PIANO RECITAL!

Good early morning,

It's Monday morning, 6 a.m., and I'm feeling good, and ready for a busy day. (I have a job interview tomorrow morning for JAR BAR, a new raw restaurant in Center City! Wish me luck!)

Yesterday was Cliff's students' piano recital!

It was a wonderful afternoon...so many beautiful tunes! It occured to me that it was such an old fashioned way to spend an afternoon, listening to classical piano played. No computers, no texting. Just marveoulous music making! It was like an old fashioned salon recital. Remember in the movie Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly when they would play piano for each other to entertain each other? It felt just like that. It was so special! Cliff was a very proud 'papa' to his 18 students. Many exceeded his expectations!

Above, here we are after the recital at the Chestnut Hill Grill. I knew i could get a good salad there, which I did, yummy. "Miss, I'm a vegan, and a raw one, so you have to bear with me. Could i please have the chicken salad with no chicken, a bigger salad, no cooked veggies, just lettuce, shredded cabbage, cucumber, carrot, avocado, onion, no croutons, no cheese, no cooked corn, with some vinaigrette on the side?" Next time i'll get fresh lemon and olive oil. Cooked vinegar made my belly feel a little funny after dinner. Too acidic.

I was still starving, so i ordered a nice little bowl of guacamole after the salad. I hadn't eaten all afternoon. I was glad I asserted myself by asking for more food. I hadn't seen 'guacamole' on the menu, but since they had avocado, i asked if the chef could make me up some guacamole. It arrived with fresh pico de gallo on top. It satisfied me, finally...but when i got home, i still had a big fruity shake and another salad. I was hungry! I guess all of the activity?

And it's 6:45 a.m. now and i'm hungry again!

I love this picture of Cliff, in a contemplative mood at the piano.

That's my babe! I love you, honey!

Cliff's been working out again, riding his bicycle daily, and has lost over 20 lbs between the many months of food combining we did, plus adding the bicycling back into his life.

Talk about exercise, yesterday was a WHIRLWIND of activity for me, i was MOVING all day. Though it wasn't necessarily formal exercise, I burned up calories galore, i'm sure, making food, packing the car, transporting food to the church from the car, setting up the refreshment table, running back and forth to the church refrigerator, packing up the refreshment table and putting everything back where it belonged, vacuming the church after the recital, etc... It was a FULL FULL day of movement and I was starving! I earned that guacamole!

Compare that to just lying in front of the TV all day like i was doing when i was binge eating, and you will understand why I am losing weight eating olive oil on my salads with sides of guacamole!

Here is the nice little spread I put together at the recital! We made sure to have vegan as well as traditional offerings, as several of the students' families are veggie people! We had traditional pound cake, cookies, cheese and crackers, veggies and dairy dip. But i also made a wonderful fresh hummus with pita, we brought pretzel sticks, made 2 fruit platters, and a i stuffed some dates with raw nut butter!


The stuffed dates were so yummy! Guess what i stuffed the dates with? The Macademia Brazil Nut Butter that i won in the Nut Butter Poetry Contest! They were a big hit!

xoxo michelle joy