Birthday Celebrations!

It sure was fun turning 60 last week! I celebrated all week long with fun activities and get togethers. We had the big Holland Bowl and California Balsamic Giveaway to celebrate my milestone birthday. Thank you to everyone for your birthday greetings and wishes – I really appreciate you following me on the blog, facebook, Instagram and YouTube. We have the best followers ever – you all are so kind and generous with your comments and suggestions. It’s a pleasure enteracting with you.

On Instagram and facbook I shared our celebration meal at a restaurant but I also wanted to share with you what we had at home with the family. Birthdays should be celebreated all week long don’t you agree? We had family over for a Burrito Bowl Buffet. We had black beans, brown rice, water sauteed peppers and onions, homemade salsa, vegan cheeze sauce, corn, avocado, shredded romaine, green onions, fresh limes, store bought chips as well as our no oil air fried chips and Carrot Cake cupcakes. It was super easy and everyone enjoyed it. I will share the fresh salsa recipe soon.

I find that entertaining with a buffet and doing ethnic food is so easy and something everyone will enjoy because they can fix their own plate of food to their liking. Everyone we know likes Mexican food so that is my go to choice. I have a Mexican Fiesta Cooking Webinar that is filled with 10 recipes that make a great buffet for entertaining. I have quite a few Mexican recipes that you can look at just by clicking on the Recipe tab at the top of this page, then select Mexican from the menu and browse to your delight!

These are my favorite Carrot Cake Cupcakes from Cathy Fisher. If you don’t have her Straight Up Food cookbook I highly recommend it. She cooks SOS free. She does use a few nuts in some of the recipes which can easily be adapted. For the frosting on the cupcakes you can sub an equal amount of oven roasted Japanese sweet potato for the cashews and it works beautifully!

Daughter Katy made me this amazing Chocolate Peanut Parfait Pie! It was her own creation and we all loved it! I will share the recipe soon.

This is what I ordered for myself for my birthday! A 15 inch cherry salad bowl set from Holland Bowl Mill. I got 8 bowls with mine so when we have our family over we can serve everyone salad in their own individual Holland bowl. I love it so much – the wood is gorgeous. We won’t be chopping in this one as I want it to be a serving piece for entertaining.

I will also use the small salad bowls in the kitchen for various things, like fruit, tomatoes and prep bowls when I am cooking. They will get plenty of use around here.

Holland Bowl Mill offers free engraving on the bottom of the bowl so this is what I had engraved on the large bowl. I love it! I will provide a link to Holland Bowl at the bottom of this post and more details about how you can get a free mezzaluna knife with your order.

The other birthday splurge was this Champion Juicer! I have wanted this since we were at Chef AJ’s in April for our Ultimate Weight Loss certification training. It makes the best frozen fruit soft serve we have ever had! It comes out truly like soft serve – so creamy and fluffly. It’s amazing! I am not a juicer – I only make celery juice for Dr Fuhrman’s anti cancer soup and I have always borrowed my daughters juicer for that. Really we got this Champion Juicer just so we can make the all fruit soft serve. With three grandchildren and our Ultimate Weight Loss classes I am sure it’s going to get plenty of use! I will make a video soon and show you all how amazng it is.

This is banana cherry soft serve made in the Champion Juicer served over my Cherry Peach Cobbler. Insanely delicious!

Chef AJ and Charles sent me this amazing Aromatherapy Diffuser – 3D glass that has this incredible LED changing light. You can set it on a timer at bedtime to diffuse lavender oil and enjoy the magic of the lights as you drift off to sleep. I love it!

The above photos are me at my highest weight in 2002! I weighed about 44 pounds more than I do right now and only being 5’4″ tall it wasn’t pretty. I was wearing a tight size 16! I was yo – yo dieting and trying to eat all the Standard American Diet – SAD foods in moderation. How was that working for me? As you can see not very well. At age 43 I was in the worse shape of my life. When I got these photos developed after a trip to Europe I was horrified and joined Weight Watchers. I did lose weight and got to my goal weight and stayed there for a couple of years but it wasn’t easy. I had to weigh and measure my food and I was constantly thinkging about food and dieting. I gained back about 25–30 pounds and would lose the weight and gain it back over and over again.

You really can Get Healthy – Stay Healthy – One Meal At A Time!

Then in 2013 I discovered a whole food plant based lifestyle. I watched the Forks Over Knives documentary and read Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s book Eat To Live. It changed my perception on how I should be eating. I found Chef AJ on the Fuhrman message board and joined her and John Pierre’s on line Ultimate Weight Loss program in 2015 and it changed my life! That’s when I learned from Chef AJ all about refined food addiction, calorie density, eating vegetables for breakfast and sequencing my food. I read Dr. Doug Lisle’s book The Pleasure Trap. Armed with new knowledge is when the pieces of the puzzle finally all came together for me. I had been trying to maintain a healthy weight by eating the wrong food – no wonder I couldn’t have long term success. John Pierre taught me to treat myself with love and commpassion. He taught me to seek pleasure from things other than food and to create an environment that supports how I want to live my life. John Pierre and Chef AJ also encouraged me to help other people by passing this information forward. Tom and I decided to make it our mission to help educate others about this lifetyle and show others how to make this lifestyle simple and easy. So here I am at age 60 in the best shape of my life! Eating a health promoting diet that Dr. Steven Lawenda calls the Magical Buffet and maintaining a healthy weight with a lifestyle that supports it. When you have good health you are wealthy beyond measure. Truth be told being a size 4 is pretty fun too! Life is good.

I want to thank my family, friends and my subscribers for making my 60th birthday so special with all your kind comments and well wishes. I am truly blessed by having you all in my life!

Be sure to check out our Amazon Affiliate Page where we share many of our favorite small kitchen appliances, kitchen tools, food products, books and fun things for the grandchildren! When you use our affiliate links you help support our work without any extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!

We are also Holland Bowl Mill Affiliates. The 15 inch Holland Bowl Mill Cherry fruit bowl has a permanent home on our kitchen island. It’s beautiful and useful. The heart shaped bowl makes me happy – I love everything heart shaped! We use our 15 inch Beechwood bowl to chop our salads everyday. Eating a salad for one meal every day helped me lose weight and become a size 4. I still eat a salad for one meal a day but now it’s a Big Beautiful Chopped salad and it helps me stay a size 4! See the Chopped Salad Blog Post to find out how you can incorporate a chopped salad into your daily food plan and how you can get a free mezzaluna knife with your Holland Bowl order when you use our affiliate link as well as free engraving and free shipping.