Thankful for Fiber

Rather than celebrate Thanksgiving with extended family, as many do, my family has always celebrated with the dear friends my parents made when they first moved to Dallas.  Unable to travel to their far away Yankee homes, they made their own Thanksgiving traditions with two other sets of young marrieds, who also have kids that are now grown.  Thanksgiving in Dallas morphed into renting a house in the woods, and Thanksgiving for me has always been a mini-vacation with this “chosen family.”  Hubs honors me by embracing this tradition wholeheartedly (but it’s not really a bad deal for him, as the dads of the two other families are wine hobbyists and bring tons for us to sample).

Cue us spending three days in the woods, eating amazing food (including copious amounts of cheesy appetizers) and drinking lots of wine (and homebrew this year, provided by Hubs).  This upset of the normal schedule has never caused me as many, ahem, digestive problems as it did this year.  Maybe my increased age has come with an increased need for fiber or we had more cheesy appetizers that usual, but what’s more likely is that my body is used to having a daily dose of all things good in the form of a green smoothie.  Hubs and I splurged for a Vitamix blender on our birthdays (they are three days apart) this year and we’ve been having green smoothies for breakfast just about every day since then.  I didn’t think about not having them while we were away as being a problem, but at the risk of getting too real with the interwebs, it WAS.

So after getting back last night and more importantly, getting back to the green smoothie this morning, in addition to being thankful for the seemingly unconditional love of my husband, our pets, and all of our family, my good fortune to be a woman in the United States, our jobs and consistent income, and all the wonderful people I have the privilege to know and love, I am also thankful for fiber and that I have the means, the access to ingredients, and the time to enjoy a green smoothie every day.

Green Smoothie
4 Large kale leaves (including stems) or several handfuls of spinach
2 bananas, peeled
Large handful of frozen fruit
1/2 cup unfiltered apple juice
2 cups water

Put it all in the Vitamix and blend.  Put it in a clear glass/cup and take it to lab with you if you want to gross people out.

Reading Memoirs

I have been on a serious memoir-reading kick lately, and I just figured out why.  Memoirs are the blogs of literature.  Because I LOVE blogs, it is only logical that I would be really into reading memoirs.  Often times, when I find a new blog, I’ll go back and read previous posts.  I like to know the beginning of a story, even if we (the memoir-author, blog-writer or reader) haven’t come to the end yet.  A quick review of the memoirs I have read (and loved) this year.  Before making this list, I didn’t think much about the fact that I seem to only be reading books by women:

The Wishing Year: a house, a man, my soul:  a memoir of fulfilled desire (Noelle Oxenhandler)

Poser:  my life in 23 yoga poses (Claire Dederer)

The Happiness Project (Gretchen Rubin)

The Dirty Life:  on farming, food, and love (Kristin Kimball)

Eat, Pray, Love and Committed:  a skeptic makes peace with marriage (Elizabeth Gilbert)

Bossypants (Tina Fey)