Tender

My word of the year is Nourish. (What's your word of the year? Any time you're faced with a decision, you just plug it in. What could do I right now that would be the most nourishing choice?)

But the word of today was Tender. Feeling tender hearted, tender spirited. I've been making big batches of beef broth - which is fatty, messy, and smells gross for a while and then turns into smelling amazing. So today I had beef broth and the soft meat and gelatinous parts off the soup bones for breakfast. I had a beef broth, broccoli and onion pureed soup for lunch. And I'm going to have a simmered pork soup for dinner, with bits of mushy butternut squash. I'm not certain the squash is allowed, but I'm dying for it.

My snacks were: one cup of plain, lactose-free, organic yogurt. Three big sips of the juice that my live sauerkraut is sitting in. And three small sips of lactose-free kefir.

And a lot of chamomile tea.

Tomorrow will be identical, in terms of what I am directed to eat. I'm making chicken broth, too, to have something a bit lighter in which to stew my butternut squash, onions and carrots down into mush. Oh, and I can add garlic to all this too! Excuse me one minute.

I keep thinking how this will be in five, fifteen, fifty more days - and I keep trying to stop myself. One day at a time, and who knows how quickly healing will happen? And who knows how I will feel off of sugar for that long? That's the intriguing motivation of this lone day. I'm intrigued to know what it will be like to have no sugar, no fake sugar, no maple syrup, nadda, for a few weeks. I can't imagine I've gone more than two or three days without sugar in my entire life, after the age of about 11 (when I could get my own hands on cookies). What will it feel like? And is that enough to keep me toeing the line for as long as it's going to take?