeballs, and trust me, time from your eyeballs is precious.

So here we are.  I'm ready to write.  Spring is here and I feel ideas sprouting and growing in my head.  I have several projects in my queue, and am feeling refreshed and renewed.  I don't know how much this blog will be different from before, but I feel better about it.

Love me the beach.

Our trip to Costa Rica was AMAZING, by the way.  It feels cheesy to say that the amazing-ness was so profound and that it changed my life, but a lot of things have the ability to change one's life so it's not entirely untrue either.  There were many moments during the trip where I was brought nearly to tears of joy/excitement, and I can say that I've never been anywhere that was that far away from home that, actually feels like home.  I was uncontrollably weeping to the point of embarrassment on the plane ride home, and we can't wait to find a moment to go back.

Love me the jungle.  See the bridge we crossed earlier?

Sure, some of you may be thinking: well duh, it was vacation, no one wants their vacation to end... which is also totally true.  But there was something about this trip that was more than that.

I think I will tell you a story of one of our adventures from our trip.  So gather 'round the fire kids, (since spring in Seattle still requires a fire,) and listen close.


When we arrived in CR, we drove out to the Pacific Coast to a tiny little town called Playa Grande.  It's a little beach on a tiny peninsula, and the whole beach is a leatherback turtle reserve.  Leatherbacks are the biggest of the sea turtles and nest between November and February.  The hotel where we stayed is the only one directly on the beach, and is considered an ecohotel since they are really careful not to disturb the natural area with their presence.  Unfortunately, nesting season technically ends on Feb 15th, and we got there on Feb 17th.  Ah well.  The beach is off limits after dark though, so hatched turtle babies can get to the ocean, and late egg layers can still do their thing.  We were bummed that we barely missed the Playa Grande turtle tours, but we later found out that our guide who led our estuary tour, Jonathan, also "does turtle tours" on another beach.  We told him we were interested, and he told us to meet him in the hotel restaurant at 6:15 the next evening.

When 6:15pm came along, Jonathan led us down to the dark parking lot (dark because the hotel can't have a lot of lights on the beach to distract baby turtles,) where he introduced us to his friend Carlos who "works for the national parks."  Carlos seemed nice but shy, and didn't seem to speak English very well.  It was too dark to see what he looked like but he had the darker complexion of a native Guanacastan.  Oh, and he was on a scooter.  We stood around feeling confused for the next few minutes as Jonathan ran around, and next thing you know, Jonathan is saying bye to us and we are instructed to follow Carlos on his scooter with our rental car.  Shawn was a little wary about driving at night, but whatever.

So off we go.  Carlos leading on his scooter, a family which consisted of an older couple, a younger woman, and her preteen son in a sedan following him, and us bringing up the rear in our Diahatsu BeGo (a mini SUV.)  We drive out of Playa Grande for about 10 minutes, and after a quick right turn, Carlos suddenly pulls off onto the side of the road.  He gets off his scooter and comes and tells us in broken English that we are at his house and he needs to go inside for about 5 minutes and whether he could drop his scooter off and ride with us.  We're a bit surprised, but agree.  We laugh about this while Carlos is in his house, but true to his word, he comes back in 5 minutes and hops into the back seat.  We turn around and we are back on our way.

He tells us to take a few turns, and about 3 minutes later we end up on an unpaved dirt road.  This road is pretty darn bumpy.  We take it nice and slow to make sure the family doesn't mess up their rental behind us.  Meanwhile, Carlos starts talking.  He asks us about what we do, what life is like for us at home, and then tells us about his two sons, one of them who plays the trumpet...  The conversation is a bit slow since we are trying to communicate in broken Spanish and his broken English, but we are having a great time.  He even pulls out his flip phone and plays some Tipico brass music for us to hear what his son plays.  Throughout this whole 20 minute conversation we continue to drive down a one lane dirt road.  It is pitch dark and there are very few signs of civilization around us.  If Carlos wasn't so friendly, I would have been worried about our safety.

Then Carlos instructs us to take a right.  With this he also adds, "this road is really bad."  Ha.  But it's true.  It's much worse than the last road that I thought was bad.  Now we have to go really slow.  Shawn has to navigate the potholes and ditches, and the already shot suspension on our rental is squeaking like the dickens.  After 10 minutes of driving probably a half mile, we finally end up in a clearing on the beach.  There is a small parking lot with a big van that says "turismo por estudiante" on it and a couple other SUVs and cars.  Carlos immediately tells us to turn off our lights as we're parking, and we get out to meet our companions and make our way to the beach.

