The Sandcastle

But not what you’d think. A couple of weeks ago I made myself sick eating vegetables. It came about this way.

My doctor and nutritionist have both been after to me eat more vegetables. But, I find it really hard to make small changes in my diet. Then I read a bunch of stuff on the internet about Primal Eating. The idea is to eat what our original ancesters would have eaten: mostly vegetables, some fruits and nuts, and meat. No bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, etc. Why they think our ancesters would have cooked meat but not potatoes I don’t know but that’s the plan.

So I decided to try it when we were in an RV park with full hookups so I could wash vegetables and use the microwave without having to worry about running out of water or power. Went whole hog so to speak. Breakfast would mostly be an egg scramble with vegetables in it. Lunch would be a big tossed salad with canned chicken or tuna on it. Supper would be chicken or steak with a half plate full of vegetables.

Turned myself into a digestive machine and spent almost half of each day sitting in the bathroom. Couldn’t go anyplace. Couldn’t do anything. Cramps! Oh, my! More cramps than I ever had in my life!

Tried to wait it out to see if my body would adjust. Kept eating that way for a week. Nope. Not getting any better.

So, I decided that was not the eating plan for me. Now I still eat an egg scramble with vegetables some days but not every day. And I still sometimes eat a big tossed salad but I did that before. And I am eating more vegetables with dinner but not every night and not half a plate full.

Still I learned some good foods while trying this plan. Here’s a couple of my favorites.

Apple Scramble

Finely chop an apple and saute’ it in butter/margarine in a small skillet. Add 1/2 cup Egg Beaters, 1 packet Splenda, and cinnamon to taste. Stir until egg is set. Serves 1.

Sesame Beans

Steam 2 cups frozen green beans according to package directions. Drain and toss with 1 teaspoon sesame oil and 2 Tablespoons slivered almonds. Serves 2?

The next one I want to try is Lemon Carrots

In a 1 quart microwave safe bowl, stir together  1/4 cup water and 2 teaspoons lemon juice. Add 8 ounces of baby carrots. Cover and microwave on high for 7 minutes or until carrots become tender. Serves 2.

Doesn’t that sound good? And easy enough for even us non-cooks to make.

But, I think I’ll have a potato or some rice or a slice of bread with dinner sometimes, too. And now I can eat the whole slice of pizza instead of having to scrape off and eat just the toppings. 🙂

TTYL,

Linda

Jeri & Terry came over to play cards and I helped Jeri loose her favorite game then beat them all at Dave’s favorite game.

Ed & Linda invited me to go with them to play Bingo. I won $31; they won nothing.

Steve & Carol invited me to go to the pool with them. I brought my instructions for doing water aerobics and talked them into joining me for a good workout instead of the relaxing swim they thought they were in for.

Want to be my friend?  🙂

TTYL,

Linda

When you live full time in an RV you do not have a standard phone. You have a cell phone. If there are two of you, you probably each have a cell phone. We have two phones.

Dave’s is an iPhone with a contract at AT&T. Mine is a dumb phone with a contract long expired but still being used at T-Mobile. One of these days I’m going to get an iPhone with Verizon.

Why? Let me tell you what happened today.

An email informed us our friends Steve and Carol would be moving into the same park we are in today. We said, if they let us know when they got here, we could get together and do something. So they came, they called, but we didn’t know.

You see my dumb phone does not get a signal in this park and I forgot to tell Steve and Carol about that. So they called my phone and left a voice message. This was apparently early afternoon. But, my phone did not tell them I would not get that message.

So we spent the afternoon wondering what happened to them while they spent the afternoon wondering what happened to us. We finally decided they didn’t make it here today so went out to supper.

In town, my phone rang to tell me I had a voice mail. From Steve. Hours ago.

I returned his call using Dave’s phone and we’ll meet up tomorrow.

Dumb phone!

TTYL,

Linda

We recently joined a membership campground. Emerald Cove RV Resort, part of the Colorado River Adventures system, is technically in California but it is right across the Colorado River from Parker, Arizona, and everything here runs on Arizona time. But, it apparently runs on California logic.

As members of this park we can come for two weeks for free. Then we need to leave for a week before we can come back for two more weeks for free. OR. We can buy our week out for $95. That means for $95 we can camp for five weeks.

So we came for our two free weeks and were assigned a pull-through site with 50 amp power and a view of the river.

The views to left and right are not wonderful but acceptable. Keep in mind that the RV on the right is actually two spaces away–normally there is another one between us and it.

The two weeks went well, the weather is excellent, and the shopping is acceptable. We were comfortable where we were. Moving is more work than I wanted to do for reasons I will give in a different post. So we decided to stay, paying for what should have been our week out. Thus Dave went off to make arrangement.

When he came back he said we could stay. Sort of. The site we were in was not available to people paying for their week out so we would have to move to a different site.

So we packed up and moved. To a back-in site with 30 amp electricity and this view.

So the best sites are free and the lesser sites cost $13.50 a night. Hmmm.

This membership park camping is going to be challenging. There are eight parks in our “system” that we can use under the same pricing method. But we also now have memberships in two other systems. One of them the price varies by the type of park we go to and the other one uses a points system to determine where you can stay. I wonder if we will ever figure out all this?

All of this is because we finally slowed down, staying longer in each place so we thought we’d save money by joining a park system. I wonder if we will?

TTYL,

Linda

Froggi Donna asked us on her blog about games we played. http://2takinga5th.blogspot.com/2011/02/childhood-games.html

That made me think about games we’ve taken camping with us pretty much all our lives. Even when we were backpacking off the beaten track we took a games pack that looked much like this:

It used to be in a fold-top sandwich bag but now resides in a quart-sized Zip-Loc bag which is the right width but about twice as tall as it need to be.

The bag now holds this:

Two decks of cards so we can play Canasta, Hearts, 500 ,or Hell.

Six dice. It used to have five so we could play Yahtzee. Then we learned to play Farkel so now we have six dice. Which means we can also have two tables playing Bunco. No gambling, though, or the Bunco Squad could show up at your door.

The pencil and paper are, of course, for keeping score. The filled out papers are rules for games we play seldom enough to not trust our memories. Other games we just agree on the rules before start.

And that funny little key-chain thing is a cribbage board. It is finely machined, lightweight metal with metal pegs that are much easier to use than they look like they would be.

All of this weighs only ounces and takes little room in any type of travel carrier.

That’s the indoor games.

Next Donna asked people about outdoor games. Here’s the one our daughter gave us when we went full-time in our RV. I laid a toothpick on it so you can see how small it is.

But, when removed from its bag, it opens itself to become…

…a flying saucer!

I throw it and you chase it, right?

TTYL,

Linda