beat eczema = raw veganism

My resourceful and loving hubby got me a copy of the popular ebook, “Beat Eczema” by Susan Clark this past week.  The premise of this book is “you are what you eat.”  The only food categories that are good for healing my skin are:
1.  raw or dried fruits
2.  raw vegetables
3.  Miso
The last…category…makes me wonder about the validity of Susan’s claims, but despite that, I cannot agree more that you are indeed what you eat.  

Upon embarking on my war against eczema, I was required to be on apple detox for 3 days (but i was still able to use my iphone…haha… :-S.  worst.  3.  days.  of my life.  No, not really, but I really really really love food, especially foods with gluten and white flour and sugar and everything that is not raw fruits and vegetables and miso.  Therefore, (unfortunately) I did not succeed in my apple detox, but for 2/3 days I did.  I dreamed about food every night.  Yes, all 2 nights.  

How will I live without white flour products?  I sure do love white flour and sugar, especially mixed with lots of butter and eggs.  Here are two cakes I made for 2/3 Thanksgiving parties.  Can you tell there are two colors on the one to the left?  Perfecting icing and/or pie weaving is one of my goals in life.

fresh posts and cake

i will never stop finding the term “freshly pressed” amusing. then again, i will never stop finding a lot of things amusing. sometimes i will think of some of these things at work and start smiling, and try my hardest to suppress my random fits of laughter that i have a bad habit of having. the kids automatically assume i’m smiling at them and think that i find their antics amusing, and act out even more. and of course i stomp that out immediately by yelling and making a stern face, successfully confirming their suspicions in their 4-year-old minds that i am in fact, bipolar.
so there’s that for a fresh post, and, oh! my dearest dear has a fresh post too. i hope one day that wordpress will provide stable blogging careers for all. see his at jjchang.wordpress.com

and as for fresh cake…

"heavenly white cake" from allrecipes, cooked frosting recipe from pioneer woman, fruit from judylee

good ol trusty iphone camera, always there when a real camera may or may not be within 5 feet of you. if i were a more devoted blogger, i would have linked the recipes, however, i’m lazy. not lazy enough not to end this post without proclaiming what a success this cake was! seriously, most successful cake i’ve ever made. i’m usually quite bad at these multi-step baking projects, since the only types of recipes i usually have the patience for are 1-bowl recipes. so, after 3 hours of cursing and arm-numbing hand mixer-ing, this beauty was born, and devoured quickly, which is my favorite sign that my food creations are a success.

domesticism

i never imagined my culinary adventures would be so interesting after my cooking frequency catapulted after i got married over a year ago.  cooking a lot can get boring, so it’s fun and necessary (for me at least) to conduct many experiments to remedy the boredom of the typical stir-fry dish.  this all sounds fancy and foodie, so i will burst that bubble of expectation with my neon green soup invention i just came up with for dinner tonight:

blended spinach and chicken soup! with chicken chunks...hm. chunks sounds unappetizing.

the soup was delicious though!  way better and more edible than i thought it would turn out.  i thought the soup was going to be way too fibrous because of the giant amount of spinach, but the blender did a nice job and it wasn’t THAT much spinach i guess.  still a lot.  my fear of fibrous food comes from last week’s questionable experiment.  spinach quiche…way way WAY too much spinach.  one slice was enough to make your tongue feel like you rubbed sandpaper all over it.  good taste, dreadful texture after the 1st slice .

and the desert on the menu this past week was jello.  lots of it because i have no concept of realistic proportions for two average weight people.  here is another high quality photo worthy of this impressive blog, shot from an iphone3, and linked from my twitter, of course:

coffee jello with condensed milk

the more sugar, the better it is by me!

bchangberry

should i get a new blog now that my last name is not wu anymore? haha. it might make sense, since this blog has been neglected for over a year, and tumblr is oh so appealing because it is highly related to twitter, which i love oh so much. do i love the easy, compulsive 150 word blips of information TOO much? sometimes.

is it hard for me to blog publicly? yes. well, i guess a private blog would be called…a diary. i had a friend when i was 6 who insisted that a diary is called a diarrhea. fitting word, sometimes, depending on the content.

heart of a child.

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder.  Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe.  Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places…to the Father through the features of men’s faces. Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number.  I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all.
–Joshua Abraham Heschel

Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his need.  He is no entirely sorry for the fresh need they have produced.
–C.S. Lewis

flop flip

Today I lost my flip flop while riding my bike.  I stopped and rolled backwards after I reminded myself there’s no reverse gear like in a car…so slowly I inched toward my flip flop and all of a sudden a random man picks it up and goes “here you go!” and placing my flip flop on my foot.  I laughed so hard…but I managed to blurt out a “thank you” and was about to ride off bahahaing.  But then another random man stopped me because he wanted to know where the nearest bike shop was.  I’m not sure why he would assume a girl who can barely keep her shoes on while she rides her bike would know where a bike shop is…but I told him there’s some on north high street.  the end.

Late Night Musings.

“If young people have heroes today, they are athletes. If they have role models of endurance and sacrifice and self-discipline, they are athletes. If a man denies himself comforts, vacations, pleasures with his family, evenings at home, or the free indulgence of whatever appetite he feels, it is usually for money. Nobody will worry very much about his being repressive or fanatical or weird, so long as money is his motive. 

If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.”
-Elisabeth Elliot

Hohum.  I often wonder why I’m not doing as well in other areas of life, like money and grades, as other people.  Why am I different?  Isn’t this the answer I’ve been asking for?  To be DIFFERENT?  How am I different from everyone else?  Because I choose not to pursue these things?  Is my idea of being the best person possible flawed?  Is it because I can’t be good at everything, including grades and money—but I’m faithful in my relationship with God and I go to where He is and do what He commands?  Is it wrong to have a fear of the Lord that’s very different than the desired norm that I’m constantly desperately trying to fit in?  I feel so tempted to believe my past decisions with my education and choices of how I spend my time have been wrong all along right now.  Why am I such a Feeler.  If I was more of a Thinker this wouldn’t be as big of a problem festering in my heart right now.  haha.

Unfailing Love.

Here’s to a year of leading a tight-woven small group for the first time in my life (in contrast to my pseudo small group leader days in high school).  I still have a lot to learn and I’ve experienced so much grace this year.  I feel like these things I worry about, whether it be in the area of ministry or work or grades…they all fall under the same category of God’s provision.  It’s funny cause I’ve realized this countless times.  But I think this is the first time I’ve felt peace in knowing that.

You have my heart
And I am Yours forever
You are my strength
God of grace and power

And everything You hold in Your hand
Still You make time for me
I can’t understand
Praise You God of earth and sky
How beautiful is Your unfailing love
Unfailing love.

Fridays

I feel so much more relaxed even though I still have the same mountain of work to do. Sleep is currently the most valuable thing in my life…I treasure every little bit of it I get. I don’t like to give it up for less treasured things. Less treasured things=studying.

Google calendar + texting = solution to my life! Kinda. It’s fun though. You text “what is the meaning of life?” to Gvent and it tells you all. And you can even add meaning to your life viewable in Google calendar form.

I wish I had more time in a day to cook. And sit down to eat instead of eating while running around or in front of a computer. I’m going to drop of out school so I can cook and eat for the rest of my life. mmm. I’ve been foodblog-surfing too long.

liddo piggy

How could you possibly cause an epidemic?