Day 63

Snacking on the go

I. Need. Kale.

You may have noticed that that's been a trend in my blog over the past week. What I've noticed is that my food cravings are very cyclical. In Victoria Boutenko's books, she stresses the importance of listening to your body for its nutritional needs. It's difficult at times for me to filter out my psychological cravings (No, Eloise, you will not die without bread), but there are strong patterns to my eating habits. The first week, all I wanted were avocados. I was bereft when they wouldn't ripen fast enough. Then it was olives, which I had never liked before. I always picked them out of my food. Two weeks ago were green smoothies. I'm still drinking them on a daily basis, sometimes twice a day, but not as ravenously as I had before.

Last week was mangoes. I needed mangoes. We had picked up five or six that we had to wait to ripen, but once I ate them, I had to have more. Seriously, we made an emergency trip out to Whole Foods to pick up a case of 18 (coincidentally, we ran into the twenty-somethings who live below us heading out for a beer run... the comparison of priorities cracks me up). I picked up a second case a couple days later, and between the two of us, we ate about 40 mangoes that week with me having eaten about 30 of them.

This week, it's kale. I have discovered kale salads, and I am obsessed. Savory with garlic and nutritional yeast, like I made last Sunday or sweet, like Kristen's Candy Kale salad, which I made the other day (and several times for lunch), I love it all. I even managed to make kale chips without eating it all first, which were delicious and really satisfy a chip craving. They're quick, too. Unlike a lot of dehydrated recipes that take 24 hours, give or take, this was about 5 hours to completion. We had some that night and they were even better the next day.

I've realized that it's silly to worry so much about the excessive amounts of kale I'm currently consuming, because this obsession will pass. Like mangoes, of which there are three or four in the fruit bowl, I'll continue to eat it, but it will not be my sole reason for existence. Something else will come along to fill that role, and I'm curious to see what's coming next.

My goal this week is to expand my dehydrator repertoire. I used it to to warm up a soup a made last night (Marvelous Mushroom Soup, doubled with half the almond butter and extra mushrooms to compensate. I thought it was alright, but Madeline really loved it), which worked well, but there's so much I could be doing with it. Top priority is to find a good cracker recipe.

-Eloise