Eat Light, Be Light

I had a green smoothie for breakfast. Not exactly eggs benedict but satisfying nonetheless. I’m back to feeling vaguely detoxy again. I’ve had a busy week and next week is the same. Today was supposed to be a day off but I allowed myself to be talked into doing a sound session down at the spa – maybe while I am there I will go in the sauna and soak in the mineral soaking pool. Nice perks involved when you work at a spa.

I am intrigued by my bean experience of yesterday. On the one hand, I’m not happy with how indigestive they made me, but on the other hand, I wasn’t hungry for EIGHT hours after I ate about 3/4 cup of canned black bean chili.

So I think I need to play around with various kinds of beans cooked in various kinds of ways to see what works well. I do have a mild and somewhat silly trauma around beans that has always made me slightly averse to them.

My childhood (and much of my adult as well) nickname was Bean. As the youngest of 6 and the smallest in my class at school from skipping a few grades, the name Bean (shortened from “Eileeny McBeany”) stuck. It stuck further when I came up with the idea for the Vanilla Bean Cafe when I was 18.

When I moved to Vermont in 2002 I told people my name was Eileen. I was 34 years old after all. But no one ever remembers the name Eileen, whereas everyone always remembered Bean. But this is not my point.

The trauma came from a song from the musical “Paint Your Wagon” that my brothers (and maybe even my parents) used to sing to me when I was little :

Well hand me down that can o’ beans
Hand me down that can o’ beans
Hand me down that can o’ beans
I’m throwing it away

Out the winder go the beans
Out the winder go the beans
Out the winder go the beans
I had a lucky day

except that they would say “We’re throwing HER away”.

Of course they were being playful, but I was “overly sensitive” and got quite beside myself from it.

So I’ve never been big on beans.

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For lunch I am having a repeat of the tempeh and shitakes over salad that I had two days ago. I am pleased with myself for feeding myself healthy food. It takes time and energy and money and self respect to feed yourself well. No wonder most people don’t/can’t do it.

It’s been a long road of steady effort for me to get to this place.

My earliest “memory” about my relationship with food isn’t even a memory – it’s a photograph. I am about three, perhaps, and I am lying, like an overstuffed little doll, on the floor of the pantry with an open box of Lucky Charms next to me, having clearly just eaten myself into a carb coma. That inclination towards overindulgence in carbs/sugar became a pattern for a long time.

While I was never exactly fat as a kid, I was a little pudgy, soft in the middle, inclined towards ice cream and saltines and candy. My mom was a good cook and I got three squares a day, plus dessert and plenty of snacks.

Things got troublesome when I turned 16. Up until that point, I had been a brainiac, a geek, a dork – too little for my age, glasses, braces. But then suddenly I “blossomed”. On a whim, I entered the Miss Teen Connecticut pageant, and much to my surprise won both runner up and “Miss Photogenic”.

Now, suddenly, I had all the pressures of being a “pretty” girl, which meant I needed to be Skinny. I’m not really built to be skinny – I’m built to be medium-sized. But medium-sized, in my teenage head, was Fat.

My inner conflict, around my natural build, and my need to conform to social expectations, resulted in me becoming bulimic at 17, a miserable condition that I was finally able to free myself of by the time I turned 20.

Time to face a day of being “on the run” – headed out soon to appointments around the state. Been busy all morning so haven’t eaten, haven’t put anything together, haven’t even thought about it yet!

Last night I was hungry (what a surprise) when I came home at 5, so I sat down with a box of Mary’s Gone Crackers and some hummus and whoa! went a little crackers myself and ate almost the whole box (6.5 oz) before I knew it. That’s a lot of seeds!

Filling to say the least, and it ended up being my dinner. For the boys, I made cheese tortellini with meatballs. Juicy, tasty, little balls of beef. Seasoned just so…

No, I didn’t have one – but I did accidentally lick the metal spatula I used to cook them when I was getting ready to wash the dishes. Have to watch things like that.

One of my favorite foods is pan drippings. I like to cook chicken or pork in butter in my cast iron skillet, and then add some water or some very diluted apple cider at the end to create a rich and savory reduction that I literally stand at the stove and eat with a spoon. I don’t think there is any way to reproduce that flavor in a vegan kind of way…

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So – lunch! I made the mistake of choosing to fit in another errand before coming home and making lunch. I had some trail mix with me and I thought that would work, but it didn’t. My breakfast – a porridge of quinoa, almond milk, raisins, cashews and almond meal leftover from making almond milk, was delicious if somewhat challenging to eat in my standard transmission car while driving on snowy roads. And it only tided me over for less than two hours.

Ordinarily on Friday mornings, I do a house call about 1/2 hour away, and stop at Jana’s Deli and Cupboard in Jeffersonville to get a “Breakfast Buddy” on my way- a microwaved bun with a microwaved egg and some microwave melted cheese and some bacon. Easy to eat while driving, and “fills the hole” for hours.

