How to eat organic when your poor

I was talking to my brother-in-law the other night about how to eat organic food on a budget and I was telling him there are foods that are safer to eat than others, but didn't have the list with me. So at his request here is the list of safer foods as well as the ones that have the most pesticides. I am not going to tell you why you should start eating organic because I don't really care if you want to put pesticides into your body, however, if you are interested in eating healthier without spending as much money this will help.

These are referred to in many places as the "dirty dozen" These fruits and veggies you want to always buy organic (note: This list is from Kashi , I don't know where I got it from, but you can go to Kashi.com/recipes for some organic recipe ideas. )

Apples (these also taste so good organic! Apples are priced by what kind they are so I just buy the cheapest  variety)

Bell Peppers (green bell peppers are usually cheaper so those are the ones I usually buy)

Celery (super cheap so I buy these a lot. I make soups and stock in the winter and ants on a log in the summer)

Cherries (expensive! I rarely buy these)

Grapes (organic grapes mold quickly, so I wash them and put them in clear containers right away, which seems to preserve them longer and it makes it easy to see a bad one)

Nectarines (I don't really like those so I don't really buy them)

Peaches (these also mold quickly, so wash them, let them ripen, peel, slice and them put in containers in the fridge)

Pears (cheap and taste so much better organic, I buy these a lot)

Potatoes (these also mold quickly so I only buy what I need, I never buy those huge bags)

Raspberries (these are also expensive, however my local health food store puts them on sale a lot so I just buy them whenever they are on sale)

Spinach ( I buy frozen spinach because you get a little more bang for your buck, plus its easy to cook with so if we don't have a lot of food this is my go to item)

Strawberries (these are also expensive, however once you have tasted an organic strawberry you will never want to buy non-organic again! Also I will sacrifice many an item on my list so I can afford these when they are in season)

We pretty much eat vegetarian because it is cheaper and healthier. If we do purchase any animal products (i.e. dairy, meat, eggs) I always buy free range and/or organic, not only is it better for the animals, but it is also better for us and the environment.  It is really easy to get enough protein without meat. All you need to do is educate yourself on how to get protein without meat. On top of not buying entirely organic and eating less meat, making things at home is a great way to save money. The more prepared the food is the more it is going to cost. I know that most people would say they don't have time to make more meals at home, but really it is a matter of priorities. Cooking can involve the whole family and it can be very fun! My husband and I trade off cooking depending on if I am working that night or not, so it is not all on my shoulders or his. I have also hunted down and memorized quick and easy recipes for those nights that are rushed or when we are simply too worn out from the day, to make something fancy.  My two favorite vegetarian cookbooks are by the same author, Heidi Swanson. She takes time to educate you on all sorts of new foods, their benefits, and how to use them as substitutes in your regular cooking.  

This is the list of food that is very low in pesticides. I have no idea where this is from, I have it written on a piece of paper hanging on my fridge. So you are going to have to trust me that it is legit! I don't have many comments on these, except that it is better to buy local of anything when you can.

