Oops!

Hey there to all you folks in blogger-ville!  I guess my brain took a bit of a vacay last night when I normally put up my blog posts.  So...here's what happened.

Yesterday was kind of uncommonly busy and one of the blessings that came my way was I belatedly remembered my personal training session was cancelled so I regained nearly an hour of my day.  I say Total Woman Gym nearly an hour since I wasn't with it enough to remember she had a conflict until after I went to the gym and wandered around looking for her.  Fortunately the gym is only a ten minute drive from my house so a minor investment into the recurring realization that my senior moments are appearing more and more frequently.  Perhaps I will avail of the senior citizen discounts at some of the places I frequent.  Yes! Can you believe it - I actually qualify at some places.  It is sobering but all the more reason to dedicate ourselves to taking care of the parts God gave us so that they work as well as possible into our golden years.

Speaking of sobering.  In the past week I received news that two men I know - both younger than me - have had heart attacks!  Yikes!  As I said - take care of the parts God gave you.  Until there are decent bionic alternatives we have to make do with the originals.

So - In addition to my aborted gym outing I had my first French class with a somewhat squirrel-y little French lady.  It was two hours - so  significant chunk of the day.  At first I was all panic-y that I'd bit off more than I could chew but she was very accommodating and the sweet woman who also is in the class with me is pretty much at my same level so I'm feeling really good about maybe finally learning some French.  Why French?  Well - since MSB is a first generation American with many relatives in Europe its not that unusual for us to go to France.  But even more importantly - the mission work we do is often in French speaking Africa and it would be such a benefit if I could at least speak enough to get around on my own.  Even better if I could be fluent enough to understand some patients.

Then in the evening I had my monthly get together with my dear church lady friends where we play a goofy game that's very popular in So. Cal - Bunco!   It's a dice game and we play once a month and have for many years.

So by the time I got home and vegged out with the sweet doggy watching TV I completely forgot about my nightly writing ritual until I came across some food pics I'd e-mailed to myself!  No kidding!  I actually forgot about the writing despite spending most of the day chopping and dehydrating stuff and thinking about what to say about it all.  But since I discovered the pictures after midnight I figured too late to try and be coherent.

So what did I eat yesterday?  Rather than some of Cherie's special Green Juice we had a lovely Blue-Green Smoothie with a banana, blueberries, kale, and an orange.  The smoothie was perfectly portable and it was the perfect drink to fuel me as I took the little doggy out for a morning walk.   It is interesting to me how different these various raw vegan cookbook authors interpret something as generic as a "Green Smoothie".  Since all one has to do is throw a smidgen of kale or spinach into the mix you will always get something green.  It's the other stuff that really lend the variety to the drink.  She tends to throw an orange in just about everything which really sweetens up the drink.  The citrus is always refreshing so this is a nice, very drinkable morning pick me up.  It gets a B.

I was glad I got the gym reprieve because lunch was really pretty involved.  This is at least the second day I noted she had us have two things for lunch - like a soup AND salad.  Or salad and a roll up.  Seems like a lot of food to me but if one has a larger meal in the day having it at mid day makes way more sense than at night before bed.  Just something to think about.

For lunch we have Mexican Burritos and Mexican Style Cabbage.  As I'm making these complex dishes I remember why I stopped following her plans in the first place.  Kind of too involved for me.  So - first with the burritos.  This dish is basically just a variation on guacamole.  Since living in So. Cal for nearly 20 years I'm feeling a bit like a guacamole snob so it takes a bit to impress me.  In addition to a nice mushy avocado this dish has zucchini, tomato, cucumber, green onion, cilantro, jalapeno, cabbage and a dash of cayenne pepper.  This was nice and once rolled up in a leaf of romaine made a nice sort of burrito but it was not spectacular.  Like I said - a guac snob.  I'll give it a B.

As our side dish we have the Mexican style cabbage.  In addition to the cabbage there's peas, green onion EVOO, chili powder, cumin and garlic.  The really surprising item that she apparently uses quite a bit is Sun Dried Tomato Powder.  Not only have I never heard of such a thing I have to wonder how she dreamed this up?  Fortunately I had some very dry sun dried tomatoes on hand AND I have my wonderful vita-mix with its Dry Processing container.  This is great for grinding wheat berries into fresh whole wheat flour, etc..  I don't use it much but for this it was perfect.  This powder is used as a pungent flavoring that came thru very nicely.  Once all of this was stirred together with some chopped up tomatoes I was stunned!  This really looked like rice.  It looked like Mexican style rice!  Genius!  What is even more impressive is all of this together was just amazing!  It was hard to stop eating this stunningly good looking dish that tasted even better than it looked.  So - an involved process, using up nearly every kitchen appliance I had and a fair amount of clean up time as stuff was strewn all over but certainly worth the effort.  This absolutely gets an A in my book.

Finally - after French and before bunco my dinner was a green soup called  Garden Blend Soup made of kale, orange juice, cucumber, cilantro, miso, lemon juice, garlic, jalapeno, green onion and sunflower seeds.  This deep green soup is quite luscious in its creaminess due to the avocado but with a sweet taste due to the orange and apple.  The pepper gives it enough kick to keep it from being too breakfast-y.  Along with this soup - which gets a B we had a few of the flax crackers that have been slowly drying out in the dehydrator since Sunday night.  I thought I had a picture of them on the dehydrator but I didn't find it.  I'll look again and post it later if I can.  They were quite good too but have the flax seed oily taste that I'm not a huge fan of.  In addition to the flax seed and flax meal there are peppers, zucchini and onion, lemon juice and garlic all processed together and spread out on the dehydrator sheet and slowly dried at a very low heat - enzyme protection plan - for 8 hours.  After the initial 8 hours the mixture is peeled off the sheet and placed on the drying rack / screens and dried for another 12 hours.  Since the drier goes forever and forever it makes sense to load it up with all the stuff you'd ever want to make to maximize the electricity being used and because it takes up so much time.  Fortunately - unlike the rest of our raw diet the dried food last for a very long time so making things up way in advance is very sensible.  It's the way in advance part that has always gotten me hung up so I've tried very few of her dehydrator recipes before.  These get a B from me, too. 

OK - so I'm running late - gotten post this and run.  Hope there's no typo's.  More later!