The tooth got the best of me and I continued to fall off the wagon.  I did have some decent moments because I recognize how good my morning juice makes me feel, however, I don't think I've eaten this much ice cream in my first 30 years of life.  Oh and smoothies.  The good news today is that I am going to have my permanent crown placed, removing the troublesome temp that seems to have stinky garbage underneath.  Bleh.   My other crowns, I never had the perms until months later and in one case over a year later. :)   They rushed this one to us and today is the day.

This weekend was my biggest fall because we had company and I knew I was going to go off my diet so two days before I started eating very badly.   Excuses.   Anyways, Sunday was the first time I had diet soda, diet A&W rootbeer to be exact.  Diet Soda is evil.  I woke with heavy legs and concrete feet, plus numb fingers.  The worst was I actually had a hangover headache.  I think when I fall of the wagon again, I will NOT drink diet soda.   Somebody cut off my hands if I reach for one.  Thank you.

After four days of not juicing, I embarked excitedly this morning.    My body needs juice.  It's craving nutrition and I made the ugliest stuff and drank it right down.  I'm on my second glass as I write.

Not a great picture (it is just my phone..lol) but I even juiced the bushy parts of the raddish.  I'm proud, of course, I rinsed it really well because it had gritty soil in the leaves.   This morning I was a crazy woman, tossing everything into a tomato mix.

1/2 a bunch of spinach
2 Kale leaves
6 radishes and their leaves
cilantro (about 1/2 a bunch)
2 celery
1 cucumber
1 green apple
1/2 lemon (zest and all)
some ginger
2 cloves of garlic
This is where I stop and feed the ever expectant Chevy, who was happy to see me juicing, I'm sure because he has started itching again because my scraps diet for him was unhealthy!

I stopped to give Chevy his pulp because the next step was adding tomatoes, which I know will make him aggressively itchy.  Also, the onion, which is not good for dogs in general.  
I added:
6 medium tomatoes
1/2 a sweet onion

The result was this:

I'm a messy kitchen person.  It's not my forte.   I am far too ADD to clean as I go and severely disorganized.  I'm always searching frantically for the doohickey that cleans the pulp shoot.   It looks like a huge toothbrush, has a hook on one end and is a bright melon green.   I normally find it under my pile of skins and peelings.  Today I found it in the garbage.  Sigh.   However, because of Chevy, my floor could be a lot worse.   I mean A LOT worse.  He cleans as I go.  :)   But this is how I discover which fruits and veggies he truly doesn't appreciate.   Today it was.......

....spinach.   He took one whiff of the droppings and clearly left them all alone.   He ate the apple slices that fell.  He munched on a cucumber piece.   There is no 5-second rule with my Chevy.   He retrieves in about 2.5 seconds.   Except, of course, spinach.

This has been a long week.  Work.  Crazy.   Mouth.  Pain.   I had a cracked crown fixed last week and Dr. decided to replace both back crowns at once.   Made sense at the time but a double whammy for me.   I've had at least eight crowns now (replacements included) and never has one hurt this much.   Let's just say I'm glad I'm juicing.  Chewing on my right side sends me into a tizzy.   Yeah, I just said the word tizzy....


Several times this week I fell off the wagon.  I made up for it by extra nutrients the next day.  I really pushed my juicing limits!  Basically, I had a thin crust pizza.   And with it came..SHERMAN.   I knew that was coming but truthfully, it looked so good and I was way too lazy to concoct something.    Laziness is surely my biggest obstacle to creating gluten free/dairy free/soy free foods.  The bad news (besides falling off the wagon) is that chewing now brings up a horrible taste and smell so I am only able to chew on left.  One more day until I return to the dentist.

I, also, fell off the wagon numerous times because I needed cold.  First I was doing the juice smoothies at the coffee shop, which are just blended with ice.   They did let me read the label on the jug of berry berry.   It truly looked like pure fruit juice.  However, I'm not naive and I'm sure there was a horrendous amount of corn syrup and refined sugars in there somewhere.   These were good but expensive.  So, I turned to DQ and blew the dairy free on a shake.  Have you ever seen somebody gargle with ice cream?   It's not too sexy.   Finally, I discovered the ultimate cheap cold high at BK with their lemonade slushie.  Yeah, I know.   Not a wise choice but tell that to my tooth.   My husband is on another BK run as I type.

