Daddy-Daughter Day

My breakfast

Yep.  This noise again.

I don't know WHY blogging my food works so well for me, but it does, so I'm going to try this again.

I've basically not been paying much attention to what I eat since Emily's birthday a month and a half ago, and  it shows.  I've been really tired lately (although that might just mean I need to have my thyroid meds adjusted...looking into that) and I am looking quite puffy.  As I've said before I almost never maintain my weight; I am always either gaining or losing so this is me trying to wrestle my constant weight change from the positive to the negative direction.  Again.

My morning was spent building forts and then keeping the occupants supplied with toys and beverages.

That is, until a fearsome sentry was posted at the entrance.

I did not end up getting hungry until almost 11, then it took me awhile to figure out what to have for lunch.  We have TONS of fruit and veggies obviously, but we were sorely lacking in the "stuff to help pull said fruits and veggies together into a cohesive meal or snack" category.  I eventually made myself a sadly low-protein sandwich.

  

I thought I'd be hungry again right away, but I guess there was enough protein in the Ezekiel bread to keep me full for a decent amount of time. 

Will decided he'd like some juice, and we had plenty of ingredients laying around, so I started the prep.

Super-mealy pears, a peeled lemon, carrots, assorted greens, some ginger, half a jalapeño

We ended up with tasty (if a little "earthy") technicolor juice, and lots of pulp.

 I drank the juice,

Then finally tried out Pure2Raw's pulp crackers recipe.  They turned out pretty tasty!  I was careful to take out the pulp for the crackers before I juiced the pears and lemon though because I thought that might make them taste a bit weird.  Maybe I'll try to leave them in next time.  I wanted to try them "normal" the first time, but having done that a bit of sweetness and tang would be an interesting addition.

Crackers + a blob of hummus

I always feel kinda guilty making juice.  It spikes your blood sugar to take in all those sugars without any of the insoluble fiber to balance it out!  It takes massive amounts of veggies and reduces them to a single cup of calorie-dense juice that won't keep you full for any time at all!  You have to drink it right away or else you lose all the nutrients!  It makes a GIGANTIC mess!  But there was no way I was going to eat (much less enjoy) all those bitter beet greens or mushy pears otherwise, and my dad was singing the praises of juicing to make nutrients more "available" the last time we were chatting, plus I WAS, after all, planning on eating at least some of the pulp so I figure there are pluses and minuses.  I don't plan to do a juice fast or anything like that so I gave myself permission to not feel guilty about this particular glass of juice.

This afternoon, Will took Emily on a "date" to see Madagascar 3.  I wanted to see it myself, but we gave Emily a choice of which parent would take her, and she chose Daddy.  Daddy was one happy guy, because I think this might possibly be the first time in her life that she has chosen Daddy for something like this.  He was SO happy in fact, that he bought her a second ice cream cone in as many days!  He said it was a date so they had to get ice cream (perhaps this is why I gained so much weight when we started dating).  For such a clean-eating Daddy who is so careful about what he feeds his kids, this was a big deal and it made me smile.  Emily has gotten better about allowing Daddy to help with things and do activities with her, but she's still usually a total Mama's girl.  Will is incredibly happy to be "chosen" to do more things with her nowadays, and I am more than happy to relinquish "only parent allowed to help or do anything EVER" status since she's kinda forced to do things with me during the week whether she chooses to or not anyway.  A break on the weekends is nice, and it warms the cockles of my heart to see their daddy-daughter relationship getting tighter :-)

While they were gone and Charlotte was napping, my toasty warm heart cockles and I did some dinner prep, kitchen cleaning, reading and snacking.

 

Fat-free plain greek yogurt, raspberries (both red and black), 6 chopped-up almonds, and a drizzle of buckwheat honey

The berries kind of reminded me of that black and red raspberry candy mix that I LOVED growing up.  The real berries were better though, because they didn't make my teeth hurt or have that weird bitterness that the candies always had.  Also the real ones probably won't give you diabetes. 

Later I was hungry again so I snacked on an apple with PB.  If we had had cinnamon it would've gone nicely on both snacks but alas, we are out :-(

I also had a babybel light because when Will and Emily biked back home from the movie theater they were baking hot and ready to hit the pool so we delayed dinner and went for a swim first.  We finally got Charlotte back to last summer's level of swimming proficiency this evening.  Every fall I tell myself that I'm going to somehow make sure they get to swim occasionally over the winter so they don't regress in their swimming skills, and every summer I wish I had followed through on the previous year's promise.  They catch back up quickly though.  Although I know kids (and adults for that matter) are never 100% safe around water, I will breathe a big sigh of relief AND get a lot more reading done at the pool once they're both capable swimmers without water wings.

Dinner was a version of Salad Niçoise, which is the most labor-intensive dinner masquerading as a "quick meal" ever.  Luckily I had been boiling potatoes and eggs and chopping and marinating asparagus here and there over the course of the day so it really did come together quickly when we got home.

Greens, sprouts, potatoes, egg, olives, tuna, an asparagus marinated in maple syrup/balsamic vinegar/grainy mustard

We replaced the traditional green beans with asparagus because thats what we had on hand, and added alfalfa sprouts because we are not purists and we felt like it.  I also realized once it was too late to start defrosting that we had actual tuna steaks in the freezer, which would have been preferable to canned, but oh well.  We always used canned tuna when I was growing up so it's the first thing I think to use.

It made me happy how much of this dinner was local...if only I could get an olive tree to grow in my yard, then I'd be set!  Well, I'd probably also need a coffee tree to be truly happy.  And a cocoa tree.  And, you know, an ocean with fish in it.  Damn this global economy that has gotten me addicted to so many things I can't possibly grow myself!