Onions

Avocado

Sweet corn

Pineapple

Mango

Sweet peas 

Asparagus

Kiwi

Cabbage

Eggplant

Cantaloupe

Watermelon

Grapefruit

Sweet potato

Honeydew

burning the ego

I think we would all like to be a little more humble. I don't think anyone would dislike it if they were described as being humble, but I don't think that most of us desire to BE humbled.  I have had some experiences recently where light was shown on those dark place inside of me and I was horrified by what I saw.  It was one of those moments where your like "I am an awful person."  I am not talking about when we are dragging ourselves through the mud, but where something has happened and we have the realization that we suck.  These haven't been realizations you can brush aside and forget about.  My true self has been shown and there is no going back.
 I have spent almost my whole life on a quest to better myself, well more like perfect myself. I have done everything that I felt was necessary and  it has been hard, it has been painful, and I have been unhappy for most of it.  So to do all this work and find out that I am still a complete and total asshole is a bit disheartening. When our eyes are opened to who we truly and wholly are, humility should be our first, or at the very least, second emotion.  I fully believe that each and everyone of us is unique, beautiful, and sacred. I also believe we are all imperfect, selfish and capable of doing horrible things. To become humble, to be humbled, is not a happy experience. In yoga we talk about Tapas, or fire, as a means to burn away toxins, blocked energy or whatever garbage we are holding onto. All that sounds good and nice, except that when we are talking about Tapas we are usually talking about the burning sensation that has started to develop in your muscles from holding the posture so long, or having done abs to the point where you are sure your body can do no more.  In those moments I think most of us want to tell Tapas to "F Off" and we would like to keep our garbage, thank you very much. It is not easy to continue to do something once it has become uncomfortable, inconvenient, or just plain hard.  So many times in life I have been at the doorstep to some new path or new truth, but it just seems too hard to obtain, I want to turn back, or go around, or perhaps just stay right where I am because what's in front of me seems too hard or too scary. How many times have we been willing to sacrifice growth and wisdom for the sake of comfort and safety? How many of us have seen all that we could be, but at the last second backed out for fear of failure? I was reading one of my old journals a couple nights ago and I had written this quote on the inside of the cover:

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach for another is to risk involvement
To expose your feeling is to risk exposing your true self
To place your ideas, your dreams before a crown is to risk their loss
To love is to risk not being loved in return
To live is to risk dying
To believe is to risk despair
To try is to risk failure
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live
Chained by their attitudes they are slaves; they have forfeited their freedom
Only a person who risks is free
-Anonymous Chicago teacher

To grow, to create, to be become new involves risk, it involves stepping out of your comfort zone, and it often involves getting hurt. As I have mentioned before and am sure to mention again and again, I have dealt with depression on and off through a lot of my life and it has truly sucked. I honestly thought at times that I would simply fall over and die. What I have come to realize is that through all that pain and suffering, beauty and life have sprung forth. If I had not suffered for so long I would not be who I am right now.  In those dark times and dark places of my life I did not thank God for my suffering, I was in no way happy, I did not see any future blessing, and often, I simply hoped there would be no future.  I use that word suffer because that's what I did. I was in pain, I felt as though all of my insides were dying and I know that I am not the only one who has felt that way, so many of us walk around carrying these burdens with us.  However, because I felt the way I did, I  was driven forward in life; I was driven to stop hurting, to fight the agony that was overwhelming me.  Most of the things I have done in life were in search of peace and happiness. I have been trying to find a balance in my life. I have had so many blessings on this journey and none of that would have happened had I not spent so many years in pain.  Even now when I am going through a hard time I am not happy. I complain the whole time and drag my feet whining like a small child. I cannot wait for it to be over, then when it is over, and I have received the fruits of my half-assed labor I look back and see what God was doing and realize how silly I was being. Right now I think God is humbling me. I  feel my ego being burned and I don't like it. Although I very much like the idea of being humble, of letting my ego go, it really doesn't feel good during the process. To have my shadow self brought fully into the light is a disappointing and an uncomfortable experience. However I can think of no faster way of destroying my ego, then looking at myself completely and honestly. I will close with this quote from Erwin McManus' book Uprising:


Humility's closest attribute is honesty. Humility doesn't require us to be self-deprecating. Humility is not about having a low self-image or poor self-esteem. Humility is about self-awareness. It is important to be self-aware in relationship to our gifts, talents, skills and intellect, but in regard to our spiritual health, it is far more essential that we are self-aware in the arena of personal character. If you see yourself for who you are and embrace it honestly, humility is the natural result.  God isn't asking you to say something about yourself that isn't true. God is asking that we take a good, long look in the mirror and see ourselves for who we truly are, and then after that, to have the courage to ask for help. 
Our humility allows God's intervention. The word humble comes from humus, which is simply translated "earth" or "dirt." Humility is about coming to grips with our humanity. 

freedom

Lately I have been wanting to find more freedom in my life. I want to be free of certain things in myself, but also be free to be myself.  I see different pictures or quotes and I think "I want that!"  I imagine myself running wild through a field with the wind in my hair and not a care in the world. The problem is freedom doesn't just appear on your doorstep, take over all your responsibility's and say "the world is yours." Freedom is not free. There are somethings I believe are freely given, but most things are obtained not given.  I love this story Erwin McManus tells in his book Uprising.

