I am still here, just not too much on the blog 🙂 My time is taken up with teaching 17 first graders to read, write, understand math, compost, and build and plant a garden. You know, things that take only a little bit of time.

This year has already been filled with ups and downs and a lot of life lessons. Hopefully I will get to write a post about some of those lessons. I have already dealt with some mild depression and through that depression I have felt burnt out at my job and just kind of burnt out on life in general. But I don’t like giving up and I am a fighter so with all the studying of health and health related topics that I am obsessed with I made some “rules” for myself. I try to go to bed at 8:00 pm and get up around 4:30 am to pray, meditate, and move. I also have a little schedule that I try to follow as closely as possible so I get things done, which helps me do some things for myself. I am also reading a great book that is teaching me more about resilience. 

I realized recently that I lost my motivation to be creative, which is one reason I have not written in this space much. I felt like I had no time to myself or to do things I enjoy, but now that I have scheduled in reading and writing I feel more free and creative. I still feel like I have the same amount of time, but my mind is being freed to be creative again.

Right now I have been enjoying a plant based, mostly raw vegan lifestyle. I really love my fruit and I do not like the idea of restricting the calories that I eat. This is not to say I don’t go out to restaurants, which I absolutely love to do and I also enjoy french fries on many occasions. At home eating raw foods is my diet/lifestyle of choice though. Since I am eating lots of salads and my husband is eating them with me, I am experimenting with different dressings. My husband is a picky salad eater and when I make a dressing he really likes he says, “Make this one again! Write it down!” This recipe happened to be one of those so I wrote it down and now I will share it with you, because I really like it too.

Spring Roll Salad Dressing

1 zucchini

3 small cloves garlic

3 green onions

2 limes, juiced

2 tsp yellow miso

4 TBS almond butter

4 TBS Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (or any other soy sauce)

1 small thumb of ginger

Couple drops stevia to taste or 1 small date

Salt to taste

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. I like to eat this dressing on zucchini noodles with red, yellow, and orange bell peppers and a little chopped lettuce. You could make any salad you felt like eating. Enjoy!