friday+saturday+sunday

[black bean burgers on gluten free bun+roasted sweet potatoes.]

[gluten free/vegan bagels+daiya strawberry cream cheese.  yes]

[confused]

[lactofermentation! this is cortido+can't wait to try it]

[depressed]

[sour stomached pitbull]

[sweet potato+kale chowdah]

recipe:

1/2 onion

1 sweet potato

3 red potatoes [can be replaced with additional sweet potato]

1 Tbl. coconut oil

-combine and saute-

salt/garlic salt to taste

pepper to taste

thyme to taste

1 1/2 boxes of vegetable broth

-cook until potatoes are soft then mash to desired mashiness-

4-5 kale leaves sliced in thin ribbons.

2 Tbl. nutritional yeast

-simmer for a couple minutes-

-eat-

-fill bowl again-

-repeat-

-add and simmer for a couple of minutes-

needling.

3 acupuncture sessions in one week is harsh.

  HARSH! 

I love acupuncture but today as I lay on the table I hated it.  I wanted to rip the needles out.  All of the sudden they were too intense.  It was as though I could feel electrical pulses shooting to the various meridians that were tweaked by those tiny needles.  

Luckily now I have a week and a half off for my body to recalibrate and start to heal.  

Here are my goals for helping it along.

[I have Liver qi stagnation, so I plan on eating accordingly.]

-EAT SPINACH!  Spinach in smoothies, salads, juices, wherever I can hide it.

-Avocados.  They're green.  Green is good.

-Lemon and lime in everything

-Melon

-Berries and Peaches
-Fermented foods, lost of probiotic filled foods!

-Gluten-free beer?  It's on the cooling list.  I'll take it.

My uncle sent this to me last week.  My conniving brother and myself planning a sneak attack.  Apparently we were also playing croquet?  I didn't know I had played croquet before this year.  Be jelly of the fro.  It's killer.

tortillas

Justin ate at Panchero's a couple of weeks ago.  He loved it, so I decided to replicate it at home the best I could.  Of course that meant spending $5.99 on a pack of 6 gluten-free tortillas.  Seriously?

This weekend when I was planning meals and decided to do a re-do of the vegetarian burritos, obviously I had to figure out something cheaper as a tortilla option.  I found a recipe for gluten-free flour tortillas online and holy smokes.  They were excellent.  They were quick to whip up [the recipe said 50 minutes, but honestly I started making them, had to run back into work and then came home and finished cooking them off in a total of about 50 minutes.]  They bent without breaking, like rolled my tortilla into a complete round burrito and it didn't break.  It was a miracle.

I got the recipe here.  I'll never buy tortillas again.

The perfect bite.  Black beans, guacamole and tobasco sauce.  I love tobasco sauce.

That's all I have to say about that.

panic.

In Iron Man 3, Tony Stark suffers a couple of short lived seconds of extreme, out of control panic.  I can't even begin to describe how jealous I am that his panic attacks last only seconds.  He gets to run from nothing for a couple of seconds and then he decompresses and equalizes back to normal.

I've been having panic attacks since I was 11 years old.  I remember the first one like it was last week. It was a cool, grey October day.  I had gone to the corn maze with my youth group.  My friends decided that they all loved the weird kid's dad and chose him as their chaperone that day.  I'm sure he was as surprised as I.  I was not pleased and kept my distance- you know- the apple doesn't fall to far from the tree.  Then we went home.  The sky was still grey and my dad made pork chops on the grill for dinner.  I didn't feel right.  [background: I have a severe, irrational fear of vomiting.  Ask my friends, family, co-workers, nursing instructors from 4 years ago.  It's intense.  I learned this year that it's called emetophobia and there are other people like me, halleluja!] 

