Autumn my dear readers is a beautiful season, especially here in Nebraska. On campus the trees are turning so many colors: red, yellow, orange, and pink, all with different variance of these shades; there are even trees with multiple colors on the leaves, one side might be red while the other side is yellow! And as a college student and Biology major, Autumn is the busiest time of the year, with tests to take, papers to write, projects to do, books to read, classes to attend, and lab experiments to conduct. I still managed to have some fun though, and even make a couple of new good friends.
In early October I attended a small fall festival at the church by Union's campus. The festival was put on by the the George Stone Elementary school (which is housed below the Union girls' dorm) to raise money for their school.
Some of the kids even performed.
This guy was pretty good.
Due to its pagan origins I have never, and still don't celebrate Halloween. However, I love that because of Halloween you can dress up in a costume during this time of the month without people thinking your nuts, and this year I took advantage of it. So I grabbed whatever I had handy in my dorm room, and for one day I went to classes as a wood nymph. What fun I had! =D
When November came about three things happened: (1) It got colder! Brrr..., (2) my workload got heavier, and (3) some of my favorite fall fruits became available, Fuyu persimmons, cranberries, honey crisp apples, and dragon fruit! Persimmons and dragon fruit I prefer to eat as a mono-meals. While its true that persimmons and dragon fruit taste good with a lot of different fruits and raw recipes, there is just something delectable about sitting down to a large meal of sweet, soft, and juicy persimmons or dragon fruit. Mmmmm...
And when cranberry season arrives, so do the honey crisp apples, and I get to make one of my favorite fall breakfast, raw cranberry sauce:
Today is the last day of classes for me. Tomorrow morning I get to fly home for Thanksgiving Break. It's going to be wonderful. A whole week without classes or labs to go to and no tests to take. . . I can't wait! I plan on running the Atlanta Thanksgiving Half Marathon again this year. It's the same course as last year so I'll get the chance to see if I can beat my PB for this course from last year. Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough.
Today was hectic but productive. I was finally able to sort out my classes so I am now set for the Spring semester. Hallelujah!
This semester I am taking:
English Composition II
Principles of Accounting I: Financing
United States History II
Introduction to Anthropology
I also got to have fun in the kitchen coming up with some cooked vegan recipes for my mother and I's healthy lifestyle transition book. I spent so much time playing in the kitchen that time just flew by and I didn't have time to go to the gym. Instead, I opted to just bundle up, grab my bicycle, and go for it!
Today (Tuesday)
3 mile bike ride
100 jumping jacks
100 crunches
A merry heart does good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.
~ Proverbs 17:22
I love it when a day works out for the better. Later!
I just love weekends, particularly the ones that last three days instead of two. I spent all day Saturday relaxing. I slept in, laid in bed and read, took our family dog, Charlie, for a walk with my mom, and went crazy with my Chocolate (Black) Sapote.
You remember this decadent fruit from my last post?
I had bought quite a few sapote from jourdansbeautifulfood.com. However, unlike the last batch, these sapote ripened all at once. Yikes! Now don't get me wrong, I love eating massive amounts of sapote mono meal style, but after a while I was ready for a new spin on this scrumptious fruit. So I turned on my culinary creativity, went to work, and came up with this luscious meal that I dubbed. . .
Chocolate Silk Breakfast Pudding
Despite its name, I love this meal so much that I have it for more than just breakfast. I often enjoy this pudding 2-3 times a day and as a result, I'm almost out of sapote. Oh no! I better go order some more. Chocolate Sapote only comes around once a year and I want to have my fill of it before the season ends.
Yum yum. . . eat em up! LOL
Another meal that I have been enjoying 1-2 times a day lately is this tropical thirst quencher. . .
Punchy Pineapple Smoothie
I just love how rich the color is because it gives the food the aesthetic appeal we humans often need to enjoy our meal.
