it's time....oh my, it's time

The month of February has been full of three things: fun, stress and cake.

A few birthday parties, a baby shower, a valentine's dance and throwing a surprise 30th birthday party for Trish has meant a ton of planning, a general revealing in all the love and blessings in our lives and way, WAY too much cake.

I go through periods of my life where cake is in its appropriate place of occasional dessert.  For these stretches of time I am incredibly thankful.  Then I go through months like this one where cake is on my mind more than it should be and I would give up any salad or tofu stir-fry to sink a fork into a stack of frosted layers.

I'm not saying it's healthy, people. I'm just telling you the situation.

Then there are people like Sandi who can take or leave it.  "I will just have a few bites," she says.  And then she does, which fortunately and unfortunately leaves more for me.

Besides being on opposite ends of the introvert/extrovert spectrum and me being Type A and she being whatever type is so laid back it occasionally needs its pulse checked, we differ greatly on the dessert spectrum. 

Sandi brought this massive piece of chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting home when we celebrated Valentine's Day. 

And can you see what she is eating instead?!

Can you get a sense of what I'm working with here?  Occasional cake addict meets goody two shoes clementines-for-dessert girl!

It's a good thing I love her so much or I might resent the hell out of her.

Aaaanyway, this brings me to my real point. 

It is time for the clean food challenge again!  Starting tomorrow and lasting a grueling, I mean AWESOME, seven days, I will be going it without sugar, alcohol, dairy, gluten, meat (easy) and caffeine (yikes!).  I will be subsiting on unprocessed, mostly raw foods including fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and an obscene amount of water. 

Yes, after this month it is time for a reset, a clean house, a blank slate.  I'm shaking in my shoes about no coffee or tea and I'm contemplating a trip out for some cake tonight. 

If anyone has so much of an inkling to do this please email me at phoenix8@roadrunner.com.  I would love to have the power in numbers. Even if you don't think you can do seven days, try 3 or 4!  It is kind of amazing how wonderful eating clean makes you feel. 

I will be posting recipes, anecdotes about finding bathrooms to accomadate the gallon of water I will drink a day, annoying prosthelitizing that will make you and me both wonder why I would ever eat cake again and my usual outward processing of my life experience. 

Sound fun, huh?