I'm featured!

I'm so flattered. 

I have never been featured on a blog before!

Many thanks to @nutritionist_kt! 
 

She featured my recipe for the green smoothie that

I have been enjoying every morning this week.

Here's the link if you want to try it out!

She has a ton of great tips and info on her site! 

Take a look around while you're there. 

The Shift - Week One

At long last I'm sitting down to take the time to write my "vegan post".

Only - it's not so vegan.

I tried to go gun-ho on the whole vegan thing after my doctor's appointment on Monday - only to discover that I have NOT THE FIRST CLUE about how to eat vegan.  And thus I just kinda stopped eating - which was very very dumb of me, I know, I know.

Had a couple days of being a total and complete BITCH  (and feeling like a dirty and wet dishrag) and then decided that going vegetarian before going fully vegan was probably a smarter way to go. I thought that since I had quit smoking ciggarettes cold turkey I could do the same with food.  Turns out my junk food addiction is much more powerful! Who'd have thunk it.

I'm gonna digress for a minute to give you a better view of my (more recent) diet.
My mom was a big time cook so I grew up on home cooked foods.  But lots and lots of it.  I have always been a well-rounded girl!

In 2000 I decided to go veggie.  I did so (very successfully - I <3 vegetarian food!) for 3 years at which point I was forced to not be one anymore due to financial reasons (was barely eating at all - though I still managed to be kinda overweight because when I did eat it was cheap, easy, and usually from the food bank, thus not very nutritious)
Lived that way until 2005 when I moved into my "girl pad" and became veggie again for a year and a few months.  I was thin, I was happy, I was healthy, I was fit... it was great. 
Then me and D moved in together, November of 2006, and out the door went my blissful vegetable, fruit & fish market diet.  For the last four years up until last Monday I have been a total junk-food-aholic.   Not a care in the world.  Well, not entirely.  I always had that voice in the back of my head telling me to STOP NOW... but I ignored it... and now? I am suffering GREATLY from it.

If I'm going to be totally honest I believe that my fibromyalgia and endometriosis are both bi-products of the junk life I have been leading. 

But it ends NOW.
And I'm going to stop beating my head with a stick every time I give in and have some yogurt.  Or cream cheese. I am realizing that baby steps are the ONLY way that this is going to happen.   
And if we are going to eat out, we will eat at Subway or at a decent restaurant where I can get a nice salad or "health-wise" meal.
NO MORE MCDONALDS!
NO MORE WENDY'S!
NO MORE BINGING ON JUNK FROM THE DOLLAR STORE.
and... this one is HARD but...
NO MORE $0.99 ARIZONA GREEN TEA in a CAN.

I'm using these books to help me along:

I don't have these ones yet, but I'm hoping to get em in the coming weeks:























I'll keep you all posted on how things are going, and if you have ANY tips they are ALWAYS greatly appreciated!  I'm kinda obsessive really... with the checking of the comments.... :P

Utopia - The way it's all gonna come together...

D and I had a really interesting conversation to do with our life tonight. I'm not going to get into the details in this post (need to gather thoughts and have a early morning blog session for that one!) but....after D and I finshed talking this we  started discussing how we'd  like to formulate the "laws" of Utopia. We both wrote this post together (WHOA! we did something together! for my BLOG! big stuff people!)

Ok here goes....


1. Everyone eats together.  Like at camp. One big happy family, each taking turns cooking for everyone else. 








2 Minimal dish philosophy.   This means everyone has a bowl and plate (made by themselves? during a commune pottery class?   Or just get THAT guy to make yours... I'll bet he makes A LOT of bowls!), a fork, knife and spoon, a cup (etc...etc...) and everyone washes their dish&utensils in a fun fountain (like, remember those fountain sinks that there used to be in elementary school? The ones with the foot pedal? I friggin loved those things) with everyone else after eating :D  Doing dishes ain't so bad if it's fun, and you only have to wash one dish!




3. Zero-footprint law.   This means - well... you all probably know what it means... but for those "non-camping"types, it basically means you aren't to harm, alter or destroy any part of the land/forest/swamp/ WHATEVER you happen to inhabit. That means if you put it there, you take it away when you leave, and leave no evidence of it ever being there.   Or even better - leave it there, but make it organic so that it can one day be one with it's environment.





4.NO NEGATIVE NELLIES!  And D INVENTED THIS ONE!!! HOLY SHIT. Was that a pig?  I'm on the 17th floor and I seriously think a pig just flew by. 
But seriously.  You all know my mantra - positive thinking = positive living.
Anyone that's not down with that?  OUTSKI!





5.Nothing living is to be harmed.  Ok within reason.  Like, you can still eat veggies and fruit and all.  And we can eat meat and all that good stuf..... but like... don't go tramping around on ant hills for fun, or tearing through Charlotte's Web just for a laugh. 



6. Eco-friendly living.  This one is kind of obvious, but we will utilize only renewable sources of energy.  Solar, Wind, Hydro(the good kind, with the things that take energy from waves) etc etc.





