What's stopping me?

Forgive me, dear reader(s). I've had several serious life changes in the past two or three months, and I have yet to fall into a new routine. Blogging has been one of the things that has fallen to the wayside.

Life Changes:
1) I broke up with my wife.
2) I moved out.
  a) I moved in with one of my dearest friends
      i) and stayed on her couch for a month.
  b) I moved off of my friend's couch.
      i) and into my sister's house.
      ii) where I temporarily have a bed!!
3) I enrolled at the local community college.
  a) I am enrolled for a full 12 hour course load.
  b) I am pursuing a Nursing Degree.
      i) to follow my dream of becoming a midwife (!!)
4) I quit my full-time, well-paying job.
  a) See #3
5) After a one-day job search, I found one.
  a) At Starbucks.
  b) I start on Thursday, September 2nd.
  c) I am uber-excited (!!)

Yep. That about sums it up.

So. As to a routine ... Because I am currently living out of a few eco-conscious cloth sacks filled with a very limited selection of clothing, plus a few necessities - toiletries, books, and the like - I feel very transient. My diet, tenuously healthy though it was, has suffered for two reasons: that feeling of having no roots, and a bit of Depression. I'm still grieving The Breakup.

I have so appreciated my friends' and family's hospitality over the past few months. Being with my friend for a full month was just what the doctor ordered for my spirits, and spending time with my family after having been distant for so long has been so refreshing. But ... I crave a space to call my own. I've been searching, and may have a few promising leads on Efficiency and One Bedroom apartments near work and school. I'll be visiting them after class on Monday.

Perhaps ... perhaps, despite the sense of upheaval I can't seem to shake, I should pick up where I left off months ago. Perhaps it's time to use this blog for its appointed purpose.

I need to start making one - just one - vegetarian meal per week. It seems silly that that hasn't occurred to me until tonight. I suppose it goes back to my last post (it seems like I wrote that a lifetime ago!), in which I realized - what the hell am I waiting for? What's stopping me from meditating? A lack of candles??

What's stopping me from going veg*n? Not having an apartment?!

When you put it that way ... LOL.

It'll be good for me to start blogging again. You know things are bad when I stop journaling in my hard-bound blank book. And I have. Stopped, that is.

It'll give me something to look forward to, and prepare for, every single week.

Plus, I like showing off my pictures, even if they are a little gimpy sometimes. :)

So, tomorrow morning, I'll gather the few cookbooks I have not packed away, and go grocery shopping for mah dinner! I'll let you know how it goes!

Also, MOAR JUICE

Yes. I made MOAR.

I am in love with how simple juicing without a juicer has turned out to be!

Behold, the beauty that is ...

Grapefruit / Blood Orange Juice

I used ...

• one whole Texas Red Grapefruit
• one whole Blood Orange
• four pieces of ice

... blended it all together in my Handy-Dandy Food Processor, strained it through a paint-straining bag, and ... VOILA! Juice of the most delicious kind! 

I made JUICE

and it is FANTASTIC!

I used this recipe from {gone raw DOT com}, a truly wonderful resource, both for its RAW recipes and for its forum community.

The recipe had only three ingredients, most of which I had on hand -

• 1 apple
• 2 peaches
• half a can of pineapple with its juice

It called for fresh pineapple, but because I'm on a tight budget, I used the canned variety that I had on hand. I found it to be extra handy, since it had the juice and all.


It's so smooth and light! Delightfully refreshing and tingly on my tastebuds! And all I needed was my food processor and a paint-straining bag-thing! It took all of 5 minutes to prepare the fruit, blend, and strain, leaving me plenty of time to enjoy!

This healthy eating thing is just so darn novel, I can't get over it!

Watch out for my post later this evening (or in the morning), for I am preparing a Vegetarian meal, as promised!

Bananas and I ...

... don't seem to get along.

I have a love/hate relationship with 'nanners. I love them, they hate me! It's happened a few times - I eat a banana, and then have to run to the bathroom to allow it a hasty exit, stage left. It sours my stomach, usually very suddenly, and I have the uncontrollable urge to hurl.

I (foolishly) tentatively tried one again today. I needed a quick pick-me-up. My sugars were low, and I didn't want to make a sandwich. My roommate's bananas called to me quite beguilingly, only to prove once and for all, that bananas are not for me.

So I made my first bowl of cereal with Almond Mylk instead of Milk-milk. I was a bit trepidatious, as milk often has the same violently disasterous result with my stomach chemistry that bananas do, but ...

