Day 14 – 100 mile Diet: 2 weeks already?

Time sure does fly! We realized last night that we had hit the 2 week mark of our NOW 64 day venture.

(Our new end date now being November 18 because of a few social life amendments taken.)

We started talking about how we felt so far and came up with a small list of things we miss, things we love or things we’ll never go back to again.

Things we love:

• Visiting the people and places where our food comes from: Every time we stop at a stand, we talk to the farmers and share with them in our experiences. We love knowing the people that grow and produce the food we eat.
• Going for rides for the purpose of food: We have taken to simply choosing a road and driving for an hour and seeing what we can find. It makes for wonderful week-end drives and we have discovered the coolest little stands, shops, orchards… This is something we will continue doing for sure even after the diet.
• Being able to function without caffeine: Although the first 4 days were head splitting and horrible, now that the caffeine is out of our system, we enjoy the way we feel. We have actually decided together that coffee (in small quantities) will only be a week-end thing. And when we do decide to buy coffee, it will at least be fair trade, organic and locally roasted.
• The weight factor: We have both shed at least 5 pounds in the last 2 weeks. We are thinking it’s not only the lack of simple cards and refined sugar, but the lack of salt in our diet. We feel great!
• I love how together my husband and I feel. We have always been a very close couple, but this has brought us even closer. All the time spent in the kitchen together means less TV, less internet, less chatting online… We talk, we laugh, and we share. It's been wonderful.

Things we are getting used to:

• We miss cooking in huge quantities to have things on hand for the week: We were never that big into pre-packaged foods, but when I would make a spaghetti sauce, a chilli or a soup, I would make enough to have lunches and freeze some! Now that a spaghetti sauce means stewing, peeling, seeding and crushing tomatoes by hand, I make what I need. Which means we rarely have something quick to just make coming home from work? Every meal takes at the least an hour to make now. We have the time, but we sometimes wish it could be easier.
• We miss the convenience of saying “feel like a bottle of wine? Lets go to the Wine store.” Or “We are out of this; let’s walk to the grocery store that is opened until 11pm.” Everything has to be planned. The farmer’s markets have been closing earlier and earlier with the days getting shorter so if we are without at 7pm, we are without until the next day.
• I will say it: I miss spices. Not really salt. Honestly, I’m doing well without it and was never a big salt person, but I do miss spices.
• Smoothies are great, but I miss fruit juice! I nice big glass of fruit juice would be really great right now. LOL!

So, that is my 2-week wrap-up. Our sour starter is ready and we will be venturing into bread tonight so wish us luck! Here is a great site for starting your own sour starter.

Thank you to everyone for the support.