Holidaze

(Yes, I stole the title from a Grey's Anatomy episode. You caught me.)

The holidays are fabulous--family comes to town (or you go to them), beautiful decorations pop up all over the place (I'm such a sucker for those Christmas ball ornaments--the matte kind, that just glow with color. I want to suspend a million of them on fishing line from my ceiling, so that I can feel like I'm floating in chromatics every time I walk into my room), and old familiar music that everyone knows pulls itself out of the attic and into your soul--holidays are warm, fuzzy times of year.

Unless you are a college student. For if you are a college student, holidays = final exams = holidaze. Tis the season to stay up way past your nonexistent bedtime reading and rewriting and rereading notes you took 3 months ago. If you sleep, visions of #2 pencils and scantrons dance will in your head. Your eyes will turn haunted, your walk will melt into a tired shuffle, and people on the street will stop to remind you that it is Christmastime, not Halloween--so really, drop the zombie act.


In addition to changing you from a well-adjusted and happy college student to a depressed and mumbling over-sized kindergartener, the Holidaze will also rob you of your physical well-being. At 3 AM, you will not reach for vegetables, or fruit. You will reach for a candy bar. When you forget to pack your lunch (because you instead were running chemistry equations through your brain), you will stop at Wendys, and you will be tired and your zombie mouth will tell the person behind the counter to give you "a number ten large combo", which you will then use to salt your sorrows and rot your body (so that it matches the current state of your brain). The Holidaze are a tough time for those of us who have final exams (or have to see those of us who have final exams--it's not pretty).

But life (and Holidaze) is not all bad--for there are acorn squash and puppies in the world.

Acorn squash is my biggest surprise yet--oh my goodness, it's a lot like potatoes (like, enough like potatoes that I could substitute it an be alright). Here's what my wonderful superwoman-mother did:
--Cut the squash in half (this will be difficult, as squash do not like being squashed or mangled in any way)
--Steam the squash until tender (about 20 minutes)
--Cut the squash into smaller pieces so that they are more easily consumable.
--Dress as desired with pepper, salt, and/or butter. Eat with other yummy foods.


I only had a few bites (I had already eaten), but oh, it was so good--I will definitely have to try the recipe. I was quite, quite pleased. One last gift to kick off the season:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/healthy-recipes/RecipeIndex

Happy Holidaze! I will eat rabbit food.

My Very Favorite Holiday

Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday. It's like Christmas, but without the gifts (and all the pressure/money issues that come with gifts)--just family, food, and prayer, which is really all you need in life.

Thanksgiving is not the very favorite holiday of this blog--I didn't do terribly, in that I didn't gorge myself ridiculously or trash an elaborately-planned diet, but I didn't eat a huge variety of plants--I had the usual corn and potatoes, and then I had 3 slices of an apple that night (my mother tells me that this is a quarter of an apple, the way she slices them). I'm about to have some acorn squash, but that's been as good as I've been this holiday--I hope the next one (Christmas) will find me with a little more willpower. Willpower is very hard for me to find at my parents house--I just unwind so completely! It's a wonderful, relaxing place to be. I love home.


I WILL EAT RABBIT FOOD.

p.s. if you have a good acorn squash recipe, please post it? We are experimenting tonight...

Save the Ta-Tas (and other Breast Cancer slogans)

Given that this blog is about trying to live a healthier lifestyle (and not just about forcing plants down my unwilling throat), I feel that I would be remiss if I, as a nursing student and medical assistant in a gynecological office, did not mention or address the guidelines recently posted out by some silly task force. The new guidelines (which are not supported by the American Cancer Society--they will not be the sponsor of YOUR birthday if you choose not to follow their attempts to make you healthy) state that women do not need mammograms until they are 50 (not 40), and that self-breast exams are useless wastes of time. Furthermore, pap smears (samplings and testings of the vaginal and cervical cells to check for abnormalities that are pre-cancerous or indicative of HPV), should only be done every three years. Doctors (and the American Cancer Society) have publicly and professionally renounced these new guidelines as being rediculous and untrue--which is something I can also attest to. It makes part of me feel broken that women are being told that taking care of themselves and developing a knowledge of their own bodies is a bad or useless thing. So, if you have been living under a rock and have not heard of this debate, and if this blog is your only connection to the wellness world (you poor, poor soul), hear me now:

GET YOUR MAMMOGRAMS (WHEN YOU ARE 40, EVERY YEAR). DO SELF BREAST EXAMS. GO TO YOUR OB-GYN EVERY YEAR FOR A PAP SMEAR AND EXAM.

I love you, I really do. I want you to be healthy. Take care of yourself.

Today I ate carrots. I will eat Rabbit Food.

