Category: Life

Going Vegetarian – What a Challenge!

My son and I decided to adopt a vegetarian diet for Lent. It’s required a whole new mindset when it comes to meal planning. There are positives though.

We are a week  into lent and my son and I had decided that we would give up meat for our Lenten fast.  While I am not a religious person, there are certain Christian rituals that I still believe in and look forward to participating in.  Lent is one of them.  For the record I was baptised into the Anglican faith as a baby and had my son baptised into it as well simply because it is one of those rituals that brings my soul peace.

Photo by BULBFISH on Pexels.com

Anyway, back to my vegetarian challenge!  It’s been rough. Other than the odd margherita pizza or a Greek salad, my son and I don’t generally do vegetarian dishes.  It was also a spur of the moment decision so we were not prepared.  There we were, munching on our flapjacks (we did not have pancake mix and were lazy to make some from scratch) on Shrove Tuesday when we decided that we would change our fast from chips and chocolates to meat.  With the cost of living today, both could be considered luxuries.

Thus far, besides vegetarian pizza’s, we have yet to find at least 5-6 dishes that we enjoy and can rotate for the Lenten period.    There is still 6 weeks to go after all.😜 My son was partial to the vegetarian version of “chicken nuggets” although I have a feeling they will be wasted if I buy them again.  My vegetarian pasta was awfully boring last night so I won’t be trying that particular recipe again.  I think tomorrow I will make a vegetable curry to excite the taste buds a little (hopefully). Any tasty vegetarian recipes recommendations will be very welcome by the way.

On the positive side, it has been good to spend the first week of lent strengthening my connection to God through prayer and a bit of mediation.  I still battle with reading my bible.  For some reason, I just can’t connect to it but I don’t let it get me down as I know that God will get His messages to me in a way that I will hear Him and understand what it is He needs me to know. In the meantime I am reading Marianne Williamson’s book, Return to Love. It’s a good read if you have not read it yet. At the moment I am being reminded to surrender to God’s will. That reminder has come just in time. I can feel that my ego has been over exerting itself of late! 😞

Another positive is that I have noticed that my blood sugar levels are averaging slighter lower this week which is probably due to the increased vegetable intake. The thing I do need to be careful of is allowing too many refined carbs creep into my diet through pizza and pasta. I quite interested to see if my son’s skin will also benefit form the change in diet. I am really hoping it will. He has really had a pretty bad case of acne this past year.

Well that’s it from me. Be blessed everyone.

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Every Sunset Brings the Promise of a New Dawn

I love that quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s Day 31 of Bloganuray!!!

Today’s prompt: Where is the best place to watch the sunset near you?

Oh wow it is the end of January and therefore, the end of Bloganuary. It’s been a great reminder that I can actually write every day if I put my mind to it. Thank you WordPress for the challenge. I have also found new and interesting blogs to follow, met some cool people, discovered new books to add to my (already very long) reading list and picked up a few great tips on blogging. Let’s not forget that I wrote my first poem as well! This has really being a good month!

Now for the prompt. Well, as it turns out, the back of my home faces south west so I often get to witness the sun’s last hoorah for the day.

A winter sunset from our complex’s car park
A summer sunset form the car park.

I know that you cannot actually see the where the sun went down in the winter pic but you can get a sense of it. I have only just noticed how the position of the sun differs between the seasons in these pics. I tried to capture the sun’s position in the east on the solstice days last year but I wasn’t very successful. My son’s school is near the sea which is in the east for us. I think this year I need to find a good spot where I can capture the sun in summer especially as the difference in position is quite huge.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by to read my blog this month. Thank to all who took the time to comment as well. I hope to “bump into you” on WordPress again in the near future so don’t be a stranger 😊 Bye for now.

Phenomenal Woman

Bloganuary Day 30
one more day to go


Todays Prompt: What would you title the chapters of your autobiography?

Hmmm
another good question Bloganuary. Funny enough, tuning 50 this month did make me think through my life and the experiences I have had. I didn’t think about titles but now is as good a time as any I suppose.

My first decade would definitely be called “My carefree years”. I don’t recall having too much anxiety during this time in my life and I pretty much excelled at everything I did (I think).

My second decade, my teen years, was a completely different story. “Becoming part I’ would probably be a good title. I had no idea who I was or what I really wanted out if life. Remember how my dream career in a previous post wasn’t even a specific one? I guess that tells you how lost and undecided I was.

My 20’s was “Becoming part II”. I still didn’t know what I wanted or where I wanted to be in this world but by the end of this decade I started to get a feel for what I enjoyed doing . I still wasn’t sure but I could see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

My 30’s = “Evolution”. I began this decade in tears and very angry and remained that way for the first 2-3 years until I discovered the law of attraction and started behaving intentionally in some ways. I still was not there yet. I became a mom in this decade! A revelation! Suddenly it became absolutely necessary to know how I wanted to live the rest of my life and what experiences I wanted to give my son. Motherhood really galvanized me in to action.

My 40’s “Awakening”. Things started coming together. Isn’t amazing how that happens once you have clarity about you want. There have also been major losses in the later half of this decade but with these losses have come some gains. Some of those gains have been spiritual and some have been people. I have stepped out if my 40’s with clarity about my purpose and the talents that God has given me to fulfill this purpose. I have stepped into my 50’s stronger, happier within myself and feeling complete because now I know who I am. I am surrounded by amazing people who only want the best for me as well. There is still so much more to learn so who knows what the title of my 6th decade will be. I look forward to finding out!

Do you know what you would call your chapters? Let me know in the comments.

Thank for stopping by. Bye for now.

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