Chocolate Sunshake + Slaying An Anxiety Dragon

A couple weekends back, I found myself crying in a farmers market.

This isn’t typical farmers market behavior. Usually it’s a sunhat wearing, hip checking a vegan to get the best bunches of kale, haggling over baskets of warm strawberries type of situation. But, I haven’t been having a typical week, or month, or year. I used to go to our local farmers market regularly on Sundays. We’d meet up with friends. We’d eat gluten-free crepes, and sweat profusely in the sunshine as we listened to some dude play a sitar. But, in recent months I haven’t been going. My body has been tired, and my mind even more so.  My health will ebb and flow along with my Lyme treatment. Unfortunately, it often gets worse before it gets better. I get trapped in days or weeks or months of feeling like I’m walking through a thick sludge. Exhaustion will creep in and feel debilitating. My normal vivacious self just sits at a hum under a heavy blanket of fatigue. It’s disorienting and frustrating and a breeding ground for anxiety. I stopped doing things that I love to do. Driving became difficult if not impossible. Flowing through a yoga class made me feel like I was suffocating. I’d stare at the door the whole class as if it was the only thing between me and freedom. Walking around the neighborhood I’d feel my heart pounding — my mind racing, telling me that I was too tired, that I wasn’t safe. So, those rows of vendors at our farmers market, selling produce and honey and fancy pickles didn’t feel the same as they did a couple summers ago. Everything was difficult now. Simple every day things become big things. Huge things. Mountains. […]

Balsamic Roasted Asparagus & Cara Cara Oranges

Five things I know to be true:

1) Fruit gets a little bit more awesome when you shove it into the oven and let it get all sweaty and juicy.

2) The above sentence sounds about a billion times more sexual than intended (even though I totally didn’t say moist, so you’re welcome).

3) Asparagus is so delicious, that I don’t care if it makes my urine smell like actual cat food. It’s par for the course.

4) Roasting veggies with fruit, in a bath of oil and balsamic vinegar, and then hitting them with some steak seasoning is a total culinary panty dropper.

5) The above sentence sounds only marginally worse than I intended. But, as with the feline food-urine… it’s just par for the course in these parts. #BloggingIsWeird #Sorry […]

Roasted Cabbage With Almond Sesame Sauce & Herbs + The 21 Day Sugar Detox Recap {Week One}

So, I’m kind of in the middle of a breakup.

About ten days ago, I decided to breakup with sugar. After making (and eating) some of the world’s most delicious grain-free brownies (yes, don’t get weird on me–I’ll still share that recipe with you), I started noticing some things were going on in my body. My joints hurt almost immediately. My anxiety spiked. I felt bad, and generally hungover the next day. But, that didn’t stop my cravings. I wanted another brownie. I wanted a chocolate bar. I wanted a pint of ice cream. This felt like new territory for me. I’ve never been much of a sweets monster. I usually opt for the savory things in life. Steak is my power food. I choose crispy chicken skin over cake. That’s just how I roll. But, recently I began this spiral of chasing my savory meals with a sweet treat. It was a like a switch flipped in my brain upon meal completion, begging for a little bit of sweet sugary crack.  After compulsively eating more brownies than one should, I not only felt achy and anxious, but I started to feel out of control. At this point, I ordered The 21 Day Sugar Detox, by Diane Sanfilippo. It was time to call in reinforcements. […]

Citrus & Fennel Salad With Tahini Dressing

Dudes. Dudettes. Polar Bears. Information-Mining Google Robots…

I don’t know exactly how to address this little love letter to citrus, so, I’m just throwing it all out there. I’m experiencing a little bit of citrus fever. It’s a hopeful sunny burst of color exploding out of the dreariness of winter.

Okay, I’m lying a little. Winter here in California is currently not dreary, even though we’re promised some rain towards the end of the week. But, for now, I just went out for a sunny walk wearing only a t-shirt. Oh, and pants. Didn’t forget those. But, still. The sun was shining, I was warm and sweaty in just my t-shirt (and pants), and I had to use all of my self control to not pilfer all of my neighbors’ citrus trees. There are sooooo many! They are all dripping with citrus. How are citrus tree-owning people not jamming and canning and peeling and eating and slicing and dicing and marmalade-ing their way through this season?! How about lemon curd? Don’t even get me started. […]