Just change something

Went to teach for a couple of hours this morning, and three people mentioned No Dairy January to me.  I consider that success, even though one of them seemed to be enjoying his cheesy breakfast burrito a little too much. 

I haven't publicly altered my diet in a long time, and I'd forgotten how interesting it is to other people.  I gave up meat in college, but in Ann Arbor in 1993 there weren't that many people questioning vegetarianism.  Actually, in the Bursley Hall cafeteria, there was just a lot of dietary oneupmanship: "I don't eat anything that has a face!"  "Well, *I* only eat plants that photosynthesize!"  A few years ago, some health-related issues led me to do a veggie/juice fast, which fascinated people, and then I gave up alcohol, which *really* drew criticism from my brass-playing community.  Yep--they were ok with my not eating solid food, but when I quit drinking, I lost 95% of my social life. 

No Dairy January has turned some heads, and some people don't seem happy.  Besides the "no way!" responses (like I'm ordering anyone to join me?!), I have had multiple requests to move it to February, since it's a shorter month.  Three days?  Tell you what: if you want to just do No Dairy (first 28 days of) January, I will give you credit for that.  As if I'm keeping track.  It's not like half the nation is joining NDJ, or like anyone's going to take away your cookie for having milk in your coffee on January 29th. 

It's 31 days.  744 hours--and you'll be asleep for at least a couple hundred of them.  You make the rules--want to give up only cheese?  Give up only cheese.  Switch to tea instead of lattes for a month.  Go vegan, yay you.  Instead of buying a coffee and muffin every day, just buy the coffee--put the two bucks from the muffin into a jar every night and get a massage at the end of the month.

Actually, that last sounds good to me.  I wish I had a muffin habit so I could quit it and pay for a massage.

Just change something!  It's New Year's Eve tomorrow, and everyone's going to be resolving this and giving up that.  I haven't made a concrete New Year's resolution in years.  It's too hard to keep up--and too easy to just wait till next year (or next month) before trying again.  Change something small, and do it now.  Just one day.  If you fall off the wagon, get back on. 

Give up dairy.  Pack your own lunch.  Practice your horn every day.  Write a blog entry every night--even if it's just a short one about nothing.  (Even if it's just a lame top ten list.)  Change something small.  When you've done it for a month, it becomes much, much bigger.

Top Ten

Top Ten Things I Won't Be Eating During No Dairy January:

10. Graeter's Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

9. Ben and Jerry's Karamel Sutra Ice Cream

8. Lane Packing Company Peach Soft Serve Ice Cream

7. Haagen-Dazs Five Brown Sugar Ice Cream

6. Bruster's Double Scoop Cheesecake Ice Cream with Pumpkin Ice Cream

5. Haagen-Dazs Pineapple Coconut Ice Cream

4. Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby Ice Cream

3. Sheer Bliss Pomegranate with Dark Chocolate Chips Ice Cream

2. Cold Stone Creamery Cake Batter Ice Cream with Cherry Pie Filling and Pineapple Topping (a.k.a. "Betsy's DumpCake")

1. Macaroni and cheese from Sam's BBQ1 on Lower Roswell in Marietta.

Sleep

Okay, about yesterday: I didn't actually eat eight Reese's peanut butter cups.  They were Reese's peanut butter trees. 

I have totally jacked up my sleeping patterns now.  I was doing really well for few weeks, but now I'm back to lying awake for hours, then sleeping till forever in the morning, then staying up late again at night.  Not getting anything productive done during the day.  My brain doesn't shut off right at night; it never has.  I was always lying awake as a kid, thinking about whatever book I'd been reading, or pretending that I was terminally ill and romantically, stoically dying in a hospital bed.  Or that I was a precocious and sarcastic little league baseball star with Han Solo for a best friend.

Okay, so I didn't do much dairy today, just some hot chocolate that John made.  And (go figure), my sinuses are clearer than normal.  I also made those two awwwwesome (dairy-free!) candles out of a spent candle and a green crayon.  And I have a follower!  Heather joined the NDJ project--hi, Heather!

Recruits, and spooky Jesus

Went on a quest to find an 8-oz. Reese's peanut butter cup, and had to settle for 8 1-oz. Reese's peanut butter cups.

Ate pizza tonight. OF COURSE there was cheese on it. Also ate chocolate. Don't look at me like that--No Dairy January starts in 5 days.

I've recruited two friends for NDJ! Welcome, Tom and Bill.

Also, I'm adding some photos to the blog.  They don't have anything to do with dairy, or giving up dairy.  I'm not starting a separate blog for photography, that's all.

