Never Crave French Fries Again

(EDIT: fixed the link below)

White potatoes are part of the nightshade vegetable family.  I still can't tell if they personally affect my inflammation levels.  I hear its different for everyone.  I don't crave crave homemade potatoes ever, but when I smell regular McD type fries, the scratchin and twinchin starts.  They don't even taste that awesome to me, so I reckon it's the heroin they add into their frying lard bins that tells my brain I must have them.  Either way, I still stay away from french fries or anything fried.  But I do crave starches, as we should, and it's tiring eating brown rice all the time.  Hellooooo Sweet Potatoes! this tater is in the clear for dangerous toxin avoidance.

So I tried this lil easy and quick recipe.  This is an addiction that doesn't terrorize the body and mind.  Like the recently added word from the Oxford dictionary implies: OMG!

When I saw the recipe and imagined the flavors together, I couldn't have imagined how awesome it would turn out. So, click below and check it out.  Filling, satisfying and it feels like indulgence. And its so pretty.  However, even the oils are good for you (if the rest of your diet during the day/week is balanced).  Yes, this meal was nice to me.  No pain, no inflammation, no weirdness.  The trick now is seeing if Husband will like it when he gets back to town.



[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Roasted Sweet Potato Salad w/ Cranberries & Roasted Pumpkin Seeds"][/caption]

http://vegvacious.blogspot.com/2011/02/roasted-sweet-potato-salad.html

Note:

I didn't have Dijon mustard so I improvised and probably will keep doing it my way. My dressing involved two parts.  Since I didn't know if the tastes would blend well, I made them separately and mixed them on the plate instead:

• 1/3 olive oil
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• white onion (small half, sliced thin into slivers)

(the extra can be used as an everyday healthy salad dressing.  But I don't like yer typical greens salad. Yeck.)

Separately, I just mixed honey mustard:

• 2 tbsps Organic mustard (or any yellow mustard)
• 3 drops of Pure honey

Kay, that's it. Buh Bye.

Top Ten Lists

The dog days are here (for Florida). It's March Madness. I turned 28 this. I hesitantly signed up for the gym (since you know I have wonderful health). I returned a Blockbuster to movie Redbox. Husband has been out of town way too much. Oxford put LOL and OMG in the dictionary. This week skipped a day. Well, it didn't really but I took work off Wednesday, convinced it was Thursday, missed my meeting, and now have an extra day of work, or so it feels like it.

Mercury must be in retrograde or the vernal moon threw everything off.  There's a poor sense of flowing continuity. More like random scattered events and chores are taken care of during pocketed moments of lucidity and then I'm sucked back into a timespace jumble box where the days and minutes jump around. Also, I may be reading too much on parallel world physics.

Not feeling so hot lately, except for the literal heat beating down from the sun onto my sensitive skin or immune system. In the last few years, when I would spend a day at the beach, the rest of the week I would have some kind of feverish symptoms and be depleted. I always thought it was the beer/hydration but oh, how I'm learning new things. Now I'm getting the full blown detriment of what the sun does to people with lupus (which is still very confusing to me). There is something about heat, that to some, releases histamine wildly into the body. I either break down in hives or 'exercise' hives (urticaria), shut down completely, feel flushed, or swell up all over.  This is just another explanation for the abovementioned hesitance for signing up to a gym.  I overheat and then got little red bumps everywhere, thankfully its usually beneath the clothes, nothing obvious; but when I take a hot shower I look like a sci-fi creature.

Anyway, things should get better when I get my car back since I'm driving a car with no AC right now; or, when winter comes around again.  I'm not sure how the sensitivity to the sun works since everyone with Lupus reacts differently.  But for now my health, therefore sanity, is on a crazier roller coaster than Lindsey Lohan's sobriety.

So that little intro segues to the following comedic relief that I found floating around the net.  The absurdity of life.

Here's to hoping I get better soon so I can blog about something coherent, useful, and worthwhile without having to drop celebrity names to get more hits on the web:

10. Life is sexually transmitted.

9. Good health is merely the slowest rate at which one can die.

8. Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.

7. Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

6. Some people are like a slinky... not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.

5. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital dying of nothing. 

4. All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

3. Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars, and a substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents?

2. In the 60's, people took LSD to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

1. We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in America, but we haven't a clue as to where thousands of Illegal immigrants and Terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration.

Elephant and itises

(-itis: Greek derived suffix meaning inflammation)

Inflammation from head to toe.  Front to back.  Inside and out.  I feel like an elephant is trying to fit inside my human shell.

A cute one though:

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="via Cake Wrekcs"][/caption]

My hair feels like that too! Electrocuted scanty tufts!

Who would've thought my favorite picture ever on Cake Wrecks would've been of an elephant?

Some medicines, insurance rejections, and not carefully reading food labels have rendered me mentally and physically wrought.  As upset and overwhelmed as I am, I will not let it drag me down after all the progress I've made.  The thoughts that go through one's heads while you're experiencing pain are usually not reality based and can drag you down.  I know that the feeling of despair and defeat are not based on the facts, but on the current and ephemeral feelings of frustration.  Perspective is key.

My plea and reminder to all those who are sick and tired and being sick and tired is to remember to not be hard on yourself for not being able to do more, for not cleaning those last few pots leaving a food smell, and for having to stay in and watch yet another movie at home. Turn on a few candles, sit down, take naps, rest well, and another run of good days eventually comes around.

Do not punish yourself for not sticking to the diet 100% and if other people scold you for it, you tell THEM to not eat cookies for a whole year and watch them suck at it.  However, don't give in to more no-no foods just because you've had it with the rice cakes.  Hang tight to the friends and family that support you and put aside the ones that don't for a little while.  Do not resent the things you cannot do and the healthy people who do not relate to you anymore.  And do not feel the need to make others understand what you are going through (unless they ask).  They still care about you just as much even if they don't really get it.   Mostly, stop trying to explain to yourself why you should be washing the car , re-tiling the kitchen, and hitting the gym.

Do relax while you wait for the worse to past and start your game plan on how to carry on stronger the next go round of health you have.  The easier you are on your body, the sooner you will feel better.  Do remember to wear something cute and put some color on your face even if you're stuck home.  And do take the down time to think and do something for the other people who have it rough too like a faithful caretaker, a friend who sticks to you when you're bummy, a congregation member who's ill, or the families in Japan.  Being chronically ill does not change you're relevancy in being there for others.

Learn the drill cycle and follow through. (Insert smiley face emoticon here).

And for God's sake, if you're allergic to gluten, stop looking at cake websites unless you have the energy and $60 to buy the supplies and ingredients for a wheat free, yeast free, sugar free, night-shade free vegetable, cake.