Three full boxes...

Since the turn of the new year, I have filled THREE big boxes with items that were just cluttering up our house. Things that I've kept for a variety of reasons but none that passed the 'Is it important to me? Do I want to move it again?' test. 

Today I cleared off the top of the refrigerator (and wiped it down - ick!), the top of the bookshelf, and the items that have taken up residence on the end of the kitchen island for lack of a better place to put them (like the KitchenAid mixer). 

I was pleased that despite coming home exhausted from another overnight double, A spotted the changes immediately and liked it! He didn't even see what I took out of the guest room closet but that's another story. 

I've now got a shelving system set up in the basement that holds only items to be donated or sold. When it gets full, out it all goes! 

I feel lighter already! Ahhhhhh.......

Onion recycling...

Several weeks ago, I had a yellow onion I didn't want to waste and we finished a jar of Claussen pickles. I hate pouring pickle juice out. When I was a kid, my sister and I used to argue over who got the last pickle and who got to drink the pickle juice at the end of the jar. I've matured and now realize that drinking the pickle juice, particularly from the EXTRA HUGE jars of pickles we get from the warehouse  club, is probably a tad too much sodium for one serving... so, despite a sip or two now and then, I just weep a little as I pour it down the drain. 

But not the last jar we finished! The coordination of the onion ripening plus the polishing off of the last pickles gave me a brilliant idea! So, when A wasn't looking, I sliced up the onion and tossed it in the pickle juice jar and pushed it waaaaay back in the refrigerator. I point out that he wasn't looking when I did this because a few days later, he reached waaaaay back in the fridge and grabbed the pickle jar. He then hollered to me in my office (just off the kitchen), "Uh, Love? Did you put ONIONS in the pickle jar?!?!" To which I responded with my long-winded explanation of waste etc. He's a good sport so he just pushed it waaaaaay waaaaay back in the fridge and opened a new jar of pickles. (I should mention that my dear husband quite despises onions in any form.)

Fast forward to today. I am back on my healthy eating plan (we will just gloss right over the last two months of a myriad of poor choices...) which means that I eat three meals and one snack a day plus unlimited veggie snacks. Having already had a "dirt smoothie" earlier in the day, I wasn't really into making another one. (Afterall, how much kale, cabbage, spinach, and fresh ginger can one be expected to consume in one day?) Not wanting to undo the last few days of healthy eating by pulling out the almond butter and a spoon but trying to satisfy the major after dinner snacking urge, I buried myself shoulders-deep in the refrigerator hoping the answer would be hiding in there. "Ah Ha. Onions!" I pulled them out and dished some into a bowl. They are amazing! The onions retained their crunch but lost their oniony bite and absorbed the garlicky goodness of the pickle juice. Crunchy, tasty, delicious!

I must point out that there are many other pickles out there but in my book, none rival Claussen pickles with their big chunks of garlic, peppercorns and other magical tasty spices in their divine pickle juice! Other pickles just won't do at our house anymore!

Dirt smoothie. Yum.

I got a NutriBullet for Christmas. I've had a MagicBullet for a few years... well... about ten years. However, it spent a few years among the missing. I was convinced that I had given it away and didn't bother to look for it. Then during a kitchen purge about two years ago, I found it buried waaaaaay in the deep recesses of the black hole in the lower corner cabinet. (Don't get me started on the total lack of efficiency with that cabinet!) Since then, I've used it pretty regularly and it's been great but it's too small. Once I get a scoop of protein powder and enough water in it, it barely has room to add in fruits and veggies so I asked Santa for the much larger NutriBullet... and remarkably, I got it! (He's so good and knows me so well! He also seems to have found the coupon and flier cutout that I left as a hint.)

Anyway... I've been playing with some recipes that I found. Because low carb works well for my body, I'm toying with some low carb smoothie recipes. 

Yesterday, during a day of pure slugdom where neither A nor I got out of our jammies alllllllll day, I made a low carb smoothie. It included kale, unsweetened almond milk, raw almond butter, cacao powder, and strawberries. I took a sip of it in the kitchen and immediately knew A wasn't going to like it. (Truth be told, if I smelled it while taking a sip, I wouldn't have drank it either!) When I returned to the living room, I passed it to A to put on the end table. On the way by, he snitched a sip and immediately got a horrified look and grabbed for the low carb toast on my plate to rid himself of the taste in his mouth. On a good day, I'm pretty sure he would have spit out the toast too but compared to the smoothie, he savored it like a delectable dessert. 

He had to work outside at a detail at work all day today and had to leave home at 5am so I offered to make him a smoothie for the morning. Oddly, he said no. Why? Because it tastes like dirt. Huh. Oh well. More for me. Lucky me. (Why can't honey be low carb?!?!)

Giving myself permission...

I was having a conversation with my mom the other day while sitting in my pajamas at noon with no intention to put on real clothes any time soon and I said "Gardening doesn't appeal to me because it's never finished. I prefer projects that have a point at which you know you are finished." I had been feeling something along these lines for a long time but had never found the words to go with it. And I didn't have the permission to back it up. Now I do. 

I realized, after saying  that out loud to my mom, that I've been beating myself up for my crappy looking gardens for a few years. I've wanted to be a gardener and at one point fancied myself a gardener but after returning to the same damned weeds year after year, I realize that this constant argument with the same weeds doesn't actually bring me pleasure. It brings me stress. It makes me feel like I'm letting down my neighbors by not having a tidier yard. It makes me feel like I'm letting down myself for not following through and for being lazy about the weeds. But then I look around... Give me an outdoor shower project or a new fence project or a patio-building project and I can throw myself into it and enjoy it (overall - maybe not in the moment of hauling patio bricks but overall...). Being able to put away the tools and know that it's DONE brings me the type of satisfaction that lasts for me. I don't feel defeated because three days later, I don't need to go back and fix the shower again. I feel the same way about cleaning my house. I'll organize all day long but cleaning just irritates me!

So I now realize that it's OKAY for me to have this preference! How freeing it is to recognize this and honor it! 

So far so good 2015!

New Year!

It's a new year. Here's what I've realized. New Year's "resolutions" aren't exactly my specialty. To-do lists of things I'm going to do or change etc tend to get derailed by that little thing called "life". So... here's my 2015 plan...

I want to feel good. Inside and out. That means that I will exercise when I can and forgive myself when I can't. I'll eat in a way that makes me feel good and when I don't, I'll give myself a break and get back to it as soon as I can. I want to feel productive and I will try to recognize that productivity comes in many forms. And I will make space in my life to just do nothing. Nothing is something when the rest of my life is so full and busy. 

The only "to-do" that I want to add to my list is to pare down what's in our home. There is too much stuff and if we plan to live in a smaller house some day, the stuff needs to go some time and now is as good as any to help it find another home. It might take all year but I really want to have far less stuff in our house by this time next year.