So today is the one day a week that John and I do our juice fast. He made our drinks last night and had them in the fridge for us to grab and go to work this morning. The morning juice was ok. He put a grapefruit in it which I'm not a huge grapefruit juice fan. It's just a little too tart for me. It was drinkable at least. But let's back up a bit to this morning. I leave before anyone else is even out of bed so I went to the fridge to find that my two bottles of juice were in the fridge. Both looked orange in color. I couldn't figure out what he used that would have been orange since we're out of carrots. But I threw them in my lunch bag and walked out the door. Afraid of tasting either of them I texted John to asked which one was breakfast and which was mid-morning. He didn't respond for a while after my initial text but as I was hungry I realized that I was going to have to taste each of them. I took a sip of the first one and got the grapefruit taste but still wasn't sure if it was the morning juice. So I opened the second one...took a sip...GROSS!!! I knew this was the mid-morning right away. I couldn't put my finger on the taste though. Then I got a text from John. He said, "the one that tastes like pickles is the mid-morning juice." Duh. Already tasted it.
Morning Juice
Since I had a brief sip of the pickle juice I decided that the grapefruit juice wasn't that terrible. It had some chunky things in it which always grosses me out. I hate pulp in my juice and when there's chunks (even if it's an apple chunk) it makes it harder to drink. It sort of reminds me of drinking vomit. Sorry for being so explicit but maybe now you can understand why it grosses me out so much.
Mid-Morning Juice
I was getting hungry but I knew what I was going to have to drink in order to not be hungry. I was seriously opting for hunger! Just so everyone is clear, I LOVE pickles. Right out of the jar. On a hamburger. In tuna or potato salad. You can pretty much put a pickle in most anything and I'll eat it. But drinking a pickle is nasty! It was another one of those 'close your eyes, hold your breath, and chug' drinks! Bl eh!! It was waaay too salty. I am absolutely thrilled that he made the juices last night for us so I wouldn't have to wake up extra early to make them. And I'm also thrilled that he's getting gutsy in the kitchen and experimenting with new flavors. But this one was an epic fail. I was only able to choke down half of the drink (which was still about 10 oz's!). Went and got a salad for lunch.
Food Snobs
The more and more John and I get into all of this Paleo/Primal lifestyle stuff the more and more we are turning into food snobs. Let's give you all an example: last week we traveled by bus to and from Myrtle Beach from Maryland. The 'lunch stop' was at this placed called South of the Border. This place is a run down dive. It sorta feels like being in Mexico with a red-neck twist. There was one lunch option. It was a place that served burgers, hot dogs, burritos and tacos. Oh...and chili! I ordered a bun less burger. They didn't have lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole or even salsa (I thought this was a Mexican joint??). So here's what I got: a small 2 oz disc shaped piece of gray matter covered in melted processed cheese, a squirt of mustard and about 5 onion pieces. GROSS!!!! John ordered the chili. He had about two bites and he threw it away. None of it had anything 'real' in it. Ground beef shouldn't be a pale gray color! Another example was at our hotel. Part of our hotel package was the free breakfast buffet. Everyday it consisted of the same items: flavored yogurts, canned peaches, pale orange cantaloupe, dried out country fries, super greasy sausage links, baby soft yellow scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, and french toast with syrup that I'm sure was pure high fructose corn syrup. John and I ate eggs and bacon every day but in total disgust. We are so used to our free range chicken eggs fresh from the farm that are bright orange when you crack them open. These pale eggs were lifeless and unsatisfying. The sausage link actually burst a shot of grease in our mouths when we bit into it. YUCK!! We love our fresh breakfast sausage we get from Polyface Farms that is so lean and delicious that we actually have to add coconut oil to the pan to cook them!! So as we move more and more toward buying local, buying fresh and in season, the harder and harder it is to travel and be too far from home. At least on a bus full of people. Had we our own car we could have tried seeking out restaurants that served local produce and meats. But we were limited. Don't even get me started on the cafeteria style place we stopped for dinner one night. Carbs, carbs, carbs.
Cooking more, eating out less
Dinner
We had an awesome dinner last night. We grilled two portabello mushroom caps (drizzled with EVOO, salt and pepper) and two bison burgers. Put burgers on top of mushroom cap, topped with guacamole and salsa (that I had freshly made) and romaine lettuce. YUM!!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Day 11 - present...
