hey you crazy kids! what’s shakin’?
i’m still here. deeply immersed in school. creatively, the sketchbook pages in this post represent all i’ve done this week.
rain is beating against the window panes. strong winds are shaking the trees. a good old-fashioned storm has come to call.
i’m tucked inside by the window watching the branches bow down and the clouds roar across the sky.
inside my sketchbook i’m turning my attention away from donuts & cupcakes to my classroom kids. more or less.
it is so so good to have an entire day devoted to rest & play.
pam’s class, painting petals started today. i’m having fun painting some petals of my own using her excellent instruction. fun fun fun!!!
i watched forks over knives. soon i’ll be drawing stalks of broccoli and heads of cauliflower. but cake, pie, and flowers are so pretty i don’t know…
see you soon!
What a storm you guys had/are having, but glad the parched ground is getting watered. I guess it is safe to say the drought is over? For now at least. As far as food, I am a EIM and a CS officianodo. Which being translated, means everything in moderation, and common sense. I allow myself to eat pretty much what I want, BUT in reasonable amounts. So, instead of sitting down and gobbling a giant piece of pie, I eat half of what I might lust after. Or instead of making stuffed peppers with ground beef, I use ground turkey. Just stuff like that. I was just talking to the hubby the other day about how we grew up. We were both raised on farms (he in ND and myself in Montana and Oregon). Everything we ate was either fried or a casserole. When we had bacon, which was often, our moms would save the bacon fat in a jar in the fridge and everything was fried in that. In his case, his mom was 100% German, so they ate A LOT of meat and especially sausage! He even told me that his mom butchered her own chickens and would cook up the FEET and eat a pot of those too. Yuck…They called them “scratchers”. They also ate a ton of homemade noodles and tons of eggs. Nothing was wasted. My diet was similar but without the noodles and scratchers. We did eat veggies, but they were canned or pickled. Everything. The vegetables always seemed overcooked and everything was mushy. Green beans were more like an unappealing army green. Now, I hardly ever fry anything, or if I do, it is in vegetable or olive oil, and there are lots of fresh or el dente, colorful vegetables. Fruit too. I think one thing Americans are missing is exercise. My husband and I worked HARD even as children, and played hard too. We were outside from morning until it got dark, unless there was a blizzard. I think YOU have it right Mary Ann, by starting to move that body. Eating sensibly and moving a lot more. Simplicity:). Eat a LITTLE of everything. The only time I make the old fashioned cooking is during the holidays. Then, it’s everything in extreme (butter, gravy, etc) twice a year. MMMMMM!
Love the sweet pics of the kidlets! I too, started Pam’s new class and already LOVE it. I like your red blossoms a LOT!
Thanks for the mermaid alert. I shall clear the beach and hide behind a rock next mermaid search. 🙂 I love your sketches especially of the kids. After you mentioned How Not To Die awhile back I signed up for his emails and am awaiting the book. Also have taken up walking again with sketch book and camera in hand. Lifes to short not to get a move on. I’m off to the woods……………..
Yes to a plant based diet. But not plant only. Some pastured eggs, a little bit of pastured meat, some chocolate, too. Worst thing one can eat is all that processed stuff, with artificial flavours, glutamate and all that other nasty stuff. Leave that out, add more plants instead, and good!
Check out “Fat Head” too, both the movie and the blog!
Love your sketches. Especially the squares with the animals, cake etc!
I hope you have a good week at school. Lots of work over here, but a 2 week summer vacation in Sweden (Gotland and Stockholm) is scheduled!
Hi Mary Anne, I’m a long time lurker – and really enjoy your blog, words and images alike ?. I’m stepping out of the shadows because I just want to share this research about cholesterol. The Forks and Knives site focuses a lot on it, I noticed, but everything they say is actually either incorrect or just bad advice. Part of the problem is that the idea that cholesterol is bad for you is so ingrained in our culture that people don’t bother to actually look at any research. They just repeat the same things over and over without any research to back it up. And in fact research has for a long time been showing that cholesterol is not the evil it’s made out to be – it’s far more complicated than that as it is vital for our bodies . We make the stuff, for goodness sake! Anyway here is a link to a write up about an excellent, huge, ten year study carried out in Norway: http://anthonycolpo.com/new-study-women-with-higher-cholesterol-live-longer/
And more research from Japan http://phys.org/news/2010-09-high-cholesterol-longevity.html
The truth is that we are still discovering how crucial cholesterol is to health, and what is does in the body.
