I'm still here, though I haven't been blogging as much lately. February and March both left something to be desired when it comes to stress and self control, but my mind and kitchen are still very much focused on the Gatherer diet. It came so easy the first month, and I felt quite satisfied, then for some reason I rebelled. The rebellion had nothing to do with the diet, I love the foods I'm allowed, it had everything to do with me.

Anyway, last night I baked these cranberry flax muffins and they're great! I used 1/4 cup of teff flour, for 1/4 cup of the flax meal, as I prefer the way it turns out, I didn't add any vanilla, used ginger instead of nutmeg, used mac nut oil, no orange zest, and agave for sweetener. I mixed most of the pecans into the batter, and put some on top. They aren't very sweet, but are lovely bran muffins, I love the tart cranberries. I had some frozen cranberries from the holidays, and just let them soak a bit longer in the boiling water. So far today they have stopped me from cheating on any of the kid's snacks. (I hid away all the easter candy where nobody thinks about it, that helps

It's been a rough month, after that flu or whatever I had, I've been having trouble with my sinuses. I forgot how miserable sinus trouble can be, just by virtue of location, it can interfere with so much. I took antibiotics for it after a few days, I was too miserable not to, but never felt like they did the whole job. I didn't want to go back for more though, so I started using my neti pot twice a day to keep the infection away. Whenever I cut back to once a day, it would start to gradually get worse again. I think my sinuses are just sore and dry now, as I'm not stuffy and the neti pot doesn't get much out besides the saline I put in.

I tried putting some Alkalol in the neti, but I think it was a little late in the game for that. I can see how it would help when they are congested or infected, but at this stage it didn't seem to help much. Then I felt like I'd snorted curry powder after using it. I'll keep it in my medicine cabinet in case I need it again, but I'm sticking with saline for now.

My stress response with eating hasn't improved as much as I'd hoped. A healthy diet still requires a lot of planning and no skipped meals, or else I eat convenience food junk. As soon as my son started to get sick, I went into that cycle again. That didn't help my sinuses! I've also had work to do, housework to do, and responsibilities at home...add that to a brief vacation, and I've slipped up a lot this month. I'm getting organized again now. and hoping to see the scale start to go down again. It hasn't gone up as much as I though it would, but it certainly hasn't gone down!