May has been a bit of a blur. Its been rainy and cold. Yes, thats right, in the SF bay area. No, I did not say Canada or Ireland.
It feels like winter. YES, I know 60 degrees and rainy hardly qualifies as winter, but it feels that way to me.
Last weekend I hosted a “retro housewife” themed bridal shower for my best friend. It was a lot of fun. I meant to take pics of my food but in all the craziness of the day I completely FORGOT. The food was delicious if I might say so myself. We had strawberry salad, bbq chicken and beef sandwiches, green beans, and sweet potato casserole. Then of course there were lots of munchies and alcoholic beverages. It was a lot of fun, but it was exhausting and it took me all week plus this weekend to get rested and to get everything cleaned up.
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Here were a few of my my favorites this month:
Ingredients for an amazing special taco salad
“Cheese” topping for my taco salad – YUM!! I like this better than real cheese!
Taco Salad Version 1
Taco Salad Version 2
New favorite wine – Wente Riva Ranch Chardonnay (I seriously need to pick up a case of this!)
Gluten Free Pizza (with Udi’s crust) + Wine
*This is one of numerous meals this month that had real cheese in it. I was trying to re-introduce dairy back into my diet. I have a future post planned that will cover the results of how that turned out!
Whole Foods brand Dark Chocolate with coconut flakes. This might be one of my all time favorite foods to walk the planet.
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I’ve been so bad about blogging lately. So in the spirit of getting back in the saddle, today I decided to take a picture of every single food item that I ate. It really is tougher than I remember it. In some cases I plum forgot and had to re-create the circumstances (e.g., I staged the chocolate photo below AFTER I ate an equivalent amount of chocolate). So here is my best attempt for today.
Breakfast: this is a new thing for me, a 50-50 mix of plain kefir with fruity flavored kefir (both lactose free) plus a scoop of wheat grass powder. Then I pair it with some other little breakfast-y thing, like, in this case, gluten free pecan raisin toast with earth balance.
My vitamin routine (forgot the enzymes and probiotics)
Mid-day snacks (didn’t eat lunch, just munched all day)
(the tortilla above was a new personal favorite in my gluten free repertoire)
To me, memorial day symbolizes the official start of the summer season, so tonight I had to barbeque some thing. We kept it simple – we cooked up some hot dogs, corn and beans. It helped the day feel a bit more like summer (even though it was cloudy and only about 62 degrees).
While I cooked, I munched on some cherries and strawberries.
I meant for that to distract me from the last of the wine I had from the weekend but no such luck…. Yes, I measure my wine.
I soaked the corn to get it ready for the grill…
I put some baked beans and chili (for hubby) on the stovetop…..
I got the bacon cooking in the oven…
When it was done I couldn’t help but munch on it. By the time I took this picture I had eaten 2 pieces, hence the hand gesture so that I didn’t lose track of what I was eating.
Hubby cooked up the corn and hot dogs on the grill…
Final product… It doesn’t look too appetizing but, trust me, it was delicious. I sprinkled the bacon onto the baked beans, and then added some earth balance and salt to the corn. YUM.
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Lately I’m really trying to keep my mind open to ways I can continue to improve my health and diet. Something I have learned about myself: making decisions takes a lot out of me. It doesn’t seem immediately connected to my health and diet, but – - I assure you – - it is.
Making decisions is exhausting!! Do you ever burn out from making decisions? I do all the time. Pretty much whenever I am at home I avoid making major decisions about anything because I make so many heavy-duty decisions at work.
I know its not just me. People make hundreds of decisions each day. I don’t have a source for that statistic, that is just my best guess.
Think about it. There are simple things like deciding what outfit to wear or whether to wash the in the drive thru versus by hand. Then there are more critical things (usually at work) like deciding to incur out of budget expenses for a project or deciding whether or not to fire someone. Being in HR means I have to make critical decisions every day, sometimes multiple times each day.
So here is where I make a connection to health and diet. The biggest drawback to all of this decision making is that I come home from work mentally taxed. I don’t want to make decisions like, whats for dinner? Or should I go to the gym? So that means I push the easy button, microwave something from a can and eat it in front of the TV when I should be making a fresh, healthy dinner and eating it with music playing next to my husband.
I’m going to work on that.
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Last but not least I wanted to share this picture with my little tomato plant. My dad fashioned a hydroponic device to grow this little bugger into a flourishing tomato factory. So far its been beaten pretty badly by the weather (wind, rain). We’ll see how it turns out!
