Wow, 40 days of almost no meat, dairy or sugar. What do you know about that?! I was thinking about it this afternoon and realized that we're closing in on six weeks of the eight week challenge gone. Wow. I guess I'll have to go all out for the last two weeks and really be extra good to help these habits I've been working on and make them stick. (Except for the lasagne I'm planning on having for breakfast, lunch and dinner on day 1 after the challenge.... kidding!)
Today was sort of a zombie day. For some reason for the past two nights, I've awakened at 1:30 am and haven't been able to sleep again until after 5:00. Then I wake up at 7:00, feeling all grouchy and discombobulated. That is no fun at all. When I'm grouchy, I don't take the dogs for their walk, which probably makes me even grouchier, and it is all a vicious cycle. As you read in yesterday's post (written mid-morning today), I had a PB&J with banana sandwich for breakfast, while writing my blog. I read for awhile, took out the garbage, took a shower and took the dogs for a very short 1/2 mile walk. All of this took about 5 hours to do. Normally, that is about 30 minutes worth of work. Oh yeah, I was also perusing the job postings during that time, but still, it took forever.
Finally, we were ready for lunch and we decided, unsurprisingly to go out. We ended up at Veggie Grill, since my good friend Tammi gave it a positive review in Seattle last night. It was an interesting place. It is completely vegan, but many of the foods were meat-like. For example, the Santa Fe Chickin' sandwich, which we had. Oh, there are so many things to talk about here. First off: I get that this is fake chicken (made with soy, beans and peas) and the spelling has to be off... but why the apostrophe? In the South, we often use an apostrophe to imply a missing letter g, as in, "I'm a goin' to the store." At times, we'll use the letter n to indicate a missing and, as in "chicken'n'biscuits", But at no time is there an n at the end of a word with a hanging apostrophe for no reason whatsoever. Who came up with this ridiculousness? Secondly: I'm eating vegetables... why do they need to feel like meat? Do I even want them to chew in a meat-like fashion? (OK, poor grammar on my part. I'm totally picturing carrots chewing their cud.) Thirdley: How about processing? How much processing had to happen for those veggies to become chicken-like in texture? Are there any nutrients left at this stage? Hmmmm. I wonder. Lastly: it was actually pretty good. We had a side of steamed kale with a miso-ginger dressing and some sweet potato fries. The kale was fantastic, but I could have skipped on the sauce. Even the iced tea was excellent. I'm not sure if I'll go back, but just because the fake meat idea kind of turns me off - not because it was anything other than quite tasty.
After lunch, we drove a couple of miles out of our way to get gas at a very cheap $3.19 per gallon. I did that because everywhere else was charging upwards of $3.67 per gallon. The difference a couple of miles makes is huge - and since I'm getting just shy of 25 MPG in my car, 4 miles of extra driving is well worth the $7.00 I saved for the 14 gallon tank that was essentially empty. (There is a math word problem just sitting here if anyone wants to do it. Solve for how much it cost me to go 4 miles and you can win a prize! Just be the first to respond to my blog with the correct answer. And yes, I was doing that math problem in my head as we were driving back from the gas station.) As we were on our way home, I realized that my phone wasn't around, so we started playing the "where the heck is my phone" game. Turned out that I left it at the Veggie Grill. We, of course, found that out about 30 seconds after we got back to the house.
So, off we went to pick up my phone from the restaurant. It was in the same parking lot as Trader Joe's, so we stopped by to pick up a couple of things (you know, snack foods and a random candy bar made with 70% cocoa, which Brian and I scarfed right there in line), then went back home. By that time, my brain was completely shot (zombie mode again) and the rest of the day was a blur. I remember eating a piece of naan and four Thai vegetable gyoza, then drinking some peppermint tea, but that was about it. So, at 7:20 pm, I'm pretty much throwing in the towel and planning to sleep through the night. Wish me luck on that.
Be happy and healthy!
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