A new kind of sushi

Tonight I made the most yummy sushi ever! And no it wasn't fried.

I added this "alternative" cheese Natalia gives a recipe for in her Raw Food Detox Diet book.

It was so good, I forgot to take a picture.

I started with quinoa. I made a 1/2 cup and it made 2 sushi rolls.
I cooked the quinoa with veggie broth. NOT just any veggie broth, Imagine brand veggie broth. I am NOT a fan of Pacific brand veggie broth. Cook your rinsed quinoa for about 15 minutes, like you would rice and voila! YUMMY, flavorful quinoa.

Next, I made my "alternative" cheese. (Middle Eastern Nut Cheese pg. 117)

3tbsp pine nuts
3 tbsp macadamia nuts
3 tbsp walnuts
Juice of 1 1/2 lemons
1/3 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 clove garlic
7 dash's Bragg's Liquid Aminos
Dash of soy sauce-preferably the gluten free brand(s)

Blend until smooth. I tried using my Blendtec, but to no avail. I finally had to pull out the mini food processor.

I then placed this concoction in a zip lock and cut off the tip for easy squeezing down the middle of the sushi.

Last, I made sure I had my avocado, spicy "tuna" (red pepper), and cucumber ready to put on there.

With my quinoa (cooled and sprinkled with rice vinegar), "cheese", and other condiments, I was ready to roll these sushi and make me some dinner!

It turned out awesome. If you need tips on sushi or how to make a veggie spicy tuna go here.

But before I ate every last morsel of these sushi rolls, I had a yummy butter lettuce salad. I topped it with tomatoes and the easiest yummiest dressing.

First, get a plastic container with a lid, pour in about a 1/4 cup of EVOO, add a few tbsp of balsalmic and this is the kicker, add about a 1/4tsp of salt. Put the lid on and SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE! WOWZERS! Something about that salt just takes it up a bit! Pour a bit on your salad and dig in!

My Smith's, which is really Kroger and/or Fred Meyer had butter lettuce on sale today! So, it being Jordan's and I's favorite lettuce, I stocked up. Yep. Bought four of those bad boys today. SOOOOOO GOOD. And once again, didn't snap a pic because it was in my belly faster than, well, butter lettuce? :)

I also am so happy to be back at this again. To say I was "on track" over the summer would be a GROSS exaggeration. I feel so good, whether I lose more weight or not. So happy to be finding more healthy recipes. Tonight Jace ate an entire roll of sushi and Kenzie ate bits of the sushi torn apart. It was amazing.

Now to get Sean to realize fruits and veggies are good for him...

I'm back. For good.

If you didn't notice I completely failed my last cleanse, like TOTAL FAILURE! One week into it I couldn't do it. So I had to stop. Ginger said I was doing my body more harm than good when I had so many negative emotions I was working on.

I'm sure even some of you are going to be like WHAT? She cleanses and does these weird things, cause we are probably new friends and you didn't realize weight loss and sticking with something is a difficult thing for me.

Well, I have a few things to post. I haven't known how I was going to word this re-entry post in to my blog.

I feel like a sinner asking for forgiveness and not knowing how to go about it. So I'm just jumping in.

The last 9 months of my life have not been the happiest, most peaceful in my life. Some you may be thinking, "Oh whatever you just went to Europe, rough life". Well, thankfully, I had that to look forward to. It's been really dark in my head and I've had to really dig deep and figure out what and who I am going to be.

Some of you may be like, "Well, tell us, tell us what has been happening." And all I can say is...

Wouldn't you like to know! :)

I just can't. So, to begin I realized at the end of April after three months of crying every day, that something was not right and I needed help. So, off to a counselor I went. And what did she suggest?

An Antidepressant. Shocking, I know. So to get an anti-depressant I had to go to a Dr. to get a prescription. At this point I realized I think I'm about as low as I've ever been in my life. So I knew I needed something. Crying every day is NOT normal in case you're wondering. LOL.

Then I had the wonderful opportunity to tell a complete chauvinist of a Dr. my tale and why I felt like I needed an anti-depressant. Unfortunately, depression and anxiety run in my family, and so I was aware of anti-depressants that have helped my family. He suggested one of those would be great. I got my prescription and after two days of taking it, threw it away. Now you may be wondering why in the world would someone do that!? Well, I remember a very special person in my life telling me, "I think everyone could use some extra serotonin." Well she is right! That is what most anti-depressants are made of, except they are a man made form of it.