So, didn't feel right.  The pork chops.  I think I tried to eat them, but they didn't taste right so I didn't finish them.  I thought I was going to vomit so I ended up  in my parent's bathroom sitting in front of the toilet crying and gasping for air.  Unhinged.  My dad sat with me trying to calm me down.  He was wearing his red sweatshirt with two dueling knights on it.  It smelled like charcoal and grilled pork chops.  Eventually I got my wits about me and was able to relax, but with apprehension.

My mom is convinced that was when my celiac disease started.  I tend to agree with her.  I lost 8 pounds as an already skinny sixth grader.  I went to the doctor on numerous occasions for complaints of nausea and stomach issues.  And my mom had to call my teacher to tell him that I was having some problems eating and if at any time during the day I was hungry, he was to allow me to eat whatever I wished out of my lunch box.  He was a peach and did and I eventually ate lunch at the proper time.  And went back to gaining adequate weight.

Fast forward almost fourteen years [sigh, I'm getting so old] and I still experience panic attacks.  The complete unhinged feeling, like I can't hold onto myself. Something else has control of by body and I'm inside trying however I can to gain back control. I have gone for months without them in the past, but lately they've been frequenting my life.  Ever since my ovarian cyst ruptured they have increased dramatically.  I'm nervous every time I go to work.  Every time I'm in the car.  Every time I'm anywhere that isn't "safe".  Whatever that means.  I go today for my first visit to an acupuncture specialist in Dubuque.  Acupuncture has helped in the past, hopefully it will help again.  

My anxiety issues are part of why I started eating vegan.  I can't say that it has helped yet, but is hasn't hurt either.  I had to leave work today because I had a panic attack at my desk.  This has got to stop.  It stops today.  [It started stopping yesterday and last week and two months ago too, but seriously.]  

weekender.

I've decided I'd like to be a professional weekender.  I would like to get paid for this position.  A cool 2 million per year would suffice just fine.  I'll need a little extra cash, you know, for all the DIY stuff I'll have time for.  With includes but is not limited to:

-Gardening

-Building furniture [with what tools....?]

-Painting

-Baking

-Inventing new recipes

-Potting plants [this is different from gardening]

And other various good ideas from pinterest.

I wouldn't mind if this job didn't include digging out plants [which we did this weekend], lawn mowing [our mower isn't self-propelled], tilling, getting attacked by bugs, and the like.

This weekend was the weekend of spiders.  We did yard work and encountered thousands of spiders. Big ones, little ones, hairy ones, ones with white bums, and I'm fairly certain, a tarantula.  Do tarantulas live in Iowa?  To top it all off, I went to put a glass in the dishwasher this morning and there was a daddy long leg spider in it.  Yuck yuck yuck.

I'm fairly certain that Justin is afraid of spiders too.  He denies it, but I know the truth.

And now let the iPhone photos of the weekend commence!

 

Can Rady has some pancakes?

Prease?

The menu for vegan week four.  We're still rocking it.  Some of us miss meat a little more than others...  Some of us might be grumpy about it.  Some of us may have even requested to go to taco bell for lunch even though that one of us hates taco bell.  Basically I'm winning at veganism.  But I've lost 10 pounds so I made this:

COWBOY CAVIAR!  And we finished it in less than 24 hours.  I expect to have gained at least two pounds from this weekend.

And finally, we got this little Lady a year ago from this weekend.  As Justin said, she seems to have adjusted just fine...  Spoiled.

on congestion

In light of my lovely summer cold, I would like to share some of my opinions about congestion.

Sinus pressure is torture.  I feel like my forehead is going to pop off, like my eyeballs are going to bulge out of their sockets and my molars are going to propel out of my gums with great sinus pressure induced force.  I'm also fairly certain that the roof of my mouth has lowered into my mouth due to the build up of pressure.

Being a mouth breather at night is horrible.  HORRIBLE!  I swear I don't breathe as well through my mouth and that makes me nervous.  Plus I bet spiders can get in.  But hey, vitamin B12, right?

I look like Rudolph the Red Nosed Idiot.  Thanks work for not stocking the soft lotion-filled kleenexes.  Not cool.

