It's warm in my heart this Saturday

Surprisingly - given the hell that I went through trying to get to sleep last night - I woke up refreshed and convinced that it was a nice sunny Florida morning here in DC.

Let me tell you - if you've ever been so frustrated that you start throwing pillows at the person sleeping next to you - and you're not at a slumber party - then this is nothing short of a miracle.

It's been a week since our epic 20 hour(!) drive back from St. Pete, and I've been waging war with some bugs in my throat ever since. My strategy, which includes kale soup with chiles, grapefruit from Joellen (thanks so much), vitamin C and bitching non-stop about the weather, seemed to be working.

Until last night - hence the pillows.

Today, I felt much better and able to tackle one of my New Year's Resolutions:

Eat in a Conscious Manner

My conscious eating revolves around three things I grapple with:

Healthy eating:

Even though I've been a vegetarian nearly my entire adult life, I still find it easier to pop in a fake chikn patty than chop, shred, saute, etc.

This year, I've resolved to remove as much processed food as possible from my diet.

Second, I want to be as responsible as I can to the people who grow, pick, and prepare my food. This means buying locally (easy to do in season at the many farmers markets we visit; not so easy in the winter), buying organic, and third...

Not Wasting Food

See, I have grand plans for healthy dinners, but there are lots of good restaurants in DC, and I find my fridge full of rotten broccoli, mushy ginger, and slimy peppers way too often.

These three things are so intertwined that it's impossible to even assign a hierarchy to them.

One is simply not possible without the other.

Purchasing outside the big-ag system is more labor-intensive, costly (no thanks to gov't. subsidies), and time-consuming. But it's worth it to me, and I enjoy doing it.

Which is all a very soap-boxy way of saying that I used the following ingredients to make some pretty yummy Pumpkin Pear muffins for breakfast this morning:

Left-over pumpkin from a soup recipe gone awry

That last bit of oatmeal that's not enough for a full bowl, but too much to throw away

Not mushy YET ginger

One of two pears that were definitely in the mushy stage

So.. waking up, pulling up a Neko Case playlist on LaLa, and whipping up some healthy, conscious breakfast bread was a pretty kick-ass way to chase away the no-sleep blues.

And I can now tackle cleaning up the oatmeal box I gave the dog to play with while I cooked.