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| Huge boulders placed on the beach as a breakwater or were they there all along? |
A few days ago I wrote to the lovely property owners of our upcoming vacation rental in Trinity Beach, Australia beginning on June 11th. I posed a question to Andy, the owner of the property for which I anticipated a negative response: “Is there a blender available for our use during the 89 night stay?” Only about half of our vacation rentals have had blenders.
With the huge time difference of 20 hours between Hawaii and Trinity Beach, Australia, I didn’t expect to hear back for a day or so. In no time at all, Andy replied that they had a blender and would let us use it during our stay. We were thrilled.
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| A lone tree near the shore on the Kauai Path. |
Why do we so desperately need a blender? Over the past few years, as we fine-tuned our diet, we’ve stopped using products containing soy, vegetable, and seed oils and any products containing chemicals. Store-bought mayonnaise contains all of these.
I’ve been making a walnut (a nut, not a seed) oil dressing and yesterday, I made a bacon grease mayo that was delicious. With our low carb high fat (LCHF), grain, starch, and sugar-free way of eating, saving the grease from nitrate-free bacon over several days, left us with the one cup of clear, clean, chemical-free oil needed to make a perfect mayo.
You may cringe at this thought. If I were to try to explain how it’s safe if not healthful on our way of eating to consume bacon grease every day on our salads, it would take me more than the 1000+ post we’ve done so far.
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| A bushy path to the beach on the Kauai Path. |
There are numerous scientific books I’ve posted here that explains it better than I. If you’d like to see that list again, please feel free to write to me and I’ll resend you the list that is the basis of this way of eating.
Oh, it’s easy for me to talk about health when I’ve been suffering from an infection for over a week, now slightly better on day two of taking Cipro. No diet, no lifestyle change, and no exercise modality can make any of us exempt from illness. If there was, we’d be doing it! Being sick in a strange land is awful.
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| The beach in downtown Kapaa. |
So for those of you who either have adopted this way of eating or are considering doing so, here’s the recipe:
Jess’s Baconnaise
2 egg yolks from pasteurized eggs (readily available at most grocery stores)
1 tsp. prepared mustard
1 T. lemon juice
1 cup bacon fat, strained or not (Don’t refrigerate it before using, only after it’s made. If the bacon fat is solid, place it in hot water in the sink to let it liquefy. Don’t heat it in the microwave. Hot grease won’t work. It will cook the egg yolks which you don’t want).
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| A house during construction above the Kauai Path which has a magnificent distant view of the sea. |
Please don’t consume a high fat and high carb diet together. It’s a lethal combination! It’s that way of eating that is causing diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and obesity all over the world.
Please read about this way of eating before adopting this lifestyle to see if its right for you and also check with your doctor, although most doctors didn’t study nutrition in medical school for more than a few hours and still believe in the low fat, high grain diet that we were fed by congress in the 1970s. Read the book by Nina Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise, if you’d like to see the facts.
Anyway, enough pontificating for today. I apologize if I bore those of you who have little interest in these topics.
In any case, Andy offered the blender and we were almost as appreciative of Andy in Australia as were with Mario in Fiji who purchased a stove for us as told in this post of a few weeks ago.
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| The Kauai Path is well maintained and has several restroom buildings such as this and lifeguard vehicles with surfboards for aiding in water rescues. |
Gosh, maybe it really is OK to ask for what we want. In our old lives, we hesitated to ever ask for anything we wanted or needed from others. We always tried to do it ourselves, never wanting to impose. How we’ve learned from experience!
Continuing on…yesterday, I received an email from a lovely woman I’d met while on the tour of the Princeville Botanical Garden, asking for a reading list on my anti-inflammation way of eating.
I wouldn’t normally bring up my diet on a tour but when I refused to taste the fruit from the trees and the sugar-added-chocolates during the cacao beans demonstration, I was asked why I refused to taste either. In brief, I explained, and yet, the questions kept coming during breaks on the tour. Today, after I’m done here, I will send Barbara the list. If you’d like a copy of this list, please send me an email.
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| In every direction, a mountain view enhances the exquisite scenery in Kauai. On most days, there are full clouds hovering over the mountains. The sky is seldom totally clear for more than an hour. |
Then, early this morning while checking my email, I was blown away by a message Tom received from Jerry (and Vicki) whom we met on the beach in Hanalei when we first arrived in Kauai.
See this link here from the day we met Vicki and Jerry. We only spent a few hours together on that special day. They were leaving the next day but a friendship blossomed that we’ll always cherish and remember. We’ve been lucky to meet so many wonderful people here in Kauai!
I couldn’t resist posting this photo of Tom and Jerry, one more time, as we approach the end of our time in Kauai. Here it is! It bespeaks the fun we had that afternoon.
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| This photo makes us smile as we recall how lucky we were to meet Jerry and Vicki in January. |
Today, Jerry wrote the following in his message. I blush over the accolades but so admire him for taking the time and effort to share his thoughts with us. Here it is:
“Hello Tom: Some days, I speed read Jessica’s blogs. Of late, I am hanging on every word. I am so glad I/we met you and Jessica. She says and writes what she thinks, in a way putting into simple words what we think, but somehow can’t get out. Ah, what a teacher. Teaching is a way to see the world thru nature and our interdependence on one another. The May 13, 2015 blog was special. It strikes one’s emotions and reminded me of a saying I once read in “golf in the kingdom”—-we are all kites in the wind, attached only by a mere thread. but even a kite, a symbol of freedom in the wind, cannot fly without a conductor, someone to help it get going. Thank you, Jerry, Hanalei Beach January 19, 2015, Kauai, Hawaii.”
Jerry, thank you! Your words warm our hearts and validate the degree of effort we exercise daily in posting and sharing endless photos. We’ll always remember you both. But, as we soon leave Kauai in nine days, guess what? We’re taking you with us! As you hopefully continue to follow us each day!
Photo from one year ago today, May 14, 2014:
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| Taking a few more photos in the souk as we wound down our last day in Marrakech, we spotted this colorful swirl of scarves. For details from that final date and our total expenses for the two and a half months in Morocco, please click here. |