Week 29 Challenge - Vegetarian

This year I decided to challenge myself to reflect on various Yoga and Buddhist aspects throughout the year. The challenges come from a variety of places including readings in Deborah Adele's Yamas and Niyamas and Thich Nhat Hanh's Heart of the Buddha's Teaching and Happiness.

My philosophies and my tastes are often in contradiction. My heart wants me to be vegetarian (well, actually vegan, but that's another story). But, it's a challenge for me sometimes to want to be. In the past I've spent two 1.5 year periods vegetarian. And I've started off many a week with vegetarian ambitions, only to cave to my taste buds in moments of stress.

This week I decided to challenge myself to a week of vegetarianism. This way, if I wanted meat, I could know it was just for a week. I looked forward to this week with excitement and trepidation. I love veggie food, but I love meat too.

I had lots of yummy meals this week. I've re-discovered plenty of simple vegetarian favorites like cheese and veggie sandwiches. And I found that my favorite pizzeria makes a mean 3 Cheese Pizza. I struck a balance between eating in and eating out because I wanted to ensure that I explored options on both sides.

So what about next week? Given the success of this week, I'm feeling motivated to continue eating vegetarian for now, without committing myself to any specific time frame.

Week 23 Challenge - Purification (Take 2)

This year I decided to challenge myself to reflect on various Yoga and Buddhist aspects throughout the year. The challenges come from a variety of places including readings in Deborah Adele's Yamas and Niyamas and Thich Nhat Hanh's Heart of the Buddha's Teaching and Happiness.

In Week 20, I did a challenge on purification. It dealt with small items in my day, but I knew I wanted to tackle the same challenge in regards to food. I do believe purifying my body on the inside is really important (since I tend to take in a lot of toxins in my food).

This week, I tried juicing as a challenge in purification. I decided to start each morning that way without intentionally changing anything else and see what I thought.

Taste? Yum! I made a variety of juices throughout the week, but all with the same theme. 1 green (romaine or spinach), 1 base fruit (apple or grapes) and 1 accent fruit (strawberries, nectarine, kiwi). I'd say the Kiwi/Grape/Romaine was my favorite, but the nectarine mixes were really good and they were all tasty.

Easy? Relatively. I bought some fruit at the beginning of the week. I bought organic as much as possible. Some of the fruit wasn't ideal for eating, but it was still great for juicing (resulting in less waste). I used greens from our garden. It didn't take long to make juice each morning and the clean-up was pretty simple.

Effects? I feel like I made some healthier choices in the rest of my day that might have been affected by the juice in the morning. With my breakfast, I tended to have 1 cup of coffee instead of 2. I craved salads a bit more throughout the week. I also craved juice later in the day as well.

I definitely think the juicing is a keeper. I plan to experiment with veggie juices as well at some point.

Eating for the Body, Mind and Spirit

I am trying to listen to what my body wants and what my spirit wants when it comes to food. And what do they want?

My body wants light, simple food. Nothing too heavy. Nothing with unpronounceable ingredients. Not too much at one time.

My spirit wants local, vegetarian food. Food with a small ecological footprint.

That seems pretty simple. But then there's the mind that is wedged in there with the body and spirit. What does the mind want?

My mind seeks comfort from food, as it learned to do when I was young. And the comfort it seeks is in meat, heavy food, junk food. Food with a huge ecological footprint.

So I continue to work on finding non-food comfort for my mind to allow my body and spirit to have the food they want.

Yummy Substitutions

I've been on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), for a little over 2 weeks. When I tell people that the diet is "no grains, no sugar, no dairy except homemade yogurt and aged cheese", a lot of people are appalled at the restrictiveness. However, I find the food I do eat really tasty. I thought I'd share some of my favorite substitutions:

• Butternut squash fries (instead of potato or sweet potato fries)
• Prosciutto instead of bacon
• Banana bread made with ground almonds (instead of flour)
• Hot chicken wings made with homemade hot sauce of honey, butter, vinegar, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper (instead of bottled hot sauce)
• Club soda with a lemon wedge (instead of pop)

In general I consider the substitutions I make better for me. While they sometimes have more calories or fat, they also have more nutrition and less processing.

Holiday Food and Yummy Pancakes

My last post about food was on December 13. I was still flying high on healthy food that day. Then I started to have problems with the foods I was adding back into my diet (tomatoes, chili peppers) and with other foods I had been eating all along.

Then came the first of my indulgence days. And they're still going. What can I say? It's the holidays and I'm enjoying all of the sweet treats of the season. And I'm paying for it because my body certainly doesn't love me eating this way.

I made a decision almost a week ago to go back on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), starting Dec 27. I've done this diet before for 8 months and it was the happiest my digestive system has ever been.

Almond flour (ground blanched almonds) is typically a big part of the SCD. I've had a lot of experience cooking with almond flour and made some great recipes. However, they always were obviously different than their grain-filled counterparts. Until I made these pancakes.

Before I share the pancake recipe, if you make these don't feel discouraged. I made a half batch and they got all gummed up in my blender (oh no!). So I put the batter in a bowl and stirred it; it seemed way to thick (oh no!). I put the batter on a griddle and it didn't spread itself, I needed to use the spatula (oh no!). Then I burnt one side (oh no!). After all of that I almost didn't try them. But I'm so glad I did. So tasty! And very pancake like.

Elana's pancake recipe (and see my notes below): Pancakes

1) Almond flour can be anywhere from coarse to fine depending on your source. Mine has always been on the coarse side which is what made my baked goods so different from flour based recipes. Before making the pancakes, I pulsed the almond flour in my mini-food processor to get a finer grind. I think this is what gave them that perfect pancake texture.

2) I don't use agave, so I substituted homemade apple syrup.