A beach day, finally!!!

The main motivation for us to change to a plant-based, whole foods diet was for our health, especially Bill's. He takes meds for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and gerd. The first two can be controlled with diet, somewhat, but not too sure about the gerd. We have now been eating this way for 6 months - not 100%, but probably about 95%. We knew that while in Cedar Key we would have the opportunity to eat fresh fish and that Bill was hoping to spend most of his time fishing. Unfortunately, the latter did not take place as there have been NO FISH! Not any that you would pull out of the water to eat, anyway, we think it's just been too cold. He has been toying around with taking his blood pressure medication and the numbers really seem to be all over the place - they'll be super low and then go up, so he's back on them for now. His cholesterol medication he really wanted to stop taking because we eat little to no cholesterol - but those numbers are also highly affected by heredity so we needed to get his blood work done. He fasted all Monday night and Tuesday morning we drove the hour into Gainesville to the blood lab. After driving from one lab to another we finally found the office and he signed in, only to be inadvertently crossed off the list! This man has had no coffee and nothing to eat for over 12 hours now and he was getting a little fidgity - he finally went up to the front to inquire and then got right in. We just got his numbers back and aside from his PSA & glucose being a little high, we were pretty darn happy with the results:

LDL:  106

HDL:  91

Triglycerides:  125

Glucose:  102

TOTAL:  222
Total to HDL: 2.44 - excellent!!

Now if he can just give up one of his daily martini's he could get that glucose number down! His total is higher than we'd like but considering his LDL was more than the total before medication we're ecstatic.

After we got some coffee in the poor man we headed off to Trader Joes to stock up and then to the Reggae Shack Cafe which was supposed to have quite a few vegan options and some interesting Jamaican beer.

Everything "GREEN" is safe to eat for Vegans!

The food was fabulous and Bill had the Escovitch especially because it was made with the Scotch Bonnet peppers that his brother Kurt has been telling him about. I had the tempeh sandwich in a brown gravy sauce which was like a bbq sauce and their "ditty fries" which were wonderful! I'm glad we had the opportunity to come into Gainesville again. I really like this city - it's a total college town (which I love) and has a lot of whole food grocery stores and restaurants. The Citizen's Co-op is really fabulous with it's own garden across the street.

We got home around 1:30 and the sun was shining so we packed up our beach stuff and hopped on our bikes to spend the rest of the day lounging in the sand and staring at the gulf watching the dolphins play. As you know our bikes are quite colorful and always bring a smile to anyone passing us by...we had them parked up on the grass a little ways away from us.

While we were sitting there a man with a thick English accent came up to us and said, "excuse me, but are you the hashers?" I had seen this guy walking by us a little earlier but didn't pay him any attention. I answered, of course, "why yes we are, and how did you know?!" He said - the bikes and not understanding I looked again at them and remembered the hash flag that I had on my bike and the beer mug on Bill's. It was great fun and we chatted for awhile. He owns a home here in Cedar Key and was with his family, who were leaving the next day, but would be here on his own for the next two weeks. We told him all about the Trailer Trash Hash and the Tiki Bar, which he did not know about even though he's had the home here for several years. He said he would come by the bar - we hope we see him there!! I always forget I have that hash flag on my bike (thanks to BATT for that gift) but it's come in handy a few times now. We were next accosted by a young couple, with a bunch of little kids, who liked the music we were playing and wanted to befriend us but Bill had been watching the guy all day and had no interest to go there - never a dull moment for us!

Yesterday Bill spent the day cooking again - I love it! He made his wonderful poblano stuffed garlic mashed potatoes and a really yummy Creamy Roasted Garlic Tomato soup (he did add collard greens, kale and zucchini to the recipe) for dinner while I got some work done. We walked down to the tiki bar just as it was starting to rain hoping to see our "hasher" but he wasn't there - we did have to wait about an hour though for a clearing of the skies as we were getting pounded with a thunderstorm. 

Today he's back at it making his, already famous, Crazy, Sexy Chili with dried beans (not canned) and using the pressure cooker - can't wait for dinner!