The ingredients and prep work is really simple: take one ripe pineapple, chop it up, put pineapple pieces in the blender, add enough water to blend (I just use a splash of coconut water), and blend until frothy. That's it, your all done! Now just pour yourself a glass and enjoy. =D
The rest of the weekend went well. By Sunday it was time to stock up on food, so the entire morning was spent making the Whole Foods and Farmer's Market rounds with my mom. I was really lucky that all my favorite fruits for the season were ripe (or almost ripe) and were being sold in bulk (it really saves me money). I ended up buying a box of large pineapple (6 pineapple), 2 boxes of persimmon (28), 2 lbs. of red grapes, 4 Organic red mango, 15 lbs, Organic bananas, and 2 Organic Hawaii Papaya (score!). I also got a bunch of greens and un-sweet fruit (e.g. tomato, bell pepper, cucumber) for giant dinner salads.
Today(Monday) went less smoothly then the rest of the weekend. My college classes are supposed to start tomorrow and this morning all the classes I had registered for have somehow managed to unregister themselves and I can't seem to get them back. Hopefully someone in the administration office can help me get that sorted out tomorrow morning.
Then this afternoon I accidentally drove all the way to the gym and back with my emergency brakes on. I feel like such an idiot about that. I'm just praying that I didn't total the emergency break. *sigh* I guess I'll find out when I have the car checked out later in the week. *chuckles* The things that life throws at you huh? I just do what the penguins did.
Well, it's getting late and I have a full day tomorrow, but before I wrap this post up, my weekend workouts:
Saturday
Day off - 20 minutes walking dog and 20 push-ups
Sunday
8 miles cycling - avg. 16 mph pace
1 hour of yoga (my 2nd class and my arms are still feeling it!)
Only four days into 2011 and it's still hard to believe that time has flown by so quickly. It seems like only yesterday that I was welcoming in 2010, and now it is passed. 2010 was a wonderful and eventful year for me and I hope it was the same for all of you.
With this new year comes changes in my life. I enjoyed my first semester of college immensely. I feel that having the chance to live away from home allowed me to grow and explore who I am. I made some amazing friends and had the opportunity to try new activities. I got into rock climbing/bouldering and outdoor cycling; I was able to try my first triathlon and to preform a flying squirrel. However, all good things must come to an end and I am back at home. Union College provided me with a wonderful education but the tuition was just to high for me to stay. So I am now attending my local community college while I look for some scholarships and save my money. If I play my cards right I will be able to attend a very good private university for my last two years of undergraduate studies. My goal is to graduate with my bachelors degree debt free.
Don't worry though, I still plan on keeping busy and updating this blog more frequently. I have so much planned for the future. Currently I am collaborating with my mom to write and publish a vegan recipe book. It's going to be half raw (mostly LFRV) and half cooked vegan recipes. The goal of this book is to help those who are transitioning from being SAD or vegetarian to being vegan and eventually (hopefully) raw or high raw. Personally, If I get enough feedback from you and those who purchase the finished recipe book I may publish a recipe book with just the raw recipes for those people who have already transitioned from cooked and just want the raw recipes. Also, I am working on starting up my own part-time business this summer. Stay tuned to find out what it will be! =)
This year I also plan on training as hard as I can while going to school and improve my athletic performance. I have another half-marathon approaching in March and an obstacle course race called The Warrior Dash. I will training outside as often as possible but I will also be training at a gym on the days where the weather is unfavorable. My fitness goal this year is to become a bit more versatile in my athletic abilities.
I will be working on developing my upper body more this year. I plan to do this through weight training, rock climbing, swimming, and yoga (hopefully). I will still be running and cycling, I just feel that increasing my upper body strength will improve my running. Remember that in running stronger arms give you more power to quicken your pace.
How does all this effect my blog? I plan on documenting my training more often along with pictures of what I eat. I'm going to try to blog every day that I train, giving as much detail as possible. Blogging my progress will hopefully encourage me to really give it my all and maybe give you readers some ideas.
Hello my lovely readers! I know that my time away from the blogging world came without warning, but I have avery good explanation. Are you comfortable? Good, because I have tons to to tell!
