2012: Reviewed

Every year I like to look back at the goals I set from last year (from this post) and review the years highlights. Best part of 2012? spending the summer with the family in Montana

Worst part? Probably getting robbed, twice. Which is why I don't have any pictures from before April... Anyway, here is the list of goals from last year and my evaluation of them.

• Read 25 books (8 of which are fiction)
• I read 45, 10 of which 17 of which were fiction but not necessarily written as personal advice, which is what I meant. 
• Work out most days a week for 1 hour each day, do yoga once a week
• Mostly accomplished. Yoga has been more consistent since being in Seattle, thanks to an abundance of Living Socials and Groupons. 
• Evaluate purchases before I make them
• Eh, not so much. Moving put a damper on this situation.
• Successfully grow an herb
• Nope. Need to work on this
• Watch less than an hour of TV a day; spend more time outside
• Definitely spent more time outside, especially over the summer in Montana and it was glorious. TV watching was probably more than an hour a day on days I watched to my obsession with How I Met Your Mother in Netflicx
• Volunteer
• Again, moving made this challenging. 
• Devote myself to prayer, being watchful and thankful. Colossians 4:2
• Better than before but need to work on it
• Figure out what it means to invest in relationships
• Not measurable but I did work on this
• National Chemo Certification course
• DONE
• Apply for grad school by 2012
• Modified, I'll be taking classes that will apply to grad school this year but not officially in a program yet. 

Some of my secret goals included spending the summer in Montana with my family and moving to Seattle! Both of which I did. Hooray

Visit to Seattle back in April to interview and scope out the city

From our road trip from TX to Montana.

My niece was born and I was in Montana when it happened. So amazing.

First annual TEAS reunion trip: Sparkle Motion!

Seth's younger brother got married in August in Lubbock, TX

So fun to add another girl to the Knox clan and celebrate with the family

We moved to Seattle! Our first hike to Snow Lake.

Christmas in Montana 2012!

We got to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family,

Such a blessing

Vegan Date Bars

My general philosophy is that if something is vegan it's healthy. Therefore it's okay if I eat one of the vegan date bars as a dessert after breakfast, lunch and dinner. Cool, right?

One of the most fantastic parts about this is that there is NO oven involved. No turning on the oven. woo hoo. 

 Also there are only 6 ingredients. The original recipe had 5 but I didn't have enough almonds so it's a whole 6 ingredients. This recipe is shaping up to be amazing. How could it get better?

 But really, the best best part about bar this is the crust. You wouldn't even know it's vegan. It tastes so delicious and is salty which perfectly balances the the sweetness of the dates.

Vegan Date Bars

(adapted from Oh She Glows)

Ingredients for crust:

• 1 cup raw almonds
• 1/2 cup raw pecans
• 1 1/3 cups old-fashioned oats
• 10 Medjool dates, pitted
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

for filling:

• 30-35 Medjool dates (about 2.5 cups)
• 3/4 cup water

To Make:

1. Roughly chop the dates. In a food processor combine the oats, almonds, pecans and salt until it turns into a fine crumble. Add the 10 dates until combined. Melt the oil in microwave and put that in the food processor too. This mixture should be sticky. Save about one cup of this mixture until the end.
2. Spray an 8x8 pan with non-stick spray. Dump the crust mixture and spread into the bottom of a pan. Press the mixture evenly into the bottom.
3. Clean out the food processor. Bring the 3/4 cup water to a boil in the microwave and put the rest of the dates into the boiling water. Let soak for a 5-10 minutes. 
4. Dump water and dates into food processor and pulse until a paste forms. Scrape down the sides as often as you need to. Now, spread paste over the crust evenly. Finally, sprinkle the part of the crust mixture you saved over the top.
5. Refrigerate for 1 hour up to overnight. Serve with a big glass of almond or soy milk or regular milk. Enjoy!

A little change

A few weeks ago I watched a documentary called "Forks over Knives" on Netflix. Here is summary from the website:

"FORKS OVER KNIVES examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting animal-based and processed foods. The major storyline in the film traces the personal journeys of a pair of pioneering researchers, Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn."

I was totally inspired.

As a medical professional I work in a hospital where most of our "curative" efforts consist of giving people a new pill for every new complaint they have. Unfortunately due to lack of time/resources/education most people accept this and go on and generally don't make any lifestyle changes. I find myself getting endlessly frustrated with our medical system (although sometimes it's the individuals or doctors or myself) because of this. In the documentary they feature several doctors that help people with reversible diseases (like hypertension, heart disease, diabetes type II) stop and even reverse the disease itself with diet and exercise.

And last week I finally picked up a book called Anti-Cancer by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber. (It's been on my book list for months & don't worry, you'll get full review when I finish it). The author was diagnosed with a brain tumor and ends up researching ways to help our bodies and modern medicine fight off cancer (and prevent it) with diet, habits and lifestyle changes. I'm about 50 pages in, but I'm also completely inspired by this as well.

I've thought about changes I need to make for awhile. I'm pretty consistent with exercise, I do the gym thing most days a week and try and do some yoga at home, but I've always been challenged when I think about what I eat/put into my body. Bottom line here is I think I'm going to move away from eating processed food and I'm going to cut down on my intake on animal products. At this point I doubt I will ever be 100% vegan (lets be honest, I had bacon on my breakfast burrito today) but I've started drinking soy milk (which is actually really good) and trying to eat less animal products. We'll see how it goes.

There is a lot more I could expound on related to these topics, but I'll leave it at this for now. I'm still processing and learning most of this myself and I'll have to see where this goes from here.