Zest of 5 or 6 oranges. I used a vegetable peelers and tried avoid the pith as much as possible

4 packages of cranberries.  How much is that?  I don’t know – google it!

I squeezed the juice of two of the oranges in here, just enough liquid to get things started.

Then add the orange peels

And two cups of sugar.  This is going to help the cranberries pop, and also make the resulting booze sweeter and not tongue-numblingly puckerish from the cranberries.

Cook over medium high heat until most of the cranberries have popped.  Stir occasionally so it doesn’t burn on the bottom.  You can have a taste now to make sure there’s nothing funky going on – should taste like fancy cranberry sauce!

You want a large, clean, glass vessel.  You can use mason jars, even.  I have these large glass storage jars that work nicely.  Let the cranberries cool down a bit, then scoop them into the jar.

Do not be buying the super fancy vodka.  But don’t buy rotgut, either.  I wanted at least a triple distilled -this stuff was quadruple distilled!  Score!

Dump in two large bottles of vodka.

Put on lid and…let sit.

I will be bottling this just before Thanksgiving, since I want to drive up a couple bottles while we’re up there for Turkey day.  Christmas will be spent with the in-laws, and I’m pretty sure I can’t mail this stuff!

About a week before I bottle, I’m going to throw in a couple cinnamon sticks.  I’m not putting them in now, because I want it to be a more subtle flavor,  and not hit you over the head with ZOMG CINNAMON!!!!!

I would say minimum two weeks for letting your cranberry vodka infuse, but the longer it sits, the better it will be.

Serving suggestions:

Over ice – tart!

Mixed with club soda – refreshing

Mixed with hot apple cider – toasty warm!

I have some apples I plan on making apple cinnamon vodka with, so stay tuned for those results.  Happy imbibing!

So what is going on in my life.  I left one job and started a new one.  One I like even better, even though it’s only temporary (for now – if you can send some “YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT THIS WOMAN” mojo towards the general region of Duluth, GA, I’d really appreciate it).  That was a major upheaval and one I hadn’t expected -  but who does?  As usual, I’m not going to blog any specifics, just that I’m still in the pharmaceutical industry, doing very different work that I did in my last job, sciency enough to scratch that itch, but not so much that I’m banging my head against a lab bench all day.  Perfect!

What else?  Ohhh..the d word.  Crap.

Diet.

I could do a whole separate blog post on my body and my relationship with it (and maybe I will!).  It’s complicated, and yet it’s not.  I am new to Fat Acceptance and the ideas of HAES (Health At Every Size), and yet it also feels like something I’ve come to naturally.  Because I’ve been fat my whole life.  BUT, and I must stress this – I haven’t been on diets my whole life.  Because even when I was young, I realized that diets do not work.  For me.  Because anyone who stands there and tells me YOU CAN NEVER EAT ANOTHER CHEESECAKE AGAIN, FATTY! is going to get laughed out of the room.  Fuck you, I can eat whatever I want.  And I gradually came to a point in my life where I didn’t care what other people thought.  I had friends who cared for me, boyfriend-fiance-husband who loved me, clothes that fit me, a roof over my head…etc etc etc – I was blessed in so many ways, that I didn’t care what the scale said.

Check that – I still don’t care what the scale says.

Getting ahead of myself.  Anyway…

Since Kev and I have been together, our weights have been creeping up.  It bothered him more than it bothered me.  What started to bother me were other things.  When I turned 30, my blood pressure went up.  Pretty much overnight, I went from 120/80 LIKE CLOCKWORK, to much higher, scarier numbers.  And because of spotty insurance coverage over the next several years *INSERT RANT ABOUT THE STATE OF HEALTH CARE AND INSURANCE IN THE US HERE AND FUCK YOU IF YOU’VE NEVER HAD TO MAKE A CHOICE BETWEEN GETTING A CAT SCAN AND PAYING YOUR MORTGAGE THAT MONTH, YOU INSUFFERABLE ASSHOLES* it took almost 3 years before I found a doctor who prescribed the right cocktail of pills to bring my blood pressure down to reasonable levels.

And so I plugged along, in my early thirties, already taking blood pressure pills (for full disclosure – there’s a HUGE family history of high blood pressure in my family, so this really wasn’t a huge shock for me), cholesterol meds, and the other pills that made me a healthy, happy girl.

ASIDE: As you can tell, I am not one of those people who avoids modern pharmaceuticals.  I learned from a very early age that medicine that doctors give you GENERALLY make you feel better.  You can disagree with me (don’t care!), but I learned that lesson after  severe asthma kept me in and out of the hospital throughout my childhood.  I WILL TAKE WHATEVER YOU GIVE ME, JUST PLEASE SAY I WILL BE ABLE TO BREATH AGAIN AND GO HOME!!!!  I take medicines promptly and cheerfully, and if they don’t work, I go back to the doctor and ask for something else.

