Energy Day 16 - 20: catching up

Whoops, as the month goes on I'm slipping on posting about my energy quest, just like back in October with the yoga thing. I shall now attempt to recap the past five days and then resume somewhat normal updates. Almost really for sure probably I will, because my bf is going to be out of the country for the rest of the week so I'll be bored and won't have anyone to talk to.

Thursday:
Saw a documentary called "King Corn" about how most corn is grown, what is done with it and how it's in darn near everything. Decided not to eat anything made with corn for 30 days. This is hard because it's not just Fritos (which now I'm suddenly craving every day even though I don't normally even eat them) and corn on the cob and corn bread and corn tortillas, there is also fructose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, vegetable oil that is made with corn and other sneaky stuff. I'm just glad I don't eat any animal products, since most animals eat corn (even factory farmed fish) so eating animal products looks, at the molecular level, the same as eating corn itself.

I was worried the mustard in the sandwiches I've been eating lately would have corn syrup, but instead the bit of sweet in it is from honey, which reminds me honey is not generally considered vegan, but I ate it anyway and hopefully those particular bees weren't pollinating any corn. I don't think so because corn only needs wind to pollinate itself.

We were supposed to have wheat grass juice this day, so we went to Jamba Juice before the gym but they were sold out...all they had was a shaggy, sad looking patch of hacked at grass behind the counter. We got smoothies instead, mine was the pomegranate paradise. It wasn't very good and I was worried about what might be in it. On the menu they aren't very forthcoming with the ingredients. I finally managed to find the REAL ingredient list for the pomegranate paradise and basically the main ingredient is apple and pear juice from concentrate. I think I'll stick to making my own smoothies with fresh pomegranate seeds in them!

Since we didn't have wheat grass and neither one of us liked our smoothies, we decided to go get burritos again. I'm sort of questioning the wisdom of not just getting out of the gym in the evening and promptly ordering a burrito the size of a small child, but of doing it over and over again. And, I'm hoping nothing in the burrito contains corn...like, the tortillas could be made with vegetable oil that is made with corn.

Friday:
I was going to go to the gym. No really! But about 5pm I suggested we make dinner at my bf's place instead. He countered with "let's go out to eat". Well hmmm...I could go work out at the gym OR I could go out to eat...that's a tough one. The toughest thing about it is picking out which restaurant to go to. We decided to go to a restaurant in Hayward that has a little wine bar built into it. This was good because we want to visit every wine bar in the bay area. We've probably been to over a dozen now, so that's only about 345,973 to go.

I should have known I'd had too much wine about the time we started planning our own lounge act, with me agreeing to learn how to play the piano so we could do this, and picking out suitable locations where we could just sort of start playing whether the owners liked it or not. I didn't catch the clue, though, and when we got home I actually had a fourth glass of wine.

Saturday:
I wanted to die. Curse that fourth glass of wine. Damn it to hell! But you know, at least I started my day with fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, courtesy of my bf who went to Costco and bought a large wheelbarrow full of grapefruits and various other large boxes of stuff that are now taking up vast amounts of space in his kitchen. I'm so sweet I'm willing to take some grapefruits and maybe some more pomegranates off his hands if he needs to be able to get to his kitchen door or use the counters.

My sweet bf also made pumpkin waffles with maple syrup and blueberries. I must say, pumpkin waffles are MUCH BETTER when you don't feel like you want to die. I spent the rest of the day recovering by napping and continuing my Stargate marathon, so as far as having ENERGY goes...well, actually I did pretty good there because what I was trying to do was horde up my energy for Sunday so I'd be ready to go wine tasting.

Sunday:
Sundays we occasionally go to Livermore for wine tasting and for brunch at Wente. For some reason my bf, the guy who ate the same flavor of oatmeal every morning for 20 years, wanted to try a new restaurant. In the past, finding a new restaurant has often involved using my iPhone to look up nearby places on Yelp to get an idea of whether we might like them and what they serve, however, ever since I spilled grapefruit juice on my phone it only works when plugged into a computer. Basically, my cell phone has now become a land line phone but still with the expensive cell phone monthly fee.

So instead, we used the gps to find a restaurant. This is not the best way to do it for two reasons.
1.) The settings on the gps allow you to choose "all" restaurants or choose based on type of food. To choose by type is confusing because we just want a good restaurant and we don't know if that's going to be american, french, italian...not to mention so many restaurants these days don't fit in a good category, like they might be pan-asian-california-cuisine and there is no category for that. So one is forced to view "all" restaurants, which will also list every Arby's, McDonalds, Subway, Dairy Queen, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell, Carl's Jr., In & Out Burger and etc. It makes it very hard to find the restaurants that serve real food. The gps needs a category that is "everything but fast food".
and
2.) Just seeing the name of a restaurant doesn't really tell you much about it, certainly not whether it's good or bad or if you're going to find something you like on the menu or if they're open or ANYTHING. It's only a name.

We settled on a greek restaurant. I'm not sure if we really understood it was greek before we went in. I didn't anyway. We ended up having one of the worst sandwiches ever. So bad I decided to just eat my fries. Then I started to wonder if the fries were fried in vegetable oil probably made from corn and I decided it was very likely, so I didn't eat those either. Thank goodness for the hummus, at least that was good.

