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hecallsmehischild · 4 years

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On Losing Weight

Recently I was asked a question that prompted me to pull together all the information I could remember about how my husband, Sergey, and I have been eating over the last few years. We both struggle very much with food and have been trying to do better by our bodies for a long time, but are wary of all the diets and fads. This post has details about what we’ve tried to date and what has worked for us. Most of it is written by me. At the end, Sergey wrote a few paragraphs also. Very long post under the cut.

Disclaimers and a few generalities

One thing about eating and weight loss is that accountability really helps. However, I’ve found personally that even if everyone in your family means well, accountability partners should not be within the family. The main reason I've found is that there's too much baggage with any family member (with the potential exception of your marriage partner) for accountability to ever go well and function as it should. Resentment, triggers, irritation, even accidental shaming crops up because of old baggage and derails everything. You need accountability with someone who you don’t carry a lot of baggage with, because there’s often a huge emotional component to eating.

It takes a LONG time to lose large amounts of weight. You can lose five to ten pounds relatively quickly, but often your body will stabilize on the new number and then you may find it very hard to get lower for months, so continuing to try new things is helpful.

You will yo-yo between 3 and 5 pounds all the time. That is standard. So think in five pound increments in any direction, because your bodyweight is constantly in flux over a few pounds. For this reason, weighing once a week is a lot more accurate than weighing every day and will cause a lot less despair and frustration.

We are not vegetarians at all. We cannot offer any thoughts on a vegetarian diet.

Whatever you do, food-wise, has to be part of your ordinary life. Short term diets set you up to fail. Changing your lifestyle is what will produce long-lasting changes.

Also, some of the things my husband and I try, in some ways, appears to walk the line of eating disorder. I’m watching it very closely with that in mind, and I still don’t think it falls into the trap. Sergey and I do not have enough activity to burn off all the food with take in, so we’re trying things to decrease our food intake AND increase our activity, so that we reach a reasonable balance. But people who have (or are tempted by) eating disorders need to take care, and I would recommend not reading this post or else proceeding with utmost caution.

Obviously not all of the things we do are feasible for everyone, but maybe even hearing some of our ideas might spark a different way of thinking about food and being active for you.

One Meal a Day

Three meals a day makes a lot of sense if you’re doing hard labor all the time. It doesn’t make as much sense if you have a desk job or take care of a house as your main occupation. So the first thing we did a few years back is cut down to one meal a day. It could be anything at all, but it had to be just one meal. That alone dropped us both about 10 pounds down. We’d have one meal around lunch, and later in the evening we would share a large bowl of some sort of fruit (like tangerines or cherries). The aim was to eat things that were both good and filling. Variation keeps you from getting bored and abandoning the lifestyle.

Meals were often grilled salmon or home-warmed burgers (lean, when we could) or a soup from Trader Joe’s. Some of our meals now:

Two burgers with lean beef patties, pickles, and some mayo on bakery fresh onion rolls

Lox (with is VERY low cal, if expensive) on onion rolls with tomato and onion, a little oil and pepper and salt

Sharing a whole roast chicken from the store, plus a roll each

Large can of tuna mixed with a little mayo on two onion rolls

Shredded chicken and mashed potatoes from the store’s fresh packaged food section

Pot roast and mashed potatoes from the store’s fresh packaged food section

Meatballs. Just meatballs.

A spicy beans/rice/sausage/mushroom dish we brainstormed that we make in a pressure cooker

Home-made chicken mushroom fettuccine alfredo. Not super healthy, but hot and homemade. (this is a “maintenance” meal, see what I mean by that later)

A bag of chicken fried rice from Trader Joe’s

Soup from the grocery store (not the canned kind, but the fresher ones sold by the store)

Two larger sized tamales

One frozen pizza (inspect the full calorie count, you’re shooting for something between 600 and 1000 calories total, which does exist but it takes some looking and experimenting with types) whose flavor can always be spiced up with extra mushrooms or garlic powder. Not the Tostino’s or Party pizzas. I promise there are healthier, tastier, and more varied pizzas to be had in this calorie range.

Chicken breast or chicken thigh meat is sold frozen. Cook that and make that into sandwiches for very lean, filling meals. Use of various spices encouraged.

A tray of baked “catfish nuggets” which are chunks of catfish cooked in the oven

A tray of baked white meat chicken nuggets

Cocktail shrimp (thawed from frozen) with cocktail sauce

I have just broken into the frontier of omelettes, also low-cal and filling in conjunction with onion rolls.

Sergey would often go to a salad bar and load up on the salad, then also load up on the chicken noodle soup which is very filling and very low cal.

Sergey eats his meal closer to noon or one. I try to eat my meal around 3 or 4 if I can hold out, because then I’m not groaning about how hungry I am in the evening or being kept up by hunger pangs. For me, that’s the mid-point of the day and the one that helps me deal with hunger best.

Snacks and Sweets

Snacks are always tricky, and large bags of anything salty are automatic failures in this house; we are incapable of portioning them. So we stopped getting them unless we acknowledged the truth to ourselves, which is that one bag is one serving size no matter what the back says (i.e. we embraced that we’re being bad and got it anyway).

For a while Sergey and I had an occasional bowl of non-buttered popcorn with powdered salt. This worked for a bit because it was pretty filling, but Sergey found himself making multiple bowls so we had to stop because that defeated the purpose.

Some stores sell very small snacks individually portioned, like a tiny foil pack of variously flavored olives, or banana bites coated in cacao, etc. Those are great. Rice cakes can be good, though I get tired of them after a while. I like the cinnamon apple and chocolate ones best. Speaking of cinnamon apple, individual oatmeal cups are good too. I aim for around 140 cal for a snack.

Sometimes I will snack on a lean burger patty or chicken thigh-meat piece, each of which is about 70 cal.

By himself, Sergey often would (and still does) fill a large bowl full of small quartered tomatoes mixed with pepper, oil, and onion. He can put away two of these tomato salads a day as “snacks.” He says they’re very filling, good for you, and low-cal. He’s leaning more on bowls of baby carrots and sugar snap peas these days. Sometimes he will make a large bowl of Golden Apple slices to chow down on.

I keep NO ice cream in the house. I may get a larger quantity for a birthday celebratory binge, or use individual containers as a reward system, but I never “stock up” on ice cream. Birthday? Maybe 4 of the personal containers of various flavors, and that’s it for my birthday treat. Reward system? Once I get to a certain weight, I allow myself to have one small personal container of ice cream (or my other favorite, a jar of honey pecans) a week. The incentive to get to a certain weight balances out the slow-down on the weight loss the treat causes, because this can’t be all about deprivation or I couldn’t sustain it. Being able to sustain a way of eating into a lifestyle is a huge deal.

I keep dried cranberries in the cabinet. Sometimes if I’m hungry and need to hold out, I’ll grab one handful of those to eat. I keep larger quantities of oatmeal too, but I’m not sure if that’s working against me or not, because I dump high quantities of honey in to bring it up to my sweet tooth standards so it might end up being a bad thing for me. I haven’t sat down to figure that out yet.

I make a mean chunky cinnamon applesauce that is a delicious and pretty healthy snack, too, when I have the energy to make it.

I would like to make sweets all the ding dong day, but it works against us, so I have to reserve my sweets making for when there’s a large group to share them with. Otherwise we would eat all of that ourselves.

Tools that help

Making your own food at home becomes a lot more enjoyable and feasible for low-energy people like us when there are tools that cut back on the effort it takes. To that end

A good 6 qt pressure cooker does everything a crockpot does, but it has more options and is faster.

A good food processor can do almost anything, from applesauce to milling oats to slicing veggies to finely dicing the onions you don’t want to deal with, to making ice cream out of frozen bananas and cocoa powder. We have an older one and it still does wonders, even though some of the latches don’t work right.

A good indoor grill machine.

Electric mixer/beater. The effort of making cookies goes down by a third to a half the personal energy cost when you use this, plus the process goes faster and the texture is so much better.

A dishwasher. A good dishwasher means you aren’t spending a ton of energy cleaning up all the dishes you soiled just making food. Did you know there are portable dishwashers that hook up to your sink if you don’t have one in the home? I just learned this...

This one heavily depends on how much you’d use it, but it can be very inexpensive to get an electric citrus juicer. I can go through about 40 lemons for a party-sized quantity of lemonade and it wracks out my wrist to do that manually, so I got a good one for about $20.

This website is one Sergey uses to see what products are legitimately good, because Amazon is starting to have major issues with fake reviews PLUS Chinese knock-offs getting passed off as the good product. This site user-tests a ton of different brands of the same product and tells you which one they found to be best and why, then gives a few runners up in other categories like price or different type. I used this to find a good set of salt/pepper grinders, a good knife sharpener, and an individual serving coffee maker. I also found my electric mixer and citrus juicer on here.

Also, pickling things is fun and very cheap and easy.

A few radical things

This is our lifestyle, not a diet. We go crazy with our eating when we’re on a trip, but normal, everyday eating is the one-meal-a-day plan for us. Going to a friend’s place for a meal is a balancing act that we often fail (because it’s often all-you-can-eat), but we’re already brainstorming ways to compensate.

Here’s for something radical sounding, to be handled with care. While Sergey aims for around 1300 calories a day, approximately, I aim for under or close to 800. I’ve found that if I eat the same things as him, I maintain my current weight but do not lose any. It’s when I, the smaller and less active person, undershoot him, that I start gaining ground. When I reach the weight I’m aiming for, I will allow myself more leeway to get to his calorie intake level, because that’s “maintenance” level for me.

Here’s the current thing we are testing, so the results are not in yet. We’re doing this because neither of us has been able to budge our weight for a while. It’s a combination of factors so track with me. We like a place called Star Cinema Grill which is a movie theater that serves you a meal and/or drinks while you watch the movie. But even for one meal this is a very high calorie day if we go there. We swore off going for a long time, until their marketing department sent out a wave of “Two free tickets!” in the mail. Sergey figured that he would go, and then he would not eat for 48 hours to make up for it. I was a little concerned by the idea, but after thinking it over for a while (with the concern about eating disorders in mind) it didn’t actually seem that unreasonable. So I joined him in this. So now we’ve worked out that we can go to Star Cinema Grill on occasion as long as it’s followed by a 48 hour fast.

We had previously tried 48 hour fasts (which consist of, for example, eating lunch around noon on Sunday and stopping food until lunch on Tuesday, so that you sleep through much of the 48 hour period) but we first did the fast on ONLY water. By the second day we were both so lethargic and unfocused that we could hardly function. This time we allowed ourselves to have several rounds of tea or mocha throughout the day. That time, we experienced very negligible energy drops and made it through the period of no-eating with a lot less suffering.

NOW. I was reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the expanded and revised edition, and at the end they included several articles they had written as bonus material. Please read this article to understand where I’m going next.

Excited, I rushed over to Sergey to make him read this bit. This is already sort of what we had been doing. Though this guy had distilled it down to sugar water, tea with a cube of sugar isn’t much different. My mocha had about three times the sugar, but was still on the very low end of calories for a day. So this idea (that sugar-water helps trick your body past hunger) was being confirmed for us by someone else. So we’ve decided to test out doing this 48-hour fast once a week, which may also allow for re-inclusion of things we tend to forgo more often (like weekly ice cream? Or a fresh batch of cookies?). Stay tuned...

Going out

We built a list of places and categories of how good or bad they are for us to go to. We divided them into Healthy and Healthy Cheat. Bad ones don’t make it on the list so we’re not tempted when we’re thinking of where to go out.

Healthy Restaurants are places where, if you’re reasonable with your choices, you can eat pretty much any one meal on their menu. (Lemon Shark is our Poke place in the area. Poke is unreasonably good and healthy and filling for you, and most will have vegetarian or cooked options on the menu if you don’t like raw fish. Jinya is a ramen place, though you have to be a little more selective about because some dishes are two meals’ worth, and Sweet Tomatoes is a salad bar also known as Souplantation in some regions)

Healthy Cheat Restaurants are places where we know we’ll probably eat more than we should, but the food is still relatively healthy. Tokyo Grill and Dimassi’s are both buffet places with relatively healthy options near us. Fukuda Sushi is our sushi go-to for now (though we’re looking to replace it as the fish quality went down).

Avoid most all-you-can-eat places like the plague, unless it’s a salad bar. Even then, if you gravitate toward the breads and creamy soups like I do, just say no.

Places we love that are also pretty bad for us on any kind of regular basis: Rudy’s BBQ, Star Cinema Grill, Wine Tasting Room (large meat and cheese platters), anywhere Italian.

Being Active

We took up Krav Maga, which had us doing off and on rigorous exercise for an hour twice a week. That went on for about a year. After I broke my toe, we switched to a home exercise regimen.

Instead of home exercise equipment, we opted for DDR pads, and have been doing hour-long DDR sessions most mornings. After an hour long workout (25 songs on easy-to-medium levels) we each do 20 crunches and then Sergey does extra burpees or push-ups. As the crunches get easier for me, I will be adding five at a time. I’m up to 30 now. Crunches were initially added to help me maintain the muscles that hold up a weak place in my spine, however now it’s also a good end-workout routine. I cannot get through all this without frequent water breaks because I drip sweat, and Sergey turns into a waterfall.

Sergey has added about 3-5 extra mini-workouts (a set of pushups or burpees) sprinkled throughout the day.

Some days we go to a park in the morning and walk for 30-50 minutes instead of DDR. It’s less strenuous, but a nice change of pace and scenery.

Some days we go kayaking in a nearby waterway, which REALLY works the arm muscles that day, but it’s a fantastic workout. We keep saying we need to go more often, but often forget.

Failing

It’s going to happen. It’s going to feel miserable. Sometimes I have found myself up at three AM, unable to sleep, making myself another whole frozen pizza or eating all the spaghetti leftovers. Sometimes I can talk myself into something slightly better, like a bowl of oatmeal, but not often. Sometimes I’ll just mix white and brown sugar, butter, and raw oatmeal and eat this lump-of-barely-cookie-dough as is. Sometimes I come home from the grocery store with an entire round loaf of bakery bread and eat it, much to Sergey’s fascination and surprise. One time I scooped one out and filled it with clam chowder and ate my own homemade bread bowl. It was great. It was also way over my limit.

Sometimes “failing” is known and expected, like around the holidays or birthdays. It’s okay to celebrate. Food is a very social and emotional experience as well as a sustenance deal. Keep picking yourself back up and trying again.

Sergey, who is SUPER good at distilling core concepts, adds his own TLDR:

On Losing Weight

Dusty and I have both struggled with overeating. For me, there have been sad times when plowing through a huge meal may have been the happiest 20 minutes of my day, and it’s no surprise that I would resist any attempts to eliminate that. However, I’ve found that losing weight and getting healthier leads to better moods and reduces the frequency and severity of impulses to binge.

