smoothie love

Just a quick post to declare my love for smoothies, the ultimate fast-health-food! Seriously guys, smoothies are foundational to my diet, preferably with lots of green! So easy to digest and they always make me feel great. This bad boy is 1/2 avocado, 1 banana, bunch of backyard babykale (my garden is doing great!) spinach, 1/2 cucumber, a generous amount of frozen blueberries, coconut water. So yummy, had to share :) 

noodles and trees

Well, Ive been a crappy blogger. Lately Ive been thinking alot about how much crohn I want to talk about here and have no conclusion for this thought. Ive been digging deeper into the world of crohnie bloggers and there is a pretty cool community out there with loads of important info. Ive read alot of stories of different treatments and scary complications ect and have am a little overwhelmed and in awe of the bravery and strength required to take the biological pharmaceuticals. Crohns is pretty wild in its varied degrees of severity and am I just so super grateful that Ive managed as well as I have as long as I have. I have to admit Ive been thinking a lot about these drugs and the (unknown) long term effects. For now Im still honoring my gut feeling (haha) that imuran/remicade/humira are not right for me, as Im still feeling amazing post-surgery and am going to ride out this great feeling as long as I can. That ride includes lots and lots and lots of greens! 

One of my very favorite dinners, miso veggie noodle soup. Ive been experimenting with eating less grains lately (more on that later) but I loooooove my rice noodles so this is challenging. This bowl is a mix of half rice noodles (actually they are pumpkin ginger rice noodles yum!) and half zuchinni noodles    to lighten the grain load. Lots of greens steamed in a broth of homemade chicken stock and chickpea miso, tamari, ginger, green onion and shitake mushrooms. Yumyumyum. And soooooo good on my guts :)

In non food related news, Ive been climbing alot of trees, with Lula standing watch. Good for catching a new perspective ;) We are loving summer :)

Alright, Im going to try to be a better blogger, because I actually kind of enjoy it :)

comfort food

Just a couple breakdowns of some delicious dinners that were born out of the need for comfort food. 

hippie bowl

This one happened after I had the foresight to start the rice cooker with some sprouted brown rice before I headed out for my cleaning shift at the yoga studio. I was pretty tired and hungry and so happy for the quick yet still hearty and wholesome meal that is made possible by having a pot of rice at the ready! This was inspired by one of my favorite bloggers Hungry Hungry Hippie. She frequents the rice&egg bowl with a zillion random variations. This one was sprouted brown rice, pea shoots, wilted arugula, dairy-free pesto, a fried organic egg and a blob of cashew cheese. So yummy and satisfying :)

Lula gets really interested when I cook meat

So Im one of those mostly-vegetarian, great at vegan baking, sometimes eats organic meat kinda girls. This was one evening after work and I wanted a good, simple dinner with lots of yum and not alot of frills. I gathered a few solid quality items from the market and whipped up this nice dinner- Steamed broccoli with lots of butter, roasted rose fingerling potatoes and grilled organic chicken breast :)

still getting the hang of this blogging stuff

alright, alright so I havent been great at being a regular blogger but Im still getting the hang of it. You havent missed too much though, still feeling great post-op and enjoying the peace and quiet of normalcy after surgery. Normal and happy has been looking alot like this:

so many pancake mornings

 Its been super beautiful here for at least the past week so we've been getting in lots of backyard chilling time.

lula staying chill on hot backyard days

rocking so many monster salads

vintage crockpot crafted soup, groovy sister-made potholder  and mooooooore salad!

Alright, so real talk. I had a slightly overdue follow up with my specialist not long ago, and well, it was interesting. The heavy duty drugs they are pumping crohnies up with these days are pretty serious scary stuff and this doctor is in a bit of a rush to get me on them. I wont get too far into the details, but the potential side effects vs the potential success is far too high a risk for me to take at this point in my life. The drugs they are pushing are not a cure, they are not %100, they come with loads of potentially life changing side effects and basically are extremely harsh on all your major organs/systems... And this specialist I see, well she sees me for about 10 minutes a year, and didnt even have the real story about what went down with my surgery, so I just dont feel right trusting her judgement. I feel like Ive worked really hard for the health I have in spite of crohns disease and these drugs would just put it all in jeopardy. So after dr. scared the bejeebus out of with 10 minutes of terrifying tales of side effects, a life sentence of being pumped up with modified mouse proteins, followed by completely losing my trust when she was clueless as to what actually happened in my surgery, I just knew this was not the way for me.

