Bananas

I love potatoes. They are a fabulous food. Boiled potatoes can be so very many different dishes. Simply add butter and parsley stir and there you have nicely creamy potato chunks. The next day the leftovers are wonderful pan fried. Baked potatoes with butter and sour cream, yum. French fries either baked or deep fried, still tasty. Potato soup, this is by far my favorite soup. I can't think of anything better when I am feeling down or sick than some form of potatoes.

Sadly potatoes are no longer on my menu. I discovered through the long process of elimination dieting that potatoes cause me pain the next day. So what do I do instead of potatoes? Bananas! Yes, green bananas boil up as a nice potato substitute. The bananas must be very very green. If they have started to turn yellow or yellow green they have already developed sugars and don't boil well. These are not plantain bananas they are regular eating bananas that have been picked young and not gassed to speed their ripening process.

How are they prepared? Cut the ends off and slice the skin from tip to tip through to the fruit. Be careful here, bananas excrete a milky juice that stains. Then put in a pot of water. Add about a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of oil to the pot. The salt adds flavor and the oil makes for a nicer clean up, that milky juice turns to a glue on the side of the pan without the oil. The bananas are cooked when they poke out of the ends. This takes 30-45 minutes. Peel the bananas and slice them. Then you can saute with olive oil, onion, and garlic. They are also very nice tossed with a bit of butter, cilantro, salt and pepper.

While bananas are not potatoes they do make potato loss easier to handle.

Haitus

I am back after quite a long hiatus. I found that opening a business will do that for the creative outlets. There was all that fun knitting time for holiday gifts. That paid off too. I think everyone was pleased with their hand knits this season. But then came the up fit.

WOW! What an intense time. I thought I would be able to blog my way through. No way dude! I was spent at the end of the day. My hands were so tired from pulling carpet, painting, laying cork flooring, and what ever else needed to be done on the given day there was no way I could think about typing!

So now I am back. I am working out again and getting some creative time in. I didn't worry about the workout aspect too much until all the construction stuff was complete. Now that I am not knee deep in construction demands I am realizing the need for exercise again. Last week afforded me a couple of workouts and then a few days of nursing a headache. No workouts allowed during headache time. Today I am headache free and planning some solid cardio-knitting. I had to start a pair of tube socks for Kam to accommodate my simple knitting needs. Her feelings will not be hurt by a new pair of socks. And I am able to use up some leftover stash yarn.

One of my favorite clients found this contest site. I went ahead and joined. The challenge is 18 weeks long. I am also going for the BFL Challenge. But that one is only 12 weeks. I am curious how having a surgery during these challenges will effect my outcome. I know I had tried to get going on the BFL earlier. As with most everything else it fell by the wayside while we were opening THE FIRE. But with that surgery, hysterectomy on the 26th of February, I was told I would be released for exercise after two weeks. Now if that means I am back to my normal life~miraculously fabulously great! If that means I am able to do moderate exercise in the form of cardio~great! If that means I can tell others what to do but still need to wait before I am back doing my own routine~oh no! My hope is to go into a 75% living foods diet during my recovery. That will assist my body in its fat burning and healing while not moving. This may be a challenge in itself. I know it is not easy to have a diet different from what the rest of the world is doing when others could be responsible for care and/or feeding.

Goals are good!! I encourage everyone to make some goals now. Create little steps to accomplishing those goals. Bring your life into focus. Make your health a lifelong priority!!