So then yadda yadda we went to some wineries that we'd never been to before and it really seemed like we made some good choices and Livermore is so much more relaxed and uncrowded compared to Sonoma or Napa. The people are nice and one guy even gave us a barrel tasting, which was pretty cool.

Eventually we ended up at the one winery we always go to when we go to Livermore and we got the owner and his gf to go out to dinner with us. I think they are starting to feel very comfortable with us because we went to an italian restaurant where they ordered pina coladas. The wine maker had a pina colada. Isn't that against some kind of rule or something?

Monday:
What did I do Monday? Oh yeah...another Stargate marathon. Hey, it won't be long now and I'll be done with Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis...I'm in the home stretch. Can't slow down now!

Did I have energy? You know, I actually did I just wasted it. I decided I should learn to knit. Or more like re-learn to knit, since I once at least knew how to make a scarf. I had knitting needles and a knitting basket and I made a kick-ass scarf for myself that of course I lost just like I lost my mad knitting skillzzzzz (and by mad knitting skillzzzzz I mean I could knit one stitch and didn't know how to actually finish off the piece.) I'm trying to assemble the things I need in order to start relearning to knit again and I think it could have been a great thing to do while watching 15 seasons of Stargate plus several Stargate made for tv movies, but I'm not waiting for my supplies to do that, so it'll have to wait for the Battlestar Gallactica marathon.

Tuesday (today!):
The winemaker and his gf called and wanted to have dinner with us again. I figured it must be because of all the very intelligent web 2.0 stuff I had to say to them on Sunday. I was spouting techo-babble and telling them how to create a dynamic CMS site like the biggest, smartest geek you ever heard. Or at least so I thought after visiting four wineries in under three hours. Since this time they never asked me once about their site, I'm now thinking my brilliant techno-babble was what triggered the winemaker saying "I'm tired!"

We had a fun evening, even though I had to tear myself away from scanning stuff in for FaceBook. I didn't quite get my 7-8 hours sleep the night before, but my energy was still decent, still drinking grapefruit juice and matcha smoothies, and I even did a few loads of laundry which I hate, hate, hate (though I must admit it's nice to have all my favorite clothes clean...)

Alright, I think there's just time for an episode of Stargate before bed...

Twitterfox

I just learned about Twitterfox today. Twitterfox is a Firefox browser plug-in that allows you to make and send Twitter tweets right from the bottom of your browser instead of going to the Twitter site. When you receive them, you're notified via pop-up immediately. Because it's separate from Twitter, you don't have to choose it on Twitter as the method you want to get tweets, but the plug-in will go check your Twitter account on your behalf.

Of course, Twitter is designed to be easy to update via IM, website or cell phone, but Twitterfox is the easiest of all. Also, the person who created Twitterfox also created TwitterFon for the iPhone...got to give that a try although my iPhone has never properly recovered from the grapefruit juice I spilled on it a few months ago.

I use Twitter to update people when I have Therebucks in stock to sell, and any little thing that can make that process easier and faster is A+ in my book. Those people looking to see if I have ThereBucks in stock should definitely give it a try if they use Firefox.

Tweet, tweet, tweet!

Energy Day 14 & 15:

I'm awake! I'm awake!

Yeesh. Somehow my plan to get up earlier every day has completely gone awry and I'm actually getting up later. This is too bad because the weather has been unseasonably warm and mostly sunny. I was thinking I should start going into San Francisco for those stairway walks this week, but I'm actually thinking the weather is a bit warm for that. So maybe I'll plan on starting next week, and meanwhile I'll try to plan exactly what I should wear and bring to spend hours walking around San Francisco (and going up and down hills and stairs ON PURPOSE) because it would suck to get there and then I wore the wrong shoes or some pants that keep falling down or I didn't really wear layers so I can't adjust my temperature by adding or subtracting clothing or I brought a purse when I should have brought a messenger bag. Oh yes, it must be planned.

Speaking of planning, I received a new copy of Microsoft OneNote 2007 a few days ago and I installed it last night and am going to be using that to write my MASTER LIST OF THINGS I SHOULD DO. It's going to be a fun way to use my tablet pc. I can use it to plan this year's garden, too! I used a trial copy of 2003 to do that last year and...oooh, now I can access those old files if I want. Bonus!

Yesterday I received my confused herb plant from Puerto Rico. I think my postal carrier hates me. One of the part time ones now seems to be the full time guy and seriously...the old one was super nice but this guy will knock on my door to give me a package (which I guess is good albeit maybe the reason he seems to hate me...like maybe I got him in trouble before for not even attempting to make package deliveries) and then he'll just be REALLY FREAKING WEIRD when he says hello OR he won't even say hello at all, just scan my package and hand it to me like he'd rather die than do anything else. He can't possibly know I was accusing him of being a cross-dressing thief, can he??!?

The plant is FUZZY, which doesn't seem very herb-like to me, or at least it didn't until I remembered sage. Sage: the other fuzzy herb. Still don't know if I want to cook with this one. Oh heck I don't care, I just want it to live and grow and trade me oxygen for carbon dioxide. I wish I'd gotten more plants by now. I think I might plant some seeds today, some cilantro and maybe some more kinds of beans

I'm actually more okay the last few days about the time I spend in the kitchen juicing and smoothie-ing and other various activities and even cleaning up after the same since finishing Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. He says we should eat FOOD. Food! That maybe sounds obvious but he means REAL food. It makes sense. If you go to the grocery store, most of the stuff there is NOT real food. It's just processed crap that has had all the nutrition removed from it to make it less perishable and less desirable to insects and rodents so it can be stored better.

