Weekly Menu

Mon L: LO D: Chili fried rice, Cauliflower 59965
Tues L: LO fried rice D: Frozen Chkn & Rice, Broccoli 155018
Wed L: LO Ckn and Rice, D: Fish Taco 216778, veggie & rice side
Thurs L: Out D: LO's

Fri L: LOs D: Tilipia 129996, Green Beans 31403

Meal Plans

I've wanted to go back for a while now and track what my meal plans are so I know if I'm making too much of something, or repeating things too often, or if I just want to look back because I vaguely remember having a great pot roast and can't remember what the recipe is.

So.. starting from a while ago
Wed L: Veggie soup with chicken D: Beef Stroganoff 73922
Thurs L: Beef Strog LO D: Tilipia 251802 and Green Beans 294141
Fri L: Veggie Soup LO D: Rotisserie Chicken w/ Stuffing
Sat: L: Beef Stew D: Tilipia 251802 and Green Beans 294141
Sun L: Veggie Soup w/chkn D: Chicken and Rice 12458, Salad
Mon L: Roast Ckn & rice D: Tilipia 57474, Zucchini 307575
Tues L: Mushroom Soup D: Taco Soup 81029, Frozen Pizza
Wed L: LO Pizza D: Pasta with jar sauce, Broccoli 61830
Thurs L: Out D: Tilipia 22639, Cauliflower 94989
Fri L: LO Pasta D: LO's
Sat L: Pizza/Chkn & Rice D: Enchilada & Sauce
Sun L: Out D: Tilipia 192282 w/rice and veggies
Mon L: Enchilada LO D: Pot Roast 27208, Mashed Cauliflower
Tues L: LO Pot Roast D: Pasta w/jar sauce, steamed broccoli
Wed L: LO Pasta D: Tilipia Taco 216778, veggie/rice side
Thurs L: Out D: Chicken & rice
Fri L: Out D: LOs
Sat L: Chkn & rice D: Out
Sun L: Mexican Casserole 16328 D: Shepard's Pie 63355, steamed broccoli
Mon L: Shep Pie Lo D: Tilipia 169764, Cauliflower 19710
Tues L: Mexican Casserole LO D: Bourbon Ckn over rice, Green Beans 294141
Wed L: Bourbon Ckn LO D: Tilipia 129996, Broccoli 69501
Thurs: THANKSGIVING :)
Fri L: LO D: LO
Mon L: LO D: Tilipia 169764, Cauliflower 19710
Tues L: LO pasta D: Turkey 30887 & Salad
Wed L: LO Turkey D: Turkey 25700 & steamed broccoli
Thurs L: LO Turkey D: LOs
Fri L: LO D: LOs

There, now I can keep track better :)

December personal challenge

My parents already gave me my Christmas (and Birthday) presents for this year - a beautiful new digital piano with just about every feature imaginable. My old one broke around the end of the summer. It just wouldn't turn on any more out of the blue one day. I've been without a piano for 3 or 4 months now and really have been missing it.

So now that I have a piano again, I've been reading stuff on line about the best ways to practice to get better. One site I found said that the best way is to memorize all the music as you go, so you end up with a whole bunch of stuff you can play from memory. I've decided to try that out for a bit and see how it goes.

Well, it turns out I absolutely suck at memorizing music :P I guess there is a reason I don't have a single other song memorized. I sat down to learn Somewhere Over the Rainbow and it's taken me days but I just about have it now. I am also so bored with that song I can't even begin to tell you (though with the sheet music I can now play it perfectly which is saying something at least!).

This morning I was thinking that I should really be using this great time in Dec to learn Xmas songs instead of just random ones. I have about a billion xmas sheet music books so I picked one and by Dec 25, I plan to have 8 songs memorized. That is my challenge to myself!!

I hope I get better at this memorization thing. I couldn't believe how bad I was at it for Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

My first Xmas song on my list to memorize is Away in a Manger. So far, I've got 1 line down already. I'm on my way! :D

Olympics

I've never really cared for the Olympics before but some how this year I totally got into them. I can't get enough!! I'm not sure what changed in me to suddenly love them but I'm having a good time cheering on the Americans.

It is really making me want to do all sorts of athletic things now though. I bought a new 1-piece swim suit that I'll be able to go to the gym and wear to do laps at the pool. Thanks Michael Phelps, lol. At least the suit was on sale. It was only 30 dollars when it was originally 120. Not a bad deal!

I'd also like to do Gymnastics but at this point in my life I think I can safely say I am not flexible enough for that kind of thing!