It’s also worth noting that much of the research around cholesterol has previously been funded by pharmaceutical companies….
Anyway, love your sketchbooks – I’m unlikely to keep commenting, because I have a chronic illness and limited energy, but I’ll be reading and enjoying!
I love your drawings of your students. Melts my heart…
Yes, beyond blustery day in San Diego too. The wind blew our patio chairs out into the yard and my mom’s over the balcony. They have disappeared. She will have to hunt them down tomorrow. Good for you with the diet additions. My sons are fans of Forks Over Knives. Guess I need to watch it too. I’m already a big fan of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Thanks for sharing what you did for Pam’s class. So nice. More, please. 🙂
That movie is Life Changing. SO important.
Those paintings are Grumpyness Dissolving.
Oh MAN, I wish that I had been lucky enough to have a teacher who let me skip P.E. and draw!…yea, speaking of Life Changing…..
Holy mackerel (very good for you), I’ve been on the soapbox about this for years. Over 80% of the diseases that finish us off have something to do with the food we’ve eaten throughout our lives. I studied macrobiotic cooking – not for everyone, but the principles of a largely plant-based diet are worth looking into. Okay, in my comments here I’m likely to have suggested that cake (particularly chocolate) is an important element of a happy life, but here’s where I hasten to add…in moderation. Eat your cake, just not the whole bakery. And as far as your sketch showing we might eat cake rather than chicken, my chickens send their regards for your sensitive take on the matter.
And as to the little boy who’s the mermaid expert, he’s absolutely correct. As an east coast dweller near the Atlantic Ocean, I have it on good authority mermaids never hang out on the beach when people are around, at least they don’t at the Jersey shore. But that’s another story.
the book How Not to Die had sort of a scared-straight effect on me! i had NO IDEA. food as medicine. it just makes sense. mermaids live! that makes sense too.
Check out Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan and illustrated by the great Maira Kalman. Guarantee you’ll love it.
I watched FOK last year and was changed. I changed my eating for 3 months but was unable to be satisfied with the conversion. I bought cook books, found blogs that were Vegan but ended throwing most of the dinner food items in the trash. So, I am trying VB6.
I just signed up for the cooking class at Rouxbe to learn cooking the FOK way by professional chefs. I felt so amazing when I ate FOK but was very dissatisfied with dinner and it was depressing and exhausting trying to find things to make that tasted good.
Are you going to change to FOK?
what’s VB6?
here’s what i’ve been doing for about 5 weeks or so… i’m ADDING more plants to my diet. more beans, more greens, more cruciferous, more fruit, more whole grains like steel cut oats, brown rice, etc., if i don’t think it tastes really good i don’t eat it. fortunately i like a lot of things!
i look at it as ADDING instead of subtracting. makes it easier. i feel a lot better already.
i just got the FOK app. i’m also reading Eat to Live and a few others by the big plant-based people like McDougall
i still eat some dairy, but have cut way back. i will always have cream in my coffee, eat yogurt, have cake once in a while, and eat a steak every now and then.
your cooking classes sound excellent. i’d love to find some online ones. is Rouxbe online? i’ll investigate!
Yes, Rouxbe is online. I waited for a discount but I hope it will help me making the food without my beloved cheese and other dairy. I gave up yogurt, cream cheese, milk. Occasional other grated cheese, trying to use goat milk cheese because of the casein.
VB6 is Vegan Before 6 by Mark Bittman. Two meals vegan and one not a day. It is easier to follow since my dinner can be vegan, vegetarian or meat.
I eat more greens and beans too. Make my own sauces, soups, dressings and anything else that I used to buy in a box or bottle. No GMO and organic when I can find it here in Denver.