Whatever you do must be incorporated into your lifestyle—if you are “going on a diet,” then you are setting yourself up to fail. If certain behaviors become part of your ordinary day, and you maintain that for months at a time, it’s much more likely that you’ll be able to keep going.

The most important change I’ve made is limiting myself to 1 meal a day. After a short adjustment period, I feel only a little bit hungrier than I did with 2 meals a day while consuming half the calories. That meal should be a reasonably-sized meal (typically 800-1200 calories for men, 600-900 for women), not an extra-large one. If I get hungry again, I only allow myself some very low-calorie snacks like carrots, sugar snap peas, or tomatoes.

The second thing I did was institute a daily exercise program. Dusty and I start each morning with an hour of DDR when we can, and I stop what I’m doing every 3-5 hours to do a set of 20 burpees. As I gain strength, I plan to increase this number. We also go for walks or go kayaking when the weather and our moods allow. What’s most important is that you do something to get your heart racing and get sweaty, and that you do it every day.

The last thing I did was institute occasional 48-hour fasts. For example, I would have lunch on Monday and not eat again until lunch on Wednesday. If I have tea with light sugar during a fast, I only feel moderately hungrier than I would otherwise. It’s much more tolerable than I thought it would be. There is considerable research suggesting that intermittent fasting is good for you, and it can be a reasonable way to offset the binge you couldn’t resist having. It’s definitely a healthier approach than purging, which hurts both your body and your soul.

#food #eating #rlchild #exercise #if you struggle with eating disorders this post is not good for you #not vegetarian

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hallsp · 5 years

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Ramadan Diary

Ramadan is a month of fasting, prayer, and self-reflection for the world’s two billion Muslims. The observance of Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, a central tenet of the faith. The holy month itself commemorates the start of the recitation of the Qur’an to Mohammad, culminating in Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Destiny, which celebrates the very first revelation.

The date for Ramadan varies from year to year, as the Islamic calendar is based on the movements of the moon, not the sun. This year, it began on the night of Sunday, May 5th, when the religious authorities glimpsed the thin crescent of a new moon.

I decided, after some encouragement from my students, to fast for all of Ramadan as a kind of personal challenge. This is a diary of my progress.

Monday, 6th May

Today was long, and hungry. I didn’t eat a morsel, nor drink a drop, all the livelong day. It wasn’t easy. I thought about food quite a lot. Bron, my roommate, is also fasting so we can do iftar together. An app tells me that the evening call to prayer, called maghrib, is at 19.27, but it began a small bit later — an agonizing two minutes — at about 19.29. Maryam, my other roommate, and raised Muslim, told me we have to wait until the prayer is finished, bless the food bismillah, and then eat. I broke the fast with some water and some dates, as is the custom, then devoured a chicken curry.

Tuesday, 7th May

Small bit easier today. Didn’t think of food so often. I was noticeably more tired though. I slept for an hour when I came home. Some strange reactions from some of the teachers to my fasting, but a lot of encouragement from fellow-fasters. Advice from other fasters includes waking at 3 or 4 AM for suhur, the pre-dawn meal, and easing into the iftar in the evenings with soup and salad. I decided against suhur, for reasons of laziness, so my fast is actually more extreme, having one meal, as opposed to two meals, per day. Broke the fast with some dates, a lot more water, and the last part of my chicken curry.

Wednesday, 8th May

Getting into the swing of things now, the hunger isn’t so obvious throughout the day, but much less energy. I’m in a very good mood, though. I’ve decided to make a fattoush salad, with the help of my Syrian friend Majd, who’s Christian and thinks I’m crazy for fasting. He also helped make lentil soup, another staple dish, with Bron, my roommate. So, this was a proper iftar: dates, soup, salad, and bread.

Thursday, 9th

Talked with the Biology teacher, who’s also fasting. He tells me that people ought to re-orient their mind towards other people during Ramadan, and that it’s not about feasting once the sun goes down. Look out, not in, essentially. More advice received: do not eat an even number of dates. Mohammad used to eat three. Broke the fast with (three) dates, and water. I made my own fattoush, which worked out very well. We also had leftover soup from yesterday, and I bought chicken tawouq, which I ate with bread.

Friday, 10th May

Today is International Day at school. The worst event for people fasting. There was food from every country on the planet. I had to borrow a tupperware container to bring the food home. Worse, today is Friday. The weekend is here. I have to go on a trip to Batroun for a bachelorette party with my friends leaving Beirut at about 5pm. Drink will certainly be taken. I can’t avoid it. Anyway, I’m not doing the fast for religious reasons, so once the sun goes down, I can eat, drink, and be merry. The hangover will be tough without a lot of water to compensate, though. We arrived in Batroun at 19:30 so I hopped out of the van, chugged some water, had a few dates, then started into the champagne. I managed to squeeze in a chicken burger in between the drinks.

Saturday, 11th May

The hangover wasn’t so bad, actually. In spite of this, I broke the fast for the first time — to drink a small bottle of water. As sins go, not so heinous. I was just so thirsty day after the night before. Religiously, you can break the fast if you’re pregnant, or menstruating, or sick. Maybe a hangover is a type of sickness? Anyway, spent the day on the beach, mostly under cover, and rested. Broke the fast back in Beirut with dates, some tuna fish, and pasta.

Sunday, 12th May

Apparently there’s an exemption on fasting if you’re traveling. I could’ve done with this on the road to Batroun! It also excuses my breach the day of my return to Beirut, I reckon. Broke the fast with dates, water, tawouq, bread, and pasta.

Monday, 13th May

People are always giving you advice when they hear that you’re fasting. Some of it contradictory. Bron was told not to drink so much water before eating at iftar. We decided to try it. Broke the fast with dates, no water, and chicken curry. Then copious amounts of water after. No obvious difference.

Tuesday, 14th May

Bron makes a strong point. Those who alter their body clocks by sleeping during the day and eating all night are cheating in a way. They’re just moving their day around, and sleeping through the hunger. It’s not a proper fast if you can’t feel the hunger. Broke the fast with chicken curry, round two, and lots of water.

Wednesday, 15th May

I feel hungrier today, not sure why. More advice with recommendations for iftar. The mindfulness coach thinks I ought to break the fast with some warm water, not cold, perhaps herbal tea, as this prepares the stomach better for eating, to be followed by three dates. He’s also of the opinion that people should be humble during Ramadan, no talking about their fast, no feasts at iftar, certainly no Instagram pictures. Broke the fast with a chicken burger from Smoked Bun, post-dates. Ridiculously nice.

Thursday, 16th May

I have a day off school today, for the funeral of Patriarch Sfeir, a Lebanese Maronite Cardinal. It was more difficult being home, actually. At work, even though I’m much more active and using more energy, at least I’m kept busy. Today, I caught myself watching cooking videos on YouTube. Broke the fast with (three) dates, and beef fajitas, but made with Lebanese bread.

Friday, 17th May

Broke the fast with a gorgeous mujaddara, a spicy mix of lentils, rice, and onions, made by a chef friend of Bron’s. Eaten with some of his delicious homemade bread, and some 961 Red Ale. Today is my good friend Enzo’s last night in Lebanon so drink will have to be taken again. What choice do I have?

Saturday, 18th May

Asma, Maryam’s friend from the UK whose working with a medical NGO in the Beqaa Valley, came for iftar. She’s a practising Muslim, so we had to lend her a Qur’an and find the Qibla, the direction of prayer. It was nice to get some more insight into the traditions. Apparently we can eat as soon as the call to prayer begins. We ate three dates, some ripe peach, and drank water, followed by mint tea. Dinner included pasta, fattoush, and more mujaddara. We also had ayran, a traditional kind of sour yoghurt drink. After dinner, we drank some Turkish coffee, then some Indian desi chai, made with ginger and milk. Finally, we had some traditional sweets, heloweyat. A proper iftar!

Sunday, 19th May

No hunger pangs at all today. I think my body has fully acclimatised to fasting. A small group of us went to see some childrens’ theatre in Tripoli, directed by a friend of ours and starring some kids from a Syrian refugee camp. It was really entertaining. The boys put on a production about a couple of swindlers selling dodgy seeds. The girls had a modern take on Cinderella. I could understand most of it, so I’m happy. We rushed back to Beirut for iftar. I decided to order a Ramadan Combo from Malik al-Tawouq: lentil soup, salad, and chicken tawouq platter, and a date cookie called ma’moul. Plus, a Miranda tamarind soft drink. The guy who delivered it was fasting and so forgot to take any money! We also ate some traditional Ramadan cheese sweets, heloweyat al-jibn, made with clotted cream called ashta, which we bought in Tripoli. They were spectacular. There’s a beautiful full moon tonight, which means: we’re half way through Ramadan! Ramadan Kareem!

Monday, 20th May

I genuinely don’t feel hungry during the day any more. Intellectually, I know I need to eat, but there are no hunger pangs. It’s not an obvious hunger. My sense of smell is more active, that’s about it. I decided to make chicken biryani today, which worked out really well. No big communal iftar today, as the final episode of Game of Thrones is available. Some things are more important.

Tuesday, 21st May

Bron invited two work friends over, a Syrian Muslim and a Jordanian Christian, and we also invited Dennis from downstairs. Bron made another batch of lentil soup, which was nicer even than the last one. She made fattoush as well. I contributed the remaining biryani. We had a huge variety of ice-creams with cones for dessert.

Wednesday, 22nd May

I didn’t eat so much today. I think my stomach is getting smaller. Broke the fast with three dates, some of the leftover lentil soup, a Mexican bean and tuna fish mix, and some fried haloumi. Fried haloumi is my new favourite food. Also, had a little pot of yoghurt.

Thursday, 23rd May

The routine now is to break the fast with three dates, and follow this with warm tea, usually mint tea. This really helps the transition to eating. Today, I had a big plate of pasta, some fried haloumi, and a yoghurt.

Friday, 24th May

It’s 38° today. It’s so hot that the cold tap runs warm. It’s at times like these that you appreciate the true value of something as simple as a glass of water. Tonight we’re hosting iftar on our balcony. Maryam made a Palestinian vegetarian maqluba, meaning upside-down, which is made with layers of fried vegetables, potatoes, and rice, which is then flipped before serving, and topped with fried cashew nuts. It was delicious. I made fattoush for seven people, complete with fried pita bread, and it was my best one yet. I was relieved, as I was serving Arabic food to Arabs. My friend Shadi brought his fiancé all the way from Damascus. We eventually made our way to Mezyan in Hamra, where I was rewarded with a free drink for boldly asking for one. It’s Ramadan, after all, the season of good will.

Saturday, 25th May

Myself and my house mates, Maryam and Bron, went to the Beqaa Valley to meet with Asma, who had invited us to iftar with her boss, Doctor Fares, and his extended family. It was such an amazing evening. Typically Syrian. First, we sat around half-talking, half-watching Arab dramas, like Al-Hayba and Khamsa Wa Nos, while the family cooked. People were coming and going all the time. We then went for a short walk with the good doctor’s kids, who were adorable. His eldest daughter, Lamar, had very good English. Then we moved to the garden where we played cards, a version of Trumps. I managed to cheat a bit with help of the kids. Finally, as the sun went down, we ate in a big group in the garden, sitting on cushions around a selection of dishes. There was soup and salad, alongside three different meat dishes: chicken, lamb, and fish. The flavours were superb. The family were a lively bunch. At one point, Doctor Fares insisted on feeding us from his hand. I also discovered that they knew one of my colleagues in Eastwood. Lebanon is a very small place! We sang happy birthday to one his kids and topped it all off with cake. It was the best iftar experience so far.

Sunday, 26th May

Went to Souq al-Ahad, the Sunday market, with Bron. Such a crazy place. We bought some spices, some olives and maqdus (baby aubergine stuffed with chilies, and then pickled) from Aleppo, and salvaged an old backgammon board. It’s a great place to wander for a couple of hours. At one stage I was offered a taste of something, and when I said I was fasting he immediately said (in Arabic): “Me too, I’m Muslim. Are you Muslim? Are you Sunni or Shi’a?” I had to disappoint him by saying neither. It was at this point that he said, with utmost confidence: “It’s only a matter of time.” We broke the fast with a vegetable curry, alongside some maqdus and some Lebanese bread.

Monday, 27th May

I was a small bit busy with work tonight so I had three dates followed by a simple pasta with pesto rosso, onions, and tomato. Naturally, had some mint tea and gallons of water.

Tuesday, 28th May

Today, I had the least amount of food yet. I just had a simple pasta with spicy tomato sauce and cheddar cheese. I couldn’t even finish it. I think my stomach has shrunk over the course of Ramadan. I’m definitely losing weight.

Wednesday, 29th May

Today was a tough day. I was in a bad mood for some reason. I think it’s to do with not having enough energy. Usually, during the whole of Ramadan, my mood has been positive. I think I need to eat enough to maintain my energy levels. Tonight I made chicken vindaloo with egg noodles.

Thursday, 30th May

I had more energy today, back to my normal self. I broke the fast with the remainder of my chicken vindaloo. Also, the requisite number of dates and some mint tea.

Friday, 31st May

Another Friday is upon us. The last, in fact, of Ramadan. Tonight is a big night for Muslims around the world. No-one is quite sure exactly when Laylat al-Qadr is supposed to fall, but most believe it’s the 27th day of Ramadan, which is tonight. It’s also a Friday, so it’s a big deal. We had our last group iftar in the apartment. This time we had three Syrians with us, so we had plenty of help with the food. We had a rice and aubergine dish, a water melon and feta salad, a tabbouleh salad, and some fried haloumi. Later, I nipped downstairs to say goodbye to some friends, before moving to Strada 51, a local bar, and winding up in a swimming pool in a club at 4am. Your typical Laylat al-Qadr.

Saturday, 1st June

I had Arabic class with my friend Majd, from about 2pm. He spent half the day preparing a chicken and rice dish to break the fast with at 7.45. Bless him. I broke the fast with this and some delicious Ethiopian soup made by our friend Jodie, called shiro. It was spicy, and the perfect match for the chicken. I followed this with a few drinks with an Irish guy visiting Lebanon for a week.

Sunday, 2nd June

I broke the fast with three dates, some water, and pasta, alongside some fried haloumi. The end is nigh.

Monday, 3rd June

I had to work today, but I’ve been given the rest of the week off work to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the Festival of Fast Breaking. Today might well be the last night of Ramadan, but we’ll have to wait for the religious authorities to check on the phase of the moon. It will end either tonight or tomorrow.

If Eid begins tomorrow, Muslims will gather for special prayers called Salat al-Eid, which is usually followed by a small breakfast, the first daytime meal in a month. Eid is usually celebrated by visiting relatives, where gifts are exchanged, and zakat is given to the poor. The kids will get a tidy sum of money. Unsurprisingly, food is very important. After a whole month of fasting, all sorts of delicacies will be eaten.

