The End of an (Almost) Fart-Free Year

PA saw a half assed white Christmas this year. A week before the birth of Baby Jeebus, a blizzard tore through the Philly area. Everything stopped for a few days. It was nice.

Christmas eve, everyone had to go to work except Mom and me. Mom was in charge of the tree. Didn't she do a nice job?

Meanwhile I was in the kitchen, baking the day away. I started with vegan gluten-free apple spice bread for myself...

... And finished with Mom's old school butter cookies for everyone else. Check out the cookie press! I found it in the basement, under an inch of dust.

Fortunately, the cookies were dirt free.

The smell of the cookies took me back to the 80s... Mom too... We were both bent over the plates of trees and stars and swirlies, inhaling and growling.

When it came time to eat, I had no urge to dip my hand into the cookie tins. Instead, I revved up the food processor and made...

... a ginger green smoothie!

This one is chock full of spinach, applesauce, ginger, coconut milk kefir, and rice milk. I also threw in a little stevia to mask the spinach taste. Thanks to the ladies at Pure2Raw and Choosing Raw for their tips on green smoothie making and the raw lifestyle.

Raw is my new jawn. At first, the thought of eating only veggies for dinner scared me. I thought I'd wake up hungry at two in the morning. BUT... veggies like the ones you see below - Zukes, shrooms, and carrots - keep me full all night long. Coupled with a bit of cashew cheeze sauce, I'm in bid-ness.

The next day, Santa brought me my #1 present on my list...

SWEATPANTS!!!

Seriously - what IBSSer can live without sweatpants? I can't believe I did for so long. Part of the reason is because I was holding out for these particular sweatpants. They are part of the regulation gym uniform for my old elementary school, St. Basil's.

Maybe it's just me, but I think that school sweats are so much more thicker and warmer than the kinds you can get at Target or K-Mart. These were so worth the wait.

Christmas came and went. My brother, sister, and I celebrated the true meaning of the blessed day in the only way we knew how...

... watching Inglourious Basterds!!!

Two days later, my Boston BFF Peter came up to see me! This is he, standing in Market-East station in Philly. What a handsome fella!

My gift to him was a trip to the city for a day. We ate at Reading Terminal Market and Pat's Cheesesteaks. (He had lots of meat and cheese; I had a veggie smoothie and bag of mixed nuts.) Peter is super into sneakers and hats. So we hit up sneaker stores like Ubiq and Abakus... then snugged to keep warm on the train ride home...

The next day, we went to the mall and bought Phillies hats! Here's mine. He bought it for me.

He left about an hour ago. I am very sad. But I'm also busy. I've got to motor to the food store and prepare for tomorrow. Stores will be closed. I have to make sure I'm stocked with fart-free foods for the new year.

With that, I will bid farewell to you and 2009. My wish for your upcoming year is cliche. But it's a good cliche. May you...

EAT!

DRINK!

AND BE HAPPY!!!

Here's to a fart-free year!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's portfolio season.

If you didn't know already, I'm an adjunct English professor. Ever since I started teaching, Christmas has become a time of stress for me. It usually takes up until Christmas eve for me to get through all of the grading. Once finished, all I want to do is revise my old plan, my old syllabus. But it's Christmas. There's a tree to decorate, healthy cookies to bake, and bottles of vino to drink.

This year, I'm trying to get through the "ports" before Christmas.

Needless to say, I won't be blogging again 'til at least next week. But I can tell you about the delicious breakfast I had this 5 AM. I made the twins' peanut butter and sweet potato sandwich! Mine was a little different. I used a leftover pancake for the bread, spread on almond butter and topped it with broccoli sprouts. What can I say? I love sprouts in the morning.

Come to think of it, I think that's the weirdest thing I do - sprouts in the AM. What about you? What's the weirdest thing you eat on a regular basis?

Farty Friday

Breakfast

I'm getting real good at making Katie's Brownie Batter Pancakes. Look how fluffy!

CCK's Brownie Batter Pancakes, Farty-Style

1/2 cup dark buckwheat flour

1 cup of applesauce

1/4 cup apple juice

1/4 cup edensoy rice and soy milk

1/4 teaspoon spirulina powder

2-3 tablespoons of peanut butter

2 tablespoons of flax seed meal

2 tablespoons of rice protein powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

5 packets of Truvia

A ridiculous amount of unsweetened chocolate

Elevensies

I think I'm gonna call this WTF? Tea. There's so much healthy crap in this, it's like, WTF? I slammed it on my way home from Math class. Yoshi, my car, was not happy. He said that if I want to take care of my health, I should be watching the road, not taking pictures of yummy drinks. I said, Shut up, Yosh.

WTF? Tea

Nettle tea

Raspberry Leaf tea

Echinacea tea

Artichoke Compound tincture

Chaste Tree tincture

Almond milk

Coconut water

Lunch

I made raw spirutein puddin'. Ingredients: Spirutein plus a little soy and rice milk. I whisked them together until reaching a creamy texture, then spooned the puddin' into my trap. Edensoy's rice and soy is lightly sweet. The spirutein is very vanilla-y. It was perfect.

Lunch, 2nd Course

Hummus, white button shrooms, raw zucchini, and cauliflower - all courtesy of Kimberton Whole Foods. KWF makes the most bangin'est hummus. If you live outside Philly and can get to one of their locations, hit it up. I am lucky to have one that's two minutes from my house. I go there every day. Sometimes the people who work there give me weird looks, like: Weren't you just here two hours ago? I smile. KWF makes me that happy.

Snack

I found this orange and cranberry Pure Bar at KWF as well. It's so hard to find cranberry in anything that's not doused in sugar. If anyone knows of dried cranberries without sugar, please let me know! I'll send you a nice present as thanks.

Dinner

This is my scrumptious kitty, Elmo. He is so delicious. It's hard to believe he's over fifteen years old. I picked him out of a litter when I was fifteen. He has terrorized our house ever since. At meal times, he rubs against our legs and whines for what we are eating. So if I'm eating Elmo for dinner, does that mean he's going to want to eat himself? Probably. He's a weird kitty. Hmmm... I wonder where he gets it from?