And Life Gets In The Way

One day I was blogging and the next I was not.  And the next, and the next, and the next, and then before long it was nearly two years before the next post popped up.

Sure, the blogging urge never went away and I thought about blogging, at least weekly, composing blogs in my head as I rushed through my days.  Still seeing life through my bloggie lenses…as life unfolds always thinking about how I would write that in a post. 

But between kids getting older and my now or never realization I needed to spend as much time as possible with them before they moved out, and work getting more demanding, and so many outside activities, and dealing with lots of life stuff…the actual time for sitting down to write never happened. 

And before I knew it nearly two years of unblogged, undocumented life had flown by.

So here I am, trying to get back, hoping this isn’t an isolated post that I manage to crank out in the midst of all my busy-ness. 

And nearly two years later life is so much different.  So much has happened.

My son has graduated and has gone off to college.  Big adventures for him, pride yet heartbreak for me.  I miss him a lot.

My daughter is in high school now, forging her independence fiercely, working at growing up and pushing away much harder than her brother did in a way that is common I guess for most teenage girls. 

Hard again for me as I reel from the one-two punch of my two kids stepping out on a ledge of their own at the same time.

And in another huge, life-altering event, in September 2010 we did an experimental 21-day challenge with the PCRM and tried going vegan for a three-week period.   That three-day challenge showed so much promise in how we felt that here in March 2010 we are still living a 100% plant-based lifestyle.  And feeling great.  A healthy lifestyle is now the theme of our lives, not only from the way we eat but extending to the smaller, greener footprint we have and very active lifestyle we have gravitated towards as we now lean towards being a car-lite cycling family.  Needless to say in many ways we are feeling and looking great.

And so that is where I am today.  A little update to let the world know I am older, but still finding my way to fit and fabulous and even closer than I was when I was last here.

Looking forward to getting back on the path.

No Lights, No Phone, No Motorcar…Not A Single Luxury!!!!!!

For those of you too young to recognize it…that would be from the theme from Gilligan’s Island…and except for the island surrounded by water part, that is exactly how I lived for a few weeks while I was off in Virginia with FabTeen, being mountain men!

We lived in a camp, learned 17th century crafts and even had to dress the part or we were considered “naked” and couldn’t participate!

This was my home away from home:

My cot is the one on the right without the mosquito netting!

See how the walls of the tent don’t go all the way to the floor…and the slats in my wooden pallet floor?  These were welcoming open doors for my multiple roommates!

  YES!   They are as big and scary as they look!  I HATED them!!!  and I HATED going to bed! 

Susanna (my human roommate and much preferred to the spidery ones) and I had a nightly bedtime ritual that sadly did not include hot cocoa and bedtime stories.  Instead we would call in one of the nonspider fearing men to remove by hand a dozen or so spiders from our tent….no matter…every single night, by the middle of the night, new ones had moved in! 

The closeup is the back of my tent…the little structure up hill is the bathroom!  No running water…and I always did spider and snake checks before I sat down!

This was our little “village” in the woods, with the fire in the center and the tents all around it:

We built fires and cooked all of our meals over it…

Showers were also very primitive…and were a 25 minute hike there and back into “town” which translates to base camp (where FabHubs and FabStepson were!) I even had company in the shower!Sounds like a lot of work and struggles…but still I had a lot of fun and did a lot of firsts…I learned how to blacksmith!   Like Mother, Like Son…   I learned how to start a fire without matches…using flint and steel! I filled my water bottle from this pump….I was surprised the water tasted really good..I am very picky about my water too!Learned some old-fashioned games:Learned to weave…and I am much better at weaving than blacksmithing!     Made a sheath, and then made a knife to put in the sheath:    Learned how to load and shoot a black powder rifle (and it turns out I am a pretty good shot too!)

 

        While I did dread the nights, in spite of the spiders I had such a great time! 

There is so much more that I did…but this post is getting long!  And since this is a food blog I know you are curious how I handled the food part!

So  I will be writing another post about how I managed too eat while I was in totally meat-based environment with no access to my yummy organics or grocery!

You May Be A Mom If You……

Cry like a big baby during (of all movies) Toy Story 3!! 

FabSheTeen wanted to see Eclipse tonight!  So I decided to give her a rare treat (we are movie renters and never go to the theater unless it is a school field trip!) and picked her up from camp and we went to the movies…but since her BFF ended up not going…she decided to wait for her, so we opted to see

instead!

The 3-D version!  Don’t we look cute in our 3-D glasses?  I am actually wearing glassesses since I have my 3-D glasses on over my glasses!