It’s official. Eid begins tonight. The fast is over. I broke the fast by going to Tariq al-Jadida, a busy part of the southern suburbs, with Bron. We then went to Dahieh, where we had some saj with jibneh and zataar, before walking through the market in Sabra and Shatilla. We ended up back in Tariq al-Jadida looking for heloweyat. We weren’t very successful, but we were given free street food: foul with lemon, and seasoned corn. Tomorrow, I’ll go for breakfast in the morning, and then hit the beach.

Epilogue

This month has been really amazing. I’ve learned so much about the traditions of Islam, I’ve met so many different people, I’ve tasted lots of new foods, and I’ve had some great experiences.

It was trying at times, but the effort was definitely worth it. Ramadan really focuses the mind, and makes you very thankful for what you have. It’s also helped me to think more about portion size and also about my own health. Lastly, it’s helped me bond with others who are fasting, and brought me closer to my Muslim friends and students. I can now say with pride that I made it through the full month of Ramadan.

#ramadan #lebanon #diary #reporter

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allforthecourtt · 5 years

Text

rereading aftg with my dumbass opinions pt. 2 (tfc chapters 6-10)

pt. 1 | pt. 2 | pt. 3

look guys! its the highly unanticipated continuation of my reread of aftg!

chapter 6 (aka. meet this MESS of a team)

“My mother's family is French." It was a lie that probably had his British mother rolling over in her sandy grave.”

neil really never misses an opportunity to remind readers that he fucking buried his mom on the beach huh?

“A liar who practices occasional honesty. Clever. Keeps people guessing. Very effective. I would know. I do it myself, you see. Come on, then. After you.”

have i mentioned how entertaining high andrew is? because he’s funny as hell

also rereading these are fun because Nora is incredible at foreshadowing just sayin

“Neil automatically reached for his seatbelt, but one of the brothers was sitting on it.”

how neil would be in the back of the cousins’ car if they let him:

“You?" Neil said. "You can't." Andrew's smile curved wider. "Ohhh, that sounds like a challenge. Mother may I?" "Your mother's dead. I don't think she cares what you do.”

HO HO HOLY SHIT NEIL

“Starting a fight was too out of character for who he portrayed "Neil” to be, though.”

“Consider this your official invite, you suicidal wretch. I'm bringing you to Columbia with us this Friday.”

awe suicidal wretch... glad they’re starting those pet names early

“I don't drink or dance," Neil said.

andrew: i kno u can

“Kevin doesn't dance anymore”

anymore? ANYMORE??? release the cursed events that led to him not dancing anymore Nora im begging you

“Are you bleeding anywhere?" Matt asked. "Nowhere vital," Neil said.

gskjgnsak god i stan this little asshole so much

“She said it gently, with the hint of a smile on her face, but Neil still felt the rebuke. It was subtler but somehow deadlier”

have i mentioned how gay i am for renee? because im very gay for renee

“Allison looked ready for a photo shoot with perfect platinum curls, spiked heels, and a skintight dress.”

im also gay for allison ngl

“I can move if you want to sit here," Neil said. "No, this is fine." She smiled, but it had a smug edge to it, probably because Seth was glaring at them like he could kill them with willpower alone. ”

lol remember how neil doesn’t think he’s attractive and yet in 0.1 seconds after meeting him allison is like “yes this idiot is hot enough to piss off the other idiot im dating”

“Personal favorite was when someone told the police we were running a meth lab out of the dorm," Dan said sourly. "Police raids are awesome.”

no offence dan but that’s fucking hilarious omg

that’s kind of like the time my residence floor had to get evacuated bc some kids hotboxed their dorm room

god i love uni

“The death threats were creative, though," Nicky said. "Maybe this time they'll follow through and actually kill one of us. Let's vote. I nominate Seth.”

pfffffttttt i love Nicky omg

also hahahahahah foreshadowing!

“It'll be fine," Andrew said. "I promised, didn't I? Don't you believe me?" It took a while, but at last Kevin visibly relaxed. ”

again this is why i thought they were fucking for like the better part of the first two books

“The dead look Kevin turned on Andrew today was the same look Neil saw in his reflection. When Neil stopped acting, when he stopped worrying about who was watching, when he let go of the lies that kept him alive, that was the only expression he could make.”

it’s fine i didnt need a heart anyways

this kid is 18 hes A BABY

the first time i read this i was 18 too and like jfc i was a BABY at 18 and so i neil

“One of us has to make it, Mom." It wasn't going to be Neil. It was obvious he was too stupid to survive without his mother if he let himself get into messes like this. But maybe Kevin could do it.”

sorry let me just wipe my TEARS off my fucking laptop neil honey what the fuck

“He felt distant as he watched them walk in. Maybe he was already dying, his stupid soul fading from his short body in preparation for a brutal end.”

neil we get it you have depression (me too bitch u aint special)

“Fuck running," Seth said.

now that’s a whole ass mood

“he didn't know how Renee could smile so warmly when she was speaking to Andrew.”

haha bitch just wait

“when he slept, he dreamed of his father waiting for him on the Foxhole Court.”

remember how at the end of the series his father is waiting on the court but neil wins??? god we love good storytelling

this is such a fucking wild chapter

could you imagine? coming back from the summer and your first introduction to this amateur from arizona is this neil josten level of sass? because i’d probably kill him

first years are bad enough but first years who dont care about other people’s opinions? the fucking worst

chapter 7 (aka. neil does NOT have a fun night out)

“It seemed Allison and Seth didn't believe in middle ground: either they were slinging vile insults at each other or they were making out in the locker room regardless of whoever might be around.”

that’s just how the straights are

“It reminded Neil a little of Allison and Seth, except without the desperate sexual undertones.”

i’ll just leave this gem of a line here

“His teammates held so little regard for him he didn't even have the dubious honor of being dead last.”

neil shading himself is actually hilarious how relatable

“Neil watched him do it, trying to remember the last time someone gave him a gift and coming up blank. That his first one should be from Andrew was unsettling.”

i actually love the fact that andrew bought him clothes so early on like andrew your gay is showing

“Neil debated how much damage the thick heels of his new boots would do against Andrew's face and liked what his mind came up with.”

i thank god everyday that these books are neil’s pov

“Andrew gave Neil another slow once-over and let go. "We're going.”

^andrew seeing neil w/o contacts (aka. the ‘i can’t think straight’ vine)

“Most of the men wore leather, half the women had corsets, and a good number of both genders were covered in buckles and chains.”

this... is a... gay bar

“Andrew saluted the bouncers on his way by and led the way into the club, bypassing the line entirely.”

i always forget the drinking age in the us is 21 but like this bar really dont care about their liquor license AT ALL lmao

“You think Kevin would risk his future over a night out at the club?" "What future?" Neil asked.”

WOW NEIL WAY TO BE A BITCH

“Neil hadn't seen Aaron get up, but he was waiting behind Neil when Andrew let go. Neil reached for Andrew with lethal intent, but Aaron grabbed the back of his chair and pulled hard enough to topple it over.”

why are the twins literally this gif:

real talk nicky kissing neil like that is horrible and really reflects poorly on nicky as a character

andrew for this entire chapter:

chapter 8 (aka. a hitchhiker’s guide to lying about your identity)

“I don't know how your conversation with Andrew went, but it didn't end well. Rumor has it you paid a busboy a hundred bucks to knock you out. Way to cut our night short.”

this is probably my favourite thing neil does in the entire series ngl

“Wymack grabbed his elbow and hauled him inside. He slowed just long enough to slam the door behind Neil. "Are you stupid or just crazy? Do you have any idea what could have happened to you between here and there? What were you thinking?”

Why does Wymack literally sound like my father?

foxes: daddy?

wymack: DO I LOOK LIKE

follow up:

kevin: daddy?

wymack: uh yeah

“I don't know what the beef is between you two, but it ends here and now.”

Wymack @ neil: tell your boyfriend, if he says he’s got beef that your a vegetarian and your not fucking scared of him

“Then correct me." "Give me a reason." "Besides the obvious?" Andrew said. "If I can't get an answer from you, I'll get it wherever I can.”

andrew:

“I'm—" Neil didn't want to say it, but the word was already there, broken and pathetic between them, "—nothing. I'll always have and be nothing.”

“He wondered for a moment if Andrew could handle the entire truth so calmly, but that was too dangerous and stupid to consider.”

“Hope was a dangerous, disquieting thing, but he thought perhaps he liked it.”

this is such a good fucking line like i am shooketh

chapter 9 (aka. neil is, like, really horny for exy)

“Are you stupid?" Seth asked. "Yeah," Neil said.”

what a fuckin MOOD

“Neil had almost forgotten why he liked Exy so much. He did his best at practices but these days he worked mostly to keep his teammates off his back. As Neil surveyed Kevin's damage, he finally felt inspired again. On its heels was a hungry, desperate rush.”

“Seth made as if to throw his beer at Neil. "His life is not more important than mine just because he's more talented.”

sometimes i really wish seth was actually given a chance to have some character development

“ "Maybe you're not as stupid as I thought." "Maybe I am," Neil said”

another big fucking MOOD

chapter 10 (aka. shocking: university is hard :/ )

“It's fun telling Kevin no," Andrew said with a wicked grin.”

why is andrew like this omg

betsy probably was like just looking for a chill job and was like “oh cool uni students? ill have to deal with like a lot of anxiety, sexual tension, depression and like confusion about the future, not to bad” but NOPE welcome to the fucking MAFIA WARS

“That wasn't so bad, was it? Andrew was convinced it would be a disaster. He put money on you hating Betsy." "Did you bet against him?" "Yes," Renee said. "It was a private bet between the two of us.”

“I hope you didn't lose much," Neil said.”

god why is he such an asshole at every opportunity i love him

“I can take care of myself," Neil said. "Watch me beam with pride.”

wymack is the best father in the world and you cant convince me otherwise

“There was one for every fall team with schedules printed on each. Neil kept the Exy one, tossed the rest into the trash, and buried his magnet deep in his pocket where he didn't have to look at the dates.”

neil “i only care about exy” josten strikes again with his great school spirit

“Palmetto State was facing Edgar Allan on Friday, October 13th”

that’s such a cliche and i love it

“He detoured around students toward one of Palmetto State's three dining halls. Two were for the general student body. The third was for athletes only”

lmao my school literally has one dining hall and it couldnt give less of a fuck what type of student they’re selling food too as long as they’ll pay $15 for chicken fingers

what kind of money does palmetto state fuckin have

like i get us tuition is a lot but jesus so’s mine and my school couldn’t be less fucked

“It was only the first day of school and he already had three assignments: a short paper, a fifty-page chapter to read, and a page of questions about said chapter. Neil debated for a minute as to which one sounded least painful. Five minutes later he was still uninspired, so he put his head down on his desk.”

1. MOOD

2. first years are so cute thinking that’s a lot of assignments i remember in first year being like “i have to read 40 pages thats so unfair :(” and now i’m like “ah sick only 200 pgs of readings this week? im gonna have so much free time!”

upper year history sucks ngl

“I'm fine," Neil said.”

neil knows exactly two (2) words and those are it

“You say that an awful lot," Matt said. "I'm starting to think you don't know what it means.”

overall thoughts:

the plot is pickinnnng upppp

i kind of forget how much world building happens in the first book but like its good

also i love neil literally hating everyone its so funny bc like bby these going to be your best friends just wait

anyways that’s all for now

part 3 will be the rest of tfc and then we’ll move onto trk if you guys still want more of this? let me know

love u all bye

#rereading aftg

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pyrogina · 5 years

Text

my keto experience

Intro/TL:DR

As a preface I can report that I lost 17lbs in 30 days while strictly adhering to a keto diet. I'm a 34 year old canadian woman who works from home as an artist and a huge helping factor for me was the freedom to stay home on the bad days and the ability to purchase fresh meats and vegetables on a weekly basis. This is a really tough diet but if you put the right pieces in place, it might work for you too. Additionally, I am NOT a dietitian/nutritionist in any way, shape, or form. Everything posted here is from my own experience and a modicum of research on the net. Please double-check my facts before you begin this diet for yourself.

Is keto for you?

The first and hardest question to ask yourself about a ketosis diet is, Can I Endure this? And you should not feel any guilt if the answer to that question is no, because this is a very invasive and aggressive diet that will cause you physical pain even if just for a brief amount of time. Similar to vegetarianism, or is extreme cousin, veganism, a keto diet involves cutting out large swaths of the food pyramid to facilitate this diet. This does not mean going hungry, the foods that are removed will be replaced with other foods, only without any (or minimal) artificial or natural sugars. Sugar is just a chemical, which doesn't sound like a huge sacrifice, right? Most adults don't bother adding sugar to anything other than tea or coffee, but sugar is much more deeply rooted in our lives than you may realize.

Carbohydrates can be found in virtually every type of ready-to-serve foods: breads, wraps, pastas, fried snacks, hors d'oeuvre (these are examples of things I ate before this diet). All of these delicious and very satisfying foods have a fiber content and sugar content. You're still allowed to consume these, and I encourage you do so, but make sure to monitor the grams of total carbohydrates you consume that day. During this diet you will only be allowed to consume 20 grams (to 50 grams, depending on your body and personal needs) a day. remember this. Those 20 grams of carbs maybe the difference between you having a normal day and one of the worst days of your life.

Before I chose to begin a keto diet, I had been exercising casually (as before I was sedentary, more details on this later) and consuming about half as many carbohydrates as I had normally done in my life before. During the two years I was living this way, I was able to lose approximately 20lbs (from about 230 to 210). If you're starting your diet or lifestyle change from scratch, maybe try starting here first. Its significantly slower (10lbs in nearly a year), but it will not cause any pain or significant inconvenience.

What’s the big deal?/What to eat?

Sugar is a chemical, and more than that, its a drug that your body has been dependent on since you were a wee baby in your mama’s belly. Sugar makes your brain work and when you mess with your brain’s intake of the all-important-life-sauce it goes into panic mode. In the first 2-3 days (up to 6 if your me!) you will literally, physically go into a state of depression. Many had described it to me as ‘keto flu’ but as a survivor of 2009s Swine flu, I can most assuredly tell you that keto is much, MUCH worse.

First, my appetite became very finicky (and i'm already a very picky eater). I had no desire to eat the genuinely tasty keto meals that my boyfriend had lovingly prepared. I didn't want to draw, and I wasn't even in the mood to play easy video games. All I felt like doing was crying or sleeping (which I did, for 9 hours in the middle of my 3rd day). This is why, whenever I speak to someone who’s even moderately interested in this diet to BOOK TIME OFF YOUR JOB!!! It’s inconceivable to me to be forced to face other human beings in this state of physical distress. You need to pamper yourself while in this state in order to endure it and ensure your success.