Now let me tell you about this beach.

It is PARADISE.

The stars are out, the temperature is perfect for the skirt and tank top I'm wearing and the sand is still warm from the sun.  Carlos instructs us to stay put while he goes to look for turtles, then disappears down the beach.  We start talking to our tour companions and find out the older couple is from Bend, Oregon and their daughter and grandson are from Bainbridge Island.  Crazy.  Looking around there are about a dozen or so other people hanging out down the beach, clearly here for the same reason.

After 20 minutes, Carlos comes back and lets us know a turtle was currently making her way up the beach.  So we wait.  Apparently we need to give her some time to settle in before approaching her.  When we are able approach her, Carlos explains in his all-of-a-sudden-good English, we need to stay out of her line of sight at all times and remain very quiet.  He explains a little bit about the nesting habits of the black turtle and we get excited.  After a while, he leads us over to where she came out of the ocean to see the tracks that she left on the beach.  This is where I almost lose it for the first time of the night.  The trail is about 3-4 feet wide and it's awesome.  You can see where her flippers dug into the sand and the line her heavy belly made while she struggled up the beach.  I have a thing with tracks and trails.  The natural mystery of it all just gets me going.  So we follow it up the beach and, though we have to stay about 30 feet away still, if we look hard enough we are able to make out a dark mound up near the grass line that is digging around.  We still need to give her time to settle into digging.

So we wait again.  There are about 30 people on the beach at this point.  We sit down and I start playing in the sand like a child.  I bury my legs a few times, watch it fall through my fingers and get picked up by the perfect breeze, and just enjoy the feeling of it between my toes.  We watch the stars, discuss whether a light on the horizon is a star or a boat, and eventually take a wee nap.  Seriously, it was kind of a long wait.  Then Carlos tells us we can get closer.  Now we are able to get to within 6 feet of her, and we watch her dig.  There are a few other tour guides around and they set up a red light for us to see her better.  One of us explains that she has chosen a bad spot with too much grass and will likely not succeed tonight.

After watching her a few minutes, Carlos tells us there's another turtle down the beach.  We go over to see her but have to stay 20 yards or so away since she's still looking for a place to start digging.  This one's under the trees so we are told she, too, will likely not succeed and will have to come back the next evening to try again.  Ten minutes of rooting around later, she suddenly turns around and starts back toward the ocean. This is the second moment I almost lose it.  Watching her make her way back to the ocean, for some reason, made me really emotional.  Seeing a creature that is likely older than I am, who lives 99.999% of her life in the ocean, lugging her heavy body down the sand after failing to lay her eggs just made me sad but inspired at the same time.  Once she passed where we were standing, we lined up behind her and just followed her all the way down to the water.  It was just such an amazing sight, I don't think there are words to adequately explain the emotions I felt.

After seeing turtle #2 back to the ocean, we went back to turtle #1 to find that she had officially decided that the "poor spot" she had chosen was good enough to lay eggs.  For the next half an hour, we watched her ever so carefully dig a smaller deeper hole with her back flippers, within the large hole she had made with her front flippers.  It was adorable how delicate, slow, and precise she was.  Leave it to a mama to take all the time she needs for her babies.  There was a biologist there who started helping her out, so that the sand wouldn't fall back into the hole.

Then she was ready to lay.

(You can see two eggs drop at the very end.  Unfortunately, the stupid lady who forgot to turn off her flash made the biologist angry and he turned the light off.)

It was surreal.  How much longer will we be able to see something like this?  With all the development and habitat destruction happening on beaches all over the world, the days are numbered for our prehistoric friends.  I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to be there and share in two very different moments with 2 different lady turtles.  I know they don't give two shits about the fact that I was there, but I felt special that they decided to come up the beach on that night.

On the drive home, our car was a bit quieter, but Carlos mentioned that he also sells coconuts.  I had been wanting one since we arrived in Playa Grande, so he said he would meet us at the hotel the next morning before we left for the next leg of our trip. 

This is when my favorite picture of our trip was taken.

We WILL find Carlos when we go back.

