I have an addition to last week’s rant…and maybe a little poem, too…if you can make it through the rant. Oh! And an amazing recipe.

4) Food Additives: UGHH!! Why do they have to add sugars and dextrose and guar gum to everything. Why can’t people just be compliant with runny, unsweetened foods?! I just want to eat peanut butter but my body expects it to be sweetened, like my bread and my pickles. I can only imagine what my ancestors would think if they tried to eat bread or something that was somewhat familiar to them, only to find it appalingly sugary. eew.

Okay, my poem will wait, actually…cause I’ve got big plans, but here’s an amazing recipe that Amil invented after our attempt to satisfy a mac n cheese craving without wheat or cheese. Ah-Ha! Paying Attention?

Heat: 1 green zuccini+4 yellow squash shredded, with tumeric, paprika, marjoram and basil to taste.

Simmer Garlic, onions and olive oil until translucent. Add Cashew-lemon-salt-“Cheese” and a gloop or two of homemade kefir to make a cheese sauce. 

Finally, layer the bottom of a baking dish with slices of sun-dried tomato polenta, topped with the shredded squash and then the cheese, then repeat: polenta, squash and cheese.

The result was an incredibly tasty dish a little reminiscent of my aunt’s broccoli rice casserole. I think I’ll get him to make it again for Thanksgiving and see if we can get my grandpa to eat it.

That’s all for now :)

Aloha!

I hope you’re all enjoying the warming weather as Spring fades into summer.

(Makes it easy to pack for the week!)

I have slowly been working on a literary project called Searching for Summer Nights. In the end, I expect it to be a conglomerations of poems and beats and ditties praising the hot sticky season as it embodies me here in Texas, out in New Mexico where I’m going next, and California or wherever I end up after. Here’s a little taste of it:

Oh mourning Dove, why are you mourning, Love?
Can’t you see how I empathize with thee?
The evening’s done and all that’s left for me
is a rising sun and its hot curelty
the warmth he brings does make me sing,
but like you Dove, I do
want to rip off my wings.

A bathe in the rays leaves us in a daze
while the sorrowful band just plays and plays
That good morning tune has more solemn in June
as the morning Dove mourns
the scorched rows of corn,
crack beneath my feet,
I inhale the scent of wheat
burned in this heat,
leaving us with none to eat

Oh mourning Dove,
Where summer nights had life
the summers rest is death,
the Earth’s warm breath
that causes sweat to drip
and minds to rip,
that pours down trees,
no shadows to be seen,
but leaves the land scortched and torched
and in us hopes of Summer Nights
not close enough to make things right,
but mourning— oh- Dove,
your sweet song sings along the cautious shades of blues,
fading out of view,
you lament the loss of summers true Boss
and as the curtain of night is drawn back,
we await summer’s daylight attack.

_____________________________________________

I have…unfortunately… been starting a lot of projects recently— only at the most hectic time of the season. Because I’ve been helping to start up a new location, we’ve had a slow season thus far- and it’s only really getting going this coming week…only to wrap up in 3 weeks. Shortly after that I’ll be on my way to New Mexico, where away from internet and blogs and technologies, I’ll hopefully be able to spend more time writing, and then, with less frequency, more posts sharing. The other project I’m working on is a collective of all my environmental-themed poems, and perhaps some collections from friends…all illustrated by us and my boyfriend, and complied into an interesting little expose of the Earth through my little biased eye. But alas, I’ll digress into my true rant of the day… the things we American’s take for granted that seem incredibly, positively, inhumanly unnecessary and an absolute satire in themselves.

1) Driving. I still resent the fact that I’m a car owner, although I excuse it due to the gracious circumstances that my owning a car came about… Despite owning a vehicle and living in Texas, arguably one of the least commuting-friendly places in the country, I still make a point to walk- especially if my destination is within two miles, or to drive. While enjoying a beautiful walk to the grocery store this morning, I was thinking about how infrequently people I know use walking as a legitimate way of locomotion. (Although skipping is truly the most underrated form of transportation, in my opinion :-p). I just find it incredibly backward that people honk at me or give me strange looks when I want to walk places, as though driving where the norm and people had been driving everywhere for the last 50,000 years.