Apples and Cuties and Amy's, oh my!

I did end up splitting a clementine (which will hereafter be called "cuties", because that is what the label on the bag said--though it has been pointed out that this is a brand name and not a type of fruit, I think it is far more fun to pretend otherwise) with NNAE. I must say that in general, I'm not a real fan of plant skin, whether it be the shiny green sheen on apples or the translucent webby film across section of citrus. NNAE is a crazy expert at that webby citrus stuff--in the time it took for me to woefully chew one small section, she effectively peeled another section of cutie and handed it to me, hanging from it's translucent cocoon. It was fascinating and gross.

Under that film on the interior of citrus, it's easy to see that the fruit is really made up of a million little chambers of juice, all stuck together and covered with a thin white layer of dividing-substance (which is apparently peel-able). I'm mildly grossed out by these little chambers because I know that if you hold the cutie slice upside down (so the curved edge is pointing to the floor and the straight edge is pointing up), and attempt to snap it in half, then little juice-chambers split from each other and look like cockroach legs. I had no idea, however, that those little juice chambers (and thus, the whole fruit, sans skin and peel) were so tasty! I only had (and wanted) half a cutie, but it definitely exceeded my expectations.

Beyond that fun experience this afternoon, it is a sad day in the land of eating healthy. I'm crashing the land of eating healthy tonight. I'm tearing down all the tofu-towers, asparagus auditoriums, ripe-fruit rivers and sesame streets and replacing them with (drumroll, please) Amy's Ice Cream. I ate part of an apple after dinner (and thus I don't feel guilty) and it was a terrible day at work, full of patients and papers--so it may be trashing my new plant-habits (we do not use the "diet" word), but I need ice cream. I need something delicious with a cookie dough crush-in and Hershey's syrup, in the small size please. I may eat plants again tomorrow, but tonight I would like some milk product mixed with some butter product topped with some sugar product. Bad Shauna.

I WILL EAT RABBIT FOOD.

Thanksgiving (on a Sunday)

One of the perks about living in a community setting (like a co op, as opposed to an apartment, which is lonely and desolate) is that Thanksgiving comes multiple times a year. The fabulous crew in charge of cooking tonight (commanded by The Green Project Man [TGPM], who is responsible for a number of earth-friendly projects around the co op, and who is also running for some important position in the local Sierra Club) decided that since most of us would be going home to our parents, native bedrooms, and free washer/dryers, Thanksgiving should happen tonight. We were served turkey (which is making me appropriately sleepy right about now), mashed potatoes, green beans, gravy, cranberry sauce, rolls that were deceptively shaped like muffins, and a pumpkin-cream cheese rolled log concoction that was approximately the size of an infant (thank you, NNAE, for cutting this into consumable pieces).

I should tell you that my co op is especially fond of Thanksgiving--I think this is the 4th such feast that we have had this year (I see absolutely no issue with this--Thanksgiving is my VERY favorite holiday, I think it should be a monthly event). This is the first Thanksgiving, however, where I have consumed green beans. I had about 6, in the potato-stacked-with-meat fashion. People noticed and commented in proper cheerleader fashion.

What these silly co opers don't know is that I ate green beans not once, but twice today--once was at Thanksgiving dinner, and once was this afternoon, at Montana Mikes (again). Green bean eating seems secondary, though, when I think about what else happened at the meal--it was the first meal ever that Kody's family (minus his dad, who is working in Quatar right now) and my family have eaten together. I was very, very nervous about it (I mean, Kody and I know how to put up with the crazy from both families, but what if one family or the other couldn't put up with the other kind of crazy? Surely that was the original reason for the Caplet-Montague dispute), but it came out surprisingly pleasant. To my knowledge, no one was offended, vegetables were consumed, and no drinks were  spilled (all hallmarks of a successful meal).

Tomorrow will bring another attempt at an apple and perhaps a split clementine with the No-Nonsense Arabic Extraordinaire (to break out of my monochromatic green spell).

I WILL EAT RABBIT FOOD.

Green Things

I ended up eating about 1/3 of that ill-fated lopsided apple on Wednesday. I was a bad girl on Thurday and didn't eat anything good, but Friday was a little better--like Wednesday, it started off with an apple.

I live in a Co-op--this means lots of things, but one of the things it means is that there is lots of "common space" in the building I live it. My space consists of a room that fits a bed, desk, dresser, and mini-bookshelf, and a bathroom (which I share with this incredibly fit and active girl, who is also wholesome and nice and loves children and eats well). All the other places I go--the courtyard, the kitchen, the study room, computer room, fitness room, ect, is common space. Sometimes this is awful--if I wake up hungry in the middle of the night, I have to actually GET DRESSED (a ridiculous and unmeetable demand) to get food--but when you are trying to eat something you hate, it is wonderful. There is always someone in the kitchen eating, and that someone can be a cheerleader.

