Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Freedom with Boundaries

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Happy 20th birthday to my sweet son, Sam! (at Pensacola) Mom misses you!

This is my first day of giving myself a bit more freedom. You’ll see very soon why I gave myself such stringent guidelines before I even woke up today. Discipline is not my strong suit.  So let’s see how today went.

Until my coconut milk is gone, I’m planning to mix it ½ and ½ with cow’s milk. This is a continued sacrifice, but I don’t see how else to motivate myself to finish the coconut milk off. Once I go to cow’s milk alone, I would find it very difficult to go back and finish off the coconut milk. So I enjoyed a glass!!! of milk (mixed) with my apricot breakfast bar from the Daniel Fast book for breakfast. It still had a strong coconut flavor, but it was more of a pleasant taste than the overwhelming dirty-sock flavor of coconut milk alone.  Since I drank the milk instead of using it with cereal or granola, I didn’t make my every-other-day cup of coffee today, so that I’ll be able to enjoy it tomorrow.

After the girls had left for school, I faced the same challenge as last week, but with new freedoms, the temptation was even stronger! My first thought – let’s order from Sarpino’s (an incredible Italian fast-food place that delivers) for lunch! But I didn’t…. The fridge is full of healthy leftovers, as well as full of veggies that need to be turned into healthy meals. So I know I can’t spend money to get “yummy” food. But the leftovers just didn’t light my fire today. :-) Finally, my eyes lit on the jar of natural peanut butter I picked up at Sprout’s. Delicious!!! I’ve always been a sucker for PB! I used the multi-grain bread that my mother-in-law brought to me last week (when I was off of yeast products) to make Peanut butter toast, and made a cup of decaf hot tea to go with it. Yuuummmmm Yuuummmm! What a delightful treat, after so many days of staring at that bread with longing!
When I got up from my nap (eat your heart out, tired mamas!), I poured the last few ounces of tea over ice to make a half cup of iced tea that lasted me through my afternoon, until I was making dinner. I did a good job NOT snacking all afternoon. This was probably helped by the fact that I didn’t have the dehydrator running with something yummy in it all afternoon. :-)

For supper, I made the flatbread pizza with Macadamia Nut cheese from the Daniel Fast book. It was plumb wonderful! However, because I’m off the first ten days, I did make the following modifications: I used veggie sausage crumbles on my portion, and I added a tablespoon of parmesan and a tablespoon of mozzarella to mine. This recipe necessitated making the flatbread recipe first, which has to sit for 30 minutes and bake for ten minutes before assembling the pizza. Then I had to make the spinach artichoke dip from the cookbook (I made a half batch, and added about a ¼ cup of mozzarella to this, too) and bake it. I cut the flatbread into four portions (for me and my three kiddos) before baking, then let each person top his or her own. They chose from sliced veggies, cooked chicken, and whatever else they could find. For the most part, they enjoyed all of theirs, although I LOVED mine! I even saved a little of it for a leftover another day, and am looking forward to it! I served it with the remaining white bean salad from yesterday (yeah, that did NOT improve with age!) and it made a filling, healthy dinner.

The miracle of miracles for today was that I MADE IT TO CHURCH at Eagle Heights! I haven’t been able to attend a Wednesday night service in forever, partly because by that time of day, things are pretty rough in my fuzzy little head. Malachi was driving, since Dan was at work till 8pm, so he had the privilege of walking his dizzy mama all the way down the hall to the adult service, then coming back for me afterward. :-) What fun! He’s a sweet guy, though, and teased me the whole way, instead of grumbling or mocking. :-)

Overall, it was a great first day to continue making wise decisions while giving myself a bit more freedom. What suggestions do you have?

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