Photo: Rose Hill Cemetery
12/26/2010

Dairy Diary

I'd like to say that this blog will be a long term project, but I know myself better than that. I kept an online journal back before blogs existed, back when we had to use an html editor or code the pages by hand. I was pretty good with it for 5 years or so, covering the end of my grad school, my move to Georgia and the first few years of my marriage. I had a domain for it and everything, but eventually I outgrew the diary and let it expire.

Since then, I've halfheartedly started a few blogs; in fact, they're probably still out there somewhere, but I never wrote more than a dozen times in any of them. I'm committing myself to write in this one till the end of January, and we'll see what happens then. This is my dairy diary for the next 5 weeks or so.

To that end, my only dairy today was the butter and milk I used to make French toast around 1 pm. Oh--and some chocolate-covered edamame. I'm about to eat some cheese and crackers now. (A little English Cheddar, some sharp cheddar, and a couple schmears of Brie.)

I'm definitely not restricting my writing to dairy updates. It's going to be whatever comes out, for sure--I just need a place to keep tabs on myself and my ice cream consumption. Plus, it will be nice to have an official record from No Dairy January the next time I need to convince myself to give up dairy.

I'm also not sure how careful to be with cutting dairy for the month. The big culprits (as if you don't already know, and after only three entries) are cheese and ice cream. I'm not too concerned about milk as an ingredient in other foods. I will stop cooking with butter, not that I really cook with it much now, other than baking. I've been experimenting with coconut oil--it's been wonderful in pancakes, peanut butter cookies and cornbread, and we used it to fry hash browns and grits cakes.

One issue (even when I had my vegetarian stint back in college) is that I won't ever restrict my diet to the point of being rude to other people. I always eat food that others serve, even if it violates whatever diet I'm on. I learned more about defending my food choices when I gave up alcohol a few years ago. I'm not worried about getting peer pressured into eating cheese, but if someone is passing out cookies, I'm probably not going to ask if they used cream in the icing.

Christmas

We celebrated Christmas in the usual way: went out for sushi and then a movie. Chipped away at all the cheese in the fridge. Normally, I make pierogi for Christmas Eve dinner, but we had a long afternoon/evening with a church gig, so we skipped the pierogi this year. Maybe I'll make them next week sometime. They're one of my favorite foods, but so messy, and my recipe is weird. It's one of those hand-me-downs that don't make sense in cookbook terms--instead of a cup of this and a tablespoon of that, it's a "package" of this or that, with no indication of how big the package should be. A handful of something, and something "to taste," whatever that means to YOU on any given day.

The annoying thing in this case is that the recipes for the two fillings (1. sauerkraut, 2. potato-cheese) make a HUGE amount of filling, while the dough recipe makes maybe 9-12 pierogi. I usually make 5 or 6 batches of dough, and still have at least half of each bowl of filling left over. For some reason, I never make half the amount of filling. I always think I'm going to make more pierogi "later this week" and then I just eat the fillings little by little with a spoon until I throw them out.

Haven't been sleeping right lately. I've always had trouble falling asleep, but the last few days have been rough. Wouldn't it be awesome if cutting the dairy for a month made my sleep better? I'm not getting my hopes up.

No Dairy January

It's Christmas Eve Eve and I'm at Kroger, holding three wedges of cheese.  How did I get here? 

I gave up milk (not a huge sacrifice, really) about five years ago.  I also went through a few weird dairy incidents--one of which involved my lips swelling up to three times their normal size.  I did a six-day fruit-and-veggie detox in 2007, followed by a juice fast, and my allergies completely disappeared; for about six months I didn't eat ice cream or cheese, and I felt great.  Then it came back.

The cheese came back.

I've known all along that it would have to go away again.  My ass is big, my throat is phlegmy, my sinuses are all congesty and my head hurts more than it should.  Not to mention the typical digestive issues--I don't really have a lot of those TMI-sorts of lactose intolerant attacks, but every now and then a scoop of ice cream has its way with me. 

I have a few important gigs coming up--the kind where I want my sinuses clear.  I want to breathe (tuba-style) without sounding like I'm choking on south Georgia pollen.  I also want to fit back into my cute jeans again. 

So here it is: I have a week of December to get through, with these three cheese wedges and a quart of Edy's in the freezer.  I'll probably eat one more order of mac-and-cheese from Sam's BBQ1 in Marietta.  In January, I'll drop my husband off at the airport to go back to his job in Texas, and I'm done with dairy for at least 31 days. 

No Dairy January!