There was one more bump in the road around the one-week point but i'm fairly certain it came down to a combination of dehydration and moodiness (period) so perhaps that was an outlier. Either way, water is the key when you start feeling shitty. Get yourself a nice BPA-free water bottle that you're comfortable carrying around and keeping full of fresh water. Once your body is in ketosis (you can check using those little paper sticks you pee on from the drug store, wash your hands!) you will get tired and moody the very instant you become hungry at mealtimes. Sometimes you don't even feel the familiar hunger pangs from your previous diet and mistake it for just a general bad mood. Always have a sip of water, babes; that’s your brain telling you to hydrate.

Alternatively, after eating a keto meal you still may feel hungry or unsatisfied, even sad (longing for your favourite dessert). This is where those 20g of carbs come in pretty clutch. Finding your perfect portion of reward may be impossibly difficult, I can only tell you what made me feel better when I got the cravings. Blueberries are quite sweet, they have a lot of natural sugar, but a handful of them sufficed as an incredibly sweet treat (some keto dieters have proclaimed that ‘regular things taste much sweeter than before’, I didn't experience this). Minigo/iogo yoghurt cups are fatty and sweet and work as a decent replacement to ice cream (count the carbs!). On extra tough mornings (in addition to bacon and eggs! Totally keto!) we would split a cavendish oven-fried hashbrown (about 15g; 7.5g split between my partner and I).

There are a surprising amount of natural foods that are not keto, but in careful proportions, can be incorporated into a daily keto diet. Most every fruit (that I checked) is very sugary but can make for a nice dessert. Certain vegetables like carrots or potato have too many carbs to be anything more than a boost when you feel shitty. Red onions have a very small amount of carbs (sugar and fibre work together to your benefit!) and server to replace pasta as a side to a nice steak dinner.

On that note, you need fibre to make your BMs move. Cutting carbs from your life means your number 2’s go bunny mode…. Take a sugar-free metamucil on any day where you have more meat during a meal than other types of food, or the toilet will be a nightmare.

Meals:

Cutting away pastas, breads, and other sides seems like an insane task but with some discipline and creativity, it's quite manageable. Breakfast didn't change much: eggs any way (sunny side for me, cheddar omelette for my BF) with bacon or sausage. Lunch was some combination of chicken breast and various salads (so many salad dressings are low or no carb! Read the back!). On steak night, we replace noodles with sauteed red onions fried and seasoning. Snacktime was usually pre-sliced cheddar cheese (go NUTS that shit is A-OK!), unsalted peanuts (other nuts have marginally more carbs, almonds and sunflower are moderate, check what works for you), or small amounts of beef jerky. Accompany those snacks with a big drink of water, or if you've had enough of that, certain drinks are acceptable like tea or coffee (with sweetner and high fat milk, skim milk is too sugary), diet sodas, sugarfree drink mix (migo, nestea). Just remember water, water, water.

Is it worth it? Pros/Cons

Cons:

-HURTS LIEK DRUG WITHDRAWL (you're literally coming down from the lifelong chemical addiction of sugar. It hurts like Trainspotting)

-MEAT (you will be consuming a lot of animal product)

-POOP (even when you have your metamucil, the toilet can take some time)

-SWEETS (the cravings for your favourite yumyums will almost never stop, it takes monk-like discipline)

-BORING (you can't go out and enjoy meals/drinks with friends and family without them or the restaurant making odd or even crappy exceptions. Keto menu options are slowly becoming popular though)

-TIRED (the first week or two will be very tedious and you won’t have any energy, even your favourite hobbies may seen unfulfilling for a time)

-ALCOHOL (basically none, unless you like vodka and sugarfree mix, you'll get drunk a lot quicker and end up feeling shittier without carbs in your body to process the liquor)

Pros:

-INSTANT RESULTS (in my first week i lost nearly 10lbs, and then two for every subsequent week. note that, just like any diet, there will be bounce-back)

-APPETITE LOSS (once you get into the swing of this, after the 2 week mark, you’ll find you no longer are pained when your hungry and the bigger cravings subside)

-BUDGET (this is a bit of an odd one and may not necessarily reflect your cost benefits. Before engaging in this diet, my BF and I discovered we were spending too much money on restaurants and leaving the food in the fridge to waste. This was primarily because we were too lazy to cook. Getting off our asses and cooking 6 days of the week made an immediate impact on this for us. If you already do that, this won't apply. Concurrently, we spent more money at the grocery store ensuring we always had fresh meat and vegetables; this did net us positive)

-REWARDING MEALS (having to stop and think about what it takes to make a tasty and satisfying meal has forced us to look at things in a different way. Making yourself and your partner a healthy, supremely tasty meal gets those endorphins peaking)

-EXERCISE (Unnecessary! Your choice! Just note that building muscle increases your weight as muscle weights more than fat)

My fave meals:

-Coffee (reluctantly replacing 1tsp of sugar with a fairy-dust sprinkling of sweetner cos i HATE sweetner, its 20-30x stronger than sugar so you only need 1/20th as much)

-Eggs and bacon!!! (sausage sometimes too)

-Garlic grilled chicken with spinach salad (onions, sliced almonds, feta, dressing)

-Steak and red onions (meat rare and onions grilled with seasoning)

-Spicy ground pork tacos (replace the taco/burrito with large boston lettuce leaves, shredded cheddar, green onions, diced tomato, dab of ranch sauce)

-Baked chicken breast stuffed with ricotta and spinach, topped with parmesan

-Slow-cooked pulled pork slathered with sharp cheddar (just eat with a fork!)

-Baked shrimp with garlic butter and parmesan

-Jalapenos stuffed with ricotta, cream cheese and cheddar, then wrapped in a strip of bacon (great late-night snack)

-Even changing the texture of a cheese can change the taste of the meal. Shredded cheddar adds a salty bite to a lettuce wrap, grated parmesan can trick a baked chicken breast into thinking its breaded. creamy cheeses can replace other baking sauces entirely.

-Diet pops (make sure its 0 sugar!), and tea/coffees with sweetner are fine, they do contain a lot of sodium though, make sure to drink 1-for-1 with water (meaning: every diet coke or tea you have, accompany it with the same amount of plain water so your body can process it and pee it out).

Variations/Control:

Vitamins: It should be noted that I take a daily multivitamin (C3+D) as I generally don't get enough sun or fruits. I highly recommend you take these just in general. They help keep skin soft and blemish free (I initially began taking these because of acne on upper arms and it cleared within days).

Activity: As briefly mentioned earlier, I began shifting from sedentary (not moving much, sitting for hours a day) to a more active lifestyle about 2-3 years ago. This entailed a personal regimen of making an attempt at physical activity approximately half the days of the month (period week was generally excluded). Every other day I would attempt one of the following: walking at least 2km, 15-20m of floor exercises (‘lady push-ups’, sit-ups), 15-20m of time on the indoor bike, or an hour of house related chores (lifting, laundry, cleaning, anything that involves getting sweaty). In addition to these, yoga is peppered into my lifestyle as frequently as possibly, particularly in the morning before breakfast. On days where i'm unable to exercise, I at least attempt the basic yoga poses to stave off my (no-longer chronic) back pain.

#personal #diet #keto diet #ketosis #okay to reblog #no one proofread this for me...#ill try to keep edits to a minimum

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karingudino · 3 years

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Meat industry shrinks as more Australians embrace flexitarianism

Australia’s meat consumption is at its lowest level in 25 years as Australians more and more transfer in direction of environmentally acutely aware dietary habits.

In line with new information from market analysis firm IBISWorld, the nation’s meat consumption per capita presently sits at 99.5 kilograms yearly, ranges not seen since 1996-97.

Quick meals firms are on board the vegan prepare: Hungry Jack’s launched its plant-based Insurgent Whopper in 2019. Picture: Marta Pascual Juanola

In consequence, the meat processing business is predicted to contract by 10 per cent in 2020-21, falling to $22.2 billion.

“The home worth of meat has risen at an annualised 3.1 per cent over the previous 5 years, driving extra shoppers to hunt vegetarian alternate options,” stated IBISWorld senior business analyst Suzy Oo.

“This has expanded goal markets for plant-based merchandise past vegans and vegetarians.”

Deliciou is one among many Australian firms to enter the meat-alternatives market. Picture: Provided

In line with the report, public concern over environmental points has risen by a mean of 1.2 per cent yearly over the previous 5 years, reflecting higher consciousness of unsustainable farming and forestry practices.

Cattle, sheep and different livestock account for almost 70 per cent of greenhouse fuel emissions by the agribusiness business.

Get the most recent information and updates emailed straight to your inbox.

Shannon Martinez is the owner-chef of Melbourne’s Smith and Daughters plant-based restaurant. She stated there was a major uptick in foot site visitors for her vegan meals.

“I believe there’s been an enormous shift in direction of plant-based diets as a result of the connotations related to veganism have moved away from crazed hippy to only being accountable and moral.”

Though Martinez serves vegan meals, the chef is not fully dedicated to plant-based consuming herself. She credit a few of Smith and Daughter’s success to the actual fact shoppers are likely to belief her extra due to this.

“It is a bit bizarre, however folks commonly say issues like ‘you simply get what we need to eat’. I am flattered, however actually, the explanation meat-[based] meals style good is not truly due to the meat, it is usually the flavouring.”

Shannon Martinez stated there was a major uptick in foot site visitors for her vegan meals. Picture: Kristoffer Paulsen

Chef Brent Savage additionally reported elevated patronage at his Sydney plant-based restaurant Yellow over the previous two years.

“I actually do not prepare dinner meat however will eat it out,” he stated. “Lots of people that come to our restaurant are doing the other and use their weekends to embrace vegetarianism or veganism. It would not must be excessive, you’ll be able to see by the numbers that these little modifications assist.”

Producers and meal resolution firms have been leaping on the plant-based pattern. Meal supply firm Marley Spoon not too long ago partnered with Fable, for instance, a mushroom-based meat different.

New meal supply child on the block Soulara is now giving established dinner equipment choices equivalent to HelloFresh and Marley Spoon a run for his or her cash with their fully plant-based operation.

In 2019, the Australian Coronary heart Basis additionally up to date its dietary pointers to advocate folks scale back their crimson meat consumption, proposing a restrict of lower than three servings – or 350 grams – of lean and unprocessed beef, pork, lamb or veal per week.

“It is fairly laborious to open the paper nowadays and never see the consequences of consuming meat from dwell exports, manufacturing facility farming, and the setting and I believe that is why folks have transitioned from considering vegans are loopy hippies to doing the proper factor,” stated Martinez.

She nonetheless acknowledges it may be laborious to transform “meat and three veg” folks to incorporating different substances. “My strategy is to only sneak it into their weight loss plan within the hope they get pleasure from it with out noticing there’s no meat!”

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source https://fikiss.net/meat-industry-shrinks-as-more-australians-embrace-flexitarianism/ Meat industry shrinks as more Australians embrace flexitarianism published first on https://fikiss.net/ from Karin Gudino https://karingudino.blogspot.com/2021/05/meat-industry-shrinks-as-more.html

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chefruhi · 3 years

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Vegetarian Diet

The vegetarian diet involves abstaining from eating meat, fish, and poultry. People often adopt a vegetarian diet for religious or personal reasons, as well as ethical issues, such as animal rights. Others decide to become vegetarian for environmental reasons, as livestock production increases greenhouse gas emissions, contributes to climate change, and requires large amounts of water, energy and natural resources.

The most common types of a vegetarian diet include:

Lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet: Eliminates meat, fish, and poultry but allows eggs and dairy products.

Lacto-vegetarian diet: Eliminates meat, fish, poultry, and eggs but allows dairy products.

Ovo-vegetarian diet: Eliminates meat, fish, poultry, and dairy products but allows eggs.

Pescatarian diet: Eliminates meat and poultry but allows fish and sometimes eggs and dairy products.

Vegan diet: Eliminates meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and dairy products, as well as other animal-derived products, such as honey.

Flexitarian diet: A mostly vegetarian diet that incorporates occasional meat, fish, or poultry.

Health Benefits

Vegetarian diets are associated with several health benefits.

Studies show that vegetarians tend to have better diet quality than meat-eaters and a higher intake of important nutrients like fiber, vitamin C, vitamin E, and magnesium.

May Enhance Weight Loss

Switching to a vegetarian diet can be an effective strategy if you’re looking to lose weight. One review of 12 studies noted that vegetarians, on average, experienced 4.5 more pounds (2 kg) of weight loss over 18 weeks than non-vegetarians. Similarly, a six-month study in 74 people with type 2 diabetes demonstrated that vegetarian diets were nearly twice as effective at reducing body weight as low-calorie diets. Plus, a study in nearly 61,000 adults showed that vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index (BMI) than omnivores — BMI being a measurement of body fat based on height and weight.

May Reduce Cancer Risk

Some research suggests that a vegetarian diet may be linked to a lower risk of cancer including those of the breast, colon, rectum, and stomach. However, current research is limited to observational studies, which cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship. Keep in mind that some studies have turned up inconsistent findings. Therefore, more research is needed to understand how vegetarianism may impact cancer risk.

May Stabilize Blood Sugar

Several studies indicate that vegetarian diets may help maintain healthy blood sugar levels. For instance, one review of six studies linked vegetarianism to improved blood sugar control in people with type 2 diabetes. Vegetarian diets may also prevent diabetes by stabilizing blood sugar levels in the long term. According to one study in 2,918 people, switching from a non-vegetarian to a vegetarian diet was associated with a 53% reduced risk of diabetes over an average of five years.

Promotes Heart Health

Vegetarian diets reduce several heart disease risk factors to help keep your heart healthy and strong. In a recent study, 118 people found that a low-calorie vegetarian diet was more effective at reducing “bad” LDL cholesterol than a Mediterranean diet. Other research indicates that vegetarianism may be associated with lower blood pressure levels. High blood pressure is another key risk factor for heart disease .

Foods to Eat

A vegetarian diet should include a diverse mix of fruits, vegetables, grains, healthy fats, and proteins. To replace the protein provided by meat in your diet, include a variety of protein-rich plant foods like nuts, seeds, legumes, tempeh, tofu, and seitan. If you follow a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet, eggs and dairy can also boost your protein intake. Eating nutrient-dense whole foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains will supply a range of important vitamins and minerals to fill in any nutritional gaps in your diet.

A few healthy foods to eat on a vegetarian diet are:

Fruits: Apples, bananas, berries, oranges, melons, pears, peaches

Vegetables: Leafy greens, asparagus, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots

Grains: Quinoa, barley, buckwheat, rice, oats

Legumes: Lentils, beans, peas, chickpeas.

Nuts: Almonds, walnuts, cashews, chestnuts

Seeds: Flaxseeds, chia, and hemp seeds

Healthy fats: Coconut oil, olive oil, avocados

Proteins: Tempeh, tofu, seitan, natto, nutritional yeast, spirulina, eggs, dairy products

Foods to Avoid

Lacto-Ovo vegetarianism, the most common type of vegetarian diet, involves eliminating all meat, poultry, and fish. Other types of vegetarians may also avoid foods like eggs and dairy. A vegan diet is the most restrictive form of vegetarianism because it bars meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, and any other animal products.

