Love List, Other
This much ice should not be allowed on Daylight Savings Weekend. {Friday}
This much sun should be. {Saturday}
We went from being under a State of Emergency to gorgeous, beautiful, soul-warming sunshine. Let’s hope the latter is what decides to stick around.
Things I’m Loving
The Kindle App for my phone. It’s always been there and I’ve always ignored it. I never quite understood the enticement of a kindle when you could get books for free from the library. Then our library got with the times and started digital loans. I still prefer the feel of an actual book in my hand with pages I can turn, but it has been nice on these snowed in days to grab a “new book” to curl up with.
Gone Girl. Speaking of books, said book I’m reading is Gone Girl. Finally. I’m a little more than halfway through I’d say it gets a pretty good review so far. I love the different writing styles for the two main characters, although so far I like the first part of the book better than the second. Other recent reads I liked include: Language of Flowers and Revenge Wears Prada.
Wearable ice packs. Part of my PT program requires me to ice my knee every time I use it, even if it doesn’t hurt, just as a precaution. I laugh if you think having a two year old affords you the time to actually sit still long enough to ice. Wearable ice packs aren’t quite as cold but they get the job done and I can ice and chase a toddler at the same time.
Daylight Savings. I’m probably one of the few parents that actually likes Daylight Savings time because it’s the one day I can say my kid slept til 6 {when it was really only 5}.
Reading list:
How your personality affects diet and fitness
Lessons from the fittest states in America
Manage these 5 negative emotions based on where you feel them in your body
Mental health lessons from Dr. Seuss
How to fake spring til it gets here for real
Toddler eating mistakes I’m ok with making
Review
As you can imagine, I own one or two books about food and nutrition. Make that more like 20 or 30…at least. {A fact that was made ever apparent as I emptied my bookshelves to make room for painting the nursery.}
You’d be surprised how many of them aren’t cookbooks. I love looking at new recipes, but I’m not a big recipe follower. I’d much rather read about the actual food and nutrients themselves. I’m a dork. It’s also my job, so that makes up for a little bit of the nerdiness, right?
One of my many favorites is Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide by Brendan Brazier, an professional Ironman triathlete.
I was thrilled when Vega sent me a copy of his latest book, Thrive Foods, which is all about the actual foods he believes make the ideal diet.
What I love about the book is that it doesn’t just stop at “this food has this nutrient, and this is why that’s good”. It explains why those nutrients are important, why we aren’t getting enough, and what the impact of industry and the environment has on these foods.
He explains the toll that food production places on the environment- how many resources are used to create a pound of meat vs. a pound of veggies, etc. I knew meat production made a big impact on the land, but I was surprised by just how much water and other resources went in to such production.
Brendan then goes on to explain how we can use whole foods to improve our health. He goes into great detail {understandable detail} on each of these components. It’s great to hear what he has to say about these foods, as he’s essentially used himself as a guinea pig over the years.
Brendan started down the road of whole food living when he suffered from adrenal exhaustion during his intense triathlon training. Through experimentation and research he discovered it wasn’t that he was training too hard- it was that he wasn’t recovering well enough. Recovery means rest, of course, but it also means proper fueling and energy. He talks about this a lot in his other books, and then includes some recipes using these principles.
Thrive Foods places the emphasis on the recipes part- it’s packed with 200 recipes, all plant-based, and all created from whole foods. The recipes in this book aren’t just Brendan’s though- he’s recruited recipes from well-known chefs and restaurants around the world, which adds a great dimension to the book.
Many of the recipes do look a little intimidating at first glance- there are things you may never have heard of or seen in the grocery store, like sacha inchi seeds and yacon syrup. These things are easily substituted, or give you the little nudge you need to experiment with something new.
Plenty of the recipes use common, everyday foods, just not always in a way you would expect. Dates become sweeteners and chia seeds become emulsifiers. Beans and quinoa turn into pizza crusts, and nuts become cheese.