2) Vegetables. Like all these topics, I could probably branch out into a 15 page essay on how I’ve been offended by my human need to do something, yet impeeded by the ‘technological updates’ of our society…but I’ll try and fit this rant into the topic of vegetables. On Friday I worked from 7:45-6:00pm and in turn was promised 3 meals. Because I was at a camp, I didn’t expect anything compared to what I’ve been making out of the Forks over Knives cookbook, which focuses on not just vegetarian meals, but oil-free and really healthy, incredibly delicious dishes. I was surprised, though, when given a serving of Vegetarian Lasagna that I honestly couldn’t tell was vegetarian. Are people THAT obsessed with meat in this country that even the vegetarian food has to taste like it. My meal consisted of piles of burned, crunchy cheese, textured soy protein and noodles. I can’t believe that’s even considered a meal! And a vegetarian one! Not a single vegetable in my vegetarian lasagna. At least I have access to the salad bar, which consists of iceberg lettuce, tasteless carrots, and curious looking broccoli bunches. That’s really where my aggravation lies. What are we so obsessed with in this world that we’ve turned our head to nutritious foods- happily subsituting a fresh, organically grown zucchini for some processed soy protein that went through three factories before being driven in a giant Sysco truck to the camp and fed to me in expectation that it can fuel my body throughout the day. yuck.

3. Water. I believe I posted something on Facebook about how Water wars are coming alive…and people in the West are starting to see water issues coming up more and more frequently. In addition to water conservation, which is a huge interest of advocacy for me… I enjoy drinking fresh-mineraly-well water…the kind my ancestors have been drinking. Yet I’m appalled to find that chlorinated, flourinated, green liquid is all I can seem to find at work or at my apartments. Are we so sterile from all that soy protein that we can’t afford to get a little mineral build-up in our bodies?

I could probably go on and on with things that people have given me funny looks for. Wiping my hands on my pants instead of using a paper towel, blowing my nose in a scrap piece of fabric, walking barefoot through town… things that just make sense to me, that our culture seems to be fading out as a fad— simply because advertisers say it’s better that way. I recently subscribed to Green Life, which works like many Eco-friendly websites to educate people toward a sustainable life, and against the traps that advertisers try to pull to make you think you’re living sustainably. I thought all of these were audacious in their efforts to reverse their image…but it makes me wonder what else out there we’re totally missing. Who else are we rolling our eyes at when actually it’s us that’s acting the fool?

Green Washing at it’s worst:

1)CBS EcoAds: Any advertiser can pay extra, and CBS puts a green stamp on their TV ad.

2) Windex: in 2009, they introduced the “GreenList” logo - which looks like a third-party seal, but doesn’t actually have any verified standards.

3) Tested Green: From 2009-10, this company sold completely bogus certifications — neither “Tested” nor “Green” — to any company willing to pay a few hundred dollars

4) Mazda: their TV ad features the Lorax approving of their SUV. Gave themselves the fictional “Truffula Tree Certification.” But it’s not even a hybrid!

5) Fiji Water: Bottled water imported from Fiji. Claims “every drop is green” and that their water is “carbon negative”

PS… at least people appreciate the bluebonnets on Easter Sunday :-p

If a plane traveling 30,000 miles has forty 150 pound passengers, and it passes a plane travling 20,000 miles with forty 350lb passengers, which one uses less fuel?

If I dehydrate my cereal for 24 hours at 110 degrees does it use less energy/heat than if I heat it in the over at 350 for 20 minutes?

Is it more efficient to use a matate or mortar and pestel to grind my grains, or is it worth the electricity, (not to mention production, delivery, etc) of my food processor? Could I benefit from the muscles worked in pounding out peanuts for my peanut butter? Or is that time better spent typing up a blog? Which is more beneficial?

Does it use less fuel for a car to drive from my apartment to the grocery store with 2 people than with 3 (say if my roommates pick me up on my walk there). What if the journey is all downhill?

Do these minute details really matter in the midst of all the climate-related catastrophes occuring in the world? Should I push these questions from my mind and just be thankful to have a car, electricity, roommates, sunshine. Of course. But it still makes me wonder.

So, I don’t normally do this, and I’m trying not to form a habit and make this a food blog, but I just ate an amazing vegan quesadilla that I have to share.

Since getting this Forks over Knives book, I have found a lot of interesting recipes. Plus, I have a new foodie roommate who has peppered the living room with all sorts of cookbooks for me to browse, giving me all sorts of ideas of concoctions…but what is most motivating to me is finding a relatively simple recipe that includes ingredients that I have on hand or can use again in the near future.

Working seasonally means we have to take all our food with us place to place, but this season I’m determined to use up everything before we move to New Mexico(!), which adds an extra challenge.Since finding this recipe, however, I flagged it and couldn’t wait to give it a try.

