Joie de Vivre: a French phrase used to express a cheerful enjoyment of life; an exultation of spirit.
Joie de vivre "can be a joy of conversation, joy of eating, joy of anything one might do... And joie de vivre may be seen as a joy of everything, a comprehensive joy, a philosophy of life... Robert's Dictionnaire says joie is a sentiment exaltant ressenti par toute la conscience, that is, involves one's whole being" (Wikipedia).
Lately everything has been coming up French. It began with an article in More magazine about two women who swapped eating and exercise habits. One was French, the other American. The American lost two pounds in two weeks and substantially increased her energy level via adopting the French way. Plus, she didn't go to the gym in the mornings as was her standard routine before work, but walked to work and other places instead. The French eat high fat foods like cheese, real butter, pastries, and red meat. They also eats lots of local, fresh fruits and vegetables. And of course, wine is regularly drunk with meals.
I went to Paris in 1990 for eight days. I haven't lived in France, so I can't give you in depth knowledge about what it is like to actually live there. I did, however, witness people walking everywhere. The French are not in love with their cars. The cars I saw were very small by American standards and often dented. Evidently they don't worry over every bump and scratch. I also saw tons of bicycles. Something else that stood out was the seeming lack of makeup worn during the day. I was told that French women reserve makeup for going out in the evening.
After reading the magazine article, I started to incorporate the French eating habits. This involves a big breakfast and lunch cooked oneself, and a very small dinner. No snacking, and the kitchen is closed at 8:00 pm. Meals are leisurely, eaten together at a table with the family, and food is savored. Real food, not fast food, take out, or processed and packaged foods. One day this week I had a small but substantial breakfast of granola with organic yogurt and dried cranberries. Often I either only have coffee, or I eat a bowl of cereal (or some cookies!).
For lunch I began with a plate of hummus, carrots, organic blue corn chips, and dates. Usually that would constitute a normal lunch for me. But after that I cooked some scrambled eggs with organic cheese, onions, garlic, and mushrooms, and added curry powder and Trader Joe's everyday seasoning mix. It was so delicious! I forget what I had for dinner. I can tell you that after that large lunch, I had so much more energy than usual, and my mood was much improved!
I'm currently having camera trouble, so in lieu of featuring fall Gypsy Mama fashions, I'm going to explore the French concept of joie de vivre. I've ordered French lifestyle books from the library, and I've been inspired by Jennifer L. Scott's blog, The Daily Connoisseur, and her youtube videos.
Yesterday I felt very French. It was my husband's birthday, and also that of our cousin who just turned 8, so we all went to see Smurfs 2, which was, to my delight, set in Paris! Afterward we crossed the street from the movie theater and shopped at the farmers market on the town square. We got tons of produce as well as some homemade soap. In the evening we went out to a nice restaurant where a live jazz band was playing. I wore a simple but chic outfit and had followed Jennifer's "le no makeup" look (which, incidentally, is a significant about of makeup).
So I hope to keep up my French lifestyle aspirations, and I will share my journey with you. By the way, if you have read this far, be aware that this is the blog of a woman who has caught up on her laundry! At this moment I have merely one basket of dirty laundry in my basement. It is much easier to get dressed when one's clothes are clean, and life is certainly more joyful without that mountain of dirty laundry hanging perenially over my head. If I can do it, anyone can! Until next time, peace be with you...
Love,
dancingmommio
Showing posts with label farmers markets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farmers markets. Show all posts
Friday, August 9, 2013
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
It's Detox Time!
If you are in tune with your body, you know the signs that a detoxification is in order. You are feeling tired, perhaps not sleeping well. This may be the result of too much caffeine, the physical illness of yourself or a child you are caring for in the night, insomnia (the infamous "monkey mind"), or just not going to bed early enough. Maybe the coffee is causing digestive issues, or maybe you just haven't been eating healthy enough--not enough whole foods and fresh fruits and vegetables. Get thyself to the farmers market! Maybe too much meat or processed foods are dragging you down. In my case, I injured my foot and haven't been able to be as active as usual, which is undoubtedly part of the lower energy equation.
If you are in a summer slump, then join me in a simple detox program for the next month. I'm beginning today with Yogi DeTox tea, a natural herbal supplement available at health food stores and on line at vitacost.com. Up to 10 tea bags can be used per day, every day for up to 30 days. The box says: "As everyday impurities find their way into our bodies, we may be left feeling tired or out of balance. Yogi DeTox is a gentle way to help the body cleanse itself by aiding the two primary filtering organs, the liver and kidneys. Our tea uses the time-honored purifying herbs Burdock and Organic Dandelion to support the liver. Juniper Berry aids kidney function. The traditional Ayurvedic cleansing blend called trikatu (Ginger, Black Pepper, and Long Pepper) aids blood flow, while Indian Sarsaparilla adds spicy flavor."
