Playtime

Warm sun and fresh breezes through the green blades made another beautiful day today. I've made a play area for the birds outside so that they have a fairly secure home base from which to enjoy the outdoors. I fastened a birch branch down to the railing with some twine to make some chewable perches and there's a nice green potted plant underneath that they can fertilize. Almost an entire ecosystem. Not quite.

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Today is Day 1 of My Palate Experiment.

Yesterday was Day 0 and didn't really count since brunch included French fries. Yum! Later meals were good though: fruits only.

So today, I've been ingesting water, celery and organic carrots and mushrooms. I figure I'll leave the sweet fruits for later, or else it'll be harder to eat the veggies. One of the birds is following along with me; he shredded some celery, chewed up baby carrots, but he refused both of those as soon as he got a nibble off the organic mushroom. I bet he goes for those umami flavours from the glutamate, just like his mommy. He also tends to gorge on whatever food he likes the most and needs to be encouraged to eat a more varied diet. I hope he hasn't inherited poor eating habits from me.

Flavours On My Palate

To go along with my Spring cleaning, I'm planning to do a little experiment cleaning my tastebuds. In recent months, I've been eating a lot of strongly flavoured foods: my favourite spicy curries and fiery hot sauces, potato chips and other snacks high in salt and MSG, processed sugars thanks to my weakness for sour keys... I'd better stop describing all these or I'll never finish this experiment.

Materials:
4 grapefruit
4 tangerines
8 pears
6 apples
2 figs
a bunch of grapes
5 sweet yellow/orange/red peppers
2 lb. baby carrots
1 lb. tomatoes
1 lb. of salad greens
a bunch of celery
broccoli
pear yogurt
vanilla yogurt
various organic soy milks, rice drinks

Method:
1. Avoid all processed foods with added flavour, for a week or so.
2. Drink water. Avoid alcohol, sweetened juices, syrups, etc.
3. Eat healthy: only whole foods, vegetables and fruits.

I'll try to stick to plain raw fruits and veggies, and if I get desperate, I can break open some yogurt/rice/soy milk with some muesli. Or have a salad with a simple dressing (olive oil, vinegar, mustard, herbs, minimal/no spices, no sugar, no salt). If I really get desperate, maybe a vegetable/cheese sandwich with some mustard on whole wheat or multigrain. Let's hope it doesn't come to all that.

Purpose:
The goal is to cleanse my palate. By the end of the week, I am hoping my tastebuds won't be so accustomed to oversalting, oversweetening and overspicing. I want to taste everything vividly.

Flying Free

We had a gorgeous storm today. Rain poured for about an hour with high winds blowing everything down. I let some rain and wind come inside and the flock loved it. This weather has spurred me on to do some Spring Cleaning, although it might be Summer Cleaning by the time I've made enough progress to call it a "cleaning".

Lately, it's been warming. So warm, in fact, that I didn't notice my pepper sprouts were getting too much sun beside the window, and they promptly withered and died. My thumb isn't brown anymore; it's outright black.

I've taken the birds outside a bit to enjoy the warmth. While I want them to get fresh air and sunlight, it makes me nervous that they get so excited whenever they're out. They call out to all the wild birds they hear and hold their wings slightly away from their bodies as if they're about to flap any moment. I'm torn between wanting them to enjoy some freedom and fearing that they'll panic, fly off and get into trouble. Freedom or security?


In response to some feedback about how pale they looked in the last set I posted, here are some unretouched, non-colour-corrected photos of the birds outside. Note that the high contrast from the direct sunlight has overexposed the brights, and my camera chose to properly expose the dark brown wall in shadow in the background.