Starch Hurrahs, New Exercise Equipment, Cherry-Almond Smoothie

I hope everyone's having a great weekend. We seem to be perpetually busy right now, and I can't blame the full moon! I can blame these Anchorage trips: we're getting ready to take off again and all the back-and-forth is unsettling. Hopefully after this week, we can start going less frequently.

I've been promising to share my experiences around trying out eating more starch and cutting out PUFAs. I'll talk about the latter next week, but am ready to talk about the starches! As I mentioned before, I felt that I had good reasons for being Carbophobic, between celiac/gluten allergy and the difficulties that I've experienced digesting starch on many occasions, as well as all the claims that equate starch with sugar in the body.

Although I still have to go through candida clearout when I finish with chelating, my sense is that I'm far less rife with yeastie-beasties than I was a year ago. Far fewer yeasty symptoms, and whereas last summer, even yams and beets would upset my stomach, lately they have been my great friends--yams and parsnips especially. And my ND says that I'll still be able to eat those even when cleansing candida.

 I'm not eating a huge amount of it, but am eating some every day, usually at dinner. I'd been tackling the mental portion of Carbophobia by reading a lot of research showing that starch (as opposed to sugar) is good for our bodies. This is per rule #5 in my conversation about ground rules for nutritional research: I'd sucked in a lot of why starch was bad, and come to find out, there was plenty of research showing the opposite was the case!

But here's the gold/paydirt: I just got through my 11th cycle of chelating, eating some starch every day, and had been eating some every day the week before, and I wasn't constipated at all! This was a hallelujah event (and I'm sorry if it's tmi). I'd had the ample experience of ten previous chelation cycles, and in every instance, constipation was one of several major discomforts. It is also one of long-term results of my 'bad and ugly' years of self-mistreatment, and I'd pretty much resigned myself to having to control it with high doses of Magnesium for the rest of my life. Can't take Magnesium during chelation, hence the problem. This last time, no problem at all! I was caught between wanting to sing hallelujah all day every day and not wanting to breathe a word and jinx it!

This feedback from my body is a wonderful gift in two ways at least:
1) It's the first sign I've had in years that my body knows what she's doing and can come back into balance. I've always believed in the self-healing and homeostatic powers of bodies, just not of my own body.
2) It feels so liberating to relax on demonized foods: to think of foods like yams and even bananas as 'good for me' rather than 'something I shouldn't be eating.'

And so, I share a smoothie that made me so happy, I've had to repeat it.

 It's: 1cup almond or coconut milk
        half a frozen banana
        half a cup of frozen cherries
        a handful of greens (this one had cilantro but I couldn't taste it)
        a couple tablespoons irish moss gel
       half a teaspoon sunflower lecithin (tastes gross by itself but is a great emulsifier)
       vanilla
       half a teaspoon almond extract
       spoonful of spirulina
       half a teaspoon of yacon syrup
       bit of coconut oil (it's solid up here, so I just put in a little chunk.)
       dusting of stevia powder
Perhaps it's since I made that marzipan, but the richly cyanided blend of almond and cherry flavors just melts me and delights me. So good! One time I made it with leftover baked yam in place of the banana--and then found that Lori had done something quite similar. I'm also seeing myself heading in a similar culinary direction to the wonderfully talented Pure2Raw ladies: nourishing and delectable combinations of cooked starches with lots of raw food all around.

Of course, per rule #4, I'm not making any long-term conclusions yet, but this feedback that my body can learn to function unassisted is just entrancing. If it can do that, maybe my metabolism can normalize too, and, and.... :)

Moving on to exercise equipment. I love to be outdoors but my work involves being indoors, and sometimes even stubborn old me is deterred by icy winds and sideways snow. I love rebounders and finally bought one recently. The challenge, even with a piece of equipment so small, is how to fit it in our little space!

Here's Phil figuring it out...

It hangs above our heads like a dorky sun-negative with little feet, when not in use. When I want to use it, I unclip the rope and down it comes (easy now!).

I bounce away. It's a blurred pic but you can see I'm smiling!

And yes, it's pretty cold in here, so I'm wearing my hat and heavy booties. Much of what I've been reading about exercise lately is suggesting that short, intense bursts of exercise are the way to go. Having those super-heavy feet is one way of ensuring that I'm gasping and panting and ready to stop after a short but fun bounce.

The pulley is strong enough to support my weight, so I can also hang onto the rope and work my upper body while bouncing. Super-tiring. Phil is a genius!

Do you like exercise that makes you feel like a kid?
What's the best validation you've had from your body recently?

