Real Food: Day 24

I can't believe that this 30 days is blowing by so fast! I am still enjoying doing it. Yes, sometimes not being able to just grab something quick from the store is hard. Yes, I do now have more dishes to do, and no I still don't have a dish washer. Yes, it take time to think about meal plans and cook enough stuff to have on hand for meals and snacks. Yes, sometimes I end up eating weird things for dinner because I'm to tired/lazy to make something. That is right for the last to nights dinner has been some homemade beef jerky and mozzarella cheese, I totally feel like a pioneer eating jerky for dinner. You know what, that dinner was yummy and satisfying.

All in all I like this real foods thing and can't believe I only have 6 days left.

Real Food; days 12-15

These fews days have offered up my hardedst days so far. I was on vacation in Whistler BC for these days. I new going into this vacation that I didn't want to be totally crazy about what I ate, but I did want to try to stick with the 30 day plan, here is what I did. I made sure that I made and took with me some great snacks: homemade beef jerky, homemade cracker jacks, grain free crackers, dried fruit, and grain free granola. I also offered to make dinner for all my friends on evening, a yummy stew. I did eat out while we where there, if it was possible I tried to not eat grains and eat as many real foods as I could. There were some things that I ate that had grains because you can only get them in BC, plus I have a few snacks that I bought that I will enjoy after these 30 days are up. All in all I think it went pretty good.

Real Foods: day 9

whoa, major breakthrough! Normally if I were to drink a cup of tea I would put 2 splendas in it, today is I drank a cup of tea with no sweetener in it...and I enjoyed it. I wouldn't have thought that possible because I usually like my tea sweet. I would have used some honey but I couldn't find any here at work. I'm very impressed that I had no issues with drinking unsweetened tea, maybe my 9 days with out processed sugar is starting to change my taste buds!

Real Foods: day 7

Thank goodness for deliciously organic, without it I would be starving! This site is making my 30s a breeze so far! I made grain free pancakes today, they were tasty! I also made some grain free crackers tonight that were super easy and yummy! Mine don't have poppy seed because I didn't have any but they stilled worked. I tried them with the ricotta and honey and it was awesome!

Real Foods: Day 6

Just whipped up a tasty dinner of some stuff I had in the fridge. A stir fry of onion, carrot, turnip, and snow peas topped with a little goat cheese. Very fresh and YUMMY!!! After my half day off I'm back with a vengeance!

Real Foods : day 5

Today is an interesting day. It started out normal breakfast of grain free real food, but then I went to my friends baby shower...not grain free. So today was only half grain free. But tomorrow I will be back at it.

hmmmmm....

Do I want to try to make my own yogurt?

http://ourgrowingfam.blogspot.com/2011/09/homemade-yogurt.html

Delicious

Let me just say that Deliciously Organic recipes are exactly that, DELICIOUS!! In the last couple of day I have made 5 things from the site and they have all be very yummy! Last nights dinner didn't disappoint. I'm thinking I might need to run out and get her cookbook! She also offers weekly recipes/meal planners for about $10 a month, I'm thinking I might need to join.

Real Foods: Day 2

Things were going great until I hit a small backslide in the form a of cookie that was in the break room at work. Maybe eating lunch in the break room when there are processed foods in there are is not the best idea. It also might be a good idea to work on finding a good real foods sweet snack that I can bring for lunch.

Real Foods day 1

After spending Monday cooking and getting ready for this week. Day 1 was a breeze!

Breakfast of blueberries, yogurt and some grain free granola that I made
Lunch for me and friend of kale salad and this awesome stew
Snack of hummus with carrots and snap peas
Dinner of this yummy salad and a soup I made with a Hubbard squash, onions and apples.

Day one awesome!

30 Days of Real Food

After finding these two blogs the other day I thought it was time for me to try out a new way of eating.
http://deliciouslyorganic.net/
http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/

Last year after seeing Alicia Silverstone on Oprah and buying The Kind Diet I tried Vegetarian and Vegan for 30 days. I learned that being a strict vegan is HARD and I'm not really my thing, although I do still make many vegan dishes and sometimes have vegan days. I tend to lean towards vegetarian, so far I have made no decisions to become strictly vegetarian.

So this year I'm doing 30 days of real food, but being me I also threw in a couple other things. Really I'm doing 30 days of real foods that are grain free mostly organic, plus I'm thinking of throwing in doing it on a budget just for kicks.

