Spirooli and More

Spirooli:


On Gena's recommendation (Gena from Choosing Raw - Thanks for e-mailing me so quickly, it helped me from buying the Joyce Chen one too), I ordered the Spirooli today. Two of my bosses at work gave me an Amazon (My favorite most used online store ever - LOVE MY KINDLE) gift card for my Birthday, so I had a hole burning in my pocket!





I'm so excited to make some "angelhair" veggies. I have a ton of zuchinni coming up in my garden and I'm so excited to try some new recipes. One thing I'm really excited to try is a pesto sauce mixed with some angelhair veggie pasta!

Now that I've got my Vitamix and my Spirooli will be coming in a few days - my want's list now includes an Excaliber Dehydrator, Juicer (still trying to figure out what brand), and a mandoline (again - not sure what brand). I think I'd also like an ice cream maker - but that is far down the line.

I think once I get a juicer - This will fix the nasty taste of green smoothies. I think green juices are much more tasty.

We are going camping tomorrow night and Saturday night in the Pocono's. Working on a food list. I'd like to not eat all the junk that is typical on a camping trip, although resisting is going to be hard - but I can do it!

Yuck and Yumminess!

Yucky Green Smoothie:

Today for breakast I fully intended to make a smoothie, but with the greens I still had in my fridge I decided for a green smoothie. It was yuck and I think I definately need to stop putting celery in them because I think that is what is making me grossed out. Some of my green smoothies are ok, and this one was vile. I can usually stomach it -but I threw 1/3 of it out. I did eat 2/3 though, so I got some vital nutrients.


Dark Chocolate Yumminess:

Today is my birthday and some nice person at work gave me a small bag of Asher's dark chocolate covered pretzels. Not healthy at all, but oh man are they good. I had to hide the bag so I wouldn't eat them all.




Lunch:

Lunch was a salad from Chipoltle Grill.

Lettuce, carnitas shredded pork, guacamole, 2 servings mild salsa (chunky tomatoes) and 1 serving medium salsa (clears my sinus').

Dinner:

Bill has pork and saurkraut in the crockpot. I'll most likely have something healthier since I had pork already once today. Plus he didn't get organic saurkraut.

Lip Smacking Good - My favorite lip balm

Burt's Bee's Beeswax Lip Balm


I don't know about anyone else, but I have to keep my lips hydrated and moisturized. My favorite lip balm is Burt's Bee's Beeswax Lip Balm (just the plain kind). The only thing I would change is maybe if they had a version that had sunscreen for day use. I love the smell, the slight hint of peppermint. The ingredients are clean too!

It's a 2 in the Cosmetic Safety Database (would love a 0- but I think some people are allergic to some of the products, and that is why it's a 2). For now until I find something that rates a 0, it's my "balm" of choice.



Ingredients:
Tube: beeswax, cocos nucifera (coconut) oil, helianthus annuus (sunflower) seed oil, mentha piperita (peppermint) oil, tocopheryl acetate, lanolin, symphytum officinale (comfrey) root extract, rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary) leaf oil, tocopherol, Tin: beeswax, cocos nucifera (coconut) oil, prunus amydalus dulcis (sweet almond) oil, mentha piperita (peppermint) oil, tocopheryl acetate, lanolin, symphytum officinale (comfrey) root extract, rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary) leaf oil, tocopherol


What is your favorite lip balm? I think I'm going to make it my mission to search out a 0 on the Cosmetic Safety Database list.

Check this link for some 0 lip balm options. Let me know if you have tried any.

Juicy Pineapples

Hey everyone - I've been experimenting with a lot of raw dishes lately. I love experimenting with all the fresh veggies and fruit. The kids and I cut open a beautiful yummy pineapple. It was so yummy and fresh. We are definately going to make sure we get another one really soon.





Check out the Fitnessista's blog for a chance to win Sarma Melngailis' new book Living Raw Food - Get the Glow!

Great family vacation

We've been so busy now that school is out. We took a drive to Missouri and Kansas. We had a College visit for Taryn and got to see my Dad and two of my Great Aunts on Father's day in Kansas. It was a great trip. We even got to see the St. Louis Arch on our return trip home. I have some great pictures I will post soon.

I've been experimenting by adding more raw into my diet. I'm really loving the extra greens. Tonight for dinner I had a spinach dip (spinach, avocado, lemon juice and salt) that I put in the food processor and then I put it on a sprouted grain Ezekiel 4:9 tortilla. It was a little mushier than it should have been. I think I put too much lemon juice on and left it processing too long.

