Weekend Highlights: Lots o’ Guac, PEEPS, and beginning spring cleaning

It was a pretty typical weekend for us, but with things skewed due to all of the stores being closed on Sunday for Easter. We didn’t do anything celebratory, but the weather was nice, so here are the highlights:

I LOVE the guacamole from Whole Foods. It costs probably too much money, but it is delicious and we always finish the entire container.

Oh, god, peeps…why are you so tasty? You’re so deliciously attractive (and gluten-free!!!), but all you do is punch me in the pancreas. Here’s a nice pic of the ingredient list. Horrid, but tasty.

Finally, I don’t have a picture for this, but the weather on Sunday was absolutely beautiful AND there were not enough airborne allergens to kill me. The windows were open, and I was able to get a lot of cleaning done that hasn’t been touched in months 🙂

WIAW – March 27

Breakfast: liver(!), bacon, mushrooms, onions, and a mix of squash, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. I also had orange juice with maca powder, a B vitamin supplement, and a cup of bone broth (not pictured).

My breakfast in the process of being cooked. I actually made this on Monday night and had it for breakfast yesterday as well.

Lunch: I forgot to take a picture! Crap. I had the same mix of squash, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, now topped with arugala, asparagus, mushrooms and a little shredded chicken. I also had some green tea with honey.

After getting my allergy shots, I did some dinner shopping at Whole Foods and left with some pumpkin seeds and a ginger kombucha for a snack. yummmmmmmm…

Dinner was a delicious bison steak (well, half of one) with bok choy, broccolini, and some awesome fermented veggies.

I bought the cabbage, beet, ginger, pear combo for my first try of wildbrine fermented veggies. They were amazing! I can’t wait to try the other combos.

 

What is your favorite kind of fermented veggies? 

 

Weekend Highlights: Chicken Thighs, Kitty Cuddles, and Snow!

I’m still on the mend from the nasty plague from which I have been suffering, and I feel a little better every day. The highlights this weekend were:

Sunday brunch of chicken thighs, bacon, sweet potatoes, and spinach. Eaten in bed with coffee from the french press.

Lots of kitty cuddles. Sunday was an all-pajamas-in-bed day, which made the cats (and us) very happy.

And, snow! What the heck, man? It was 50 degrees on Saturday!

Natural Healing – My 2 days in bed with a respiratory infection

It seems like everyone is sick right now–my coworkers, my girlfriend, even half of the bloggers I follow. When I woke up on Monday, I didn’t feel well, but I still went to work. I had a busy week to prepare for and couldn’t afford to miss a day. When I tried to sleep on Monday night, it was a disaster. I was too hot to sleep in the bedroom. I ended up sleeping in the coldest room in our house under a thin blanket, and I still had to stick my feet out because I was too hot (ok, so I always stick my feet out when I get too hot). I tossed and turned and flopped and occasionally slept.

When I tried to get up on Tuesday, I felt like death. A trip to the doctor landed me with a packet of antibiotics and the diagnosis of a sinus infection and an upper respiratory infection. Ugh. I have worked really hard over the last few months to get my gut health under control and I really did not want to upset that balance by taking an antibiotic. I made the decision that I would try 3 days of natural remedies, and if I was still sick, then it meant I really needed the antibiotic.

Here’s a peek at my treatment plan:

• Zinc supplements. I typically take a zinc supplement as a part of my “I got glutened” treatment plan (for a great post about this, check out this one by Amanda at Celiac and Allergy Adventures). But, in addition to it’s gut-healing properties, zinc is also a great way to support your immune system. Some studies have shown that high doses (75 mg) of zinc were able to shorten the length of the common cold by up to 42%. My supplements were 22 mg each, so I took between 44 and 66 mg each day for 3 days.  
• Vitamin C (but not at the same time as the Zinc). Most people can tell you that vitamin C is good for you and that you should consume it if you are sick. What I did not know was what dosage would be appropriate. Before I came down with “the plague , I happened to listen to this blog post about At Home Lab Testing on Dr. Lo Radio. In it, there was a great discussion about how vitamin C is used by every cell in the body and how much a person needs in a day (and how to determine your dosage). It turns out that an average person needs between 2 and 9 grams of vitamin C each day BUT ONLY if they are healthy. A person who is stressed or sick can require up to 10 times that dose. There is some additional information in the Dr. Lo podcast about the importance of a buffered (with minerals) vitamin C supplement, but I didn’t worry about this for a short-term high-dose. I managed to get in about 8 grams of vitamin C each day for 2 days, and 4-6 grams on the third day.
• Honey, lemon, coconut oil “tea”. Honey is anti-bacterial, coconut oil is anti-viral, and the hot lemon water is nice and soothing on a sore throat. When I went back to work on Thursday, I switched to hot green tea with honey for the same effect with a little caffeine boost.
• Soup with chicken broth. It would have likely been better with actual chicken in it, but it has been shown in a scientific study that chicken soup has a real effect on a cold.
• A steamy shower. Coughing up a lung does not feel nice. Kitchen Stewardship had a very timely post this week about treating pneumonia in toddlers. Now, there are NO TODDLERS in my house, but her advice was still appropriate for helping me clear out my lungs.
• Sleep! Go to bed and let your body take care of itself. I had to take two days off work and spend nearly all of that time in bed sleeping or resting (read: watching Jurassic Park or playing Jurassic Park on my iPad).