And so, while we're eating real food, it also makes sense that food takes TIME. Time to make, time to eat and enjoy. Eating should be a sociable, pleasurable act and not an inconvenience made tolerable by drive-through windows.

So I am going to enjoy my food, and enjoy the preperation of my food. In fact, I've been thinking of making bento boxes. I even found a cool site to get started with making them and I ordered a box from eBay and have my eye on another in a different style from the site j-box. Not that bento requires a special bento box, one could simply use a plastic storage container or something. In fact, I might make one in just such a container while I wait for my kawaii bento.

My final thought for now is that not eating refined grains and sugars during the day has definitely had a major positive effect on my energy levels. I never want a nap in the afternoon or early evening, and my energy level is quite high in the afternoon and evening. Still need to work on the part where I channel that energy in a useful way.

It would help if I got up several hours earlier....

Energy day 12 & 13: El Grullense

My bf and I have a new tradition. Thursdays evenings have often been "go to the gym and then go across the street to the wine bar", now Mondays are "El Grullense day". El Grullense is a very conveniently located taqueria which I have been by MANY times in my nearly four years in Redwood City. There are a bunch of them in the area, and since I'm not originally from California, I was intrigued enough by my bf's mild embarrassment at ordering a burrito there to research the place online.

An article in the Palo Alto Weekly told me that El Grullense started out as a roach coach (aka taco truck) and then mushroomed into a bunch of physical locations. The name kind of looks like it refers to grilling, but it actually grullo means "crane" and the owner is from the town of El Grullo, Mexico and because of this is known by the name "El Grullense".

I can't believe I never went to this place before! I guess I was just intimidated, because I knew almost everyone there would be speaking spanish and trying to order could potentially be an ordeal since "vegetarian burrito with no cheese or sour cream or anything too spicy" is probably not on the menu.

That's silly, though. If I know anything in spanish, it's how to order food. And shop. Or especially, shop for food. At least I thought I did until I asked the woman behind the counter "a que hora cerrado?" and she looked at my bf questioningly until he said THE SAME THING to her and she answered. C'mon, my pronunciation isn't that bad, is it? Maybe I'm just scary.

Yeah, so Mondays when we go to the gym are "go get a burrito at El Grullense" night. I'm trying to decide where I put burritos on the scale of foods from healthy to unhealthy. Rice, beans (whole, not refried), lettuce, tomato, guacamole and cilantro all swaddled up in a giant, lightly grilled flour tortilla. It's kind of in the middle maybe? It's not an ideal dinner, but it's not exactly junk food either. They're pretty huge...I mean, one burrito and you're stuffed. Not sure it's the ideal food to eat late at night. But hey, it's my bf who eats a burrito the size of his head and then goes to bed, me I'm up for hours afterwards.

Speaking of the gym, I have had a LOT of energy when I'm there. Even if I'm sleepy for a couple hours when I get up (like today when UPS knocked on my door three hours earlier than normal) by the time I get to the gym I'm quite perky and I have tons of energy. I'm not too sore the next day, either. I think I need to do something else to challenge myself and to burn off the extra energy.

About six months ago, I was going to the gym sometimes a half hour before my bf and spending an extra 30 mins on the treadmill before he showed up. That was a good way to burn some extra energy. Maybe I should do that again. Although...Thursday we are going to the gym and we are supposed to meet at Jamba Juice first and both have our FIRST EVER shot of wheat grass juice. Hopefully I'll remember we're supposed to do this. We were supposed to do it Monday and I forgot and my bf...no, he didn't forget...he was HAPPY I forgot. I guess he won't be so happy when I remember in two days, huh???

Okay, let's talk about food...yesterday some crazy person took over my brain and made me buy beer flavored potato chips and eat the whole bag for breakfast. You see this crazy person loves to shop at Grocery Outlet which is like a dented can store except the cans aren't dented and they have lots of organic products and interesting flavors of soy milk and all kinds of different stuff. It's stuff that is overstock and discontinued items from warehouses and distributors and other stores. So where a dented can store takes the product AFTER it's been on another store's shelves, this stuff comes to Grocery Outlet without making an intermediate stop generally. The thing is you never know what they're going to have or IF THEY'LL EVER have it again. So if you see something intriguing, something you've never had before like oh say...beer flavored potato chips...you have to get them NOW or they may never have them again and you may not be able to find them anywhere.

So this crazy person that took over my brain HAD TO buy the beer flavored potato chips while she was at the store buying oranges and grapefruits because it was like NOW or NEVER. Then...well, I hadn't eaten yet and I was hungry and she took advantage of my weakness and made me open the package and eat them. They were pretty good, too, although not my favorite. They had a kind of cheesy taste to them so I was thinking they'd be great for a vegan that misses cheese flavored potato chips, which I don't. I miss Velveeta Shells and Cheese. I miss port wine cheese spread. There are a lot of cheesy things I miss but that isn't one of them.