I realized two days into taking Prozac, yah!, that I was going to get addicted to it. The dr. also gave me a drug that is similar to how people drink a glass of wine to take the edge off, which was HIGHLY addictive. I realized me and my addictive personality and these drugs were going to turn me into something I had worked really hard to not turn into. I saw myself 10 years from now looking for drugs, being that person addicted to prescription medications. I threw everything in the garbage and went to the internet!

I went to amazon.com and typed in serotonin in the search bar to see if there was an all natural form of the drug, aside from getting it in my meat, cheese, etc, which I have greatly limited in my life over the past couple of years. Well low and behold I found this!

This may help YOU! It may not. But I felt I had an obligation to let others know how this has really helped me.

I have been so much better since taking this. I also increased my magnesium and all my other vitamins by 3x for the first month or so, to ramp up my bodies deficiencies. Whenever your body is under stress, ie exercise, work stress, kid stress, whatever stress it might be, your body burns through minerals like crazy! And since most of our food is deficient in minerals, all of our bodies are screaming for minerals! I took 9 pills of my cal/mag/d vitamin a day. That was 1800mg of calcium, 600 mg magnesium, and 1800 IU's of vitamin d, along with my daily vitamin and the other supplements I take.

I finally felt better. Nothing was getting done in my house unless it was ABSOLUTELY necessary until I started taking care of myself with all of this. I stopped ripping everyone's heads off. I could finally think clearly and get things done. I could make a list of what needed to get done that day, instead of wandering around the house and nothing getting done. I got done more the first few days of taking this serotonin than I had the past few months.

*This is not easy to say, but here it is. I hope it can help someone. I feel strongly that antidepressants are VERY useful for a majority of the population, but I felt I could use an alternative. Please talk with your DR. before stopping your anti-depressant or starting this all natural serotonin.

Next, I started making my own all natural deodorant! LOVE IT!!! If you'd like the recipe message me and I will get it to you. :)

Lastly, I had a friend ask to do a juice fast/cleanse.

Starting tomorrow, the juice fast begins and then on Thursday her and I will begin a cleanse. If you are interested in doing one or both of these, let me know! :)

Much love and thanks for letting me get myself right!

Day 5 Is over

Had some rather strong cravings yesterday and today. Must push forward. My strongest was for Chick fila. I couldn't tell if it was for the food, or my friends in Nashville...still deciding.(Have I mentioned how much I miss Nashville?) Not just my friends. I miss everything, the weather, the incredibly beautiful landscape, that heat, the accents, the kind and friendly people, Publix, Nashville Zoo (even though I lost Sean there, opps), the red dirt, cotton fields-have you ever seen a cotton field, you haven't lived until you see one and pick some cotton, magnolias, lightening bugs that you catch in a jar,

the storms-wowzers, the cardinals, the blue jays, the incredible homes, the diversity, the southern gentlemen and ladies, the amazing city of Franklin(probably the cutest and quaint place EVER), okra-fried, a no no I know, but oh it's so good!, historic Civil War along the roadside, driving to Huntsville and the beauty of it, and oh my gosh I could go on and on. And I won't for your sake! haha

With all of us having strep and me with a cold, I couldn't wait for today to be over. I'm going to bed soon.

I had a very yummy salad, which was nice. Maybe my taste buds are working again in that department. Just mixed greens, romaine, tomato, cucumber, yellow pepper, and red onion. I poured 1 lemon juiced over it with 1 tsp stone ground mustard and a few drops of liquid stevia.

Dinner was one of my frozen cauliflower pizza crusts. It was divine, and so easy. The kids had whole wheat spaghetti for dinner. It was an easy breezy night. Jordan has been gone all day, so I needed it easy.

I think the most important thing I have learned when doing a detox is to keep it simple for meals. I am also not experimenting as much as I did with the first 30 day cleanse. That is why I made a list of meals back on Saturday. I tried to get at least 15, so all I would have to do is plan on eating each meal twice. EASY! So doable when you approach it like that right? And, like this week, if I feel like pizza twice, so be it! It is ok on the cleanse. LOVE THAT! :)

And lastly, I have the puffiest face ever. Lack of sleep and enlarged mucus membranes in my head. It is truly lovely. I really do not ever get sick, so this is making me nuts! Back in the day, I caught every cold and sickness that came through my house. NOT any more. Rarely do I get sick, so I guess this is my once a year cold.

Wear it and take it like a champ, Nat, I say. 

Cheers!

My day ended better than it began

Just a rough day. Detoxing, I'm sure, although I can't tell what is a cold/allergy symptom or detox symptom. I've never had allergies, so this is new. I was rather grumpy last night and today. But after lunch, the kids I went to the sand park, they played and I read the Ensign. Much needed. My heart is so happy when I see this thing in the mailbox. I know that sounds so Molly Mormon, but seriously, I need it. I need it!

