MIA

I've been MIA for a couple of reasons. First, I've been traveling! I spent a fabulous long weekend visiting a friend in the bay area, and I have to say that the warmer weather and the wine tastings were the perfect remedy for the doldrums of February in Chicago.

This past weekend the kids and I went on a mini road trip to Wisconsin where we attended a camp-in at Diane's. Super cool moms + some lord-of-the-flies time for the littles = an incredibly fun time had by all (and an enormous mess for Diane. Sorry about that!)

Sadly, I cannot post pictures because my computer has gone kaput. It's old, so I have been expecting it to fall apart at any moment, but as a new computer is just not in the budget for the time being, it's a pretty inconvenient reality. ugh!

The kids are good. Isabel is completely obsessed with gymnastics and spends several hours every day honing her skills. She's practicing cartwheels and handstands, and begs me to watch youtube videos of gymnasts so that she can study their techniques (she also loves to provide commentary about their "sharp toes", "glued legs", and "strong tummy muscles".

Elijah has shifted his focus from trains to airplanes, and has been filling our house with control towers and display panels. He asks everyone to call him "Elijah Pilot" and loves talking about the process of flying an airplane. He thinks (and talks) *all the time* nonstop, and is always asking insightful and interesting questions. It's a lot of fun (and really, really exhausting) to see how his mind works.

In the meantime, we made it through whole foods month and I think it was a pretty big success. The experience has fundamentally shifted our relationship with food, and made us a whole lot more conscious of what we're actually eating and where it's coming from. Our pantry has changed pretty dramatically, and despite the amount of time I've been spending in the kitchen on food prep, I'm not burned out on the constant cooking (yet). I've used the opportunity to try out lots of new recipes (Deirdre's Cauliflower and Caramelized Onion Tart is amazing, and Carrie's Olive and Havarti Pasta has quickly become a favourite! Keep those fabulous recipes coming ladies!!!) I've also made my own seitan sausages, granola bars, vegetable stock, bread, and so on and so forth. It's been a great challenge overall.

Going forward, we'll be trying to maintain a mostly whole foods lifestyle, buying locally whenever possible. I have really missed certain things (i.e. tortillas, blue corn chips, pretzels, etc.) and will be reintroducing them as "once in a while treats" as long as all of the ingredients are whole foods. As for the meat substitutes, we'll still be buying seitan (and experimenting with ways to make it ourselves) and I've found a couple of local producers of tofu, so I'm going to make a trip sometime this week. I'm sort of feeling like we're done with Morningstar and Boka products, but may have them on occasion. I'm still torn on the Quorn. There really is no better substitute that I've found for chicken dishes. At this point, I'm thinking we'll be keeping it, but only as an occasional meal.

I found a supplier of locally milled organic whole wheat flour, so I'm pretty excited about that. I'm already planning summer trips to various farms so that we can all see what goes into the production of our food. We'll be picking lots of berries this summer and apples in the fall. I'm planning a slightly expanded garden for our yard, and once farmer's market and CSA season starts, I'm confident that we'll have no problem at all maintaining this lifestyle change.

Today we begin 31 days of daily exercise, no excuses. My goals are pretty manageable: lifting weights every morning, at least 20 minutes of cardio with an elevated heart rate (including at least 3 days a week at the gym), and daily 1 mile walks with the entire family. It already feels daunting.