First Instant Pot Trial

Although I've had my I- pot for a week now, I've just made my first meal in it. The recipe for this vegan, no oil stew was found on Simple Daily Recipes.  I didn't use the faux meat though as I prefer my food not to look like meat.  I tweaked other things to my tastes and adjusted spices including omitting salt. The family loved it. The liquid smoke gave it depth and authenticity as a stew. I felt that the broth was delicious although somewhat thin for a stew. I will play with this in the future to try to achieve thicker consistency.  Delicious.

It has taken me a week to start using this amazing appliance due to hurting my wrist last Friday. I currently do not have use of my left arm below the elbow.  No definitive answers from the ER on Saturday and with very little improvement with pain or mobility, I plan to see a doctor again tomorrow. Treating the pain is one thing, but I really want to know what is causing the pain and address that.

The steroids definitely mess with body weight and I'm thankful that the pharmacist mentioned that or I'd be freaking out right now. The high dose is making my heart beat wildly so I will not take anymore. The force of it was so strong that I could see my hand on my chest go up and down to the rhythm.  Scary stuff.

I am hoping tomorrow brings some answers regarding my injury and subsiding side effects from Prednisone.  I'm a terrible couch potato and just want to get back on track with all I need to do.

Decluttered Body; Decluttered Home

Four Weeks. That is how much time I have until school starts.  This is important because for four weeks I have a certain amount of freedom I will not have for another 10 months.  Granted, I will have some small chunks of time to devote to my choice of activities but for four weeks I will have great chunks of time.  Boy, do I have some goals.

I have been working at eliminating all animal products from my diet since April 2, 2017.  I have reduced 15 pounds off of my body so far.  It feels great to declutter my physical body.  I feel much better and am working on getting completely back on track to a WFPB diet and cutting out the processed food that I added in over the past 6 weeks.  

Another area that I have been working on for the last seven years is decluttering my house.  (Is there a body/house connection here?) Oh before children it was not very hard to keep everything neat, tidy, and more toward a minimalist style.  Oh, but children change everything.  They need stuff.  They want stuff.  They keep stuff.  I keep stuff for them.  I keep important stuff.  I keep nostalgic stuff.  I need stuff.  I want stuff.  I own more stuff then I've ever owned before.  Time to evaluate my stuff.

Now, I do constantly get rid of stuff and always have a donation bag or two in the works.  I have had a few focused efforts of purging stuff and have tackled my clothes closet on more than one occasion.  It does desperately need it again, though.  

About three months ago, I purged the linen/personal care closet.  Two months ago, I purged a couple of kitchen cabinets and my make-up drawer.  A bit more than a month ago, I purged my cookbooks.  

Still, I have too much stuff everywhere.  Pretty things, neat things, interesting things, all join necessities and useless things alike.  At this age and stage in my life, I long for calm.  Think flat spaces with little on them.  Shelves with only a few special items needing dusting.  Closets that are easy to put things away in, simply because there is space and a place.  

So I have a dual focus for the next four weeks.  Purge the junk from my dieta and purge junk from my home.  Junk that I don't want in my diet is anything that is not a fruit, vegetable, whole grain, legume, or seeds and nuts.  Junk that I don't want in my house is anything that doesn't fit, is not used, is not usable, or that does not bring joy when encountering it.  Sounds easy enough.  I know better.  If it was easy we'd all have done it already.  I found this article inspiring today: 18 Five-Minute Decluttering Tips to Start Conquering Your Mess. I am ready.  Let's see what I can accomplish in four weeks.

First picture: taken right this minute: 3:05 p.m.: my desktop computer area before:

After:  3:54 p.m.

 It did not take me 49 minutes to do this.  There was a bathroom break, phone call, a trip to another level for a duster, etc.  It actually probably took about 10 minutes.  Small task and focused effort =accomplishment.  Now, time to make a focused effort to eat an apple.

Thankful Vacations are Over

Vacations throw me off in every way.  My few but simple routines matter to me and yet they are so hard to keep on vacation.  I had two ten day vacations, two weeks apart.  My brain is just starting to get back in the groove.

I held steady on my weight with a total of fifteen pounds gone since April.  I ate way too much processed snacks and just don't feel as good as I did before.  Today was really my first day getting back in the groove and I feel better already. I did take/buy veggies and grains with us and did cook on vacation and use them, however, I also ate some snacky foods and sweets that I didn't really need.  I was actually surprised that I did not have a big gain.

I cleaned out my fridge before I left so now I need to go shopping tomorrow and stock up.  I literally have no fresh fruit in the house which is very unusual.  Aldi's, here I come.  I was able to harvest some cucumbers out of the garden so that has given me something fresh for today.  A few tomatoes are almost ripe but need another day or two.

I'm still loving this lifestyle.  I need to get into WFPB cooking a bit more but cooking and summer don't really go together.  I did make some polenta today at the request of my daughter.  I made a version of a 'ragout' to eat over it.  It was enjoyed by all.

It is time for me to start spending a bit more time in the house getting some projects done and organizing some areas I have been ignoring.  Not as much fun as gardening, in my opinion, but it has to get done.  I did unpack my suitcase, groceries that came back, and caught up with the watering today.

 The gardens looked good and am grateful to my son for taking care of them while I was gone.  Nice to come home to everything green in this 95+ degree weather.  Disappointed to find that raccoons ate three of my fish... for a total of 6 this summer.  I have three left and not sure if I will get anymore until I find a solution for the coons. Anyone have a suggestion?

I ordered an Instant Pot today.  I had seen a different brand of electric pressure cooker at Nebraska Furniture Mart over the weekend but talked myself out of putting out $90 for an unfamiliar brand as the reviews are best for the actual Instant Pot brand.  Well, today I happened to find a $10 off coupon for Kohl's home goods in an email so I looked on their website.  They had the IP-DUO60 7 way pot for $99. I combined the $10 off with my 30% off coupon and ended up at $68.09 with tax.  It is waiting to be picked up at a nearby Kohl's store.  Patience paid off and God provided.