I just noticed "die" is the first part of diet.

It has been a nightmare. It is sapping my energy and depressing me into states of melancholy and self-loathing. I can’t stop thinking about the pure misery of it.

It is a diet. A terrible, spawned-from-the-devil, diet.

I’m on day three.

Yes, I just said three. That is “all” you say? Oh, don’t you dare! I will punch something angrily! I will cry despairingly.      ...For the love of God (who I do love), let me have a cup of coffee. With lots of cream. Or a hunk of bread. With lots of butter. 

Alright look, I might be getting a little dramatic. And perhaps ever so slightly delusional. But I’m really hungry.

Did I mention I'm on a diet? Yes, so it’s day three of no: wheat/gluten/yeast, dairy products, eggs, almonds, oats, corn, beans, bananas, pineapple, coffee, chocolate… or, roughly classified as: food.

My blood recently tested as having a reaction to all of those foods and so this is a couple month to perhaps a lifetime, cold-turkey... bah, turkey: one of the few foods I can eat... elimination to help with some residual arthritis/post-cancer problems.

On day one of said diet I was very late for work because, instead of getting up to face the day – mainly the task of trying to find something to eat, I laid in bed hungrily instead. You don’t have to eat if you’re (pretending to be) asleep, right? Later in the morning I indulgently went to Whole Foods to console myself with a $7 (gross) hemp smoothie to go with my frighteningly expensive one bag of groceries – only to realize the smoothie had banana in it and so was off my list. I almost slumped down onto the eco-friendly floors and cried out from my knees, “whhhhhhy?”

I have slogged through some pretty horrendous things in life, (like many people.) If I wasn't so hungry right now, it might be amusing that a very restrictive diet is undoing me. Plus, I have been dragging an aching body around for five years now; the immobility and painful hobbles this diet is meant to help should be bolstering my resolve. I should be standing on my mountain of earned badges of fortitude, pumping my fist into the air while chanting, "I got this too. Yeah Baby!"

But really, I’m just hungry. (Sorry, did I already mention that?) And I’m tired of a body that I don’t understand and can’t keep up with me.

It used to bother me that I had become an emblem to incite gratitude in others – as in, “At least I’m not her.” I don’t mind that so much anymore. (But, Dear Husband, please drink your coffee somewhere else before I strangle you to merely get a good whiff of that deliciousness.)  Right, so to the contrary, I’m glad I can help. Because, all jokes aside, I can help you. And so, not for the sake of garnering your sympathy but for brightening your perspective, I tell you this story. (And all the others.) I can help you realize your day is not so bad, your problems not so big. Your pain is not so deep. And when it is or when they are, you too will survive.

You might not be pumping your fist through it, but you will wake up again tomorrow – and maybe then the smoothie won’t have banana in it. Or even better, someone will make some bacon.

If you have any tips, favorite recipes, or comments, please share!

Making Your Own Laundry Detergent

So have you heard that making your own everything is a thing now?

Thanks to the whole green/DIY movements, a growing mistrust of commercial products, Pinterest and blogging, we've entered a reversion to revere for all things homemade. 

Five years ago, when my son was born and I was getting started in cloth diapering, I begin learning about the adverse effects the chemicals, dyes and fragrances in standard detergents have on the diapers. That got me thinking - about those chemicals, dyes and fragrances. I decided we could do without them. 

I used to buy Charlie's Soap, which I think is a great product and company (once I got used to swallowing the price tag.) After a few years, I tried my hand at making my own safer detergent. 

Okay, so I know we're all busy and not looking for more ways to add to our domestic workload. But once you get into the routine of something, the extra few minutes becomes normal and can have benefits well-worth the time.

The benefits of making your own laundry detergent include both saving money and saving yourselves from exposure to chemicals that are in conventional detergent.

You can make a powder or a liquid version. Here's how to do both:

 

 

  For a powder version:

 

Mix equal parts:

• Super Washing Soda
• Borax
• Shredded Castile Soap

You can also add some Baking Soda or grated Fels Naptha if you have particularly soiled laundry.