Now, I don’t own a microwave and never will. I avoid microwaved food as much as possible. But I have a fondness for the occasional breakfast buddy. Maybe it is because they have a cute name.

Anyway, minus my little buddy, I was ONCE AGAIN beside myself with hunger by the time I got home to make lunch. The upside of this going too long between meals is that it gives me time to figure out what I am going to eat once I get to the kitchen. I am quite pleased with what I whipped up:

Tempeh  marinated in soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, maple syrup, pepper, sesame seeds – sauteed in coconut oil with shitake mushrooms, served over a salad of spinach, romaine, avocado, carrots and celery, with a side of kimchee.

And wow, who knew that tempeh and kimchee could make a carnivore so happy? My mother always used to say “Hunger is the best sauce” so that might be having something to do with it too.

This meal is hearty and filling and since it is 2pm I am pretty sure I will be good until dinner in 4 hours. No idea what’s for dinner yet…

Back to feeling detoxy. Headache, just an overall sense of not-quite-rightness. Feeling fantastic yesterday might have had something to do with the fact that I had received, ahem, two massages in two days prior to yesterday. Lucky me!

Bob Hope apparently got a massage every day. I aspire to that. It’s amazing how good they make you feel.

As a wellness provider ( I am a sound therapist) I have the luxury of doing trades with my colleagues – although the people in our business would tell you that it isn’t really a luxury, it’s a necessity. Two in two days is a bit of luxury though.

So, food. Yesterday for lunch I was pressed for time so I went to the cafe next door to my office. I asked what the soup was and they said “15 bean…” (yay!) “with bacon” (oh… bacon).

Do you think I said, “Well, I am going to run home and hastily throw together some quinoa and kale and choke that down” ?

No, I opted to consume a wee bit of bacon. Without guilt. Well, that’s not entirely true. I think I felt a vague sense of guilt.

Dinner was also on the run but I had a bit of pre-planning: I had my husband (who was making his famous “Daddy Casserole” – ground beef (buffalo actually) and Annie’s Mac N Cheese- for himself and the boys last night) throw a frozen vegan entree into the oven for me.

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So, time to face another day of food choices. This bothers me. I really don’t like thinking about food. That’s why I have eaten meat quite happily in the past. Meat in the belly lasts for hours, which means not having to think about food all that time.

I am a philosopher. I like to think about life, the universe and everything. I wish I could be a breatharian and only eat if and when I felt so inclined. This HAVING to eat thing is annoying. And this having to eat all the time is even more annoying!

I guess I should just be grateful that I have food, access to food – I sound like a spoiled American.

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Sitting down with my breakfast. I wanted eggs. I mean, I REALLY wanted eggs, first time since I started that I could say I have a genuine craving for something. This is what I made instead: sauteed onions, shitake and crimini mushrooms, spinach and quinoa. And you know what? It’s really pretty good.

Good thing I’m a pretty good cook. I used to own a restaurant. Really. A very popular restaurant, where I cooked and baked all day. After that, I owned a specialty food business, making organic kettle corn. Sort of funny for someone who would prefer not to have to eat, don’t you think?

Now I’m a bodyworker – or maybe more technically, a “soundworker”. I use tuning forks to detect and correct tonal imbalances in the body and its energy field. I know that sounds painfully woo woo, but it’s actually quite “logical” according to skeptics who experience it.

I’m also a writer – a real, genuine writer with a book contract even. I’m going to be writing a book about the therapeutic use of sound. But I decided not to start that until January – so this blog is a kind of warm up, a place to get in the groove, so to speak.

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12:30 and I just finished another green monster drink for lunch. I know that isn’t enough and it is not going to tide me over til dinner. But in this  moment I don’t want anything else. I guess I will pack some nuts and raisins in my bag and hope for the best.

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I feel great today. Clear, light, and energized. Focused. So that is good.

I had some leftover giant dry muffin for breakfast – it was (surprisingly) better the second day.  I spent some time looking at my juicer this morning but then put it away. I can’t quite bring myself to juice when it is 20 degrees out and there is snow on the ground. Maybe I will get over that resistance at some point.

I still have yet to make the green smoothie -maybe today is the day. Last night, I had some boxed butternut soup for dinner. I chose to ignore the leftover quinoa in the fridge, but I suppose I should eat that today. There are some greens that are going yellow that need to be eaten too.

Quinoa, adzuki beans and kale, someone suggested. So that will probably be lunch today. And at some point I need to take a good look at that lovely new cookbook I bought –

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10:45am and I am enjoying a “super green monster” from oh she glows : almond milk, almond butter, 2 handfuls of spinach and some parsley, chia seeds, and a frozen banana – and yes, it is delicious – but will it tide me over until lunch, which I won’t be able to have until 2pm today?