Then to continue the "weird things for breakfast" trend, this morning (morning being a relative term) I had brazil nuts for breakfast. I blame this on our society full of "convenience" foods. I'm sort of tired of having to get out the juicer and/or the VitaMix every time I am going to have something, and then having to clean them out afterwards. It's a lot less work than cooking a full meal, but it's way more work than say, tearing a bag of chips at that little notch in the top of the bag or undoing the twist-tie on a bag of brazil nuts and sticking your hand in. We're so spoiled by having food come in a cup that you just stick in the microwave for 90 seconds and voila! Soup! Or something. I dunno...I've been trying to avoid ever microwaving anything and am thinking of giving away my Warm and Toasty microwave toaster oven to the feline HIV cat shelter. I was just listening to some more of Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" and he was talking about how the food we eat isn't even really food any more and I think it's so true.

Today's smoothie:

1 young thai coconut, both the water and flesh
1 frozen banana
1 scoop maca powder
4 packets stevia
1 scoop raw cacao powder
1/2 scoop espresso powder
4 ice cubes

I used a coconut because a.) I was out of soy milk b.) I had a coconut in the fridge and c.) I thought it would be delicious. At first it tasted weird and I couldn't figure out why, then I realized I forgot the stevia. Once I fixed that part it tasted pretty normal but I think it would have been better with two bananas, a pinch of sea salt and no espresso powder.

Energy Day 10 & 11: now we're cooking

Saturday I was still suffering from the problem of "okay, I have energy but I don't feel like doing anything with it". My bf was coming to pick me up at 8pm and I have this weird thing where if I have something to do later in the day, I'm not very good at getting stuff done earlier in the day with this event (whatever it is) hanging over my head. I did start listening to Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" on audiobook, and I'm pretty sure I was doing SOMETHING while listening but I don't remember what offhand. We had food from Coconut Bay for dinner, and they saved us some extra calories and grease by refusing to deep fry the rice paper spring rolls...so we just didn't get them and were perfectly happy (and stuffed) with the coconut rice, coconut curry vegetables and vegan pad thai.

Yesterday, after staying up too late and sleeping equally late, I at least started my day out with some grapefruit juice, which was great, and some hazelnut iced coffee, which is maybe not as good for one as a matcha smoothie but it's certainly tasty. Then we had our Sunday version of breakfast burritos, which can vary a little based on what's in the fridge but was homemade white whole wheat flour tortillas wrapped around refried beans (not sure why they're called "re" fried, since we only fry them once) with Soyrizo (soy version of chorizo) in them, avocado, tomato and chives. We used to use cheese but with avocado even soy cheese isn't really necessary, and we like them with cilantro but the chives were what we had and were a tasty touch.

The rest of the day consisted of cooking, cooking, and cooking. The last two hours of cooking I just really, really wanted to stop chopping vegetables and sit down, or lie down, and sleep or drink wine while in a semi vegetative state, half sitting, half lying down. But I kept going. And now I am thinking that totally counts as exercise, so at least I didn't sit on my butt all day. We made three kinds of energy bars from the Thrive book, two soups from vegan planet, and two kinds of cornbread from a book full of cornbread recipes. Half of what we made was pretty good, too. It was like a culinary bootcamp, the idea of which is not only to learn some new recipes but to hopefully provide my bf with some food to eat during the week so eating a plant based diet doesn't cause him to starve to death. After seeing how many sweet potato cornbread muffins with dates, walnuts and streusel topping he ate, I am totally not worrying about that right now.

Energy day 9: Motivation

Well, I think the way I've been eating lately, with all the fresh juice and the matcha and maca and no high fat simple carb foods until the day is almost over is really helping me have more energy. In fact, the last few days at the gym I've been feeling energetic and strong and I've been pushing myself when doing cardio without even thinking about it.

Once I get going in the morning, after the first few hours, I have plenty of energy. It seems like my problem is more one of motivation. Like I won't get anything "done" until I find something to inspire me. The last few days it's been searching for pictures on old hard drives and scanning in photos and negatives for Facebook. I've been very motivated and driven to work on that, but there are other things I really should get done, arguably more important, that I just don't seem to get to.

All the energy in the world won't do me any good without the drive or motivation to do something with it.

Maybe if I make a list, and look at it in the mornings. Sometimes I just don't remember what it was I was going to do until later in the day, and I feel disorganized and scattered. With a big list of everything I want or need to do on it, I could scan the list while drinking my morning juice, or when I'm still laying there going "um, I really should get up..." and find something that inspires me. For the most part I don't think it matters what order stuff gets done in, as long as it gets done.

Now I just need to decide if I should write my list in Google Notebook or the old fashioned way, on paper. OR...on the touchscreen of my tablet pc using OCR!!! That could be fun because then I'd have it on my computer but I'd also be writing it by hand, which I think I read stimulates different parts of your brain than typing.

Energy day 8: Accidental Salad

Getting up earlier is not exactly going well. In fact, today I got up a little later than usual. I then felt groggy for several hours, but eventually perked up in time for the gym.

Ah yes, the gym...the only reason I got any exercise today, but at least I was there for a couple of hours, so that must be good, right?

After the gym we tried my pomegranate/orange smoothie and it wasn't bad. My bf brought me a bag from a taqueria or someplace the other day and told me it had burritos in it and I got all excited...yum, burritos! But when I looked inside I found it was pomegranates. Well, when life gives you pomegranates, I figure why not make a pomegranate smoothie? I'd seen a recipe for one the other day in the book "The Thrive Diet: The Whole Food Way To Lose Weight, Reduce Stress, and Stay Healthy For Life" and I was curious to try it since the recipe doesn't call for pomegranate juice, but whole seeds pulverized in the blender. I found it pretty tasty and may make it again although the pith of the seeds doesn't seem to get blended in and leaves some sediment on the bottom, and it's a bit futzy to de-seed a pomegranate. I wonder how pomegranate tastes with matcha...