We were happy with our delicious coconut, and happy to support our new friend who was instrumental in the amazing experience from the night before.

So there you have it.  Sorry for the lengthiness of the story, but it was such an amazing four hours that I just felt like I had to tell it and attempt to share the strong emotions that were flooding through me that evening.

Stay tuned for more Urban Hobby Homesteader 2.0!

All the best,

Hana

Recharging and Refueling

Dear Gentle Readers-

As you may have noticed, I've been majorly slacking in the blogging department.  I have since taken this as a sign that I think I need a bit of a break.  I have written all I can write about at this point, and the last thing I want to do is get redundant.  There are only so many posts about the ladies and gardening that I can write.  I find that sometimes recipe posts can be boring and I've honestly been really busy.  I feel like my idea and inspiration bank is empty.

This is a few months coming.  My writing has gotten stale, and I don't want to waste your or my time with stuff that isn't exciting.  I want my posts to have substance and mean something.  I put a lot of effort into each one making sure that it is thoughtful, informative, fun, or interesting, and hopefully more than one of these attributes at once.

Let's take this opportunity to review what I've accomplished through this blog:
*177 posts
*24 followers, 32 email subscribers (some people are both, so I don't know the total following.)
*Over 13,000 page hits.  (AWESOME.)
*28 months

I'm proud.  I want to stay proud.

I had a light bulb moment today at school.  I'm still working it out and it may not amount to anything, much like most of my other ideas, but I'm excited about the possibilities.

I'm also excited about our honeymoon, which will kick off in 4 days.  Yes.  FOUR days.  We're going to Costa Rica.  We'll be heading to the Pacific Coast for a few days, then to the rainforests around an active volcano for the rest of our trip.  It will be epic.  I'll be sure to share some of our experiences when we get back, but I think it will be a great recharging that I will need to refresh my perspective and start a new chapter in my life.  Our lives.

So I'll be back.  This blog has become an integral part of my life and I need it for various reasons.  But I also want it to be worth something.  I just need a break.

In the meantime, I hope your day to day is filled with coziness and laughter.

See you in March.

Love,
Hana

Going to See the Birdies

To distract ourselves from the pangs of hunger during our post-holiday detox, the hubs and I decided to drive down to Olympia to check out the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge.  I saw something about it on TV and immediately decided I had to go there.  I love birds and we are always watching them out our windows, but decided that it would be nice to see something other than juncos, finches, and chickadees for a change.

And see we did.  It was awesome.  The rain held off and we saw more water fowl than I've ever seen in my life.  To top it off, we even saw three different species of mammal.  So cool.  We were hungry, but it was so nice to spend a few hours outside, taking in the fresh air and being a part of a world that is not quite our own.

The sky was really cool.

We were following these green winged teal because they were so cute.

There was a belted kingfisher on those trees.

Greater yellowlegs!

Did I mention that the sky was really cool?

BEAVER!!!

GBH! GBH! GBH! We were thinking possibly a juvenile.

Geese are big.

 Final species list was as follows:
* Pied-billed Grebe
* Great Blue Heron (tons)
* Canada Goose
* Green-winged Teal
* Mallard
* Gadwall
* Ring-necked Duck
* American Widgeon
* Bufflehead
* Northern Harrier
* Bald Eagle (so many!)
* Greater Yellowlegs
* Ring Billed Gull
* Belted Kingfisher
* Downy Woodpecker
* Northern Flicker
* American Crow
* Black-capped Chickadee
* Marsh Wren
* Song Sparrow
* Dark-eyed Junco
* Mountain Beaver
* Sea Lion
* Harbor Seal

The ones in italics are the ones that are new to my bird list.  I LOVE adding new species to my life list.  I know, I'm a HUGE nerd.

That's 21 birds and 3 mammals.  I got so excited about the beaver that in my excitement I dropped my camera when Shawn and I were switching for binoculars and I scared it away.  But at least I got a shot of it.  It was also really fun to watch the seal and sea lion swimming around in the estuary.  Of course the birds were awesome as well.  My knowledge of water fowl is fairly limited so it was a fabulous way to test my ID powers.

Seriously, go there.  It's easy, only 3 dollars per four people, and a great way to get some laid back exercise.  I don't think there are very many situations where I feel more at peace than in a location where nature is allowed to take over just a little bit.  Thanks birds.