Neti pots are a super invention.  I've been using mine obsessively since this cold snuck up on me.  [Like really, I was fine and then my nose felt tickly and BOOM!  An hour later I couldn't breathe, hear, or think straight].

Can we please out law getting colds in the summer?  The muggy heat makes the pressure worse.

Also, I almost just typed "muggle" instead of "muggy".  Harry Potter 4EVR

summer

here is a list of what I love about summer.

the ripe peaches that perfume my kitchen.  there is no better smell on earth.

hanging baskets of flowers on the porch.

the smell of fresh cut grass.

the sun as he stays up late.  and gets up early.

evening walks with the husband and canine.

not freezing all the time.

my peonies.

farmers markets.

a different wardrobe.

the way the grill smells.

throwing all the windows and doors open and welcoming the breeze through the house.

the adrenaline rush of a good quality severe storm.  we've been fighting with one since about 5 pm and she'll be going strong until 2 am.  it was exciting enough to bring lady and some pillows [?? justin's idea] into the basement.  

98% vegan

I say that because, occasionally, I cheat.  Like the cookies that my brother brought me from Germany, I'll be damned if I don't eat those puppies!  But for the most part, we've been vegan for 2 weeks and 1 day.  And it's not too bad.  I'll admit, I did have to text my friend whose husband is vegetarian last night and beg for her veggie burger recipe.  But other than that, it's going well.  So well that when I see chicken it grosses me out.  No worries, hamburgers still look amazing.  Hopefully our veggie burgers tomorrow will kick that craving.

Another benefit to going vegan is I've stopped eating candy.  I went cold turkey off of it.  And I don't miss it.  That has never happened to me before.  Usually when I give up candy I get really grumpy and think about it constantly.  That has not been the case this time.  I made black bean brownies for J's birthday last week that weren't stupendous, but we'll get there.  

The worst thing I've made while being a vegan was probably my vegan chili.  Horrible.  The best thing was the vegan waffles.  They.  Were.  Amazing.  Crispy and delicious.  Even if we went off being vegan, I'd never use my old recipe again.  I could eat waffles every day.

I'm even eating spinach.  It's happening people.  I didn't put one piece of spinach in the discard pile tonight. [Background: the discard pile is where I place all of the unsavory bits of food that aren't fit for consumption.  Be it an item that touched the table -the horror- an iffy looking leaf of lettuce, or a particularly menacing spinach stem.  Justin also makes discard piles, but he usually forgets they're discards and eats them...]  This week of vegan meals is looking to be the best one yet.  Pizza, veggie burgers, and one pot pasta are on the list.  

Happy Monday!

michigan

This weekend we took a quick trip up to Michigan for my Gram's memorial.  Everyone was there, so it was a full house.  Justin and I managed to eat mostly vegan [thank goodness it's not biggie to cheat a little on this diet...] My biggest accomplishment was not getting into a fight with anyone.

Lady's biggest accomplishment was getting everyone to love her.  Success.  Everyone's preconceived notions about pitbulls went up in smoke.  She was in rare form.  It must have been the lake air.  I was surprised that my very finicky little Lady loves Loves LOVES the beach.  I've never seen her more joyful.  Running through the sand is what she was made for, apparently.  We're going back for the 4th of July, and luckily it's just us.  I tried to explain this to Lady as we drove away, though I don't think she understood.  She looked out the window and cried until she couldn't see the lake anymore.  Then she slept.  She's still sleeping.

We found some old clothes...

Packing up.

Lady socializing with my brother.  In the sun.  She couldn't be happier.

Loving it.

Looking down the beach.

on why I want a cat

1. Cats are beautiful.

2. Cats think they're better than everyone.

3. Cats remind me that self-esteem is everything.

4.  Cats purr.

5.  They also meow.  And that is cute.

Plus they sleep in funny positions.

I just really would love a cat.  That is all.

Happy Birthday Husband

You are superb.