Lovely Lentils

Hola, chicas! Today was a good day. Started with a lovely breakfast, involving an apple, and this apple pie parfait.

I layered 3/4 cup of plain yogurt, 1/2 c apple sauce, 1 whole grain graham cracker and cinnamon in bowl. Nummikins. As my.. third course of breakfast, I had some simple PB&J oats. I was going to just use blueberries instead of jam, but I barely had any left. So I microwaved what we did have to make 'em mushy, and added a bit of cran apple butter on top.

I then went off to a nice, two hour ballet class. My calves and toes are in serious pain right now! But a good pain, like I've worked them well. The body checking stuff (or lack there of) went pretty well! At the bar, I was kind of concentrated more on holding my leg out at a 120* angle than I was on how "fat" I looked. When we went out into the center, I started to scrutinize myself in the mirror. ED didn't cut in and start calling me fat though. Instead, I had an EPIPHANY (love that word)! I am not fat! I am dissatisfied with how the weight I gained distributed. None of the weight I gained went to the upper half of my body, so I have twig arms and gross ribs, but a lot of it went to my legs. But I used the rational side of me to think that I am normal sized, and some parts of me look bigger because the rest of me is ridiculously small. Ooooh I wish I had my old body back. Back when I didn't feel like I had to limit my food or exercise to feel good about myself.

Anyhow, for lunch my sister wanted to go to the mall food court. I hate fast food, you can make something much healthier, tastier, and cheaper at home. I had to go anyway. Subway is one of the few fast food restaurants that I'll eat from, so I went there. I ordered a 6" veggie delite. It annoys me how it's delite, not delight. I got provolone, lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, pickles, black olives, and olive oil on mine. T'was very salty tasting. Hate fast food grumble grumble.
Then when I got home I had an apple and almonds.

For most of the day today, I've just been chillin' out (maxin' relaxin' all cool while shootin' some b-ball outside of the school). I started to do a little craft-y jewelry project that I'll post if I ever finish it. For dinner, I made brown rice and lentil casserole. I heart lentils! I've made this a couple times before and it rocks socks. This time, I accidentaly spilled some broth out of the casserole dish so I had to approximate how much spilled out and replace it with water. I think I put too much water in though, because it didn't stay together like it usually does. Delicious anyway though.
With garlic toast! And an unpictured clementine.

Oh yes, I made more pudding! Using CCV's basic pudding recipe. After the base cooled this time, I stuck it in the blender with 1 tbs cocoa powder, half a banana, and 1 tbs sugar. Chocolate and banana is one of my favorite combos. Here it is, in my beautiful tupperware container.
And Shelby, you asked whether I used agar flakes or powder. I use flakes. I got it to be really creamy by putting my blender on the puree setting for a long time, rather than on the blend setting for a shorter time.

Today I was thinking of how my ED/recovery have expanded my food choices. Pre-ED, I was a pretty picky vegetarian, and wouldn't eat anything that sounded to much like hippy health food. This means quinoa, couscous, seitan, dark chocolate, and lots of fruits and veggies were off the list of things I'd eat. I ate a pretty processed diet, lots of faux-meat stuff. But one of the positive things that I've gotten out of recovery and my preoccupation with food is a lot more healthy variety in my diet. Now I'd say that I'm an adventurous eater, and like to cook up new foods. Has having an ED changed you girls' diets for the better, too?

Hope you all had wonderful Saturdays and enjoy your Sundays!

La prueba fue facil

Grrrrrrrrrrrr I wish I had noticed the thing about the scheduled blogger outage sooner. I wonder how long this is supposed to last, because it's 7:22 and I want to post soon! Mrph.

The Spanish exam was so easy! I didn't even need to spend so much time studying. I think I only missed one or two multiple choices, and I did really well (I hope) on my written section. We were supposed to say what we bought for a party and I couldn't remember how to say soda! So I put beverages of fruit, but it's okay. My teacher will get it.

Only piccies of dinner tonight, because that was the most exciting meal. I made crockpot lentil and apricot soup.

It was pretty good, but not what I was expecting. I thought that the apricots would make the whole soup sweeter, but they didn't even though I doubled them. So basically, it tasted like lentil soup (but v. good lentil soup) unless you got a bite of apricot. Which was like perfection, the apricots got all mushy and oozing.
I had 2 pieces of TJ's French baguette

And for dessert, Eggnog Panna Cotta from BitterSweet! Second try at using agar flakes. I've had a carton of Holly Nog in the pantry since last year and I need to use it up. So I eliminated about half of with this recipe. And it was a really, really good choice. I didn't have any vanilla, for some strange reason, so I used 1/2 tsp maple extract and you couldn't tell since the eggnog was already spiced. It was sooo light and creamy! I topped it with some blueberries in a feeble attempt to make my dessert look as good as it does on BitterSweet. Mission failed :[

It was a challenge to have dessert, as always, but a little less of one this time. ED always tells me that I'll be overindulging if I have dessert, and I don't deserve that. But guess what? I do deserve to have dessert. I deserve to indulge and live life to the fullest without feeling guilty or "fat" about it, and so do all of you. What we don't deserve is ED! I may have made some mistakes in my life, but that doesn't mean ED should be able to take away the rest of it.

Hope you all had wonderful Wednesdays! Remember, it's all downhill until Friday now!

Troubling Tuesday

I don't mean to be negative, I've just had a horrible day. I usually always feel a little down and depressed, but today I can barely even function. I felt like crying all day at school today, I couldn't laugh or smile, I just feel hopeless now. I don't know what triggered this either, so I don't know how to fix it. Unfortunately, when I get into one of these ruts and draw myself away from the real world, it gives ED a great opportunity to pester me. Today my thoughts have been about calories, weight, and cooking constantly.

Again, sorry to be so down but I just really need to vent, or something. I have no one else to talk to, I can't tell my friends, they have no idea I still have problems like this. Thank God I have this blog, I don't know what I would do if I couldn't get my thoughts out somehow.

Not very exciting food for most of the day. Just to give you an idea of what my usual lunch looks like:

PB sammie, TLC bar, carrots, and a yogurt. The yogurt is usually the only thing that changes...

For dinner tonight, I was planning on eating it in the car because on Tuesday I have to go from my cello lesson to therapy. I packed lentil salad from Veganomicon along with string cheese and a PB and cranberry apple butter quesadilla.

My mom was talking to my therapist alone this week, but I was supposed to come along anyway because there's no time between my lesson and my therapy to go home. My dad actually ended up picking me up from my lesson though, so I got to come come instead of going with my mom. I sat down to eat dinner, and I seriously could not get through the lentil salad. It didn't taste bad, my body was just rejecting it like crazy. I got through about half, then I literally couldn't make myself swallow anymore. I just wasn't craving it.

The funny thing though, is that I don't know what I crave anymore. I get hungry, but I can never tell what I actually want to eat to get rid of my hunger. And sometimes I'll eat something and I think "Yum, this tastes good." but when it's time to eat I can't recognize if my body is craving the thing that tasted good to me before. This all used to be so natural. What did I do to myself?

After the lentil fiasco, I was trying to just use up stuff in the fridge so I heated up about 2/3 of a leftover potato left over from the knish dough. I added a splash of milk and microwaved it (peeled) with the rest of my Amy's minestrone.
I still don't think it's really what my body wanted, but it tasted alright.

Hope everyone who went back to school today had an okay time. Stay strong, my girlies. Thanks to everyone who gives their time to read my blog!