Posted on

Juicy Resolutions

Since September kicks off the start of Fall, and is my birthday month, and is also my favorite month, I want to make it a good one. I was inspired by Lara’s new month resolutions and I made some of my own. Heather’s new plan post was also inspiring.

  1. Get creative. I want to bring style and flair back into my kitchen by making new recipes each week.
  2. I want to call my family and friends more often. Like Lara, the longer I go without calling someone, the more likely I am to put it off. Every time I chat with my long-distance friends I feel so happy – so I want to do it more often. The same goes for family, especially family besides my parents (who I do actually chat with often).
  3. Enjoy California. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, and I want to take advantage of every moment.
  4. Read more. There are days when I get through multiple books and other days when I don’t read at all. I have a big pile of library books that are just begging to be read, and I want to finish them before they’re due.
  5. Practice moderation in all things.
  6. Yoga with Bobby. We did yoga together yesterday and the day before (20 minutes each day; I hope to do it today too). It makes his back feel great and I need to do it with him to motivate him.

Here is a lovely juice I made for us the other day…

02 sweet juice veggies

  • goodies: Asian pear, 1/2 fuji apple, mint, 1/2 lemon
  • green: cucumber, celery

This was rather sweet, so I poured most of this into a glass for Bobby and juiced some more stuff into what was left… (Bobby doesn’t like ginger so I always pour out his glass before I finish anyway so that I can add it at the end.)

03 more juice veggies

  • goodies: small piece of granny smith apple, 1/2 lime, ginger, more mint
  • green: more celery, more cucumber

I have an absolutely crazy confession about something that I put on a salad. But that will have to wait for my next post 🙂 What do you think I did? It’s a great ingredient, just… not your typical way of preparing it.

Want some Friday vocab? Click here.

What are you doing this weekend? We don’t have any set plans… maybe going up to San Francisco, or a day trip to Berkeley, or going alll the way down to Earthbound Farm‘s farm stand in Carmel Valley. They’re having a “Bug Walk” on Saturday.

P.S. I updated my About Me page. Eventually I’ll put up a new picture but I kinda like the one I have up there now 🙂

Posted on

Some raw recipes

I have been giving out my own version of the Liquid Gold Elixir recipe to a bunch of people through email, so I think I should just post it. The original recipe is by Natalia Rose.

Maggie’s Take on Liquid Gold Elixir

Ingredients

  • 3 large cloves of garlic, grated (probably less for normal people)
  • juice from 1/2 lemon
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 3-4 tablespoons bragg’s liquid aminos
  • 3-4 tablespoons rice vinegar
  • 2 teaspoons powdered stevia (I use the kind from Trader Joe’s but I want to get NuNaturals when I run out)

Directions

Blend everything in a food processor. It really does come out gold, and tastes like the elixir of life. It’s fabulous.

Another raw recipe that I tried (finally) is Gena’s Banana Soft Serve. It was so awesome!

01 banana soft serve

I took 2.5 bananas and blended them in my mini food processor for 2-3 minutes. I probably could have gone on for longer but it was 11pm and Bobby said I was probably waking the neighbors. I topped it with cinnamon.

Reading:

If you haven’t seen it, Clare did a very cool post about Vinyasa (and I helped with the etymology = word origins).

Jordan also had a sweet post about some of the inspiration she’s found from other bloggers.

And I wrote about the English alphabet (it hasn’t always looked like it does today!).

A sweet reader sent me this recipe site and I’ve been ogling over the healthy recipes. I might try some out!

Fun stuff & exercise:

Bobby and I did Yogadownload.com‘s Sun Salutations Flow #2 (Dave Farmar instructing; ~25 minutes). We are going to do yoga together today, too. Before yoga I did 15 minutes of rebounding and then I did 15 more afterwards.

And my anthropology class – it seems like it’s going to be a lot of fun. I might sign up for Cultural Anthropology too; it’s a video class and I can watch it at home. Cultural Anthropology is cool because it gets into linguistics.

Stay tuned for some resolutions tomorrow 🙂 September and Fall make me feel refreshed, happy, and motivated! I also love September because it’s my birthday month – I’ll be 23 in less than 2 weeks. Scary.

Posted on

Boy food

I thought I would share some of the things I’ve made for Bobby recently.

We have been watching Dexter obsessively and we’re now midway through the third season (the fourth one premieres in the end of September). There was a character in the second season that ate cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches for lunch every day, and Bobby wanted to try them (he never had before). I was shocked, so we immediately went out to whole foods for some soft whole wheat bread and cream cheese.

