In Which I Am Hardcore And Eat Bee Pollen

Did you get that? I am hardcore and I ate bee pollen this weekend. (Not I am hardcore because I ate bee pollen. The bee pollen is totally a side gig.) I am hardcore because yesterday I rode my bike on the trainer for 45 minutes then went OUTSIDE in the RAIN and FORTY-FOUR degree weather to do track drills* and run three miles and then went to the pool for my swim workout. That is the hardcorest (hardest core?) I've ever been.

[Insert your own segue here because I can't come up with one] on Saturday, Donna and I went to Whole Foods with the following list:
(<--)Bee pollen, wheat germ, kale, edamame, wine**, eucalyptus soap, barley malt, flaxseeds, and almond butter. The barley malt is for John's bread making endeavors and the soap is Donna's favorite. The rest of the bizarro things on the list? All for eating. I put them on the list. Me! Eating shit like kale and flaxseeds!! How did this happen?

As little girls in the 70's, my sister and I got dragged to the Good Life Health Food Store. It smelled weird. The walls were harvest gold, the letters on the sign were chocolate brown. (Those letters were the chocolatiest things in the whole place. Who on earth came up with the idea that "carob" is an adequate substitute for chocolate? Can we shoot that person?) Anyway, my mom wasn't uber crunchy but she loved that health food store. At seven, I tried to like it too, for her sake. The flowery herbal hair conditioner was nice. The vanilla protein snack sticks were ok. The carrot candy and oily peaunut butter? Not ok at all. They squicked me out. Did I mention the place smelled weird?

Then along came the 80's - woo hoo! High school meant my mother (whom I no longer wanted to please) was working as a news producer (i.e. never home). My friends & I were hanging out at McDonald's, the arcade, and the food court in the mall. Coca cola! French fries! And also bulimia! The 80's - not so healthy for me.

Then I was in the Navy and it was back to someone else being in charge of what I ate. I assume the food at the chow hall was moderately healthy. To be honest, I don't remember thinking about it one way or the other. What I do remember is lots of black coffee on watch, lots of exercise at 5 am and lots of alcohol on the weekends I didn't have watch.

Then I was in college - and ridiculously poor. I ate the most substantial food I could given my $15 a week (yes, a week) budget. There was a "Co-op" on campus that my friends dragged me to once in a while. (I was never entirely clear on exactly what the cooperative aspect of it was.) It was in a corner of the basement of the student union. It was part health food store, part weirdo cafeteria and was staffed by people with dreads and berets crocheted out of hemp. You know the kind of people who rub lava rocks on their pits and try to tell you that it works just as well as the toxic and environmentally irresponsible deodorant you use - when you know for a fact it doesn't work at all, much less as well - because boy, do those people smell bad? Yeah - the co-op. It was enough to put me off health food again for another decade or two.

Then came mommyhood and moderation in all things. I was now only moderately poor but also moderately obsessed with walking the right line between health food and junk food to feed my family. Of course I wanted my kids to be healthy but I also did not want them to be picked on. No way was I going to be that mommy who uses applesauce instead of sugar to sweeten brownies or the one who puts rice cakes soaked in carrot juice into the Spiderman lunch box. I was the kind of mommy who had family dinners by candlelight (because kids who can't see that it's green eat it without rebelling) and also the kind of mommy who would mix peanut butter and gummy bears into oatmeal. I think I must have found the right balance somewhere along the way because even though my kids live to be allowed energy drinks and pop tarts - they also eat their veggies. Saturday night the dinner menu was roasted chicken and veggies (broccolini, carrots, potatoes, garlic and kale) with Bakerella's Cake Bites (by way of Pioneer Woman's blog) for dessert. At the end of the night - there were some leftover cakebites but the kale and broccolini were gone! Three of the five kids had gone back for seconds on the kale. Woo hoo!

Somewhere along the way - I've found the right balance for me too. I no longer see the world divided into two camps: the smelly, lentil- loving, breathing-through-one-nostril, yoga folks on one side and the mostly manic, chardonnay sipping, tiny, overly perfumed and estee laudered, aerobics ladies on the other. I can be a little of both and neither, all at the same time. I can have my Zone and Eat Clean too! I am excited about my training for the half ironman and love learning more about nutrition so I can fuel properly. I'm braver in all ways. I don't mind trying a supplement or two. Bee pollen (for energy), wheat germ (for fiber)***, flaxseeds (for a healthy heart, hair, and skin) - sure I'll try that!
<---Tosca Reno is pretty damn hot - and she puts all that muck in her oatmeal*** every morning. You BET I'll try it! Did you know she's ten years older than I am?! Yeah, she doesn't look like she smells weird either. So now I'm off to eat a bowl of crunchy fiber twigs ****while I read race reports from the weekend! Ciao.

TODAY I LOVE: trying new things (even if some of them turn out to be yucky)!


*Didn't fall down once thankyouverymuch. And? That karaoke one? I ROCK at that! Those long ago tapdance lessons and aerobics classes (where we did the same thing but called it the grapevine) paid off more than I thought. Woo hoo!
**See? We may be turning into crunchy weirdos but we still like our White Burgundy every once in a while. Only, RATS! We forgot to buy wine even though it was on the list!! I think we got too distracted trying to figure out where barley malt would be.
***Do not believe anyone who tells you wheat germ tastes good sprinkled on popcorn. It doesn't. It tastes vile. And weird. And since I'm throwing out advice on this hippie food - let me also tell you that bee pollen is not sweet and delicious like all those bee pollen pushers say it is. It is dry and a little rank in a citrus-y kind of way. It tastes the way the froth from an Orange Julius smells. If you mix it in your oatmeal, you are condemned to a whole bowl of that taste. Next time just pop a teaspoon of it into your mouth and wash it down with a glass of water. Same burst of energy. Way less suffering. (Oh - and skip it entirely if you're allergic to bees or honey.)
****Crunchy fiber twigs?!! Who the hell thought the idea of eating twigs of any description, much less crunchy and fibery ones, was a marketing bonus? If that is the best that can be said about this cereal then I'm giving the rest of the box to my hound dog who eats deer poop. I'll let you know how it goes.