Intuitive Fruit Dehydrating Yoga

I found the instructions for my food dehydrator online and got to work this morning.

As instructed, I soaked sliced bananas in lemon juice for a few minutes before placing them on the tray.

Two trays of these guys.

Sliced up and cored a red delicious apple, soaked in lemon juice and onto the tray they went.

And a kiwi tray. Peeled, but not soaked.

All that fruit slicing – call me crazy – I went ahead ate a hydrated kiwi with reckless abandon. I’m a wild woman.

I was a little disturbed by the fact that this fruit was going to have to dry for 4 – 16 hours. First, 4 – 16 HOURS?? But second, that’s quite the range! Oh well. Here goes nothing.

While the juices in my fruit were evaporating, we did our thing around the house and eventually it was lunch time.

Who wants salad?

Ooooo me me! I do! I do! Me! Over here!

Red leaf, onion, grape tomatoes, raw corn off the cob and mushrooms tossed in Good Seasons Italian.

I ate my massive salad but still felt empty. I had a couple of my favorite date and almond butter guys.

And still – not feeling satisfied. Just feeling annoyed and frustrated. Maybe I should have left the kitchen, but I didn’t feel motivated to go do anything else. I ate a couple of carrots that I forgot to put on my salad, hoping that might do the trick. I’m beginning to wonder if I sabotaged myself this morning with no juice or fruit first thing and having coffee and oats instead. I haven’t felt this way in a long time.

One thing I learned from Intuitive Eating is that if you are REALLY craving something – just eat it. Don’t waste calories eating other stuff with the hope that you’ll forget about your craving. Chances are you’re going to eventually eat what you’re craving anyway AND you ate all that other stuff FIRST trying to forget about your craving. How many times have I wanted a cookie in the cupboard but ate other stuff first, then ate that damn cookie anyway. If I can just get it out of the way I can move past the craving and save myself a bunch of unnecessary calories.

Except today I could not figure out what it was that I wanted. It was like an unreachable itch. I wanted something sweet. I wanted something savory. But nothing sounded appealing. Eventually it dawned on me and felt like I needed some protein.

I remembered I had a container of Fage in the fridge and rummaged through the cupboard for something fun to put on top.

I found this sample of Bakery on the Main gluten free granola in the cupboard and had at it.

On top of 2% Fage, it was perfect and exactly what I needed.

But was it what I needed? I guess I can’t be sure. Maybe enough time had passed from lunch and my brain finally registered that I had eaten and the fullness hormones set in. Or maybe I really did need some protein. But either way, my itch was scratched and I was able to leave the kitchen in peace.

Aunt Ellen was coming to stay with the girls while I went to my yoga class. Around 5:00 I whipped up a quick whatever-I-have-in-the-cupboard veggie chili.

I sauteed green pepper and onion in some EVOO until soft. Added two cans of diced tomatoes and a little water and bring to a boil. A can of black beans, a can of red kidney beans, both drained and rinsed, then about 8 oz of frozen corn. Some cumin, chili powder, cilantro. Voila. Veggie chili.

With a slice of toasted, dry wheat bread. Ellen arrived in time for dinner and we ate together before I jetted out the door to get to yoga.

And oh yeah. Yoga class? LOVED IT! I have to say that yogadownload.com prepared me well for this intermediate level class today, it was fab!

I got home and checked on my fruit loot.

Thoughts on dehydrating after today’s experiments:

1. Choosing to run a machine that blows hot air into the house on THE SAME DAY I run the air conditioner trying to cool the house is not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I think I’ll be waiting to try this again until winter.

2. While these turned out ok, honestly I just would have preferred to have eaten the fresh fruit.

3. And third – cut the bananas *a little* thicker, so that you make banana chips instead of banana glue.

A fun thing to try, but not something I see myself doing on a regular basis. At the very least not while it’s 90 degrees and humid outside! Good lord woman. But we munched our dried fruit away and called it a day.

The End.