So then we went to the wine bar because you know...it's Thursday and we were at the gym that's across the street from the wine bar anyway so whatcha gonna do? Usually this involves a few glasses of wine and some food, but they've kind of sort of changed their hours and technically weren't open any more when we went there, so food wasn't on the menu.

Finally we get to the title of this post...I'd said I was going to try and have salad every day this month, or at least have some leafy greens, but first I didn't have the ingredients and then I got salad ingredients yesterday but it just seems really hard to try and eat EVERY healthy food I'm trying to eat. It's too much food! I don't know WHEN I'm going to eat the brussel sprouts, cherries or chestnuts I have in the fridge right now. BUT, I did find myself making a salad at 11pm. Dang, salad is a lot of work. I surprised myself by actually chopping up vegetables and mixing up dressing at such a late hour. I wish I was in a salad co-op with a dozen people and each person could just make salad for 12 people once every 12 days. It wouldn't be much more work to make salad for 12 than for just one person so it would be totally worth it.

Of course, those 11 other people have to all want the same things in the salad that I want.

Okay scratch that...that would never work.

Energy day 7: My get up and go...

...got up and went.

I didn't sleep so well last night...I was doing okay until my phone woke me up (note to self: silent mode isn't good enough, it has to be set not to vibrate) and then a few hours later my cat Rodney woke me up THROWING UP ON MY BED. Ugh.

So I was kind of dragging when I got up, although I did get up a little earlier at least, so that was good.

Then before I could have some grapefruit juice or a matcha smoothie, UPS showed up earlier than usual and brought me a box of Koka Moka Pro Bar, a mostly raw organic energy bar full of dried fruit, nuts and decent sized chocolate chips. So of course I ate one. They're very filling with lots-o-calories and have that "this must be really healthy stuff" kind of taste that is saved from mediocrity by the chocolate chunks. I'm planning to give most of them to my bf so he doesn't starve during busy workdays, but I love to try something new. This totally ruined my appetite for hours.

I moped around for a while, ready to spend the day watching Stargate, but I've known for a few days that it was supposed to be a beautiful and mostly sunny 60 degrees. I'd have been kicking myself if I didn't get anything done or get outside and enjoy the day, so I finally motivated out to run some errands. I felt envigorated while I was walking, but standing in line I felt like I could doze off while waiting and by the time I was almost home I started really dragging.

After having grapefruit juice and a matcha smoothie I felt better but still not really like doing anything until I was inspired to search for and upload a bunch of photos to Facebook. Suddenly I had much more energy! So I guess finding something you can get excited about is one way to rev up energy levels. It's also one way to stay up way past one's bedtime yet again.

Oh, I think I figured out one of the reasons the smoothie has been tasting a little weird. Gelatinized maca has a mild butterscotch flavor. Maybe not the best flavor combined with OJ and green tea flavors.

Energy day 6: I wonder where to wander

So much for going to sleep early last night. I couldn't sleep and went to bed extra-late. Still, I got up at the same time as usual and although I felt slightly tired from that, I still had plenty of energy today.

I was out of orange juice until I went to the store, so I had the juice of two grapefruits for breakfast. After that I made a smoothie from coffee flavoured soy milk, 1 1/2 frozen bananas, a scoop of raw cacao powder, and a half scoop of espresso powder and four packets of stevia. It came out amazing and you could barely taste the espresso/coffee flavors, it just made the chocolate flavor richer and it tasted like a really creamy chocolate milkshake.

Because I had the cacao/espresso smoothie, I thought maybe I wouldn't have a matcha smoothie, but then some Gelatinized Maca Powder arrived in the mail and I wanted to try it, so once I had oranges I made a smoothie of the juice of three oranges, two mounded little spoons of matcha, a teaspoon of maca powder, six ice cubes and four packets of stevia. It tasted a little funny...I think without the banana I've been putting in there it just had too much matcha, but it could be the maca powder as well.

Maca helps the adrenal glands regenerate, helps maintain your body's hormone balance and possesses the precursors for serotonin (thereby reducing sugar cravings). Maca can help you lift more weight and recover faster

Anyway, I had a lot of energy today, and although I didn't get as much done as I had fantasized I might, at least I can't say it was for lack of energy. I also got the Klutz juggling kit today, and I've been practicing throwing just ONE beanbag. I completely suck at throwing anything and I want to be able to consistently throw at the same arc and catch reliably before moving on to two. It makes a nice way to fidget while watching Stargate. Hopefully that mid-range lobe in my brain is taking notice!