Depending on your needs and preferences, you may have to avoid the following foods on a vegetarian diet:

Meat: Beef, veal, and pork

Poultry: Chicken and turkey

Fish and shellfish: This restriction does not apply to pescatarians.

Meat-based ingredients: Gelatin, lard, carmine, isinglass, oleic acid, and suet

Eggs: This restriction applies to vegans and lacto-vegetarians.

Dairy products: This restriction on milk, yogurt, and cheese applies to vegans and ovo-vegetarians.

Other animal products: Vegans may choose to avoid honey, beeswax, and pollen.

Meal plan for a week:

Monday

Breakfast: Oatmeal with fruit and flaxseeds

Lunch: Grilled veggie and hummus wrap with sweet potato fries

Dinner: Tofu sandwich with cabbage slaw

Tuesday

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with tomatoes, garlic and mushrooms

Lunch: Zucchini with other veggies and tomato soup

Dinner: Chickpea curry with basmati rice

Wednesday

Breakfast: Greek yogurt with chia seeds and berries

Lunch: Salad of tomatoes, cucumber, and feta with spiced lentil soup

Dinner: Eggplant parmesan with a side salad

Thursday

Breakfast: Tofu scramble with sautéed peppers, onions, and spinach

Lunch: Burrito bowl with brown rice, beans, avocado, salsa, and veggies

Dinner: Vegetable paella with a side salad

Friday

Breakfast: Whole-wheat toast with avocado

Lunch: Marinated tofu pita pocket with Greek salad

Dinner: Quinoa-black-bean with zucchini noodles

Saturday

Breakfast: Smoothie of kale, berries, bananas, peanut butter, and almond milk

Lunch: Red lentil veggie burger with avocado salad

Dinner: Lentil Soup

Sunday

Breakfast: Kale and sweet potato

Lunch: Bell peppers stuffed with zucchini fritters

Dinner: Black bean tacos with cauliflower rice

Summarizing:

A balanced vegetarian diet with nutritious foods like produce, grains, healthy fats and plant-based protein may offer several benefits, but it may increase your risk of nutritional deficiencies if poorly planned.

I tried to put all the basic nutrition needed for a body like vitamins, carbohydrates, protein, fats, iron, and others in my diet plan. My regular diet is very irregular and unhealthy mostly junk and eating at one time sometimes make you happen to eat more which causes weight gain. My usual meals were from outside only like McDonalds, Tim Hortons, Osmos, Wendy’s, Pizza Pizza. So basically all the junk and anytime, meals were never scheduled. Well after following this diet for a week, it was refreshing! I was more energetic at work, also more attentive. I felt good about my body like what I am eating. It was a sufficient meal for a day and there was no overheating. I was not even hungry in between and in each meal I was full. I would for sure continue it and maybe can change after a month or so. It was a great experience.

References:

· Health hq: Becoming a vegetarian. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2021, from http://healthhq.world/issue-sections/fitness-wellbeing/healthy-diet-vegetarianism/becoming-a-vegetarian/

· Vegetarian diet: How to get the best nutrition. (2020, August 20). Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/vegetarian-diet/art-20046446?reDate=16042021

· Vegetarian diet: Benefits, risks, and tips. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2021, from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/8749

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starshineskyandthepowerofrock · 3 years

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Nightmares and Stallions

Part 9 of Starshine, Sky, and the Power of Rock.

CW for a little over a paragraph describing a gory nightmare. You’ll know when you hit the word “autopsy.”

I shouldn't be doing this to myself. This is torture. But the music is too good.

I'm encased in squishy padding. My body is cocooned in the soft blanket. Wilbur's terrycloth in my arms anchors me to home. The music does too.

The CD player sits on the pillow, right next to my head. It pumps electric power through the wires and into my earbuds and into my skull. Track 11 is still the best. There's no light in this casket, so I can just sink into it. Drown in it. Become it.

This album was a birthday gift. For my 10th, if I'm remembering right. So was the CD player. And the earbuds, now that I think about it. His gifts were always my favorites because he was the only one in my life that shared my taste.

There's something about the violence, the chaos of this music that awakens something in me. An electric shock to the system that gets me going. Tells me that I can do anything. That I'm not powerless. That I am power.

He got that. It was the same for him. I'd show up at his dad's music store, eye black and lip bloody because the kids at school were relentless and he'd remind me that the world was bigger than them. I was bigger than them. He didn't tell me with words. He told me with music. And I spoke to him the same way.

But this morning ritual isn't the same anymore because I still hear him in every note. The music that would bring me back to the real world after the constant nightmares is now pushing me deeper into them. Because he's part of the nightmares now.

So I should probably stop listening, right? But the music is too good.

💙💙💙

Star and I are supposed to be at the stables by 10:30, I guess so we can have time for breakfast. But my breakfast is in the stables anyway.

Almost all of the students' horses are already gone. I guess being stuck in one building, even one as big as this place, gets claustrophobic after a school week. I also guess the Land of Light is filled with morning people. I've seen enough of Fairy Dust Falls so I'll leave them to enjoy it. I don't think their horses like me very much anyway. Guillotine, on the other hand, is real happy to see me.

"Morning, buddy," I say as I put down my bag and go to stroke his neck. As usual I'm careful about going around the wad of gauze taped to the side. I look up into his blank eyes and can feel him looking down into mine. I sense the warmth coming from him even if on the outside all I see is something straight out of a nightmare. Or an album cover. Yeah I like that more. Speaking of nightmares... "You hungry?" I ask. Instinct tells me the answer is "Yes." I gently pull his giant head down until it's at the level of mine, move the hood of my cloak up and out of the way, push my forehead between his eyes, and dig through my brain to remember last night's horror show.

I've had autopsy dreams before but this one's getting to me more than the other ones. I mean obviously being cut open and feeling everything and seeing my own organs being pulled from my stomach and somehow puking all over my own guts gets to me every time it happens. But this time it was Boris doing the job. And he wasn't laughing like the normal guy. Everyone watching was laughing but he just stared into my soul. Every time I begged him to stop he only got rougher as he dug through me. The part I remember best is when his fingers sank into my intestines and he let them linger there so I could really take in the raw pain. At that point all I could get out was a desperate "Please..." He stopped for a second. Got so close I could taste his breath.

"Traitor," he spat. Then he yanked out my intestines harder than they'd ever been yanked out before, spraying bile everywhere. That'd been enough to wake me up.

My fingers tremble on Guillotine's face now. I want to throw up just remembering the awful dream. I press myself harder onto his head, let the fear take over. Bit by bit the knot in my gut loosens. My lungs still. The fear is drained away and into Guillotine, who relishes in what's no doubt a delicious breakfast. I open my eyes. Smile at him. He'd smile back if he could.

"Okay," I whisper, feeling around for the gauze and carefully peeling it back. "My turn."

The bite mark is starting to scab over. I always feel a little bad that I can't ever let it heal but I'm sure Guillotine prefers that over me picking a different spot every time and leaving scars all over his neck.

My stomach rumbles. I'd better get going.

My mouth opens wide. The tips of my fangs are placed just around the wound and I rest my tongue on the scab. It tastes like iron. I put supportive hands on Guillotine's neck. Then I bite down. Pull the scab back with my teeth. Blood pools in my mouth and I drink it up. I keep my lips pressed on his skin to keep any drops from escaping. I know how badly blood stains.

The blood burns my throat on the way down, it's so hot. It warms me from the inside out. Just a few more gulps and I'll be-

"Um, Sky?" a panicked voice asks.

An involuntary gasp makes me swallow through the wrong tube. I rip my mouth from Guillotine's neck, way harder than normal, and cough blood all over the straw-covered floor.

Star and Queen Diamond Shine stare at me. Star wavers between concern and fear. Diamond Shine tries to hide disapproval behind professionalism.

I try to stammer out an explanation but Diamond Shine cuts me off with, "I understand this as one of the... accommodations made for you."

All I can do is nod and pull out a clean rag from my bag to wipe my face.

"Um..." Star says, uneasy. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I rasp.

Diamond Shine stares at the blood splatters on the floor. "Well, you two have plenty of work ahead of you. Lunch break is at 12:30. You may not stop until sundown." She looks to me. "There are security cameras in here, by the way. Don't try anything." Then she leaves me alone with Star.

"So..." Star is having a hard time looking me in the eye. "I take it this is where you go every morning?"

I nod. "Yup."

"I see... Is your horse okay?"

"Oh! Guillotine!" I fold the rag over, get the peroxide bottle from my bag, and disinfect the wound. He recoils from the sting. "Shh... shh... it's okay, bud, I'm done. You did great, okay? It's okay..." I whisper.

Star keeps her distance while watching me redress the wound. "Do you, um, normally drink horse blood?"

"Oh Guillotine's is the only blood I have. He's my host."

"Your... host?"

"Yeah. Any decent vampire has one."

"I see." Star takes a couple cautious steps forward. She looks up at Guillotine. He snuffles her hair.

"You just ate, bud, give it a rest," I say to Guillotine, patting him playfully. I look to Star. "He eats fear."

Star steps back again. "Does he, now?" she says, failing to hide the wobble in her voice.

"Yeah Night Mares normally sit on people's chests while they're sleeping and give them bad dreams to get their fill."

"Hence the name."

I nod. "Yeah. But my dreams usually suck anyway so we kinda have a thing going. I feed him and he feeds me."

Star smiles a bit. "That's actually kinda sweet. You're like... parasites in mutualism." She gasps. "Hey, I should write that down!"

I smile back like I understand whatever she just said. "Yeah, exactly."

💙💙💙

Royalty never really meant much to me. Like, big deal, you ended up in the right family. So Star being a princess hasn't really crossed my mind all week because it's kinda irrelevant to me.

Now I can't forget it.

Star has clearly never lifted a finger her whole life. She's been holding the pitchfork wrong, she can't maneuver the wheelbarrow, she doesn't even sweep right. I mean I'll give her this, she is trying. But I'm still pulling, like, 80% of the weight because I'd rather have 20% of the job done wrong than half.

Come lunch I'd say we've made good progress. I sit at the edge of the landing platform, sandwich in hand, while Star lays next to me panting like she's had the craziest workout of her life.

"You good?" I ask, mouth full of lettuce and tomato.

"I'll be fi... ugh..." she rolls to her side. "Where's lunch?"

"You didn't bring any?"

"Your steak tartare, Your Highness," a guy in a pastel jacket says, coming towards us and holding a plate with a metal dome over it.

Star yelps and sits up. "Thank you!" she says, clapping. The guy sets the plate down, puts a cloth napkin over her lap, and bows out.

I knock on the dome. "Uh..."

"What?" Star says. "It's called a cloche." She takes it off to reveal a tiny mound of beef with an egg yolk on top and takes a dainty little bite with a silver fork.

It puts me off my sandwich for a bit. I can't help staring. "Is that... raw meat?"

"Mm hm," Star says between bites. "The normal dish is supposed to have, like, capers and stuff, but that makes me feel sick. Ugh, carnivore problems. I'll just take the protein, thanks!"

"Carnivore, huh?" I ask, vaguely remembering that most people in the Land of Light are vegetarian. "People ever give you crap about that one?"

Star giggles but there's a sadness to it. "Not to me, obviously, but my friend Citrus gets it from some jerk kids that don't get that we don't have a choice, you know? Like, one time Summer literally told him, 'You like the taste of dead animals, freak?' Like, first of all, lame and unsubtle, but also rude!"

I nod, deciding she doesn't need to know that I try to be vegetarian outside of the blood thing. "She seems like a b-"

"Malignant harpy? I know."

That's not what I was going for but that works too. I keep eating my sandwich.

"I bet you get some of that too, huh? Being a... you know... bloodsucker."

I almost choke on that last word but manage to swallow. "Don't call me that," I say, dead serious.

Star's cat ears flatten against her head. "Oh, I'm sorry! I just figured, you know, it's what you do, right?"

"I mean, yeah, but that word is just..." I shake my head. "Don't call me that."

"Oh, okay, um..." Star's trying to look for a way to change the subject. "So, if you only drink blood from your horse, then you've never bitten a person, right?"

"That's right," I say firmly.

...Alright so I've bitten one person but she was crazy and I'm trying to forget about her. Telling Star about that mess would just muddy the issue, you know?

...She wanted it more than I did, okay? Okay. Moving on.

"And you're totally done with the Band of Darkness, right?" Star asks.

"Yes." I'm not lying about that one.

Star scoffs. "So, there we go! People are freaking out over you for no reason." She pulls me into a hug that I wasn't prepared for. "And... I admit I was freaking out, too. I'm really sorry about that. Really." She pulls back and looks me straight in the eyes with her slit pupils. "Really."

I can't say why, but I believe her.

💙💙💙

We should be a couple hours away from sundown now and it looks like we'll be about halfway done by the end of the day. Perfect. Even more perfect, I think Star is starting to get into the swing of things. I'm willing to shift the workload split from 80-20 to 70-30. We'll see how this keeps going.

Kids have started coming back from their days out. Most deal with their horses themselves because they feel weird about having the princess do the job for them and don't trust a vampire not to rip out their horses' necks or something. We get a few compliments on our work so far. They're all said to Star but being invisible is better than being a target so I'm not complaining.

At one point a group of boys flies in and greets Star excitedly. One of them, a catboy with orange hair, picks her up in a big hug that brings her off the floor.

"STAR!" he shouts and puts her down. "It sucks you couldn't go out with us today! How's the punishment going?"

"Oh, I think we're getting along nicely, actually!" Star says, then gasps. "How about a spa trip next weekend?" They squeal together. So they're friends, huh? Maybe I should introduce myself.

"Hey," I say, walking up. "I'm Sky. I'm in Star's band."

The smile wipes clean off his face. His ears flatten against his head. He just stares at me with wide eyes. This was a mistake.

Star wraps an arm around his. "Um... Sky, this is Citrus. He's been my friend since we were kids in the orphanage."

I nod. "Nice to meet you," I say, trying to look as friendly as a monster can look.

Citrus tries to open his mouth but no sound comes out. He turns to Star, who's at a loss too.

That's when the — What did Star call her? — malignant harpy comes. She and her four sisters, one of who's supposed to be rooming with me but has been sleeping who knows where all week. I'm guessing with her sisters.

"Oh look," Summer says way too loud, dismounting from her shimmering white horse. "The princess... and her charity cases."

"Screw off, Glade," Citrus says.

Star holds him back, cool as ever. "It's okay, Citrus. She's just salty because I choose my friends based on their personalities and not... Sorry, Summer, what do you have going for you?"

I stifle a laugh.

