Mistakes Made, Lessons Learned

Do you ever know what the right thing is to do but do the opposite of it anyway?  I guess the truest definition of that is 'sin' but no, this blog is not about sin and God's amazing Grace and Redemption (although I do love that topic!).  It's actually about being sick.  This week our family has been hit hard with fevers, sore throats, runny noses...basic cold symptoms that really wipe a person out.  Now, we used to get this in September, October, November, December, January...you get the picture.  We were one of the SICKEST families around.  I've often joked that I needed to take out stock in Kleenix because I was sure I kept them in business. 

Many of my childhood memories revolve around me, tissues and sore throats.  In college I sang in a choir and we would take a yearly tour for a week around California, singing in churches.  Every year I went and mouthed the words because I'd be sick and have no voice.  My first year of teaching, my biggest fear was what to do when I was sick and didn't have a voice, because it happened SO OFTEN!

I joked yesterday with a friend that I feel like I'm a living science experiment.  I went into Clean Eating/Healthy Lifestyle with Optimal Health as my end goal.  My supposition was that if you eat clean and healthy, your body will be able to fight disease and you will stay healthy.  And if anyone would know what it's like to be sick, it's me.  For the most part, I'm pleased to say, I'm proving my theory to be true.  Sickness and germs are still around me and my body is constantly under attack, especially on weeks like this one where the other 4 in my family have all been sick.  Would I get sick too?  Or would my food truly be my medicine?

I did really well last week.  I ate cooked food (clean only!) one time a day and otherwise it was all raw.  Broccoli salad, sweet potato salad, green smoothies, Walnut pate, etc...  Amazing food...seriously delicious!  I had no symptoms of sickness while everyone else was sneezing all over me.  Until...yesterday.

When I made my BIG mistake.

I was coming home at 6 p.m., exhausted and hungry.  Instead of going home and eating food I'd already prepared, I drove through Panda Express...our former favorite food.  We chowed down.  The kids wanted dessert and I said, "Are you kidding me!  You just ate sugar coated chicken.  You just HAD your dessert!"  Which is 100% true.  But my sweet tooth was kicked into high gear so I topped it off with the only sugar left in the house...1/2 bag of M&M's.  Within 30 minutes not only did I feel terribly sick to my stomach but I had a raging sore throat.  The germs in me had been fed with their favorite food, sugar, and I was getting sick.

I knew better!  I knew that I was in the middle of the battle ground but I still gave in!  Sometimes I frustrate myself SO MUCH.  I went to bed early and woke up with the same sore throat, if not worse.  So I went to my daily arsenal (which I had completely neglected yesterday) and fired it up.  I know there are many more things to do than this, but this is what I do DAILY.

• 1 spoonful of bee pollen (don't do if you're allergic to bee stings)
• glasses and glasses of water (should be 1/2 your body weight in ounces)
• hot tea with honey
• 3 vitamin C tablets a day
• 1 freshly-squeezed lemon to a glass of water + 5 drops of Grapefruit Seed Extract (it's nasty business but it works!)
• 2 green smoothies a day (both with 5 drops of Grapefruit Seed Extract)
• And most important...NO SUGAR!

Ironically, this is what a family friend, Kimbra Nungessar, wrote yesterday in her Menu Monday raw cooking emails.  Kimbra has been a Raw/Vegan for 9 years and her husband is co-author of the cookbook TopRawMen (click to link to their website).

"People wonder why they and their kids are always sick in the winter. We blame sick classmates, cold weather outside, too many germs inside, the list goes on. Think about this...Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day and Easter. Candy, sugar, Candy and more sugar. Sugar kills our immune system. Normally after Easter sickness disappears and our kids run healthy through the summer and early fall until....Halloween, Thanksgiving...etc. I encourage you to control the amount of candy and sugar in your kids diet. I can literally turn runny noses on and off in my kids via their diet. Some of the worst offenders are well meaning Sunday School teachers and school teachers which feed high sugar snacks to the kids on a weekly basis. 

