It's been a while...

Hey blog followers! I'm back and updating things!

I have to admit to a few things though before I begin:

First of all, I have been less than fully meatetarian these past months. Yes. It's true. I've been eating and enjoying candies, pastries, and fruits and vegetables. I even went mushroom harvesting recently and fully intend to eat them. I have not, however, intentionally eaten bread without the express purpose of being polite. I have chosen wine over beer except when eating with friends, and have not drunk any soda (not even diet soda). My diet has still been mostly meatetarian, but it has also been mostly uninteresting (one of many reasons I have not been updating regularly).

Second, I have not been exercising much. I went to the gym two times in July, and maybe about 4 times in June. I could get specific about that last one but there's no point. Basically I've been pretty lazy all summer with no reason. I've also been trying unsuccessfully to get a job - maybe it'll happen - but once school starts, tutoring and homework will take up much of my time, so I might not have time... I'll keep looking anyway. Good news is that I have started up the gym trips relatively regularly starting last week (HA!). It's almost like starting all over in terms of endurance and strength levels, but I didn't get fat - in fact, I lost five pounds! I expect to bounce back quick enough.

Third, I had a health "scare" which I do not wish to detail here for the sake of my readers (it was unrelated to the meat diet) which spooked me into not doing anything for a period of time, and then going to the doctor, who basically laughed at me and said, "You're fine, but call me if you're not." This is why I stopped going to the gym, and why I slipped on the diet, and because of those two factors (I think...) I ended up with a serious bout of long term... loose bowels. That bout is over now, and everything is indeed back to normal. I think I wasn't eating enough fat and I didn't do anything to try to fix it... Never again!

Anyway, things are back to normal! Time for an update!

Like I said, I went harvesting chanterelles with a friend today, and intend to eat them with a steak soon :) That's the plan. There's also a recipe I saw in a cookbook at BnN that I want to get - it called for chicken and chanterelles (not that I want the cookbook, I want to get the recipe out of it from the bookstore... this is a hobby of mine) and was almost fully meatetarian - since I consider fungus to fall under the meatetarian heading since it has almost no carbs. I've never eaten chanterelles before and I am excited to try them :) My sister-in-law got me into mushrooms (oh gersh... I just realized what that sounds like!) by telling me to try them at a Mongolian restaurant in the pick-it-yourself barbecue, and I decided they tasted awesome! So I'm excited to try chanterelles because they are allegedly the finest tasting mushrooms around, and are super plentiful in the northwest about 6 months out of the year.

Speaking of which... in the northwest they are early this year! They probably are convinced that it's fall already since the weather has been so subpar :/ but I enjoy it. So my friend and I went out on a hike in Seabeck to find them! It's kinda an unwritten rule of mushroom harvesting that you don't reveal your source (but it's now a written rule...), so I won't be specific, but I will give hints. We found the mushrooms in relatively deep coniferous forest with thick canopies - almost no direct sun made it to the floor. They were most common in areas with little underbrush (but not no underbrush!) and seemed to like growing around mossy areas. They seem to like the firs and hemlocks most, however, pacific chanterelles are apparently not picky - we also found them growing around the bases of bushes like oregon grape and huckleberries (I ate some of each...) They didn't seem to like the larger deciduous trees, and were more common in the more damp and cool areas of the forest. They are difficult to confuse with any other mushroom, so there's no need to worry much about poisoning yourself, but don't get lost! My friend and I decided to go on a trek through some thick underbrush and then we just kept going until we were basically swimming in a sea of ferns... It took us about an hour and a half to get back to where we knew we had been lol. Very fun trip in all though - I will be eating the chanterelles soon, and going on another trip before long as well.

Whew! No need for input/output tonight, I figure I've done enough for today hehehe. Glad to be back!