Thursday was a busy one

Thursday was one of those just before Christmas days with lots to do for the holiday. The day started like normal with a green smoothie for Dan.

I wasn’t particularly hungry so I had a banana and walnuts and a few mugs of green and white tea with ascorbate C (to increase the absorption of EGCG from the tea).

Since Dan’s office was closing early he decided to have lunch with Dan Jr. at Teavolve downtown. Sorry there are no pictures because the server messed up and didn’t put the order into until 5 minutes before Dan Jr. had to go back to work for meeting. The guys ended up getting their food to go and they weren’t exactly thrilled about that. Dan ordered his usual Asian tofu salad which I pictured here.

My lunch was leftover Crème of Krab soup.

To round out my lunch I had a salad of baby spinach with oranges and grapes, no dressing. The fruit added enough juiciness to the salad for me. Normally I would have added nuts to the salad but since the soup had plenty of cashews I thought I didn’t need a double dose.

Since I am still on a mission to get the scale back down dinner was also a salad. This one contained: shredded romaine, mango, red pepper strips, white miso and mirin dressing and topped with white and black sesame seeds which also contain dried ginger and pepper.

Here is a picture of Luca Belle relaxing with her father. Our cats love to cuddle. The moment we sit down one or more cats arrive to sit on us.

This is me trying to read a book with Binky trying to cuddle.

Healthy Eating:

I have been emailing a blog friend this week and she said something that I want to talk about. She said she feels weird posting tofurky or baked goods on her blog because she doesn’t want to disappoint me. While this is very sweet and touching it is also very unnecessary. I have said many times that if it weren’t for cancer we would probably never have started eating this healthy and that is true. I would like to believe we would have been smart enough to change our diet and lifestyle without that wakeup call but the reality is we didn’t/weren’t.

Cancer is a horrible disease and if you know anyone who has had it you know what I mean. If anything I write causes one person to eat more healthfully I will feel like the time I spend blogging is worth it. I don’t want to see anyone else have to deal with this horrible disease. There is a huge amount of data that the consumption of animal products increases cancer. Vegans are not immune from cancer. Soy protein isolates also fuel cancer, as do foods with a high glycemic index and alcohol. Additionally oil has been shown to decrease the flexibility of your arteries and since cancer patients and survivors are at a higher risk of heart disease we removed the oil too. *sigh* I know it can be overwhelming to make that many changes to a diet. Except for a little alcohol to flavor dishes we have eliminated most of these foods unless we are out for dinner where that many modifications aren’t realistic. However I hope my blog shows that you can still eat delicious food that is also healthy.

Back to my friends comment about not wanting to disappoint me. Just because we don’t eat something doesn’t mean there is any judgment being made. From all the research I had done I believe our diet is the healthiest I can make it. However not everyone is ready to change to the extent we have. I firmly believe that if more people read the research that I have they would change. However I am also a realist and know that probably isn’t going to happen, sadly. I think the less unhealthy foods any of us consume the better off we are. I hope that explains where my head is regarding food.

Happy thoughts:

Thursday and Friday very busy but they were also a good days. Here are my happy thoughts now:

• I love the calm and quiet that we have at home. Sometimes I need a little peace and serenity and it is wonderful to have that at home.

• My favorite thing about Christmas this year is the long weekend. I love spending time with Dan and I know we will have a wonderful weekend together.

• All the Christmas presents that I ordered online arrived on time. *huge sigh of relief*  The last one arrived Wednesday evening just be 6pm. Shipping did go right down the wire. Who knew 10 days was barely enough time to order online. I am very happy that everything arrived before Christmas.

• We did the end of our grocery shopping this morning and Whole Foods. I am thankful to have that out crossed off our list.

• The on again off again Christmas snow seems to be on again. This time they are calling for flurries which sound wonderful to me. The best of both worlds white stuff but no traffic nightmare.

• We had a lovely dinner out on Friday that I will tell you about in my next post. It is wonderful to have dinner with friends. Ian liked his presents in case you are wondering. I will fill you in on that in the next post.

• Friday I was having computer problems which is why I didn’t get this post up yesterday. I am thankful that Dan is very handy with computers and got things fixed for me.

Signing off:

Merry Christmas to all of you and I hope you are having a wonderful holiday and are enjoying your friends and family. I will try to get another post up later today with the Friday update. Realistically it may not happen but that is my plan.  Have a great day and I will talk to you again soon.