Use the dollar store or garage sales to fill a basket with small trinkets. Let your kids cash in their candy for an item from the basket. However, don't stash the candy away in the house because guess who will eat it in a moment of weakness...you! Throw it away, give it away or send it to work with someone you know.  If your kids want to work together let them slowly put their candy treats in a collective jar. Write the prize on the outside of the jar: family movie night, trip to bounceU, whatever would motivate your kids. When the jar is full of sweets they get to go on the treat!"

 

I love it!  Thank you SO much Kimbra! 
It's now 1:40 p.m. and I am sore-throat free!  Yay to healthy eating!

My Kind of Snacks

Snacks are my very favorite topic in the whole world... because they're my very favorite foods in the whole world!  Through October I'll be posting about what I feed my family for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks.  But to be quite honest, snacks are probably 75% of what we eat so I figure I'll go ahead and start there.  However, this is such a HUGE topic, I'm breaking it into two posts.  Snacks for ME and Snacks for the Kids.  Of course I'm going with the ME ones first! :-)

When I first started Weight Watchers, finding snacks that fit the points I could have was very difficult.  I'm a grazer.  I'll eat all day if I can.  A bite here, a spoon there, a donut now, and another one, and another one...  You get the picture.  Starting WW and learning the points system made me realize I was eating in one day the amount of points I was allotted for an entire week!  I had to drastically change something.  I've already mentioned before that I'm the world's biggest Sugaraholic.  Sugar is (WAS!) literally my drug.  Figuring out how to snack my way through life in a healthy way became a huge challenge for me.  One I have, mostly, conquered! 

BUT it wasn't until I began to learn how to Eat Clean, and more specifically, eat Raw, that I found the key to overcoming my sugar intake issues.  The first Raw Foods party I attended was a cookie event (big shocker there!).  When Haley (Living Raw by Grace) talked about how she was a grazer and ate all day long, and COULD eat all day long because of eating Raw, I thought "this is the perfect way for me to eat!".  And I've not been able to get her words out of my head since.  I literally CAN snack my life away when I'm snacking Raw, and if not Raw, then Clean.

So...what ARE my favorite snacks?  Oh!  I'm so excited to tell you...and in some cases, show you!

Typically on a Sunday or Monday I'm low on snacks so I make out my list for the week of what I want to be eating.  And then I make a few both days to last me through the week.  The very first recipe I found that I loved was from Skinny "Fatkids".  It was called No-Bake Banana Berry Oat Bars.  Click HERE for photos and recipe.  These were so filling and so yummy that I decided snacking clean was going to be awesome!  And I went in search of more recipes.

I fell in love with The Gracious Pantry and Chocolate Covered Katie.  (click on either name to visit their sites - but don't forget to come back!)  I found a huge variety of raw, gluten-free cookie recipes on both sites.  I've made most of them and just love them!  In fact, here's one I made for this week:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie Balls

The recipe for those came from Chocolate Covered Katie but I make them with my own little twist.  She also has a fabulous sugar-free, dairy-free ice cream recipe that is so fast to make, I've now developed a new daily addiction!

When I need a salty, crunchy treat I go for Kale Crisps.

I love fruit in smoothies but I really don't like just eating whole fruit.  It's not a viable snack to me.  So I found a wonderful recipe in The Clean-Eating Magazine a few months ago that I just loved.  It was originally a filler for French Toast but I thought it was amazing enough to use as a fruit dip.  So that's what I do!  Apples and Fruit Dip. (but unfortunately I don't have a photo...yet)

I don't know about you but my all-time favorite desserts ever are cupcakes.  I could eat a whole plate of cupcakes by myself...and I'm really not exaggerating here.  So I had to come up with a substitute for that.  I found an awesome recipe for pumpkin muffins (can substitute zucchini too).  They're great served with dinner and then I freeze the extra for snacking.  So one day I decided to try the fruit dip on top of the muffin and woilla! I had a cupcake!  And it was healthy!!

