Hearty Soup

Starting the day with smoothies, eating homemade soups for lunch, and cutting back on grains and meat at dinner has left me ten pounds lighter and feeling much more energized. I plan my meals based on the fresh foods available and select healthier choices in general. I have not counted any points, weighed any food, or even tried to count calories. I have just made mindful decisions to eat a certain way. Best of all, I have not deprived myself. I have enjoyed some pasta, steak, and even ice-cream. I just don’t indulge everyday. I eat raw fruits and veggies daily and add nuts and healthy fats to my diet. I am not food obsessed, but thoughtful about what I am putting into my body. Here’s to a new outlook on food and my own health. I am enjoying it very much so far. I will be posting my recipes and progress over the coming weeks…be sure to check in!

• Germs: Keeping Them At Bay
  I am sitting here in my living room on my iPad Mini (my son is on my laptop so I’m relegated to tiny typing) and right next to me is a peeled and halved onion. It sits on our Santa Cookie plate looking rather odd as a table decoration. Why? Well, not usually one for [Read the full story ...]
• Stress – Taking a Toll on My Health
  I have to say, the last three years have been a roller-coaster. Now things are settling into a more ‘normal’ routine (no chemo, radiation and baldness), I should be reveling in joy and calm. But the trouble with fighting cancer (my eight year old son’s, not my own) is that it takes a HUGE toll [Read the full story ...]

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Apparently, onions pull the germs from the air….literally. According to someone’s hairdresser, who heard it from a cab diver, who knew…someone else, the onion has properties that attract germs like a moth to a flame. Legend has it (well, gossip at least) that a town was stricken with flu, and the only household not to have the illness was a farmer who put an onion in each room. The onion blacked and tested positive for the flu virus, but the family remained healthy!

Going back in history, people used to hang onions and garlic to ward off illnesses such as the Black Death. Well, that’s good enough for me. I am giving it a try! The reason I’m doing it today is that I have the beginnings of a stinking cold. The sore throat, the fuzzy, thick feeling in my head….you get the picture. So far, the onion has not turned black but my nose is clearer and I feel much better than I did when I woke up. Mind over matter? Maybe. But it is worth a try. I’ll let you know if my cold develops into a full force stinker or stays at bay.

Relax

I have to say, the last three years have been a roller-coaster. Now things are settling into a more ‘normal’ routine (no chemo, radiation and baldness), I should be reveling in joy and calm. But the trouble with fighting cancer (my eight year old son’s, not my own) is that it takes a HUGE toll on one’s own health.

I am currently waiting, cell phone by my side, to hear from a neurologist. I have ‘white matter’ in my brain, which could be age (that sucks) or could be the sign that my body is giving me grief for being ridiculously stressed for so long. Given my other symptoms: unrelenting fatigue, headaches, strange body sensations, to name a few, it is the general consensus that I have developed some kind of autoimmune condition.

While nothing is confirmed as yet, my family has a history of Lupus and Fibromyalgia, so I wouldn’t be overly shocked to discover my stress has induced a family favorite! While I am organic as much as possible, careful to balance my diet, and believe in exercise, my recent illness has meant I have been more sloth than Supermom! Basically, I feel awful. I feel like crawling into bed and never moving again. I feel like shouting out about how unfair it all is.

What I won’t do, however, is wallow in pity and accept my lot. I intend to fight this with fire…kick it hard…just like my son kicked cancer…and get myself functioning in a positive and healthy way. After all, I am a Healthy Working Mom…got to stick to that no matter what! Unfortunately, I cannot take part in the run I planned to raise money to find a cure for cancer…the doctor actually laughed at me when I told him I still planned to try to train.

So where do I start? I think I need to get myself back to how I was before… gently, with some modifications, and lots of self-discipline.

Force myself to go to bed by 10pm

Plan weekly menus to eliminate panic cooking and stress about feeding family properly

Find a way to get a cleaning person in at least once a month

Accept my fatigue but find a way to exercise each day

Accept that I am too tired after work to be Supermom and give myself a break

Begin Yoga and meditation…de-stress!