For those of you who are not aware, after graduating high school in May 2009, I took a gap year to travel, study nutrition, run my first half marathon, and help my mom out with the house. That gap year came to a close in mid-August of this year and I was all set to attend Kennesaw State University (approximately a 70 minute drive from my home). Alas, it was not to be, KSU wasn't able to get me off off the waiting list fir student classes in time for the fall semester.
I was devistated! I worried that I would have to wait unitil the Spring semester to begin my college education. Fortunately, hope came in the form of Union College, a Seventh-Day Adventist college in Lincon, Nebraska. Union had yet to close my file and graciously allowed me to attend their college this fall. Of course this ment scrambling to get everything I needed together at the last minute. Somehow I still managed to have a lot of fun in the week building up to my time of departure.
How I spent my week. . .
Saturday, August 8th, I turned 19 (woohoo!) and there was a small "dinner party" in the evening whuch my family and my sudo family attended. I prepared Raw Chocolate Sauce, slice Peaches, Strawberries, Banana/Date Ice Cream, Florida Passion Fruit, andcut up watermelon in the shapes of cakes! The meal was a big hit which made me incredibly happy! I'm always glad when I can get people to enjoy eating more fresh fruits.
My B-Day cake. . .yummy!! :-D
On Monday, Mom and I drove up to Whole Foods to meet up with a fellow raw vegan, Taylor Snipes of Taylor's Tropicals! As some of you may know Taylor has sold his business to his former roommate Jourdan (who has since renamed the company Jourdan's Beautiful Fruit) and has moved to the amazing city of Santa Barbara in sunny California.
I was so happy that Taylor's driving route to California went through Atlanta. We spent a good couple of hours just talking and Taylor was kind enough to share his yummy fruit stash with my mom and I for lunch. We ate a scrumptious meal of mangos and figs!
Afterwards, Taylor and I went into Whole Foods to stock up on some amazing varieties of melon. People looked at us so funny, but we didn't care because we were to excited about the awesome melon! We bought Galia, Canary, Crenshaw, Santa Clause, Casaba, and Orange-flesh Honeydew, and Sharyln melons! Taylor and I both agreed that to succeed on this diet you need to enjoy your food. If that means having to reajust your budget to be used mostly on your fruit then so be it.
People on this diet often find that the don't need or want to spend their money on much else other than fruit (e.g. beauty products, jewelry, movies, medical drugs, trendy clothes, ect.) People who eat a raw plant based diet find that they don't need those beauty products or medical drugs anymore because their ailments go away and their skin and hair have a natural healthy glow. They don't want the trendy clothes or flashy cars because they can't wear the clothes to ride the bikes that they much prefer using as transportation whenever they can.
I wish that I could have had more time to get to know Taylor but eventually he did have to hit the road. That's alright though because one day I will move back to my lovely birth state of California of which I miss dearly. I might get to see Taylor more oftne then as we are bound to run into eachother wherever there's a giant fruit sale. LOL.
Tuesday, Mom and I spent a good part of the day at the mall shopping for college dorm necessaties. It was suprisingly a lot of fun and by the end of it we were so hungry we couldn't wait to get home before getting some food. So, we decided to check out the food court and low and behold we found. . .
It was enough hold us over until we could make it back home.
The rest of the week I spent with my mom making plane reservations, making plans to board the dogs, packing up my stuff in boxes to be shipped, selling my truck (I couldn't take it with me) to my brother, and just relaxing by watching movies with my mom and brother.
My last dinner at home the night before the flight.
Raw "Chips" and Salsa
My new Vibrams bought from the Abbadabba store in Little Five Points, GA!
On Friday morning, August 13th, my mom, my brother, and I all boarded a plane bound for Omaha, NE. Ready or not I was off to college! Look out Nebraska!! :-D
My on flight snack.
The only two airpoirts that I can remember seeing in my life are London Heathrow, Las Vegas, San Fransisco, and Atlanta, all of them were huge. Not Omaha though, no way no how. It would be impossible to get lost in Omaha Airport, it is just that small.
After grabbing a taxi, my family and I spent the next few hours car hunting. I would need transportation here in Nebraska since I had to sell my car back home. By 1:00 PM we stepped out of a Ford dealership and I am now the proud honor of a used 2007 White Toyota Camry.
