Relapses, illness and good books

I will start with the positive. I just finished a really good book, The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

I had this one for a while and didn't think I would like it based on the description, but it was sooo good.
Check it out here

Book description
"Every gift has a price . . . every piece of lace has a secret.
Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations. Now the disappearance of two women is bringing Towner back home to Salem—and is bringing to light the shocking truth about the death of her twin sister."

On a negative note I have just recovered from another bought of stomach bug or food poisoning. It is so weird. I haven't had a stomach bug in years and in the past 2 months I have had it 3 times! I keep wondering if I am poisoning myself with something. It is awful and it throws off our schedule of life. I am falling so far behind in housework and we have no groceries.

We went on a family trip a few days ago to a really cool farm/ inn. The place is really all about kids. There are tons of activities (cow milking, smore making, arts and crafts, etc.) and lots of animals to visit with and feed. We stayed for 2 nights. You pay a flat rate and get all of your meals included. This is where the relapse comes in....

They had huge amounts of all of the things I try to avoid. Especially homemade baked goods at every meal. AND they served dessert at every meal. It was sooo good, but soooo bad. As I have mentioned before I will not give up eating that is an experience, and this was a true experience. So I say it was worth it. But now I must get my act together and get some clean, healthy good in the house...bewteen the trip and my illness..we are falling behind and need to get it together.

Clean Eats

I have been commenting a lot on the fact that we are trying to follow the clean eating philosophy as much as possible. For the most part we have been very good about it. Really we have always cooked and shopped for healthy foods. The problem has always been our take out. Since we had our kids it was just way too easy to pick something up or go out to eat. So we totally reversed the positive effects of our good grocery trips by eating crap on the go.

Now that we seem to have that under control, I am doing more research and following of Clean eating.

I have used the clean eating magazine website for some time
http://www.cleaneatingmag.com/


The woman who is really the guru on this is Tosca Reno. I finally bought her book "The Clean-Eat Diet Recharged" and so far I really love it. I am not big on limiting yourself and I have always known that many small meals is the way to go. I totally agree with everything she says. If eating good, healthy food is important to you I really recommend reading her book.

I decided to take a picture of some of my groceries today, which I had out on the counter, so you could visualize some of what clean eating includes.

Just to highlight some of what is in the photo:

oat meal
flax seed
flank steak
ground turkey
peppers
mushrooms
whole wheat pasta
black beans and chick peas
apples
bananas
blue berries
walnuts and almonds
skim mozzarella
eggs (those are from our own chickens, not the grocery store)
egg plant
ground bison meat (they sell this at Roche Bros.)
whole wheat bread
organic skim milk

A book to inspire

If you are looking for a great book, consider Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls (author of The Glass Castle). My mom gave this to me last week and I just finished it. It is a great book if you believe yourself to be a strong, independent woman. The protagonist is the prototype of the stong, ahead of her time female. And when I say strong I mean STRONG. I'm talking the type who spends days on the dry plains of Arizons rangling cattle, who sold bootleg liquor out of her back door and who road 500 miles by herself via a horse at the age of 12, just to get an education.
The book made me want to get up and stop complaining. GREAT READ! Thanks Mom