Category Archives: Health

Our Fast Fast

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We finished our juice fast a little earlier than we had planned. We went 5 days instead of 7. The weekend is much more difficult to fast than during the week because a lot of our activities on the weekend revolve around food: making breakfast together, going out to lunch, getting coffee or frozen yogurt, hanging out with friends (and food of course), etc. And this weekend was a three-day one with the holiday. So we went all of Saturday through Sunday night when we broke the fast with some Orange Roughy fish as our first non-fruit or vegetable.


Orange roughy and vegetables for dinner

I think we did pretty good overall. We feel a lot lighter and cleaned out. As we added more food today such as an omelet from our chickens’ eggs, we noticed flavors a lot more. It feels really good to  be cleaned out and start fresh. It definitely makes you want to eat healthier and without added sugars, salts and oils/fats. We made an avocado, tomato, pepper salad (in photo) and didn’t even need to add any salt. We just put a little cumin, garlic and lime juice into it and it was great!

I think I would do another juice fast sometime in the future if we start to feel lethargic or like we are getting into our old eating patterns. Britton said he would start to feel pretty hungry around 3pm in the afternoon but once we drank more juice he would feel a lot better. We also found the fruits and vegetables that we really like including carrot juice! We found this 25 lb bag of carrots at King Soopers for only $9!

We are planning on continuing to juice daily as a replacement for some of our meals or as a supplement. These juices are really great and give a lot of the benefits of the whole plant. In addition, Britton lost about 10 lbs and I lost about 5! That wasn’t the main purpose of this fast, but a nice side benefit. We have also been a lot more appreciative of food in general and especially of good,  healthy food in particular. If you’ve ever been curious about a juice fast, I would recommend it whole-heartedly, especially if you have a surplus of fresh fruits or veggies.

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Our New Jack LaLanne Juicer

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Britton and I recently watched the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, a documentary about an Australian man who was about 80-90 pounds overweight and decided to go on a juice fast for 60 days in America. The fast would help as he called it “reboot” his system and encourage or inspire Americans to try juicing during his road trip. Along the way he met a few people who were up to the challenge and decided to try the juice fast as well.


The juicer hidden amongst the various fruits and vegetables

We thought it sounded interesting and had positive results. A sort of opposite Super-Size Me. Since we already like fresh-squeezed juice -usually just citrus, we thought we’d try juicing other things. We researched a few brands and some of our friends recommended the Jack LaLanne brand. It’s a mid-range price model. At about $100 it’s a little spendy, but it meets some of our criteria: 1) It’s health-promoting 2) it’s for food (we have to eat something anyway) and 3) it’s something we can both enjoy together. We are planning to do a week long juice fast this week, but so far we’ve just been enjoying trying out various recipes.

We usually shop at King Soopers for our general shopping but went over to Sprouts to pick up a bunch of fruit and vegetables because Sprouts has the best prices on fresh fruit and vegetables. For instance, we got cucumbers, red and green peppers all for 33 cents each! Plus they have a lot of organic options as well.

Here are some of the recipes we have tried out:
Power Up:
4 celery stalks
1/2 cup spinach
1 medium apple
1/2 cucumber
1/2 green bell pepper
This Power Up recipe is similar to the Mean Green recipe in the movie except they used kale instead of spinach

Power Up Recipe (Doubled)

The green juices are even better for you than the fruit juices because there is a lot less sugar (from fruit).


Glasses of Green Juice

It’s kind of strange to drink green juice, but it actually tastes really pretty good. Like a green garden in summer with a little sweetness from the apple. It’s cool how the fresh juice is all frothy too.

We also tried the Carrot/Apple/Ginger Juice:
2 medium carrots
1 apple
1 inch of ginger root


Ingredients for carrot juice


Carrot going down the shute


Carrot/Apple/Ginger Juice
Carrot is surprisingly sweet when it is juiced. It’s really good, even without the apple. We made some with just carrot and celery and it was really refreshing.

We are looking forward to summer when we will have our garden to help provide us with juicer fodder. We were also thinking about Puerto Rico. It will definitely be useful when we have all the mangoes from that huge tree falling all over the property.


Pulp headed for the chickens

Besides juice, it also has the pulp which is most of the fiber. This is good to use as well. Carrot, zucchini and apple pulps can all be put in breads and cakes. The vegetable pulps can be used in savory meals like meat loaf or omelettes. We’ve even made a sorbet with some of the tropical fruit pulp like pineapple, mango and orange. The pulp we don’t use goes to the chickens which makes their eggs even healthier! Works out great. Nothing goes to waste.

I’ll keep you up to date on the juice fast that is coming up. Hopefully it will work out well. We don’t have 80 lbs to lose, but we could use a boost in energy and antioxidants and we could all use a little help getting those 5-9 daily recommended fruits and vegetables!

