What a busy and fulfilling week this has been. We
celebrated the beginning of the Jewish Holidays with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish
New Year, and then atoned for all the sugar I have eaten in my life (and other
things!) during Yom Kippur.
As with every Jewish meal, there is always “tradition”
involved. Tradition that goes back generations to our grandmothers and
their grandmothers before them. But, this year we decided it was time to
upgrade the traditional meals to a healthier version.
On Rosh Hashanah, our traditional menu was as follows -
Breaded chicken cutlets, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, challah, coffee
cake, etc…
This year we upgraded to “Unleaded Breaded” Chicken Cutlets,
Grilled Asparagus, Mashed “Fauxtatoes”, and Salad. Organic Apples (&
honey for the children!) for dessert.
Yom Kippur was a bit more difficult because we were
celebrating with another family, with whom we historically spend this holiday
and have long traditions with. Now there were 8 people with 4 kid mouths
to also satisfy!
We began with a small piece of Challah and a blessing to begin the
holiday. Enough for everyone to take a small piece and pass it
along. A sip of wine and a few minutes of reflecting on another year
behind and another year ahead. The menu for the remainder of the meal was
a salad of organic greens, tomatoes, cucumbers and our low sugar dressing;
Filet, Salmon, Organic Bell Peppers and Asparagus all cooked on the grill;
Mashed “Fauxtatoes” (which I was extremely proud of this time), and fresh berries
and melon for dessert… No “Sock It to Me Cake” for us this year.
Everybody ate. Everyone ate a lot because we were
preparing for a fast the next day. But, everyone ate and nobody seemed to
miss the sugar.
Yom Kippur is not a holiday we ever look forward to.
No food or water from after dinner until 7 PM the next night is not easy.
Somehow, this year wasn’t as difficult by comparison to previous years.
For both me and my husband, this year’s fast went pretty smoothly. It
wasn’t the hunger that got to us but we were more aware of our thirst. I
think we normally mix up the hunger and thirst signals and probably eat
unnecessarily when a big glass of water will suffice.
Since we began researching about Diverticulitis, we have
tried to separate eating and drinking in our lives. It is difficult to do
because we are all so used to sitting down to dinner with a drink to wash
everything down. We discovered a few things occur when we eat & drink
at the same time. The liquid is being mixed with our digestion fluids and
our food isn’t being broken down and used correctly, we eat much faster and
much more when we are washing everything down with a drink and when we drink
separate from eating the water goes towards hydration and nothing else. We
can get into more of this in a future post.
To break our fast, we went to a home with good friends and
good food. There were bagels, blintzes, desserts… but actually, the
spread was incredibly low-sugar friendly. We walked around the food table
and ended up with a plate consisting of cream cheese, lox, tomato &
cucumber, some corned beef, tuna salad and egg salad. Trust me, 5 months
ago I would have eaten the bagel, had the blintzes covered in jam, a glass of
orange juice, and probably sampled a dessert or 2. But, I have found that
when I stay focused I never regret not eating the sugar, and I feel great after
I eat.
And we did. We enjoyed our holidays completely and
made our Jewish New Year’s resolution to stay on track!
Me blowing the shofar for the High Holy Days
