Reid Me

Tuesday morning, I started my day with about 16 oz. of water and the juice from one full lemon.  I was a bit impressed because I didn't end up with a caffeine headache, and I even felt energized enough to go to a nice hot yoga class!  (It's been a while since I've gone to a class or even done anything at home)  Yay yoga!!  My day went well.  No obvious effects of no caffeine, and I think I felt pretty energized.  I am a firm believer in mind over body, so it may have been merely psychological. Wednesday, I overslept.  Not sure if that had something to do with being overly tired, or a low volume on my alarm...I didn't get my lemon water until after I dropped the kids off at school.  Still, no caffeine headache, but I did feel a little off.  Regardless I stuck to my guns, went to another hot yoga class (yay, yoga!).  Was feeling a bit weak at some moments, but I think it was lack of water and pushing myself too hard.  Again, here, water=life!  Perhaps I pushed myself

So I've been thinking a lot about this water thing.  Water is 70% of our world, and makes up 70% of our bodies ...so, no one is doubting it's importance.  But do we really understand how important it is?  Maybe not as important as what you put into it. I know we need water, but I also know that we can consume too much water.  Remember that CSI where the college kid was being hazed and was told to chug a 5gallon container of water?  He literally died from drinking too much water.  Okay, so you can't always believe what you see on TV, but it's CSI people!  CSI is science and science is truth ...Not that that is any excuse not to get my eight 8oz. glasses of water a day. But back to the importance of water...I have been trying to make a better attempt at drinking more water.  The problem is, when I get up in the morning the first thing I think of is coffee ....Mmmmm... coffee... Coffee is really something I never considered doing without.  I know it basically deplet

It's hard to jump on the internet now-a-days and not see headlines like this: Middle-class areas shrink as America divides into 'two-tiered society' of rich and poor                                  This Is What Revolution Looks Like Justice Dept. in deadlock with Alabama over illegal immigration law I can recall a time when my parents told me that I could be anything that I wanted to be and "the sky's the limit."  We are instilled with this hope of a middle class future, where we can live comfortably and raise a family with all of the comforts we are entitled to here in America, the land of plenty.  We know too many people who have been laid off, who are under water on their homes and are just barely squeaking by.  Our local school district is on the brink of insolvency and the teachers are being asked to take pay cuts.  There's a presidential election coming in less than a year and the budget can't even be balanced.  Us Americans are supposed to

Some things are easier to resist than others. So here I am, one week after I started a dairy-free week and I must say, I failed.  I made it six days.  But on the sixth day, there was gluten-free pizza!  This was my first time getting to try gluten-free pizza made fresh from somewhere other than my kitchen.  Did I mention there was gluten-free beer? Okay, so I had some left-overs yesterday, too.  There was mozzarella and Gorgonzola, quite the combination along with crispy bacon, butternut squash, cucumbers and other tasty veggies.  It was sinful.  It was heavenly.  It was delicious.  And I knew that I was totally weak, had absolutely no will power, no ability to say no.  Then again, for someone who pretty much gets stuck eating salads everywhere I go due to limited options, I was not going to settle for a salad when there was gluten-free pizza on the menu! Reid-Me.blogspot.com I did learn a few things this week, though.  I learned that less dairy is definitely better for my sy

Day five of no dairy.  I think it's going pretty well.  A lot easier than I thought it would be.  The challenge for me now, is to drink more water. It shouldn't be a challenge, right?  I should be able to just keep a glass of water on the table next to me and refill it once it's empty...then repeat, right?  Right. My mom used to drink a ton of water.  She'd have her water bottle with her at all times.  This was before personal water bottles were the "it" thing and you didn't find entire aisles of bottled water in the stores.  This was before Food and Water Watch showed us that you can't always believe what you read on the back of a bottle when it comes to the source.  She used to have this old beat up plastic water bottle that everyone knew was hers, because she was one of the only people I knew of that carried one.  These were the old-school water bottles, before BPA and all the other toxic chemicals were revealed as dangerous and we all started car