There are a few complicated recipes mixed in with some delightfully simple recipes- like zucchini with marinara.
As I thumbed through the book I couldn’t decide what I wanted to make. Some seemed a little scary; others would require a trip to the health food store. But there were quite a few I could make with things already in my pantry.
I used this opportunity to make something I’d always meant to, but never had: chia pudding.
When you add water to chia seeds, magic happens and they thicken and almost gelatinize the water. This is what makes them such a great egg substitute. It also makes a great pudding base.
Along with some cashews, dates, and blueberries, this simple recipe packs a powerful nutrition punch.
The one thing I’m slightly discouraged about by the book is the number of recipes that require a more powerful blender than I own, and will probably ever own. I was immensely pleased when the recipe I chose required a blender, and mine worked perfectly well for the job!
Now that I have my first brave recipe experimentation down, I’m excited to try a few more, like pumpkin gnocchi, avocado pesto, and vanilla protein ice cream with caramel syrup.
When Brendan first started down the road of plant-based eating for optimal health, he was so encouraged by the results that he developed several products that would make it easy on others to eat the same way without as much work. You may recognize is product line: Vega. They make great protein powders and whole food powders, along with bars, etc. The powders make for great smoothie bases when you don’t feel like starting from scratch.
Have you read any of the Thrive books? Have you tried anything from the Vega line?
And help me pick a green crib on tiny sneakers!
Fun
I might have picked up a book or two for my upcoming vacation.
This might be only half of them.
You can find my list on Goodreads,my latest obsession.
What’s your favorite summer reading book?
books, Breakfast
Mm there’s something so comforting about MY version of oats 🙂 Even though I had oatmeal while I was gone, it just wasn’t the same 🙂 Today I enjoyed oatmeal and cottage cheese with cinnamon, nutmeg, walnuts, wheat germ, flaxseed, and creamy yummy PB.
Since my breakfast is nothing new I thought I’d give you a book review with your morning coffee (or tea, or milk, or juice…..)
As I told you, I took Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert on the plane with me. Even though I also had lots of magazines, I decided at the last minute to throw in In Defense of Food as well. (Good thing…I finished Eat, Pray, Love before I was half way through the 2nd flight!) First my thoughts on Eat, Pray, Love…I’ll save In Defense of Food for later because that’s just too much book for one post.
If you’re not familiar with it, Eat, Pray, Love is a personal account of one woman’s quest for happiness while traveling through Italy, India, and Indonesia. The book is divided into 3 sections, one for each country. I really enjoyed the section on Italy—I loved hearing about the different cities and all the vivid descriptions of her experiences with food. It kind of went downhill for me after that. I lost interest in the India section, mostly because it was all about meditation and sitting quietly for hours. The only thing more boring than sitting quietly for hours is reading about sitting quietly for hours. I don’t think I related well because I’m not into meditating- I’m just not good at it. If you have more patience for it than I do, you might enjoy this section, as she writes just beautifully. The last section on Indonesia was better than the previous section, but not quite as good as Italy. I could take it or leave it. I think I enjoyed how she said things rather than what she said. (I do have to admit here that I didn’t know Bali was in Indonesia—smack forehead here—good thing I figured it out though because later that weekend I met somebody going to Indonesia and I was actually able to have a decently intellectual conversation about it.)
The irony that I liked the “eat” chapter best does not escape me.
You could tell just from reading that the author has a very astute self-awareness. I loved where she was describing the differences between herself and her sister. She says all she ever wants to learn about something is the story, whereas her sister notices precise details. It reminded me that understanding how people “see” things can help you understand them all together- people pick up on different things because they have a different importance to them.
So I did appreciate the honesty in which the author shared her journey, the language she used to share it, and somewhat enjoyed following her on her path of self-revelation, but if I were Oprah I probably wouldn’t have thought about calling her.
One of my favorite pieces of advice from the book: “You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.”