Although the student had the opportunity, he really didn't have the freedom. Opportunity and freedom are not the same thing. Chris's freedom to play the full spectrum of music, to passionately express the music within his soul, was only available to him as a result of years and years of discipline. Discipline can be confused with conformity. Many times we run from discipline or at least resist it because we feel we are being forced to conform in the most negative sense of the word. No one wants to be a clone. No one's life ambition is to be a carbon copy of someone else (except, of course, all those Elvis impersonators). Yet the irony is that when we forsake discipline in our attempt to avoid conformity, we lose our potential to be truly free. 

I was thinking about all this as I was running the other day, sometimes when I run it feels like freedom, it loosens something within me and I will end up sprinting with no effort at all. Most days are not like that though and this was not one of those days. I was tired and longed to feel the freedom of running, but instead I felt like I was dragging myself through the routine and no matter how hard I tried it was not going to get easier.  The thought occurred to me, more than once, that perhaps I was pushing myself too hard and should just walk or head back home, but if I only ran when it felt like I was floating on the earth I would probably never run.  I was thinking about the feeling of floating over the earth as I ran, but the thing is, this is a rather new feeling. I have almost always found joy in running, but the sensation of floating over the earth with ease has only started happening in the last month or so.  I have been working on my form and my energy as I run, I have been observing myself as I run, not just my form, but my thoughts as well. This is taken extra work and energy as well as me setting my ego aside to take a slower pace for the sake of keeping my form.  The fruit of this, of course, is that I have found when everything lines up just so, I can run without any effort at all. It literally feels as though my feet are floating over the earth. All this made me think about freedom and what McManus had said about it.  I thought about it most of the run, about how I view freedom as me running wild in a field, but really freedom looks much more like William Wallace at the end of Braveheart. Freedom takes work, discipline, and effort. Working towards freedom may mean creating boundaries and  disciplines that feel a lot like losing our freedom, but it is through these that we are able to find the freedom to express what lays within our hearts. 