Then we watched the women's marathon and now I want to run super far and fast. Not because it looked like fun like the swimming or gymnastics, but because of how awesome their stomachs looked! They were so flat!! I really do need to add some distance to my running though. Doing 2 miles a few times a week doesn't really make me much of a runner :P

Oddly enough, while the Olympics make me want to work out, they make my husband want cake and ice cream. So one night we made a late night run to Jewel and picked up some, and stuffed ourselves while we watched our girls gymnastic team. Hahaha :)

Semi-Charmed Kind of Life

My husband and I were driving the other day and some woman pulled out into traffic right in front of us. We were driving straight on a busy street and I just don't think she even ever looked in our direction. She just pulled out as she felt like it and we had to hit our brakes so we didn't hit her. I commented how it must be nice to live such a charmed life where everyone just looks out for you all the time.

Then it kind of hit me. I sort of DO have that kind of life. My friends and family look out for me all the time.

Phil recently heard of a job opening at his company and he told me about it and then emailed me the link for the site. Elise's friend had an opening at her company and Elise called me about it and put me in touch with her friend. Neither job really seemed quite right for me at this time, but how awesome to have eyes and ears out like that into the world. My husband's parents also submitted my resume in with their companies. My parents' friend has emailed me about job openings in my area at her company as well.

As soon as I started thinking about all of these things, I really started to feel like the luckiest person is the world. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate these things previously, but thinking about all of these instances together in a big pile made me realize just how charmed my life is right now. And it IS nice! :)

Ahhh @!#P$ insurance companies!! Part 2 and 3

So when we left my story, I was waiting for my HR person to call me back.

Part 2:
I did get a call back while I was in my car driving on the highway, not from the rep I called but someone else in my HR dept. She said she wanted to help me but she didn't understand my problem. I tried to explain that I just needed a paper from Blue Cross Blue Shield saying my coverage with them was over. She was very nice but still confused. How could I need that from them when I didn't have BCBS insurance in the first place? I told her I DID have them for insurance. She said I couldn't have them because they weren't an option offered through our company. ?@?!?!?@#:#!P!?! HUH ?? ?!?!!?!?! I KNOW I have BCBS insurance, I've been dealing with them for weeks over this other problem with my doctor's office I'd been having. The lady just kept insisting that I couldn't have them and I needed to find out who I did have because even though she's HR, she doesn't have access to my records so she couldn't tell for me.


Part 3:
I had to give it a day off between dealing with this to calm down. I devised a new plan though. I'd call up my insurance company, ask when was the last day I had coverage with them, and then when they tell me, I say, Great, I want it in writing! Ha, it's fool-proof! ....
So I try out my new plan, and they tell me they don't have an end date for me, I need to contact my HR dept. Okayyy... I call back the lovely lady from HR I spoke to the day before. I tell her that my insurance, BCBS, doesn't have an end date for me and needs her to send it to them. She still says I don't have BCBS but that it's not her side that sends that sort of thing, it's another company my HR works with called Connect One. Great, I get that number and I call them to tell them to send my end date to my insurance!

Well. This part turned out to be pretty much pure hell. It was more menus and options than I have ever seen a phone system have before. Plus it was voice activated too so if I so much as breathed gently into the phone, it took that as some crazy answer from me. Once it suddenly switched into Spanish because I sighed too hard. There was supposed to be some number to dial to turn it off and I tried it but then it said that was not a valid code. So I pushed all sorts of thing and listened to all sorts of menus. Finally it said connecting you and by the way, here's the number we are connecting you to, and it was THE PHONE NUMBER FOR BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD THAT I HAD BEEN CALLING ALL OF THIS TIME AND BEING TOLD THEY COULDN'T HELP ME. WTF?!?! Now I was pretty much losing it. Plus I was no longer covered by insurance so if something happened today, I was going to be SOL. I needed to get this resolved URGENTLY.

I hung up and called the number back and tried another set of menus that I hoped wouldn't just connect me to BCBS. I reached a person!!!! YES!!! She answered, Retiree pension and benefits, how can I help you? Noooooo!! I told her who I was trying to reach and she said all she could do was put me back into the menu system, but I needed to hit 4 for medical. I told her I DID hit 4 and that's how I got to her!! She said sorry and dumped me back into the menu, but something went wrong and it hung up on me.

I called the number back and tried MORE menus that sounded right. This time, at every new menu set of options, I immediately tried to hit 0 for an operator or any human at all. Every time it told me that it was not a valid selection. Finally, finally, finally, I got through to someone who sounded like she might actually be in the right area to help me!! I tell her my problem and she GETS IT!! She's nice, she's polite, she's smart, she's understanding. She looks up my records and........ I have no end date in the system with them either!! She says I need to call HR and have them send the end date to Connect One so they can send the end date to some other company called ADP so they can send it to BCBS. REALLY??!???? Oh . My . God . So.

