Food, Glorious Food! Sing with me. ;)

Seven, My first months fast against excess…

FOOD

Have you ever seen, Ice Age, The Melt Down? Where the vultures start singing about, "Food glorious food"? That song has played in my head more times then I can count this month. Hmmm...I wonder why?

After listening to the words I feel like I need to explain this song. So, for those wiho have not seen this movie, this song is sung by vultures, and yes it's a little creepy, but funny. ;) It was mainly the chorus that was stuck in my head. 

If you have read Jen's book you will notice that I did a different type of food fast than hers. (She tells you to do it the way the Lord leads you to.) After some prayer and  realizing I have some health issues that I do not want to aggravate by such a long sustained fast, I came up with this plan and I still learned a ton.

This month my meal plan for the fast will consist of...

Breakfast: Plain oatmeal. The only add ins will be milk or water.

Lunch: boiled chicken breast, sweet potato, leafy greens. 

Snack foods: Banana, apple, or carrots.

Dinner: Only homemade meals. No processed junk. This also means that if I did not make the bread or pasta myself, then I will abstain from eating it. 

So yes, my dinner was not an extreme thing, but I have a good reason. I have 3 munchkins and it is very important in our family that they know, we get one meal to eat. Momma is not a shorthand cook ready to make 3 different meals for dinner to satisfy their whims. 

There will be one meal, for our whole family, and we will all eat it. Enough said. If I suddenly show up to the dinner table with a different meal these smarty pants will undo all of our hard work using me as their example. No thank you.

Beverages: I will drink mainly water with some coffee or juice. (For the first 2 weeks I am challenging myself to drink the coffee without sugar/flavoring. This is rough since I like "phoo phoo" coffees. I have given up coffee for a whole month before and survived. I just flat-out chose not to give it up this time.)

I will also abstain from all refined white sugar.

My First Reflections…

Eating plain oatmeal with no seasoning or fruit, or maple syrup/ sweetener of any kind…Well, it really stinks. This absolutely will take a while to get used to. I LOVE cooking and this is hard to not go into chop and season mode…

Also it tastes like bleh.

Reality check…

This is sometimes the only food a person in a developing country may get for the day and honestly many do not even get this one bowl. ARGH! Sigh.

Well, so much for my pity party about how bad it tastes.

Lunch, was good. It takes a lot more forethought to cook some chicken up and chop up some sweet potatoes or other veggies. I learned the hard way that I have to think ahead with our crazy lifestyle and cook up 3-4 servings for myself ahead of time in case an emergency arises like a child throwing a major fit and a friend needing a ride to the hospital to have a baby six weeks early… (She is a beautiful and precious munchkin by the way!)

Oh how I miss you salty and sweet snack foods! I miss you so…

Suddenly, I am reminded like a smack in the face, (in other words…Wake up woman! Do you hear what you are whining about?) about something I learned from my lovely friends in South Africa. They call chips, candy, soda, etc., “luxuries”. This should be a splash of ice cold wakeup water in our faces. 

Hello America!

A bag of chips is a luxury? It’s standard fare for so many here, along with candy, beverages, and so much more. A luxury? It used to be.

I remember those days…

 I recall somewhere back there in the cobwebs of this mama brain, a time when it was an amazing treat to get some soda pop because it was someone’s birthday. Or the joy that yes, your parents actually took you to the “Golden arches”. I remember working odd jobs to save up the money to get some candy. 

I kid you not, my children are so spoiled by their grandparents that I have to give away and toss out candy monthly. There is no possible way our kids could eat it all nor would we ever allow them to, but yet it abounds.

A second issue I am running into with the word, “luxury”.  What do we call luxury items here in America? There are luxury cars, luxury vacations, luxury spas, luxury medical treatments, and so on. Luxury has such a different label here and price tag.

I am floored at how much of a difference one can experience after only one week. It’s Saturday and it’s my nephew’s birthday. All the family is there and I had decided ahead of time that I would eat “normal” during birthday celebrations. 

“Normal!” 

Haha! Oh my goodness, I didn’t even eat that much. Since my stomach had apparently shrunk a bit I took small portions. It was nothing that would have made me sick before, but oh Mylanta! 

There I was trying to shoot some video of the kiddos hitting the piñata after dinner and I suddenly had to do a quick camera hand-off to my hubby as I literally ran for the bathroom inside. Ack! Ahem…it was not pretty, but I did make it in time. I have never looked so forward to eating plain oatmeal before.

Stay tuned for, 

The not so pretty side of me, myself, and… FOOD!