 

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Benson Sculpture Garden

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The thing Britton and I do for fun and exercise is take walks. We usually go to our closest park, Ramseier Farm Park in Greeley. But in a given month we go to almost every park in Greeley. So this weekend we found ourselves in Loveland and took a wrong turn. I saw what looked like a park and thought it would be fun to walk around it while the weather is still nice. We were in for more than the regular park walking experience!


Me and a huge dog- The sculpture behind is cool too -the body progressively gets larger and larger until the feet are the most distinct things

Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland is half park and half art exhibit. There has to be about 100 different bronze and other forms of sculpture. There are a couple of bridges and wetland areas as well. The sculptures are mostly of nature and historical figures. There are lots of horses, cowboys, and settlers, but also things like African lions, sea otters and some abstract sculptures as well. Around every corner there was a new one that I liked better than the last. It was a cool find to say the least!


Britton with the bench guy

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Cooking Matters

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One thing about my job, is that it is always something new. I have worked in tobaco prevention and education for most of my time with the health department and continue to do a component of that with half my time, but I have also started to branch off into the “healthy eating, active living” (HEAL) side of things which is basically community obesity prevention and interventions. Both obesity and tobacco use cause the majority of preventable deaths and disease -cancers, heart diseases, strokes, diabetes, etc. So it is definitely important work.


Recruiting for the cooking class at Milliken’s Beef and Bean Day

Even before this new assignment at work, I’ve always been interested in nutrition and good food. But I’ve never been much for the cooking side of things. Eventhough I know that people who cook more at home tend to be healthier than those who eat out, I still just never got that into cooking.I love to eat good, whole, homemade, delicious and nutritious food, but always thought of cooking as a pain and only something Britton and I had time to do on the weekends. The work week usually meant (and sometimes still means) a quick throw-together of pasta or rice, frozen vegetables and fish or chicken.

It is still hard to fit in time to cook, but ever since I have been coordinating and collaborating to help facilitate a program called “Cooking Matters” in Milliken I’ve been intrigued with trying a few new things. In Cooking Matters we have a nutrition professor from CSU (Fort Collins) as well as another health educator helping to teach the course which is primarily geared at the underserved populations.

Everyone always has their usual bag of tricks when it comes to preparing food (like our evening throw-togethers), so a healthy cooking class helps to open your eyes to the wonders of all sorts of foods.


Cumin-Would be nice to grow in the garden -I wonder if it would do well in PR

In fact, I think I’ve found my new favorite spice: cumin! I’ve never even paid much attention to it until in the class we made hummus -which is just basically pureed garbanzo beans, garlic, salt and cumin -so easy! And the cumin makes all the difference! It is also what makes Mexican food so delicious. Not only that, but this spice, like many spices boasts health benefits as well such as being a good source of iron, helping with digestion, and even cancer prevention!

Anyhow, we had a bout of cold, rainy weather this week and weekend, so for fun, we stayed in and cooked up a bunch of food. Some of these included:

Hummus with pita chips
Pearl Barley and vegetable chicken soup
Chai tea
Enchilada lasagna -slice up whole grain tortillas into strips about the size of lasagna noodles -do not cook! In a cooking pan sautee chicken, add enchilada sauce, can of tomatoes, lots of spices like cumin and oregano, sliced bell peppers (and jalapenos if you like it hot), black olives, etc. Put this mixture on top of the strips of tortillas in a large dish (13×9) and layer as you would lasagna. Add shredded cheese and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Uncover for another ten if you like the cheese browned. Let sit for a bit. Add fat free greek yogurt or sour cream if desired on top.
Apple Crisp –Made with about 5 fresh apples with the skin still on sliced to about an 1/8 inch. Pumpkin pie spices (ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon), brown sugar and a tiny bit of flour. For the topping (the crisp): A little butter, brown sugar, quick oats, flour and more spices mixed together and put on top. Then bake in the  350 degree oven for about 30-45 minutes.


Slice of Carrot Cake!


Betty Crocker’s Homemade Carrot Cake –Made with 3 cups or about 8 freshly grated carrots and applesauce in a 1 to 1 complete exchange of the oil and decreased the sugar from 2 cups to 1 1/2 cups. Also added nutmeg, ginger, and cloves in addition to the cinnamon that was called for. Added chopped walnuts. And made the cream cheese frosting Betty Crocker called for (but made with lower fat neufchatel cheese). This was SOO good. And not too terrible nutrition wise!


Yum! Lasagna

Then last night we cooked up traditional lasagana only we used ground turkey in place of beef and added a lot of vegetables.

Cooking is still a pain with all the prep work of chopping and dicing, recipe reading and substituting and of course the cleaning up afterward, but the results are sooo delicious and so much better than any pre-processed options out there.

So while I started out as the reluctant coordinator of this cooking class, I am definitely turning into a convert! Plus I’ve been able to meet all sorts of nice people in the class as well. I would suggest to anyone who has “food issues” -like being overweight, picky, or a fast-food fiend that the best help is a cooking class! Very practical and fun! You control what is in your food and therefore what goes into your body. It is a freeing feeling. Cooking matters! It really does! 🙂

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