Christmas in February

I finally got around to developing and uploading some of our pictures from Christmas! See them all at my flickr page.

Emily in a turban

Emily in a turban
Originally uploaded by LacyLu42.

Emily's favorite Christmas gift. ;)

Grandma with hard cider

Grandma with hard cider
Originally uploaded by LacyLu42.

Grandma's favorite Christmas gift. ;)

Seth and Lacy

Seth and Lacy
Originally uploaded by LacyLu42.

Me and my nephew, Seth (5 mos) at Christmas in Las Cruces.

eat food

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Sounds pretty easy, right? Wrong.

I'm still trying to digest all the information presented in Michael Pollan's fascinating article Unhappy Meals from Sunday's NY Times Magazine and the information in his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Both are hard to summarize, because there's so much pertinent information contained therein, but Pollan's main recommendation is to stop fixating on nutrients and focus our diets more on whole foods.

But that's a lot easier said than done, at least for me.

Some people are super conscious of their appearance, always influenced by the latest fashion magazines and celebrities; I'm hyper-conscious of food, influenced by lifestyle magazines and celebrity chefs. I'm always thinking about food, reading about it, worrying about it, or eating it.

What to do, then, when Mr. Pollan tells me to stop worrying about getting enough protein with my carbs? To stop multiplying calories by grams of fiber? To toss my multi-vitamins?

Frankly, I would love to give up all these silly food affectations and obsessions that I've acquired over the years and return to a simpler lifestyle eating more healthful, whole foods. I tell myself this, and yet, I keep coming up against mental blocks when trying to implement it. (Am I really supposed to go back to full-fat butter instead of margarine??? It contradicts everything I've ever known!) Old habits die hard.

I'm not at a point in my life (financially speaking) where I can go through my kitchen and throw away anything with more than five ingredients, but even thinking about some of Pollan's assertions has me changing the way I'm thinking about food.

It may be a long row to hoe, getting to a place where I am truly living his mantra to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," but he's convinced me that it's an important step to take. Maybe I'm past the point when I need to analyze every single calorie that goes into my mouth. Maybe I'm coming to a place where the whole should be more important than the sum of its parts; rather than allowing it to be my whole life, maybe it's time to let food in general become just another part of the whole.

~*~

The Husband and I have started shopping at Wild Oats for our weekly groceries. Our goal was two-fold. First, as I've mentioned, we are operating on limited funds, so we've switched over to the envelope method of budgeting for things like groceries; we pulled out a hunk of cash at the beginning of the month for groceries, and we'll only be using that cash to pay for our food.

Second, we wanted to shop at Wild Oats because, after both reading Pollan's article, we were ready to take the plunge into buying more healthful, organic foods.

The Husband has a piece of paper and a pen and keeps a running tally of everything we put in the cart. The hardest part is figuring out fractions of a pound in the produce section! (Oh, rusty math skills! How you haunt me!) The first time we tried it, we made it through the store and realized we'd forgotten the turkey for a stew we were planning to make -- but we were already at our weekly budget. It was a really interesting exercise, going through the cart and putting back some of the things we'd picked up that weren't on the list, like ranch dressing, ready-made soup, sour cream.

It was also really challenging to only pick out foods that had only five ingredients or fewer. I found an organic raspberry jam with only five ingredients, and though the ranch dressing (that we eventually put back) had more than five ingredients, they were mostly spices. But that rule definitely ruled out a lot of things for us.

Overall, we spent just over $60 for a week's worth of food for two people, and I would estimate that 90% of it was organic whole foods: fruits, vegetables, meat, and milk.

This is actually a food revolution for me in and of itself. As soon as I start thinking about being frugal and keeping to a budget, my mind immediately turns to coupons and cheaper foodstuffs, but the whole idea is to eat better foods, and in this society, better means more expensive. It seems counterintuitive that we should be trying this now, at face value.

On the other hand, how long can we afford to eat the way we have been eating? Maybe the costs of that won't catch up to us for ten or even twenty years, but they will catch up.

