New Year's morning finds me reaching for more than my usual share of green. Breakfast today was a quick steam of broccoli florets, diced avocado, lemon juice and fleur de sel. I find the silky creaminess of avocado just feels calming - like a skin repair from the inside, out.
We had a fabulous week off, literally vegging out on the sofa with Netflix. I highly recommend two - "Vegucated" which is a cute documentary about three New Yorkers used to meat and cheese who go on a vegan adventure for six weeks and (spoiler alert) are quite likely to stay there.
The best was "Hungry for Change" - not preachy, but immensely satisfying. A few principles have REALLY stuck, and they bear repeating.
1. Your body wants to be nourished. With nutrition. And if we keep filling our bodies with crap, it will never be so.
2. Health happens over a lifetime. No crashes, fasts or quick fixes can do that.
3. Plants are great for people to eat.
4. Chemicals, carcasses and antibiotics are not good for people to eat.
5. Your body will reward you IF you give it what it needs.
Fortunately after watching documentaries like these, I do realize that for us the hardest part is over. My personal library is filled with great reads, excellent menu plans and recipes, and my fridge and pantry are stocked with great foods. We've been a little light on the greens, as I'm sure everyone has this week, but a trip to the store fixed that pretty easily.
New Year's is a great excuse to go through EVERYTHING in your house to start fresh for the year. I went through my entire spice cabinet, oils and vinegars, my entire fridge, freezer and pantry and drawers and did a great once-over. I made a remoulade sauce of the final bits of some dijon, capers, horseradish and three ketchup packets, made peanut butter and peanut satay sauce (Bill shelled them while watching World Junior Hockey- Go Canada!!), and made a pickle relish for hamburgers with the remains of my homemade dills from last season.
Kitchen 'gadgets' are another must-eliminate if you don't use them. Moments before writing this I stirred some soft brown sugar in a beautiful mason jar. It was rock solid on Sunday. I softened it by putting a balled up moistened paper towel in the jar and then sealing it. It worked like magic. No need for one of those ceramic discs for 8 bucks. Just some simplicity and time.
And I suppose that's where every New Years' usually starts. We promise to be better to ourselves and less toxic. So for this first blog of 2013 - something I want to do much more of - simplicity will be the recipe for the new year.
I ALWAYS keep my New Year's resolutions. I can remember them for years going back, so I do choose them carefully.
This year's was a toss up between
1. "Living more French" including travel, language study and culinary reading
2. Removing one toxic habit of mine every month for a year OR
3. Add more beets.
While the first two are pretty compelling, I think this year I'm going to go with beets.
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