Today, I accidentally fell asleep while Kenzie was watching Bubble Gubbies and the boys were...somewhere. Oh my gosh, bad mother moment. I just keep praying that the Lord will please watch over them. The past few days I haven't been very vigilant. I just feel so crappy. My nose is a faucet too which is no fun, and now it's extremely sore. I need to stop whining.

Ok. So dinner was sushi. I had a yummy salad before, just greens, tomato, avocado, and cucumber with Rice Vinegar. A friend posted about using just vinegar and I wanted to try it. And well it was awesome and easy. So you don't have to get fancy with dressings to enjoy your salad.

My sushi was very simple. Roasted red pepper strips in sirachi sauce, avocado, sprouts, and cucumber strips. It was super hot but it was good. I ate a lot of avocado tonight, probably two. I just wanted it!

Finished off with some chocolate.

Put my kids to bed.

I'm to bed.

Peace out!

A few of my favorite things

I know there are many skin products out on the market and I've tried a lot. But I've never had a skin care product literally heal my skin in one night!

For example I will get a few zits, and I'll pump two squirts, maybe, onto my hands at night and rub this magic into my skin, and literally they will be gone! I love it! It's all natural, smells really good and is seriously amazing! I started using it in February and have LOVED it!  Go here to read all about it!

Secondly, I cannot say enough about taking probiotics. Whether it's Kombucha, a pill form, saurkraut or raw kefir your body needs living good bacteria to do all your dirty work. If you are constipated, you are not getting enough probiotics.

Straight off amazon.  But it is cheaper technically to buy in the store cause you can open the package and on the lid of the box is a $3 off coupon! SCORE!

I suggest taking a pill form of Garden of Life Probiotic twice a day, morning and night.

And then at night taking magnesium oxide. Magnesium oxide is safe in low doses, so don't think more is better with this product, cause it ain't! It creates water in your bowels and helps to move things along. And why isn't this great in large doses? Well, let me tell you I decided a while back if a little of this product was good a lot more would be even better (against Kimberly Snyders suggestions in her book The Beauty Detox), and I believe my backache that night and next day was because my kidneys were over taxed and every ounce of water was pulled out of my body to create water in my bowels. I learned to follow the suggested dose. haha

This is the variety I use.

I suggested this to a friend back in January, and not knowing she followed my advice for more than a week, haha, told me in April what a huge difference it had made with her constipation. She was eating a ton of fiber and still very constipated. So technically fiber is not always what pulls your poo out, especially if you are VERY backed up, which honestly, 90% of Americans are!

Kombucha, ahhhh, I love this stuff. And literally could not get enough of it today. I made a batch for myself this morning and then while at Good Earth picked me up some strawberry. Yum yum. Then came home and made some more.

And for my little Kenzie Lou, who is now on an antibiotic my efforts to help her little body come in twice a day two little pink pills. They are a chewable probiotic I usually buy it at Sprouts or Good Earth. I store them in the fridge with my probiotic. It is so good for her, especially to help keep good bacteria in her gut and to hopefully avoid a yeast infection after this round of antibiotics.

I finally felt like some juice around 2pm, which is super late for me. I'm really enjoying this cleanse because it's the first time when it's time to eat I'm hungry but not starving and crazy!

Tonights dinner was, well, not something I should have been eating. Opps. I'm a ding dong. No nuts on this cleanse and didn't realize that till tonight when I looked at the chart to post to the group. Oh well. It was properly combined but a little on the heavy side. So no more of the curry.

It was massaman curry with cauliflower rice and I had my salad before too. Yummy! And then decided it would be fun to have the family have some healthy chocolate cake. The kids LOVED it and so did I! I doubled the recipe. It is here.

Another victim

Yes, today I found out Kenzie has strep. This, as she was bouncing around the doctors office, jabbering to herself and us about who knows what. I said to the doctor,"I'm not sure she has it. She had one night where she felt really hot and woke up a couple times but that was it! And other than that she's pretty happy. Every so often she freaks out but she's been ok."

Apparently, strep hits kids different than adults. So now we both are on antibiotics. Man, I haven't had this much strep since college, haha! I may be revealing some things about me with that sentence.

I still had trouble swallowing today and feeling really weak. I did my WINCO run to stock up for the week.

And then what do you do when you can't take a nap cause you have two wild men running around your house? You make a diorama. I know, you wish you would have thought of that. HA!