You see that glow there? That is the look of a dedicated green-juicing health warrior on a pretty groovy healing journey. Pretty sure that glow would not be possible on biological immune suppressants!  Green juice! Amen and namaste!

milk, bread and cookies

Milk, bread and cookies, bunny style. First up, a delicious jug of freshly milked nuts.  I believe this was a cashew/almond combo, sweetened with dates and vanilla bean. The nuts are soaked a few hours so they are soft, alive and readily digested, then blended with water, strained through a fine mesh bag then blended again with dates and vanilla. yum.  Great warmed up with chai spices, or in a creamy smoothie or...

A nice big glass alongside  gluten-free vegan almond butter cookies. The recipe I use calls for peanut butter but I swing the almond butter way. Chewy, dense, slightly sweet, slightly salty and I still get that old school cookie comfort. 

The other day I had a funny thought. Ive been on such a lettuce-as-the-bread kick that I now buy gorgeous heads of butterleaf or romaine as though I were buying a loaf of bread. Look at that beauty! 

That there lunch would be homemade guac, sweet potato chickpea burgers on butterleaf (grown locally!) And Ill proboaly have a variation of this for lunch today too!

catching up

gettin fresh in the am 

Things have been same-same here, waking up the ol' GI tract with a juicy grapefruit and green juice. So much life in this combo! And when I am done it looks like the fruit plates they leave for the butterflies at the zoo.  Feeling good, eating well and getting back into the groove of participating in the outside world.

all healed up @ 6wks

I'm pretty happy with way surgery turned out. I'm far enough along  from the intense hospital part that I can enjoy the benefits of my gi renovation project. Its pretty crazy that they can knock you out and go inside fixing stuff and bring you back like that. I went in with a positive attitude and tried naively to prepare myself for the post-op situation but it still utterly kicked my butt.  Good news is it got a tiny bit better every single day, and 6 weeks later I am healed up in pretty good shape! 

rice tortilla pizza with a blue-green smoothie

That there photo is yesterdays lunch, with the added bonus of a sneak peak at my glass  collection. That is  a spinach, tempeh leftovers, tomato feta pizza and a blueberry-banana-green smoothie, in a sundae glass, and yes, that it a glass straw.

Oh, and since I havent officially introduced her, this is Lula. She would like to get that squirrel over there.

double dinner

The other night as I was considering what to make for dinner I had funny feeling that I should consult sister before I committed. We had a undefined loosey goosey hangout plans that food would fit nicely into, but before I knew it was whisking eggs and chopping broccoli for a frittata.  While it was baking in all its eggy glory wouldnt you know, I was invited for black bean burgers with sister! I am no stranger to hobbit style eating (Im a big fan of second breakfast) so I accepted the invitation and had a wee small slice of sweet potato broccoli frittata for pre-dinner.

sweet potato, broccoli, green onion, sheep feta

 You guys, Nunus black bean burgers were ridiculous! All the flavors were spot on, I felt like I was 11 years old eating tacos in New Mexico! We ate them on romaine leaves (we are so on to the breadless sandwich trend) and because of the shape of the leaves and slight crumbling of the burgers we called them burritos! There was a touch of heat in the patties but the cool crunch of the lettuce and creaminess of the avocado and goat cheese were the perfect combo for my delicate bunny palette.

black bean burger burrito bar for sisters!

I had a spot of coconut milk ice cream for 2nd dinner dessert but Nunu skipped as she thinks mint chocolate tastes like toothpaste. And because she didnt have dessert she made a yummy almond milk chai to sip while watching Babe. And to this I asked "even though I had dessert can I have tea too???". And so it was, there was tea for two!