Once we had wheels we could now navigate about the city and begin the 50 minute drive to Lincoln. Before we did that my family and I stopped off at a Whole Foods to refuel.
Lunch at the Whole Foods in Omaha
Once in Lincoln, we settled into our rooms at the Holiday Inn Express and spent the next couple of days relaxing and exploring the general area. On Sunday I moved all my stuff into my dorm room before spending the rest of the day back in Omaha with my family. That evening I had to drop my family off at their hotel outside of Lincon Airport (It is even smaller than Omaha's. Seriousle, blink and you will miss it.).
This year is the first year Union College has put on a week long Orientation for freshmen. I spent the whole of last week in and out of seminars, waiting in line at the various registration check points, meeting with my advisor to set up a class schedule, signing up for various Clubs and Intramural Sports, and attending a mandatory weekend camping trip at a 4-H camp.
I joined the Associated Student Body of Union College.
Some of my Union Market Cafeteria Meals
Camping Trip: Look at me, I climbed a tree!
Tomorrow begins the first day of classes, I can't wait! My first class is at 9:30 AM and I plan on working-out before that, so I'm off to bed. Now that I'm all settled in I will be able to post more often. Check my blog regularly for weekly and bi-weekly updates. I can't wait to see what this year brings to myself personally and to this blog.
Ever since my last (and my first) mini-Juice feast I've wanted to do it again. These past few months I have developed a real love of all things citrus - navels, clementines, tangerines, mandarins, valencias, grapefruit - you name the citrus and I've been eating them by the pound. So this Wednesday and Thursday I drank nothing freshly juiced Valencia Oranges, Mandarins, and Honey Tangerines. It was so sweet, so refreshing, and to top it off, the days were sunny with clear blue skies! :-)
Yesterday, I was terribly tired physically and mentally. My energy levels were so low that I forwent any intense workout. At first I thought it was due to my being indoors for to long and I tried to remedy that by packing my studies into my backpack to walk to the library (2.6 mile walk round trip). It didn't work.
By the time I got home I had a killer headache, my eyes were burning, I was ready to crash. I drank a big glass of water and skipped my evening juice to go to bed early. I slept from 6:50pm to 7:30am and felt much MUCH better. It was the next morning when I looked at the bags under my eyes thatI realized what had been wrong with me, I was sleep deprived!
For the past couple of months I have been living on 5 to 6 hours of sleep and I do believe it has finally caught up with me. I had twelve hours of sleep last night and I still feel like I need another twelve to completely recuperate. Sometimes we have to stop and revaluate what we are doing in our lives that could be harmful to our health.
You can eat tons of fresh raw fruits and greens, drink plenty of water, get lots of sunshine, but your health suffers because you short yourself sleep. Our bodies are strong. Our bodies can take a lot of stress so that we can get through our daily lives, but if you short yourself on something crucial to your health for to long, your body will begin to suffer the effects, and the quality of your life.
Follow NEWSTART to the best of your ability and you your body will thank you.
Nutrition
Exercise
Water
Sleep
Temperance
Air
Rest
Trust in the Divine (in my case Yahweh)
As for today, my mom and I took a drive to see where I will be going to college in the fall, Kennesaw State University (KSU). We drove aroung the campus, visited the admissions office, and took a peak at the campus housing (nice!).
I originally wanted to go to a University out of state (still do), but decided that since the economy is a little shaky at the moment, and my mother and brother have to stay in Georgia one more year before they can move, I decided to stay instate for now.
My mom and I made good time getting up to KSU and had enough time to stop off at Whole Foods for lunch. I picked up a 16 oz. "Strawberry Punch" (freshly juiced strawberries, grapes, pineapple, and lemon) juice and 4 cups of chopped pineapple.
I also came across this little treasure and got so excited! I have been looking for something like this for ages and all of a sudden I just stumble upon it unintentionally. No longer will I have to use disposable silverware because I've got my own REUSABLE bamboo eating utensils. Woohoo!! :-D