I called HR back and left a message with this new information............

I still have not heard from HR again.

BUT. There is good news :)
My husband was able to go into his HR office and plead my case about how I couldn't get the paperwork from BCBS and his insurance WILL be able to add me on, effective immediately, and I can just get the paperwork whenever I can get it. YES!!! :D So it's a happy ending, even though I don't have 100% of what I need and I will apparently have to deal with these bozos for a while longer.

Ahhh @!#P$ insurance companies!!

GAH I am so frustrated! I just went round in circles what felt like a billion times with my insurance company. My insurance with them ends tomorrow and all I need is a statement that shows that fact. I call and the lady says no, you need to call this number instead. So I call them and that number is only for Cobra benefits?! That's not what I need. I call back (and get the same dippy lady again, I think) and I try to explain my problem in different terms. She says I need to be transfered to the benefits department. The person that answers there treats me as if I'm the dumbest freak on the planet because I was transfered to her because her number CLEARLY isn't the right one. She gives me another number to call and tells me to also contact my HR department. I call the number she gives me and it's for Time Warner employees only?!?!?! SERIOUSLY?!? Okaayyy. I give in and call my HR dept at work, and of course, my lovely HR rep isn't there, rarely was when I worked there either. I leave a message for her but I really doubt I'll be hearing from her any time soon. All I want is one damn piece of paper that shows I no longer have coverage with them! How can this honestly be so difficult?

Raw foods, on the move

I'm moving all of my raw food blogging to http://dkdreamsofgreens.blogspot.com/
I just think it'd be nice to have everything in one spot :)

Green Smoothies!

I have finally discovered green smoothies! I'm so in love with them! If you aren't familiar with them, basically it's like some spinach or other greens mixed in with bananas or some other fruits in a blender until it's at a smoothie consistency. It'll look bright, beautiful green but it will taste like whatever fruit you've put in the blender. It's so good and it's such an easy and fabulous way to get tons of greens without all the salad chewing.

I don't know what it is about it but it's all I want to eat. So I've decided, I'm going to commit to a week where that is all that I eat. Starting this Monday, July 7, I am only going to enjoy green smoothies for 1 week. I will be feasting on them left and right. I am so excited about my new feasting plan, I can't even put it into words!! I already spoke with my husband about it because I don't want him to think I'm doing anything weird or drastic or won't be getting enough nutrients. I want him to be comfortable with the way I'm eating as well. Plus, I really do need his support because if he's asking to go out to dinner every night, then I'm going to be doomed to fail. I don't think I could walk into a restaurant with my smoothie and just have that while he has a whole meal.

I'm so pumped up about this plan and I can't wait to put together a grocery list with all the great smoothies I want to try to make! I got a copy of Green for Life from the library and I'm going to use several of those suggestions to start with. It turns out, I'm not a huge fan of mango, which is a common fruit to use, so I will have to make some substitutions. I'm okay with banana although it is not my favorite. I can't wait to find out what my favorite combination will be! The fun starts Monday! :)

Raw Food!

Okay, so I've been a little behind updating. Here's what happened. The dog was soooo sick for days and days and I was freaking out about her. We had her into the vet 2 times where we were told she was totally healthy and they didn't know why she was so sick :P Given lots of meds but she didn't respond to them very well so it was just all really stressful. Just as she was recovering, all of my relatives came in town for my sister's wedding. I had a lot to do in the final days leading up to the wedding and it was all pretty stressful and busy for a while. Between all of that, I kept around 50-60% raw until the Wednesday before her wedding when it was just impossible to find the time for it, and I gave in and ate the Standard American Diet (SAD) until this past Monday. I've never been so happy to get back to an eating schedule in my life! So now I'm back to raw and very happy about it and should be getting back to regular updates soon! :)

Raw/Living food - Day 6

Today was great for my raw foods, at least up until dinner. I could never do this sort of thing while I had a job so I am really appreciating getting to spend all of the time right now focused on my health and other interests. It's going to be so sad when I have to go back to work! First thing this morning, I made a fruit juice smoothie that came out delicious. It had a lot of strawberries, 2 nectarines, a plum, and a mango. When I tasted this initially, it was a bit too over-sweet to me, so I added some watermelon, rinds included. This did the trick! It added some lovely flavor but muted down the sweetness. My husband, who thinks fruit is always too sweet, will really enjoy this I think, and I like him eating raw fruits, so I'm going to try to make up a batch of this before he goes to work in the morning so he can have half.