Tomorrow I hope to switch the locations of the cat tree and the plant shelving around. This will be to prevent a certain 15 pound cat from using the bed to jump up and down from the tree, this waking me up in the middle of the night. Perhaps this will help me get an even better night's sleep

I've also been looking at a book called "Become an Energy Addict", and it doesn't have the same concise paragraphs of ideas that "365 Energy Ideas" has, but it does have some different interesting ideas. It suggests being a "walking tourist", both in your own town and when you are away, and walking around everywhere checking out all the stuff there is to see that you might never see any other way. This is a fun idea in my own town because I love to spy what other people are growing in their gardens/yards. That's what gave me the idea that we should grow corn this coming season...so many people around here seem to plant maybe one or two dozen stalks of it and it takes up hardly any room...I think it would be SOOOOO awesome to be eating corn from your own garden. My bf was not nearly so impressed with the idea, but since it takes up such a small amount of space, he doesn't mind if we do it. Also, I have a book called "Stairway Walks in San Francisco" which is a VERY cool little book full of interesting walking routes, and as soon as I am done running a bunch of errands around my own town I AM going to move on to going in to San Francisco at least once a week to try all these walks. I think it will be so fun.

Hmmmm...I wonder if I should try to take a matcha smoothie along with me on my walks or if I should see what interesting places I can find to try new things in my wanderings.

Energy day 5: ready for a workout?

I was trying to go to bed earlier last night but I couldn't sleep. I started messing around with my iPhone, I thought maybe I'd play a little Aurora Feint, but I got stuck reading up on the update or version two or whatever it was and couldn't decide if I should update or not so I ended up discovering mint.com instead. It looks like a pretty cool website where you can track all your financial info in one place, including keeping updated on your bank accounts AND PayPal. To make it even sweeter, they have a free app for the iPhone that ties in with the site. Definitely worth a look-see.

So tonight I hope once again to go to bed a little earlier, although it's getting a bit late so we'll see. If I get up a little earlier, that would also be a step in the right direction. I am feeling pretty sleepy right now, although I did have plenty of energy today, including while at the gym! So, I'm pretty pleased about that. I just hope to repeat that over and over and over.

I really need to eat more vegetables, so tomorrow I'm going to try and make getting to the grocery store a priority.

I was reading that you can feel energized by getting rid of stuff...and lord knows I have too much stuff, so I thought I'd get rid of a bunch of magazines I have hanging around taking up too much space on my bookshelves. That was not as easy as it seemed. I sort of ended up with most of them still on shelves and a big pile of them waiting to be looked through before I recycle them...I just can't get rid of them if I haven't read them or at least paged through them yet! And many of them I view as valuable resources. Argh. I did get a few things out of my apartment however, and tomorrow I hope to do enough to make a VISIBLE difference.

I took a stab at researching low-light plants, and so far I purchased some Spanish Thyme, aka Mexican Mint, aka Cuban Oregano from eBay...it's being shipped from Puerto Rico. This plant/herb is either very worldly or very confused. I need to research/procure a few more and then clean off the top rack of my growing shelves to host my new plants. I love the idea that I can get some that are edible like this one (I guess if a recipe calls for mint, oregano and thyme...I'll only need to add one thing!)

I did have a matcha smoothie today, and I had another non-matcha smoothie after the gym. I usually make a smoothie for my bf and I and leave it in the car for when we get out of the gym...I wanted him to try the matcha powder but ummmm...probably a bad idea so late in the evening so I just used orange juice, frozen bananas, frozen cherries and a few packets of Stevia. I'm going to be really sad when I run out of Stevia because I got some packets at Grocery Outlet and they dont' have them any more, but maybe I'll try the liquid next.

Okay, in danger of babbling...going to bed...g'night...

Meme thingy

We now interrupt 31 days of energy to bring you this MEME thing. MsDarkstar sent it to me after I read her blog and requested it. I guess it's not really a meme unless you are passing it on SO, feel free to leave me a comment asking for five questions of your own to answer in your blog if you have one and I will send you some.

1. If you could go back in time and tell your 16-year-old self something, what would you tell her?
Oh hmmm...going back in time could be dangerous because you could really mess things up for the future (your present.) I was thinking maybe I'd tell her some lottery numbers, but y'know she probably would have spent all the money by now and made a mess of her life and I'd never exist as I know me today so screw that. I think I'd just tell her not to get in cars with strangers EVER, not even if they are someone she just met at a job, and I'd tell her not to cheat on her bf when she's 19.

2. What's the best thing about being vegan? What's the hardest part of being vegan?
For 20 years I was vegetarian and I was always a very guilty vegetarian. I used to agonize over the egg section at Whole Foods, trying to figure out which eggs came from the chickens that had the best lives, never mind the fact that laying hens never get to live out their natural lives no matter whether they're treated a little better than the worst treated hens or not. Plus of course all the male chicks that are born from laying hens are just thrown in a dumpster to die or otherwise inhumanely killed. I'd also agonize over plenty of other choices as well, like which butter or cheese came from "happier" cows (never mind that dairy cows are where veal calves come from, or the way the cows have their calves taken away from them over and over again so we can drink their milk instead, etc...). So becoming vegan relieved me of a great burden of guilt that I felt.
The hardest part is finding out something that seems like it SHOULD be vegan isn't for some dumb reason. Like my favorite brand of pot stickers has some egg white in it and I'm pretty sure it's not really necessary. I guess just reading food labels in general is hard, because you never know what awful ingredients you'll find in your food and sometimes I'm just not in the mood. I wish I could just say "I don't want to know" sometimes, but I don't because I've already spent too many years not wanting to know.