Here’s what I pulled out of my fridge/pantry:

1 avocado
1 large tomatoes and two lil’ ones
1/2 a red onion
5 tortillas (I use Probiotic Multi Grain made in Austin, Texas. Since my first bite I haven’t turned back, I know it sounds weird, but these things are delicious!!!)
1.5 cups black beans (soaked overnight)
1.5 cups navy/anisazi beans (soaked overnight)
2 tablespoons miso (borrowed from roomie)
3 tablespoons nooch (nutritional yeast)
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon brags liquid aminos
various seasonings- garlic powder, paprika, mustard
4 tomatillos (okay, I picked these up at the store in the morn, I didn’t have um on hand)
1 lime

Amil mixed tomatillos with some leftover chipotle peppers in adobo sauce to make a salsa. He might have added some lime juice, too.
I pounded out a (large) avocado with some chopped onion and tomato, squeezed in some lime juice and sprinkled in some salt for the guac. (<3)

The hardest part was really just cookin’ up the beans. Well, waiting an hour for the beans to cook. Once cooked, Amil food-processed them with just about all the other ingredients to make the ‘cheese’. He spread this on one side of the tortilla, topped it with onions, tomato and spinach, and black beans, put some on another tortilla and topped it off, grilling it in the pan for about a minute to make everything warm… the result—astounding. Another favorite I could eat every week! Pretty soon I’ll have a strict 7 recipes I rotate weekly :-p It’ll make shopping easy!

Since I’m determined not to make everything I write about food…here’s some random information about my day.

I learned that Pecan is the state tree of Texas, and that Prickly Ash is in the citrus family. I also learned that the flower I’ve always called Buttercup is actually Prarie Primrose…which is why all the instructors looked at me funny when I said “this is a Buttercup.” Although it is commonly called that, it’s not even in the buttercup family.
I also got paid to sit in a tree house and read ee cummings to 6 of my peers. Life is wonderful…which is why I wanna get more involved. I get e-mails every day about environmental achievements and catastrophes happening all over the world, or right in my backyard. Other than pressing a button to e-mail my congressman, I’m just sitting at the edge of my seat waiting to get active in something.But alas, even when an Environmental Activist Meet-Up happens on Wednesday, April 11 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Legislative Conference Center at the Captiol, I can’t quite justifythe gas to get there.

I am doing a lot of little things to prepare for a big environmentally focused project. But you can’t know about that yet. ;)

Recipe for Success! Recipe for doing something yourself! Recipe for fun!

This weekend has been a weekend for trying new recipes. I still haven’t made my face scrub, but my pickles are in the fridge and I got to try my hand at several new tasty treats. Such successes include…

Poppy Seed Rye Bread— Adapted from all recipes.com, I used poppy seeds since I don’t have any caraway seeds, but it came out so moist and fluffy. I can’t wait to use it for sandwiches.

Peanut and Oat Cereal— This is my third time making this cereal, which tastes a bit like peanut-brittle and is absolutely divine with milk! Unfortunately we have an elf that gets into it in the pantry, requiring that I make a new batch weekly (though it runs out long before I get a chance). Each time I make it a bit differently, using peanut butter or cashews for peanuts…though this time I followed the recipe but used wheat bran for flax.The salt and maple syrup is the real win.

Chocolate Drop Cookies— Thought of making something similar after using peanut butter in the above recipe, which worked really well. Found this recipe in the Forks over Knives cookbook that my mom got me, and it reminded me of some sinfully sweet no-bake cookies I used to make. In this case, the maple syrup and peanut butter make it a relatively ‘healthy’ treat. :-p I topped mine with a banana-coconut walnut icing of my own invention. I plan to nibble them as a post-meal treat when I want something sweet without too much sugar.

And finally… Amil made me some BBQ Tempeh on friday that was out of this world.

I LOVE BBQ, but typically it consists of a sauce with too much processed sugar and meat, which I don’t eat. Amil’s concoction was a wonderful hybrid of tastyness. For the sauce he added equal parts Chipotle Peppers in Adobo sauce, balsamic vinegar, and maple syrup, with a pinch of salt. We let that marinade for a day before he cooked it on the stove allowing the sauce to carmalize a bit, and adding in some asparagus.

He also made a side of sauteed swiss chard and beet greens with a buttery oat base. I’m truly spoiled by this man!

I told him I’d happily eat it again next week :)

Hi Dear Blog-readers! My oh my how the days and weeks have flown by. With spring sprouting and wildflowers blooming, blowing their pollen all around the air, I (fortunately) haven’t been spending much time in front of the computer… but I thought I’d take a few moments while researching some projects to share some pictures and ideas with you.