This morning I made some carrott juice and I froze the remains in hope that I will get some decent nutrients in while maintaining my cold delivery system.   Seriously?   Yeah.  I'm serious.  

Freaking #$%& teeth.  Remind me why we need them?

This was my yummiest fruit juice yet.   I've got an entire morning and lunch left so I'm glad it was super tasty since I will be my next two meals!

Let's see.   1/2 a pineapple, 1qt of strawberry, 1/2 pint of blueberries, 1/2 pint of blackberries, 1/2 of pomegranate (sp?), 1 frozen banana (yes, I'm getting smart and freezing them first, works much better and makes the juice colder), 1 mango, 1 beet and a small piece of lime (zest and all).  I'm excited I have so much to drink tomorrow.  Yay.

I must, also, add that Pomegranates are  probably my favorite fruit.   Once I hollowed out one half of the pom, I was sucking the juice right from the pom.  How dorky is that to any stranger peeking in my kitchen window??

Also, I may have mentioned that I've been feeding my trusty golden retriever, Chevy, the pulp from my juicing adventures.   It was from this pulp that I realized that tomatoes were causing his extreme itching.   Well, I never put the two together before.  I figured it was some of the strange and UNHEALTHY table scraps I have been feeding him over the years, however, this was an obvious connection.   One night after making one of my V8 juices, I fed him the pulp.  He gobbled and about an hour later he started itching.  Extreme itching.   To the point, I almost made him leave my bedroom so I could sleep.   So, I haven't fed him any tomatoes since.

For those of you who don't have a golden, they are prone to allergies and chronic hot spots.   Since I've been NOT feeding him table scraps (because I'm not eating junk) he is NOT itching.  Go figure.  

However, I have been careful not to give him grapes, mushrooms, onions and avocados as I have learned these are dangerous to dogs.  If you are reading this blog and know of any others, please leave a comment. I would never want to hurt my Chevy.   :)   (oh and btw, macadamia nuts are horrible for pooches...the poor things can eat the good stuff...imagine a life without avocados and macadamia nuts.  so sad.)

Here is a picture of Chevy, anxiously waiting my juicing machine to stop so I will empty the pulp container into his dish.   I found it funny that he didn't move from his spot when normally he is my shadow and I often trip over him.   I was able to unload the washer while it finished juicing and he just STARED!!

Obviously I'm hiding from my blog because I fell off the wagon.  I know, I know, this is where I pat myself on the back and say "it's ok Mindy, you can still do this, dust off your knees and jump back on".  Of course, I have.  I have no choice.  See, today I awoke missing my right arm, dizzy and somehow owning a foot that weighs at least 2000lbs.

Let's see.  Eat like crap = feels like crap yet I still chose to put that Reeses bar in my mouth yesterday.   I still chose to sneak some bites of hash brown casserole over the weekend and I finished off one of my hubby's pudding pops.   The absolute horrifying fall was the root beer float from Dairy Queen on Sunday night.   Sigh.....

I deserve to feel like this....

The other obvious item is that Sherman has reappeared.  Over the last several weeks, I've been thinking Sherman was gluten related but even after all that I ate, it seemed to be the root beer float that made Sherman reappear. So is he dairy or sugar related?   Or am I fooling myself?   I think Sherman may just like playing mind games with me.

Today I woke and made an awesome juice.  Let's call it Mindy's V8.   Let's not worry about copyright infringement cuz mine is inevitably better than a true V8.   I did have three tomatoes, one green pepper, five mini peppers (orange, red and yellow) a jalapeno pepper (just a halfsie) fresh basil, garlic, three celery, one cucumber and 1/4 of a head of spinach.     It's nummo and I'm taking the second half for lunch, so what out co-workers, I may be spicy!

It's going to be a hard day at work, missing an arm does that to you.   I ignored the warning signs yesterday to stay home, continued to ignore the light headedness all day and viola, I wake and wonder why these things happen to me.   And some of you THINK I might be a smart cookie.  Boy, do I have you all fooled.

Wow.  I'm moved into the realm of very VERY bad blogger.   Let me catch you all up.  (notice I said all like I have a huge fan club..lol).   Anyways, I'm lost some weight.   Yay?   I think about 6lbs now.   I seriously don't weigh myself very often so it could be more.  Based on comments of my co-workers, I think maybe more than I think.  lol.

