Fast Track & Spartacus 2.0 - Wk 8, Day 7, Sun, 6-May-2012

DORIS' DAILY SUMMARY/LEARNINGS: 

• Forgot to take BP today.
• Woke really early the past 2 days and it's been really irritating as I've had the chance to sleep longer but physically couldn't.
• Thought I would sleep for an hr before church, and missing IP, but instead, I slept through that and church and beyond.  Guess my body needed it.  
• Feel bad that I missed church and because of me, the kids did, too.
• My dad is going to let me use his Kitchen-Aid (mine is packed somewhere), which has tons of attachments.  I'm going to need to grind up chicken thighs so I can make ground chicken for chicken nuggets on Tuesday.  It's cheaper this way.  I can get chicken thighs periodically for less than $1.99/lb or chicken breasts that price, too, on sale.  However, to buy ground chicken breast, that's $4.99/lb or ground chicken thighs is $2.99/lb to $3.99/lb.  My dad also has salad attachments that make all sorts of shapes, as well as different pasta attachments (even makes macaroni).  Now I need to find a dough that I can eat, and then I can make pasta dishes, too, for my kids and I are that are grainless, starchless, and low in sugar.  Woohoo!  
• I was talking to my dad about a Blendtec & VitaMix.  He is a big proponent of making your own things over buying it already made, including things like flour, etc.  I was telling him with either of these blenders, you can make your own nut butters and things like that.  His eyes lit up.  Told him that Costco sells the Blendtec and he said that's not a bad price.  For me, it's a little too much right now, but if he buys it, he'll let me use it.  I hope he buys it!
• My dad really has a lot of tools and nice kitchen appliances where you can make a lot of your own stuff from scratch, which is what I'm leaning towards.  If I can make my own nut butters, that would save me a heap of money.  Sprouts sells almond butter for $5.49/lb and I get almonds for $3.23/lb.  That's over a $2 savings and I use almond butter in quite a few recipes, especially for baking.  Plus, it would not limit me to just making butters out of almonds, but I could do it out of sunflower seeds, cashews, pepitas, macadamia, pistachios, etc.  All those are specialty butters and I've not seen Trader  Joe's or Sprouts carry most of these.  I'm sure AJ's or Whole Foods (whole paycheck) sells them for premium dollars.
• The Blendtec also can make ice cream, crush ice to snow cones, and make incredible smoothies and soups.  That would be a dream.  Summer is coming up, and these would be great things to make for the kids.  They can make their own popsicles, too.  Our CuisinArt blender makes smoothies pretty good, just as long as you don't add ice to it.  It does not crush ice well and there are still big chunks.
• Making your own flours from all different nuts would be great, too.  Nuts can be made into flours, just process less time than for butter, which takes usually closer to 10 min.
• I finally realize I have PMS and I've probably had it for a few days, which is why everything irritated me.  The last straw was this afternoon and I went into the kitchen and it was cleaned, dishes done & put away, everything wiped down and I was still irritated.  That's when I realized I was being irrational and it was PMS.
• Kids got to play and swim at the neighbor's and they all got to play here for awhile.  Hopefully summer time the neighbor's won't mind my kids swimming a lot at their house.
• Hopefully a girlfriend of mine will have her son sleep over on Friday.  He gets along great with my kids.  She has to work.

SMARTER GOAL:   Chill!

SLEEP:  11:45 pm - 6:00 am (6.25 hrs) ---> Not enough sleep, but I wasn't sleepy anymore.  Irritating to wake up so early when you don't need to.

Nap:  8:30 am - 1:30 pm (5 hrs), 2:15 pm - 4:45 pm (2.25 hrs) ----> I'm surprised I slept so much.  I think now I'm in that part of my menstrual cycle where there are a few days I'm super tired.

SUPPLEMENTS/MEDICINES:
7:30 am - Heart Meds
7:30 pm - Heart Meds, 1 Mg capsule

EATING:  Paleo+Dairy (Day 98)
Meal 1 @ 8:00 am:  3 scrambled eggs

Treat @ 1:45 pm:  5 squares 85% dark chocolate, raw almonds


Meal 2 @ 2:00 pm:  1 cup tumeric cauli-rice, 2 chicken breast tenders (coated in unsweetened coconut, crushed pecans & seasonings)


Meal 3 @ 7:00 pm:  turmeric cauli-rice (added bacon ends, red pepper, sea salt, ground pepper), leftover pulled pork w/BBQ sauce (a little of each)