Eat, drink & be merry.

Sometimes you just don't want to do anything.

Seriously. I haven't brushed my teeth today and it's 9:51 p.m....

This is what I like to refer to as "sleep for the soul."

Instead of replenishing my physical being, like one would during sleeping hours, I have officially taken the past 14-hours to replenish my mental state. This included (but was by no means limited to):

1. Watching countless hours of Grey's Anatomy.
2. Wearing incredibly heinous fuzzy-yellow socks.
3. Eating lots of peanut butter.

Now, you may be asking yourself, why is this girl rambling on about doing nothing-in-particular on a blog that's supposed to be about refined sugars? Well, allow me to explain...

On days like this (which happen a good six-times per annum), I would normally have baked a large, gooey, delicious batch of my mom's famous chocolate chip cookies. This batch, I would tell myself, would be a great treat throughout the week - one that the whole family would enjoy for the next 14-days to come.

And then 6:30 p.m. would roll around and I would realize that I had polished off a good 7 cookies (and that's being generous in my estimated consumption).

Anywho, the point here is simple. Instead of eating a shiza-ton of sugar-infested salty butter balls, I have instead chosen to enjoy a lovely organic pink-lady apple paired with a scrumptious, natural,  creamy peanut butter spread.

Sweetness delivered the way Mamma Earth intended - nothing could put my soul more at rest.

A Sweet Surprise

It's been a long week.

This past Friday I found myself staring at the oven for a good 45 minutes while I baked a 7" yam . I immediately unraveled the aluminum foil (scorching my fingers with steam along the way) and started removing the burning hot skin from the pasty-orange loveliness that lied beneath.

Using a fork I mashed the yam with cinnamon, milk and just a touch of honey. I then preceded to devour the entire yam caveman style.

Needless to say, I needed sugar...

But here's the weirdest part about this whole experience: I originally went into this thinking that my inevitable downfall was bound to be my lust for dessert. I thought, "life without ice cream and cupcakes, are you nuts?" And I am nuts, but that's beside the point.

What I'm trying to say is that the hardest part of quitting refined sugars is not being able to eat the little things. By little things, I mean ketchup, barbeque sauce, any sort of mixed alcoholic beverage, juice, jam and pretty much any condiment you can think of.

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't miss dessert at all.

In fact, in only a couple of weeks I've come to appreciate just how incredible a yam really is -- its luscious flavor is downright sinful. So in the end, I leave you with this...

The sweetest things in life are often the things that we overlook. So next time you reach for that cupcake or cookie, take a look across the counter at that poor little deformed-looking yam and say to yourself "what the heck." I promise that that sad little orange paste will satisfy you far more than any cookie ever could.

Oh, and you don't have to say "what the heck," you can ad-lib that part.


Ciao,
Me