Where should I begin?

I just found a wonderful blog while researching Healthy Cheeses at Food Renegade.com. This site seems to be everything I would want my blog to be if I did nothing but research and blog (but then who would be out taking the photos posted later on, eh?). I’m curious because I made a big move in January to stop/cut down on my dairy. As with much of my diet, it’s fluctuated quite a bit since then, especially since I’m fed crappy food as part of my job…but all the more motivation to keep to my ‘dairy rules’- which is to know where my dairy comes from, how the cows/goats are raised, and what else goes into it. This has proved rather difficult, however, and resulted in me either not eating Dairy at all or finding excuses to cheat… Well this blog seems to spell out exactly what I’m looking for if you’re interested. And I recommend going this route. I’ve been vegetarian for 5 years, and for most of that I’ve felt pretty hypocritical saying I don’t eat meat because of the hormones, chemicals, etc… which are likely in the cheeses that I happily devour, so I’m making moves to change.

Another thing I’m working on is making a new Face Scrub. The first one I tried was a mix of brown and white sugar and essential oils. It worked very well and lasted me the 6 months it was recommended to keep it. To start the new year I made an oatmeal scrub that had almost all the ingredients you’d put in a bowl of oatmeal…in a scrub. My boyfriend was quite a fan of this and uses a fair amount almost daily, so it’s almost run out…so now I’m searching for a new one. Long ago when visiting family, I tried a grapefruit/seasalt scrub that inspired me to DIY them, although I’ve never tried one with grapefruit. I saved the peel from a grapefruit I ate recently so now it’s time to try it… it’s just hard finding a good recipe. I really like DIY sites that explain why you’re putting everything in that you use. The brown sugar, for example, added certain nutrients while the white scrubbed off the dead skin…actually I don’t remember the specifics, but that’s hwy I’m looking for a new recipe.

Pickles. I’m makin’ pickles. I’m not fermenting cucumbers…which I had long thought was the process for making pickles, I’m just packing them in with vinegar. Actually, I’m following a recipe. Amil has been dying to ferment some stuff for a while now, and has big plans for sourkraut and beets and garlic…but I just want some pickles. Plus, we got a BIG bag of GIANT cucumbers from the farm near camp for only a dollar! Along with them we got a bag of turnips, a BIG bunch of carrots, a large bundle of beets, a large bag of spinach that we picked ourselves and some chard that we also plucked on our own, plus a carton of eggs, all for…$12! Well, it was $24 total, but we got some for my grandparents, too. You can’t beat fresh food from local farms!

Sorry, I was too lazy to take everything out of the bag for the photo.

And the last little project I wanted to share with you, is driving. Admitedly, I haven’t done hardly any driving since getting my new car…and some how we’ve put 2k on it already.But despite the fact that we’ve almost only driven to and from work (and with work’s gas stipend)…we’ve been following some rules to get great gas mileage.

Great Gas Milage Tips

• “Just be smooth and drive like your mother is in the car.”

• Hills:  maintain your momentum. Speeding up a little as you approach a hill will help your car get over the top without working too hard.

• Just “going with the flow” through traffic can mean traveling 10 or 15 miles per hour above the speed limit, and that alone can rob your fuel economy by up to 20%

• In heavy traffic:  keep a good following distance so  you don’t have to make any emergency stops.”

  The trick to efficient in-town motoring is to drive smoothly, maintain momentum, avoid quick starts and hard stops, always combine short trips, and plan your route to avoid backtracking, congested areas and hills. And don’t rely upon your navigation system to do that for you.

• Slow down well in advance of red lights rather than driving right up to them. The fewer times you have to accelerate from a complete stop the better your mileage will be.

• First, check your tire pressure regularly. Just one psi under-inflated can reduce fuel economy by 3%. Second, get the junk out of the trunk. Those golf clubs, mega-size toolkits and bags of traction salt are forcing your engine to work harder than it should.

• Keep your car tuned up. A well-maintained car will run more efficiently.

• While each vehicle reaches its optimal fuel economy at a different speed (or range of speeds), gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph

• You can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.27 per gallon for gas.

• Idling can use a quarter to a half gallon of fuel per hour, depending on engine size and air conditioner (AC) use. Turn off your engine when your vehicle is parked. It only takes a few seconds worth of fuel to restart your vehicle. Turning your engine on and off excessively, however, may increase starter wear.

