Delusions of... Everything

Photo a Day in February: Days 5 & 6

Day 5:  10AM

Taken at work on Monday Feb 6 at 10AM.

Day 6:  Dinner

My dinner on Monday Feb 6.

Now I am caught up, tomorrow I'll be right on schedule.

Saturday Sharing

• Is it weird that I've been listening to Christmas music all week while falling asleep?
• I've been mostly Vegan for well over a month.
• I WILL be eating Turkey on Thanksgiving... I said MOSTLY Vegan.
• Being anonymous would be so great, then I could write about whatever I wanted on this blog.
• Maybe I'll start a new blog with a new identity.
• I'm listening to Christmas music while typing this.
• Homemade "bean burgers" are not very good.  Dr. Praeger's California Veggie Burgers are yummy!
• Whole grains, beans and nuts are full of protein.
• It's taken me a while to make friends with beans, but now we are buds.
• I've already started my Christmas shopping.
• I've missed blogging, but most things I want to blog about I shouldn't, so I haven't written anything.
• I hope to be back to regular blogging, now that I've actually written something for the first time in weeks!

Fun with Snooty Part 2

Go read Part 1 if you missed it.  You can read Snooty's point of view, with different pictures, here and here.

After a great nights sleep we woke to have coffee and AG's famous sourdough start pancakes.  Now I am not a pancake fan, at all.  These pancakes were amazing.  While AG tended to the meat, her dad tended to the pancakes.

This breakfast was going to give my newly gallbladder free body a workout!  I ate bacon, sausage and four, yes count 'em, FOUR pancakes.  Pretty good for someone who doesn't even like pancakes.

After we reluctantly said goodbye to our wonderful hosts we made the long trek to Des Moines where Snooty met the Brute Squad and made friends with Fiona, who doesn't take to new people very well.  Snooty also made fast friends with AG's youngest daughter who joined us for dinner at Barnacles in Des Moines.  Snooty might have had an oyster shooter or two!  Three of us might have had cocktails!

The next morning we were scheduled to meet AG at the Pub for brunch but she wasn't feeling well.  Handy Man, Drill Daughter and I ended up taking Snooty to Salty's on Alki for their award winning Sunday brunch.  The restaurant is right on the water and has an amazing view of downtown Seattle.  After we gorged were pleasantly full we took a walk along Alki Beach and enjoyed the beautiful sunny day and the water.

Some words about Snooty... She is exactly like you would picture her to be from her blog.  She's funny, sweet, honest, generous and seriously pretty!  Her child like wonder at all the new things she saw and experienced thrilled me.  Seeing Seattle and the other parts of WA State through her eyes really made me appreciate what we have here in our little corner of the world.

I will welcome Snooty back to my house whenever she wants to visit!

How does my garden grow?

When I decided to plant a veggie garden this spring this is what the space looked like.

 

Now it looks like this.

 

I picked some of this to make a salad for dinner.

Yes, it was mighty delicious.  I'll be going out today to pick more for our dining pleasure.

 

Question?  How do I know it's time to pick the garlic?

 

The Detox Recap

The 21 day detox Handy Man and I have been participating in has now come to an end.  It was extremely successful for both of us but in much different ways.

You can read how it was successful for me here. 

Handy Man lost only a few pounds but that slight layer of fat on his abs is going away and he's gone down two belt holes.  He found out there are certain food combinations he cannot eat without emitting an odor that clears the room of other humans.  His chronic heartburn is almost completely gone.  He stopped sleeping with his c-pap machine (to stop snoring) and I have not noticed any snoring.  He has not had the same feeling of having a ton of energy that I have, but he also has not been falling asleep in the middle of the day either.

Before I started the detox, there were a few things I already knew about myself.  I have always been allergic to milk.  It was not a stomach type allergy either, but a head plugging, sneezing, sore throat reaction.  I already avoided milk and milk products as much as possible, but I wasn't really strict about it.  I also knew that enriched flour did not agree with me.  I had already mostly given up white pasta and most breads, but again I was not super strict about it.  I had a feeling that my morning coffee with sugared creamer was not really agreeing with me either.

So the detox was a great opportunity to really give up these things and see exactly how my body reacted.  As I said in a previous post, it's amazing that I could see such a change in such a short time.  I'm convinced I was poisoning my body with foods it didn't like and didn't handle well.  Never mind that I loved to eat them.  When these so called toxins were eliminated from my diet by body started healing, and quickly.  I was able to start losing weight, which had been virtually impossible before.  I lost a total of 14 pounds in the 21 days.

Here are a few simple things that I plan to continue doing to help keep my body cleansed:

• If there are ingredients in it that I cannot pronounce I'm not eating it.
• Drink a lot of water, my goal is 1/2 my body weight in ounces.
• One cup of Aloe Vera Juice a day.
• One meal in liquid form like a fruit/green smoothie for breakfast.
• Whole grains only, preferably sprouted.  No enriched flour, including wheat.
• Limit sugar, try for foods containing 5 grams or less of sugar per serving.
• Eat plenty of fresh greens everyday.
• Exercise 4 times a week.  This will be the hardest for me to do, I really don't like exercising.

This way of eating is by no means easy.  It takes planning, label reading and lots of pre-preparing to be successful.  But when I think back to how I felt a month ago, headaches, heart palpitations, lethargic, forgetful, stomach aches, gassy, chest pains, aching joints and just feeling overall sh***y, all the planning and label reading is so worth it.  I know there will be times when I will have to partake in non-detox friendly foods, but I refuse to let unhealthy eating become the norm for me again.

I plan to do a weekly blog post about how my progress is going and to share healthy recipes and tips along this journey of turning my diet and attitude around.

