Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Primal Tasty Dessert – Coconut milk with berries

As I mentioned in my last post, I have the occasional ice cream cravings.  I AM a hot-blooded American woman for crissake.  Well, I’ve discovered a pretty tasty, primal-aligned alternative.  I’ve been defrosting frozen organic berries, mixing them with fresh-sliced kiwi and copious amounts of coconut milk, freezing it until it’s slushy, and then eating the heck out of it.  It’s SUPER delicious, at least if you love coconut milk and berries.  If you don’t like those things, you will not like this dessert.  I really, really love coconut milk.  I need to move to Hawaii so I have access to more coconut products.

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Biphasic Sleep, or Why I wake up at 3AM

For the past few weeks I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night.  I’m usually awake for an hour or two, but I usually fall back asleep until I need to wake up for the day around 5 or 5:30.  This pattern has been starting to frustrate me, as it sometimes makes me tired in the afternoon.  And, as anyone knows who works in a cubicle at an office job, sleepy afternoons = sugar cravings & trips to the vending machine.

I ran across this post on MarksDailyApple.com this morning, though, that made me look at this sleep cycle in a different way.  Evidently, it was common for our ancestors to wake up in the middle of the night.  This hour of wakefulness was used for meditation and contemplation.  I love this quote from the article:

Robert Louis Stevenson liked the idea, too. Sleep historian (awesome-sounding job!) Roger Ekirch writes of Stevenson who, in the fall of 1878, while trekking through the French highlands on foot, alone, made a remarkable discovery. As anyone who backpacks or spends time outdoors will corroborate, Stevenson found himself drifting off to sleep shortly after sunset. He awoke around midnight, smoked a cigarette, and, only after “enjoying an hour’s contemplation,” fell back asleep. That hour, that “one stirring hour” moved him; Stevenson had never before experienced a “more perfect hour.” He had awoken not because of an interloper, a night terror, or any other external actor, but because of what he later described as a “wakeful influence [that] goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere” and is unknown to “those who dwell in houses.”

Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/biphasic-sleep/#ixzz1vyifI7dM

The article goes on to say that like most things, perception affects your reality, or makes your new reality.  If, instead of getting frustrated and worked up about the 2 or 3AM wakeups, you view it as an opportunity to relax in a different way, the interruption in your sleep can actually be a good thing.

I’m going to have to try this approach when I wake up tonight at 3AM again.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Ad Hoc Veggie Salad

I bought a bum bag of organic salad mix this week.  It did not look appetizing for lunch, so I just pulled everything tasty looking out of the fridge and chopped it up.  Here’s what went into the lunch salad:

Half-can of tuna, 1 hard boiled egg, a couple pieces of cauliflower, a few broccoli florets, a carrot, 1/2 a stick of celery, 1/3rd an avocado. I diced up all of that and added some avocado oil, 1/2 T of apple cider vinegar, copious amounts of salt and pepper and turmeric, stirred it all up and nom nom nom.  You can see a picture in my Instagram feed to the right.

In fact, it was so tasty that I repeated it for supper, less the tuna & egg and plus grilled chicken.  Very delicious.  I couldn’t eat it all, and I’m already looking forward to tossing the whole leftover mess into the frying pan tomorrow morning with some coconut oil for breakfast.

On Sunday I spent maybe 45 minutes cutting up cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, & celery.  I feel bad using a bunch of plastic bags for this, but it makes life sooooo much easier during the week.  Plus, as Tim says, we’ve already done our part to protect the environment by not having kids.  Anyway, I take a baggie to work with me too, and instead of hitting the vending machine for a Take 5, I hit the fridge for some carrots.  It really helps stave off the cravings.