• Turn off the AC. If you’re in Texas in the summer, at least turn off the AC 5 minutes before you reach your destination and don’t keep it working until the last second.

• When you turn on a car, it uses a bit of gas. When the car is idling, it uses a fixed amount of gas over a period of time (especially with the AC on).
  In most scenarios, the energy balance will be positive if you turn off your car for more then 20 seconds. Any time you can foresee that you will not be moving for more then 30s or 1minute you should turn off the engine to help your vacation budget.

Well hopefully that’s enough to keep you occupied for today. :)

Hello Blog world! I’ve had QUITE a few thoughts to share with you over the last week, but in order to get internet to share them with you, I have to come down to this cute little coffee shop, and during the work week I spend enough time here for work…so now it’s blog time.

I’ll start with a little update about the week before I start expounding my philosophies.
This was a strange week of getting settled and working from home, with no one but dear Amil to work with and play with. We’ve tried to spend the week getting into a routine and away from all the crazy celebrations of the last week, but as you might guess, this week has been anything from routine, starting work at 10:00 some days and working until 7 or 8 other days. However, we have had a kitchen at our disposal almost the whole time, and as you’re about to see…we really tried to make the most of it. I stopped short of photographing every delicious meal this week, but you’ll quickly get the idea.

Lovely, delicious things. Amil, Flowers, and quick cashew butter, apple and granola wraps.

Half of a mega grapefruit that had grown a bit too big. This is my new favorite way to fulfill a sweet-tooth craving, especially in the afternoon or mid-morning.

Amil made some homemade veggie pockets with leftover phylo dough. A-May-Zing! Like many of our meals, we had enough for lunch the next day. The carrots, pesto, turnips, egg and tempeh all complimented each other amazingly, while providing unique flavors reminiscent of other meals.

Another amazing Amil invention of stuffed peppers with sprouted brown rice, or gaba, and guacamole. mmmmmh! Feeling bad and eating good.

In other news, we started Insanity this week, and are going to do our best to follow the program. We even took our before pictures…which I’m not going to upload until we have some beautiful after pictures to juxtapose them.
In addition to Insanity, we’re continuing our tradition of cheat days and fast days…and guess what? Today’s a CHEAT DAY! Woo!

I used up some potatoes today in one of my favorite breakfast- Potato Pancakes.
We didn’t have sour cream and applesuce, so I sliced some apples and busted out the goat cheese- a delicious combination in all.

Next up: Cake for lunch (we have a lot of leftovers) and beet spaghetti for dinner!

Part of the motivation for all this food making, has been to lighten the load in our kitchen. I meant to take a photo, but it was just amazing how full our fridge and pantry were after moving in here. It took almost a full car just of food stuffs to bring it all over, and we’re only going to be living here for a few months. I think the move was a big realization to us just how comfortably we’ve been living and how much stuff we’ve acquired.
Over the next few months I definitely plan to find creative ways to use our food, and a lot of the craft stuff I’ve accumulated. So expect some new craft posts, and some gifts coming up. :-p

On another note, I’ve been so obsessed with food lately, I’ve completely neglected the primary purpose of this blog, which is to highlight my ethical over-analyzation of environmental protection. In fact, in the last few months I’ve pulled away from some of my more radical habits and compromised for a lifestyle of ease and comfort that’s made me feel a little guilty. Not because I don’t think people should live comfortably, but because this comfort, such as the heat that warms my apartment, comes at a cost…like gorgeous mountains being obliterated for the sake of finding coal. Or a giant pipeline being built across the country to transport oil from the Canada tarsands to our dependent needs.

I’m hoping that when work starts to stabilize, (heh, which might be in two months), I’ll get a chance to start thinking like myself…so expect this blog to start taking form soon.

Well well…put your feet up and get cozy, Cause this here’s a tale aout gluttony, will-power, hard work, and attitude…it’s called: The Last Week of my Life.

Funny thing about that title, is that it’s (hopefully) not the LAST week of my Life, but the last WEEK of my life… different meanings depending on where you put the emphasis. Funny English. I’m reading an interesting book about language that as part of my 1-book-a-month goal should have been finished 3 days ago, but none-the-less I’m only halfway through. The book assesses different languages and their different strengths and weaknesses regarding human expression. English, it says, is a “methodical, energetic, business-like and sober language, that does not care much for finery and elegance, but does care for logical consistency.” “As the languge is, so also is the nation,” according to a Danish linguist. By that token, French possesses claity and precision because they “follow in all utterances exactly the order of thought, which is the order of Nature.” So, it’s got me thinking that different languages are helpful at expressing different tones and thoughts. My friend Laura suggested that there be a Myers-Briggs type test that tells us what language would best be suited for us to express ourselves. So, someone…get on that!