*Update: It has been brought to my attention that the "beaver" we saw is more likely a Nutria, a very large semi aquatic rodent.  They are considered pests so they're not as exciting as beavers, but I've never seen one before, so I'm still happy.

Post Holiday Detox: Lessons Learned

It's been 7 days since the end of our 4-day post holiday detox/cleanse experiment.  I've eaten pizza 3 times: free pizza day at the gym, at a committee meeting, and pizza Friday at school, and I've thoroughly enjoyed every bowl of cereal I've had this week.  My cough and cold are nearly gone and I feel back to my normal self.

So now that my head and body are back into the normal routine, I am in a good place to look back on our experiment and reflect on it logically and realistically.

So here we go.

The Hunger
I expected to feel pretty hungry.  Looking at the meals, there was almost no protein, and some fiber, but not too much since the whole point was to give our digestive track a break.  We were basically eating water mixed with fruit and vegetables.  So we were hungry for most of the 4 days.  The food was filling, but it only lasted about 2 or 3 hours.  We tried to curb the hunger with herbal tea and tiny oranges, which did the trick, but just enough to get us to the next meal.  We attacked each meal like zombies to fresh brains.  The hardest part was at night.  I feel like hunger pangs are much more painful when trying to fall asleep, and this was true for all 4 nights.  It pretty much sucked.

The Food
Some good, some not so good, but when you're really hungry, any food is pretty darn delicious.  There are some recipes I will keep in my arsenal, and some I will never make again.  (Can you say green kale smoothie? Gross.)  In case you haven't read the posts with the recipes that we tried, or would like to revisit them again here they are: The First 48 and The Final 40.

The Mind
Meh.  I don't think I was any more or less focused or at peace.  Just hungry.

The Body
I think my energy levels were up on the first full day, but after that, I can't say that I felt much different.  Though we were hungry and knew that we had little by way of energy coming from our food, we made sure to do something active each day.  On the first day we did some gardening and backyard work, on the second day we went to see the birds at the Nisqually wildlife refuge (a post on that to come later,) and on the third day we decided to do some gentle yoga.  The yoga was NOT good for me.  Halfway through, I felt incredibly nauseated and spent the rest of the afternoon feeling green and sipping on ginger tea.  Shawn, on the other hand, stated he was feeling pretty darn energized on the third full day.  He messed up his neck on the first day and was really feeling the caffeine withdrawals on the second day so the third day is when he finally was able to focus on how the detox was making him feel.  He also noticed a big improvement in his digestion.  I may have mentioned before, but we wonder about a gluten issue with him so this may be why he felt the effects of the detox more postitively that I did.

The Weight
We don't have a working scale at our house and I was afraid to know how much I weighed before the detox so I have no idea if I lost any weight or not.  Probably not.  I wouldn't be surprised if my metabolism decided to get back at me for not giving it enough energy by slowing down and storing as much as it could.  Asshole.

The Lessons
1. Almond milk is delicious.
2. Coconut milk is not.  Too thick.
3. Smoothies make great breakfasts.
4. Brown rice is nice and chewy.
5. It's ok to not have a large lump of protein with every meal.
6. Garbanzo beans aren't so bad.
7. Starving yourself of all the things you love about life is not the best way to feel better, or to make yourself eat less of those things.  After the detox ended, I spent a couple days eating all of the things that I dreamed about during the cleanse.  I don't think I overdid myself, but I did eat more that I normally would have.  I just couldn't help it.  I really couldn't.
8. Vegetables are delicious and I will eat more of them.

The Conclusion
After weighing the pros and cons, I think the pros barely outweigh the cons.  I discovered some new ways to eat healthier and I know that I can eat less during the day and feel ok.  I'm glad enough that I did it, but will never do it again.  I just didn't feel "cleansed" enough.  Sure, I felt alright, but it just wasn't worth it to me.  It is just who I am to love sweets and delicious food and I just have to be able to live with this love in a way to have a relationship with food that is not abusive. 

Shawn and I signed up for a 15k race in March so we have some serious motivation to get moving and train our bodies for a long distance run.  I'm confident that this coupled with my new knowledge of food will get me the results that I was hoping for from this detox.  That's the better way to do it anyway.

Final thought: My feelings and results from this detox are purely my own.  We all have very different compositions and it could be that your experience will be very different from mine.  So try it.  And if you do, I want to hear all about it.