It. was. delicious!

And my stomach is calm as ... something that is very calm!

Now I'm off to conquer my day-off from work. I recently found out from Bitt of Raw that I can make juice using only a Blender! So I'm off to Home Depot for to buy some paint-straining bags. I want to experiment with juices before I try a juice fast next week that I was inspired to do after reading Raw Goddess Healthy's post.

Toodles!

Salad. I enjoys it

Much has happened today which made my planned trip to the grocery store fall through, but I remain undeterred. Salad fixin's to the rescue! I had hoped to make a full-fledged Vegetarian meal this evening, but putting it off an extra day never hurt anyone. So I'm sitting here enjoying the fruits vegetables of my labours and leafing through my (many) Veg' recipes, planning tomorrow night's meal.

While I'm doing that, here's a photo of my tres delicious salad, with

• iceburg lettuce
• 2/3 of a green bell pepper
• one whole vine-ripened tomato
• a handful of chopped yellow onion bits

topped with Kraft Italian Dressing and freshly-grated parmesean cheese.

Bon apetit!

Gooooooal!!

I'm sitting here on our awesomely fluffy couch with Merry, my beloved wife, sitting to my right. Our kitten, Luna Twinkletoes, is sandwiched between us. I live for these moments, the ones in which life and all its troubles seem to melt away in the simple pleasure of companionable silences.

I'm slowly sweeping out the cobwebs from This Old Blog (sounds like a TV show PBS would broadcast), and as I do, I can't help but compare myself, my current self, to the self of years long past. I'm coming out of a period of semi-stagnation, a time of little self-exploration, an embarrassingly long stretch of just "getting by". The new year has brought new hope, and the goal of vegetarianism seems to be settling in, taking root, and sustaining me right now. It represents something more to me than just changing what I eat. It represents my commitment to take care of and nourish the self. This is the first time in many years that I've wanted to take care of my self. She deserves it. When I let my guard down, I get glimpses of a well rounded, self-assured, interesting young woman. I feel I'm already headed down the path to release her from the layers of personal baggage that I've been clinging to for years now.

For the first time in months, maybe even a year, I'm allowing myself to hope. For the first time in my life, I can say that these dreams I have are attainable.

My darling wife will be going to school in the fall, studying to become an RN. When she finishes in a few years' time, it will be my turn to go back to school. Believe it or not, I won't be studying music again. I know! Crazy, innit? All these years, I've been hemming and hawing over my music, asking myself things like, "Will I ever feel that spark again?", "Why don't I feel the drive to practice anymore?", "What will everyone think if I don't go back to music??" My viola had become a source of guilt and depression - something that it should never have come to. I have been naturally moving away from it for years now, and you know what?


That's ok.

I've given hours upon hours of thought, meditation, and prayer to the question, "If not music, then what??" And I finally have an answer.

My sister invited me to attend the midwife-assisted birth of one of her sons about 9 years ago. I was moved to tears by the beauty of a life, my little nephew, coming into the world. The raw energy of that natural birth was palpable, and touched me in profound ways.

For the first time, I have now given credence to something that has niggled at the back of my mind since that very day. I want to become a midwife. I want to help women empower themselves through natural birth. I want to provide holistic heath care and sound nutritional advice to women throughout their pregnancies, and beyond. And I want to become a certified Yoga instructor, with a focus on yoga during pregnancy.

I've done extensive research. It'll require that I get my RN and then land a job in Labor/Delivery at a hospital. Once I've worked there for a year, I'll finally be eligible to enter the Certified Nurse-Midwifery program at Parkland Medical Center in Dallas. Because it is an extremely competitive school, anything I can do to set myself apart from the masses will only serve me well. I think that with the Yoga training I was already wanting to do, I'll be golden.

I think I've finally developed the patience that it takes to make dreams like these come to fruition. I have the support of a loving wife, and the drive to make it a reality.

This is the stuff dreams are made of.

Going Veg.

I have been remiss in my blog-maven duties. For that, dear readers (assuming I had any...), I offer my deepest apologies.

This blog, for anyone who may remember its old incarnation, has ... evolved. Lets just call it like it is - it's completely re-vamped! There's a new theme. No longer am I merely chronicling my daily escapades (if they can even be called that), this blog now has a purpose. I have a purpose.

Lemme 'splain you:

January rolled around (as it often does), and I took stock of all the things I'd like to accomplish in 2010. It's a new year ... hell, it's a new decade! What do I want to do with my life?