Speaking of my husband, I don't think I've mentioned this here yet. He started eating a bit of raw food when I did. I've been shooting for about 66% of my day as raw (2 meals). He was only doing a raw breakfast, and all fruits really, no vegetables. Within just a few days, his serious heartburn issues cleared up all on their own - no other food changes! He has been doing things over the past several months like cutting down on sodas and eating less for dinner, eating dinner earlier, eating less tomatoes and spicy foods, ect, and it all helped a bit, but he was still having problems with it and taking lots of Prilosec and Tums. But after just a week of adding the raw food in to his diet, he kissed his heartburn bye-bye. Unfortunately, he just doesn't like the taste of fruits much, and raw veggies even less so it was a struggle for him, but I know he liked the results so he's going to keep trying to find things he likes. I just wanted to share his exciting 'success' story with raw foods, and it all happened in such little time! Okay, back to me.

After I ran, I cooled down with a veggie juice the way I have been doing for most breakfasts. This drink is really growing on me. My first experience with it was so negative! So if you have tried the veggie juices and don't like them, suffer with it for a few days. I really got used to them and learned to enjoy them so I think anyone could! I showered and cleaned the house until I was tired. Then I rested with a good book until I fell asleep for a nice little nap. I didn't give myself a chance to make the lunch I had planned up but after I woke up from my nap, around 5 pm, I was starving so I finished off the rest of the Pumpkin Pie in a Bowl from yesterday. It saved great and tasted fabulous today too. I must have been extra hungry because I didn't think it was overly sweet at all.

My husband wanted to go out car shopping after he got home from work so I knew we would probably have to go out to dinner, but I didn't want to AGAIN so I cooked dinner anyways (taco soup) in hopes we could just eat it instead. But no, we rushed right out to the car dealership (put a deposit down for a Honda Fit) and then stopped at TGI Friday's for dinner. I did not make healthy dinner choices. I didn't pick a well combine meal, I overate, and I had way too much fried food. I'm getting really frustrated with my dinners lately, especially since I work so hard to plan out something healthy!! But it seems even the best of my plans get thwarted into eating crap. No wonder it's so hard to lose weight. I did gain half a lb so I'm back up to 42.5 lbs to lose total. I have no hopes that it will be back down for tomorrow :( But hopefully tomorrow I can enjoy my HEALTHY dinner that I have planned and I can feel proud of my food choices! Tomorrow is another day :)

Raw/Living food - Day 5 - Back on Track!

Okay so this isn't exactly day 5 of all of this but close enough for my purposes. The dog was still sick last night and I was up for hours with her so today I have to admit I still did a half-assed job of the raw foods and the lifestyle that goes with it. I did not do my body brushing (I completely 100% just forgot about it), I did not work out (toooooo exhausted) and I did not do my morning papers (I started them and then I think she started throwing up again so I had to quit in the middle). But I did manage to eat my breakfast and lunch both raw! I think that is an important step to getting back into the diet. I think I must have missed my veggies the last few days because my morning drink was sooo delicious to me today! Today was the first time I cut the recipe in half and I will use the other half of the ingredients tomorrow in a new, fresh juice. The lunch (pumpkin pie in a bowl) I made was very tasty at first but too overpoweringly sweet for a full meal. I think if I had mixed it with a salad it would have been okay. I still have a lot of it left so I'll be able to make a second meal from it. I think it's fantastic I'm getting second meals out of these things because this is really going to help me cut down on my grocery bills!

This weekend I spent 30 dollars at Caputos, which is all of my fruits and veggies. I think the only thing I picked up from Target was the Almond Milk, which I think was around 3 dollars, and then at Costco I got romaine lettuce in bulk, which was another 3. If I can cut my Caputo's bill nearly in half by using each meal 2ce, then I'll really be in pretty good shape!

Tonight for dinner I did much worse than I planned. Everything fell apart when my husband came home from work early and wanted to go out looking at cars when I should have been making dinner. When we got home, we were both getting hungry, but the dinner I had scheduled took over an hour to cook. Then, to top it off, I think our dishwasher is broke. It was hugely frustrating to me because I just don't have enough counter space to store a ton of dirty dishes. I had so many dirty dishes that there wasn't even room to start cleaning them because there would be no where to put them once they were washed. I started to get really frustrated and overwhelmed by all of it and ended up asking my husband if we could just do leftovers instead of me fixing another meal as scheduled. I hate going off my schedule but I was starting to flip out. So I ended up with 2 pieces of pizza, 2 breadsticks and way too many french fries and onion rings that we had left over from the other day.

I'm sure with all of this crappy eating tonight, my weight will be up a good bit, especially because the food is all so salty too. However, this morning I was down another bit so I have 42 lbs to lose! I'm on a roll. If only I could get my dinners working the way the rest of my day does. Tomorrow's another day to try to get it right! :)

Raw/Living food - On Pause!