Harmony Yoga

Here is a FaceBook find from https://www.facebook.com/matthewmcdevitt65 Thought it might motivate me to switch from my obsession with coffee to Green Tea – the latter burns fat!!

You see, I have been fighting fatigue for some time now. My doctor gave me the all clear, reminding me that I have been more than stressed for the past three years as my son battled leukemia. I feel now, however, that I should have recovered more from that than my body actually has. I will never ‘relax’ and forget about it all, but I don’t have the immediate stress of the illness anymore. So what is going on?

I have found that I wake up feeling like I have not been to sleep at all. For months I have been sleeping like a baby and feeling exhausted upon waking. Recently, I have not been able to get to sleep at night, despite being bone tired, so I think my new-found passion for coffee is screwing me up some!

I know I have been given a clean bill of health but I am a little suspicious of my adrenal glands. Having such high stress levels for so long will have filled my body with the stress hormone cortisol. That wreaks havoc with your adrenals. So I have been looking for natural ways to try to regulate this. I know I need a good eating plan:

•Avoid gluten — a protein that many women with adrenal imbalance may be sensitive to.
•Eat adequate protein at every meal — important for energy and stamina.
•Eat within an hour of waking — helps restore healthy blood sugar levels.
•Eat healthy fats.
•Eliminate all “white” food – refined sugar, flour, and grains, at least temporarily. (This is easy as I already do this for the most part)

running

I also have to take into consideration my herniated disc at the base of my neck. This is an old injury which threatens to pop from time to time, always at the most inconvenient moment, and is a constant nagging companion whenever I decide to be awake!!! I have learned that exercise is the best thing for it; strengthening the muscles around my neck keeps the disc in place. I just have to be careful!

So this is where I am at. School is going to start soon so I need to get my butt back on that crazy schedule. My kids are going to the local school (instead of schlepping down to the school I teach at miles away), so we have a new way of doing things to figure out. I am working on kicking my adrenals into shape along with my ‘within normal weight‘ body with the ‘not going to run anywhere fast‘ physique. Big boobs and butt are sexy to some, but my expanding middle (also a sign of adrenal fatigue) is not! It is also one of the unhealthiest places to gain weight. This healthy working mom wants to reevaluate and get her game on again!

My shining glory this morning was a recipe inspired by recent posts on other blogs to do with Kale. I am not a lover of this green, leafy vegetable, but I do know how wonderful it is nutritionally. Naturally, I have never managed to get my kids to eat it, as I don’t cook it much.

My smoothie started out with me ripping apart (who needs to chop?) two large handfuls of kale. Where I was going from there, I was not sure. Then I hunted around my kitchen and threw this gem together:

•Two large handfuls of ripped-up Kale
•Two bananas
•One red apple chopped
•About half a small carton of raspberries
•1 cup (about) organic Banilla yoghurt
•2 cups (about) vanilla soy milk
•One scoop of Chia

A true miracle happened. My very fussy kids immediately turned their noses up at the smoothie because it was green! Peanut decided to give it a try, however, and viola! He loved it! I was over the moon…kale and chia all in one! He even asked for more which produced a big beaming smile all over my face.

To try to persuade Button to give it a go, I have put some of the mixture into the freezer to make an ice-pop. Hopefully that will entice him to at least try.

I wanted to add protein powder to the smoothie, but discovered that the last of it was used on the smoothie we enjoyed a couple of days ago. This one had more precise measurements and was delicious but not my all time favorite. I did like using green tea, however, as it is thought to fight off cancer and heart disease. The recipe called for regular honey but I am a raw honey nut and love the flavor and the general idea that it is a healthier version. I have no scientific evidence to back up that statement but mind over matter goes a long way I’m sure

1 scoop protein powder
3 cups frozen white grapes
2 packed cups baby spinach
1 1/2 cups green tea, cooled
1 medium ripe avocado
2 teaspoons raw honey

So now I am all set for the day. We are cleaning…yay! Then a trip to the pool to relax. Have a wonderful day, everyone!

