A Beautiful October Week

Three words.

Japanese sweet potato.

Seriously delicious, so much so that if I were of the mind, I would eat one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And as a snack between breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But I won't. Instead, I'll eat a half of one for lunch and save the other half for tomorrow. That way, I can be incredibly happy today and tomorrow just because of this purple skinned, yellow fleshed lovely sweet tater.

For the past week, my work's website has been down. The whole kit and kaboodle. An entire week. We've been told it was a breach/hack, and it has affected every part of the website. I haven't been able to work since last Sunday, which has totally thrown me off my routine. Just another curve ball added to this crap show that is 2020. So far today, I've not received a text about what will happen tomorrow, and when I tried to get into the website I was met with nothing. This whole situation has been quite surreal.

So, to fill my time through the week, I decided to get in the kitchen. I soaked and cooked garbanzo beans and black beans, and black beans by the way, create a gorgeous dark purple/black water after soaking for 8 hours. If I ever got into dyes, I would definitely use black bean water to dye fabrics. Just beautiful. I soaked cashews and used them to make a cashew cheesy sauce. The Japanese sweet potatoes were cooked and gave me a couple of days' lunches. They, too, create a colored water that could be a dye. Though they have a purple skin, the water ends up being a lovely yellow-brown, a very autumn color. Lastly, all the veggies were steamed: Brussels sprouts, peas, carrots, corn, broccoli, and onions. Kale, too, found its way into the steamer. I saw a recipe for garbanzo bean quesadillas and tried it the other night. Definitely a keeper recipe. Delicious. 

When a friend learned I have switched completely to a whole foods plant based lifestyle, which I reminded him I've been working towards for a year and a half, he asked where I get protein. Nearly everything I eat has protein in it. Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, spinach, and more have protein. Peas are an excellent source of protein. Even better, all of these provide other important nutrients that help improve overall health. I really don't think getting enough protein is a worry.

I do take a B12 supplement since B12 is one nutrient I can't get enough of from eating whole foods plant based. But other than that, I really don't need to take any other supplement. I get plenty of vitamin D because I'm outside a lot. During the winter months this might change, mostly because we'll have more cloudy days, but because of Ado, I'm outside three or four times a day just for our 40 minute walks. That's plenty of time in the sun to soak up vitamin D.

I am really hoping I'm back to work tomorrow. I do enjoy the fact my job is currently online, and typically, I spend anywhere from 6 or 7 hours a day doing work-related tasks. Even over the weekend. Not having that as part of my day is very weird. We are right at midterm for the semester, which is crazy. The whole time aspect of a semester is very different since I'm not going to campus. I no longer look at the work week as Monday through Friday. My work week includes every day. That has become my new normal. What's strange is I'm perfectly okay with this since I'm in charge of every moment of the day. It doesn't matter if I work from 6 am to 2 pm, 3 pm to 10 pm, or even 10 pm to 5 am. As long as the teaching and grading get done, that's all that matters. It's actually quite freeing to be teaching this way.

This whole week was absolutely gorgeous. Mid 70's to 80 degrees. Sunny. A nice breeze. I mowed the lawn, and I'm thinking because of the cooler, dry weather, the grass has slowed its growing frenzy, so I might be looking at maybe one more mowing for the season.