Test Kitchen Tuesday

It’s been a quiet week on the blog, but, anything but quiet behind the scenes around here! Warning: There are a lot of words below!

Honestly, this week has been quite a doozie indeed! Before I get into it, I wish to lament the closing of my gym, which I found out about on Wednesday by a sign on the door. Boo! Oh well, there are other gyms, just not other gyms 3 minutes from my house. <Sob.>

Moving on…

For the last few months, I have been really not feeling myself. Run down a lot, cold all the time, and just plain not right. I chalked it up to the crazy months we’ve had of selling houses, moving multiple times, stress at work, and starting a remodel. I mean, that is a lot of change!

But, I finally realized there could be something wrong (listen to your body!), and had a full blood work panel done through WellnessFX.

The beauty of WellnessFX is that if you want to just get an overall health panel, you can do so without needing any doctor’s orders, or worrying about insurance. It’s kind of pricey, but, much less than going to the doctor (at least our doctor) for lab work, and comes with a physician consultation to review your results, should you wish. I figured I would go this route first, so that if everything was normal, I would just go about my day and be re-assured. And, if something was not right, I could go from there.

Anyway, that was a long introduction to say that I found out I am pretty solidly hypothyroid. Everything else was fantastic, but the thyroid came back not good. While that is not ideal, believe it or not, I was somewhat relieved to see this. It explains a lot. And, it proves I am not crazy! My doctor is able to work with the blood work from WellnessFX and we are on track to start figuring out the best solution for me.

So, as I learn more about this condition – which something like 60 million Americans have – and how to thrive regardless of it, I will  most definitely share with you all. It makes getting a kitchen back a huge priority, though. I need to get control of my food supply again. Thankfully 2Chili understands this as well, and we are doing our best to make big house progress. Which, leads me to this update!

We have made a giant to-do list (it’s pages and pages long) and are steadily working our way through it. Since we are doing such a big chunk of the house remodel at once, we are gaining efficiencies, but we are also not making as fast of progress as we’d like on any single room. But, as of last weekend, we have started hanging drywall, which really starts to bring things together and makes the new floor plan  take shape.

It doesn’t seem like much, but hanging drywall always makes me excited, because this is the point where I take over. I even got new drywall tools to celebrate!

Lastly, I got a few new things in the mail today — that have nothing to do with drywall — that I plan to review over the next couple weeks:

• The Be Well Cleanse by Dr. Frank Lipman. This is a 14 day cleanse that a lot of celebrities endorse. I ordinarily wouldn’t pay for a cleanse system, but, based on the recent discovery about my thyroid, I decided to give it a try. The books I’ve read recommend a cleanse every 3-6 months to keep your system running optimally. We have a duathlon this weekend, so I plan to start this on Monday. I am excited to report back to you on this one, as it has received very good independent reviews.
• Jillian Michaels Whey Protein. I am always on the quest to find the best low sugar protein powder, and have actually used this one in the past. I sort of forgot about it, and then remembered, and then decided to try it again with a more discerning eye. After the SunWarrior experiment, anything is an improvement!
• Garden of Life Primal Defense Ultra Probiotics. This is another one of my “hypothyroid”-induced products to try. I have been thinking of trying a probiotic for a while, but decided to go ahead and try it now. This one received great reviews on Amazon, and, I typically think Garden of Life creates high quality products.

And, when I get my temporary kitchen built (we plan to finish the laundry room first and use it as a temp kitchen), I plan to try one of these, a portable NuWave Conduction Cooktop.

Why? Because 2Chili really wants us to get a conduction range in the new kitchen, and we figure a $100 investment to try it out before having a full oven is probably worth the trial cost. What do you guys think? Does anyone use a conduction cooktop?

Whew. That was a lot of info after a bit of a quiet week.

Thanks for reading, and, have a great weekend all! I’ll be back next week with something more fun than medical conditions, drywall, and cleanses!