45 cucumber sandwich

It was simple to prepare – 2 pieces of bread, cream cheese on both sides, and sliced cucumber. Some dill would be a nice addition. He loved it – it’s a new favorite.

Another nice meal was Whole Foods lamb (on sale this week) with wild rice and grilled red peppers and fuji apples. I stole a few bites of this and it was delicious. It was another new thing for Bobby – he doesn’t think he’s had lamb before, but he really liked it. I love lamb – I just don’t have it that often. It was a nice treat.

47 bobby dinner

I was influenced by Dexter, too – there was an episode in which Deb started listening to Chopin, so I downloaded a CD of “Favorite Piano Works”. I used to play piano (I suppose I still can) and they make me miss it.

I signed up for an Anthropology class at a local community college, and it meets tonight. It’s once a week for 3 hours on Wednesday nights. It’s a Physical Anthropology class – “The study of human origins, including evolution, genetics, variability, fossil evidence for human evolution, comparative primate anatomy and behavior.” I’m pretty excited for it.

I found a ridiculous word this morning – floccinaucinihilipilification – it means “the action or habit of estimating as worthless”. I think someone needs to estimate floccinaucinihilipilification as worthless. It’s a combination of 4 Latin words (flocci, nauci, nihili, pilifi) that all mean “at a small price”/”for nothing”. Apparently uber-literate British men used to make up words like this all the time just for fun. I just wrote a piece on crazy English spelling which was also influenced by British men wanting to seem smart or dandy.

What’s your favorite after dinner treat?

Posted on

Bored yet?

I have been eating a lot of the same stuff recently, but surprisingly I’m not bored. Because each of my meals has almost a dozen ingredients, I guess that’s variety enough to keep me happy.

46 raw salad

This salad was…

  • base: iceberg and green leaf lettuce
  • toppings: raw blue cheese, seaweed, raw corn, heirloom tomatoes, red cabbage, beets, red bell pepper
  • dressing: liquid gold elixir AND some carrot juice (why not?)

I got some great responses to the favorite food question. The trick was to see if people would list specific ingredients (tomatoes, etc…) or specific dishes (hamburger, etc…). I think most people realized the trick though. I also used Aardvark to get some more answers. Here are some responses from Aardvark users..

  • “Broccoli, butter, cheese, tempura, popcorn”
  • “olives, artichokes, soy sauce, seafood, walnuts/pecans/other nuts”
  • “1. Potatoes 2. Avacados. 3. Garlic 4. bread 5. chicken”
  • “chocolate, bread, ceviche, cheese, ham”
  • “Cheesecake,meatloaf,italian ice,carrots, cucumbers”
  • “Carrots, celery, onions, beef, poultry”
  • “Interesting. Never thought about it. Avocado, Honey, ALL Thai food, Tofu, a really good steak”

I thought these answers were very interesting because they don’t come from healthy bloggers… but almost all of them had vegetables in the top 5. Most of them listed just ingredients, not dishes. I found it funny that the person who listed tofu as a favorite food also liked “really good steak”.

Some of your favorites were: almond butter, apples, avocado, bananas, berries, blueberries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, champagne, cheese, cherries, coconut things, coffee, corn, crab, crusty bread, dark chocolate, dates, fish, fresh greens, fruit, Greek yogurt, grilled zucchini, hummus, kabocha, macademia nuts, mango, mashed potatoes, mushrooms, nectarines, oatmeal with bananas & cinnamon, pancakes, peaches, peanut butter, raw cashews, rice, salmon, salsa, shrimp, spinach, strawberries, sunbutter, sushi, and sweet potatoes.

I’m having trouble deciding mine. At this very moment (in no particular order):

  • bananas
  • my green juice (not a single ingredient – a dish)
  • kabocha squash
  • raw blue cheese
  • raw corn

But this changes all the time. The only thing on there that isn’t a specific ingredient is the juice, but it’s a very specific recipe (must have ginger, lemon/lime, mint, granny smith apple, + GREEN things).

Another interesting question to ask is this – what are your favorite exercises? No trick here; my favorites (right now) are rebounding and yoga. A few weeks ago I would have said dance videos. A few weeks before that I would have said running and walking. It changes all the time. I’m off to do some yoga, and then I think I’ll rebound for a few minutes. Yesterday the only exercise I did was 30 minutes of rebounding, but it felt great. I watched the NOVA documentary “Cracking the Maya Code” while I bounced.

(I wrote a bit more about Shakespeare this morning, if you want to read it!)