Day 11 - modified plan begins...
I still had my herbal tea on the way into work which is probably something I will continue to do because I've come to really enjoy it. I missed my morning juice though. It is really easy to 'drink' your breakfast. My routine at work had been to log onto my computer and check emails while drinking my juice. No dishes to wash. Nothing to heat up in the microwave. Easy. On the other hand, this morning's breakfast was some cut up strawberries and banana with some of the chocolate dip I talked about in a previous post along with some scrambled eggs and a piece of sausage. I think those were the best eggs and sausage I've ever had!! No joke. They tasted amazing! The longing for the morning juice quickly disappeared. John ate eggs too and agreed that they taste amazing!
Not hungry...
I am happy to report that my breakfast has 'stuck to my ribs'. I ate around...8-ish and I was just starting to get hungry for lunch around 1. Amazing! I am working on getting back in touch of my true sense of hunger and not eat out of boredom. I'm certain those days will still exist but with all of the bad carbs and refined sugars out of my body I haven't craved chocolate, sweets, bread, pasta, chips. Do I want those things? Well, honestly, on occasion it would be helpful. Helpful?? Yes that is what I said. I don't crave them but I could use them. For example, I made a huge bowl of salsa and a lot of it is left because we don't eat tortilla chips. But now that we can eat steak I'll be putting a hefty helping on top! And since we're back to eating eggs, I will be putting some on those as well.
The other days...
Sorry I stopped posting daily after we started modifying our juice diet. We have been busy with kids. I mean LOTS of kids! We had a birthday party for my step son and there were 10 kids over for that. As soon as the majority of the partiers left my son had 4 of his friends stay with us for a couple days before they left for a week at the beach. But we still had four of our own kids plus two other sleep over guests for a couple more days. Now we're down to 5 kids. It's hard to get computer time with all those kids in the house. No, I don't have my own laptop. Well I do, but it's an old apple mini and I really don't like it. It's hard to type on.
Birthday Guilt
I feel really guilty about all the birthday food that we provided for all the kids. I bought two different sandwich platters from Subway. Bread! I served bread! Then we bought a box of Sun Chips and slim jims. Did you know that one of the ingredients on slim jims says "mechanically separated chicken"? WTF is that??? Then we of course bought a big ole birthday cake and a tub of Neapolitan ice cream. The second ingredient was high fructose corn syrup! And all that was washed down with mini bottles of Simply Lemonade. I served all those kids a big heaping helping of...of...I don't even know what to call all that garbage!
Kids are slow to adjust
It's challenging feeding all five of them Paleo/Primal meals for a couple reasons. 1) it's more expensive to buy organic, local foods and I have to buy things in large quantities, and 2) they don't understand the science or the political reasons we don't eat bread, rice, pasta and grains. I did make a big pot roast the other day that they all devoured! It was a grass fed roast I bought from Polyface Farms (that's Joel Salatin's farm in VA - he was in the movie Food, Inc and Fresh) I threw in the crockpot with some green beans and potatoes and onion I got from the farmers market. I put fresh sage and fresh thyme, salt, pepper and chicken stock and just let it cook until the meat fell apart. Delish! Last night I made meatloaf (ground beef also from Polyface Farms) with sun dried tomatoes, feta cheese, basil (from my garden!), almond meal (in place of breadcrumbs), salt, pepper, garlic and an egg. We served it with steamed broccoli and cantaloupe I also got from the farmers market. Yum to me and John and JT (who pretty much will eat anything you put in front of him). My daughter, Makenzie only ate broccoli. Her friend, Hannah ate it but wasn't super excited and our daughter, Kennedy ate a little of everything but then made a bag of popcorn (which I will never buy again as soon as we're out). Z ate it but commented that he really only liked the broccoli. I ate his melon. He tried it but said it wasn't sweet like a mango. True that! Later in the evening, John and I were on the porch watching a movie and we could see Hannah and Makenzie raiding the fridge. They had to be creative because there's only fruits, veggies, eggs, sausage and cheese for the most part in there. The less and less 'crap' we have around and the more and more healthy options are around the more they will just have to eat healthy. There are still some bad things lingering around and I'm not throwing it away because the kids will eat them. For example there's nuttella in the cabinet and there are some cheese and cracker things.
