We have started to talk about a date for our move to Puerto Rico. They definitely relate to the amount of money we need to save up, but also some things we need to take care of and line up before we leave (as you can see on the vine).
If our projections are correct, we will meet our projected amount needed to move to Puerto Rico sometime around the spring/summer of 2013. Then we figured we could get through another nice summer in Colorado and move to Rincon sometime before the winter of 2013. I calculated that we are about 500 days away! Five hundred days. That seems both short and long. I am now into the 5 digits of days alive on Earth so 500 days represents about 4% of my lifetime! On the other hand, that’s only about 18 months. Another cold winter to get through and then it will be Endless Summer if we want it to be.
Of course life can throw any number of curveballs at you, especially when you try to plan, so we are flexible. No need to worry or rush. But if all the stars align, it could make for some nice symmetry. By October 2013, we will have lived in our house in Greeley a little over 10 years! We will have written our blog for 5 years! We will have owned our property in Puerto Rico for 2 years. October 5, 2013 is exactly 500 days from May 23, 2012. May 23rd, 2012 is the 1 year anniversary since we bought the property in Rincon, Puerto Rico! Pretty cool stuff!
We have also been thinking about all the things we want to do in Colorado before the big move. Soon we will be making a Colorado “bucket list” so to speak and checking things off that list. Looking forward and counting down to making our dreams come true!
Cassie and I have been brainstorming for what we’d like to do with the house. We’ve told how we go back and forth on either tearing it down and building a concrete place from scratch or working with what we’ve got.
Lately we have been leaning towards working with what we’ve got. It would move us quicker to our goal of moving to Rincón to keep what we have and simply remodel it. There are a few things we would like to achieve.
A main floor bathroom.
A better bathroom in the master bedroom
More space / Separate living space
More light / brighten it up
We are pretty much certain that we’d take the bathroom that was built on the deck down. It seems like too much of an add-on and doesn’t really fit. So what we’d do is just move it to the side of the house and integrate it into the main house structure. We can make an entrance to it from the inside of the house and from the deck.
The bathroom in the upstairs bedroom is only a toilet and a sink. We can extend the room and reconfigure that bathroom to take up more space. We can put in a shower or bath so that the master bedroom upstairs is a bit more complete. We are thinking about also adding an upper deck off the master bedroom.
We can pour a concrete floor under the house, then close in the lower area and frame rooms and a bathroom. This would provide more living space and/or a separate living area which could be used for visitors when they stay with us.
As far as more light, we will take out some of the shutter windows and put in more traditional glass windows on the ocean side. We are thinking about also putting in a glass sliding door to let more light in. I’ve seen some of them that are rated for hurricane force impacts. I’d have to do more research on the windows available and how they hold up in high winds, but adding slots for storm shutters /plywood would be part of the plan.
We finished our juice fast a little earlier than we had planned. We went 5 days instead of 7. The weekend is much more difficult to fast than during the week because a lot of our activities on the weekend revolve around food: making breakfast together, going out to lunch, getting coffee or frozen yogurt, hanging out with friends (and food of course), etc. And this weekend was a three-day one with the holiday. So we went all of Saturday through Sunday night when we broke the fast with some Orange Roughy fish as our first non-fruit or vegetable.
Orange roughy and vegetables for dinner
I think we did pretty good overall. We feel a lot lighter and cleaned out. As we added more food today such as an omelet from our chickens’ eggs, we noticed flavors a lot more. It feels really good to be cleaned out and start fresh. It definitely makes you want to eat healthier and without added sugars, salts and oils/fats. We made an avocado, tomato, pepper salad (in photo) and didn’t even need to add any salt. We just put a little cumin, garlic and lime juice into it and it was great!
I think I would do another juice fast sometime in the future if we start to feel lethargic or like we are getting into our old eating patterns. Britton said he would start to feel pretty hungry around 3pm in the afternoon but once we drank more juice he would feel a lot better. We also found the fruits and vegetables that we really like including carrot juice! We found this 25 lb bag of carrots at King Soopers for only $9!
We are planning on continuing to juice daily as a replacement for some of our meals or as a supplement. These juices are really great and give a lot of the benefits of the whole plant. In addition, Britton lost about 10 lbs and I lost about 5! That wasn’t the main purpose of this fast, but a nice side benefit. We have also been a lot more appreciative of food in general and especially of good, healthy food in particular. If you’ve ever been curious about a juice fast, I would recommend it whole-heartedly, especially if you have a surplus of fresh fruits or veggies.
Britton and I recently watched the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, a documentary about an Australian man who was about 80-90 pounds overweight and decided to go on a juice fast for 60 days in America. The fast would help as he called it “reboot” his system and encourage or inspire Americans to try juicing during his road trip. Along the way he met a few people who were up to the challenge and decided to try the juice fast as well.
The juicer hidden amongst the various fruits and vegetables
We thought it sounded interesting and had positive results. A sort of opposite Super-Size Me. Since we already like fresh-squeezed juice -usually just citrus, we thought we’d try juicing other things. We researched a few brands and some of our friends recommended the Jack LaLanne brand. It’s a mid-range price model. At about $100 it’s a little spendy, but it meets some of our criteria: 1) It’s health-promoting 2) it’s for food (we have to eat something anyway) and 3) it’s something we can both enjoy together. We are planning to do a week long juice fast this week, but so far we’ve just been enjoying trying out various recipes.
We usually shop at King Soopers for our general shopping but went over to Sprouts to pick up a bunch of fruit and vegetables because Sprouts has the best prices on fresh fruit and vegetables. For instance, we got cucumbers, red and green peppers all for 33 cents each! Plus they have a lot of organic options as well.
Here are some of the recipes we have tried out: Power Up:
4 celery stalks
1/2 cup spinach
1 medium apple
1/2 cucumber
1/2 green bell pepper This Power Up recipe is similar to the Mean Green recipe in the movie except they used kale instead of spinach Power Up Recipe (Doubled)
The green juices are even better for you than the fruit juices because there is a lot less sugar (from fruit).
Glasses of Green Juice
It’s kind of strange to drink green juice, but it actually tastes really pretty good. Like a green garden in summer with a little sweetness from the apple. It’s cool how the fresh juice is all frothy too.
We also tried the Carrot/Apple/Ginger Juice:
2 medium carrots
1 apple
1 inch of ginger root
Ingredients for carrot juice
Carrot going down the shute
Carrot/Apple/Ginger Juice
Carrot is surprisingly sweet when it is juiced. It’s really good, even without the apple. We made some with just carrot and celery and it was really refreshing.
We are looking forward to summer when we will have our garden to help provide us with juicer fodder. We were also thinking about Puerto Rico. It will definitely be useful when we have all the mangoes from that huge tree falling all over the property.
Pulp headed for the chickens
Besides juice, it also has the pulp which is most of the fiber. This is good to use as well. Carrot, zucchini and apple pulps can all be put in breads and cakes. The vegetable pulps can be used in savory meals like meat loaf or omelettes. We’ve even made a sorbet with some of the tropical fruit pulp like pineapple, mango and orange. The pulp we don’t use goes to the chickens which makes their eggs even healthier! Works out great. Nothing goes to waste.
I’ll keep you up to date on the juice fast that is coming up. Hopefully it will work out well. We don’t have 80 lbs to lose, but we could use a boost in energy and antioxidants and we could all use a little help getting those 5-9 daily recommended fruits and vegetables!