Ornery. Feeling a little ornery. Last night for dinner I combined the lentil stew I made the night before with some kale and quinoa. It was tasty but….

This morning I was feeling adventurous so I made a … thing.. don’t really know what to call it. It was going to be blueberry muffins but the batter was too thick so I put it all in the cheesecake pan and made a kind of … giant dry muffin.

I combined coconut flour and teff flour with a mashed banana and some applesauce, coconut oil, maple syrup and almond milk, but I think I added too much flour to the wet mixture. It’s ok, but  I probably wouldn’t offer a piece to anyone.

And it didn’t occur to me to look in my fancy new cookbook for a recipe. Maybe next time I will think of that.

I think for lunch – or rather, midmorning snack because I am not going to make it to lunch – I will have a green smoothie.

I don’t want anything to do with lentils, that’s for sure. That batch of lentil stew is going in the freezer.

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I made it to lunch and  never had that smoothie. I’ve yet to make myself a green drink!

I had the same salad I had yesterday, veggie burger on a spinach salad. I toasted some sesame seeds and added them to it – super yummy, toasted sesame seeds. Now I am heading out for the afternoon and have to pack some snacks. I think I need to spend some time making some energy bars because buying them is really expensive. They will definitely have toasted sesame seeds in them.

Home for a quick lunch before heading out the door again. I added chia seeds to my oatmeal this morning, hoping that would buy  me some time before hunger set in. It didn’t. By 10:30 I was starving again. Luckily, I had packed some expensive tiny little vegan snack bar which was tasty but disappointingly brief, and DID NOT tide me over until lunch.

LUNCH: vegan burgers, heated up in the toaster oven, over a spinach, celery and carrot salad. And I added a few teaspoons of KimChi.

My carnivore husband, who has been surprisingly supportive of my experiment, draws the line at Kimchi. “Don’t get near me after eating that shit”, he told me. I’m not sure I want to be near myself. Ewwww. But I will be a good vegan and eat it anyway. They tell me you grow to love it.

Because I am very hungry, I was not content to top my salad with just one burger. I am having one and a half. Hopefully this will keep me going until dinner. Oh my god, what am I going to make for dinner???

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Sitting down at 4pm with a jar of almond butter and a spoon. Contemplating making some vegan cookies. I want to go very easy on flours and sweeteners. No wheat, as little cane sugar as possible. I made my own almond milk this morning and sweetened it a tad with maple syrup. Much better than the stuff from the store that is sweetened with cane juice. I’m not ready to give up coffee – even though it was suggested to me by the …

Here  might be a good place to explain the “mail slot”. I read in a book once this person describing their intuitive process : “It’s like I have a mail slot in the back of my head. Sometimes it opens, and a note drops in. I’ve found if I follow the instructions on the note, it always has a good outcome”.

That is how I live my life, mostly. By the mail slot. It tells me to do something, I do it, it produces a pleasing outcome. So the whole “Eat Light Be Light” thing came in through the mail slot. Very clear instructions to “feed my light body”.

But I like coffee and the mail slot is not insistent on this point, at least for the moment. And it is a whole lot better with homemade almond milk than storebought!

Thank you to Pam at Sunflower Natural Foods in Waterbury VT for her help getting me on the path of veganhood

Feeling detoxy today – I have a low grade headache and a curious sensation in my body like my cells are pushing out meat residue. Luckily it is Sunday and I don’t have a lot going on today.

Last night for dinner, I had some soup, but because I was afraid of being hungry, I ate a very large portion of it- 2.25 cups to be exact.

Afterwards, I felt bloated and uncomfortable. “Guess I didn’t need to have that much” I said to my husband. “It’s going to take some time to figure this out.”

“That’s the problem with trial and error”, he said. “You make errors.”

I suppose I could go and find a cookbook and follow it but I have never been very good at following anything. I like to make things up as I go. And this has always worked for me in the past, because I have always centered meals around meat – that is the tradition in which I was raised. I have my ancestors’ memories to draw from.

The foods I have enjoyed the most, that I have raised my family on, are comfort foods: meatloaf, chicken pot pie, turkey dinners, beef stew – that sort of thing. Meal planning has revolved around what meat I am serving.

My husband, who largely depends on me to feed him, requires meat at every meal – “if it doesn’t have meat, it’s not complete!”. My two boys, who are 12 and 15, have followed suit.

When I announced to my boys that I was going to embark on this experiment, they both got fussy and then retreated from the room. “You’re not going to make us do it too, are you??” the younger one asked, a look of horror on his face.

I assured them that I would not. I didn’t expect them to be so… disappointed in my decision. They are clearly quite attached not just to meat but also the tradition of mom making delicious meat dishes.

Well, for now at least, I will continue with that, AND feeding myself otherwise. Now, what to have for breakfast?