So far, so good I suppose...no cheese for three days.  That is, if you don't count those two mini Butterfinger candy bars I took out of the candy baskets of my children.  Yes, I am a candy thief.  I did, however, read the ingredient list on my other favorite, the tootsie roll.  No dairy there, but I was a bit curious about the "artificial and natural flavors".  Just what is the" natural" flavor in a tootsie roll? Don't even get me started on the contents of ingredient lists and nutritional labels... So back to this whole cheese thing.  Sunday was a bit rough.  My husband, the chef, who cannot seem to attend a single tailgate party for the Chargers without preparing three or four homemade, delicious dishes, made macaroni and cheese (with Boar's Head Monterrey jack no less) and sausage and peppers.  Now, homemade sausage and peppers is nice, but homemade macaroni and cheese is downright sinful.  Even with gluten-free pasta, the cheese is the most i

Wow, it's been a while since I've blogged.  Well, blogging hasn't been on the top of my list of things to do lately, mostly because it's been a VERY long list of things to do...   See, I could be blogging about Occupy this and Occupy that or the recent school closure discussions that have been hovering over San Diego Unified like a stinky cloud lately, but I wont.  No, today I really just feel like blogging about myself. As a gluten-free eater I've had to rearrange my diet and pay more attention to nutrition labels.  As the mom of a daughter who was born with a dairy and soy allergy I got used to delving deeper into the nutritional content of everything in the house.  I had to remove all dairy and soy from my already scant diet while nursing my daughter, which aided in my milk supply drying up and me losing all of my baby weight rather quickly.  I noticed after I stopped nursing my daughter I still had trouble digesting dairy (or soy, who knows). Oooh, intest

I've taken a few weeks to mull this over and I've taken those weeks, too, to make sure that I don't over-react or say something that I would later regret...Now that I've gotten that out of the way... There are a lot of subjects we don't discuss with people for fear that you may have differing opinions and it would harm the relationship, or you end up walking into a debate.  Politics is one of them, race is another, and then there's the other R word, Religion. Of all the religions in the world, it seems that there is just one that wants me to be a part of it.  You know who they are, they come to your door, they offer to "share" something from the Bible with you.  You play along and smile, nod politely and then give them some random excuse as to why you have to cut their conversion - I mean conversation, short.  They leave you with a little pamphlet or booklet and depart.  Usually that's they way it happens and perhaps its just once or twice a ye

A small post today... I am not shocked by the behavior of some of our elected officials, and I find it rather funny when people become outraged that "so-and-so" did "such-and-such" and now it's become a scandal. We elect people to represent us every-day people.  Do we expect them to be super-human, above average, and perfect?  Well, yeah, we do.  But they're still human.  They make mistakes, they err.  Unfortunately, some of them make really dumb mistakes and leave proof (like pictures or a whole child!)  I am not condoning such behavior, I am just merely stating a fact.  We elect people to make laws, uphold the rights of the citizens they represent and make good decisions.  It's the making good decisions part that I think was left out in several of these cases.  Sure, it's okay to make mistakes.  Just make sure it's not something that will end up getting you fired, put in jail or make you end up looking bad in front of an entire country o

This is a topic very close to my heart.  Race is such a touchy subject.  I know race is a social construct and I know that it was all a sham.  I believe such a thing as white privilege exists and I believe that we are all "created" equally - however you believe we were created. Recently, there was an article published in Psychology Today online called, "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive?" For one, that question in and of itself is racially inclined.  I stumbled upon a blog post from Sam Sommers, PhD in response to the article.  You can read it here. The article has since been removed from Psychology Today's site and Change.org has already created a petition to get PT to respond to the outrage from posting the article.  Now, I agree it may not have been in the best interest of the people at PT to allow such an article to be posted, but without having read the article, I can't really speak to it's content.  The whole idea of Race in Americ