My dog got really sick and I haven't been able to keep up my raw lifestyle plans because we've been spending so much time at the vet and cleaning up her puke, lol. I can laugh, because she's doing a lot better now but it was pretty scary for a while there. But we had very little time for any sort of food preparation and got a lot of take out and pizzas. I'm sure in times of great stress, it would be more helpful to stick with a healthy eating plan, but it still takes me too long to prepare everything and I just didn't have that sort of time. I still did raw breakfasts every morning because those are easy. A piece of fruit or two and you're set!

I'm planning on jumping back on it tomorrow! I have all of my breakfasts and lunches planned out as raw for the whole week. My dinners are healthy (but not properly combined) and hopefully will be delicious also.

My mandoline showed up this weekend! The zyliss one from Amazon.com. I looove it already! I used it to make a non-raw dinner tonight. I sliced through 6 potatoes in no time at all! It's going to be a wonderful addition to my raw lifestyle. OH! And I got seeds and my sprouter this weekend also! My seeds are a "Zesty Sprout Mix" that I bought from Fruitful Yield. I was hoping for broccoli seeds and they stock them but they were out today. They also had mung beans but there was an episode of The Office where they talked about how mung bean sprouting smelled like death. I don't really want that in my kitchen. I'm sooo excited to see my sprouts grow though! Can't wait to get back to raw tomorrow!

Raw/Living food - Day 4

Today has been the day where I felt 'hungriest' so far. I upped my running this morning from 3 miles to 4, so I think that may have also had an effect on how I was feeling. It was pretty warm out today so I'm sure that was draining. I also realized I may just not be eating quite enough. I think for next week I should plan on adding a raw salad with my lunches and dinners. I like salad, especially if I can have tasty lettuce instead of spinach or something strange. It finally dawned on me today that while I made 3 meals out of my beet and sweet potato pasta, it also means that it took me 3 days to eat 1 beet and one sweet potato. That's not really a lot of food when it comes down to it and the point of this plan is just to eat what you want when you want as long as it's the 'right' sort of foods in the right combinations.

I do feel like the food combinations that Natalia Rose suggests in her Raw Food Detox books are beyond me to understand. I feel like it's like learning grammar rules all over again. I before E, except after C and when sounding like... well you get the idea. It's all like, veggies can pair with anything but raw fruit. Never eat fruit with anything except on an empty stomach. Veggies can pair with Flesh and nuts and starch. Starch never pairs with flesh. Dried fruit doesn't count as fruit but counts as a nut, except for bananas which can apparently pair all over the place. Cooked corn is a starch while raw corn is something else. Avocados also don't go in the group you think they would go in. Oh some how I forgot the dairy category. See, it's too much for my small little brain. She keeps claiming it's easy and not intimidating, and I keep feeling clueless. I'm hoping it will sink in eventually but for now I think I have to ignore her extra crazy rules because it's part of the reason I'm not eating enough. I'm worried I'm going to break her odd food combo commandments.

Both of my injured feet felt about the same this morning as last. After I ran though, I could barely manage walking for the rest of the day. I'm getting more and more worried there is something seriously wrong with my left ankle. The pain is crazy and it doesn't seem to be getting much better. I tried compressing it today so maybe that will help make a difference for tomorrow.

I'm down another half a pound so that makes me at 42.5 lbs to lose. Not bad results for 4 days! I did have a meal at Chipoltle for dinner though (and I ate every last bite) so I'm not expecting anything good for tomorrow's weigh in. We'll see though! I was pleasantly surprised by losing another half of a pound this morning. Gotta love the raw fruits and veggies! :)

Raw/Living food - Day 3

Today I really made some bad eating choices. The day started well with my yoga work out followed up by some vegetable juice for breakfast. Then my husband remembered that there are some fun buffets around on Wednesday, and we are never both home on a Wed, so we should take advantage of that and go try one. I feel so horrible saying no to him about going out to eat all the time so I didn't even put up a fuss. I think that's the part of this that makes me the most frustrated with myself is that it really was not what I wanted to eat but I hate disappointing my husband so I went along with it. I just want to make him happy and it really sucks when making him happy has to make me unhappy in some way. So I went to the buffet and even though I tried not to over-eat, I totally failed. I really noticed a huge difference in my energy level after that meal. We went to a store immediately after and I was so groggy I was nearly falling asleep in the aisles. When we got home, I took a nap from 2 pm until 5 pm!! 3 hours of nap time all because of one overly large meal!