Last week I went to the acupuncturist for the first time.  She convinced me to begin taking fish oil tablets and a liquid B complex, both of which make my pee smelly and yellow but if they do the job...wonderful.  She thinks I'm doing great with juicing and staying gluten, dairy and soy free.  With my MS, she would have demanded I become Gluten free as she is convinced of gluten's inflammatory properties in relation to MS.   Anyways, I wasn't thinking I was going to have acupuncture on that visit, maybe just listen to why she thought I should.  However, because I immediately began crying when I sat down, she was insistent I needed a "mood" fix.  Yes, I did cry.   I think I was emotionally spent but also I had been almost five days of my Cymbalta by that point.  

I like how she was not going to "compete" against my neuro but "compliment" his strategies.   It may well be that I need to go back on an antidepressant to help with nerve pain and fatigue and I will have to accept it but I'm gonna try really hard not to head in that direction.   I'm tired of feeling like a Zombie.   For example (and this is just an example).    Before antidepressants, if you told me my husband was having a torrid affair I would have been like "f*ck that!.  Where's the bitch.  Imma kill him and her".   On antidepressants I would most likely shrug and say "oh that's nice.  Did he pick up the orange juice on the way home?"    Seriously.  I don't react to anything.  It's like I live in my own protected "mindy" bubble only it's lonely in this bubble and I'm dying to break out.    Considering I swore at my husband this evening for throwing out a brand new hand soap, I would say I'm on my way to being the potty mouth queen I once was....lol

Today marked a week I have been taking the fish oils and b complex, no difference so far.  I have felt the "didn't juice" difference though.   On days I don't juice, I'm hot tempered, uncomfortable, unfocused and all around lousy.  I need to make juicing an every morning priority.  

On the non juicing front, it's still hit and miss with what I like and can manage to cook.  Tonight I made some lime rice or something like that.   I used sesame oil, mustard seeds, poppy seeds, ground tumeric and some curry, green onions and one tiny thai pepper (chopped) to season the boneless, skinless chixen strips.  I ran out of sesame oil and used the oil in the tahini jar too....lol.  I tossed the cooked stuff into my steamed organic long grain rice and then I squeezed an entire lime into the rice and tossed again, adding slivered almonds.   I must say...nummo!!!!   I think I'm going to leave this blog and go get some seconds.....

Today I made some homemade lemonade with my juicer.  You would think this would be easy but as I cant use sugar and the organic honey I found doesn't break down into the juice, so it was quite messy.   In the end, I have some yummy strawberry lime/lemonade and while you can tell it's honey sweetening the mix, it's not a bad flavor combo.

Tonight I minced some ginger and garlic, flavored it with lime juice and rubbed it over some hormone free chicken.   It was yummo.   I, also, took some of the juice of the ginger, garlic and lime and added it to my rice steamer and again...fabulouso.   Topped with almonds, I made something I love.   Maybe Mark won't love it so much.....lol

I planted cherry tomato plants and regular tomato plants outside the house.  First time for everything.  I'm sure it's not the ideal spot but with two large trees shading our humble abode, I'm not sure where the ideal spot may be.    Of course, plant today and heavy winds and hail this evening.   Lovely.   Poor plants.   Good thing I didn't name them and get attached.  

I should note that I've finally lost some weight.   A measly 4lbs.  Yippee.   Good thing I'm not doing this for the benefit of weight loss alone........

Starting my day with 3/4 of a pineapple, two green apples, two kiwi's and one banana.  Good thing I have a juicer to pack all those nutrients into my morning.   I must admit, I want to buckle on the caffeine thing.  I brought almond milk to the local coffee shop (yeah, we can do that in the Yoop) and I've been drinking decaf cappacino's....they are ok but sniff...sniff.   It's just not the same.    It's like having George Clooney and settling for Jay Leno.  

I realized this morning it's been two weeks since I've had a headache.  I'm assuming it's because I'm not as dehydrated as I'm assuming juicing wont allow you to be dehydrated.   I'm also assuming it has something to do with caffeine.   I do a lot of assuming.  :)

I got up uber early this morning, made my juice, took Chevy for his walk and my Nano must have been a bit too loud as I got home and had the following text.."sure, don't say hi to me you biatch"   lol.   Sorry Jen, I would most certainly said "hi" had I been listening to something other than awolnation at 10 decibels.

I'm off to peruse the net to find some easy sweet potato chip recipes so I can have a yummy snack for work today.   Look out Martha!