GOAAAAAAALS!!!!!

I've been blahging a lot about food recently. Because food is delicious, and I've been going through a bunch of bullshit regarding gluten and whatnot, so it's been forefront in my mind.

 But now it's time to talk about fitness.

So in April and May, I worked my skinny white ass off running, zumba-ing, doing ab excercises and all like, 10 pushups I had worked myself up to. Because I had this crazy-wild project I was working on. I have an amazingly talented friend who is a bodypainter, and she had this great idea to do a nude bodypaint session using blacklight paint. And then have a super-amazing photographer of my choice do a photoshoot using blacklights. Yeah, I know. Badass as Hell.

Thankfully, the body painter is a good friend of mine, and through the power of theatre, has likely seen me nude (or damned close to it) many times backstage. So the awkward scale was dramatically reduced. It was tickly and cold, and lots of FUN.

All of the hard work paid off, and the photoshoot ended up AMAZING. Ming Loo is the most talented photographer that I know, and DeeDee's Facepainting is... well, the pictures speak for themselves.

http://mingloophotography.blogspot.ca/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dee-Dees-Face-Painting/265777126785707

So after all of my hard work, I've fallen from the workout train. I mean, I haven't gained anything, but I haven't resumed my maintenance either! Where did those lovely abs go!? Time to find em again. And I know JUST the way:

LIKE, OH MY GOD YOU GUYS!! I TOTALLY got a part in the chorus of Legally Blonde: The Musical!!! So it's time to whip my ass into shape. Get this gluten crap sorted out, keep with the Lean, Mean, Clean and GlutenFree, and get stretchy again! Summer fun, here we come!



















I started by planning out my week's meals.

Individual veggie bowls for every day of work this week for snacks, I made a HUGE Roasted Vegetable Egglplant Parmesan from pg 180 of The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook 2 by Tosca Reno that I can warm up this week for lunch or quick suppers, baggies of almonds and cranberries, and a meal plan for this week.

Now if only this weather would cooperate so that I can go for a run! My city has been blasted by rain and thunderstorms this week, which really should be no excuse... but you know. I get cold easy, I'm a skinny bitch.

Phallic Foodstuffs

Honestly. Are there many things funnier than phallic looking food??

This is one of the reasons that I usually have a butternut squash sitting in the middle of my kitchen island for decoration. It's just such a good lookin' gourd.

I saw this bad boy at The Market Center one day, and I had to have it. I realized that my life could not go on unless that DongSquash came home with me. And it did.

Why WOULDN'T I?

And it has been a glorious ornament on my island for a little while now. But, the time comes where, unless you want to end up on one of those unwatchable episodes of Hoarders, you need to put it to use, and make something delicious.

I decided to roast him, and use him in Butternut Squash Soup, from the Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook by Tosca Reno.

I sliced him in half, and then spent 15 minutes giggling my head off and taking pictures. It was PERFECT.

I then put my adolescent self away, and put him in the oven alongside some garlic and onions. After 45 minutes, I took him out.

And then my adolescent self returned for another round of giggling and pictures.

It keeps getting better and better

 Finally, I scooped it out and put it in the pot along with the garlic, onions, vegetable stock and lime juice. Let it simmer for 15 minutes, and pureed it.

Thankfully, it tasted delicious. Entertaining dinner, thy name is DongSquash.

(I realize there's really nothing of value in this post. Just pictures of a squash that looked like a wang. Because that's how I roll.)

Gluten is the Ginger Kid of my Intestinal Playground

New Zealand made me eat birdseed bread. No lie.
Moving on....
Oh, you want the explanation? Well fine, here it is.

2 years ago, I travelled to New Zealand. The night before I was to go home, I hadn't had supper so I had a quiet, unassuming late-night BLT sandwich in the hotel I was staying at in Auckland.

The furry things are actually samurai swords

The next morning, I felt like I was being repeatedly shanked in the stomach with a knife, but I wasn't involved in any coke-deals gone bad. And I was involuntarily evacuating my body out of every orifice my anatomy allows. This is 7 hours before my 14 hour flight to Canada.
Long story short, I miss my flight because I'm in the emergency ward of Auckland City Hospital, being treated for Escherichia Coli infection. Yes, I'm not talking the 'oh shit, they didn't cook the chicken thoroughly so now I have the poops' food poisoning. I'm talking, "CNN Breaking News: So-And-So Product Has Been Recalled Off Of Grocery Shelves Due To Contamination" food poisoning. E.Coli. Anyways, it wasn't pleasant it fucking sucked.