Summer's eyes snap on me, then she gives Star a smug smile. "Careful, Your Highness." She gives an exaggerated curtsy. "You've already gotten in trouble. Looks like the bloodsucker is rubbing off on you."

I'm not laughing anymore.

Star gasps. "Don't call her that!"

Summer raises her eyebrows, finally getting a reaction out of Star. She turns to me real slow. Looks me dead in the eyes. "Bloodsucker." She relishes every syllable.

Keep your cool, keep your cool. Okay she doesn't seem like the type to get physical. I don't think I'm in danger. I think. But my fight-or-flight is going off anyway. Gah, why can't I say anything? What's wrong with me?

"I said don't call her that!" Star repeats.

Summer ignores her. "Going after royal blood, aren't you? I bet you wanna suck her dry, freak. Is that your plan?"

Don't move a muscle. You're stone cold. She just wants a reaction out of you. Don't give her one. My face is getting real hot.

Star steps between us. "Leave her alone or I'll tell my moms."

Summer scowls. "Whatever. Come on." She and her sisters leave.

"Oh, and Gossamer?" Star calls as they head inside.

Gossamer turns around. "Yes, Your Highness?"

"Mama says you have to start sleeping in your dorm room. Not your sisters'."

Gossamer opens her mouth to reply but Summer cuts her off with, "She's not sleeping in the same room as a coffin."

"I'm not sleeping in the same room as her," I call back to them but they've already left. I'm not sure they even heard me. I hope they didn't.

Citrus left in the middle of that. It's just us again.

"She's pathetic," Star says. "They're all pathetic. Forget them. Come on." She picks up the pitchfork the right way this time.

We get back to work. "You said you knew Citrus from an orphanage?"

"Mm hm," Star says. "I spent the first six years of my life there. He came in when he was three and I was two."

I stop for a second, just look at her. "You're an orphan?"

"Well, yeah, technically. Did you think my two moms were my birth parents?" She giggles.

"No, obviously. No, I guess I just... I don't know what I thought. The story I always heard was that they found you. They never said where."

"Probably because the Band of Darkness was the reason I was there in the first place."

Alright now I have to drop what I'm doing completely. "Your parents were killed by the Band of Darkness?"

Star nods like this isn't news. "Uh huh. It's happened to lots of kids. Citrus's too. By the way, I'm sorry about how weird he was around you. It's nothing personal, he just has a hard time trusting vampires since it was it was a vampire that his parents were... you know..." She makes a slashing motion across her neck.

There's a difference between knowing something happens and seeing the consequences right in front of you. I knew the Band of Darkness was making orphans left and right but I'd just talked to two without even realizing. And this one barely seems fazed by it! How normal is this to her?

Our shadows are getting longer and longer. The sky'll start changing color any moment now. In fact... I'm seeing a bit of orange!

"Looks like we can turn in," I say, stretching my shoulders.

"Ugh, I'm never breaking the rules again, that was exhausting!" Star says.

I chuckle to myself. If she thought that was bad she should see tomorrow. I'm splitting the work 50-50.

#vampire oc #catgirl oc #catgirl #princess oc #vampire #princess #magical school #fantasy story #fantasy wip #writers on tumblr #skylar acdalur #princess starshine

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promothecode99 · 3 years

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5 Famous Restaurants You Should Visit In London

The tempting aroma, the sizzling noise, and the ambrosial dishes in front of you! Just a perfect scene for every food lover out there! If the thought of good food excites you every time, you can proudly label yourself as a foodie like me! I am always open to experiencing new places to eat. That is why I was very curious and excited to try out the different restaurants when I visited London last year.

Based on my experience, I present the top 5 restaurants that you should definitely visit in London. They are a selection of different cuisines around the world at a flexible range of prices.

Disclaimer: Thoughts of delicious, piping hot food might emerge in your mind after reading this. You might even feel hungry instantly!

Chiquito

This restaurant should definitely be on top of your list if you are a fan of Mexican cuisine. They serve a wide range of Tex-Mex dishes, a perfect fusion of Mexican and South American flavors.I used the Chiquito Code there, which made my experience even better! Everyone likes such a budget-friendly meal, after all. The thing I loved the most about them is that they have a separate gluten-free and vegan menu too. Even though I am not a vegan and do not have a gluten allergy, I understand that the people in these categories have very few dining-out options.

Hoppers

‘Hoppers’ is the ultimate stop for Sri Lankan and South Indian cuisine in London. Named after the delectable dish of egg-topped pancakes ,this restaurant is really worth every penny.

Their Dosas, Kothus, and Roasts spice up your taste buds on a whole new level. Mouth-watering food, complemented by a tropical drinks list, Hoppers has quickly become the talk of the SoHo town!

You can enjoy the food at Hoppers at a price range of £30 to £49. I would totally recommend you to give this unique cuisine a try!

Pizza Pilgrims

Pizza may sound typical to you but believe me; this pizza place is way too different from the others. It is safe to say that after months of tasting and observing everything about pizzas in the country of its origin, Pizza Pilgrim has brought Italy's real flavors to London.

Pizza Pilgrim makes the best Neapolitan pizza in the city. They are the perfect level of bready and chewy, filled with delectable flavors.

Their most demanded flavor is Nduja, a spicy sausage from Calabria. It’s a must-try item on their menus. Do you know the best part? They even offer frying Pan Pizza Kits that you can enjoy at home!

In addition to that, they have also introduced Pizza Box Art. This initiative aims to appreciate the blooming artists with a free pizza.

Hide

Established in 2018, this lavish restaurant made its way into people’s hearts in a very short span of time. It has also received a Michelin star for its exceptional cuisine.

Also, the view of this 3-story restaurant is literally mesmerizing as it overlooks Green Park.

A common misconception about skyscraper-topping restaurants is that they are only known for their view, not their food. But the excellent food at Hide entirely negates this misconception.

If you are in the mood of splurging on a highly-fancy meal within a luxurious setting, this is your place to go!

Bright

With its cool, casual, and confident atmosphere, Bright is one of London's highest-rated restaurants and wine bars.

Located in Hackney, they serve contemporary global dishes like Katsu Sandu, Pizza Fritta, Beef tongue in blackcurrant, Shellfish, etc.

The place has an aura of comfort and sophistication. They offer an informal set menu at £50 per head consisting of sharing snacks and individual plates.

Even though it is on the pricey side, this restaurant’s food, ambiance, and service, everything is worth it. They even cater to a menu for vegetarians. Try them out, and you won’t be disappointed at all!

#discount #coupon code #promo code #offers #london #restaurant

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ifelltomyknees · 6 years

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How to become vegetarian as a meat lover: A comprehensive guide

So you love meat. It’s delicious, fatty, and satisfies your need for umami flavours like nothing else. The downside of this delicious common food item is the pain, suffering and poor environmental effects that come with it. Now I’m not going to educate you on factory farming, I’m assuming you’ve done your research, you hate the idea of eating something that was raised, tortured and slaughtered to be on your plate, and now you want to stop eating it. Congratulations! You are an empathetic person! I was in your exact position. I was addicted to meat, i had it at every meal for majority of my life. It was symbolic of home and nostalgia, and always found its way into family recipes that just ARENT the same without it. But I went vegetarian and I haven’t turned back since (and am progressing to vegan slowly for the record, but for people like us, it’s a process). Now you may see people on social media pretty much flip on a dime and just DECIDE to be vegan. And that’s awesome that they can do that, but as a pure and true food lover, that was impossible for me. So I took it into my own hands, and through tons of trial and error and plenty of failures, I have now successfully been vegetarian for over half a year with no hiccups! But first things first there are a couple of tips and things you need to understand before trying.

1. NOTHING is going to taste like meat except for meat. Bean burgers don’t taste like meat burgers. Cauliflower wings don’t taste like chicken. Get the idea of the taste of meat out of your head because you are never going to replicate it exactly.

2. Mushrooms tend to be a vegetarian staple, but if you don’t like them, don’t use them. They’re considered “meaty” to some but I literally dont know how people get that at all. In fact don’t cook with anything you don’t like or you won’t be satisfied.

3. It’s not easy. People will tease you (including your family), you’ll miss out on main courses at family meals, you may be the “annoying vegetarian” of your friends, you always have to look at the menu before you eat out and you always have to ask “what’s for dinner?” When going to a dinner party just in case you need to eat before.

4. You have to take B12 supplements and don’t believe anybody who says you don’t. You may seem fine for YEARS living off of your built up stores but eventually it’s gonna hit you and it will hit you HARD. Budget it in now (I can usually get 3 months worth for $15).

5. Some things have micro-amounts of meat or meat juice (Parmesan is a good example, although pure vegetarian kinds exist) but literally don’t worry about it at first (if at all). Take things step by step, eating the 1/5473930 of a ml of beef juice does not mean you suddenly aren’t vegetarian anymore! Try your best to avoid it, but don’t stress and don’t freak out at restaurant workers if you happen to get a tiny bit of meat in your food, you risk that by going out to eat.

6. The easiest way to transition is to do it over time. Start by only allowing yourself meat a few days a week. Next cut out the main meat you enjoy (for me that was beef) and slowly decrease your intake over months. This also allows you to try out new recipes and meals you may enjoy once you fully transition.

7. DONT freak out if you make a mistake. It happens to literally everyone. So you ordered a pizza and didn’t realize it would have meat on it. You bought something without checking the ingredients and now it’s opened and cooked in a bowl in front of you. The deed has been done, and wasting food and going hungry isn’t going to bring back a life, if anything it just makes more waste for the landfills.

8. Try recipes. you can use meat substitutes but i don’t find they’re that great. Try to enjoy the vegetarian food for what it is (like i said, it’s never going to taste like meat).

9. Don’t suddenly turn into an asshole about it. All this does is turn others away from it, when thats the opposite of what we want. Be generous, make great veggie meals for your friends and fam, don’t call them murderers or anything thats gross.

10. Finally, never underestimate the power of guilt. One of the best ways to turn yourself off of meat is to THINK about it. Don’t see a steak, see a cow. Don’t see bacon, see a pig. Don’t take the “chicken” out of chicken wings. Understand the impact you’re making on the environment and you will find will power, i PROMISE.

Good luck lovelies <3

#vegetarian #starter vegetarian #guide #tips and tricks

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bethestaryouareradio · 4 years

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Fall in a Pot!

Digging Deep with Goddess Gardener, Cynthia Brian

Fall in a Pot! By Cynthia Brian

“Truth comes out in wine.” Pliny the Elder

“The people who give you their food give you their heart." Cesar Chavez

The fires and smoke have ravaged farms and vineyards throughout Northern California, including my family vineyards in Napa County. The grapes are plump, juicy, and ripe. Harvesting would normally be in full swing this month, but, sadly, with so much smoke suffocating fields throughout the region, wineries require red grape samples to be tested for smoke taint.

Smoke taint is concentrated in the skins and during fermentation glycosides break down, releasing the volatile phenols and smoky flavors into the wine. The result tastes like licking an ashtray. The damage is not detectable by looking at or eating a grape. It is only noticeable in the wine. Since white wine isn’t barrel-aged nor use skins, white wine doesn’t experience this smoke taint.

The largest testing laboratory, ETS in St. Helena is swamped with results backlogged for weeks or, as some growers are finding out, over a month away. If a grower or winery is not a client, they won’t be able to process samples until November. By then the window for harvesting will be over. The grapes will be dried raisins, not suitable for pressing.

What this means for viticulture in 2020 is that farmers may lose their entire crop and face increased financial hardships as the grapes hang on the vines. There may not be a 2020 red wine vintage as wineries are not allowing deliveries of grapes under contract until the lab results have confirmed an absence of smoke taint. Truth is always evident in the wine.

With the stifling smoke of the past weeks, my normal September gardening tasks have been placed on pause. I am sheltering indoors and suggesting to clients and readers to do the same to maintain health as smoke inhalation peril is increased during Covid-19. But this doesn’t mean that I’m avoiding my garden. I’ve been asked to write another gardening book and am brainstorming in my library. And, I’m bringing the fruits of my labors inside to my kitchen while I chef it up.

“Oh, I can smell the sauce from here,” my charity collaborator and friend, Terry in Washington, emailed me when I wrote her that, to mask the smell of smoke, I was making my family’s traditional homemade spaghetti sauce with ingredients from my waning garden. My process reminded her of being in her Italian great-grandmother’s kitchen.

With the intense sunshine and heat of the summer, tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, and herbs are filled with flavor. Being Italian, neither my Nonie, Mom, nor relatives measured anything. A recipe was handed down throughout the generations by watching, doing, and adding “a little of this, a pinch of that”, lots of garlic, and several splashes of wine. We have always cooked by taste, adding spices as needed. Naturally, numerous “malfatti’s” or mistakes occurred, which oftentimes, were our greatest successes.

The best cooks that I’ve ever encountered have also been avid gardeners. Gardeners experience nature using their senses. Gardeners amber through a potager snipping, smelling, nibbling, feeling, and seeing with a profound sensitivity to the innate characteristics of each legume, bloom, or crop. Being an astute chef requires one to know how to mix and match fruits, flowers, vegetables, and herbs to enhance any dish, allowing the natural essences to imbue their zests and aromas. Food must look good, smell good, taste good, and be ultimately satisfying, making one feel good.

Autumn is harvest time. Besides eating our tasty produce now, it is also the perfect opportunity to can or freeze fresh crops to savor during the winter months.

What herbs can you dry or freeze: Basil Bay Oregano Sage Rosemary Dill Thyme Parsley

I prefer to freeze basil and parsley or make “sauce ice cubes” with those. The rest of the herbs, I dry, then store in labeled jars.

Cynthia’s Italian Family Spaghetti Sauce “Recipe”  In a pestle and mortar grind together oregano, sage, rosemary, and thyme. You can also use a blender if that is easier for you.  Chop red and yellow onions and several cloves of garlic.  Saute onions and garlic in olive oil until translucent.  Stir in chopped mushrooms.  Add 3 or 4 whole bay leaves and a handful of the mashed herbs.  Gently brown meat (ground beef, lamb, pork, chicken) in the mixture. If you want a vegetarian sauce, skip this part.  Cut 6-10 tomatoes into small pieces. Smash half of the tomatoes. Add cut pieces and the tomato paste to the meat mixture.  Pour in red wine.  Tear 4 or 5 basil leaves into pieces and stir into pot.  Continue adding more wine as necessary.  Simmer at lowest heat for several hours until all the flavors have melded together. Turn off the burner to let sit.  Sprinkle sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

Optional ingredients include peppers or eggplant. To make a Puttanesca, add olives and capers.

The final sauce will be thick, rich, and delicious. Don’t be afraid to make this in advance as flavors are more delectable the next day. Freeze or can any extra sauce. (I always make a big pot and freeze tubs for later consumption.)