Language lesson aside, this has been a week of extravagance and annoyance. Rather than continue with adjectives, I’ll just explain why. It all started precisely one week ago… with a giant birthday breakfast that I had been anticipating for seven months since it was invented. I was telling someone at that time how much I love receeses peanut butter puffs, as I love all cereals, but that one is so addicting I feel that I could eat the entire box. And then the idea was born, “heck, on my birthday… I WILL eat an entire box!” So for months leading up I would mention it, especially in the last week. I even got a container of Central Market Organics Almond Milk from a good friend (the afore-mentioned Laura, actually) to help me with my quest. Alas, when the morning finally came…I did not succeed. I actually wimped out and opted for the healthier version, getting one box of Central Market Orgnaics Peanut Butter puffs and one Leaping Lemurs box of peanut butter and chocolate. Since I had two, and since my beloved boyfriend was a bit envious, he helped me kill them, bowl by bowl.

The biggest cause of my failure to down an entire box of cereal (plus milk, berries, peanut butter and goodies, as pictured) was the fact that I woke up to the smell of some delicious waffles that my grandmother had made..and despite my attempt to resist, ended up having two waffle-peanut-butter-banana-and-maple-syrup sandwiches, all before diving into my four bowls of cereal. If this sounds like too much for you to bear reading, and by all means I understand because it’s making me shameful just typing it up, then turn away now…because the week of gorging myself on more food in one week than a Cantonese woman eats in an entire year has only begun to be laid out before you, and I promise there are many more shameful ventures to be explained.
            After such a heaping breakfast, I had planned on skipping lunch and enjoying my Party in the Park as my stomach rested in anticipation for Thai Food for dinner. Only an hour or two after my stomach began to cope with the copious amounts of cereal within it, my grandmother invited us to share her lunch of vegetarian spaghetti and salad. Oi. As much as I didn’t want any, I couldn’t refuse my sweet grandmother’s offering…and so I piled some spaghetti sauce onto what was left of the spaghetti squash we had brought to a spaghetti pot-luck the night before, and scooped a big bowl of salad that I hardly had the mandible muscles left to chew, and chomped away.
            Finally it turned 2:00 so we met up with more family and several friends at Longhorn Cavern State Park..a place I’ve visited a bit but never taken the time and $ to enjoy the cave tour. Boy-howdy what a tour it was! One hour and a half of non-stop information. It turned out to be just the tourguide and my family, plus one other couple, so we got to ask a few question and take a few pictures on the way. There was a point in my life when I had no idea what direction to go career-wise and so I applied to every cave I could find an application to. Not one of them ended up calling me back, which I know now is because that wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing, but I can definitely see myself spending some time someday leading tour after tour through a cold, dark cave and showing all the spectacular formations.

Well right after the cave, you better believe it was time to get some Thai Food…I grabbed some handfuls of m&ms to tide me over as I walked out the door, although my stomach wasn’t craving anything, candy or thai food. I resisted the usual pad-thai and opted for some Sweet and Sour tofu. Although (as is apparent) I hadn’t been giving much thought to calories, food combining or my overall health this day, I still spent a while pondering the menu. Tofu comes from Soy which is likely genetically modified. It’s not good to eat too much soy because it has an enzyme? Which mimics estrogen…more of a problem in boys, I guess. I wanted something heavy with vegetables but also something that the chef, a thai woman who apparently cooks every single dish in the restaurant because sometimes it takes a while, could add her little flair too. In the end, I opted for the sweet and sour because it came with cucumbers and pineapple! I just hoped the gooey sauce was homemade and not something out of a packet with MSG as one of the ingredients.

So, as the wine-glasses emptied and the checks got paid (Happy birthday to ME!) I counted this as a birthday success. I had weighed myself that morning, just to see what would happen with all this over-eating and celebration, and I had planned on fasting the next day, to let it all settle. I had been working out every morning, although with the work day being so strange lately it’s been hard to get a good solid workout in. We left the thai restaurant and went back to my aunts for…oh yes, but of course…CAKE. Not just any cake, since I’m not a big fan of fluffy, moist stuff…but my brother’s amazing chocolate macaroon ganache cake.

Amil and I ate about ¼ of it ourselves, and shared some, too…but took a lot back to the freezer for future munching. Yum!