The Detox

Week one of the 21 day detox is done!  Today starts week two.  Yesterday was the first day I started to feel really good.  I had tons of energy and no afternoon sleepies.  This has been a huge shake up of my diet.

I'm eating no:

• white flour, white pasta, white rice
• milk or milk products
• sugar
• beef, chicken or pork
• caffeine
• no alcohol

The caffeine I gave up on my own.  This detox allows for 1 cup of caffeinated beverage in the morning.  I just decided to try going without last Wednesday and haven't had any since.

This is what I am eating:

• Fish of all kinds, red snapper, salmon, shrimp and scallops
• Every color veggie you can think of
• Beets
• Sweet potatoes
• Almonds and pumpkin seeds
• Every fruit you can imagine
• Whole grain bread
• beans
• hummus

Key items to eat on the detox are radishes, beets, artichokes, aloe vera juice, lemons, garlic, ginger, Yogi detox tea, carrots, alfalfa sprouts and wheat grass.  The last item I haven't eaten yet.

Each morning I check my pH balance with a strip that I pee on.  I have very acid pH which is unhealthy.  I'm hoping by the time this detox is over it will be closer to the healthy range.

Once a week, on Sunday, I take a detox bath of baking soda and epsom salt.

I did my first weigh in today and I'm down 7 pounds.  Pretty exciting stuff!

The two things I thought I'd really miss were meat and my morning coffee with sugared creamer but I haven't missed any of it.  I did have a little bit of sugar cravings the first few days, but strawberries or a couple bites of banana and a few almonds really satisfied my sweet tooth.

The key to being successful for me has been pre-planning.  Cutting veggies so they are ready to eat, planning meals for the week, pre-making everything I can.  I'm lucky that Handy Man is doing the detox with me, this is making it so much easier than it would be if I was doing it alone.

This and That Thursday

Took Dancing Daughter to the Dr this week to get her ankle checked out.  She came down on it wrong after jumping for joy that she got a strike while bowling almost 2 weeks ago.  It hasn't been healing like I thought it should.  She has a torn ligament and has to wear an air cast for 4 weeks, even while sleeping!  She's done dancing for the season and will not be able to perform in the end of the year dance show.  We are all adjusting to that little bit of news.

Today starts day 4 of my 21 Day Detox.  It's going quite well.  It helps that Handy Man is doing it with me.  This will help keep me on track.  I've had no alcohol, sugar or artificial sweeteners, dairy (except eggs), beef, chicken or anything white.  I have been eating lots of fresh veggies and fruit, fish, whole grains, seeds and hummus (YUM).  Each day I've had detox tea and aloe vera juice.  I'm also checking my PH balance daily (I'm way out of balance).  I know I'm going to feel great very soon, just have to get through the slight head and body aches I'm currently having.

The weather here has just been terrible.  Last night we had a fire because the house was so cold and damp.  This was not the best year to start a vegetable garden.  I do have garlic, onions, lettuce and spinach up.  I had beets and radishes up, but some critter has eaten them.  I plan to replant this weekend, but the night time temps are still in the 40's and day time temps in the 50's...  We had the coldest April in something like 50 years and May is going the same way.

I hope it warms up for Blog Fest West!!  Are you planning to come?!

Old Town

We loved Old Town so much we visited it twice!

There were cool things to see in Old Town, plants, artwork, buildings, every kind of shop you can imagine and restaurants galore!

Two of the best meals we ate were at Old Town.  The first was Mexican.  This was Handy Man's burrito...

The other meal was at Crazee Burger, which has been featured on the Food Network's Diner's, Drive-ins and Dives with Guy Fieri.  Best burger ever... Not to mention the onion rings. 

That was lunch and I ended up not eating any dinner.

Here are some of the sites we saw and loved!

When we go back to San Diego we are considering staying in Old Town!

 

This and That Thursday

It took until yesterday before I fully recovered from the wine tasting weekend I took with my friends!  Talk about dragging through Monday and Tuesday at work, wow!  While I had the best time I've had in a long time I would not want to do that every weekend!

I'm finally done sorting through pictures of the trip and have my first post started, hopefully it will be ready tomorrow!

Other stuff has been going on in my life, like doing laundry, getting my hair cut, grocery shopping, getting caught up on American Idol before last night's show.  Important stuff going on in the life of Tammy!

I would like to leave you with a delicious image from the wine tasting weekend!

We ate some amazing food on the trip!

Now I'm hungry!

Have a great day!

Party Recap - The Food!

Saturday was our annual family holiday open house.  It's a very casual gathering of friends and family where one can get a cookie or three or ten and a cup of hot spiced cider.  It's something I start planning for after Halloween.  First I go through my recipes and decide what I want to bake and make a list.  After the list is made I check my baking supplies and make another list of what I need to buy.  If the list is long I make my purchases over a couple grocery shopping outings, so it's not such a strain on the budget.  The baking begins before Thanksgiving and continues until just before the party.  This year I ran out of freezer space so I made rice krispie treats and pumpkin bars the night before the party.

I try to bake one new thing every year.  This year I baked four (!) new recipes.

The best Christmas cookie ever!  These were a huge hit!

Cheesecake squares (This was Dancing Daughters pick)

Fancy Date Ball - While these look really yummy I didn't like them that much and there were a lot left over.

Heath Bar Bit Snickerdoodles - Wow were these ever yummy!

All the new cookies I made were hits, except the date balls.  Last years new recipe was chocolate mint cookies that everyone loved!  This year I made some with Mint M&Ms on top, they all went really fast!

I also served hummus, crackers, veggie tray, chips and salsa, salmon ball (which I made), and cheesy bacon onion biscuits (that I also made)...  No one went home hungry that's for sure!

Tomorrow, the people of the party!

You can see Monochrome Monday here.