Fast forward to this past week. I'm at the doc's office, and as we're discussing the results of my body juice testing, I make a passing comment about when I had E.Coli poisoning they told me I was extremely low on calcium. She looks up, stares at me and says, "When you what?"

Asshole.

This is her theory. When I got E. Coli and my body violently said, "STOP THE MUTHAFUCKIN TRAIN, EVERYBODY OUT NOW!!!", wearing its dagger-cleats, it strolled out of my body like a riptide and tore the SHIT (no pun intended) out of my small intestine, carving it's name on the walls and dragging it's razor sharp tentacles across the floor. (Of course, she did not use this colorful description, but that's what my mind cooked up.) This damage sustained during Body Evacuation: Bacterial Edition likely created a lot of sensitivity to foods. One of which, being gluten. She said that my body may have already been allergic to gluten, but this damage made my tolerance of it worse, or that my small intestine just has decided that gluten is an irritant and doesn't want anything to do with it. Gluten is the ginger kid in my intestinal playground.

Now, of course, I don't know if that's true, I'm no doctor and she could have just fed me a line of bullshit. It sounds plausible though. Either way, advise was, just stay away from gluten. Maybe try it again in a year or so and see if anything changes, but take 'er easy.

Gotcha Coach.

Back on the Track

Rollercoaster, thy name is Zombiegyrl's Life.

I've been going through ups and downs with this Gluten-Free stuff as it is. This past week has been a hard one. I'm in a theatrical production that has been unorganized and chaotic since day one and it was opening weekend last weekend, so I've been max stressed out for weeks about that. Top that off with my grandfather's death last week, it's been hectic and stressful. But add a major new allergy that I'm struggling with sorting out to the equation, and all Hell breaks loose.

The problem has been that, haven't had the time to cook or meal-plan. So when it's tummy-rumble time, I've been getting frustrated and confused with what to make, and then throw up my arms and say "Fuck it!" and I resort to grabbing something small that's already pre-fab like GF crackers with homemade salsa, or veggies, or a quick salad... well, since it hasn't been very fulfilling, I get snacky later on. And when I get snacky, I get more frustrated. And when I get frustrated I suggest picking up ice cream. Or pizza. Or something that is the opposite of healthy.

SO. Time to regroup. Saturday I made one of my favorite recipes, Gluten-Free Taco Bowls. It was in the Jan/Feb 2012 Edition of Clean Eating Magazine, and I continually whip out my tablet to find the recipe, because it's just SO DAMNED GOOD.



Last night, I was all ape-shit excited about the brand new food processor I had just purchased, so I made Salmon with Sun-dried Tomato Tapenade and Lentils with Swiss Chard (Both from The Eat-Clean Cookbook by Tosca Reno). Then I made enough hummus to feed the Canadian Military. I love my new food processor.

AND I've been excited about cooking with all of the yummy fresh herbs I've been growing on my deck. I can't grow a proper garden because my house is Deer Foodcourt, and they're a bunch of pricks and eat everything they can wrap their furry mouths around. And when you walk up to them to say, "Get the hell out of here! Those are MY ROSES!" they just chew slowly and look at you like a defiant teenager as if to say, "I'll eat whatever I damned well please." and then you do the 'shoo! shoo!' thing at them and they slowly turn around and walk away, and if they didn't have hooves, I'm pretty sure they'd give you the finger too. Because they're a bunch of pricks.
So anyways, FRESH HERBS! I'm growing cilantro, chives, rosemary, salad greens, orange thyme, lemon thyme, spearmint, mojito mint, peppermint, parsley, dill, oregano and Italian basil. I'm also trying to grow potted tomatoes, peppers and chili peppers, but I seeded them quite late, so I might be eating fresh salsa in September. Best laid plans...

So now, it's time to meal-plan. Or at least have something healthy on hand that I can whip up quickly when I'm pressed for time, or not in the mood to cook. Also, once this production is finished, it'll be summer, which means three things. Road construction, no hockey, and PLENTY of beautiful weather for working out OUTSIDE! Rockin' summer bod, here I come!

(Oh. Oh yeah. You see that? Moroccan Chicken and Lentils from the
Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook. Tonight's masterpiece. It's okay to be jealous.)