7. Limited impact on the surface.   Whoa... Dinny's getting really excited talking about this one....   We can tap into geo-thermal energy easier this way, and uber cool in the summer, nice & cozy in the winter... We'd be good to go if there were a nuclear meltdown, or something...   And it's just all round cool. And we'll have Free Spirit tree-spheres up on the surface so if we want to go above ground for the night, or if a guest shows up and you don't want them to know where exactly  the house is (aka secret laboratory *whispers D*) there's an awesome little pod waiting.

OK I'm babbling.



 8. no CIGARETTE smoking and no ALCOHOLIC drinking.   As in, if the majority sees  a problem with your drinking, there WILL be an intervention.  And if that doesn't work... OUTSKI! 

Oh. we are ganja friendly, but again, if you're a total stoner pot head douchebag mooching off everyone else.... OUTSKI!

9. NO CABLE TV .  We shall still have fast internet.  D and I have been getting by just FINE this way, and limited exposure to the commercial BULLSHIT is excellent.  And I LOVE watching stuff with no commercial breaks.  YAY. 

10. Absolutely NO vehicles that emit emissions.
If that means you gotta ride a f'ing horse, then do it!   Oh.  Good luck pooper scooping that sucker.



And thaaaaaat's all folks!  Well, for now anyways because it's 10pm and we are going to watch a summer camp inspired movie.  Not sure which one yet, but if you know a good one we're always open for suggestions! (movie suggestions OR Utopia suggestions)


Please comment - hearing from you makes me happy!

Wordless Wednesday - well.... sort of wordless Wednesday

Feelin' nostalgic this morning and I felt like reminiscing on some of our past camping trips.

Come along with me for the ride!

OOH D still had his long hair in some of these pics. :D

These two pics are of the same house, taken from different angles & 3 years apart. 

Yes, we are creatures of habit!

D first thing in the morning - my sleep lion roars!

I'm gettin' hungry!   Better start cookin'....

yum.  Food tastes much better than Frogs. 

 I love windmills.  Wave of the future. I HOPE!

Pictures do not do the nighttime justice.

 It was breathtaking.

Quiet early mornings...

perfect for fishing.

I love sleeping with the tent fly off....

This shot took about 2 hours to get - we were on an inflatable raft, floating around in the lake trying to get a shot of us kissing under the harvest moon.  We kept drifting further and further away... took about a zillion shots because we would spin out of position the second the moon was behind us... It was quite fun! ...............................

This particular trip was VERY VERY RAINY.  Hence Shanty town.

BUT we ate VERY VERY well....

Ahhhh.... our canoe... which sprang a leak on this particular trip.














These pics sum up my love for Canada....
and demonstrate the reason we should really just pack up and go live in the woods.

I hope you enjoyed the trip!  Please let me know if you like the photo-post! Not sure if this is a popular idea, but if it is, I have TONS of home-zoo (etc.) pics to post!

Utopia

D and I have always had the same vision of our ideal future.

 Our Utopia.

The ideal place for raising children, living organically, and spreading peace and love to those who we meet.

This mutual dream has held us together during some pretty rough patches. I think it's so important to have the same vision for the future, and while our present seems to indicate that we are quite opposite, our shared vision always manages to prove to me that our differences now will become our strengths then.

Obviously, having children is a big part of our mutual hope and dream for our future.

But we have other some very specific desires as well.


Right now we reside in the concrete jungle that is Toronto, Ontario.   And while we live outside of the downtown core, and thus we have more trees and grass up here, we still can't look around us without seeing towering apartment and condo buildings.


And we hate it. H.A.T.E.
We hate the traffic and the noise and the ignorance and rudeness.
We hate the rush and the bustle.

Our Utopia?
We hope to buy a parcel of land - SOON.
It's pretty expensive, even further out from the city, to get a decent parcel with a fair amount of acreage , but we are saving up and also keeping our eye on foreclosures/land auctions etc.

Once we have said parcel of land, we will probably be completely broke, thus having to start saving again to build our home on it.  I'm kind of excited to be "land poor" though - we plan to buy a trailer (and use my interior deco skills and D's handyman skills to supe it up so it's the coolest trailer you everdidsee) to live in until we can build what we want. We haven't fully agreed on what style of home we'd like to live in, but treehouses, log homes, and underground bunkers have all been discussed.

We will plant seeds, have *some* farm animals, for milk and eggs (working on D to become a veggie. Almost there).  

I'm also thinking I may like  to be able to homeschool my kids.  This is not something I am 100% decided on though. I feel that social interaction is absolutely vital and would not like to take that away from my children however if our plan goes as we hope, we would have not just our family living on our land.

We would also open our land up to like minded individuals and ideally have a co-op/commune/kibbutz type environment going.  All of us working to sustain ourselves and our happy, peaceful lifestyle.  Away from violence, away from hatred, away from intolerance.

Anyone interested? 

I know, I know. We should've been hippies. Man, we would've made great hippies...