Nuts, Nuts and More Nuts!

We drove out to Jossy Farms yesterday and picked up 50 pounds of fresh walnuts and 25 pounds of fresh hazlenuts, still in the shell but cracked. So now I have an excuse for watching TV in the evenings... they all need to be separated from the shells and bagged for the freezer.

How many nuts does one family need? I did a little calculating... an ounce a day for two people is a pound every eight days... 10 pounds every eighty days... or about 45 pounds in a year.

Miss Maisy - Infirmed Again

Miss Maisy had surgery today to remove two small tumors from her left front leg. We had spotted one of them a few weeks ago and were watching to see what it did. Then Maisy found it, too, and wouldn't leave it alone, so the Good Doctor recommended removal. While he was removing the first one, he found the second one and removed it, too.

Now Maisy is sporting her blue donut again, and is not too pleased about that.

The Good Doctor suggested that the tumors may be histocytomas, but we won't know until the pathology comes back.

San Antonio Adventures

I'm on day three of my San Antonio adventure, and things have taken a definite upswing.

First, I found three vegetarian restaurants to try. Last night I had a giant plate of grilled vegetables for dinner! The veggies, which included tomatoes, tomatillos, zuchinni, mushrooms, peppers, onions, broccoli and cauliflower, clearly had some olive oil and pesto on them, but it was a lot better than some of the other options on the Riverwalk, like enchiladas and fettucini alfredo.

Second, I took a cab ride to Whole Foods Market. $40 round trip for $50 worth of groceries, but I'm glad I did it. I bought fresh fruit, veggies, salad fixings and Lara Bars. I'm so happy to have food I can eat! The cab driver was very funny, telling us stories about San Antonio's past and about how the Alamo is haunted.

Tonight is a "dinner with friends" event at the conference. We decided to go back to Boudro's, which is where we ate on Saturday. (I'm just now realizing how lucky we were... we got there at the prime dinner hour, and while everyone else was waiting an hour and a half, we got seated immediately and we were served some fantastic, wonderful, amazing food by a very skilled and charming waiter.) Tonight there are about 25 people going. I can't wait to have guacamole again! It was fantastic. I will probably try the vegetable enchiladas tonight, if I can get them to hold the cheese for me.

I didn't get much sleep last night. There was an impressive thunder and lightning storm at around 3:00 a.m. that lasted for an hour. I couldn't see the lightning bolts from my room, but the whole sky would flash a brilliant white and the thunder would sound almost immediately. It was really wild for this Oregon girl!

A SAD State of Affairs

I have food issues.

Over the past week, as I have been trying to fight off a bug, the topic of nutritional healing has been a popular one in our house. I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about and talking about what I shouldn't eat... and a little bit of time on what I should eat.

The end result? Two days of SAD binging (think burgers and candy bars) and a weight gain of FOUR POUNDS!!!

And now... I'm sitting in a hotel in San Antonio for five days of training.

So I will be doing my best, but I don't have nearly as much control over my diet as I would like. I brought fruit and raw veggies and nuts on the plane with me, so for most of the day things went ok. Dinner? Not so good... it's hard when you're with other people who love food like you do and you're trying to remain sane.

Tomorrow I hope to find a grocery.

The Ideal Me

This is the ideal me:
This is the actual me, at least according to My Virtual Model.


Talk about motivation!

The after effects of brussels sprouts

I made brussels sprouts yesterday. And then I ate them all. Today, every time I even so much as thought about vegetables, my stomach would rumble. So I didn't eat very many.

It probably didn't help that we didn't have any vegetables at home. It's amazing how many vegetables you have to buy when you do ETL.

It's also amazing how much you have to cook! I'm doing two loads of dishes a day! Last night I tried to make butternut squash soup. It was so terrible that we just threw it out. All that cooking for nothing!

Food Diary, November 1

Breakfast -
Oatmeal with soy milk and goji berries
Fresh pineapple

Lunch -
One small slice of vegetarian pizza
Black bean soup with baked blue corn chips

Dinner -
Cobb salad with cashew caesar dressing
One rum ball