What I am Loving This Season

It seems the mind seeks new pathways every few months.  Every season brings a new flavor of excitements and news.  With Ramadan just ending less than a week ago, I thought what better time to share the seasonal favorites with you, my beautiful beings.  I hope you will find them inspirational, useful, motivational, and would make you want to welcome a new season in your life too.

The summer months have begun casting a never ending sea of sunlight across the landscape, the hottest months here in Arizona, and staying indoors is sometimes the only option of survival.  The backyard plants (more on that later, I promise) are covered in unsightly sticks and fabrics to help them live through the 115 degrees Fahrenheit, the cats are enjoying the breeze of the ceiling fan, and there is a slight scent of simmering dinner in the air.  Will you be joining me?

If you were to drop in one evening, I would share with you everything that is simulating my senses these days.  Let’s have a conversation, with tea in our hands, as we wait for dinner, and let me share with you the things that have been a beautiful addition into my life this past spring.

1. BeachBody on Demand

If you choose to wear the hijab, then you know too well the struggle of finding the right size of tops to cover the unsightly bits and well, the struggle of working out in comfortable, yet modest, clothing.  Perhaps I will share with you those finds in another visit? But for now, Beach Body on Demand has been a phenomenal addition to my fitness routine.  I have been a user of workout DVDs for many years of my life, and once I decided to peruse the programs offered through Beach Body, the game changed for the better.  My fitness level skyrocketed, my body is showing the progress, and I feel more in control of my fitness goals.

What I love about this program is that it is completely portable via the apps on the phone and the workouts are flexible, but challenging.  The variety is as much as your workout schedule can handle over a period of at least a year.  I began with Core de Force, and have recently found myself in love with 21 Day Fix series.

2. Real Plans

Even before getting married, my husband knew very well how all I could do successfully in the kitchen was boil eggs. Although, in complete transparency, I admit to have burned even that creation once or twice.  There has been a lot of strides being made in my cooking journey five years onwards.  I have learned to tolerate cooking and appreciate its necessity as human beings but there is not much heartfelt joy. Mom, I am sorry to disappoint you.  However, following meal plans have made the struggle a lot easier and the headaches have dissipated.  After taking my nutrition a lot seriously than before, I found myself enjoying the meal plans offered by Tone It Up.  The options were delicious and versatile.   It was something that improved my life and taught me a lot of about nutrition and fueling my body. Since then, I have had a major setback in health which required me to eliminate a set of things from my diet – not being limited to dairy, and gluten free items.

Can you imagine my frustration at finally being able to enjoy being in the kitchen to suddenly being faced with dietary limitations? Cooking became more difficult and every day became a struggle for survival. Allah, it seems as if right on time at my highest level of desperation, introduced me to Real Plans.  This is a collection of recipes generated by bloggers and their own exclusive recipes that makes life easy for a home chef.

There are so many things that I love about this service and I will briefly tell you what they are:  Being able to selectively choose food allergies and which ingredients to not generate in the weekly meal plan, detailed grocery list of everything in the plan, day-by-day break down of what needs to be done to prepare for the meal the following day, print outs of all of the recipes for the week in one go to have on hand and the ease of mind that spending less than hour per day gives me everything I need to have the headache of cooking and meal planning out of the way.  Simple, clean, and effective. So. much. win.

 

3.  Food Journal

The entire food elimination protocol had me scratching my head to figure out how to log my reactions, moods, energy levels to the daily intakes of food and vitamins.  With all of these changes, it was hard to keep track of little things and the Ramadan schedule made it more challenging to keep track of how this was happening. A quick visit to our local Barnes and Nobles resulted in this find of a weekly planner.  On one side, is a horizontal layout of the week, and on the other, it offers a blank, lined page where I can jot down everything I am wanting to track.  Although what I am tracking has not been of immediate use as of yet, but I am sure that it is going to be an indispensable resource a few months down the line.

And I am going to take a moment and share with you these two gems.  Some of the things I am avoiding currently are dairy and refined sugar.  Do you see the delicious happenings?  I wish you could taste them!  Pop and Bottle has an amazing delivery service where you can get perfect serving sizes of flavored almond milks, without any added chemicals or sugars, right on your doorstep.  The bottles are gorgeous, the presentation is amazing, and the ingredients are drool worthy. Secondly, I find that Eating Evolved has been the only company that makes clean chocolates.  I am sorry, chocolate is something that I simply can not give up.  This Midnight Coconut was a bit bitter – as there is absolutely no sugar, with the flavor being accompanied by coconut and vanilla – but once my tongue adjusted to the flavors, I am addicted.  A dab of nut butter on top (coconut butter, anyone?) makes this a delectable treat to wind down the evening.