We managed just fine on our self-imposed budget, and we got much better quality for our money. Better food, better health, better life. On a budget!

all you need is love

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone who observes.

I celebrated the day by driving to work in a snow storm, fighting the urge to eat ALL the Hershey's kisses in the break room, and then driving home in even heavier snow. When it snows, my 15-mile commute takes up to an hour, so it's big fun, as you can imagine.

But that wasn't all I did. I also got up early and made brownies from scratch at 6:30, and then, when I got home from work, cooked a nice dinner for my hubby -- with home made brownies for dessert. I also drank 1.5 glasses of a very nice champagne and watched an episode of Dr. Who that the Husband spend FIVE DAYS downloading (it wasn't entirely our dial-up's fault; he went to a coffee shop with free hi-speed and it went just as slow, so it was the connection on the other end that was the problem). We decided to make each other gifts this year. I'm making him an afghan, but it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would.

But! Thanks to our lovely and generous parents, we will also be able to treat ourselves to a nice date this weekend. Thank you, parents!

I'm kind of glad we didn't buy into the hoopla this year. We made cards for each other and for our families, we made our gifts, and we made our nice dinner, and it was really lovely. And really, who needs a special occasion to say, "I love you?" Just last week, I came home to find those very words taped to the hanging ball in the garage that I use to tell me where to park, and it was way more special than any store-bought card or dozen roses could ever have been.

2007 book list -- january update

Finished Books:

or Cancel

• Twilight—Stephanie Meyers
• The Golden Compass—Philip Pullman
• 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them—Ronald B. Tobias
  
• Peter and the Starcatchers—Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson
  

Books to Read:

• Darkside—Tom Becker
  *Darkside* -- Tom Becker
  

  or Cancel

• Making a Literary Life—Carolyn See
  *Making a Literary Life* -- Carolyn See
  

  or Cancel

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma—Michael Pollan
  *The Omnivore's Dilemma* -- Michael Pollan
  

  or Cancel

• The Subtle Knife—Philip Pullman

Books Started, but Not Finished:

• The Last Dragon—Silvana de Mari
• Traveling Mercies—Ann Lamott
  *Traveling Mercies* -- Ann Lamott
  

  or Cancel

• The Plot Thickens—Noah Lukeman
  *The Plot Thickens* -- Noah Lukeman
  

  or Cancel

• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People—Stephen Covey
  *The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People* -- Stephen Covey
  

  or Cancel

• Living the Seven Habits—Stephen Covey

And it's already no.1 on Amazon.com

The seventh Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows will be released on 07/21/07.

I think it's a shame they couldn't have bumped it up by two weeks so that the seventh book would be released on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the twenty-first century.

Don't you agree, Em?

the wind chill was forty-below overnight...

I would like you to stop whatever you're doing for the moment. Close your eyes. (OK, that was silly, you can't read a blog and close your eyes at the same time...)

Now, imagine what a wind chill factor of thirty degrees below zero feels like.

I can tell you exactly what it feels like, because I was out in it this morning. I will tell you that things that are electronic, like garage door keypads, do not function in that kind of cold. That's right: I couldn't get my car out of the garage this morning, because the door would not open. I had to go back upstairs and trade keys with the Husband and take his car.

The liquid crystals in his radio display were frozen. I kid you not, people. I am lucky we have new cars/batteries that the thing would start at all.

Imagine now, if you will, your illustrious host (me), ankle deep in snow drifts, bundled up as much as possible, brushing three inches of snow off of the Husband's car. Imagine me, then, getting into the car and having to sit on my hands for at least two or three minutes to stop the terrible pain from the cold.

Lesson? Thicker gloves.

Now, stretch your minds a little further and picture the little silver Scion going 7-15 mph on the highway which has not yet been plowed, along with all the other morning traffic. Imagine her going 15 mph for an hour -- even I can do the math to tell you that's how long it takes to travel the 15 miles from our house to my work. Imagine me being half an hour late to work.

Good times.