Isvarapranidhana

I have been thinking a lot about what we put our energy toward and how attached we are to the outcome.  In yoga there is this idea of acting for the sake of acting, for the longest time I thought it was so stupid because I thought it meant we should have no passion or goals or desires, but as I began studying more of the yogic texts I finally realized what it really meant. We are to let go of the outcome of our actions, but not let go of the desire to act.  T.K.V. Desikachar puts this beautifully in The Heart of Yoga he writes "paying more attention to the spirit in which we act and looking less to the results our actions may bring us--this is the meaning of Isvarapranidhana in kriya yoga."  Desikachar gives the definition of Isvarapranidhana as "the yielding of all action to God, the renunciation of the desire for the fruits for all action." It wasn't until I was talking to my husband today that this idea came back to me.
This past month my husband and I have been fasting from TV and video games, at first it was just fine, but about 2 weeks in I started to get really irritated and frustrated by it, mostly because I had more time to think about my life and what I am doing with it.  I had the realization that I have been putting a lot of energy into things that were pointless. I would sometimes surf on the internet for hours looking at things I couldn't afford all the while neglecting what I already had. I also noticed how much effort I would spend thinking about the outcome of different situations or actions, even though I had no control over what would actually happen. I have basically been driving myself nuts for the past few years. Only after cutting out these distractions was I able to see that I needed to let go of the results and not only look at how I was trying to get those results, but also learn to appreciate the path I was taking to get what I wanted.
The other day my husband pointed out to me how I seemed to be jumping from one thing to the next without even completing what I had started, I didn't really want to hear that, but it's true.  As a result of that conversation, and a few books I have been reading, I have began leaning heavily into God. Asking Him  for help and guidance while also trying to let go of what I am asking for.  Doing this has given me the opportunity to really experience what is at hand rather than worrying about what might happen in the future.  It is amazing how relaxed I have been the over the last week. I hadn't  realized how much I worried about everything in my life until I was able to let go.  There have been some pretty tough situations in which I have noticed myself getting all revved up and I can honestly say that it is such a relief to take a deep breath and let go.
I think I should also let you know that the more I have leaned on God the more my life seems to fall into place, I am not talking about big things here, just my day to day life. Everything seems to work out just the way it is supposed to.  Since I have been focusing on this a lot lately I have noticed how much myself and others put so much energy into the results our actions will bring, all the while missing out on this whole beautiful flow of life happening around us.  How often do we get so focused on one small little thing we are trying to accomplish that  we are unable to appreciate the process we are going through. How many nuggets of wisdom do we miss in life because we have all our energy focused on completing the task? There is so much more to learn in our actions, so much more to gain on the path than there is at the destination. As Americans we can get very caught up in the idea of deserving something, we think we are "owed" things. Why though? Can we really know why everything that happens happens? Are we able to see the future or understand how every decision we make affects the people around us or even ourselves? I know for myself how angry and frustrated I get when things don't go the way I thought they would, but in this process of relying on God I have found how silly my anger often is. So many times what I have perceived as a problem has actually been a blessing.  It is SO HARD  to let go of the results of our actions, but it is SO MUCH HARDER to hold onto  them. 

meditation

         My eyes are closed
                                 
                                           I turn my gaze inward
           
                    I see...darkness

  My leg starts to itch                
                                    I shift my weight

I hear a car passing by
       
          I peak out the window
   
                                                                        Its no one

I close my eyes again
 
                                            Gaze inward...again

           "What am I doing?"

                          "No...be quiet"

"What time is it?"

                                   "What am I going to teach today?"

                                                                   another car...I open my eyes, but I don't look

                      I close my eyes

                                                       Silence        
Silence  
                                       Silence

Darkness welcomes me, envelopes  me

                            Silence
                                                                           Silence
                                                   Silence
 
                                                                         The world begins to open up...trees...gardens

                                        Silence
                                                                                                    Silence
                                                                         Silence

                 Relax into some soft warm grass

Warm Sun on my skin
                                           
                                                             My apartment has vanished into another space

                               another time

                                                           Silence
        Silence
                                       Silence

                     I reach deeper

Woods appear the sweet smell of moss and damp forest surround me

                                                                     Silence
                                                                                                Silence
                                                   Silence

          There my dear friend awaits me
                             
                                                                   Welcomes me and sits with me

                         Silence
                                                          My meditation
                                                Silence
               Is my prayer            
                                     
                                                                         Silence
                                             Is my healer

                                                                                         

