Random Ramblings – Tenth Edition

Happy weekend!  Todays Random Ramblings post is full of fun pictures, eating disorder recovery update (I met my new dietician this week and whoooaaaaa), food challenge failures and well—-randomness.  A little catch-you-up post on life lately in my world, with the addition of some fun and exciting stuff I am working on for the blog!  Yay!

First off, I must thank EVERYONE who read my last Random Ramblings post and for all of the love and support I received from all of you.  It really is hard for me to be so open and honest about my eating disorder, writing a post that anyone can see and read (and comment on), because I am normally a very private person.  Luckily I have received a positive response from people and supportive comments.  But I write about my recovery from anorexia with the hope that it will help at least one person.  It brought me such joy to connect with one of my readers from my last Random Ramblings post (you know who you are), who emailed me to say she appreciated my blog post and said I gave her hope and inspiration.  It truly touched my heart and made my vulnerability worth it 🙂

But before we get any more into that stuff…how about some exciting news and fun pictures?!  So I had contacted a few companies I met at the Winter Fancy Food Show to see about working with them.  This week I received some new products from the few companies I contacted, in order to use their products to develop recipes for the blog!  I am super excited to share their products with you, because I only work with companies that I truly believe in and stand behind.  They are family-owned businesses (which I love) and are dedicated to their products and being the best!  LorAnn Oils sent me several of their baking emulsions, which come in a variety of flavors, do not contain alcohol and do not bake out of desserts.  The baking emulsions provide an intense flavor and can be used in equal substitution where you would use extract in a recipe.  I was super excited to use my new baking emulsions and already used the butter vanilla baking emulsion to make THESE 🙂

At the Winter Fancy Food Show I also met the owners of VAIN Foods, who produce small batch, artisan, high-quality extracts using premium ingredients.  Extracts you ain’t gonna find at the store y’all!  I am so excited to start baking with their extracts, because you can just smell the difference in quality between their extracts and the ummm vanilla extract I normally use from Costco (sorry).  I don’t think I will ever be able to use anything but VAIN extracts from now on.  They are priced just as reasonably as big name brands, but are a million times better in taste and flavor, and you can buy them online HERE.  Stay tuned for yummy recipes I make using my new extracts!

I think I have a problem…here’s my basket full of all the extracts and emulsions I own.  Hahaha.  One can never have enough extracts or emulsions in a bunch of different flavors.  Amirite?!

February is full of birthdays and love around these parts!  For such a short month, there’s a lot happening!  What are you doing for Valentine’s Day?  James and I usually just exchange gifts with each other, and we probably go a little over board, but this year we were talking about just taking a trip together.  Time together is the best present.  Yes I’m cheesy 🙂  But I will be busy making some of my favorite homemade candies for the other special people in my life…and while I may be 35-years old, my mom and dad still get me a Valentine’s Day present (and stocking at Christmas and Easter basket for Easter…and if I lost a tooth, I am pretty sure the Tooth Fairy would mail me some money).  They are the best parents!

My mom knows how much I like making and decorating cakes, so this fondant ribbon cutter is perfect!  Can’t wait to use it.  So hit me up if you need an awesome birthday cake!

Me and my Daddy-O!  I definitely look a lot like him (and his mother)…totally a Mikolich!  This was us taking a couch break at Ethan’s birthday party, so we could sit and talk.  My Dad is the best!!

Ethan had a great birthday too!  It was such a fun birthday party!  I covered it in THIS post if ya want to read about it and check out all the pictures.

FEELING: Loved…thank you Jessie for the Hobby Lobby gift card and the sweet card you sent me.  It brought brightness to my week!  Jessie is my best friend from middle school and her and I have some craaaazzzzzzyyyyy stories.  How I became a cop and her a police dispatcher is beyond me hahahahaha.  Just kidding mom.  I was an angel growing up.  Promise 😉

WANTING: I got my tax refund (I always claim single-zero so the government takes like half my check…I know, I know but I don’t care.  I like getting a big refund), and I just want to be irresponsible and buy myself something with it (Ohhhhh Louis Vuitton…damn you!).  But then I also just want to put it in my savings account with last years refund I still haven’t spent.

WATCHING: I am sad that Top Chef is just about over…it’s my favorite show and it felt like I waited forever for the current season to even come back on.  Why can’t Top Chef be like Chopped and have a new episode every week?  Besides watching ALL the cooking shows, I just started watching the first season of Stranger Things on Netflix.  I like it…I think.  I am only two episodes in.  It reminds me of a mix between Stand By Me, The Goonies and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Pretty much my childhood there.

CRAVING: No bake cookies.  I have everything to make the original ones, and the butterscotch ones, but I want to make mocha ones.  And now I realize I haven’t even shared the other two recipes with you.  Whoops.

BAKING: Pies and donuts!  Lots of recipes coming soon to the blog.  I am obsessed again with baking donuts.  If you don’t have a donut pan, go buy one.  You will want need it!  Valentine’s Day special dessert order (I’ll share the recipe later of course) and a few of my favorite homemade candy recipes will be going down in the kitchen this weekend…waiting for the humidity to lessen.  Fingers crossed.