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A search of “vegan breakfast foods” turned up the following page:

http://ohsheglows.com/2012/01/03/top-15-vegan-breakfast-recipes-of-2011/

What a lovely website – lots of good ideas here. But I found it after I made the same breakfast as yesterday – oatmeal with apples, raisins and cashews.

I think I will spend some time going through this website and writing down ingredients for recipes and then go shopping this afternoon.

Vermont in winter is not exactly the best time or place to go vegan….

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After dinner, day 3. I went grocery shopping this afternoon and came home with a lot of supplies, including a cookbook called “Nourishing Meals”.

When I came home, I realized that I did not have room in my kitchen for all these new and different foods. This prompted a major reorganizing of my kitchen – resulting in the ridding of some annoying clutter that I had been wanting to get to anyway.

I got so busy taking care of all the food that I never got around to preparing any of it, and left to do some errands on an empty stomach. By the time I was almost home, several hours later, I was super hungry once again!

So then I had to make dinner for the boys (we’ll include my husband in that category) – meat loaf, topped with bacon. And dinner for myself- lentil stew. I took some of the leftover lentils from two nights ago, and threw them in with carrots, celery, onion, kale, parsley and spinach, and some sauteed shitakes and crimini mushrooms as well.

Putting the leftover meatloaf away was a little uncomfortable. I really like pan drippings and crispy bacon and they tempted me just a little. Just a little…

I started feeling really detoxy when I was out and about this afternoon. My kidneys especially feel mucky. I wish I had a bathtub because I would definitely take a hot epsom salt bath tonight – I guess I will just do a salt scrub in the shower instead.

It’s lunchtime. So far so good. I had oatmeal with apples, raisins and a few cashews for breakfast. That keep  me good for about two hours. Then I had an Amazake coconut drink. That kept me good for about an hour.

Now I am going to have lunch. I think I will have the leftover lentil rice dish from last night’s dinner.

When I woke up this morning, I noted that I already felt better, after just one day on this diet.

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I’m not doing this diet to “lose weight”. At 5’6″ and around 135lbs, I don’t really need to lose weight. I’m solid and I like it that way. When I get too skinny, I have to put a pillow between my knees when I sleep at night, and a pillow under my butt when I sit on wooden chairs. It hurts to rest my elbows on tables. My face gets really drawn. So, I’m not trying to lose weight.

What I am simply seeking to do is see how I feel when I eat this way. And keeping a blog is a way to record, in a public way, in case anyone else wants to follow suit, my journey with this process.

So far, I am finding myself hungry a lot!

I just finished eating lunch -I had a big bowl of french lentils, rice, asparagus, celery and bell pepper – but I’m not satisfied. Looks like I need to go find more food…

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For a snack, I had some dried apple rings, a clementine, and some cashews.

I made my family bacon quiche for dinner. All that bacon, eggs, cream  (raw cream, from the top of my jar of raw milk) and flour – and I didn’t want any of it. But I was hungry by the time I put it in the oven.

I had thought about what I was going to make for my husband and boys (and my son’s 5 friends who were also over for dinner) and taken care of that. Now, what was I going to feed myself?

I went to Natural Provisions in Williston today and brought home some staples, including some adzuki bean miso soup paste. I sauteed onions, shitake mushrooms and spinach, then added the miso. I made two +cups of soup and ate all of it.

It’s 8pm and I’m not hungry, even after baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies for the hoard of children in my house.

So, I made it through two days so far without meat. I already feel like I am starting to disappear, and I was uncomfortably hungry for several hours today. When I eat meat, I am always full. I like the security that always having meat in my belly gives me. I never have to feel hungry when there is meat in my diet.

So, here I am on Day 1 of my “Feed the Light Body Instead of the Meat Body” experiment. I’m following my inner directive on this one. What I’m hearing is :

Eat only foods that are one step away from sunlight.

Which means fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains, and that is it.

And no alcohol or drugs of any kind

Of course, all of this brings up all kinds of fears in me.

I’ve been on restricitive diets before, but never have given up meat.

Funny, one wouldn’t think that would be so difficult to give up.

But for me, meat=security.

For example, bacon, egg and cheddar on a bagel means I don’t have to eat again for 5 hours. That to me, is security.

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Just now, I cut up the carcass of turkey from last night. I didn’t eat any of it. But my mouth actually watered a little bit. Now I have to make dinner for my husband and boys as well as myself. I’m very hungry right now. This was what I was afraid of.

I took a leftover sweet potato out of the fridge and was going to heat it up and eat it. But without butter? Really?

I don’t have a microwave so I have to heat it on the stove. It seems like a lot of work. I also need to start dinner. Guess I will heat up the sweet potato.

I am going to need some help with this!

Right now I am going to cook a big batch of lentils. In fact, I came over to my computer to look up how to cook them, it has been so long since I cooked lentils that I have forgotten…