Body Image

I am 25 and I have only been slightly overweight one time in my life, right after puberty. Being 25 I haven't had much time to fluctuate, I also work out and eat organic homemade food, but those things mean nothing after you have had a baby.  At first I couldn't believe how skinny I looked, which is really not hard after having a baby in you belly then no baby, but then that disbelief wore off and I started to notice the stretch marks. I mean gaining weight is one thing at least you have the opportunity to work it off, but stretch marks? No you are stuck with those the rest of your life and I am not talking about a few here or there, they are everywhere! This was my first pregnancy and I can tell you that I was not quite prepared for the aftermath. I have a tattoo on my side and one down by my hipbone, I was prepared to sacrifice those, I was prepared to wear long shirts and in the summer wear tankini. I did not get stretch marks on my belly though, I got them on my thighs and my boobs, yes my boobs. Nobody had ever even told me that you could get stretch marks on your boobs, but there they were, bold red cracks running across my boobs. Stretch marks isn't even a good word for them they honestly look like tears, small little red canyons all over your body.  Of course the color fades and eventually they are pretty hard to see, but by the time they had faded, I really began to notice my lack of weight loss. I got down to a certain weight and here I sit.  I work out I eat healthy, I watch what I eat, but it doesn't seem to matter my weight stubbornly persists.  These things have slowly wore me down and now I look in the mirror and ashamed at what I see. My clothes barely fit and I have bought mostly new ones anyways because I couldn't keep wearing the same 3 outfits that actually fit.  I want to cry and sometimes do. I am happy I had my sweet little boy and I am happy to have sacrificed what I did, but that doesn't make me like the way I look.  I know in my head that I am being ridiculous, my weight isn't at a dangerous level it really is merely my idea of who I was and  how I should look that is the problem.  I try to give myself pep talks and meditate on letting go, but it just keeps coming back to the same thing, I am overweight and I hate the way I look.  As most women, and I know men too, know this is not an easy thing to remedy. We are fighting a whole culture of expectations about what women "should" look like.  I would like to say that this is no big deal to me that I am somehow above this, but I am not. I am right there with everyone else thinking" I should like that women" or "I used to look like that girl." I am not able to love myself for who I am right now. I think this is why I cannot lose the weight because this is an important lesson to learn. If I cannot love myself in my imperfections then how can I love others in theirs? How am I supposed to support and care for those around me when I will be judging them with the same standards I judge myself.  If I think overweight, but still very healthy is a problem then I am going to project that onto everyone else. I think that if I was able to truly love who I am right now in this moment whether it be about my weight, my success, my anger, my mistakes, or whatever I am lacking at the moment,  that the weight would slowly but surely melt away. Even if it didn't at least I would be happy with who I AM.


We must forgive ourselves for being human. We must forgive ourselves for being imperfect. Because when we judge ourselves we automatically judge others. And what we do to others, we also do to ourselves. The world is a mirror of our internal selves. When we can accept ourselves, and forgive ourselves, we automatically accept and forgive others.
-Debbie Ford, Dark Side of the Light Chasers

house hunting

To make improv work there is this rule that whoever is up on stage has to say yes to everything that is presented to them. If you don't the scene will come to a very awkward stop, however if the actors do accept everything that happens, most often, the scene is allowed to unfold into a hilarious end.  On stage I can improve very well, but in daily life I am the person that stops the scene and looks like an ass-hole. I am controlling, maybe not of those around me, but definitely of myself and my plans, which means that I might get a bit out of sorts if my husband drives a different way than I thought he should.  I am trying to learn to yes to whatever happens and allowing myself to be carried by the flow around me.  This is a whole new way of living for me because I like to plan, research and calculate constantly. It's not that I want to disown planning or calculating, but rather adjust my plans when things don't turn out the way I thought they would or should. Life is not only more fun, but everything seems to come together the way it is supposed to even though it's not how I imagined it would.  Looking for a house, for instance, can be trying, as I'm sure anyone who has bought a house can attest to, and it has brought out my crazy planning self more than most things. I try to go in knowing that it doesn't matter how much I like a house it might have major problems, or as so often seems to happen, someone has already made an offer while I am still waiting for my landlord and AT&T to send me the papers I asked for so we can get pre-approved. Even though I try to prepare myself I am disappointed each time, however, I am ok with being disappointed because that is part of saying yes to how the scene is playing out.  I am realizing that for each house that disappears there is another little gem about to be put on the market and perhaps there are forces bigger than me doing something better than the small plans I have devised in my head. Maybe I do not know everything and even though that house looked perfect for me, I can actually trust that God also has plans for me, and just maybe His plans are better than mine.