I ate raw food then for dinner, so I stuck with my 2/3's raw meals for the day. I had my left overs from the sweet potato and beet pasta with pesto sauce, and it was still very tasty, but still too much food! I have some left now for tomorrow's lunch which means I'm going to end up getting 3 meals out of it! I think that's fantastic and helps cut down on the prices so much. I love eating the beets and sweet potato for pasta and I can't wait to try this with other pasta sauces.

After lunch, we had gone out to our Whole Foods store, which isn't super far, but it definitely isn't close to us either. We just wandered around and looked without buying anything. I saw a lot of things I wanted but it was mostly all way more expensive than I thought it would be. $9.99 for a bottle of agave nectar... $7.99 for a jar of raw honey... I can't bring myself to justify those prices right now for a sweetener so I'm going to just be leaving that out for a bit. Maybe in another week or 2 when I sort of get a handle on the cooking I'm going to be doing and the amount of things I'll be needing, I'll be able to make one of those work into the budget. The vegetable prices there were more reasonable than I expected them to be. The bunches of organic kale were only $2.99! We may be stopping by there more often. I just wish it was as little bit closer to our house.

Okay, on to the really shocking news. Today I woke up this morning and was half way down the stairs with the dog when it suddenly dawned on me - there was almost no pain in my right foot! My plantar fasciitis pain was nearly gone! It was a glorious day!! I don't know how much really can be credited to the raw food, but I am certain some credit has to go to it. I've been stretching and wearing my insoles for weeks and have had very little results. I've also been icing a lot over the past week or 2 and have not seen any change. I think I'm being healed by raw foods!! My left ankle is still a problem, as are all my other small issues, knees, hips, ect. But it's a start! Through out the day the foot was better and worse randomly. I can't wait to see how it's doing again tomorrow. I am also down another pound so I've got 43 more to lose. I will be surprised if I keep that pound off when I weigh in tomorrow though, after my behavior at the pizza buffet. But we'll see, and tomorrow is another day where I can go further on my raw food journey!

Raw/Living food - Day 2

Day 2 of my Raw/Living food experience.

So far, still so good. I enjoyed my morning vegetable juice more, probably because I chose a recipe that doesn't include celery for this morning. It was carrots, beets and cucumbers. Not the world's tastiest drink, but definitely drinkable. It made a ton too so I froze some for tomorrow morning. I'm noticing that all of the recipes I'm following actually make enough food for two meals for me, which is great because it will cut down on the expense of this lifestyle. The only tough part is that a lot of the food includes avocado which doesn't save very well. I will have to find some way to work around that. I ran this morning and then had the veggie juice. I didn't drink the juice until around 10 or 11 this morning. I wanted to eat between 12-1 but somehow I didn't get around to starting to make lunch until 2, and it took me until nearly 3 to finish it. I made the sweet potato and beet pasta with basil pesto. It was very pleasantly delicious! I don't have a mandolin though so I had to use a regular vegetable peeler and scrape at slices of the potato and beet. It was super messy and slow and sort of dangerous if I wasn't careful. It also wasted good chunks of beat and potato. I need a mandoline! I think I'm interested in this one http://www.amazon.com/Zyliss-Easy-Slice-Folding-Mandoline/dp/B000HVDZU4/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t
but I need to do more research. The price seems reasonable though and the reviews are generally good. My big problem with lunch was that, while tasty, it was definitely not filling to me. I never really felt like I had any food actually reach my stomach though I felt like I was doing a lot of eating. On the other hand though, I wasn't really hungry through the afternoon either so maybe it's just that difference between being hungry and being empty. The food digests quickly because it is all living, raw food, so it doesn't stay in your stomach long, but the nutrients from the food fuels your body so you technically are not hungry. This has been an important difference to me and it's one I didn't realize previously. Even if I get nothing else out of this raw food lifestyle, I think that difference is enough.

Then on to the other important information. So far, I still have all the usual aches and pains. Possibly even worse foot/ankle pain since today was a running day. My PF in my right foot hurts like heck, and my whatever new pain in my left ankle also hurts like heck. Not sure which is worse but I'm hobbling around pretty badly. My throat had been really bothering me a few days ago, very sore and scratchy. It is better, but not completely gone yet. That, of course, could have happened either way, but I figured I'd report on it all the same. While I haven't really felt hungry, I did take a long nap this afternoon and that might have changed things. Also, it shows that my energy level is not all that high. I think the meal we chose for dinner tonight, chicken breasts with cauliflower, was a healthy choice and pairs well with the raw food diet transition so I don't feel guilty about that. My favorite part is though, that now I only have 44 lbs to lose, instead of 46. It's a great start and I hope it keeps up!