Without hesitation, let me share with you the goal I wrote smack-dab at the top of my list:

I WANT TO GO VEGETARIAN.

Last year ... no, before that. In 2008, I started buying cook books. I wanted to eat healthier by eating at home. I was getting tired of fast food burgers and other overly processed foods. I wanted to go back to the basics.

My body was telling me something, and I was finally pausing long enough to listen to it. But there was something missing ... I needed something more. Eating at home was not enough, and I knew it. At the tail-end of 2008, I was going through a period wherein most foods sounded repulsive, and I had a hard time keeping anything down. I was under extreme amounts of stress, both at home and at work, and I wasn't coping with it well.

That was when I first started making the connection that what I put in my body has a profound effect on the way I feel. It was also the first time that I began to pinpoint specific foods and the way I reacted to them. Milk was my first observation. Milk aggravates my already frustrating post-nasal drip, and if I'm not careful, will make me throw up. Beef, regardless of how well prepared, makes my stomach go sour. I began clinging to my "safe" list and making a conscious effort to omit the worst offenders.

It wasn't until a few months had passed that I was hit upside the head by the Cosmic clue-by-four, and realized that the diet that I was beginning to follow had a name - Vegetarianism - and that there must be books about how to do it, and do it properly.

Being a voracious reader, I went to the local bookstore and sought them out. Another clue-by-four later, it dawned on me that there must be websites and blogs about it, too!

In January of 2009, I excitedly wrote a goal of becoming vegetarian in my New Year's resolutions. My motives? While I know it to be a highly ethical lifestyle, I frankly loved the way I felt after eating a fresh, Vegetarian meal. It was novel. My body was telling me something, and it was right! And furthermore, as I started removing certain things from my diet, the urge to throw-up began to dissipate.

As we all know, however, resolutions - especially of the New Year variety - are often broken. For many reasons, I was not a Vegetarian by the time January 2010 rolled around. I was daunted by the prospect of restocking the entire kitchen. I was daunted by the fact that I have no working repertoire of what constitutes a healthy Vegetarian meal. But I was also frustrated by the fact that, as the only aspiring Vegetarian in a three-person household, cooking two separate meals seemed like the only option. One for me, one for them.

Instead of being frustrated at my (lack of) progress, or being daunted by the sheer magnitude of The Goal, I simply added VEGETARIANISM to the top of my list of Resolutions this year.

My dear wife had a wonderful idea:

So that I don't burn out on the idea (again), why don't I plan just one meal per week? I don't work on Sundays, so that'd be a perfect day to do some meal planning, then hit the grocery store for just the meal's-worth of produce. It'd allow me the chance to slowly build my confidence in the kitchen without feeling overwhelmed. As I get more and more proficient and ambitious, I can begin adding meals. Breakfasts, for instance, would be an easy meal to plan Veg.

AND she offered to help in the kitchen. I'll make a Vegetarian meal for myself, which will be a side dish for the others. SHE will be in charge of cooking the meat for the meal.

Problem solved.

=^.^=

The purpose of this blog, then, is to record my progress on the path to Vegetarianism. Each Sunday, I'll write an entry about my newest culinary creation, possibly posting pictures along the way.

So wish me luck! And be sure to tune in this Sunday for the first installment!

Success is mine!

I have successfully followed a recipe, and it turned out marvelously. I made an apple salad with a dressing consisting of mayo, applesauce, honey, lemon juice and salt. I then mixed in diced apples, celery, sunflower seeds, and raisins.

Delicious!

Going Green

... greener, anyway.

I bought a book at Half Priced Books t'other day: basically a Vegetarian 101. I love animals - they're delicious - so why a book on vegetarianism? I have been eating hella unhealthily and desperately want to overhaul my eating habits. While I don't want to give up meat, I do want to incorporate tons of Freshies into my diet.

The book is pretty cool. It demystifies the whole "cooking" thing (I am by no means a goddess in the Kitchen), and has pretty awesome recipes to boot.

I picked one out and Merry and I went grocery-shopping this morning. We spent less than usual and got more food out of the deal, which was pretty awesome. We got salad stuffs, things for the new dish tomorrow, sandwich things, and hamburger meat. So, a few meals and a bunch of lunches. Sounds like a winner to me!

I'm excited.

We've been talking about overhauling our food intake for a while now, even merely in portion size, but every time I think "Cut back, gotta cut back", I feel the need to eat compulsively. Not cool.

But for some reason this morning felt like a fresh start. I've had a few light snacks and have eaten healthily on the whole.

I think this is going to stick.

Yay!