So back to eating disorder stuff.  Ahhh…so my food challenge failures this week.  Let me preface this with some information first.  Eating disorders are an isolating and controlling disease that affect every part of your life and rob you of so many joys and experiences.  I have established “safe” foods that I can eat at home and at different restaurants.  If the food isn’t on my mental “safe” list, you will see the eating disorder completely take over my mind and Kelly is no where to be found.  Anyone that eats with me can usually recognize that at a certain point while I am eating, I have checked out of the conversation and am consumed by the thoughts in my head over what I ate, if it was too much, did I work out enough to off set what I ate, how many calories were in what I ate, did the food server add something to my food I didn’t ask for, is this REALLY Diet Coke???, or are you messing with me?  Thank you James for always tasting my Diet Coke first to make sure it really is diet.  So because this is what happens whenever I eat, I tend to opt out of social gatherings and eat by myself at home.  It’s sad.  And I wish I could control it.  I know it will be better with time, but in the mean time, I am in a constant battle with myself.

So my failures this week….I was supposed to go with James and Ethan out to breakfast for Ethan’s birthday, but I woke up with a headache and just couldn’t go out to breakfast.  I knew it would just cause me too much mental turmoil to try and eat breakfast at IHOP (hence the headache).  I’m not there yet.  Maybe I will try to go out to eat breakfast somewhere by myself first…that will help break the ice.  Work in progress.  I will try again though!  My second failure was that James and I were supposed to get frozen yogurt one afternoon as a snack.  By the time we were able to get to the frozen yogurt place, I told him it was too late in the day and it would mess with me eating dinner.  I struggle enough as it is to feel hunger, so in order just to keep up on my three meals a day, I space them out quite a bit.  Which I also got in trouble for with my new dietician.  Whoops.  And yes my husband is pretty much a saint for putting up with me.  I promise I do have some redeeming qualities though 😉

Living with anorexia for six years, I have had my fair share of eating disorder therapists, doctors, dieticians and treatment centers.  If you live in Northern California, have an eating disorder and are looking for some direction for treatment, feel free to email me at kellymikolich@comcast.net.  I am more than happy to share my resources with anyone.  It took a lot of phone calls and trial and error before I found a team that worked for me.  My doctor is no-nonsense, no bullshit…which is exactly what I need.  And my new dietician, who was recommended by my doctor, is also no-nonsense, no bullshit.  I needed a dietician that specialized in eating disorders.  So it costs me a couple hundred dollars to see her (insurance doesn’t cover a dietician unless it’s for diabetes…because that makes sense) and we drive three hours to see her (and my other doctor too).  But it is worth it.

Besides telling me the destruction I have done to my body, and what my future health looks like if I continue with poor choices, Sandi (my RD) actually didn’t get on me too much about my food choices.  Sandi is good with baby steps.  My diet has been all over the place since starting my recovery.  When I was in ERC I ate breakfast, a morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack, dinner, dessert and a bedtime snack (I should write about what an average day of food was like there….soooooooo much food you would laugh!).  I felt like I could go jump in the pool and train with Michael Phelps after, because I think him and I were eating about the same amount of calories when he was training for the olympics.

But now that I am at home, I slowly have lost those three snacks and my meals have gone back to what they were before I left for ERC.  It’s just that now I don’t skip lunch.  Sandi was surprised I had been able to gain weight and said I might be okay now, but it could catch up with me later and I would drop weight.  So now I have to add in a couple snacks each day and they can be whatever I want.  So I am thinking a piece of fruit will be the easiest thing to incorporate (my morning snack at ERC was two Pop Tarts–um yeah).  And I have to add healthy fats in to my diet.  Still working on that one.  But Sandi was fine with my protein bar for breakfast every day and didn’t really care that my meals are pretty much the same every day.  I just need to add some more food in there somewhere.  I am sure once that happens, it will be time to challenge myself with eating different foods again.

Maybe you have a food challenge for me??  I’m open to them.  Leave me a comment with a challenge and I will report back next week.  Helps to keep me  accountable!!

On a side note, the funniest thing at every eating disorder related appointment I have ever had, is that the specialist will ask me what weight I think I should be at.  And then we all laugh.  Well they laugh.  Because I am so off base.  But writing about it here helps.  I am more than a number, I am more than what I look like…I am my worst critic and harshest judge.  Working on that 🙂  Whoooo…..Thanks for listening.  Doctors appointment this week to see about going back to work.  I will keep you posted!  Follow me on Instagram to get the latest!  Feel free to share this post on Facebook…I hope I can give those that may be struggling with eating disorders hope and inspiration!!  And sign up for my FREE email subscription to the blog so ya never miss a thang!

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We celebrated my sisters birthday this week!  I made her a Cannoli Cream Pie 🙂  We had a fun time getting together with the whole family.  Sisters forever and best friends for life!

And my sweet Miss A.  I am successfully getting all my family and friends hooked on The Original Cannoli Chips hehehe.  My nieces…..ohhhhhh my reason for breathing.  My world.

Super excited too!  My sister, me and my two nieces are going to go see Disney On Ice this weekend!

Thanks for coming by the blog and reading!  If you made it this far that you are still reading this, then damn I love you hahaha.  Long post.  But I don’t call it Random Ramblings for nothing 😉

XOXO,

Kelly

Here’s a quote my friend sent me (unknown source—if you recognize the author let me know so I can give them credit), which pretty much sums it up for me currently, “She isn’t healed completely, but she is completely healing.”

PS-

I have linked up this recipe to the following link parties: What’s Cooking Wednesday, Weekend Potluck, Pretty Pintastic Party, Sugar and Spice, Pin Junkie, Friday Frenzy, Meal Plan Monday.  Click on the links top check out all the fun parties (recipes and crafts galore)!!