So, I've never been the kind of person that thinks about what to have for dinner AHEAD of time.  My husband used to ask me all the time, "What should we have for dinner tonight?"  I'd think to myself, 'We just had breakfast!'...but this is the way my husband was raised: dinners were pretty regular for him growing up.   For me, not so much.   I went out to eat a lot with my family, particularly after my mom went back to school for her Master's degree when I was seven .  Life was about convenience and what was easy.  I remember a lot of Arby's and Piccolos, this Italian/Mexican restaurant down the street.  My dad wasn't much of a cook, so we ate a lot of rice and beans, microwave meals (once we finally bought a microwave from a yard sale down the street) and lentil pilaf. courtesy of dummies.com I can't even recall a time when I cooked a full meal when I lived on my own after high school, while I was going to the state college in Denver. 

Ah, the pictures in the cookbooks can be so deceiving and they really truly are either "staged" or photo shopped...I swear.  My cooking never turns out like the pictures.  Most of my dishes come out looking like limp versions of the photos.  However, I am getting better at the whole presentation thing. Here is the photo from the cookbook:     Here is my finished product:   So, lighting aside, and minus the fancy-schmancy plates, they look pretty similar.  Tasted pretty darn good too.  I am no gourmand and I don't have any technique but I can say that I'm trying to make more tasty meals that my kids will eat.  I am not Martha Stewart or even Rachel Ray...just a mom with a mission - to make sure my kids grow up healthy, eating right and getting the best variety of foods possible.  We are capable of making our children well-rounded eaters and lovers of all kinds of food.  "Food explorers" is what my mom always called us.  We tried everything.  I'm prou

I must admit, I've always loved food.  Eating food is and has been one of my favorite pastimes.  Now, cooking the food, not so much.  Which is why the running joke is "That's why I married a chef!"  I have always been a better baker than a cook.  I make a mean spaghetti and meatballs and I've gotten quite good at making quiche; but still, my abilities as a honest-to-goodness cook are lacking. No wheat, oats, barley, gluten or rye! To make matters more interesting, I am gluten-intolerant.  I was born this way, as was my brother.  It wasn't until after my brother was born and had a more severe reaction that my mother realized I had the same intolerance.  For quite some time in my adolescence I was able to tolerate some gluten and didn't follow a gluten-free diet at all.  Needless to say, I probably should have.  After my son was born I had the hardest time with my gut.  I had to call in sick to work because I was in so much pain.  My brother suggested

I think I always wanted to be a mother, even before I knew what it meant (or took, for that matter) to be a mom.  When my parents used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, "A mommy!"  I thought being a mom was the coolest thing in the world.  My mom used to tease me and say that she learned things in "Mom School."  I believed this so wholeheartedly that I even told friends I was going to Mom School for college.  I was in elementary school, so who could blame me for believing that there truly was a Mom School. The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new.  ~Rajneesh I don't think that I ever was really prepared for what motherhood truly encompassed.  You fear more, you worry, you love harder, you think of things you never would have considered before.  It's an amazing thing, being a mom.  We have this great responsibility

So after much mulling over, I've decided to start blogging.  Not because I've deemed myself all important, I just have some important things to say . I'm a wife and a mom , I write grants for a small non-profit in DC that helps low-income families become more self-sufficient.  I am also gluten-intolerant, which makes cooking meals in my house a bit more tricky and interesting.  I pay attention to politics because I believe that you can't complain about the system unless you participate in the system.  I love my children and I want the best in life for them.  I am an active participant in my son's school and plan on keeping it like that until my daughter graduates.  I don't really do PTA, though, there's only so much I can do.  I am a very lucky wife - my husband is a chef and makes the most incredible meals!  I'm working on the whole cooking thing myself...I must say, I'm getting better. I am a sociologist at heart. I have a degree in Sociolo