Raw/Living food - Day 1

I recently stumbled onto a raw food book. I had no idea there was a whole world of eating like this out there! For anyone else not really familiar with it, it's only eating foods that are not cooked above 118 degrees. This rules out... well a lot of stuff. It's about eating fresh food, and often organic food where you can, and avoiding processed food. The people who have been living this lifestyle claim all sorts of fantastic health benefits and crazy amounts of weight loss. I feel like this is close to the eating style I had towards the end of college, where I just ate things like sprouts with mustard on them. My body felt so good then too. I just didn't wake up with aches and pains any longer. I know I'm a lot older now so more aches and pains are to be expected, but I had pains that did go away with my eating style changes. So I'm considering trying to go back to it.

It's a hard transition and yet, not hard at the same time. On one hand, I've been against processed food for a while, especially all of the additives. And after reading these books, now I just look at it and think Toxic!! But who knows how long that strong of a reaction will stay with me. Also, I know from personal experience that I felt better in the past, so that should be strong reasons for me to do it again. On the other hand though, it is hard to do! It's expensive! We've been to our local fruit and veggie place two times today alone and spent over 50 dollars between the trips. That's only getting me about 6 meals in this lifestyle. I can't be spending hundreds of dollars a week just on my food alone! Plus there is no way that my husband will be joining me eating like this so now we have double the food costs, plus double the time and energy to make a whole second meal. These raw meals do not just make themselves. They are time consuming and use just about every dish and device I have in the house it feels like. They need the juicer, the blender, the food processor. They often call for a dehydrator, a sprouter and an ice cream machine but I don't have any of these items yet, so I'm skipping those recipes for now. Then I have to sit next to my husband while he eats things that I know are delicious! It's hard to sit there and smell that food and never have a taste! I'm still not sold on the taste of all raw vegetables yet. I'm sure it would be fine if I never knew other things, such as pizza and tuna casserole and others along those lines, but I have had delicious foods before and I know what I'm missing! While I had the willpower to turn it down today, will I tomorrow? Or the next day? Enough so that this can be a lifestyle change and not just some odd fad I'm going through? I'm not sure.

But surely a healthier, less painful life should be worth giving up a bit of taste, right? Taste is just one little sense. I have 4 others! Plus it's not like you can NEVER eat anything else in this lifestyle. Just mostly it has to come from raw, unprocessed foods. I'm going to try to monitor my body and feelings carefully as I try this lifestyle on for size. It would be great if it would help me lose excess weight while still having tons of energy as it claims it will. I would love to lose 46 lbs from this point. I'll watch to see how much weight I lose from here, if any. The book I'm following to make these change also asks you to rate your energy level every day, presumably so you can see how much it improves over time. Today's energy rating would be between 2 an 5 throughout the day. At one point I was so groggy I was bumping in to all sorts of things. It would be so fantastic not to feel so sleepy in the afternoons!

I do know one thing though, if I always ate alone, always had enough time to prepare my food, and money wasn't an object when purchasing ingredients, I would definitely always eat this way. This sort of lifestyle really speaks to me. Maybe that should be reason enough to give this a try, even if it may be hard along the way.

The Housewife Experience

My workplace decided to encourage me to become a housewife. They did this by eliminating my position and telling me not to bother coming back into work on Monday. So I'm going to try this housewife thing for a bit and see how it goes. I cooked dinner and did a load of laundry, all on a random Thursday, instead of waiting to have time to do it on the weekend. When I started the laundry, my first thought was to make sure my work clothes got done right away so they'd be ready for next week. Then it clicked... no, I am not going to be needing these for a while. It doesn't really matter if I let them sit in the laundry bin for weeks! This is going to take some time to get used to.

I've decided that housewives also paint their finger and toe nails, and take lots of baths instead of showers. Should be fun to see what else housewives do in the upcoming weeks :D I think I've heard that bon-bons are involved :D

Adventures in Home Ownership

So I've been excited to have some extra time these days and have really been revving up to work on projects around the house. It'll be great to get some of those annoying little things finished up that I just haven't had the time to touch. I've been in a super do-it-yourself mood and no project has seemed to big. Until today...

I got home from work around 2, took the dog out and noticed that the gutter repair guy was at the house and had a ladder propped up against the roof. I was really excited about that because I was worried that if the gutter kept falling off, eventually the roof would leak or something and we'd have a major problem on our hands. I was super worried about leaking and didn't want that to happen, so I was pleased the guy was out here so fast.

I went back in the house with the dog to realize... the kitchen was flooded. Inches of water stood on the kitchen floor and the dog's bed and blankets were soaked. The first inch of the chair legs were under water. The wine fridge was now in a puddle instead of on solid ground. And there was a big, wet tear in the drywall near the sliding glass door.

