Rabbit Food

Day #1 of juicing is complete. It was delicious. Not like, "oh, gimmie that pint of cookie dough ice cream" delicious, but definitely not plug-your-nose gross. I'm following the recipes from juicerecipes.com under their 30-Day Challenge. It's free to sign up and once you do they give you a week of groceries to pick up at a time along with a new recipe each day. They also do great job at easing you into drinking fruits and vegetables - they don't start you off with beet root for example. 

The day one recipe was this: 

• Apples - 2 medium (3" dia) 364g

• Carrots - 3 medium 183g

• Celery - 4 stalk, large (11"-12" long) 256g

The recipe is meant for a 32oz juice and either meant to be used as your meal replacement or shared with someone. Since I didn't do either I just cut the recipe in half. The site is also flexible in taste - so if you need it to be sweeter to mask the taste of a certain produce you don't really enjoy then just add more of what you do like. So after sniffing my juice I decided to toss in another apple to sweeten it up a bit. 

I'm using the Breville Compact Juicer and it is amazing. I searched juicers based on their easiness to clean. I know this may be silly but for a newbie juicer I wanted to make sure this wasn't a hassle for me or I knew I wouldn't stick to it. I learned a lot about juicers in the process - various speeds, "purist juicing", and pulp collection. Mainly I wanted a small size (as small as you can get for a juicer anyways) and easy to clean. This machine is both and I'm glad I went with it. Also got a steal of a deal on it by purchasing online through Macy's with their crazy good coupons and sales. 

Here is the juice collector and the leftover pulp. I have a thing about not wanting my appliances to stain to I emptied and disassembled the juicer as quickly as possible to avoid pesky carrot stains. I poured my juice in my to-go cup with a straw and emptied the pulp in my under-the-sink compost bin that I empty out into the garden compost bin. 

The pulp was almost all the way dry meaning I got almost all the juice out of the produce and had very little produce chunks left in the pulp meaning they all pretty much went right into the cup. 

The rest of the week recipes are pretty much the same except I'll add in some oranges, lemons and ginger later in the week. Next week I add in some cabbage....hmmmmmm. 

Juicy McJuicerson

So my New Year's resolution two years ago was to take meat (not seafood) out of my diet. I honestly thought that after a couple of months I would feel like my body was clean again and go right back to it. BUT two years later and I can list about 3 times that I've eaten a meat other than seafood.

I chose to take most meat out of my diet for dietary reasons (how my body was reacting to it) not animal rights reasons (but those are pretty great reasons). However, I still cook meat for my husband (although minimal, he says), but I only use organic meats. Meaning cage-free-grass-fed-all-that-jazz-kinda-meat. Is it the cheapest option? No. But I like to think of higher quality food (all foods, not just meats) as a long-term insurance plan. Are those organic apples 33 cents more than the non-organic apples? Yes. But this article from 2010 notes that a less-severe heart attack can cost you upwards of $760,000. Holy cow.  <--pun intended.

So all of that being said I wanted to spend this new year getting the other parts of my diet up to a higher standard. My parents did a great thing when I was about 13 and completely cut us off from fast food. No more running through McDonald's on the way to practice. It was the best decision for my health the could've made. If you don't eat it on the regular or stock it in the home, you. will. not. want. it. (this goes for healthy food too!). So no meats (for my specific diet needs), check. No fast foods, pretty much check. No bad snacks in the house, check. Ok, so there were a lot of things I wasn't eating and putting in my body, but what good am I actually putting in? When you take meat out you really have to readjust what you eat and how to get full. It's a complete mindset change.

Insert this:

It's the Breville Compact Juicer. Small, easy to clean, does the job. Now I'm not talking about going on a juice cleanse or fast - these have been shown time and again to be ineffective. And hello, I'd rather not starve or be super grouchy. I'm talking about drinking a nice cup of fruits and veggies with my already healthy breakfast. This particular juicer and many of the newer styles let you pop in the entire fruit with skin (if edible). So all that produce with vitamin packed skins goes right into the juice that you drink. It also collects the pulp of the juice separately which can then be used in recipes or composted. 

So after waiting patiently for my juicer to arrive (it'll be here tomorrow!) I've collected recipes and even gotten my BFF in on the fun. We are starting Thursday with a 30-day juice challenge. This challenge is just meant to get us used to juicing and not meant as a diet or cleanse or fast. It's just simply there to help us introduce fruits and vegetables that we aren't getting. 

I've got my grocery list all prepped for the week and we will see how I feel about all this after 7 days of celery, ginger, and oranges. Oh! And I told my husband I'm bound and determined to find a recipe that he likes, so we will see about that - he's pickier than a 5-year-old. 

New Year, New Things

As some of you may have noticed on Facebook or Instagram, there's been a little extra posting lately with some design work that I've created. After being so inspired by multiple shops on Etsy and a wonderful array of blogs I decided to take a dip in the design pool and open up shop. The easiest and most amazing platform to begin all this was through Etsy. It was really simple to set up shop and get things going immediately with my shop called Willow and Grey Design.

On my shop you will find mostly typography prints, and as of now, all offered as digital downloads. That means once you like, click, pay - it is yours forever and ever. It will download straight to your computer and you can save it and print it as often as you like. It will come as a JPEG file, meaning it cannot be altered or edited. You'll see a pretty strong influence of black and gold or simple black and white prints. I'm trying really hard to simplify things in every aspect of my life and this is showing in my design work as well. 

And just today actually, I added some hand drawn prints to the mix. All prints are 8x10 but most anything can be custom sized. There's a custom order button under each order and to the left of the menu board to request something just for you. 

In this shop I hope you can find something that inspires you, hugs you, resonates with you, and makes you and your spaces shine. I hope nothing but uplifting and great things come out of this year. I appreciate each and every one of your support and love and…follows on Etsy, hahaha. 

You can find the shop by clicking here and you can follow along on Facebook here. Here's to 2014.