Post Holiday Detox: The Final 48 (or more like 40)

Here we are, at the end of the detox.  We made it most of the way, three and two thirds days out of four, but pretty good, I think.  We didn't do exactly what the two websites told us to do, but I think we stuck to it pretty well so we feel pretty good about ourselves.

Oh, and here are the two websites again, where I got the original recipes:
http://goop.com/journal/make/15/detox
http://theorganicbeautyblog.com/2012/01/02/4-day-post-holiday-cleanse/

Saturday

Breakfast:  Mixed Berry Smoothie (same as Thursday breakfast)

Way better than that bad kale smoothie we had on Friday.  I substituted a half cup of coconut milk for some of the almond milk and it was just as good as before.

Lunch:  Brown Rice Stir Fry
Ingredients
2 cups of brown rice cooked 
1 zucchini
2 carrots
1 clove garlic
1 tbs grapeseed oil
2 tbs organic tamari

Saute the vegetables and garlic in the grapeseed oil for about 10 minutes.  Toss with 1 tbs of the tamari when they are done cooking.  Toss the rest of the tamari in with the rice.  Top the rice with the veggies and enjoy.

The review:  Oh man, this was like eating real food.  It was so delicious.  At this point in the cleanse we haven't really had any carbs so this was a major life saver and moral booster.  I just wish we could have eaten more.  Shawn asked if he could have seconds and I had to sadly say no... though I caught him in the kitchen later stealing a mouthful of rice.  Poor guy.

Dinner:  Miso Soup
Ingredients
4 cups of water
a handful of bonito fish flakes
a handful of kale torn into bite sized pieces
3 dried shiitake mushrooms
4 tbs of miso
a pinch of dried wakame
1/2 block of silken tofu

Heat the water in a small soup pot until bubbles form around the edge.  Put the bonito into a small colander or strainer and let it sit in the simmering water for 5 minutes.  During that time, you can add the mushrooms to let them rehydrate.  After 5 minutes you can take out the bonito flakes.  Make sure you get all the good broth out of it, so you might want to squeeze it a bit.  Take out the mushrooms and cut into strips and put them back into the broth.  In a small bowl, combine the miso paste with a bit of the broth and whisk to combine. Put it back into the pot.  Cut the tofu into small cubes and add that with the wakame and kale to the pot.  Let simmer (but not boil) and serve when the kale is cooked.

The review:  Miso soup is good.  So this wasn't anything new for us.  The original recipe didn't have tofu, but I just couldn't justify it as real food without it.  So I added it and it was good.  I think it still fit into the guidelines of the cleanse since it doesn't have any of the forbidden elements in it.

Sunday

Breakfast:  Awesome Energy Smoothie
Ingredients
1/4 cup almond butter
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 cup organic almond milk
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 cup organic frozen peaches
1 banana
1 teaspoon agave syrup
1/2 cup ice

Blend together and enjoy.

The review:  The banana provided a new flavor that was really good.  I will make this again just to have as a breakfast treat, regardless of whether I need to detox or not.

That's it.  We had a rather important football game to watch starting in the early afternoon and we didn't really feel like torturing ourselves by watching football with friends and not eating football food so that was the end of the experiment.  We didn't dive right in and eat like crap, but that first tortilla chip I ate was amazing.

I'll write another post with my final thoughts about the cleanse in the next few days.  I have a lot of thoughts and I don't feel like writing them all down now.  For now, I'm going to go into the kitchen and eat whatever I want.  Yes...

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I just didn't have the energy.

Post Holiday Detox: The First 48

Yep, this is hard.  Shawn is taking a nap, trying to sleep off the caffeine deprivation hangover, and I have to use all my willpower to stay out of the kitchen before I eat something that will undo all the work I've put in so far.  Each time I close my eyes, all I see is cake.

Sigh.

I think I'm going to go through the various meals we've had so far and rate them so that if you, my dear readers, decide to go through this, will be better equipped to do it in a way to minimize suffering.  All my recipes have been coming from two different websites.  I've included my recipes below, but all the originals can be found here and here.  Oh, and all the recipes make 2 servings, except for the squash soup, that makes about 5.