Check out Justine's blog - she has a great contest going for her 100th post for Artisana Coconut butter. Have you tried Artisana's coconut butter? You must - it's such a treat and I can eat it out of the jar with a spoon - yep it's that good :)

Raw Veggie Heaven and 12 Grueling Miles

Monday 6/15/09

Breakfast:

Breakfast this morning was another Orange Veggie/Fruit Smoothie. This time I added cauliflower (yogurt, apple, banana, baby carrots, cauliflower). I didn't put ice in it, and I already had my blender washed by the time I realized it wasn't cold. It wasn't as good as yesterday's orange smoothie, but not bad. Unfortunately I didn't get to drink it..............the floorboard of my passenger seat got more than 1/2 of it. It was an ugly site and I got up as much as I could, but need to do some extra cleaning tonight.

Note to self: Don't use a big cup that you can't fit in the cup holder.


Since I really didn't get to drink much of my smoothie, I had a Larabar Jocalat Chocolate Coffee bar instead.



Lunch was raw veggie heaven:

A friend of mine at lunch has been talking about taking me to a raw food restaurant for a while. I didn't bring a lunch today since I left so early and didn't have my act together. I e-mailed my friend and we decided to head over to the raw food restaurant she wanted me to try. Unfortunately I did not take pictures.

Arnold's Way Vegetarian Organic Cafe

Protein Shake
Energy abound with purified water, bananas, Dates, & premium Hawaiian Spirulina

Cheze Burger
Our Raw Veggie Bruger served with a Sunflower Cheze on our classic Buckwheat – Flax Bread. Toppings include Lettuce, Tomato, Pickles, Onions, Olives, & Red Sauce (Tomato, Beet, Olive Oil, Green Olives).

It was absolutely fantastic and out of this world. The green olives he used were totally incredible and a wonderful addition to the dish. The buckwheat-flax bread was out of this world. The sunflower cheze and red sauce was absolutely incredible. It was art on a plate (I love food that reminds me of being edible art). I wish I had pictures to show you. The best part was the prices, it was under $12 for all that.

12 Grueling Miles:

Last night after a 10 hour work day (working four 10 hour days to have Friday off for an extended mini vacation this coming weekend), I went on a 12 mile bike ride with Bill & Ryan.

I got home around 6:40pm and we left around 7pm. I probably should have eaten something, but we left before I got to eat dinner. Our path took us on part of the Perkiomen Trail, but most of it was on open road. I really hate riding on the open rode because the cars come speeding by and when you start to get tired and your legs are like noodles it's a bit scary. We finished around 8:30pm and went 12 miles. What a great workout, although I realized when I got home the gears got shifted up and it was probably harder going up the hills than it should have been. I remember at one point telling Bill that when I was going up a hill that it was as if the brakes were on during the middle of the hill. I think that is when the shifting happened and I didn't even realize it.

My butt is totally sore this morning, lol! I'm so glad we went though. It was super great exercise.

Dinner:

I was tired and just wanted to eat.

I took some rice wrappers (think fresh vietnamese spring roll wrappers) and put soem rice noodles (think vietnamese bun or Pho noodles) inside with thinly cut zucchini.

I wanted to make a peanut sauce, so I took some organic peanut butter and added a small amount of organic soy sauce and stired. It was still thick so I added some water. Not what I wanted, but it wasn't bad. Since it wasn't dippable I put the peanut butter mixture on top of each roll. I ate two before I took a picture.


Will post picture tonight.

Another weekend comes to an end:

I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. I always hate when the weekend comes to an end. Weekends make me happy since I'm not at work and with my family.

Saturday:

We went shopping today and ended the day seeing UP in 3D. Great movie with some great messages. Some of the movie was pretty sad though, and I hadn't really expected that. 3 Thumbs way up!


Sunday:

Today was Church, hanging around the house and my 4 mile walk.


Exercise:
I had a great 4 mile walk/run today. Over 400 miles were burned.

I was alone and sometimes I love being alone in nature. I ended up taking a road I've never been down today and I saw lots of beautiful birds, beautiful flowers, lots of green trees, plants and grass, lots of bugs that seemed to be attracted to the sweat, and really old home built in 1794 that looked like they have kept it mostly how it looked like back then (simplistic and beautiful). There was even a cave looking area in a small rock next to the house that I'm thinking was something they used to keep food cool back then - something similiar to a root cellar or something.

Racing Alert:
My man Jimmie Johnson ran out of gas again this weekend, two weekends in a row. Come on Jimmie let's not make it a 3rd. It was such a bummer to see him go from 1st to 22nd. SIGH!

Some eat's over the weekend:

Green Smoothie (Yogurt, avocado, spinach, carrots, apple, kiwi)



Ezekiel Tortilla Pizza: