"When I hold a piece of bread, I look at it, and sometimes I smile at it. The piece of bread is an ambassador of the cosmos offering nourishment and support. Looking deeply into the piece of bread, I see the sunshine, the clouds, the great earth. Without the sunshine, no wheat can grow. Without the clouds, there is no rain for the wheat to grow. Without the great earth, nothing can grow. That is why the piece of bread that I hold in my hand is a wonder of life. It is there for all of us. We have to be there for it." ~Thich Nhat Hanh
Bread? Really?
Of course, "bread" is symbolic. Although I am feeling that sugar-has-left-the-building lethargy in my bones, I have not had any cravings yet. I have not missed bread or rice at all. I have been eating some fruit every day, which is a way of getting some sweet into me.
I am dreaming more and remembering more pieces of my dreams...though the pieces have not been staying with me long enough to think about them when I am fully awake. So, I am sleeping better. But, there is some healing to do in this department. Much balance still to be struck.
The lethargy, which I know will pass as my body and brain adjust to the new normal, has me waking around 8am feeling dull of mind and body (they prefer to wake at or before 7am). Yesterday I did not practice Qigong (except for a couple of minutes of Dragon right before getting into bed), nor did I go outside.
Yet, I am not the wet noodle I remember being reduced to in the past, rendered immobile by the process of detoxing.
I spent most of the day going through bookmarked (and starred in Google Reader) recipes in my now one-year old laptop. I printed over forty Paleo recipes. Very late in the afternoon I shifted to hole-punching and organizing the recipes with dividers in an old binder. I made two, actually, a Paleo binder for me and a kid-friendly recipes binder. Then I emptied the recipe binder I have been stuffing with recipes (many on the backs of envelopes and scraps of paper) for years. I kept what was useful and placed them in either my binder or the kid one. I am giving my sister a folder full of recipes I know we won't use.
This morning, I had about half an hour to devise a meal plan for the week because Cap was going to the farmer's market for me before meeting with a colleague. (The man works all the time, I tell you.) It felt really good to be able to flip through my binder, select some recipes and jot down the ingredients I needed picked up.
The organization helped free mental space to think about things like how Anthony's meats, as delectable as they are, are frozen solid when we buy them on Saturday mornings. So, for the Hungarian Goulash I want to make today, I will need to get the beef from the local butcher. (The butcher is great and has pastured and organic meat...it just necessitates a separate trip.)
It will be much easier on the bank account to plan out meals with an eye towards balancing the economy of cuts of meat rather than scanning the lovelies at Anthony's stand and picking and choosing from recipes I can think of on the spot. ("Rib-eye steak is easy!")
I likely over-killed it this morning. The excitement of a new system and all. This weekend I am trying two new recipes for Hungarian Goulash (beef) and Ginger Orange Drumsticks. My mom made goulash a few times when I was a kid and I remember loving it. I am curious if this version will wake up any taste memories.
Also on the week's menu: Denise's turkey stuffed butternut squash, Moroccan Meatballs, Slow Cooker Roast Chicken with Gravy and beef short ribs. Plus, we are hosting common meal this week. I am going to make an Italian Sausage Frittata, a big green salad and cut up a pineapple. I will ask Cap to make a Finnish carrot pancake, a sheet of corn bread and a little bday cake (we never had our celebration for Sag with this group).
Phew. That's a lot of freaking food.
Peace and love.
P.S. I am not done with the meal planning. Still need to think about breakfasts and lunches, fruit staples, etc. Once the shopping list is done there will be the dreaded food shopping to contend with...ugh.
P.P.S. Those recipes on scraps of paper I mentioned? I want to wrangle those this morning. I am going to type them up and print them or I am going to tape them onto sheets of loose-leaf paper. How anal retentive/efficient will I be in my efforts to get them into a binder?
P.P.P.S. It's funny how there are myriad (upon myriad) ways "to be there for it".
2 comments:
We thaw our meat pretty quickly in a pot of warm water (NOT hot). I think this works better for some meats (red: yes, pork: watch it carefully so it doesn't get to room temp and stay there for long; chicken: eh) than others. It's no different, really, than sous vide cooking, which works incredibly well for so many cuts of meat. Something to think about when you forget to get something out of the freezer to thaw the night before you want to cook it (like I do all. the. time.).
My "system" for thawing meat is so highly imperfect it's not even funny. At this stage, I could not thaw meat in warm water. Chances are astronomical that it would go bad.
I have been putting it in cold water from the tap because I heard that speeds up the process. But, often, it doesn't get the job done (sometimes I leave it out on the counter, sometimes in the fridge).
Then I have to go to Plan B and by the time I get to the original meat which has now been in the fridge, it's bordering on questionable. (It is almost always beef so I go ahead and use it.)
I aspire to Nom Nom Paleo's defrost bowl in the fridge!
Thank you, my dear.
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