In addition to the tea, don't forget to drink plenty of water during these hot summer months. I am additionally cutting out refined, added sugars as much as possible from my diet. We all know that sugar prematurely ages us and causes inflammation that leads to disease. It also zaps our energy when we crash from a sugar high. With all of the family reunions, graduation parties, and weddings we attend in summer months, it can be hard to avoid the processed sweets. But we don't have to deprive ourselves entirely. Eat treats at those special events sparingly. When at home, choose natural sweeteners with health benefits such as honey, maple syrup and molasses, and those lower on the glycemic index, such as agave nectar. Cut the sugar in your recipes, and use raw instead of white whenever possible.
While you are cleansing your body, don't forget to purify your mind and spirit with yoga, prayer, meditation, and sacred scripture. Get out into nature rather than staying cooped up in the air conditioning, which does not allow your body the natural purification process of sweating. Even try fasting once a week, beginning with the practice typically used at Lent of eating only one full meal and two small ones, with no snacks in between. Skip meat, or dairy products if you are vegetarian, once a week. I am going to look into fasting practices and get back to that in another post.
Let me know how you are feeling during the detox process! Keep a journal and track what works to restore your body to balance and vitality. Remember, most of all, to breathe, fully filling the belly with each inhalation, and completely releasing on the exhale. Just breathe...
If you are in a summer slump, then join me in a simple detox program for the next month. I'm beginning today with Yogi DeTox tea, a natural herbal supplement available at health food stores and on line at vitacost.com. Up to 10 tea bags can be used per day, every day for up to 30 days. The box says: "As everyday impurities find their way into our bodies, we may be left feeling tired or out of balance. Yogi DeTox is a gentle way to help the body cleanse itself by aiding the two primary filtering organs, the liver and kidneys. Our tea uses the time-honored purifying herbs Burdock and Organic Dandelion to support the liver. Juniper Berry aids kidney function. The traditional Ayurvedic cleansing blend called trikatu (Ginger, Black Pepper, and Long Pepper) aids blood flow, while Indian Sarsaparilla adds spicy flavor."
In addition to the tea, don't forget to drink plenty of water during these hot summer months. I am additionally cutting out refined, added sugars as much as possible from my diet. We all know that sugar prematurely ages us and causes inflammation that leads to disease. It also zaps our energy when we crash from a sugar high. With all of the family reunions, graduation parties, and weddings we attend in summer months, it can be hard to avoid the processed sweets. But we don't have to deprive ourselves entirely. Eat treats at those special events sparingly. When at home, choose natural sweeteners with health benefits such as honey, maple syrup and molasses, and those lower on the glycemic index, such as agave nectar. Cut the sugar in your recipes, and use raw instead of white whenever possible.
While you are cleansing your body, don't forget to purify your mind and spirit with yoga, prayer, meditation, and sacred scripture. Get out into nature rather than staying cooped up in the air conditioning, which does not allow your body the natural purification process of sweating. Even try fasting once a week, beginning with the practice typically used at Lent of eating only one full meal and two small ones, with no snacks in between. Skip meat, or dairy products if you are vegetarian, once a week. I am going to look into fasting practices and get back to that in another post.
Let me know how you are feeling during the detox process! Keep a journal and track what works to restore your body to balance and vitality. Remember, most of all, to breathe, fully filling the belly with each inhalation, and completely releasing on the exhale. Just breathe...
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Farmers Market Meditation
July 15, 2010
Last evening I stopped at the farmers market on the square in Bryan, on my way to teach belly dancing classes. I can't emphasize enough how much I love the farmers market! It makes me inexplicably happy to eat this locally grown food, literally giving my life deeper meaning. I know when I shop there that I am helping the local farmers and leaving a lighter carbon footprint. Sustainable living is a form of spiritual stewardship. Most of the produce is organically grown, though not certified. Fresh, local, in season food is healthier than the conventional counterpart. Period.
Before I became a mother, I was not much into cooking. While I was a single person living alone, I did not have much motivation to prepare meals, and I lived in a large city where I had never even heard of a farmers market. As a child I had lived in the country, and my family enjoyed home grown produce from our garden. I grew up with the example of my grandpa, who especially enjoyed making a hearty soup or rivels, and of everyone he seemed to like cooking the most, so to my child's mind it seemed to be more of a man's job! In college I had determined to have a career, and homemaking was never foremost on my mind.
Motherhood made me more conscious of proper nutrition than I had been as a single woman, and once we moved to the rural area of my home town and discovered the farmers market, some new neurons seemed to fire in my brain. We also grow some vegetables, fruits and herbs in our home garden.