Having read the New York Times article on the lack of ‘organic’ in our organic food, I am very disturbed by the latest revelations. It seems that we cannot buy real food anymore. We can buy almost real food, but there is always something added or modified. I, like so many others, felt okay buying the overpriced organic options, after all, they had been certified and followed the rules of untarnished, un-poisioned (my own word) food right? Apparently not!

Eden Foods seems to be in the small minority of companies that actually care about providing truly organic products in non-toxic cans and packaging. I strongly suggest all those who can afford it, buy many shares in that company now!

But what of us Joe Shmo’s who just want to feed our children healthy food without going bankrupt? When big companies buy up smaller organic companies, the prices might can come down a little. Of course now I know why. And what about meat? I eat meat, but cannot afford the cost of organic meat too often…which can be a good thing as I’m forced to eat more veggies However, it makes finding restaurants that serve organic meats very hard to come by!

So, super-companies are reducing our ability to buy real organic food…they have the majority share of the food industry and are manipulating the way food is deemed to be considered organic. What can we do about this?

Many people are shouting out that we should skip the stores altogether and buy locally grown produce from our Farmer’s Markets. Others suggest being careful but not overly dramatic about the issue. I am sure that there are also many who have just thrown in the towel, as time and money are just too limited to cook from scratch everyday or buy the more expensive goods.

Personally, I’d like to focus more on asking why this is allowed in the first place. This has become public and a major paper has written about it. We all need to shout out and be heard…write to our member of congress, respond to the article, petition stores, boycott products.

How should we, as a nation of consumers, win back our rights to real food?

Inspirational quotes are nice to pin also. They often catch my attention and I go back to them when I feel the need. While thinking about peace of mind. I enjoy the beauty of some of the pictures or photographs I’ve pinned along the way. Some are calming, others remind me of happy memories. Some are just too nice to pass up!.

I pin music too….not literally, but images associated with the music I like. I’m a little Pearl Jam heavy right now as I am a crazy fan and their tour of Europe has me gnashing my teeth to get over there. It’s not gonna happen, but a girl can dream!

Many of you know, I love to craft. I pin great crafting ideas so I can try them out later. I now have a full years worth of crafting projects to do either by myself or with the boys. I know I won’t get to them all, but one day….

I am sure many of you are more expert at pinning than me, so I won’t go on extolling the virtues of this social network. I am just going to share my top 5 pins this week. They may not be the most popular, but they are pins I really like. I’m hoping it becomes a regular feature. It is actually nice to share pins instead of pinning them…makes me feel like I am actually doing more with them

And I know I said top 5 but I had to include Pearl Jam as they have had such an amazing tour…

What I wouldn’t give to be at the front of that crowd!!!

One of my most re-pinned pins is this:

It is exactly how I’d like my mantle to look but I still haven’t got around to doing it yet.

Here is my work in progress (please note this photo was taken just before a party so chairs are placed in front of the fireplace..but it gives you the general disarray of my fireplace).

To achieve my desired look I need to grow the flowers…another item on my ‘to do‘ list, and I also need to find me a birds nest…hmmm, not sure I’ve even been looking for one of those, given that it wold be ultra disturbing to rob a bird and her family of their home! I do have pretty jars and stones or shells to add, so that is a check!

What amazes me most is the sheer simplicity of this arrangement and how many people it has drawn in. Original credit goes to a Flickr account here.

My Pinterest boards have many other wonderful mantle displays, yet nothing has drawn traffic like this one. I am glad the simplicity and freshness of this design has been so popular. I will not recreate it totally…but I will be working on my own little piece of tranquility atop my mantle this summer.

What ideas do you have for an interesting mantle? Join the Linky party with your mantle decorating ideas below. Just follow the rules:
1. Link directly to your post on mantle ideas not just your blog
2. Please link back to others and share thoughts and comments.
3. Pinning is welcome but please give credit to the original poster
4. Have fun