Living an EXTRAordinary Life

Yes, its true.

The 21-day Vegan Kickstart Challenge officially ended on the 21st of January, and they took the content down.  I thought they’d leave it up.  I didn’t start on the first day because of travel and illness.  But I was wrong.  The first time this year.  I have a few more credits, so its okay.

Where does that leave me?  Well… the same place.  Trying to maintain as high of a level of vegan as possible, and trying to eat more whole foods and cook more.  I have a ton of cookbooks and assorted recipes, so I can still try making tasty new things.   I can ignore the complicated ones.  The challenge starts again March 1, so maybe I’ll do it again, and this time eat the food as “assigned” every day, except for the days there are foods I don’t like.

Yesterday, I have to admit.  I had cheese.  At first, it wasn’t intentional.  We had had plans to go to a friends house to watch a movie, and we knew that we would be getting pizza.  I had 100% intention of having either half a pizza or a small one ordered without cheese for me.  Last time I had pizza, I removed the cheese, and had three toppings and extra sauce and it was yummy!  However, during the day, my delightful husband offered to make macaroni and cheese for lunch and I said that that sounded good … totally forgetting that I was eating vegan!   So, I figured … what the hey and ordered regulation pizza.  It was white pizza too, which I haven’t had in a long time.

My stomach didn’t feel too bad, even with the extra infusion of heart shaped Smiley cookies.  Or two.  Or three.  Actually, I was fine, stomach wise, but my nose clogged up big time.  I didn’t actually feel bloated until this afternoon.   So now I know … if I must, only one serving of dairy per day.

In other GOOD news, I had a very nice physical therapy session today.  My therapist says I am doing really, really well and gettting stronger every day.  She said that there was no reason I couldn’t participate in a racing event in October (location to be determined).   I can do a smaller race running, if I want.  Or walk a half.  Or run half of a half and walk the other half of the half.  That makes me happy.  Long distances are out for good, or at least a long while, she reminded me.  I can handle this.  It’s not like I could run a half marathon anyway. 

And I FORGOT to mention that I did try one other recipe from the challenge.  It was a Sunday morning, and I received the day’s menu, which called for Sweet Potato Pudding for breakfast.  That sounded really good.  It has oatmeal in it which I figured would make it nice and filling.  I had to cook and then cool the sweet potatoes (yay for the microwave at times), then I mixed it in the blender.  I put it in a bowl, sat down, ready to savor it.  And it was delicious!  However, it wasn’t cutting it as a breakfast for me.  It was truly a pudding, so therefore it became designated as a dessert.  Yay for dessert!  Using pumpkin would be equally delicious.  Adding the oatmeal is great … added fiber and even protein.  Not everyone is aware of how much protein is actually in oatmeal.  I ended up with a bagel with Better Than Cream Cheese.

I think for breakfast, it would have worked for me had I made oatmeal the traditional way and then mixed in the cooked sweet potato into the cereal.

I have been reading Wesley the Owl.  I highly recommend it.  It’s a very cute story and written well.  A fast, fun read.  Look for it on my sister blog later this week at jennreviewsthings.com.

Tomorrow, my Fuzzy goes for a teeth cleaning.  Wish us all luck.