confessions of a sometimes vegetarian
Finally picked a winner for the YogaDownload giveaway! Congrats, Jen:
I just emailed you, and YogaDownload will be in touch shortly.
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I will be back sometime (hopefully today) with a post! I have been soooo busy all week. And today is Bobby’s and my first 1-year anniversary (we got married twice – city hall wedding and the whole shebang).
Bonjour! We are in Paris. We left New York at 3:30pm on Friday, and after a short layover in Boston we were on our way to France. We arrived at CDG (Charles de Gaulle, the main international Paris airport) at 7:30am on Saturday (samedi). (Please excuse my use of French words while I’m posting here; I adore French and will make any excuse to use it.)
We walked around the city almost the whole day (we did take a nap in the afternoon) and then stayed Saturday night in Paris. On Sunday we took the train out to Saumur, a petit town Southeast of Paris, on the fleuve (river) Loire. We attended a wedding for two days – a dinner event Sunday evening, and then the ceremony all day on Monday (ceremony plus beaucoup de manger!). The wedding was at a petit chateau that was transformed into a hotel a while back. The owners are actually descended of French royalty. They managed to survive the guillotine I suppose 😀
Today (Tuesday) we took the train back to Paris and here we will stay for the rest of our time in France. So far everything has gone perfectly (fingers crossed things stay that way). Before I go, I want to share a few food pictures from our first French repas (meal) together Saturday matin (morning)…
We got the typical (?) French breakfast – jus d’orange (orange juice), croissant, cafe (coffee = espresso; Bobby got a regular and I got the “cafe creme” which I think is simply cafe with milk), and yaourt (yogurt). Bobby also got the add-on of bacon and scrambled eggs. I tried them, bien sur! Delicieux.
This breakfast (petit dejeuner) is smaller than it appears. Each part of the meal is a modestly portioned, but the healthy fats and protein make it very filling. This “breakfast” actually lasted us all the way through dinner (admittedly part of that time was spent napping and it was an early dinner).
I must go! We have beaucoup de faire (lots to do) this evening and it’s already 6:30pm. (Il est deja six heures! Oh la la.) I’m still listening to these tapes by the way. So useful.
Au revoir! I will post when I can 🙂
I saw this on Erin’s blog and decided to do my own. My first thing is shared by Erin.
1. I am tall too. I am 5’9.75″ (… rounded up to 5’10” usually). But I do love my heels. On my wedding day I wore bare feet. Bobby is 6’1″.
2. I am a sometimes vegetarian. I don’t eat much meat, but I can’t say I am fully vegetarian because I make exceptions every so often for things like Bacon Chocolate.
3. My favorite kind of exercise is yoga. This morning I did a 20 minute yoga session from yogadownload.com – Gentle Hatha Yoga #3. On Friday I took the day off from work and in the morning I did Crunch Super Slimdown with Ellen Barrett on Netflix. It’s a combination of yoga and pilates. Love! (My yoga recs here.)
4. I have a love-hate relationship with coffee. I love it, but I hate that when I start drinking it every day I get a headache when I wake up until I have my caffeine fix. I suppose this is what they call an addiction. My favorite kind of coffee right now is made by Stumptown Coffee (based in Portland, Oregon). I ordered the coffee online. I grind it with a burr grinder and brew it in a French press.
(Image Source.)
5. I have a love hate relationship with shopping, too. I love it, but I don’t like to spend $$. My favorite store is Anthropologie and I also like to browse random thrift shops. I used to like Gap, but I’ve found recently that a) I don’t really like the Gap style anymore, b) their clothes seem cheap-ish as of late, and c) I don’t usually wear the stuff I get there (especially when I buy something simply because it’s on sale). I worked at Gap briefly at the end of college and that is how I got hooked.
6. I can never make up my mind about anything. Sometimes I am perfectly happy the way I am and other times I want to travel or go do the Peace Corps. Sometimes I want a kid; sometimes I think I would be happy forever with just me and Bobby and the cats. Sometimes I want to live in Manhattan forever; other times I want to buy a farm in the middle of nowhere and eat eggs from organic chickens that I raise myself. Sometimes I want to blog every day; other times I stop blogging for a week or 2. It’s confusing. But I think everyone feels this way in some way or another.
7. I keep stealing Bobby’s new iPad. He already knows that. He got a book by Ken Jennings (of Jeopardy! fame) – Brainiac – and I cannot put it down. I was never into trivia but now I think it’s kind of cool.
Leave them in the comments or blog about it. You’re all tagged 🙂
P.S. I cleaned up the blog a bit. It’s streamlined and organized better. Click through if you want to take a peek.
I will be back to normal posting soon. In the meantime, here is an overview of wonderful things that have happened this past year…
I wanted to learn a new language (didn’t do this), go to Hawaii (yes!), I cultivated patience, I ate more fried rice, ate less meat, I didn’t drink more Kombucha, I did drink less diet soda (overall), and I ended the year on a yoga streak (though I’m not sure I did much yoga throughout the whole year).
This was a month-long challenge to do 3+ classes a week of intenSati at one of New York’s poshest gyms. I had fun, and learned a lot.
And also about drinking tea (yum) and eating kabocha.
The great fat experiment went well overall. I learned a lot about what my body needs. One thing to note is that it needs (a lot of) animal fats, so I will try to include more this year.
This was for stress and hormone stuff. Unfortunately at the time I wasn’t ready to commit to everything that I needed to do for acupuncture to work properly, so I quit after two sessions. I may give this another shot sometime though.
This post was written as a response to anyone who doubts that vegetarians (or even vegans) can get enough protein on an animal-free diet. I don’t know the answer to this – I know that I need animal protein, but maybe not everyone does. My opinion on protein has changed (for the better) since I wrote the post. I’m now more into a high-fat, moderate-protein, and low-carb lifestyle.
Including macrobiotic meals and fast food. I try not to limit myself too much.
Bobby and I went to NJ for the weekend and helped my dad build a trail. Lots of fun – hoping to do more things like that this year.
I came up with a plan for my IBS – my IBS Management Plan. I didn’t stick to it as much as I would have liked. This year one of my resolutions is to get it under control as much as possible! Recent changes in my eating (eating more fats, fewer grains, more protein) have helped a lot.
Which meant more time to blog, more time to take a class (linguistics), and more time for my favorites like papaya salad and fresh cherries.
Which later on led to…
And then, oh yeah…
We were married in a Quaker meeting house and the reception was in my parents’ (beautiful) side yard. Here is my other wedding recap. (Guest posts listed there – had lots of good ones!)
Then we…
We had two glorious weeks on the beaches of Maui. Oh how I want to go back.
Had to have a kabocha scone for dessert on my birthday.
(Didn’t get very far.)
It died down pretty fast 😉
Finally revealed it.
(She got into her first choice! Not Brown, which is where we went that weekend.)
We took a weekend trip down to DC – so fun. Love the short hair.
And again… happy new year!
