New Cookbook + New Veg Life
London Trip: V&A Fashion Exhibits, English Gardens, and Tapas
For my birthday I went for a run in Regent's Park and even though the tulips were a little sad and droopy, the flowers there were insane. The English have some kind of deal with the devil to make outrageous gardens and beautiful, sprawling parks. There were lots of ducks and HUGE ENORMOUS GEESE, although not as big as the swans at Hampton Court Palace. Have you ever seen a swan up close? They're TERRIFYING. Luckily I was a safe distance from and and all water fowl this trip.
How is it that I am moving to this wonderful magical place?! Does it really exist even though I've been there three times? Am I really going to get to poke around in archives and museum collections and go to Europe on school trips?!?!
AAHHH!
Springtime Juice Cleanse & Ten Whole Foods I'm Excited to Eat
I finished the cleanse! It was surprisingly easily. Mostly because I didn't have to think for one second about what to eat for three days: just open the fridge and knock back a bottle. The juices were delicious (although one was more of a shake made of raspberries and was kind of like drinking sludge) and I have made a juice every day since the cleanse ended. Juicing is way easier and pleasant now, for some reason before I cut everything up too much before and it took forever. But it's really not a big deal when you'll got a stock pile of veggie leftovers and surplus apples hanging around. I researched some of the local farms that offer CSA boxes (the best idea I've ever heard of really) and I missed the deadline for the one I wanted, so I'll have to do some more searching. But there are all kinds of farmer's markets and visitable farms around here that I didn't know about until now (as well as a half-built Whole Foods that torments me every day that it isn't finished yet) and I plan on descending on all of them and making off with their shiny, gorgeous, crispy, tasty, produce. Also, going down near the Gulf to get fresh seafood. There aren't words in any language to describe how I feel about good seafood. THERE IS NO GREATER GIFT FOR YOUR STOMACH.
Except of course the silky golden nectar that floats down your gullet when you juice some fresh vegetables and fruit. I had never tried fennel before and it smells licorice-y and WONDERFUL and why did I give up on juicing before? Celery is one of the best smelling veggies you can put near your snoot, and parsley makes juices taste irresistibly fresh. It doesn't take as long as I remember (not even cleaning all the parts in between juice types) and my juicers does a crazy good job. Ah, well. I know now. Soon it will be summer and there will be incredibly fresh, in-season tomatoes and cucumbers all over the place and in my tummbly.
Now that I've gotten back to eating nice things, there are lots of things I'm excited to eat. Eating super healthy is really fun because it's new, and there are all kinds of different and better ways to feed yourself than before. Most of the time, too, health food tastes a million times better. Have you ever had raw honey? Go wrap your lips around that.
Ahem. Ten Whole Foods I'm Excited to Eat:
- Quinoa. It cooks faster than most gluten-free grains (the brown rice I have says cook for 50 minutes? What's going on?!) and actually tastes like something.
- Artichokes. Just don't braise them in a bunch of wine and an overripe lemon that will ruin the entire dish and send you into a severe food rage.
- Butternut Squash. You can just sauté it in coconut oil, add salt, garlic, and curry powder, and you will try to lick the pan but DON'T because it's hot and you'll burn.
- Chickpeas. Canned wild sardines go in most of my salads, and chickpeas taste amazing when covered in sardine olive oil from the can. And some ras el hanout spices. Seriously, so get yourself some of that. It has rose petals in it.
- Blackberries/raspberries. I love love love having berries around to snack on but they go bad quickly so you have to strategically plan your snacking and/or put them in your Hello Kitty lunch box for the next day.
- Cashews. I'm allergic to tree nuts but cashews are actually a seed. Of course every healthy recipe calls for walnuts or almonds or something, but cashews usually do the trick.
- Carrots. Carrot juice is really sweet and you can make your own V8 or apple-carrot-ginger juice (and put a crazy amount of ginger so it literally slaps your tongue in the face).
- Broccoli. It likes to be roasted and thrown in udon noodle soups, but also stinks up the kitchen at work when you reheat it.
- Cucumbers. After a slightly traumatic experience with "raw cucumber soup" from another detox, I had sworn to never eat them again, but juiced cukes are a different matter. I just need some other ingredients to mellow out the cucumber-i-ness.
- Cacao. I keep forgetting to add this magical chocolatey powder into my shakes, but you can make all kinds of not-deadly desserts and snacks with it too.
I've been eating really well for the past week and I feel great! I already feel so wonderful simply because it's spring and everything is alive and happy outside. I went to a little kitchen store across from the Jesuit College and ALL the azaleas were open and crazy! I ended up driving all over town and through the fancy neighborhoods and saw azaleas everywhere. Huge, lush bushes just looming around every corner. I mean these things really look like they could eat you and no one would know where you had gone. The picture below is my favorite hot pink color, but there were also purple, coral, like pink, and white blossoms. They will only be open for a few weeks at most, but they make me so happy.
Doing the juice cleanse in spring was a great idea. I felt so optimistic and renewed about the weather that it just made sense to change my routine as well. Winter can be wonderful because you just want to stay home in your cozy bed fort, but spring makes you energized and want to go out into the world. And that includes going out and doing things for yourself. It's much easier to make a positive change in your life when you feel positive, especially since in the next month or so it will be so miserably hot outside, no one will want to do anything. But for now I'm going to enjoy our brief spring (and look forward to my London trip in three weeks!) and get out and about as much as I can!
I think I run now
I christen this post, a running post.
I'm weirdly embarrassed when people give me encouragement for my current half marathon training, because they might be confused if I tell them I was inspired by Sandra Bullock's thighs in Gravity. If you've seen the movie, you'll remember the scene where she gets into the little cruiser thing and rips off her space suit and just kind of floats there, and you really can't focus on anything except how huge her legs are and the fact that she could probably beat down anyone who looked at her wrong. I could write a whole other blog post about her badass character (and I probably will) but really I was surprised because I always thought of Bullock as thin and wispy. But something about that role in particular just screamed, if you got off your booty you could be scary too. And that is ultimately my goal in life; to be so envied that I am literally terrifying. But in a good way.
So, after that I decided to finally join a gym and start working out. Years of run/walking in the miserable Louisiana heat in middle and high school P.E. had put me off running, so I avoided the treadmills like the plague. But then I thought it might be a good idea in case I moved somewhere that a gym would be either too expensive or too much trouble, and I could just run outside without having to pay for it. I downloaded Runkeeper (which is amazing) and did one of their Beginner to 5K training plans, and in several weeks I could run for 15 minutes instead of 30 seconds. I had been going to Anytime Fitness, and the manager mentioned that she and some other girls were starting a running group to train for a half marathon. I wasn't sure about the race itself, but I thought I might enjoy running with other people so I started the Hal Higdon Novice 1 plan. Right now I'm at the end of Week 5, and for the past two weeks I've actually been able to run five miles without stopping. It may be super slow running, but I did it! I still can't believe this is my life.
Until recently I've been the kind of person that puts any kind of decision off for later, and makes lots of excuses when I'm scared to do something. But now that I've been eating healthy and exercising I feel like I can do anything. I'm going to use this blog to track myself (and make sure I don't fall into too deep of a workout slump). In the past year or so I have completely changed the way I eat and cook, and I want to share what I've learned with others that might want to do the same. It can be really scary to try and eat "healthy" when there are 500 million food theories and opinions flying around; no two diets agree with each other about what you should or shouldn't eat and real food is so expensive it's unreal. But trust me, once you find what works for you, you'll feel better, think better, and most likely look better.
Look forward to more training updates, food shopping hauls, travel doings, movie rambles, and things. Awesome things.
Eve <3