And the results? I felt well enough to go back to work on Thursday, and I feel even better today. I don’t really have a voice at the moment, but it is coming back slowly. The antibiotics are safely stored away for emergencies 🙂

 

What are some of your trusted natural remedies for colds and flu-like sicknesses?

WIAW – March 20

Welcome to “What I ate Wednesday – sickness edition”

I am on my second day of being stuck in bed with a nasty sinus and upper respiratory infection. Super gross.

Breakfast was a small portion of cauliflower potato soup.

By lunch time I had a craving for salmon, so I mixed a can up with some avocado and had a side of veggies. Sorry for the really ugly picture.

I snacked on some of these dried cherries, but tried not to have too many since they do have added sugar.

Dinner time…more soup! And broccolini. My photo won’t upload, but you get the idea 🙂

Weekend Highlights – Bacon, Coconut Crack, Maca, and New Water Bottle!

I had Friday off this week, which made for a relaxing and productive weekend. It’s too bad I can’t have 3 days for every weekend!

My first tasty accomplishment was to cook up a big batch of these bacon ends I ordered from US Wellness Meats. This is the best bacon ever. We now have bacon ready to go for breakfast and a whole lot of bacon grease set aside to cook with.

I also made these Coconut Crack bars, but in ball form. She is not lying at all by using the word crack. We ate all of the first batch and had to make a second…which we then demolished.

My new food adventure this weekend was to try maca powder in my smoothie. It has an interesting flavor. It worked really well in a berry smoothie and in a banana/pineapple one.

I also got a new water bottle, and it’s so cute!

WIAW – March 13

Today’s eats:

For breakfast I had some potatoes that we baked last night topped with a sample of crockpot chili, chicken, and a little bacon. Instead of coffee, I took a B-vitamin supplement.

I forgot to take a picture of my lunch! I had a big bowl of crockpot chili over some potatoes.

I had horrible sugar issues this afternoon. For a snack I ended up with orange juice and a Kind bar.

Dinner was portabello mushroom fajitas in lettuce and somewhere between 1 and 47 plantain crackers…

Weekend Highlights – Muse!, Rice!, and Opinionated Orange Juice

This weekend started out great with the Muse concert! It was an amazing concert. I ended up having to take a benadryl half-way through the show, thanks to the jerks who decided to smoke pot inside the venue.

Rice! My grain-day treat this weekend was this fabulous rice, chicken, and tomato dish made by my girlfriend. Yum 🙂

Opinionated Orange Juice. I bought the delicious combo pictured below while at the store on Saturday, and as soon as I grabbed it, I was offered the opportunity to take a survey and get a $10 gift card. So…I decided to give it a try. The lady conducting the survey was very nice, but I couldn’t provide her with any nice words about the product she was getting opinions on: low calorie orange juice. I made it very clear that I thought the product was disgusting and that I would never consider buying it. Sorry not sorry…ew sucralose.

This stuff is delicious. It is not sucralose swill.

WIAW – March 6

Here’s what I ate today…

I was running a little late this morning, so breakfast was smoked salmon and some steamed potatoes (which I ate on my way to work).

I barely remembered to grab a pic of lunch, but I had some cauliflower rice, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, asparagus, and onion.

For dinner I had cauliflower rice with roasted veggies (sweet potato, butternut squash, onions, mushrooms, red and purple potatoes) and broccolini.

And, snacks were candied ginger (yum!), a banana (not pictured), and chips (bad…).

 

I also had to sample some of my shipment from US Wellness Meats, which arrived today. This is the best beef jerky I have ever had.

Weekend Highlights: Farmer’s Market, Cabbage, and Dinosaurs!

I am really sad that the weekend is already over, but here are some of the highlights. We made a trip to the farmer’s market. This bunch of veggies was around $15–more than we normally spend, but those 3 zucchinis added up to over 5 lbs!

I also chopped up some cabbage and set it all up to turn itself into sauerkraut.

AND (the best part) I found this amazing DVD set for under $10! So, maybe I am the only one excited about the DVDs, but I’m ok with that 🙂