A deeper cleanse

I have decided that the way I spend my time needs a re-evaluation as well. :)

I am tired of parts of days going by without being really spent intentionally. Things like Facebook, Pinterest, news, Youtube, etc. just kinda suck my time up if I let them. So, as I finish out this juice fast, I am going to fast from non-deliberate internet use. So, the above-mentioned things will be out of my picture. Replaced by things like taking a walk/hike/run, gardening, cooking, cleaning, visiting people, reading (I have quite a list!).

I don't seem to need to water my garden right now, so even that time can go elsewhere. Monsoon season has apparently struck Colorado. Never knew we had a monsoon here. :) It's lovely. Every morning is fresh and clean and every evening this week, we get lots of rain. We're sleeping under just a sheet and leave the windows open all the time. It's awesome. Reminds me a lot of the rainy season in Africa, but it's much MUCH cooler here and MUCH less humid.

Today already, I have gone out and tended to my compost pile (cardboard boxes have to be chopped up, so I leave them out in the rain and then they're really easy to tear into pretty small pieces), picked fresh kale and collards from my garden for juice for me, and picked onions for a meal I am cooking in the slow-cooker for Jason. I'll include the recipe for it later.

This cookbook is amazingly excellent. Most slow-cooker recipes seem to involve a lot of things I don't want to cook with like cream-of-chicken-soup. What is a creamed chicken anyway? What are those chemicals on the label? I don't like dumping cans of things someone else cooked into my slow cooker and basically letting someone else cook my meals. Somehow knowing what's in everything feels a lot better to me. This cookbook is for my generation and includes few canned or pre-prepared items. I like it a lot. And they're pretty easy. There's a series of "Not Your Mother's..." cookbooks and I kinda want to collect them all.

Today, my kitchen is making Provencal Garlic Soup and the recipe promises it's not as intense as it sounds. It smells amazing. The garlic gets blanched before going into the soup, so it mellows out a bit. If it is intense, Jason won't care. The man eats garlic cloves raw sometimes. But I think this will be something palatable to a wide variety of people. It's a complete thrill to have it just cooking away in the slow cooker. It feels like having it done for me. I am way more likely to feel like cooking in the morning than in the afternoon, so this is ideal.

After I am done with my cleaning for the day, I am planning to go to the gym and do some swimming, biking, and jogging. I am training for the Fort Collins Club Triathlon in September. Kinda nervous! It's my first triathlon ever. It's a short one, so it shouldn't be that bad. It's a sprint triathlon. This race involves the following: Swim 450 Yards (in a pool), Bike 13 Miles, Run 3 Miles. Not awful, but indeed worthy of training! I am hoping to accomplish it well, not fast, but finished. I've been slowly training for the last few months and now is time to step up the game and get really serious and focused about it. I am hoping to do some research about what runners should eat. My goal is to complete the Tough Mudder and a half-marathon next summer. I have a year.

The Tough Mudder is an obstacle race that involves some pretty extreme obstacles and challenges. From things like scaling walls and swimming in mud pits to running through electrical wires and carrying heavy things uphill. This is a challenge of mental toughness more than anything else, I believe. I want to believe I can take something like this on and win against it. Beat my own expectations of myself. That's what this entire time is about for me right now. I want to find out who I really am and what my best self can be and do and accomplish. I believe I can do this.

I am also in the process of losing weight that I have spent 10 years accumulating. In the last 5 years, my weight has fluctuated dramatically. I've weighed between 145 and 193 lbs at different times over these past years. It's actually a battle of overcoming mental blocks I have built and the fact that much of my weight gain has been a result of emotional eating. Not cool. I am working to learn the proper place of food (functioning as nutrition, not an emotional filler) and learn that I CAN beat this and I CAN do it. Each day is a new challenge and I am realizing that a lot of the emotions that helped me pack this weight on are going to need to be dealt with in order for me to lose it again. When I reach my first goal, I get to register for a half marathon and the Tough Mudder next year. I am looking forward to that. I feel like it's finally time for me to be the one running my life instead of letting it run me. YEAH!

Provencal Garlic Soup

Cooker: Large oval

Setting and Cook time: LOW for 6-7 hours

Ingredients

8 heads of garlic

2 large yellow onions (I used two smaller white onions from my garden)

6 teaspoons of chicken broth base

84 ounces of water

2 6-ounce cans of tomato paste

2 fresh jalapenos

1 fresh banana pepper

6 tablespoons of olive oil

Crusty bread to serve with it

*My recipe is doubled and edited a bit from the book. They used 6 14-ounce cans of chicken broth, I prefer to use homemade broth or the chicken broth base (Better Than Boullion brand) instead. I also added the jalapenos and banana pepper. We like spicy food and had a couple jalapenos on hand and I picked my first fresh banana pepper from our plant yesterday, so wanted to use it, too. I also thought about using fresh tomatoes instead of the tomato paste and then mixing some flour in for thickening, but I don't have any tomatoes today!

1. Fill a small, deep saucepan with water and bring to a rolling boil. Separate the garlic heads into cloves (leaving the paper on) and toss them into the boiling water. Blanch for 1 minute. Drain the garlic cloves into a colander and rinse under cold running water. Peel with a paring knife and remove stem-end of each clove.

2. Combine the garlic cloves, onion, broth base, water, tomato paste, and peppers in the slow cooker and stir to blend well. Use a wisk to make sure the tomato paste and broth base break down completely. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-7 hours.

3 Puree the soup with an immersion blender or food processor or blender. Before serving, add the olive oil. Serve with hot, crusty bread.

I'll post a picture tonight when it's done. Right now, my house smells divine. We are in the third hour of cooking.

Alright, thanks for reading, I am off to work my body into a triathlon-ready machine. Nerves and all, here I come, athleticism!