Sunday was my very first day of fasting. Amil has become quite a pro at it, fasting one or two times a week. I initially thought that was a little excessive, but after two fasts of my own I can understand the appeal. It’s amazing how well you can go without food, especially when your body has an excess of a couple thousand calories to work through from the day before. Sunday was a great day to fast, as I spent the morning doing some Wii Dancing with the family, and spent almost all afternoon in the sun, on a long hike amongst wildflowers and then taking a nap in the grass in the front yard. All in all it was a wonderful birthday weekend, but it turned out to be just the beginning of a gluttonous week.

On Monday morning I broke my fast with a delicious fruit smoothie. Pineapple-kiwi-strawberry-banana and a little scoop of protein powder with some yogurt. Despite all the details from my birthday, I have really been learning to enjoy simple foods paired with each other…like fruits together or melons. For lunch I tried to go all-veggies and had a grand salad of fresh Kale from the neighbors farm, radishes and turnips and beet greens from our garden, cherry tomatoes and some avocado. I topped it off with some cilantro-lime pistachios that we received from Amil’s mom a few weeks back. Yummy! What made this week so crazy is that it was a combination of celebrations and countdowns until we left for our work’s new location. Monday’s celebration was a basketball game that brought out about 16 people, woo!, followed by a mentally stimulating book club, where we talked about my language book. Since the transition between the two was so short, I only had some leftover tomatoes, onions, beans and guacamole from the company kitchen (meaning not organic, or really nutritious at all), but I made up for it when we got home by nibbling some scrambled eggs and pesto at 9:00pm, heh.

Tuesday was a day of celebrating as my dear Amil turned 21!!! I tried to eat light throughout the day in anticipation of Amil’s birthday dinner, but I mistakenly started with a big bowl of cereal with a few too many sugars. The combination of sugar and stress made me a little antsy, and may not have been the best birthday present for Amil… but I’ll know for next time. I had the same sort of salad as Monday for lunch, this time with the extra scrambled eggs on top, and eventually we made it to dinner. As a vegetarian, sushi never initially appealed to me…until I had an avocado roll…or even better a sunshine roll (pronounced in the restaurant as “funshine”)- avocado, cucumber and a tiny wedge of lemon…mmmh! In college there was a place that delivered a 10 or 12 piece roll for $4.00, and I could hardly get enough.

Amil was greatly disappointed that his dream of enjoying sushi and sake for his 21^st birthday wasn’t going to come to fruition, as they had suspended their liqeur license temporarily. To make amends he went out and bought some Sake from Twin Liquors down the road…a cheaper solution in the end, since they still warmed it for us and gave us those sweet little sake glasses. Tuesday came to a close with kind of a light dinner- sushi and a seaweed salad, and some miso soup…that left a little to be desired. Since I knew what was to come, however, I think I stopped at that.

Wednesday was a craaazy day at work. I usually cope with stress by eating, but in this case it was going to add more stress I think. I had cereal for breakfast again since it was so good before. For continued my habit of chomping down lunch a lunch of veggie-wraps from about 2:00-3:00 since at actual lunch time I was still full from breakfast and used the break to try and get some other stuff done. For dinner, Amil and I made Spanikopita, a summer tradition that we just had to try ourselves, and offered as a sort of appreciation dinner for my grandparents. We enjoyed it with some corn and blackbean salad and a bowl of sweet, juicy fruit, which we ate as we talked about how poorly it digested inside us. The grand finale for dinner was some carrot cake my grandmother made with a brown sugar glaze rather than the usual cream cheese frosting. This turned out to be a great, albeit dangerous substitution, as Amil and I had about 3 pieces. The fullness that came next was responded to with the decision to fast the next day, despite knowing how hard it was going to be.

(oh yeah, and it rained)

