My New Toy

Introducing my new Breville juicer. I *heart* it. It came in the mail a few days ago, and I ran right out to the store to get some veggies for an after-work juice.

I didn't have access to any recipes, because my smart phone would be so much smarter if it would remember to charge itself, so here I stood in Publix after a long day of work, with no real list of what to get for a juice. I decided to wing it, and made this...

3 handfuls of Kale

3 carrots

1 lemon

2 green apples

small amount of ginger

1 long cucumber

It was delicious and refreshing, and I felt great after drinking it. And the most important part was, I went to Publix at 8pm, starving, and did not get reeled into the deli-sandwich section.

Stubborn, Cranky, Tired

I'm tired. More tired than I've ever been before. More tired than pregnant tired, or new mom tired or pulling an all-nighter in college tired. My mom is sick. Really, really sick. She in in the end stages of terminal cancer and Hospice spends hours a day at her house. So for months, I've been juggling between work (long 12 hour, high intensity days), driving the 1 + hour drive to see my mother, organizing life for her (really, planning a funeral is never fun), cattle-prodding my ADD husband to keep moving forward with his school work, attending parent-teacher conferences, family coming in town, Birthday parties, and just trying to breath. I'd say my stress level has hit a new high. Somewhere around Christmas time things started falling apart with me, and well, I can't continue to be so exhausted all the time.

A good friend I work with suggest the book Wheat Belly. As he and I were talking, I was eating my delicious turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread in the breakroom, and he had heard me talk about my abdominal pain. Of course, because I want to eat healthy and lose weight, I've been all "whole wheat this" and "whole grain that". It is possible that the wheat mixed with my stress is causing my IBS to exacerbate right now. As somewhat of a cleanse before I leap into a wheat reduced diet, I'm going to try to juice for a few days to see if I can safely clean my wheat-inflamed digestive tract. Stay tuned for juicing recipes...