The gutter guy had wanted to check that the gutter was flowing correctly, so he used the hose outside to fill it with water and watch it drain. Unfortunately, the pipe connecting to that hose had a break and when he turned it on, it blasted water through the wall and into the kitchen. The gutter repair man never knew there was a problem. The dog though was probably going nuts watching it happen.

We were lucky because nothing in the kitchen was really damaged, except the dog bed that isn't drying out right so we are going to toss it.

We went right out to Home Depot and found a guy in the plumbing aisle to ask. He said it was an easy fix and handed us a new nozzle, a connecting pipe and some other connecting something. He explained how to do it and it did sounds like a breeze so we bought what he recommended and came home.

Well, about 3 minutes at home proved that this project was going to be way over our heads. First of all, how do we even get the broken nozzle out of the cement and brick wall!? Yeah, it's pretty much impossible. The only good thing that came out of this adventure was that we found where the water shut-off valve is in the house. So all of those purchases are going to go back to Home Depot. My husband ended up taping up the pipes and when we ran the water it didn't leak. So I think we are going to call that good enough. We'll have to repair the drywall later. Until then, there is the doggie gate in front of it to keep it safe.

Our storm door also broke recently so while we were at Home Depot, we picked up a replacement handle for it. We took apart the current broken handle and started to put in the new one. Well.. apparently our door is 1.59 inches, and the handle we bought is only good for doors up to 1.25 inches. Excellent. So we put the old, broken handle on the door.

That was a lot of work today for very little positive results :P I love owning a house :D

Weekday Warrior?

With my company going under, it looks like I only have a month or so left of work there. Until then, I don't really have much actual 'work' to do. Maybe 2-3 hours every day, but that is if I'm working reaaaaaally slow. So the powers that be have said that 2 of us are allowed to go home at noon every day, and the 3rd person must stay until at least 4 pm, just in case something comes up. However, we are 'working from home', so we are still getting paid for this time off.

It's awesome :D

I've decided that while my work is paying me to go home at noon, I'm going to use this time to go home and get paid by my company to do work around the house. I'm going to be a weekday warrior, instead of a weekend warrior. There are so many little projects that need to be done and I'm excited to finally have the time to do it (Plus still getting the paycheck).

I'm starting in the master bathroom. We never repainted it after moving into the house. The bathroom is painted a plain, neutral color. It just never was really a big deal. The other 2 bathrooms are perfect and adorable but this one is just functional and nothing else.

When the asshole previous owners painted the bathroom walls before moving out, they also were kind enough to paint all over the shower tiles, the electrical outlets, the light switches, the wood molding around the doors and the towel hanging rods. Fabulous. Thanks, jerks.

I did a bit of research a while ago about paint remover chemicals, but since we have a little dog who gets into everything, we were nervous about how to use them safely around her. So it ended up being too complicated for me to figure out, so I abandoned the project.

But now that I've got time to deal with it, I've started it up again with a passion. I decided to look into non-chemical ways to remove the paint, if possible. I took a nail file to the bathroom tiles and used it to scrape at the paint. It's slow, hard and tedious, but it really works and doesn't seem to damage the tiles at all. So far, I've cleaned off 12 tiles. 17 still to go. But it's a start :D

Just a warning...

Now that we are moving into nicer weather, it's the season to start grilling out.

My parents have a lovely gas grill in their backyard that they just love. It cooks food evenly and juicy. My father turns into a master chef when using it.

Well, this evening he started the grill and waited a bit for it to pre-heat. After a few minutes, he was able to see from the thermometer on the outside of the cover that it was not warming up as expected. He was able to see that the fire had gone out and it needed to be re-lit. So, he pressed the button that starts the fire.

Since the gas had been accumulating for quite some time with the grill cover on, there was a good bit of it waiting when the flame hit it. So, naturally, it exploded.

My father was thrown backwards through the air and landed hard on his back on the concrete patio. Luckily, my aunt was outside with him when it happened and she was able to run over right away to help. He didn't realize it, but parts of his hair and clothes were on fire and smoldering.

He was very lucky to come out as unharmed as he did!!

He's lost his eyebrows and a good chunk of his hair on his head. His face mostly looks like he's been sunburned, not in a small explosion.

Please be safe with your gas grills out there and remember that life can change in an instant. If your gas grill light goes out, open the cover and let the gas escape before re-lighting it!!

aNobii!

I love aNobii.com! You can go there and keep track of what you've been reading and leave comments about how you liked it. Then you can see other people's bookshelves and their comments about what they've been reading. I love getting new book recommendations! :D

New Blog

Just wanted to try out this blogging thing - like everyone else in the universe seems to be doing!