Pour over spaghetti, ravioli, lasagna, or any pasta. Toss lightly to blend the sauce. Top with chopped parsley, torn basil leaves, and grated parmesan. Serve with crusty sourdough, a romaine lettuce salad, and a glass of sustainable, locally grown, aged, and bottled Captain Vineyards Petite Sirah. Finish off your meal with fall fruits: a bunch of grapes, tangy tangerine segments, crunchy Asian pears, and a few figs. Buon appetito.

What are you harvesting in your garden right now? Do you have a family “Fall in a Pot” recipe to share with others?

My Mom taught me that expressing love came from gardens and home-made food. My Dad taught me that farmers feed the hungry and wine is the nectar of the gods. Both gave their hearts. During these very challenging times as we pray that our California vineyards survive this ordeal, let’s toast to life with a glass of local vino and welcome fall with a pot of goodness from our gardens.

In my next column, I plan to be outside once again offering you guidance for autumn gardening. Until then, limit your outdoor exposure when it’s smokey and make sure to water your landscape deeply in the early mornings or late evenings. Be aware that your containers may need a daily dose of H2O. For the next two to three months until the rain begins to fall, our area is at imminent risk of fire danger. Be ready to evacuate. Read my article on what you need to know and do to be prepared. https://www.lamorindaweekly.com/archive/issue1414/Are-you-ready-to-evacuate.html

For a ZOOM presentation of, “Tips, Tricks, and Tonics in the Garden” join me on Thursday, September 17th, as I kick-off the 50th Anniversary of the Moraga Garden Club. For information on this ZOOM meeting, call Membership Chair Jane Magnani at 925-451-7031 for times to join in the conversation and presentation. I’ll be participating from my patio for a light, fun, informative, and hopefully smoke-free lecture.

See photos and more: https://www.lamorindaweekly.com/archive/issue1415/Digging-Deep-with-Goddess-Gardener-Cynthia-Brian-Fall-in-a-pot.html

Happy gardening. Happy growing.

Cynthia Brian, The Goddess Gardener, is available for hire to help you prepare for your spring garden. Raised in the vineyards of Napa County, Cynthia is a New York Times best-selling author, actor, radio personality, speaker, media and writing coach, as well as the Founder and Executive Director of Be the Star You Are!® 501 c, celebrating 21 years of service to the community. www.BetheSTARYouAre.org

Tune into Cynthia’s StarStyle® Radio Broadcast at www.StarStyleRadio.com.

Buy copies of her best-selling books and receive extra freebies, Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul, Growing with the Goddess Gardener, and Be the Star You Are! Millennials to Boomers at www.cynthiabrian.com/online-store.

Cynthia is available for virtual writing projects, garden consults, and inspirational lectures. [email protected] www.GoddessGardener.com

keywords:

#garden,,spaghetti,#pandemic,,#outdoors,#plants,#patio, septembergardening, #wine,#grapeharvest,# gardening, #cynthiabrian, #starstyle, #goddessGardener, #growingwiththegoddessgardener, #lamorindaweekly

#gardenspaghettipandemicoutdoorsplantspatio septembergardening winegrapeharvest gardening cynthiabrian starstyle goddessGardener growingwitht

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goddessgardener · 4 years

Text

Fall in a Pot!

Digging Deep with Goddess Gardener, Cynthia Brian

Fall in a Pot! By Cynthia Brian

“Truth comes out in wine.” Pliny the Elder

“The people who give you their food give you their heart." Cesar Chavez

Autumn is harvest time. Besides eating our tasty produce now, it is also the perfect opportunity to can or freeze fresh crops to savor during the winter months.

What herbs can you dry or freeze: Basil Bay Oregano Sage Rosemary Dill Thyme Parsley

I prefer to freeze basil and parsley or make “sauce ice cubes” with those. The rest of the herbs, I dry, then store in labeled jars.

Optional ingredients include peppers or eggplant. To make a Puttanesca, add olives and capers.

What are you harvesting in your garden right now? Do you have a family “Fall in a Pot” recipe to share with others?

See photos and more: https://www.lamorindaweekly.com/archive/issue1415/Digging-Deep-with-Goddess-Gardener-Cynthia-Brian-Fall-in-a-pot.html

Happy gardening. Happy growing.

Tune into Cynthia’s StarStyle® Radio Broadcast at www.StarStyleRadio.com.

Cynthia is available for virtual writing projects, garden consults, and inspirational lectures. [email protected] www.GoddessGardener.com

keywords:

#gardenspaghettipandemicoutdoorsplantspatio septembergardening winegrapeharvest gardening cynthiabrian starstyle goddessGardener growingwitht

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pizza-recipes-blog · 4 years

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Healthy Food Tastes Better!

How is it that we can't seem to think that something nutritious and healthy could in fact be tasty and enjoyable? Ever since I started to eat healthy food I have discovered new tastes, new flavours and new favourites. I do it almost daily. When I stopped looking at meat as the main ingredient of a meal I found a hundred new ways to prepare a good meal. I did not exclude meat completely, only the kinds that contain saturated fat. I continued to eat chicken, turkey and fish. (Chicken has its fat in the skin, so you can cut it off.) I eat vegetarian dishes at least three days a week, and the veg food has become my favourite food. Why? Because it tastes so good and the food is so easy to vary. I can't think of a life without it anymore. It would be a poor life. This food is a treasury and it has given me energy and strength that I did not have before.

The benefits are plenty. You will feel spry and lively again. You will lose weight. You will strengthen your immune system and stay well longer. You will lower your blood pressure. I could go on.

I am a notorious tea drinker, and I loved all kinds of black teas. The taste of green tea didn't appeal to me, I found it bitter. But I discovered several kinds of green tea that I have learned to enjoy and I now drink it every day. It's actually become "my cup of tea".

This is what I would suggest that you do if you want to improve your eating habits:

o Reduce the fat, especially the saturated fat, which is mostly found in meat and dairy products. Exchange the butter and margarine with extra-virgin olive oil. Avoid oils with high percentage of saturated and polyunsaturated fat. Use oils which contain mostly monounsaturated fat. Using the right kinds of fat (with moderation) is more important than reducing the fat in general. Instead of milk you may want to drink yogurt (containing live cultures) which is better for the stomach.

o Eat fish at least twice a week. If you don't like fish, make sure you get enough of the omega-3 fatty acids. One way to do this is by eating flax seed.

o Eat lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, beans, cereals and whole grain.

o Make the vegetables the main part of the meal. Rice, pasta, potatoes or couscous and beans are priority number two. Eat fish, chicken or a small slice of meat with it if you like, but it is not necessary. You will feel better if you exclude the meat and spare yourself the saturated fat.

o Eat soy products regularly (e.g. tofu, tempeh, and miso, or vegetarian beefs made of soy beans). There have been discussions about soy and its health risks, but the benefits seem to be greater than these supposed risks.

o Drink water with every meal and in between meals. You can't get enough of water.

o Use fresh ginger (the root) and garlic in your cooking. Goes well with nearly everything.

o Use fresh and dried herbs in all cooking.

o Reduce the coffee. Preferably switch to green tea. If you drink black tea, replace it partly or completely with green tea.

o Reduce the sugar. Don't use artificial sweeteners. They are not healthier. There is no evidence to suggest that using artificial sweeteners would help you lose weight. Pure sugar is OK (raw sugar is slightly better than white), just use it with moderation. Read package labels for information about sweeteners and other additives.

o Take some vitamin and mineral supplement every day.

o Sweets should be consumed with moderation. Only a few small sweets in the weekend. Dark chocolate is good (but still with moderation because of the sugar). Nuts can be an alternative to sweets (still with moderation).

o Alcohol should be used with moderation if at all. A glass of wine on Saturday evening does no harm if you are not oversensitive.

o Choose ecologically or organically grown products whenever possible.

o Try a day of fasting from time to time to rinse your system. Drink only fruit juices, water and green tea that day.

This plan will lead to a healthier and more fulfilling lifestyle. It will make you lose weight without having to be hungry. Take one step at a time. A small change can make a big difference. You will be rewarded if you are determined to really try.

When you follow the advice above you will not need much meat. Protein can be added through beans, soy and seeds for instance. If you exclude the dairy products or some of them, make sure you get enough calcium through for instance calcium fortified soy milk and orange juice, and through green vegetables.

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turkeyfeet8-blog · 5 years

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Reader Food Diary: Jennifer & Family’s Success Story

Welcome to our 2019 Reader Diary series where we are going to be sharing success stories + what people ate for a week! We are still accepting entries, and those who are featured will receive $50 in groceries from Thrive Market, 2 of my cookbooks, and a free Prepear meal planning program membership for a year. Get all the details (and share your entry with us!) on this page.

Hello! We are the Brees Bunch, and we live in Southern California. We have three children ages 17, 15, and 9. Both my husband and I work full time, but with opposite schedules. He’s a professional musician, and I’m an instructional coach. We have a lot of food concerns in our family, so we’ve been slowly introducing real food since January 2017, but really started committing to it in September of that year when our daughter was diagnosed with ADD.

My husband has Type 2 Diabetes and needs to eat lower-carb. He detests any type of seafood. My 17-year-old is a vegetarian but will eat fish occasionally. She has also been diagnosed with depression and anxiety. She has relied on heavily processed meat replacements instead of making vegetarian meals. My 9-year-old has severe ADD and functions better eating lots of healthy proteins and eliminating processed or sugary foods. My 15-year-old son has grown a foot this last year and is constantly hungry and usually turns to junk food to satisfy his hunger. And then there’s me—I’ve suffered from severe migraines for years and am always exhausted. Plus, I need to lose a significant amount of weight.

Photo Credit: Sarah Tolson

We knew what was best for our family but felt that our tight food budget and busy schedules prevented us from doing that. However, there was a point last year when we realized how much we were relying on processed food or take out for the majority of our meals. Not only were we spending way too much money, we just didn’t feel well. Our house felt tense all the time.

Success Story

One evening, as I went up to bed feeling sad and frustrated, I made the decision to commit to purchasing and preparing food that was beneficial, not harmful. I began looking for ways to do that and still stay within a strict budget. I came across the 100 Days of Real Food site and began to read and implement great ideas, like using only whole wheat products and adding fruit and veggies to every meal. I’m also a big believer in making food ahead of time and doubling recipes to have food to freeze. It was a bit slow at the beginning, and some of my family members resisted. But the benefits have been awesome.

So far…

I have lost 25 pounds from May – September 2017 (and an additional 15 lbs January 2018 to now!) and my migraines have diminished greatly!

My youngest daughter with ADD has shown increased attention after we transitioned to whole foods and cooking at home.

My husband has been able to maintain healthy blood sugar levels consistently for his diabetes.

My vegetarian daughter is able to find ways to make real food instead of always purchasing packaged, processed vegetarian items.

And, my son is able to satisfy his hunger by making snacks out of real food.

How We’ve Done It (so far)

We signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box through a local farm and shop at Costco once a month for our bulk purchases. We also purchase a large box once a month from Butcher Box, which provides meat that is humanely raised without antibiotics or hormones. Then, we plan weekly meals together as a family. I ask for suggestions for dinners and breakfasts.

Our children are responsible for packing their own lunches. It used to be extremely difficult to plan lunches, since all 3 kids like different things. I decided to give each child a weekly set amount of money to purchase lunch foods—this would include an entrée, fruit, veggies, and a snack.

We shop as a family once a week, and it has been awesome to have the kids plan, budget, and shop for their lunches. It gives them more freedom and they like trying new things. Plus, they are much more likely to eat the food they’ve chosen because it was their decision. In addition, they can use anything from the freezer or fridge if they get tired of the same lunch foods for the week. Sometimes, they will plan together and share foods.

All 3 children help my husband, and I make meals at home, and our oldest usually cooks for the family at least once a week. Our meals are usually meat or protein-based, but we have side dishes that are hearty so that our vegetarian feels satisfied. We try to plan at least one vegetarian meal each week. In January 2019, we determined as a family that our next step on our real food journey would be to eliminate any added sugar for 40 days to see if we felt any better. We decided we could use small amounts of raw organic honey or pure maple syrup if needed.

We don’t have a lot of snack food—we usually have leftover breakfast items, homemade trail mix, fresh fruit, and nut butter, or hard-boiled eggs and veggies. For treats, since we’re eliminating added sugar, we splurged on Lara bars and fruit cups (in 100% fruit juice), just for this month.

We’ve cut out buying juices and sodas over the past year, so our beverages are very simple. I drink black coffee in the morning and peppermint tea later in the day. My husband occasionally has black coffee in the morning and black unsweetened iced tea in the afternoon. Our kids usually have water or unsweetened sparkling water with dinner.

For breakfast, 2 out of the 3 will drink organic whole milk, and the other will have organic unsweetened almond milk. We recently invested in glass reusable water bottles to encourage the kids to take a water bottle to school and hydrate! I had to have a chat with my 9-year-old when I kept noticing an empty juice box in her lunchbox. One of her friends was sharing her juice with my daughter every day. We had a great conversation, and my daughter shared she wanted something more than water with her lunch. She decided that a peach herbal unsweetened iced tea or sparkling water would meet her needs.

Our food diary is mainly what I ate throughout the week, but includes at least one lunch from each child, so you can see the variety and the choices they made.

Our Food Diary

Day 1

Breakfast: Chile relleno casserole, roasted potatoes and peppers, fresh fruit. Lunch: Tomato basil soup, grilled cheese sandwiches on sourdough bread. This is a typical meal after grocery-shopping. We usually try to have something simple since we shop after church and everyone is ready to eat by the time we get home. I freeze individual soup portions for lunches or snacks at a later time. Dinner: Beef taco bowls: grass-fed beef, organic black beans, roasted street corn, sautéed peppers and onions, organic romaine lettuce, sliced avocado, sour cream, salsa. Taco bowls are great for our family since everyone can customize them to fit their needs.

Day 2

Breakfast: Broccoli-cheddar quinoa egg bites, grapefruit or mandarins. With our early mornings, breakfasts need to be ones that can be taken to go! Lunch: Homemade Protein Box: Almonds, cheese cubes, hard-boiled egg, fresh berries. During my work day, I don’t have time to eat a whole lunch so I usually pack snack-type foods that are easy to eat on the go. Dinner: Pork chops with basil cream sauce, smashed potatoes, roasted broccoli. My daughter added Parmesan cheese to the broccoli. Treat: Lara bars and mint tea. This was the first day of cutting out added sugar, so I planned ahead to have something tasty and simple as a treat.