Use approximately 2 heaping tablespoons per load.

That's it! Shredding the soap is the only time-consuming step.

  For an (easy, no-boil) liquid version:

• 1/4 C Borax
• 1/4 C Washing Soda
• 1/4 C Liquid Soap (Dr. Bronner's or Dawn work well)
• 4 Cups boiling water

Mix together the Borax and washing soda. Pour into 1 gallon jug. Add 1/4 Cup liquid soap of your choice. Then, add 4 cups boiling water and shake well.  Fill to the top with cold water. It will bubble up and be runny.

Use 1/2 cup-1 cup per load depending on how large and how soiled the load is.

 

Once or twice a year I drag myself to Wal-Mart for the Borax and Washing Soda, as they can be difficult to find elsewhere and are more expensive online than off the store shelf. You can find Dr. Bronner's soap most anyway these days, (Trader Joe's, Target, Costco...).

Helpers are welcome:

 

Another perk, once you have these supplies on-hand, you can make other household cleaners out of them. Check out some instructions on making spray cleaner or wipes here at my pal's site.

 

And now, go forth and clean something.

Recipe for Semi-Disaster

The "Surprising" part of this recipe is not born of higher hopes, as one might assume, but instead comes from crashing expectations. In case I didn't have you at "surprise" or even at "mediocre," because aren't those two qualities everyone is looking for in a recipe, do read on.

Here's what you'll need:

2 cups garbanzo beans
1/3 cup tahini
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
And, most importantly: 1 totally absent-mind

Directions:

1.   Soak the garbanzo beans overnight. Drain and set aside until you're ready to assemble.

2.   Return in the late afternoon (of, er, two days later), tired, hot, and preoccupied. Squeeze lemons by hand to come up with 1/4 cup juice, probably with at least one small laceration somewhere on your hand that will sting the entire time.

3.   Add ingredients to your small, inexpensive and unimpressive food processor, only to have it not start. Of course.

4.   Transfer ingredients to your large, expensive and impressive blender, only to have it start but not blend.

5.   Curse.

6.    Realize that the garbanzo beans, now mixed in with all the other ingredients, are in fact not yet cooked.

7.   Repeat step 5.

8.   Throw the chunky mass in a pot on the stove. Because what harm is there in seeing if it can be salvaged?

9.   After checking on said mass several times, stirring and smelling it, get distracted with your children and let it burn to the bottom of the pot, ever so slightly.

10.   Cool. Blend with olive oil, a pinch of salt, and a big squeeze of more lemon juice.

Enjoy - while being impressed that it actually turns out into an edible, hummis-like product. (Or, just feed it to the baby.)

In spite of how I have now presented my culinary abilities, I generally do produce a pretty tasty product. As my kind husband says, I "almost always hit a home run" with my cooking. (Thank you Dear; you almost always hit a home run with the post-dinner dishes.) My last major cooking foible was years ago, while making a penne vodka sauce. I'm just going to say, hazelnut creamer can look an awfully lot like half and half if you're not careful, but one is definitely not a substitute for the other. In light of that inedible disaster, I'm suddenly hungry for some hummus.

Healthy Habits

When it comes to taking care of our bodies, the chasm between knowing and doing is often so great that I sometimes forget lack of knowledge is still a culprit.

Now, I am a long and loud cry from a nutritional expert, by any means. As simply a gal who listens and reads and has picked up a modicum of at-least-presumably-healthy habits over the years, please allow me to share a few general tips. Perhaps some of them will be new to you.

- Of course, eat LOTS of veggies and fruit every day.

- Go with frozen vegetables over canned every time; they retain their nutritional value and are not packed in sodium water.

- Eliminate white; replace it with whole grains. There is no nutritional value in white (stripped) rice, flour, pasta, or bread.
     
            * Try introducing whole grains to your household by mixing them with whites to help everyone adjust to the flavors/textures over time.

- Try not to consume so much processed food. A general rule: the less ingredients in the item you are considering, the better. Have you ever really looked at the ingredients in a boxed cake mix, in coffee creamer, in cheap ice cream?