On Friday morning, my cheerleader was No-Nonsense Arabic Extraordinare (NNAE), who is probably one of my very favorite people at the co-op, and the one of the only ones I get to see on a really regular basis (we walk to class together sometimes and talk about bunnies and overdramatic co-op happenings). She is a wonderful person to eat an apple with, because she has the same command as an incredibly polite personal trainer.

"Shauna. You CANNOT be done with that apple yet," she said, with all the authority of a boot-camp director when I  put my apple (minus about 7 bites) on the table in front of me. Eager to think of a quick excuse (because really, the look on her face said "If YOU don't eat that apple, then I will eat YOU.") I took out my phone to take a quick picture of the victimized fruit. I then proceeded to send the picture to my supportive superwoman mommy, who said she was proud of me. I love my mother. I took the apple (which was not lopsided, but rather small and perfect-shaped, with a fingernail-shaped bruise on one side) and ate some more, as per NNAE orders. I was told at my next attempt to give up that I needed to eat 4 more bites. All in all, I ate about half the apple.

That night, Kody and I got to go out on a real date (read: not Taco Cabana or Kirby Lane, which doesn't count as a real restaurant because of the service). We went to Montana Mikes and had some delicious steak--which I supplemented with green beans. I figured out that if you stack your fork with 2 green beans, mashed potatoes, and a bite of steak (in that order), then the green beans don't ever really touch your tongue! This was an important discovery, and one that resulted in the disappearance of half of my green beans! I pulled the same trick with asparagus tonight.

I feel like I'm off to a good-ish start with my plants--I need to stop snacking on things that basically wreck everything else I eat (like anyone with sense, I am addicted to chocolate), but that will come with time (and substitutions--I know some people silence their sugar cravings with fruit, I think I might get there one day). My brilliant cousin Taffy (fatflusher.blogspot.com) told me that I should try grilling fruit. This sounds like an interesting idea, and I think I may try it when/if I go home for the holidays (the co-op offers many things, but access to a grill is not one of them)! I will let all yall know how it turns out.

It is also interesting to note that I'm on a bit of a mono-chromatic run... all my consumed plants thus far have been green (Granny Smith apples, green beans, asparagus). Tomorrow I shall try to go technicolor!

I WILL EAT RABBIT FOOD.

Apples to Apples

Apples to Apples is one of my very favorite games ever, because it is hilarious. Real apples, however, are not hilarious.

Sitting in front of me is one such not-hilarious apple. It is a shiny light green thing, with a brown-red streak on one side (the side facing away from me, so I can pretend that this glaring imperfection doesn't exist), a twisted off stem (removed from the fruit by my nervous fingers this morning as I plucked the apple from the crate in the kitchen), and a slightly lopsided shape, which makes it look as though it is proudly pushing itself towards me in a plea for consumption. Sitting in front of me is a not-hilarious apple that is the absolute picture of fall. It makes me think of cider and orchards and pie and big leafy trees with bendy, weighed-down branches. Most importantly, this apple does NOT make me think about my nursing research paper that is due tomorrow. It is a beautiful lopsided not-hilarious apple. And, given that it is such a wonderful thing to look at (and blog about), it would surely be a shame to eat it. It is really a much better use of my time to look at it, and write about its skin (which has this speckle-thing going on--like you could peel it off, dye it blue, and wrap it around a robins egg) and shape and growing cycle and seeds and sheen and really, anything but its taste. I have no desire to write about the taste of the apple, because I really don't like apples.

I really don't like any plants that are good for you, actually (I could eat corn mixed with mashed potatoes for every meal, but I am told this is like topping starch with starch, which is not all that great for you). I do not eat them. It would have been useless and rediculous, when I was younger, for my parents to command me to sit at the table until all the green things on my plate were gone because I simply would have been there forever. I would still, as an 18 year old, be sitting there. I. Do not. Eat. Plants.

Despite this fact about me (the fact that I don't eat plants), I have good intentions. I picked up the apple from the kitchen, did I not? My rent was paid to the co-op this month, so I basically consented to the purchase of the apple. I am a nursing student. I understand that I NEED to eat plants (and that I might as well start with a speckle-skinned, lopsided, stemless, slightly-imperfect apple). So I'm trying. An apple has made it from the kitchen to my desk, and that is progress.

Here goes.

There. One bite. Despite the fact that it looks pretty, apple skin is gross.

I WILL EAT RABBIT FOOD.