Back to the photos...  These Candied Pecans are easy to pack up and take on-the-go.  And they're so popular I just filled 3 orders for them from friends!

Crunchies have become a mainstay in my house.  I pour Kefir over and add berries, eat as cereal with milk, eat on top of Greek Yogurt...or just eat by themselves!  My kids find them packed in school lunches at least 2 days a week.

Then there are Breakfast Cookies, which are actually good any time of the day:

Hummus...which I love with raw crackers, sliced bell peppers, whole-wheat pita bread, etc...

Guacamole (with chopped cilantro and tomatoes) is an awesome snack with chopped veggies, raw chips, whole wheat pita bread, etc...

Homemade Lara Bars....

Well, I hope you're getting the picture that there are so many snacks to be enjoyed while eating Clean/Raw.  And all of these are 100% sugar-free and made with whole, natural ingredients.  I (almost) never leave the house without having something in my bag.  Most of these snacks are easy to pack-up and take on-the-go.  Over the next few months I'll post recipes for some of these snacks so that you can enjoy them too!

Pre-packaged Snacks

Whether I like it or not, there are just days/weeks where I don't have the time or energy to cook and/or pack up homemade snacks.  So I've chosen some pre-packaged snacks that I keep at-the-ready in the cupboard.  I usually have one of these hidden in my bag for emergency situations.

• Lara Bars (I prefer the chocolate ones!)
• Mojo Cliff Bars (or just about any Cliff Bar!)
• Raw-Revolution bars

You can also see my Resources page for links to places that will make amazing snacks and ship them directly to your home.  Shops like Twin-Cakes Bakery (what I wouldn't do to get my hands on some of their recipes!) and Brad's Raw Foods (great raw crackers).

Share: What is your favorite healthy snack?

Guess the Hidden Ingredient

The other evening I was preparing a Clean-Eating dinner for my family.  Now, please understand, I don't cook dinner very often.  My husband is Korean and prefers to eat his own food and the kids and I tend to eat smaller for dinner.  But once a week I do try and pull together an actual, hot (IF I can get everyone sitting down together quick enough) meal.  Here is a picture of what I served:

And here is the ingredient list:

• pork tenderloin (sliced thin and browned in frying pan...could also grill)
• baby potatoes (cut into chunks and boiled)
• agave (drizzled over the potatoes)
• corn (on the cob!! ~ love this season of veggies!!)
• Lawry's Garlic Salt (sprinkled over the boiled corn and potatoes)
• sesame oil and sea salt (to dip the pork in...Korean style!)

SO.... given that limited ingredient list, can you guess the hidden ingredient?

You know that old saying, pride comes before a fall?  Well I was pretty darn proud of my little meal.  As I was finishing it up and was putting it onto the serving dishes my thoughts went something like this:  "Remember back as a kid when I hated corn on the cob?  I had to put so much butter an salt onto it just to eat it.  Look at me now!  I'm doing so great.  All I'm putting on my potatoes and corn is garlic salt.  I sure do love garlic salt.  It's such a perfect seasoning for all veggies.  That's all you need...you don't even need butter on veggies for them to taste fabulous with garlic salt.  If anyone ever told me this wasn't clean I think I'd...I'd...this IS clean, isn't it?  This better be clean.  YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!   There's SUGAR as a main ingredient in Lawry's Garlic Salt?  Stink.  No wonder I love it so much!"

Yes, all that was going on inside my head as I headed back into the battle with sugar.  Is it any wonder this nation is addicted to sugar?  Everything is processed and pretty much everything processed contains sugar.  (Lawry's Garlic Salt does have other items in it to make it un-clean as well, much to my disappointment.)  So I'll be finding another version of garlic salt that is sugar-free and taking one more step towards victory in this battle over unexpected (in a not-good-way) sweet surprises.