Here's one of the keys to my newly found pleasure: the chopping meditation. The rhythmic process of the knife slicing through vegetables and hitting a wooden cutting board puts me in a state of "flow", or transcendent consciousness. This preparation takes time, and you have to eat, so something practical is being accomplished, and no one knows you are meditating!
Tonight I opened the refrigerator and considered my choices. I felt a bit overwhelmed, and it is my tendency to throw every possible vegetable into the pot or pan for the sake of including all the vitamins and other nutrients. But people, you do not need to cover the entire repertoire in one meal! Restraint is an artistic virtue.
The farmers are great for suggesting how to use their produce. The man who sold me three small bags of sugar snap peas said they are wonderful grilled with butter, salt , and pepper, or used in a stir fry. I decided to keep it simple. I very rarely cook with butter, but it sounded like a savory idea. Break out of your cooking rut! Get a little crazy!! Organic butter, mind you. (Note: the growth hormones in conventional meat and dairy are extremely harmful, especially to growing girls, causing premature development and disturbingly early menstruation. You should either personally know the farmer you get these foods from, or buy organic.)
I kept the spices basic--sea salt and freshly ground, Trader Joe's lemon pepper. Now, the key to nutrition is color. Seriously people, do we need expert advice, super foods and exotic supplements (ie. coral calcium from Okinawa) to keep us fit and healthy? Three square meals, or 4 to 6 triangular ones, will do it. Do you really need a food pyramid guide (especially one that lists sugar as a food group)?
So okay, you have these basic groups: breads and cereals (specifically, whole grains); a variety (think multiple colors) of fruits and vegetables; milk and dairy (organic only); and meat, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, beans, seeds, legumes, etc... (a.k.a. protein, of which Americans actually eat too much). And yes, the healthy fats--omega 3s, mono- and poly-unsaturated fats. Keep saturated fats to a minimum and eat as many whole foods as possible, rather than processed and packaged foods. Especially check the labels for high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and artificial colors and flavors. If any of these ingredients are listed, put the package back on the shelf! These products do not, I repeat, DO NOT, qualify as food.
Note: The following fruits and vegetables are the most contaminated with pesticides, so buy these organic or a locally grown equivalent--peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, grapes (imported), carrots, and pears.
Don't eat until you are stuffed. Eat slowly, so that you enjoy and experience your food, and because if you eat too fast, your body won't register that you are full in time, and you'll eat too much. Plus you will suffer from digestive disorders.
For fitness, walk as much as you can every day. Walk your dog, pull children in a wagon, walk to visit your grandma, go for a few groceries you can carry in a backpack, pick up your pharmaceuticals, go to the post office, to church, to visit a neighbor. Or ride your bike. Then cross-train with some physical activity you enjoy that is not harmful to your body for 30 minutes, 3 times a week. And sleep--7 to 8 hours a night minimum. That's it!
Oh, and cook at home. Avoid fast food like the satanic beast that it is. Even at a real restaurant, you usually don't know where the food came from or what's in it, and the portions are too large. Back to my dinner. Along with sugar snap peas, I added a sweet yellow onion, orange carrots (they also come in purple!), a gorgeous, purple bell pepper, and broccoli to a cast iron skillet (an actual source of dietary iron!). I chopped my vegetables with a wooden-handled paring knife that once belonged to my great-grandmother, Ruth Valley Roush, who died about 38 years ago. Who knows how long she had the knife, but it is still sharp and was made in America, by gosh, by golly! The vegetables went over jasmine rice, and for dessert we had wild blackberries hand-picked by my husband today, in the woods in Michigan. It took him over an hour, so I suspect he got his secret meditation time, too.
If you haven't noticed yet, I call a spade a spade, so let me give it to you straight. If you do not cook most of your meals at home, either because you are too tired or you think you don't have enough time, your life may be dangerously out of balance. You are not really living. You were created to love to eat real food, people! So stop dying right now, and get to your local farmers market. Drive out to someone's farm (a real family farm, not the industrial factory kind--also the spawn of you-know-who) and buy eggs and homemade jelly. Try some raw milk or goat cheese! Get your finest paring knife out of the drawer, pick some herbs from your garden, put soothing music on, and meditate away. Bon appetit!!
Last evening I stopped at the farmers market on the square in Bryan, on my way to teach belly dancing classes. I can't emphasize enough how much I love the farmers market! It makes me inexplicably happy to eat this locally grown food, literally giving my life deeper meaning. I know when I shop there that I am helping the local farmers and leaving a lighter carbon footprint. Sustainable living is a form of spiritual stewardship. Most of the produce is organically grown, though not certified. Fresh, local, in season food is healthier than the conventional counterpart. Period.