Ken and Barbie fall in love!  So cute!  So cheesy!

Confession:  I am a definite movie crier!  Embarrassingly enough, I am even known to cry during touching commercials.

My kids tease me mercilessly all the time about this.

But this was not Beaches, or Terms of Endearment, or Pay It Forward, or Marley and Me, or even Bambi (yes…I bawled my eyes out in all of those except for Marley and Me which I will not see because I know it will make me cry and I don’t want to cry!)

I cried for the toys, oh yes I did!  and I just silently sniffled and snorted away with the tears streaming down my face behind the glassesses (boy was I glad to be wearing those!!  They hid the tears well!) when Andy’s mom came into his room after he had packed!  (Umm….my FabTeen will be leaving for college next year…it hit so close to home!)

But to cry at Toy Story????  LOL!  or for Crying Out Loud, whichever the case may be!

Another Day, Another Salad..or Two

Another busy day spent at FabSheteen’s school…we were hungry and they were making cheeseburgers for the kids (a fun reward day…party all day with slides, rock climbing, food, and more) , so FabHubs and I ran home for lunch.

I  was in the mood for salad again…..

So I finished up the last of the salad, topped with my home-grown sprouts and half of last avocado.  It was heavily sprinkled with nutritional yeast and dressed with my new fave…homemade garlic/oil/lemon dressing.  So. So. Good.

But my manly man, tool-wielding, pioneering master, carnivorous husband…look at his lunch…

LOOK WHAT I HAVE DONE TO MY HUSBAND (hahahahaha)

Yes..he voluntarily fixed himself a lunch of a can of sardines packed in water (we read in a recent Eating Well article we should be eating more sardines); a carrot; a banana; and the other half of my avocado (guess who didn’t eat avocados when I married him)!

I am soooo proud!  LOL!  (I am obviously feeling way too much glee over this!)

After lunch we ran back to school to volunteer for the “bake sale” which was really a water bottle and and frozen artificially flavored and colored high fructose corn syrup sale (read water bottles and melting icees…..melting because this is May in South Florida of course!)  I am so NOT happy peddling this stuff to kids, some of whom come back for thirds and fourths! (I did manage to fuss enough about selling sodas though, so they don’t sell them anymore at these weekly sales.  Yes, I am THAT mom.)

Anyway, once that was finished, FabGrumps I mean Hubs and I did a Costco run to re-stock our nearly barren pantry.  We were out of nearly all of our staples!   Garlic, lemons, lettuce (no! not lettuce!), maple  syrup, peanut butter, EVOO, white vinegar for cleaning…and more.

While sampling my way running through the aisles of Costco, I found pizza on sale, two ginormous unbaked pies for $7.99…and they had yummy Margherita pizza!  A bargain like this I couldn’t resist!  Salad and pizza would be perfect (and easy for a change) for dinner.

Once home I couldn’t resist fixing it up some!  I had some leftover grilled eggplant in the fridge just begging to be added to this pizza…as well as a Vidalia onion who couldn’t wait to be sliced and diced and join the melee as well!

They were perfect on top….this pizza was perfection!Next came the salad….Costco organic spring mix topped with whatever was left in the fridge from the last two boxes:  Cukes, carrots, onions, tomatoes, celery, and parsley.

Have I mentioned how much I love salad??????

We are in love with this dressing! 

Simple. 

Lemon juice.  Olive Oil.  Minced garlic.  Parmesan Cheese.  

That is it!  A slight variation on a garlicky lemon dressing my mom used to make!And I can’t say enough about the combination of the dressing spooned over a thick layer of nutritional yeast (over the salad of course!)

While I love salads…I find I love not just any old salad, but mostly MY salads.  I put all sorts of things on them…sometimes beans, cheeses, nuts, tons of veggies, hearty greens, and more. 

Regular old iceberg lettuce with a few carrot shreds just don’t do it for me.  Unfortunately that is what I seem to find mostly when I go out!  I am starting to dread my week away at Boy Scout camp in June when I will not be able to make all of my favorite things and will have no refrigeration…so I will be almost completely relying on a meal plan based on the SAD diet.  How will I get through a week without my beloved salad?????  Or fresh veggies????  Or fresh fruits????

So far my main plan consists of bringing along some sprouting containers, starting them before I leave, so I have some fresh sprouts to munch on!  At least that will be something.  More on that to come.

The rest of the evening was spent family style.  My new best friend is the Blockbuster Movie Express, found in grocery stores where you can rent a movie for $1, for one day.  So after dinner we gathered ‘round the TV and watched The Ugly Truth…very cute movie!

What do you put on your salads to make them fun and exciting?