I wish I could admit that Jace contributed more to this diorama, but really it was a mom-orama, with Jace glueing occasionally and helping to cut. He left half way through and when he came back he said, "mom, why did you finish it without me?"-Well, son, cause you took off and it's due tomorrow.

my mojito...it was a little strong on the mint. But pretty good!

AND, I realized about halfway through making this thing, that the bird is, I believe, an Eagle, instead of a Peregrine Falcon. What little kindergartners don't know WILL NOT hurt them! So, this little craft project kept my mind and hands and stomach busy.

And what do you do if you start dinner at 4:00pm(This is probably early to most people but not for me on nights I'm planning on making cauliflower pizza crust)? You get inventive with your cauliflower rice that needs to be squeezed. I actually think this is very smart.

Excuse me while I toot my horn. Toot Toot.

So the rice is smokin' hot coming out of the boiling water (duh, I know) but I need to get pizza's cooking so I had to think of something quick. And voila! Use another strainer to push the water out of the towel covered cauliflower rice and no burned hands! It worked really well. So you should try it.

Step 1. Pour boiling cauliflower rice into towel covering a strainer. Place edges of towel over cauliflower rice.

Take second strainer and put on top of toweled cauliflower rice. And push down. Again and again, until very little liquid is coming out.

This is the end result, dry, cooked cauliflower rice.

Also, if you are going to take the time to make cauliflower pizza, please, please, PLEASE, make a second one! It is so laborious and you are already doing all that work, just double it up.

Tonight I tripled it. I had one HUGE pizza for in the future, and two small ones. I ate one of the small ones and the other two were wrapped in tinfoil and put in the freezer.

You MUST try this pizza! It is so yummy!!!!

Salad with sprouts! Yum.

So I let it sit a bit long on the pan, and it got kind of mushy. so this is like a pizza omelet, or something.

So I ate my typical salad first with the kids while they ate their pizza. And the about 6:30pm, yes 4pm to 6:30pm, I finally ate my pizza. Hence why I say I got a late start tonight.

I finished my evening with some dark chocolate and a nice HOT epsom bath. I love hot baths. The hotter the better. I think it runs in my family. ;)

Night.

First day and all I can say is: interesting

You know that feeling when you wake up in the middle of the night and you think, dang, I'm getting sick.

Well, that was last night for me.

My throat hurt so bad and it was only on one side, my left lymph node. WEIRD. Went to bed totally fine and feeling good, the rest of the night, not so good. Kenzie woke up oh, I lost count at 4 times. I hope she doesn't feel sick, hence the constant waking. And then my stinking throat hurting kept me tossing and turning.

So I didn't run today. I feel achy and tired and well, just tired.

But I'm on a cleanse and well, this stupid sore throat thing ain't going to get me down!

So I woke up, and quickly made as much juice as I could, about 50 oz. and drank that while getting three children ready, myself too, and feeling so yucky. It wasn't a fun morning, have I said that yet?

We had a dr. apointment for Sean at 10am, Jace to school by 9:15am, drop books off at the library, then swing through the Post Office and drop off a letter, and on my way down Main street see if I can figure out who my Dr. is at the one building since I can't remember his name, so I can call and try to get in and see someone!

Well, I have strep after that ridiculously long explanation. Don't know how or where I got it and as far as I know I am the only one with it in our family.

So here I am, typing, starving, and hardly swallowing my juice cause it hurts. This could probably be the easiest first day I've ever done since food is unappealing and drinking hurts. My tummy is so hungry and all I want to do is chug some liquids down this hatch and I can't. So I've decided I better prepare for tonight's dinner. I did this cleanse kind of last minute, so I planned on a meal I knew I had the ingredients for. Omelets. I hope I can eat them and not be in pain.

You can omit the butter and use coconut oil, no problemo!

I also need to eat a salad tonight, which actually really scares me right now since my throat hurts. I'm thinking romaine, tomato, cucumber, red onion...and a yummy easy dressing. Like half a lemon juiced, 1 tsp of stone ground mustard and some liquid stevia.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Post 4:00pm when the above was written.

The antibiotics must be working cause I can now swallow and drink much more easily! Yes!

So I made my salad and omelet as listed above but only finished about half of each as my appetite was NO WHERE TO BE FOUND! haha. I've been lying around rather lazily and decided I'd have some dark chocolate. It was yummy. But again, didn't feel like it either. So I think I'm done trying to eat food today. Haha.

I can't get these pictures to move...dang.

All I keep telling myself is strep is better than lice...oh my, that was AWFUL! HAHA! I love you person I went through that with!!! I LOVE YOU! xoxo