Today’s from-the-garden baking experiment: low carb (thanks, almond flour) zucchini (my plants have been producing like crazy!) bread breakfast cookies. They’re also a good source of prebiotics, courtesy of oats and chia seeds. Prebiotics feed the native good bacteria in the gut, keeping it strong to fight off infection. And they support the immune system. 💪 One cookie was actually a pretty filling breakfast. Thanks, fiber. Did you know most Americans fall far short of the daily recommended intake of fiber? In fact, a recent study* reported that only 5% of men and 9% of women get the fiber they need. That matters because inadequate fiber intake is linked to a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes, two of the most common diseases in the U.S. Women should aim for 25 grams of fiber a day. Plus, it can cause a host of digestive issues and other chronic health issues.
“Usual Dietary Fiber Intake in US Adults with Diabetes: NHANES 2013-2018.” Derek Miketinas, PhD, RD (Texas Woman’s University) et al.
Grateful for food and the ability to eat it (gonna hold onto this one for a while!). Last night, we made individual pizzas with the gluten free crust from My GF Chef at Crack A Daddle Do Farm . Mine had a lemon-garlic-tahini sauce with tomatoes; mushrooms from DarkSpore Mushroom Company ; swiss chard and red onion from JBo Ranch ; kalamata olives; banana peppers; and feta cheese. For breakfast today, I had a mushroom and sundried tomato quiche (also from Crack a Daddle*) with some citrus fruit (so I can put the peels out later to dissuade the neighborhood free-roaming cats from using our mulch like a litter box). I also made some homemade strawberry (from the farmer’s market, of course) sourdough muffins with a crumbly topping, which came out fantastic. And as an additional note, I’m now the kind of person who drives her own herbs.
Trent said, “Is that a quiche from Crack a Daddle? They’re doing a lot more prepared foods now.” And he’s right. They are because people want convenience…but also healthy and good-for-you foods. We had their stuffed shells and Bolognese the other night, and I’ve got their Tuscan Chicken Pasta bake in the freezer for the next time I don’t feel like cooking from scratch for dinner. Next best thing to homemade because I know it’s made with good ingredients and not laden with preservatives that are bad for my microbiome and overall health. Win!
eatfresh #buylocal (for me, that’s at the Simpsonville Farmer’s Market !) #Maintain2022
Sharing this article (with recipe) from my morning reading.
➡️ Fennel: supports digestive enzyme production ➡️ Cumin: same + bile secretion, helps with digestion of fatty foods ➡️ Turmeric: anti-inflammatory + supports gut lining ➡️ Cloves: powerful anti-inflammatory
I used the first three pretty frequently when I was healing (and this recipe in the article is similar to one I made…without the veggies until I could tolerate them). I still use them regularly, and I drink a CCF (cumin, coriander, fennel) tea daily, particularly after meals. Coriander also aids digestion.
Today I’m #grateful to be back home and back to my routines! Even before CDI, I always felt best when I was on routine. After CDI, routine became even more important to healing. Even small shifts in routine could cause a PI-IBS flare. That’s gotten so much better now that I’m over a year out. But it’s still good to get back on routine. I’m doing a bit of a kitchari “cleanse,” since I did so much new and different eating over the last week. I’m back to my tea and turkey tail extract and tongue scraping and morning face mask and hour-long dog walks and yoga (although I did do some yoga every morning and evening on a towel in my hotel room 🙂 ). These are all things that helped me while healing, and now they’re a great way to make sure I stay healthy, especially after a change in routine. Just because I healed my gut doesn’t mean I can start taking it for granted again! Do you have a get-healthy or stay-healthy routine that’s helped/helping you?
I’ve been considering what my guiding word for 2022 should be. I’ve settled on “maintain.”
That might not sound particularly inspirational or aspirational–that’s what I thought. But the word stuck to me like glue. I tried to come up with something better, but it just kept coming back to me: maintain. And there are some obvious reasons for this, I think. After a year of healing, of fighting for my health and wellbeing, a year focused on maintaining it makes sense. I want to maintain my health–physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. I want to maintain balance (especially work-life balance). I want to maintain focus, energy, gratitude. I want to maintain all of the good practices I adopted last year and years prior. I want to maintain the lessons learned.
And yet maintain… maintenance…seems like a really low bar. But let’s face it: after the last two years, it’s really not. And also, there’s something to be said for maintenance (ask anyone whose car/AC/appliance/tooth breaks down because they ignored their scheduled maintenance/checkups. And anyway, the world just kept floating to the top: maintain. And I pulled out my Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary and flipped through to find “maintain.” And now it seems even more apt. Maintain. Uphold, defend, carry on, keep up, assert, justify, sustain against opposition, persevere. Maintain. No wonder it kept rising to the top. So here we are: #Maintain2022.
In related news, this dictionary came home with me from Winthrop. It was probably a Writing Center reject. But at one point it apparently belonged to Dot Thompson (which will be relevant to Winthrop peeps like Jo Koster ). And that was another sign for me to stick with “maintain.” And also, I tucked between its pages random newspaper articles about language. There are also index cards with definitions of certain words and notes, including someone’s phone number on this page, which I’ve marked through because who knows whose number that was or is (I clearly didn’t think to note that 😂).
Background: Several years ago, I started choosing a word or words to guide me through the year, an idea I stole from Mary How.
2015: “life begins at the end of your comfort zone” 2016: empathy 2017: grateful 2018: Patience. 2019: Release. 2020: {I don’t remember…but can you blame me?} 2021: Healing 2022: Maintain
Wider than the Sky 