The View From Here/Up For This Week

The View From Here

A day late, I know… It's been a very strange and eventful couple of days. Our latest batch of guests are two very special almost-fifteen-year olds and their dad, and they are camping with us. So it's more of a full-time deal than the previous batch, who were staying with our dear friends 'up the hill.'

I've had 'work' things to do, so haven't participated in the fishing trips and beach hikes yet, but have been cooking and baking a great deal. Here they are proud with their first two silver salmon on Sunday, and we built a fire-pit on the edge of the bluff to cook the salmon for them.

But yesterday evening, their dad fell through the hatch in our bunker and broke three ribs. Obviously this is a deal-changer - last night he slept in a real bed at our friends' place up the hill, and Phil slept in the tent with the boys. That's why I didn't write yesterday! I don't believe that accidents are just 'accidents:' every accident I've ever had has been 'for a reason.' And yesterday I was running around with my head cut off, which is often an accident-prone situation for me, so I almost felt like I had caused it - but more so, I felt a pang of realization of how little I'd realized the stress he is under, trying to make the best possible trip for his boys. 

It's socked in and pouring right now, and we're up the hill with our friends, reevaluating how to make the next eight or nine days work.

Up For This Week

I'm so happy to be harvesting all these greens! Too bad I've been feeling so sick from chelating, I can barely eat anything… I'm looking forward to having my Vita-mix arrive - maybe blending up greens will work better than munching salads every meal.

Turnips and carrots - including our first decent carrot - they've all been funny and gnarly so far...

Yesterday, I harvested the most beautiful cauliflower - beautiful to look at and so delicious!

I am trying to keep up with my editing/translating work and more importantly (but harder to fit in when it's this crazy) my own creative writing. I know that if I don't do this for a few days in a row, I start to get loopy and cranky, like a cow that hasn't been milked! Yesterday, I did some typing work to help out a friend from Writers' Group here - I typed for six and a half hours! - And got up early to make piles of food, rushed home for lunch, then in the evening. I was glad to help out typing, and glad to make a little more money, but am not sure that typing all day was the best thing for me! I couldn't sleep last night, I was in so much pain in my shoulders and arms. Speaking of which, I'd better keep this post short! Back to the question - do you accept all kinds of work just to get some more money, or do you have stricter limits? For me, when it's also helping someone out, it's very hard to say 'no.'

I'm hoping to continue to post photos and stories here this week, but I really don't know what kind of posting schedule I can have. 

Hanging out in Anchorage, Side Street Espresso, Workshop Aftermaths

A happy Wednesday! Our last day spending time with David and Heather et al until we don't know when - pouring rain here, a change of pace for Phil and me both, hanging out in the city, going to coffee shops, etc.

But it's so good to see Phil again!

Monday night we camped out, not too far from the road, in the brush - a compromise between Phil and me for sure - he'd have gladly gone for miles, I was so exhausted I could barely make it the few hundred yards we went. At least it was dry that night - and there were some amazing fungi, their fruiting bodies further harbingers of fall, on our route - check out this amanita!

Beautiful but deadly.

Last night we stayed with a friend. It is so good to catch up with people, but I'm finding it's way harder to keep on top of myself, blood sugar, etc, when we're in this hanging-loose kind of mode, than it was at the writing workshop, with a schedule and with the imperative to be on form to absorb everything. There's the cumulative effect from tiredness from that too, I guess, and it's interesting to note that when I'm not doing significant amounts of creative writing in a day, my energy seems lower. (Kind of like how Phil feels out of sorts if he doesn't get a ton of exercise in of a day. Right now, he's donned raingear and his new running shoes, and has gone off on a hike/jog to pick up some huge pieces of discarded iron he noticed somewhere and bring them back to the truck!)

My experience this second round of chelating is that it makes me feel pretty crappy, especially by the third or fourth day. Cranky, skin crawling, guts unhappy, achey (muscles and bones), blood sugar even more delicate. Hopefully those are all symptoms of mercury etc exiting my body, and hopefully things will feel much better when this is over!

We've spent the last three mornings at Side Street Espresso - our friends' favorite coffee shop in downtown Anchorage. The owners are super friendly and know everyone by name. And they have bengal spice tea, my favorite! There's lots of really interesting artwork all over the walls, and apparently the display changes every month. And every single day there's a special coffee drink, named for a real or fictional personality, who is represented in a cartoon drawn by George (one of the owners) himself!

Here's a slightly goofy shot of David and Heather, showing some of the decor too.

Back by the bathroom is a little gallery of several previous cartoons. 

Once a year, the artwork of the month in there is entirely composed of these cartoons, and people have the opportunity to buy them. Today, when we went in, the gentleman pictured in the cartoon du jour was sitting right there in the cafe!