So we didn't have to start by jumping into a full day, we started with dinner on Wednesday:

Butternut Squash Soup
Ingredients
1 large butternut squash
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic
3 carrots
2 apples
2 cups vegetable broth
3 cups water
1 tsp nutmeg
herbs of your choice (I used cayenne, thyme, and sage)
salt and pepper to taste

Peel and chop the squash, apples and carrots into bite sized pieces.  Mince the onion and toss into a soup pot with a dash of olive oil.  Saute for a few minutes then add the garlic.  Add the liquids and bring to a boil.  Boil the squash, carrots, and apple for about 10 minutes.  Add the herbs and spices and let simmer until the veggies are tender.  Then, blend with an immersion blender until smooth. 

The Result:  This was really good.  I often make butternut squash soup and add sour cream but this really didn't need it.  We were a bit sad to not have a large slice of crusty rustic bread to go with it, but as a first meal for our detox, we really couldn't complain.

Thursday

Start the day off first thing with a cup of warm lemon water.  This gets your digestive juices going (or so I've read), and it's good to rehydrate after 8 hours of no liquid intake.

Breakfast: Mixed Berry Smoothie
Ingredients
1 cup frozen mixed berries
2 cups almond milk
2 scoops/2 servings green power powder*
1 tbs almond butter

*This can be found in the supplements section in a grocery store.  There are several different brands, I had to go with the only one that my particular store carried.

Blend everything together in a blender and enjoy.

The Result:  This is also really good.  I've never had almond milk before because I really hate soy milk, which put me off of all alternative milks.  But the almond flavor is awesome and the berries are good too.  We'll be having this again.

We're drinking a lot of our meals these days.

 Lunch: Salad with Carrot Ginger Dressing
Ingredients
For dressing: 
1 large carrot
1 small shallot
1 tbs chopped ginger
2 tbs white miso
2 tbs rice wine vinegar
1 tbs sesame oil
2 tbs cup grapeseed oil
2 tbs water

Blend all ingredients together in blender till smooth.  The salad can be made up of any pile of greens.  To that, top with a half an avocado, and some thinly sliced red onion.  Pour on the dressing and enjoy.

The review:  Holy hell.  I made this exactly as it said to in the website and it was not good.  Well, I could tell that it could have been good, but it BURNED.  We both barely finished the salad and we were crying at the end.  The above ingredient amounts are what I would do if I made it again.  It has half the shallots and ginger, and twice the avocado.  The original says to top the salad with a half an onion, which was WAY too much.  So I would make this again since the general flavor of the dressing was super delicious, just a bit too spicy.

For snack we've been snacking on satsumas.  They're good and though they aren't much, it helps to take care of the edge between meals.  A mug of hot tea helps with hunger too.

Dinner: Broccoli Spinach Soup with Some Arugula
Ingredients
1 large head of broccoli
1 clove garlic
1 tbs olive oil
1/2 yellow onion
1 cup vegetable stock
1.5 cups water
1/4 tsp each of salt and pepper
a large handful of spinach or arugula or another leafy green of your choice
a smaller handful of sun dried tomatoes chopped

Saute the onion for a few minutes and add the garlic.  Chop the broccoli and add to the onions.  Saute for about 8 minutes.  Add the liquids and bring to a boil.  Simmer until the broccoli is tender, then add the greens until they are wilted.  Use your handy friend the immersion blender and blend until smooth.  Sprinkle the sun dried tomatoes in and enjoy.

The review:  This was better than I thought.  It doesn't have too much substance so you get hungry quite quickly, but we are making it again when we can have bread and some cheese.  I added the tomatoes to make it more interesting, but I've read in some websites that you should avoid nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, etc.), but there are some recipes that include bell peppers, so I'm assuming some is ok.

Though I doubt we're allowed to have dessert during a detox, our neighbor gave us some pomegranates so we allowed ourselves a bit of a before bed snack.  C'mon, it's just high antioxidant juice, after all.

Friday

Started the day off again with another mug of warm lemon water.

Breakfast: Green Peach Smoothie
Ingredients
1 cup of frozen peaches
3 leaves of kale
1/2 avocado
1.5 cups almond milk
1/2 cup coconut milk

Blend together in a blender till smooth and enjoy.

The review:  This was ok.  The original recipe called for mango, which I understand since it has a stronger flavor.  The peach flavor was completely taken over by the avocado and kale.  It tastes green and it's a bit hard to drink.  But it's not horrible, and by this time we were pretty hungry so we gulped it down to get the hunger pangs to go away.  If I were to make it again, I would use mangoes.