Day 3

Breakfast: Peanut butter oatmeal: rolled oats with natural peanut butter added while cooking, plus a drizzle of pure maple syrup, topped with apple slices (this is one of my kiddos’ favorite meals). Lunch: Homemade bento box: rice, egg sushi, sautéed spinach and garlic, quick pickled cucumber and cabbage, mixed veggies (this was the lunch my 17-year old packed today) Dinner: Spicy salmon cakes with homemade tartar sauce, garlic-herb roasted potatoes, roasted asparagus, and broccoli. My youngest is still not a fan of asparagus so the broccoli was for her. However, she knows that she still needs to try items she doesn’t like, even if it’s just a bite. Treat: Homemade hot cocoa sweetened with maple syrup and fresh whipped cream, homemade triple coconut cookies. It was a cold, rainy day and we were all wanting some hot chocolate. While making dinner, I made hot chocolate with dark cocoa powder, organic whole milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and maple syrup. I used organic heavy cream and some maple syrup to make fresh whipped cream. I also made triple coconut cookies with unsweetened coconut, coconut flour, and coconut oil. They were super crumbly but tasted delicious!

Day 4

Breakfast: Rustic skillet with leftover garlic-herb potatoes, scrambled eggs, sautéed spinach, and cheddar cheese. When I make roasted veggies and potatoes for a meal the night before, I try to make extra so I can make a skillet meal for breakfast. My family gobbled up all the roasted veggies so I added some spinach this time. I made breakfast and then went upstairs to finish getting ready. I came back downstairs to take a picture, and the food was gone! Lunch: Eat out with colleagues at Panera Bread: Greek goddess salad, turkey BLT with avocado. I rarely get to have a long lunch or eat out during the work week, so this was a treat for me. One of my friends is vegan so our restaurant choices are limited. Panera is a great fit for all of us. Dinner: Whole-wheat pasta with homemade marinara sauce, Caesar salad with homemade dressing. My daughter made this meal, and the kids ate before I was able to get home from work so I didn’t get a picture of the meal. Snack: I was hungry after dinner so I had an apple from our CSA box and a square of Parmesan cheese. The kids had homemade trail mix.

Day 5

Breakfast: Homemade granola, organic plain Greek yogurt sweetened with maple syrup, topped with berries. Lunch: Whole wheat organic sandwich thins mini cheese pizzas, popcorn, sliced cucumbers, banana, and mandarin oranges. This was my youngest daughter’s lunch for the week. We use the sandwich thins to make mini pizzas since it’s less bread and they get nice and crispy. They’re good even cold from the lunchbox! Dinner: Organic teriyaki chicken over coconut rice, sautéed baby bok choy, and radishes. We received the bok choy and radishes from our CSA box. I’ve roasted radishes before but have never sautéed them. They paired nicely with the bok choy. I like the flavor and texture better sautéed rather than roasted. My vegetarian daughter had mushrooms and cashews instead of chicken.

Day 6

Breakfast: Breakfast bars: I used the leftover dough from the coconut cookies earlier in the week and added mashed banana, walnuts, and chia seeds. I pressed them in a pan and baked for 20 minutes. My kiddos had the option to top with organic Greek yogurt and berries or have a hard-boiled egg on the side. Lunch: Uncured roast beef sandwich with Havarti cheese, pesto, and pickles, on sourdough bread, side salad, kiwis, multigrain tortilla chips (this is my son’s choice for his lunches this week). Dinner: Breakfast for dinner: Green chili egg bake, green salad, bacon, sweet potato home fries. This egg bake is adapted from a diabetic cookbook. It makes a 9 x 13 size pan, and we cut it up and freeze individual portions. You can add any cheese or meat you’d like. We usually make it vegetarian, but we had family over for brunch recently and made a bacon, gruyere, and caramelized onion egg bake that tasted very close to the bacon and gruyere sous vide egg bites I sometimes splurge on at my favorite Starbucks.

Day 7

Breakfast: Leftover egg bake and fruit. Lunch: Snack box: cheese cube, seedless cucumber slices, hard-boiled egg, blueberries, kiwi slices, mandarin, cashews. Dinner: Split pea soup topped with ham, Cobb salad, cheesy biscuits made with almond flour for lower carbs. The soup is made with vegetable broth so it’s vegetarian and then we top it with ham for all the meat-eaters! I replace whole wheat flour with almond flour for the biscuits, and it holds together fairly well. If there are any leftover biscuits, I save them for breakfast or snacks.

Final Thoughts

Our journey is far from over, but I think we’ve made great progress over the last year. The next step is to add another vegetarian dinner to our weekly rotation and to plan meals more efficiently so that I can double, or triple, recipes and have much more variety in the freezer. I think my advice to any family who would like to eat real food is to tackle one small area and do it well, then move on to the next challenge. I think that every day we try something new and beneficial, we should be proud that we’re making growth toward health!

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Source: https://www.100daysofrealfood.com/reader-diary-jennifer/

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microsstinatir-blog · 5 years

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Thanks to Scoot, we recently had the opportunity to experience the best that Berlin had to offer in terms of dining, shopping and history during our 5 day trip to Berlin and not have to bust our airfare budget. Yes, you heard right – Scoot – a low cost airline flies non-stop to Berlin from Singapore and this is not the first time that they are doing long haul flights (Scoot is also doing long haul flights to Athens in Greece and Honolulu in Hawaii, USA).

Over the next few blog posts, I will be sharing with you our various interesting experiences in Berlin but for this post, I have some suggestions for the foodies who are keen to check out the diverse dining experiences in Berlin and I have 11 of them!

But before we talk about dining in Berlin, I just want to share some tips on enjoying a long haul flight on Scoot. Being a low cost airline means we get bargain fares with Scoot (one way fare to Berlin from Singapore starting from S$239!) but that also means that the usual amenities that we would expect with a full-fare airline e.g. meals, in-flight entertainment, will not be complimentary. But if you add up the costs of buying these extras, you have still scored a huge bargain for a flight to Berlin!

The flight to Berlin from Singapore is almost 13 hours long so do preorder your long haul meal bundle or else you can get quite hungry during the flight. Preordering ensures that you get the meal you want and there are usually discounts or certain perks (for example, you may get a complimentary Haagen Daaz ice-cream or cookies with your meal). The flight departs from Singapore to Berlin at 12.25am and the first meal service (where a light meal of chicken sandwich wrap was served) will start around 1 hour+ after take-off (around 2am). There is no seatback inflight entertainment – you will have to bring your own entertainment or sign up for the ScooTV access (US$11 or about S$15) for the duration of the flight (but you will need to bring your own device e.g. iPad, phones and if you are using Apple devices, ensure that you had downloaded the ScooTV app before boarding your flight; for android devices, you can download the app from the Scoot Wi-Fi portal for free during the flight). If you need to charge your devices (nowadays whose phone can last for 13 hours on a single charge right?), you can buy in-seat power for about US$7.

To help yourself get as comfortable as possible and to sleep well during this long haul flight, I would recommend getting a Scoot Snooze Kit which comprises a very comfortable blanket and eye mask and inflatable neck pillow. Pre-purchasing this snooze kit before your flight will save you S$5 – otherwise you can buy the Scoot Snooze Kit onboard for S$23.

Our second meal service came in at around 3 hours before we landed at Berlin and it was roast beef with potatoes (there are other choices too – chicken, vegetarian etc.). This tasted very good as the beef is very tender. The sides include a potato salad and yoghurt. Scoot’s long haul meal bundle for flights to Berlin comes in non-vegetarian and vegetarian options and includes:

Premium Meal Combo which includes a deluxe meal, 2 sides and a drink.

Light Meal Combo which includes a light meal, a snack and a precupped juice.

This long haul meal bundle is available for preorder only.

Our Scoot flight to Berlin from Singapore landed at Berlin Tegel Airport at 7.20am – perfect timing to start a long day of fun at Berlin. The best part about landing at Berlin Tegel Airport is the airport’s proximity to the Berlin city centre. After clearing immigrations and collecting your baggage, you can be at your hotel in the city centre within 20 minutes! Our basecamp for our trip to Berlin was Capri by Fraser Berlin – we had a great staycation at Capri by Fraser Singapore (the one beside Changi City Point) and the Berlin one was just as good an experience.

Now, back to the topic at hand – Interesting and Diverse Dining Experiences in Berlin, we will of course start with German cuisine:

If you love desserts, don’t miss the Chocolate Lava Cake served with ice-cream served at The Grand.

Address: The Grand, Hirtenstraße 4, 10178 Berlin (nearest U2: Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz)

Address: Brauhaus Lemke am Alex, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13, 10178 Berlin (nearest S+U: Alexanderplatz)

From the dizzying height of its viewing platform, you have spectacular 360-degree panoramic views out across the entire city – and beyond. You can also chill out with cocktail from Bar 203. You can also have dinner at the rotating restaurant just one floor above the viewing platform

Address: Panoramastraße 1 A, 10178 Berlin (nearest S+U: Alexanderplatz)

The Currywurst has an interesting origin: During 1949 in Berlin, a resourceful German housewife, Herta Heuwer, traded some spirits with British soldiers for ketchup. She then created the dish – composed of German sausage, or wurst, sliced and doused in ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder and created the currywurst which became an overnight success and eventually a staple, mainly amongst construction workers who valued its high protein content and low cost.

Address: Curry 36, Hardenbergplatz 9, 10623 Berlin (this is near the Zoo or the BIKINI Berlin which we will talk about later – nearest U2: Berlin Zoologischer Garten)

Curry 36, Mehringdamm 36, 10961 Berlin Kreuzberg

TIM RAUE serves Asian-inspired cuisine that can be characterized as a blend of Japanese product perfection, Thai aromas, and Chinese culinary philosophy. The aim of his dishes is to provide energy and joie de vivre. Guests are invited to a deliberately simple ambience influenced by the urban atmosphere of Berlin. The Michelin guide awarded Tim Raue’s restaurant with two Michelin stars.

We started our dining experience with the Ikarimi Salmon served with buttered stock of tomato juice & marukan rice vinegar, compote of tomato & star anis and green anis. The dish is served lukewarm, keeping the salmon tender – the salmon is soft and melts in your mouth. The various flavours of vinegar, tomato gives you a mix of different tastes with each bite.

Next we had the Langoustine served with wasabi mayonnaise cantonese style. This is like our Singaporean equivalent of wasabi prawn – those that you can order from zi char stalls at hawker centre, although the quality at Tim Raue is a lot better – instead of prawns, Norway lobster meat (langoustine) is used and it tasted very fresh. The wasabi mayonnaise sauce is perfect with the langoustine – some zi char stalls in Singapore makes the wasabi sauce overwhelming (as if you are swallowing wasabi) but here at Tim Raue, its just gives a tinge of wasabi taste and that is good enough.

Next, we had Sate Chicken – or we call it Satay Chicken. I am very surprised to taste such familiar tasting food all the way in Germany. The chicken is tender and when eaten with the satay sauce, it tastes so good!

We wrapped up our meal at Tim Raue with dessert which comprises Quince sherbet, macadamia nougat and passionfruit. It is a good mix of taste – sweet and sour.

A 4 course menu for lunch at Tim Raue like the above will cost 68 Euros + 19% tax. You get a choice of dishes to make up the 4 courses – the 3 course menu is the cheaper option at 58 Euros. Do note that if you select the wasabi langoustine, that will cost an additional 12 Euros to the 68 Euros for a 4 course menu.

Address: Restaurant Tim Raue, Rudi-Dutschke-Straße 26, 10969 Berlin (near Checkpoint Charlie)

Address: Night Kitchen, Oranienburger Str. 32, 10117 Berlin (nearest S-station: Berlin Oranienburger Straße station)

Address: Casalot, Claire-Waldoff-Straße 5, 10117 Berlin

Just a short aside on the THE ONE Grand Show at Friedrichstadt-Palast, if you want to catch one of the most lavish show in Europe on one of the biggest stage in the world, then you should not miss the ONE Grand Show. An iconic part of the ONE Grand Show performance is the more than 500 daring, extravagant, and glamourous costumes designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, one of the great stars of Parisian haute couture. The scale of this performance is massive in many ways – more than 100 artists on the world’s biggest theater stage and a production budget of more than eleven million euros.

Most of the singing is in German but you should be able to interpret from the music and costumes what is going on but in case you don’t, here’s my quick take on the performance. THE ONE Grand Show blurs past and present in a vibrant, euphoric waking dream. You will follow a young man who struggles with his inner emotions – anger and curiosity as he rekindles the splendour and glamour of times past in his mind’s eye while everything dissolves, floats, and spins in front of him, all leading back to the one person who means everything to him – THE ONE. I know very chim (deep-meaning in local Singaporean colloquial terms) but this is a show where you get amazed and surprised by the myriad of costume and death defying acts by the performers. It is a good mix between a typical circus act and dance performance and musical (the latter you will appreciate better if you know German).

Address: Bikini-Haus, Budapester Str. 38-50, 10787 Berlin (nearest U2: Berlin Zoologischer Garten)

For a more traditional food market, don’t miss Markthalle Neun (Market Hall 9) in Kreuzberg on Thursday because of Street Food Thursday. On Thursdays from 5pm to 10pm only, the various stalls compete with each other with their culinary delicacies, but it is you who are the winners. This is truly an international event as you get to experience British pies, Thai tapioca dumplings, Mexican tacos, Allgäu cheese spaetzle or Nigerian FuFu. It gets really crowded though so seats are very limited.

If you need help navigating the culinary gems that Berlin offers on this exciting street food tour through the district of Kreuzberg, check out the Food Tour with Fork & Walk by Dov Selby. If you check out his website, you will notice that there are lots of different food tours to meet your needs, be it whether you are a vegan or coffee connoisseur, there is a food tour for you.

We went on a Evening Food Tour with Dov where he showed us some of the best street food stalls in Markthalle Neun, for example – these tofu burgers by Tofutussis and …

… amazing cheese sandwiches by Alte Milch

Adana Kebap Yogurtlu – Minced meat on the skewer with yogurt, tomatosauce, gegrilled tomatoes, pepper and special bread

Künefe – Pastry mozzarella cheese doused with sugar syrup

Künefe is a crispy cheese-filled dessert made with kadayıf, which is a traditional shredded wheat dessert with pistachio filling. Native to the southeastern parts of Turkey in a area named Hatay. This is a very sweet and addictive dessert

Address: 37, Admiralstraße 36, 10999 Berlin, Germany

Berlin WelcomeCard gives you access to all public transport as well as discounts on selected tours and museum. Ranging from 2 – 6 days, these will definitely come in handy when exploring Berlin. Just remember to validate your ticket before you take your first ride with the bus /U-bahn.

Our spacious @berlin apartment with kitchenette and comfortable bed and refreshing rainshower – perfect rest stop after a long flight from Singapore to Berlin with @ @visit_berlin

A post shared by Zhiqiang and Tingyi (@passportchop) on Jun 20, 2018 at 2:04am PDT

Read on if you would like to know what we ate on our Scoot flight back to Singapore from Berlin. Our flight took off from Berlin at 9.40am and the first meal service is Currywurst and…

… for our second meal service (a few hours before we arrive at Singapore) – Turkey meatloaf with rye bread.

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