Myrtle Beach trip
We leave for Myrtle early Monday morning. We're considering taking the juicer with us. I'm off this Friday so my plan is to make a bunch of paleo/primal snacks that John and I can take on the bus. He says usually the elder family members bring snacks for everyone on the bus but it's things like bags of chips and cookies. I made some 'crackers' last night. I put a cup of sunflower seed in the food processor and made it into a butter consistency then added a cup of sesame seeds in. Then while blending I slowly poured 1/4 cup water until it made a dough. I put it between two pieces of parchment paper and rolled it out real thin, scored them into crackers, sprinkled them with salt, pepper and herbs de provence and baked them until they were golden brown and crispy. Quite tasty! We didn't have any last night (other than to sample them) because we were full from dinner but at least they are on hand. Makenzie thought they were gross. Our kids' taste buds are so conditioned to enjoy sugar laden, or salt laden foods they don't know what real food is suppose to taste like. It will come with time. But back to the bus trip, we got the itinerary the other day and there are three planned shopping days. One to a flea market, one to some outlet shops, and the other is to what is called the boardwalk but it's not like a normal boardwalk to me. It doesn't have rides and it's not along the ocean. It's more little shops. So we're skipping that one and we'll spend the day at the beach. There are some planned dinners too. One is to a big seafood buffet place so we should be able to stick to our paleo/primal eating.
Juice Fast day
So today is our juice fast day. Our morning drink was only ok and they are usually my favorite. It was raspberries, black berries, plums and cantaloupe. The mid morning juice is not the worst one we've had but not that great either. I had to use up the kale in the fridge so it's mostly kale but then I had some zucchini that needed to be used and a carrot, a lemon and 1/2 a pineapple. It gave John hot flashes after he finished it. As I mentioned before, it is amazing to take in so many vitamins and nutrients at one time. The boost of energy is unlike any caffeine I've ever drank!
Soup For lunch
We still had a couple servings left of the squash and pear soup so that's what lunch was made up of. Tonight the plan is to have a big salad with tuna! I think the kids might even eat that! We shall hope anyway.
I still had my herbal tea on the way into work which is probably something I will continue to do because I've come to really enjoy it. I missed my morning juice though. It is really easy to 'drink' your breakfast. My routine at work had been to log onto my computer and check emails while drinking my juice. No dishes to wash. Nothing to heat up in the microwave. Easy. On the other hand, this morning's breakfast was some cut up strawberries and banana with some of the chocolate dip I talked about in a previous post along with some scrambled eggs and a piece of sausage. I think those were the best eggs and sausage I've ever had!! No joke. They tasted amazing! The longing for the morning juice quickly disappeared. John ate eggs too and agreed that they taste amazing!
Not hungry...
I am happy to report that my breakfast has 'stuck to my ribs'. I ate around...8-ish and I was just starting to get hungry for lunch around 1. Amazing! I am working on getting back in touch of my true sense of hunger and not eat out of boredom. I'm certain those days will still exist but with all of the bad carbs and refined sugars out of my body I haven't craved chocolate, sweets, bread, pasta, chips. Do I want those things? Well, honestly, on occasion it would be helpful. Helpful?? Yes that is what I said. I don't crave them but I could use them. For example, I made a huge bowl of salsa and a lot of it is left because we don't eat tortilla chips. But now that we can eat steak I'll be putting a hefty helping on top! And since we're back to eating eggs, I will be putting some on those as well.
The other days...
Sorry I stopped posting daily after we started modifying our juice diet. We have been busy with kids. I mean LOTS of kids! We had a birthday party for my step son and there were 10 kids over for that. As soon as the majority of the partiers left my son had 4 of his friends stay with us for a couple days before they left for a week at the beach. But we still had four of our own kids plus two other sleep over guests for a couple more days. Now we're down to 5 kids. It's hard to get computer time with all those kids in the house. No, I don't have my own laptop. Well I do, but it's an old apple mini and I really don't like it. It's hard to type on.
Birthday Guilt
I feel really guilty about all the birthday food that we provided for all the kids. I bought two different sandwich platters from Subway. Bread! I served bread! Then we bought a box of Sun Chips and slim jims. Did you know that one of the ingredients on slim jims says "mechanically separated chicken"? WTF is that??? Then we of course bought a big ole birthday cake and a tub of Neapolitan ice cream. The second ingredient was high fructose corn syrup! And all that was washed down with mini bottles of Simply Lemonade. I served all those kids a big heaping helping of...of...I don't even know what to call all that garbage!
 |
| JT's HFCS cake & ice cream |
Kids are slow to adjust
It's challenging feeding all five of them Paleo/Primal meals for a couple reasons. 1) it's more expensive to buy organic, local foods and I have to buy things in large quantities, and 2) they don't understand the science or the political reasons we don't eat bread, rice, pasta and grains. I did make a big pot roast the other day that they all devoured! It was a grass fed roast I bought from Polyface Farms (that's Joel Salatin's farm in VA - he was in the movie Food, Inc and Fresh) I threw in the crockpot with some green beans and potatoes and onion I got from the farmers market. I put fresh sage and fresh thyme, salt, pepper and chicken stock and just let it cook until the meat fell apart. Delish! Last night I made meatloaf (ground beef also from Polyface Farms) with sun dried tomatoes, feta cheese, basil (from my garden!), almond meal (in place of breadcrumbs), salt, pepper, garlic and an egg. We served it with steamed broccoli and cantaloupe I also got from the farmers market. Yum to me and John and JT (who pretty much will eat anything you put in front of him). My daughter, Makenzie only ate broccoli. Her friend, Hannah ate it but wasn't super excited and our daughter, Kennedy ate a little of everything but then made a bag of popcorn (which I will never buy again as soon as we're out). Z ate it but commented that he really only liked the broccoli. I ate his melon. He tried it but said it wasn't sweet like a mango. True that! Later in the evening, John and I were on the porch watching a movie and we could see Hannah and Makenzie raiding the fridge. They had to be creative because there's only fruits, veggies, eggs, sausage and cheese for the most part in there. The less and less 'crap' we have around and the more and more healthy options are around the more they will just have to eat healthy. There are still some bad things lingering around and I'm not throwing it away because the kids will eat them. For example there's nuttella in the cabinet and there are some cheese and cracker things.
Myrtle Beach trip
We leave for Myrtle early Monday morning. We're considering taking the juicer with us. I'm off this Friday so my plan is to make a bunch of paleo/primal snacks that John and I can take on the bus. He says usually the elder family members bring snacks for everyone on the bus but it's things like bags of chips and cookies. I made some 'crackers' last night. I put a cup of sunflower seed in the food processor and made it into a butter consistency then added a cup of sesame seeds in. Then while blending I slowly poured 1/4 cup water until it made a dough. I put it between two pieces of parchment paper and rolled it out real thin, scored them into crackers, sprinkled them with salt, pepper and herbs de provence and baked them until they were golden brown and crispy. Quite tasty! We didn't have any last night (other than to sample them) because we were full from dinner but at least they are on hand. Makenzie thought they were gross. Our kids' taste buds are so conditioned to enjoy sugar laden, or salt laden foods they don't know what real food is suppose to taste like. It will come with time. But back to the bus trip, we got the itinerary the other day and there are three planned shopping days. One to a flea market, one to some outlet shops, and the other is to what is called the boardwalk but it's not like a normal boardwalk to me. It doesn't have rides and it's not along the ocean. It's more little shops. So we're skipping that one and we'll spend the day at the beach. There are some planned dinners too. One is to a big seafood buffet place so we should be able to stick to our paleo/primal eating.
Juice Fast day
So today is our juice fast day. Our morning drink was only ok and they are usually my favorite. It was raspberries, black berries, plums and cantaloupe. The mid morning juice is not the worst one we've had but not that great either. I had to use up the kale in the fridge so it's mostly kale but then I had some zucchini that needed to be used and a carrot, a lemon and 1/2 a pineapple. It gave John hot flashes after he finished it. As I mentioned before, it is amazing to take in so many vitamins and nutrients at one time. The boost of energy is unlike any caffeine I've ever drank!
Soup For lunch
We still had a couple servings left of the squash and pear soup so that's what lunch was made up of. Tonight the plan is to have a big salad with tuna! I think the kids might even eat that! We shall hope anyway.
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