2014-06-16
in
5 min read
Today was a day with travel home to spend some time with my dad on Father’s Day. As such I went back to my go-to travel plans on most of my meals. As I’m finally working through my backlog of squashes I decided to crack open another one tonight and whip up a quick meal of Shrimp Marinara over spaghetti (squash).
I’m not sure if it is the ramp up in organization and house work, staying up way late on Friday or something else, but I have been surprisingly late at waking up the past couple of days. Usually I wake up between 7:00 and 7:30 whether I went to bed at 10 pm, 11 pm or any time later than that. These past couple of days however I have been waking up after 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep even with the abundant amount of natural light pouring into the room. I genuinely prefer waking up when the light comes up. To me it just feels more natural. It’s therefore odd for me to wake up after 9 am on Saturday morning and after 8:15 am this morning. It may sound like a typical sleep in weekend routine for others, but I haven’t had this experience for many years now.
Because of the late wake up my original plan of working out before getting on the road was a bust. I had time to write some blogs and eat some breakfast but then I had to get going before 10:30 am. I hadn’t had Virgin Diet shake in awhile so that was my breakfast of choice today. To go along with it I also made an herbal tea. Usually I just drink hot water with some lemon juice in it. However I’ve started experimenting with turmeric teas. My first experiment with it was dreadful, but that time I used dried ground turmeric from the spice rack. This time I used fresh turmeric, with fresh ginger, and the outcome was much more enjoyable. I will warn anyone that wants to mess with turmeric that if you touch it with your fingers it will stain instantly and you will be leaving yellow marks all over the place.
After trying to wash up from breakfast, I got my writing done and made a to go meal for the road. I was going to be getting up to visit my dad after lunch hour and heading back mid-afternoon. I knew that if I didn’t plan ahead I would be setting myself for tripping up. I therefore packed several handfuls of celery, carrots, pumpkin seeds and almonds. I knew I could get some seltzer or mineral water, so I just made my way on the road with those for snacking on the way back. After spending a couple hours visiting with my dad walking around and enjoying the outside, for the most part, I headed back down. I quickly ate through the carrots and celery but really savored the pumpkin seeds and almonds. I especially liked the saltiness of the pumpkin seeds. It was really the only added salt I had all day until I hit dinner time.
All of that was not a lot of food to have eaten for the day so far, so I figured I’d feast at dinner. The original plan was to get home early enough to work out, then eat dinner. Unfortunately traffic conspired against me and I didn’t have time for that after all. It was fine actually because along with waking up late I was dragging ass all day anyway. I didn’t want to spend too much mental power making dinner so I figured a quick marinara sauce would do the trick. I substituted my spaghetti for half of a spaghetti squash. That made my meal more a garlicy tomato soup with squash in it and a great number of shrimp. My partner had his properly over real spaghetti with some home made sourdough bread for dipping. I did eat two spaghetti noodles while cooking since I couldn’t tell if they were al dente or needed more time cooking. Even if my ceilings were conducive to that method of testing pasta completion, I also know from personal experience that it quickly leaves a mark on the paint.
As soon as I was done my heaping pile of spaghetti squash marinara I wasn’t hungry but was craving more of something. It was a paradoxical sensation to have a full stomach but a mind saying, “I want some dessert!” I didn’t have any coconut milk ice cream made up, so I opted for some frozen berries. Frozen fruit is as much dessert as I usually need anyway so that did the trick. I finished up the day a little later with three dozen fresh cherries too.
I’m hoping that this dragging ass thing is temporary and not diet related. Between that and the dairy cravings I have a feeling my body is just taking a little adjusting to it’s new food regiment. I could rationalize that the dairy could be my mind craving calcium. In hindsight it’s the one mineral I’m substantially deficient in the past two weeks. Could it be a coincidence? Perhaps. Rather than fixing the problem with dairy, however, I think I will try addressing it by drinking a couple of bottles of mineral water per day. Let’s see if that curbs the cravings!