Here is what I mean by Real Food:
Whole foods that are more a product of nature than a product of industry.
Lots of fruits and vegetables trying to make most of them organic when possible.
100% whole-wheat and whole-grains
Seafood (wild caught is the optimal choice over farm-raised)
Only locally raised meats such as pork, beef, and chicken
Beverages limited to water, milk, all natural juices, naturally sweetened coffee & tea, and, to help the adults keep their sanity, wine and beer!
Snacks like dried fruit, seeds, nuts and popcorn
All natural sweeteners including honey, 100% maple syrup, and fruit juice concentrates are acceptable in moderation

What you not a Real Food:
No refined grains such as white flour or white rice (items containing wheat must say WHOLE wheat…not just “wheat”)
No refined sweeteners such as sugar, any form of corn syrup, cane juice, or the artificial stuff like Splenda
Nothing out of a box, can, bag, bottle or package that has more than 5 ingredients listed on the label
No deep fried foods
No “fast foods”

I have planned my menu for next week and went to the farmer's market, Trader Joe's, Safeway and back to Trader Joe's (I didn't buy enough pecans the first time) I'm ready to start cooking and getting real!

2 months!

In two months Kristen and I will be in ITALY!!! I'm getting so excited! I think I might have finally finalized our itinerary, meaning we can start to book our hotel/hostels.

Today I'm looking at my favorite website when planning European trips, my best friend Rick Steves website. Today I am looking at all the stuff I want to buy, I love the idea of buying thing specially designed for stuff, like the shower caddy. It hold 3 little bottles, has elastic loops for a razor and toothbrush and a convenient hook so that you can hook it in the shower with you plus it is mess so it drys super quick! I don't really need it but it sounds super cool!

Soon I will have to start planning on the 4 outfits that I will bring to last me our 2 week trip; what doesn't wrinkle or show dirt and other fun stuff like that.

My biggest hurdle will be getting Kristen to pack just 1 carry on bag!

Smells like cows in Sunnyside. It's reminding me of football games in high school when the wind was right and you got a whiff of cow, the wind is always right!

OMG I haven't stayed in a Motel in forever! This room smells like a powered old lady! I haven't stayed in a place with your room door to the outside in ages!!

We are finally on our way to lunch of SOPITOS!! How I have missed you Sopitos, it has been a whole year! Then off to the wine fair! Maybe I'll eat some jerky...

We are heading off to Prosser for our 3rd food and wine fair! After a slow start, thanks for the waffles and bacon carmel! Then stopping in Cle Elm for jerky

OMG I'm a lobster! I hung by the pool with some friends and even after sun blocking 3 times in 4 hours I'm a burned mess!! The front of my legs are bright red!!

Busy Morning

This morning was busy with things I needed to do.

First up: I had to check-in for my flight to Spokane tomorrow. Yep I'm going to visit the Fam for the first time this year. I can't wait to get to the heat and no AC at my mom's house! Maybe we will stop by Costco on the way home and I will buy her a window AC. On Sunday I'm going to go and hang out at the Red Lion pool with some friends from work who happen to be going to SpokVegas to enjoy the heat (it takes all kinds). John and Nicole just bought a "pool". Mom says it is the size of a hot tub, to me that doesn't make it a pool. I think I will be chillaxing in there with cutie Elisabeth, who I hear LOVES the "pool" although to her it probably is an olympic size! Then the rest of the time I will being helping my mom stain the back deck!

Second piece of business: I had to buy tickets for my friends and myself to the So You Think You Can Dance Tour that went on pre-sale this morning. Got 4 tickets on the floor! Hopefully it will not be as crazy loud as it was 2 years ago where I was still a little deaf 2 days later!

Thirdly: I have been making sure that everything is all in place and we don't run out of anything here at work while I'm away.

Fourth: I should probably look up bus schedules to get to the airport tomorrow, I'm super bummed that the new light rail isn't open all the way to the airport yet!

Tonight I have to finish straightening up my apartment so that Terry doesn't think I'm a slob when she comes to feed Maggie. Then I should probably pack.

Tori time

Trav and I with his program waiting for the show to start!

Trav and I went to Tori Amos last night. We got the tickets from his niece's boss who was unable to make it, so we got them for a steal! We had pretty good seats, we were in the 12th row, the only problem was that we were on the wrong side of her. She had her back to us a lot of the time. This was the first time that I have ever seen her from this side, when I buy tickets I either get them in the middle or on the right side because I know that she faces that way the most. It was the opening night of her Sinful Attraction Tour, it was fun to be there at the beginning when everything was new. She did a bunch from the new album, which I haven't listened to much, so they were new to me. She also did some classics, like Cornflake Girl, Precious Things, and Crucify. She did an amazing cover of Landslide, it was really great. It wasn't the best concert of hers that I've seen but she was still great!

We saw her at the new WaMu theater by Qwest field, that is an interesting venue, you are just in folding chairs on a flat floor, and I keep expecting someone to either sell me a some Amway or start a conference on synergy. It will be interesting to see how they have the place set up when we go there again to see P!nk!

Here is Tori doing Big Wheel for one of her encores.

You can check out more videos from the concert at here.

I can haz Marinerz?!?

We went to a Mariners game last night, we got the tickets from the icanhazcheezburger website. We got a t-shirt, signed by the founder of the website. Carmel got her picture with him plus her awesome poster that she made to try and win some rally fries, we didn't win. But the Mariners did so that was fun.