In hindsight, it was good that we decided to fast because we hardly would have had a moment to eat. From 7:00am to 8:30 pm we packed up 3 different cars, loaded two trailers with furniture, carried furniture for eight people, plus all our work supplies, plus three canoes up to two second floor apartments. Miraculously we did all this without a bite to eat, with not quite enough water, and without yelling at each other. The next day was just as fruitful and exhausting but with a few extra surprises. Firstly, I found that fasting is easy when you had a full stomach the night before and when you have a lot to do. Your stomach growls a few times, but it’s a nice feeling to tell it to shut up. I broke the fast with a delicious apply that I couldn’t quite finish, and a bit later had some nuts and chai tea latte with rice milk (at my new favorite internet café). We had lunch at my new favorite café. I had their daily special which was a black bean and sweet potato chili with goat cheese and cilantro, though I snuck a few bites of Amil’s Santa Fe pumpkin burger (basically a veggie burger made with wild rice and pumpkin—so fluffy and delicious) which I am going to get next time. I guess because of all the changes and celebrations lately, even something simply and pretty healthy like my chili seems extravagant. Especially when you add in the free dessert that Amil got since it was the week of his birthday—a Lemon White Chocolate Bread Pudding, which we waited until after we unloaded the two couches, two sofa chairs, 7 bedside tables and two coffee tables from the trailer and back into the apartments to enjoy. Fortunately we had the help of some locals who worked at the furniture shop we bought it all from. I tell you, I’m really enjoying this new town…but I definitely want to pay back all the help we’ve been getting. The women at the utilitiy place stayed open an extra ten minutes since we arrived 4 minutes before closing with a plea to turn our utilities on, which they did. And we had a few helping hands in moving in… which the two of us greatly needed. I think to ‘pay it forward’ I’m going to bake something sweet to spread around the town, just to even out our Karma. Can’t hurt?
Friday evening added a slice of stress to the duo of days, as we again were fighting time in trying to return home for our big end of training dinner at the bosses. We did finally arrive just after everyone finished desert, to enjoy some amazing vegetarian chili with hominy and all sorts of beans and goodness. We did end up having a rather large portion of key lime and chocolate moouse pies…which I felt we deserved up until I finished it. Why, oh goodness me, to I find it necessary to treat myself with things I know darn well don’t have a bit of goodness in it for me? After the cleanse I was sure I could avoid these processed sugary strange foods, but here I am, at them again. I’ve thought of a few tricks, always after the fact, to help myself make good food decisions. One of them is to make a habit of saying a little grace before I eat, that way I can really be cognizant of where my food comes from and how it’s going to help nourish my body… but I haven’t quite got into that habit fully yet. Another little tactic is to imagine myself as a beautiful animal, like a Gila woodpecker, and imagine facing this peculiar food…would I want it? Would I need it? Would I eat it? Maybe if I was starving, but not if there were other wholer foods around. Another tactic is to just drink some water and try to avoid it, which had been working for me until this week. There’s probably more that I’ll mention later.
So this weekend were just the icing on the cake of my ridiculous weekend. Cheddars for dinner on Saturday (salad and a big plate of fries, plus samplings of everyone’s veggies) a big ol’ breakfast of cereal Sunday morning, and Torchy’s tacos as an afternoon snack. Some good conversation and a viewing of the powerful semi-satire The Lorax seems to have rebounded me back to the state of mental consciousness that I used to hold myself to…although it’s going to take some serious meditation and a long letter to my best friend to get it all sorted. Therefore, I’ve declared tomorrow another fast day. :-p This time it’s not for my stomach but for my mind.

Daily posts turning into weekly posts…tis the season for seasonal work. :-p I imagine they will only get less frequent.

Maybe it’s all the sitting down not doing much that amounts to anything lately, or maybe it’s the lack of stuff to do when I get off work…but I’ve had a hankering to get more involved lately. For the last year and some, I’ve been completely content in my life and relationship. As you can see from the blog, I’m still trying new things and trying to learn all sorts of things, from Latin to trophology to sewing and driving a standard…but I still feel remarkably idle. One of the things I thrived on in college was the ample amount of things to do. I went from classes to the gym to meetings to homework, thought I did enjoy the month off in-between semesters just to catch up on my sleep and relax from all that moving around. It’s that busy-body lifestyle that makes seasonal work so appealing. In addition to moving around and trying new places and meeting new people—you get to completely exhaust yourself doing what you love until you get tired of it…and once you do, you get a few weeks or months off and then go somewhere new and do it again.

Until the season starts and that gets going, though… I have had more idle time than I’ve ever known what to do with. Ever since I started school I always had homework or something to work on in the evenings. Of course, the great appeal of graduating was having “free-time” finally to read and do what I want…but I’m finding that free-time to be as suffocating as it is…free. I want more, I want to volunteer, to learn, to meet new people, to exhaust myself and try new things.

So I’m starting with my favorite holiday, Earth Day. I don’t have a secured volunteer position yet, but I have found some pretty fun festivals to attend. One in Houston which will be closer to work, and one in Austin which will be closer to home. I’m hoping that some organization at these events have needs for a craft-happy tree-hugging info-sharing tabler to sit around for a few hours and explain to people what’s going on in the environmental side of the world.