3. If you could live anywhere in the world (and money were not an issue), where would you live and why?
Hmmm...first I would need to travel to a bunch of places to see if I'd really like them as much as I think I would. I used to think I'd want to live in Santa Cruz, until I actually went there. If I'm not allowed to travel to a bunch of places before I choose, then I think I'd just like to live in a really cool warehouse loft/studio in the East Bay so I can be closer to my bf. I mean if money is no issue I've seen some pretty cool condo type lofts that even have space for a garden.

4. If you could have only one beverage for the rest of your life, what would you have? (This would be something you'd drink every day)
Is water a choice or do you get water too? I guess I'd have to say water because sometimes that's the only thing that satisfies my thirst. I would never pick wine because having only the finest wines on earth could be part of Dante's 3rd circle of Hell if what you really want is to have a nice cool glass of water.

5. What's your favorite non-vegan food and how do you resist the temptation to eat it?
Oh, I suppose cheese. I have always loved cheese and although it wasn't as hard to give up as I thought it would be, I do find myself thinking about it sometimes. To resist the temptation sometimes I might have a substitute, like Tings instead of Cheetos, or some Dr. Cow aged cashew "cheese", but mostly I just remind myself 1.) it's not healthy to eat it and 2.) that's not something I eat any more because of all the reasons I've gone vegan. It's simply not an option, plus it's pretty gross when you think about it.

Energy day 4: let's wrestle!

Today I had two matcha smoothies, each made from the juice of three oranges, a banana, four packets of stevia, two heaping little spoons of matcha and seven ice cubes. The first one I managed somehow to spill part of on my dress, on my face and even in my eye. Yeah, don't ask. The second one I added some sports vitamin powder to.

I felt like I had a pretty good energy level, but I didn't put it to good use. At least not to do anything physical. I did go through the book "365 Energy Boosters" and picked out some stuff I'd like to try...

Take your vitamins with oj. By taking the sports vitamin powder, I guess I did this one today although it was rather random. I don't even have any more of the powder, so I'm not sure if I'll do it again.

Drink fresh vegetable juice. I've been drinking fruit juice, I wouldn't mind adding veggie juice to the mix, although having the amount of produce on hand to juice every day can be a bit overwhelming and expensive.

Lose a little weight. Just think, if I could lose ten pounds this month, that would be ten less pounds I'd have to lug around! Like putting down the backpack you always carry.

Cultivate indoor plants. I have plants on my balcony and in my bf's garden, but having plants in your home can provide oxygen and moisture to the air, reduce dust, and even lessen fatigue and coughs. I'm going to research the best plants to grow in low-light conditions, since i get barely any direct sunlight in my apartment. I have grow lights but I'm using them right now to sprout peas and beans for our garden, and after that it will be chili peppers and cilantro.

Jump rope. Jumping rope for one minute is supposed to get your blood flowing and energize you. Hey, it's only one minute...might as well give it a try.

Juggle. Studies have shown that practicing juggling every day for three months can increase the size of the mid-temporal lobe in your brain by 3%. That sounds pretty cool, so I ordered a book and some balls on Amazon. It was only ten bucks so why not? I think just trying to do it counts, even if you fail over and over. Since the book won't arrive until Wednesday, I may try some other coordination activities...like using the Wii and maybe the Wii Fit. I have a Wii version of DDR that I've never used, and some other goofy "physical fitness" type games I may try.

Wrestle. Wrestling is supposed to be a great mental and physical release, and I was hoping my bf would volunteer to be my wrestling partner guinea pig, but today all we did was go to the giant asian grocery store and then go out to dinner, and both places would probably frown on wrestling. In fact, the bartender at the restaurant gave us a free dessert to try and prevent us from wrestling. I wonder if that would work anywhere else...(cuz I'm all about the free dessert, especially when it's coconut sorbet with Godiva chocolate liqueur poured on top.)

Speaking of dinner and the asian grocery, I wouldn't really say the items I ate and the items I shopped for at the market were any kind of energy power-houses, although I did notice that you can buy bags of matcha at the asian market and if it tastes decent I could save a lot of money getting it there.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get more done than i did today, AND we are supposed to go to the gym tomorrow night. I also hope to get up a little earlier (to take advantage of the fact that daylight/sunlight are energy-giving) so I guess I should GO TO BED RIGHT NOW. G'night.

Energy day 3: Not!

One of the first things I saw today was a city bus with the word "NOT" lit up in the back window. I was thinking of it as the Borat bus...here comes a bus, you're all excited or relieved or whatever because you're about to get on the bus and then it passes you by. Then finally as it pulls past and leaves you in a cloud of dust, you see the word "NOT".

And that was my energy day today. It started last night. I went to my bf's and ate kind of late and went to bed kind of early and then kept waking up all night and then got up early. I meant to go back to bed but that never happened. So I just kind of dragged around the whole day. It was like what NOT to do if you want to have energy. I didn't have any juice or matcha...I did have a smoothie with soy milk, espresso powder and raw cacao powder (which did nothing for me) then I also had a lot of simple carbs and then I took a nap in the evening which is the worst time because now it is that much harder to go to bed.

I'm hoping to do better tomorrow...get a decent night of sleep tonight, start off the day with a matcha smoothie, and darnit...eat a salad! I've been flipping through the book "365 Energy Boosters", and I hope to pick a few things from there to boost my energy tomorrow, but I haven't decided what yet and I'm not sure what my plans are tomorrow.