4. The Fermented

Growing up in a desi (aka indo-pak) culture, the concept of “fermentation” was something foreign. Actually, thinking of fermented-anything made me envision something green and moldy.  I know, completely unfair.  Maybe the closest thing to the idea of fermentation is achar, the salty, spicy, oily marinated vegetables that are mostly used to compliment the main dish.  For those of you familiar with it, am I right?  It wasn’t until I tried kimchi a while ago that I began to understand the awesomeness of fermented foods.  The more I learn, the more amazed I am at the probiotic filled, tasty goodness that can be found in jars across the grocery store.  I do hope that one day I can inshAllah make a kraut myself.  But until then, I was on a hunt at local supermarkets for a quality product.  Unfortunately they all had undesirable ingredients.  Until one day, Allah opened up yet another door for me via Wild Mountain Paleo.

If you have ever lived in a small town, then you understand the struggle of finding quality items. Once I learned that WMP delivers, I loaded up the cart with the most coveted items and they arrived perfectly.  This garlic kraut is so, so amazing with any meat. I have loaded kraut through many dinners (soon to be lunches pre-Ramadan. Truth) and now it can honestly be said that I am a kraut fan.

5.  The Power of Herbs

I feel sort of ridiculous now after having ignored the hakeems “back home.”  My tiny self in Pakistan used to pitter patter along the front yard of a holistic practitioner, called Hakeem, while my mom shared with him her grievances and health concerns.  His shop always smelled earthy with the front door rolled open, revealing the walls lined with floor cushions and mysterious bottles on the shelf.  The structure of the shop can most accurately be compared to our car garages: rolled doors, completely exposed interior. My favorite part about to his shop was the lush greenery, the front lawn was the brightest, and it instantly lifted my mood.  Sometimes I wonder how much of it was my young mind’s fascination.  My mother liked our hakeem more than the regular doctors and boy was she right. Although, in my defense, it seemed that he used to point to our liver for every problem.  Surely, it can’t be that way?

At our local small herb shop here in Yuma, you can find herbalist’s Laura Lago‘s tinctures and balms.  While going through recent health challenges, I decided to purchase her Adrenal Tonic.  I am a believer.  I find that this tonic helps me to feel more energetic during my slumps and its regular intake makes me miss it when I run out.  Plants and herbs have amazing powers to heal psychologically and physically.  Living amongst plants, working with them outside, is a great stress reliever.  And herbs offer variety of vitamins, minerals and healing.  Although I understand that not all issues can be handled from this holistic approach, but many issues can be dealt with this way.

Keeping that in mind, I have started my treatment with Laura with Allah’s permission and I’m looking forward to its fruits while my regular physician had left me waiting for my condition to deteriorate before being on a lifetime of medicines.  Her approach is scientific, holistic and subtle.  I was able to speak to her freely and know that I was cared for.  This is a new journey and I request your dua’s as well as your patience for me to feel comfortable enough to share with you the details of my health as well as the progress.

6.  Indoor Plants

I remember when a few years ago a Dragon Plant came into our home.  Within a few weeks, it was chewed on by our kitties and it invited some unwanted critters flying throughout.  What a terrible experience! That plant didn’t make it for much longer in our kitchen and I was left feeling that no plants can ever make their way into my life for an extended periods of time.  Just previously, we talked about how plants are healing which they definitely are if they survive long enough!  But alhumdulillah, all Praise is for God, that somehow my brown thumb slowly turned to green and our tiny plant collection is growing. Just this salvia, the snake plant on the left, joined us during the last day of Ramadan, and I feel a sense of peace and serenity just by looking at it.

You might have some questions regarding house plants and although I am not an expert, I can direct you to one.  Keep Your Houseplants Alive: A No Nonsense Guide To Keeping 27 Awesome Indoor Plants Alive & Kickin’ was the most straightforward, methodical book about plants that I have found.  This journey is still very new to me but I have learned to love the process, enjoy the plants, and give each of them special attention every morning.

7. Gardening & Planting

Lastly, we come upon our front and backyard.  This has been a labor of love with some failures and mostly successes.  It was the fact that the trees we planted last year in our backyard survived for this long that motivated us to step into the wonderful world of gardening.  Since last year, our backyard has turned into an unattractive mesh of black shade cloth and awkwardly speared sticks in the ground, flooded through water unintentionally left open for 2 days (this was by far the most guilt-inducing experience), accidentally chopped seedlings, fungal infections, fruits being stolen by ants (I think I have tasted just a couple), and countless mistakes that have taught us invaluable lessons.

In short, gardening, playing with live, organic beings, has profound lesson for a seeker.  There are lectures upon lectures of wisdom hiding between the petals, ready to elevate a soul to connect with the Creator.  Lessons of survival, of perseverance, of growth, of love that lay down their roots in the soul.  Despite the failures, we have found a new found appreciation of our desert scape as we spend a few minutes every day walking through the little bits and pieces still thriving in the heat.  I can have my hands in the soil while my mind is sifting through the daily challenges and future plans. If you were here, I would take you to a little tour of, although not stunning yet, our humble garden where little bits and pieces of effort are coming to fruition.

Thank you for sharing your time with me.  I hope you enjoyed your visit and won’t you please stay for dinner?

-S