Visitor night at the Brays

 On Sunday we met another family from Idaho doing what we are doing down here: staying a bit longer while Dad works to get a good in depth feeling for the culture and people --giving their children new experiences. They are the Smiths, so I don't feel like giving their name sacrifices their anonymity! Anyway they emailed yesterday saying they wanted to come and check out our beach. We had given them the bus schedule earlier, but didn't specify where to get off, so I hurried up the road to intercept the bus from letting them off early.  On my walk I saw a turkey vulture up close and personal.

I also watched a father and son ride off on a pair of horses while I waited for the bus. Time moves so slowly here. I didn't mind waiting for the bus, just sitting roadside. My skin would crawl trying to sit still that long back home. Here, I can lay down and read half a book in a day. They finally made it, and looked so hot and tired, it was nice to have an ocean to offer them.

Kai had a ball playing with a flock of kids all around his age.

 Jeff and the parents went surfing, and Lisa (still pretty anonymous eh?) had a great few waves for her first time. Her husband grew up surfing.

Jeff has gotten pretty great just teaching himself these last couple of weeks.

 

 They pushed their cab home back a couple of hours to eat dinner with us. Tia had made a bunch of tortillas earlier in the day, both de masa, and flour. She whipped up a few more.

 I made a huge batch of beans a week or so ago, and froze them in batches. I pulled some out, and boiled them again in a little chicken broth, then added some EVOO, and mashed them up into "refried" beans. We made a big bowl of pico with tomatoes, peppers, onions, avocado, pineapple, and a bit of leftover dragonfruit. We offered Granadilla, related to passion fruit, but the size of a papaya, and pineapple, and cantaloupe on the side. We happened to have a carrot bread left from our cool bakery, and offered that as dessert.

It was awesome eating poolside with the sun going down next to us over the ocean.

 

 The complex is kind of full this weekend, and some guests made a huge bonfire on the beach and had a party.

I told Jeff that somebody needs to think of the opposite of a bonfire for parties down here. Why in the heck would you want to create MORE heat? Maybe they should have stacked up blocks of ice in a pyre and set a fan blowing on it. Somebody could shine a light on it for pretty.

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Pleasant heat.

 Have you tried this?  You should.  Just one teensy square....I may regret letting this bar come over to my house to play, but Oh my gosh.  Yum.  Not a real strong taste of pepper, just a warmth in the back of your mouth to go with the warm fuzzys chocolate always gives you.  Speaking of Chocolate (yes it IS capitalized in my world), I'm trying to round up some of the usual suspects to go to a chocolate tasting class at Tony Caputo's in Salt Lake.  Here's the schedule. So it would have to be a way out at the end of November --the 29th, or October 11th.  25 bucks.  But have you ever tried the chocolate they've got up there? Holy spumoni. I'll drive.

OK, here's the picture I should be sharing with you.  This is my last week of the CSA produce thing.  It didn't turn out at all how I planned, their produce overlapped all of my own garden's bounty, producing some waste --like I made spaghetti sauce out of heirlooms for crying out loud.  They should each and every one be eaten sliced on olive oil toast with fresh basil chiffonade, but there's only so many I can eat myself!  Anyway, look at the colors there: red orange yellow, green and purple.  No blue food.  Didn't I have a conversation about that with someone recently?  Have you read the Lightening theif? Have you ever tried Coldstone's cotton candy ice cream?  Blue food is sometimes amazing --but not as amazing as that chocolate.  Takers on the class?

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China Study Dinner

I haven't blogged in forever I know, but I just was keeping a few things to myself, and then those things started to take up most of my energy and focus, and there wasn't much left to blog about. I was on a really strict diet all summer as you know, and it was great for me in a ton of ways. I learned so much about controlling myself eating-wise, and with the training regimen I was on, I also learned a lot of self-discipline in getting all of my workouts in. Towards the end of the summer it was weekdays was a 40-50 minutes hard cardio in the mornings, 40-45 minutes weightlifting, and a 30 minute cardio session at night. It was hard scheduling that all in, and sometimes I was freakin tired, but it was so worth it. I finally had a body I was proud of. I've worked for so many years trying to get these results, and frankly didn't have the tools I needed. Thanks so much to my trainer Sandy for all that she did for me. She's well worth her fees. After I reached my goals I finally started reading The China Study that's been recommended to me over and over again by almost everyone I know interested in health and fitness and IT ROCKED MY WORLD. This is a book written by a national reasearcher (he has written over 350 peer-reviewed published articles in major scientific journals) regarding a major study spanning ovr 30 years of the rural Chines peoples, and a number of other studies he and other researchers have done supporting his findings. What findings? Take home message: the higher the animal protein in the diet, the higher percentages of most cancers, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases. This ROCKED MY WORLD. I was almost sorry I read it. This summer was all about animal protein. I am still worried I won't be able to keep on the muscle I've gained going all plant based, but there is a vegan bodybuilding site and while there aren't too many girls on there, I'm trusting if I'm careful I should be OK. I got into a lot of good habits this summer: eating a LOT of veggies, no sugar, LOW LOW fat, and portion control. I couldn't move into this without my training. Thanks again Sandy. OK, so here's what we had for dinner tonight.

Roasted vegetables --including two giant eggplants from my garden

Raw zucchini hummus: 3 medium zucchinis, 1 1/2 t. cumin, 1 t. salt 1 1/2 cups raw cashews, 1/2 cup lemon and 3/4 cup cooked garbanzos (because it was a little thin)
Kale chips: cover a baking sheet with potato chip size pieces of kale, spray lightly with vegetable or olive oil cooking spray, sprinkle with salt and pepper, or whatever seasoning blend you want (try salt, chili pepper, &garlic powder!) and bake at 250 for 30-40 minutes until they are all crisp. These are super good. The kids love them. You might be surprised.

I spread some of the hummus on a big lettuce leaf, piled on the roasted veggies and went to town. DELICIOUS! The kids had theirs on corn tortillas, but I was conserving a few calories because of the cashews, and I had a huge butternut squash shake earlier in the day. What??? No really. 2 cups of roasted butternut squash, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, ricemilk or soymilk or almond milk or nonfat if you have none of these, and my vice: splenda. (I suck I know, but I've tried stevia and it doesn't do the same thing for me. suggestions?) It was like pumpkin pie in a glass. Yum. I froze the last half of the shake, and blended it up later with some more water and Pero and that was fantastic too: like a frozen pumpkin pie latte. Sorry no pictures. I was considering it.

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