Energy day 2: Chichers

Yesterday I had a glass of blood orange juice...kind of. The blood oranges weren't that bloody and pretty much tasted like "regular" oranges, which was rather disappointing.

After that I made myself my first matcha smoothie. I could have followed a recipe, but nooooo, not me! I thought "how hard can it be to throw some stuff in my VitaMix and blend up something tasty?" Apparently, the answer is "hard". At least if you're me. Let's see, in the Vitamix I put a frozen banana, frozen blueberries, some soymilk, several heaping little spoonfuls of matcha powder, some packets of Stevia and a few kale leaves. A normal blender would never have been able to get through this thick sludge and I relied heavily on the tamper that came with my VitaMix.

(Yeah, I put kale leaves in it. I didn't think I was going to have a salad yesterday but I wanted to have some greens. I've had kale in a smoothie before, one with concord grapes and fresh figs, and I liked it just fine, so it didn't seem like such a wacky idea at the time.)

Well, the smoothie tasted terrible and looked like toxic sludge, but I didn't want to waste it so I tried to fix it. I added the juice of several oranges and a LOT more Stevia. This made it drinkable but also increased the volume of the smoothie. So it now tasted maybe 50% better but there was 50% more of it. It took me hours to finish all of it.

Then later I made Chichers, which is a recipe from the book "Vegan Planet", a book I just got that contains about 400 recipes, many of them extremely tasty sounding. Here is the recipe for Chichers (the original one says use olive oil, but if you have a nice peanutty tasting peanut oil I think it would be a better choice, but what do I know...I am the one who made the horrible kale-matcha smoothie above.)

Chichers

1 15 oz can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
Peanut oil
Salt

Preheat oven to 400 F. Put the chickpeas in a shallow baking dish with one or two tablespoons of peanut oil and stir it around. Grind some sea salt over it (or sprinkle) and put the dish in the oven for about 20 minutes. Stir once or twice during cooking, adding a little more salt. Take out of oven when they begin to brown, sprinkle a little more salt if you like. Eat.

Yum. Tons of fiber and so tasty. Better than popcorn or any other snack like that, or hummus or chick pea gravy or anything else you might do with chickpeas. Addictive. Try it, try it, try it! If I had more garbanzo beans in my cupboard, I'd be making it again right now.

So, did I have more energy yesterday? Well, I didn't feel like taking a nap, and I went to bed a bit later than normal, but I wasn't running around going "OMG I have so much energy!!!" and I didn't do anything more than normal. In fact, I didn't do much of anything. That could be my problem, though. What good is energy if you don't USE it?

I'm going to try and eat a salad every day, and try and stay away from refined grains. I know when I have a meal with a lot of refined grains and/or sugar I just want to declare the rest of the day nap time.

I'm also going to look at some books I got a few months ago about increasing your energy, and work on doing more stuff that actually TAKES energy.

Will report back!

I have to go drink my smoothie now...I went really basic. Juice of three oranges, three packets Stevia, two heaping little spoonfuls of matcha and 8 ice cubes. It is quite tasty! Whew.

31 days of energy

Happy New Year. I'm soooo happy this is the last holiday for almost three whole weeks. I was pretty optimistic going into the xmas/new years holidays, but was pretty over it by xmas night. Now I just want the mail schedule to be back to normal so it stops interrupting the Netflix delivery of ten seasons of Stargate SG-! plus 5 or 6 seasons of Stargate Atlantis (my current obsessions.) Screw federal holidays. Seriously...I mean it's not even like NO postal employee works on holidays...planes are still flying, trucks are still on the road, stuff still happens behind the scenes, it's just the people that have to deal with the public face-to-face that get to enjoy the day off, and then a bunch of other people are probably making time-and-a-half, and meanwhile it's almost impossible to get a mid-week netflix mailing back so you'll have movies before the next Tuesday.

I also hate the way stores are open very unpredictable hours. Did you ever notice that more businesses are closed on Christmas than any other day of the year? That's pretty funny when you consider it's not even p.c. for offices to have a Christmas party, they're supposed to have a "holiday" party so that people who celebrate hanukkah, kwanzaa or...I dunno...maybe nothing at all...so those people can feel included. I think they should rename xmas, maybe call it "even blue collar employees get the day off" day.

Um yeah anyway...off on a rant there. I'm just cranky today because, among other things, New Years Day is a very unpredictable holiday where you never know what will be open and if they are, what their modified hours will be. Well, except 7-11...they are reliably open 24/7/365. And they have Fritos. Did you know Fritos have only 3 ingredients? Corn (probably genetically modified), Corn oil (probably genetically modified) and salt.

YEAH ANYWAY....

This isn't exactly a new years resolution, but this month I'm going to try and do everything I can to have more energy.

To start with, I'm trying to be more reliable about drinking a glass of fresh squeezed juice when I get up. Lately I've been doing that about 50% of the time, but now my goal is 100%

Next thing, I'm going to make at least one matcha (green tea powder) smoothie each day, and I'll have that instead of coffee, since I believe coffee can give me energy, but in shorter bursts that will leave me more tired in the long run. I'm going to experiment with a few different recipes, perhaps throwing in some kale as well. That might sound weird, but kale is actually pretty mild blended up in a smoothie and it's a good way to get your minerals.

I'll be trying a bunch more stuff but I'll post about it later. Partly because I spent so much time ranting and partly because I haven't totally figured out what I'm going to do yet.