Happy New Year!

I want to start by saying that my wish for all of you is that 2013 is a wonderful year filled with much joy, prosperity and of course vibrant health.  Let’s all do what we can to make 2013 our best year ever. 

How Y’all Been?

Sorry that I disappeared on you it wasn’t a conscious decision I just got crazy busy with life and had no time to write.  Every time I thought about blogging something came up and it didn’t happen.  Basically I didn’t make time to it and for that I apologize.   Simply put the summer came and I started going to the boat everyday and suddenly I realized that I wasn’t blogging. Instead I was hanging out at the boat.

As you probably guessed I tend to be a bit of a social butterfly so when I am at the marina I am busy talking to everyone and sharing the nutrition love.  J  You aren’t surprised to hear that, I know. 

However I am back now and have committed to myself that I am going to get back to making a difference in the world. I will explain this more as time goes on.  A few things have happened very recently that made me realize that I needed to get back to regular blogging.  It is important that I share what I know and encourage people to make improvements to their lifestyles.  I want to do whatever I can to improve the health of the world.

Spreading the Veggie Love

Speaking of nutrition love I am happy to report I have a few new “veg recruits” one of which I can talk about.  One of our friends from the marina has gone essentially vegan (in other words he still has Ian’s tomato bisque every few months but is otherwise vegan) and he dropped 50 pounds in 8 months and is now in the low 160s and without adding exercise to his life.  You gotta love results like that don’t you?  Not only that but his doctor was concerned about his diet so he ran a battery of blood tests and everything came back excellent.  Go plants!  I get excited every time I see results like this.

I have also been “teaching” vegan cooking and sharing whole wheat vegan pizza and other delights with people at the marina.  One thing I have discovered is the best way to get people interested in vegan food is to have them try it and realize how delicious it is.  My pizza almonds have also been well received as has the raw curried almond salad in lettuce wraps.  Gee, people are starting to realize this whole healthy vegan thing isn’t such a hardship.  ;-)  LOL

Bell’s Palsy

As if we don’t have enough to worry about earlier this year we got to learn firsthand about Bell’s palsy.  When half of Dan’s face started to droop we immediately thought stroke and flew (almost literally I was driving) to the ER at Johns Hopkins. Fortunately it was not a stroke only Bell’s Palsy.  However that was still frightening. I will write try to write a post about the details soon so you know the difference between Bell’s palsy and stroke if it happens to you or someone you love. I have learned that if you have had either chicken pox or a cold sore you are at risk for Bell’s Palsy. So basically we are all at risk.  Great!  Not!

Boat Time

Having the boat 15 minutes away has been entirely too tempting for both Dan and I.  It has literally become our second home.  From March until October I was at the boat from mid-day (or earlier) through late evening.  I would spend the day talking nutrition (either with clients or for free) and then spend the evening with Dan and friends.   With all this boat time now I know that I can easily cook on the boat which is wonderful.  I also found that I can walk to two grocery stores from the boat (gotta stay active you know) and there is a farmers’ market close by which is open on Saturday.  Nice right?

The fur children now have their first sailing vacation under their belts (or in their case harnesses).  We spent a week sailing to Norfolk with the cats.  The first day we had wicked wind of 25 knots and the cats all got seasick.  I thought we were going to turn around but the wind the rest of the time was better and all was good. It turns out our little ones are becoming real “nauti-cats”.  Who knew that 11 year old felines could be so adaptable?  Well not me, I was shocked at how well they did.  Now we know we can take the fur kids with us there will be more boat trips next year, maybe every weekend.  ;-)

Doctor’s Visits

Our family doctor continues to be extremely happy with our health every time we see him.  His only complaint is that he can’t see any of his other patients doing what we had done.  If I have anything to say about it our MD will suddenly realize one day he is vegan and not know what happened.   He has asked me for recipes so his conversion isn’t out of the realm of possibilities.  ;-)

One thing I have discovered is the best way to turn people on to veganism is to be a good example.  As Ghandi said “be the change you want to see in the world.”  He was definitely on to something.  So many of our friends are now eating either vegan or having a lot more vegan meals.  Any time you add veggies to your life it is a good thing for your health and the health of the planet.

Signing out

Today I wanted to post something quickly and get my feet wet again.  I will explain more as I go along. The bottom line is that I saw something last week at dinner that smacked me in the face with the fact that I needed to get back to blogging.   A few days later I heard from my girlfriend that her cousin who was battling cancer had died.  These two events were the push I needed to get back to blogging. I will tell you more about them in a future post. I can’t promise you that I will post everyday because I don’t know where I will get the time.  However I can commit to posting at least three times a week for a while and that I will try to get back to daily posts even if they are short.

I would like to know what you would like me to write about.  Any ideas that you have would be greatly appreciated.  For example do you enjoy reading about:  our vegan life, how to navigate this meat and cheese world as a health conscious vegan, nutrition facts, health or recipes.   Maybe you want me to mix it all up.  Please let me know what you are most interested in so I know what to write.

Talk to you again soon.  I will try to post a little something tomorrow.  Hope you are all doing well and can’t wait to hear from you.  Ciao for now!  ;-)