Off the wagon

Friends, I fell off the wagon. There are certain times of year in a student activities office that it is physically impossible to eat healthfully. As finals approach, there is a steady flow of left over pizza, sandwiches, cupcakes, hummus platters, and cookies that appear and reappear in our office common area.  All left over food from all end of year celebrations end up in our office, and unfortunately the allure of free meals for a few weeks is just too tempting to turn down.  And so, I gave in, and ate pizza and chocolate chip cookies and croissant sandwiches. And here I am three weeks into May reluctantly pulling myself back up onto the wagon.  

Although I fell from my pristine diet, I did often find myself making the best choice possible, a plain slice instead of pepperoni, hummus in lieu of sliced deli meat. So, I will celebrate the small victory in my not too damaging fall.  To get myself excited about journeying back into the world of clean eating, I purchased a NutriBullet, and can I say it has been a great success! I have started the last two days with the most delicious "NutriBlasts" that are significantly less work than juicing, which I think will make this more sustainable than juicing, I hope. 

In Search of Savory

I think everyone in my life might be as sick of me talking about juicing as I am sick of myself.  But, I have successfully continued to juice for breakfast, and semi-successfully for lunch.  My lunch hurdle has been the challenge of feeling like I'm consuming quite a lot of sugar through my juices.  I have not graduated to straight up Spinach and Wheatgrass juice, and the apples and carrots used to make the spinach go down make a very sweet concoction. Delicious, but very sweet.

But, today, I think my wish for a savory juicing alternative may have been somewhat answered. This morning while perusing the Blog Serious Eats, I came across a post on the tea company Numi coming out with Savory Vegetable Teas (follow the hyperlink for the article.)  Much like the Serious Eats writer, my first reaction was gutteral and a bit grossed out, however, after reading through the tea-veggie combinations and her reviews, I think I might give it a try, after all Numi teas are organic and eco-concious.

Here is my official disclaimer: Vegetable teas are more than likely extremely limited in their nutrient delivery, especially in comparison to an afternoon juice, so I am not using it as a meal supplement, but as an accomplice to a small salad, or as Numi suggests an "Afternoon Snack".

The Strife is O'er

It's Easter morning and the three day cleanse is over! Hallelujah! I am nervous about navigating the Easter Feast that is to come.  My family doesn't host a holiday dinner, they host holiday eating marathons.  We'll start with antipasto at 2pm, and continue with course after course until at least 8pm.  My parents have also purposely purchased all organic produce and organic, grass fed, hormone free meats all for me (or, really because of me).  Hopefully this won't create vast disappointment when I'm eating appropriate sized-portions, and limited meats.  Stayed tuned!

Juicehead

We really drink shit in this country. I never thought much of my beverage consumption until I realized I had no options. Iced tea, sprite, diet coke, vitamin water. It doesn't really matter what you choose, they all have the same ingredient list! High fructose corn syrup, artificial flavor, artificial sweeteners, yellow no 5. And I've been trying to make the "healthiest choice" between these bottles for years. It sort of creates a helplessness, realizing that what you put into your body has already been chosen for you, masked by the illusion of options between label gilded bottles.

What has manifested by this lack of choice, is an intrigue in Juicing. Since the start of this crazy diet, I've thought about the health benefits of getting a juicer or a nutrabullet to make my own fruit/ veggie juice combos. Partially to end the tedium of day of water without end. I don't intend on becoming one of those juice cleanse, all I eat for breakfast is a wheatgrass shot, kind of juice head. But, there is something about a tall glass of glistening green juice that makes me think happy thoughts. And while juicing does remove most of the fiber in veggies and concentrate the sugars in fruits, there's something kind of beautiful in such a high concentration of nutrients packed into one place. And so, I took the plunge, stopped at a juice shop I passed as I walked home on saturday afternoon. I was overwhelmed and a bit intimidated by the row of refrigerated bottles, and the happy, informed, and people with gorgeous skin who worked the counter. But after weighing the anticipated taste and veggie content of each combo, I settled on two bottle. A deep pink confection romantically named "The Paris" that was a mixture of beets, carrots, apple, ginger, pineapple and pair as well as a short stouter bottle with w technical name that contained pineapple, ginger and wheatgrass. The Paris was absolutely delightful, rich in flavor, sweet and spicy from the ginger. The second bottle (shown here) was definitely more utilitarian, it was half the size, but took me twice as long to drink. Much more ginger, along with the earthy wheatgrass. After each one I felt full and satisfied, and happy. Which made me think, perhaps I could be one of those wheatgrass for breakfast kind of girls....but then i realized sometimes you really just want eggs.