Before I became a mother, I was not much into cooking. While I was a single person living alone, I did not have much motivation to prepare meals, and I lived in a large city where I had never even heard of a farmers market. As a child I had lived in the country, and my family enjoyed home grown produce from our garden. I grew up with the example of my grandpa, who especially enjoyed making a hearty soup or rivels, and of everyone he seemed to like cooking the most, so to my child's mind it seemed to be more of a man's job! In college I had determined to have a career, and homemaking was never foremost on my mind.
Motherhood made me more conscious of proper nutrition than I had been as a single woman, and once we moved to the rural area of my home town and discovered the farmers market, some new neurons seemed to fire in my brain. We also grow some vegetables, fruits and herbs in our home garden.
Here's one of the keys to my newly found pleasure: the chopping meditation. The rhythmic process of the knife slicing through vegetables and hitting a wooden cutting board puts me in a state of "flow", or transcendent consciousness. This preparation takes time, and you have to eat, so something practical is being accomplished, and no one knows you are meditating!
Tonight I opened the refrigerator and considered my choices. I felt a bit overwhelmed, and it is my tendency to throw every possible vegetable into the pot or pan for the sake of including all the vitamins and other nutrients. But people, you do not need to cover the entire repertoire in one meal! Restraint is an artistic virtue.
The farmers are great for suggesting how to use their produce. The man who sold me three small bags of sugar snap peas said they are wonderful grilled with butter, salt , and pepper, or used in a stir fry. I decided to keep it simple. I very rarely cook with butter, but it sounded like a savory idea. Break out of your cooking rut! Get a little crazy!! Organic butter, mind you. (Note: the growth hormones in conventional meat and dairy are extremely harmful, especially to growing girls, causing premature development and disturbingly early menstruation. You should either personally know the farmer you get these foods from, or buy organic.)
I kept the spices basic--sea salt and freshly ground, Trader Joe's lemon pepper. Now, the key to nutrition is color. Seriously people, do we need expert advice, super foods and exotic supplements (ie. coral calcium from Okinawa) to keep us fit and healthy? Three square meals, or 4 to 6 triangular ones, will do it. Do you really need a food pyramid guide (especially one that lists sugar as a food group)?
So okay, you have these basic groups: breads and cereals (specifically, whole grains); a variety (think multiple colors) of fruits and vegetables; milk and dairy (organic only); and meat, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, beans, seeds, legumes, etc... (a.k.a. protein, of which Americans actually eat too much). And yes, the healthy fats--omega 3s, mono- and poly-unsaturated fats. Keep saturated fats to a minimum and eat as many whole foods as possible, rather than processed and packaged foods. Especially check the labels for high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and artificial colors and flavors. If any of these ingredients are listed, put the package back on the shelf! These products do not, I repeat, DO NOT, qualify as food.
Note: The following fruits and vegetables are the most contaminated with pesticides, so buy these organic or a locally grown equivalent--peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, grapes (imported), carrots, and pears.
Don't eat until you are stuffed. Eat slowly, so that you enjoy and experience your food, and because if you eat too fast, your body won't register that you are full in time, and you'll eat too much. Plus you will suffer from digestive disorders.
For fitness, walk as much as you can every day. Walk your dog, pull children in a wagon, walk to visit your grandma, go for a few groceries you can carry in a backpack, pick up your pharmaceuticals, go to the post office, to church, to visit a neighbor. Or ride your bike. Then cross-train with some physical activity you enjoy that is not harmful to your body for 30 minutes, 3 times a week. And sleep--7 to 8 hours a night minimum. That's it!
Oh, and cook at home. Avoid fast food like the satanic beast that it is. Even at a real restaurant, you usually don't know where the food came from or what's in it, and the portions are too large. Back to my dinner. Along with sugar snap peas, I added a sweet yellow onion, orange carrots (they also come in purple!), a gorgeous, purple bell pepper, and broccoli to a cast iron skillet (an actual source of dietary iron!). I chopped my vegetables with a wooden-handled paring knife that once belonged to my great-grandmother, Ruth Valley Roush, who died about 38 years ago. Who knows how long she had the knife, but it is still sharp and was made in America, by gosh, by golly! The vegetables went over jasmine rice, and for dessert we had wild blackberries hand-picked by my husband today, in the woods in Michigan. It took him over an hour, so I suspect he got his secret meditation time, too.
If you haven't noticed yet, I call a spade a spade, so let me give it to you straight. If you do not cook most of your meals at home, either because you are too tired or you think you don't have enough time, your life may be dangerously out of balance. You are not really living. You were created to love to eat real food, people! So stop dying right now, and get to your local farmers market. Drive out to someone's farm (a real family farm, not the industrial factory kind--also the spawn of you-know-who) and buy eggs and homemade jelly. Try some raw milk or goat cheese! Get your finest paring knife out of the drawer, pick some herbs from your garden, put soothing music on, and meditate away. Bon appetit!!
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