Well, I take it all back. I have sort of snickered at the idea of having a personal trainer. Never again. I thought all I wanted to do was walk on the gym treadmill when the weather was bad. I have seen the light. I started on my arms and upper body, machines, a soupcon of free weights, and today I was able to increase the resistance and/or reps. by 40 %. I already have more energy. With time (I am doing this three times a week,) I think my rheumatoid arthritis will inhibit my knees and ankles less and less, and who knows where I can go from there? It really is a science, using breathing, body placement, and weights to gain strength and tone, and incidentally lose pounds, and I should have known it all along. Just like fewer Twinkies do not a diet make, doing more exercising the wrong way does not make a good exercise plan.
Now, to the legume recipe I mentioned previously. I started adding more legumes to my diet when I found I didn't actually have to spend time cooking them. Kroger's began carrying a Good Life Food product named Melissa's Lentils in the produce section. They are steamed and vacuum packed and ugly as sin. Snip the sealed 8+oz. package and dump the lumpy greenish-brownish-blackish unappetizing heap into a skillet, into which you have already put a little olive oil. So much the better if the olive oil is the kind with herbs that you use for dipping.
Add plenty of finely minced garlic (the kind that comes packed in oil in the produce department is fine) and heat on medium. You will need to break up the lentil mound and stir it around a bit. Add almost anything that strikes your fancy. Chopped sweet red and yellow peppers will improve its looks a lot. Chopped kale is good. (When isn't it?) So are chopped onions. Low sodium soy sauce is a good addition in small amounts, because lentils need some salt. If not soy, grind in a little sea salt. Andouille sausage, the vegetarian kind, is delicious. I have also used small chunks of previously cooked chicken which turns this side dish into a healthy main course.
If you spend more than five minutes on this you are trying way too hard. And if you can't find the steamed legumes, buy a bag of the dried ones (more work but cheaper)in the aisle with the rice and pasta and follow package directions, leaving out most of the salt and all of the bacon that most packages suggest.
And now, put your best vibes into the universe so that I might find a dear, lost friend. Jack (not his name, of course)was a friend so much on the same mental plane that we almost thought as one person. Often I repeated things to him that had happened in his past that he had never mentioned to me. We used to joke that we didn't need a phone, and it was true. We went our separate ways when I was about thirty and went to law school, and he married a young woman who had idolized him since she was a teenager.
Years passed with only a couple of contacts, and then nothing. About a year ago, I heard that his beautiful wife had died, that it had been an unhappy marriage, and, that with her death, he became unable to walk. He was in a wheelchair for a time, but with therapy had started a slow comeback.
Finally, early this summer, I reached him on the last phone number I had for him, and we talked for a long time. I told him I would be back in town (our home town)in the fall, and I wanted to get together for lunch. Now after unanswered emails, phone calls to a line with a filled mailbox, and every source I can think of, nothing. I am haunted by what he said when I told him the autumn date I was hoping we could get together: "That's such a long time. For me, at least."
Vibes have worked before.
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