- Fat free or sugar free are not always a good choice. The idea is to stick to whole, real foods, in their natural state. Fat-free products often replace removed fat with sugar (which turns to fat anyway). “Sugar free” means sweetened with artificial sweeteners such as Aspartame and Acesulfame Potassium, which have been found to increase hunger and have harmful side effects that include being carcinogenic.

- Minimize consumption of processed meats: lunch meats, standard hog dogs, sausages... Not only do they contain sodium nitrite, a questionable chemical preservative, but are also high in sodium and saturated fat.

- Adding citrus to your water is said to have great benefits, making it alkaline and helping to neutralize acids in the body.

- Stay away from microwave popcorn. The lining of the bags are coated with carcinogenic chemicals, (fluorotelomers). Instead, pop your corn in a popping machine or a pan on the stove.

- Try not to buy or use plastic water bottles and definitely don't reuse them. Similarly, avoid microwaving plastic, which includes saran-wrap topped things. As plastics age or heat-up, there is an increased risk for leaching of phthalates or BPA from the plastic to the food or water.

- The safest cookware is cast iron or stainless steel. As soon as the Teflon-lined/nonstick kinds scratch, they're leaching aluminum into your food. If you find that you only want to use nonstick, coated pans, be prepared to replace them frequently.

Fad diets are often confusing and contradictory. They go out of style for a reason. Many healthy choices are intuitive.... natural, unprocessed, homemade foods - and less of them if your caloric intake does not match your energy output.

Here's to avoiding risks, where we can, and to putting real, nutritious foods into our bodies, when we can.

What are your favorite healthy habits?

A Model of Imperfection

When a friend asks if I will participate in a photo shoot for a breast cancer service announcement, and it happens to fall on an afternoon when my husband can be home with Little H, I agree. I’m a little hazy on the facts of what’s going on, but it sounds like a fun way to help out.

A wealthy Texas oil man is funding the project and is present at the shoot. His lovely wife, who screams money from her jeweled ears to her designer-shoe clad toes, accompanies him. Both are very kind.

8 of us “survivor” women are gathered to provide our faces. Actually, make that 7 survivors + me. I think I’m still just “a patient,” not yet having survived the ordeal in its entirety and earning the title. The other women all have their hair – and lives back. They are also 20-40 years my senior, as is common at these events. But they are all now my friends, dear to me for our shared experiences.

As a fairly tall and thin gal, I dabbled in modeling in high school. Well, dabbled ever so lightly, until the day came my agent told me I had to lose weight or I wasn’t going to go anywhere. That would be when I decided where I wasn’t going to go was back to that agency ever again. Who needs anorexia at 15?

Now here I am, some 13 years later, in cheap jeans, very little make-up, (in wild fear of losing lashes, I try to avoid touching my eyes, let alone putting make-up on them), and bald/scarf on my head. I look pretty awful and my body feels terrible as I enjoy the side effects of 2 blooming diseases. But all the same - actually, very little is the same, but you get the idea; I'm taken back to my fleeting modeling days in front of the lights and cameras. Oh wait, I'm afraid there's one more detail worth mentioning: I am totally sweating. I mean, visibly sweating through my thin, light-colored shirt. I don the very stylish, the very classy hoodie for my entire shoot, to hide this.

What can I say? I’ve been reading up on the harmful nature of aluminum in anti-perspirant and have been on a quest to use only the natural stuff. My most recent find masks any unpleasant scent, but certainly does not hinder the act of perspiring itself, or so I notice as the wet rings form around my armpits in the hot, Hollywood studio warehouse. Charming.

At the sickest time in my life, in a hoodie covering sweat rings and lacking head hair, I model for big time Hollywood guys and one big time Texas guy and feel a little bit lovely.
 

                   

 

 

 

If you too would like to sweat - but not smell - I encourage you

to switch from an antiperspirant to a deodorant only.

My favorite is: Crystal Roll-on.

 

Here's a good article to start with

for the rub on antiperspirants in general:

@The Chemical Marketplace