Lunch: Garbanzo Bean Salad
Ingredients
1 can garbanzo beans
1/2 cup each of chopped carrots, celery, and bell pepper
1/4 cup chopped red onion
a handful of chopped cilantro
a handful of chopped scallions
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp rice vinegar
a pinch of salt
pepper to taste

Toss together and refrigerate overnight.

The review:  Once again, too many red onions.  I've halved it above.  It was ok, but I'm not a huge fan of beans or cilantro so this wasn't the best in my opinion.  But, the beans really help to keep you full so that's really nice on this day 2 of a 4-day healthy eating hunger marathon.

Satsumas for snack again. They're really good.

Dinner:  Leftover Butternut Squash Soup  (still delicious, and filling)

Dessert:  The other half of that pomegranate we started yesterday.

We're also drinking lots of herbal tea in between meals, which helps in curbing hunger. 

Coughing Through Christmas

I hope everyone's Christmases and New Years were a blast and full of fun and family and overall goodness. Overall, ours was pretty successful.  Grandma came up from California, thoughtful presents were given and received, lots of delicious food was consumed, and many card games were won and lost.

The hitch was the presence of a tiny black cloud called a cold that I've been battling since the 21st.  It started as a persistent dry cough that followed me everywhere I went.  I didn't let it bother me too much though, as I was determined to have a great Christmas.  No matter how much I tried to cover it, I still ended up coughing on most of my family members and my sister came down with a cold several days later.

The biggest issue with having a cold during the holidays is the whole after-Christmas hangover that follows.  Days of eating heavy food and doing little physical exercise leads to feelings of bloatedness and sluggishness.  It's too cold and wet to feel the motivation to go outside, and everywhere you look, there's a mess to be cleaned.  This cough and cold made all these shitty feelings feel even shittier.

Part of me feels glad that I don't have to take work off to get over this, but the other part of me is angry that my vacation time is being totally wasted.  I can't do anything.  My cough was so bad that I could barely hold a conversation with anybody, my body was exhausted from my non-stop hacking, and the only thing I can do is quarantine myself from everyone so no one else has to go through this.  I've probably gained a bunch of weight from all the rich food and lack of movement.  I feel like Jabba the Hut (minus the womanizing.)  Now I have a constant splitting headache that is magnified every time I cough.  I'm just glad that the amount I'm coughing has been cut in half.

The only things that have brought any relief are Nyquil and a tea concoction I've been guzzling for the last 4 days.  I read somewhere that thyme can be a natural expectorant (nature's Mucinex), and honey ginger tea is great for soothing your throat.  So each day, I've been mincing about an inch of fresh ginger and putting it into my tea strainer that I have for our Keurig.  To that I've also been adding about a quarter of a teaspoon of thyme.  To each freshly brewed cup, I also add a squeeze of lemon and a teaspoon of honey.  I then sit on my couch and desperately cradle the mug to my face while sitting in a fetal position and try to breathe in the sweet ginger vapors to sooth the tickle in my bronchial tubes and let the tea warm my body from the inside out.  It has helped greatly.

My current favorite accessory.

But this whole ordeal got me thinking.  I feel like crap.  This must mean my body is full of crap.  In fact, I know my body is full of crap because I put it there.  And crap can't fight colds.  So I need to get it out.  I've always wanted to do a cleanse or a detox.  Shawn and I have 4 days off together starting tomorrow, so here is our chance.  I did some research and found a program, complete with recipes, that lasts 4 days.  We get to eat three meals a day, but three very specific meals.  I'll be making a lot of veggie shakes.  Will we hate it?  Probably.  Will we feel really hungry and sad that we don't get to eat carbs or sugar or dairy or caffeine?  Absolutely.  Will Shawn go into major coffee withdrawals?  Yes.  I know I have a sugar addiction.  That's a fact.  I will go into withdrawals as well.  Now Shawn hasn't really had to go through the whole cold thing as bad as I have but we've been wondering about a possible gluten issue with him so he's on board with this as well.  We might not last all 4 days, but we will try our hardest.

Of course, you will get to read all about it.

Next time you hear from me, I will likely be angry and miserable.

Here's to health and feeling better in the New Year.

Oh boy.