BUT THEN…then I had my last check up.  Standard stuff, ending with a trip down to the lab for some bloodwork.  By that evening, I had the results online (soooo convenient and fast, these people) and there were my numbers.  TSH – normalish, cholesterol – still a little high, blood sugar – BORDERLINE SCARY.

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.

Type 2 diabetes is not something I want to mess with.  Not now, not ever.  Yes, there are medicines that can help control it.  But they are scary.  With nasty side effects.  And scary prognosis.  My immediate reaction was so rare for me…how can I fix this without going on drugs? I’d have to get a handle on my blood sugar.  Using diet.

*weep*

Fortunately, Kevin had gotten his hands on some books about Atkins and South Beach diets.  EYEROLL I KNOW, but whatev.  And for months he’d been filling me in on what carbohydrates do to your body, how they spike your blood sugar, how they make you crave MOAR SUGARS!  And my response had always been “oh how INTERESTING!  Please cut me another piece of baguette to dip into my giant bowl of pasta.”

But the test results were enough to weaken my anti-diet resolve just a little bit, so I decided to give it a try.  WE decided to give it a try.

I am not going to try to sell you on this diet.  Because in many ways, it does suck.  Going out to eat sucks – it’s difficult to find affordable places to eat out that don’t involve giant bowls of noodles or crap piled on bread.  Grocery bills are a little shocking – carbs are cheap.  Protein is expensive.

We have stuck to it, though.   And I have learned a lot over the past several months.

1. it’s important to me that I’m doing this because I WANT to, not because I HAVE to, or feel any pressure to do so by any outside influence.

2. I can still enjoy plenty of carbs on special occasions.

3. special occasions occur whenever I say they occur.  for example, “on thursday nights.”

4. All this time, I thought I had been “eating intuitively,” a big part of HAES.  I was not – I was eating what I was CRAVING, not what my body wanted.  When I eliminated the OMG NEED SUGAR NOW!1!!!111! cravings I was constantly having, I was able to actually listen to my body.  “I would like some chicken and broccoli for dinner.”  Why yes, body, certainly!

5. Sometimes I still crave stuff.  Sometimes I give in.  (see point 3).

6. I have new food sensitivities.  This is the only really bad part of this experience.  Suddenly, I am learning I can’t have certain things.  I’m certain some of it is lack-of-gall bladder related – like my reaction to a big spinach salad I had for lunch one day.  Some of it, I’m not sure what’s going on.  I had been enjoying the atkins shakes (shut up – this shit is made with CREAM and CHOCOLATE and some artificial sweeteners and you CAN’T TELL me that doesn’t sound at least partly good, and in the morning when I need something fast on my way out the door to work, this stuff was pretty great) until last week when I had a BAD gut reaction to one and actually had to leave work because I felt so awful.  I still don’t know what happened – experiments since have proven that it was the shake.  Dammit. I am not certain what these are all about, and I’m planning on discussing it with my doctor at my next visit.

7. I am losing weight.  I’m using weight loss as an indicator that I’m doing the low-carb thing correctly.  I’ve lost 26 pounds, am almost at my pre-wedding weight, and I’ve hit a plateau and I’m OK with that right now.  I went out and bought me some pants that fit.  (Because I’m also a big believer in getting rid of clothes that no longer fit me – I have no “this current weight” clothes left in my closet).  It’s crazy to think how much of our weight gain over the past few years was just from being lazy about cooking (“Hey, let’s have pasta for dinner AGAIN because it’s easy and cheap and deeeeelicious!”)

8. I am eating lots of bacon.  ’nuff said.

I am never going to be thin.  I don’t want to be thin – I have NEVER been thin.  That more than anything indicates to me that a healthy body weight for me is NOT going to be found in the “normal area” of a doctor’s chart.  What matters to me is that I feel better (I do – it’s amazing what eliminating those grouchy low blood sugar times will do for a person), I’m healthy, and I’m not miserable.

I’ll be heading back to the doctor to get my blood sugar rechecked next month.  And if it’s all been for naught, and my blood sugar is still high and I have to go on medicines, well…I will deal with that then.

I will end on a bloggy note: I am not planning on turning this into a ::*throws up in mouth a little*:: DIET BLOG.  I do not endorse any particular lifestyle or life choices for anyone else but ME. And GOD KNOWS there are already too many places on the internet where that shit can be discussed ad nauseum. I may mention it from time to time, but that’s because this is MY BLOG about MY LIFE. I’ve struggled with this a little, because part of me feels like I’m “betraying the movement” by doing this.  But this is MY life, MY deal – and the choices I make about my body are mine alone.  Just like the choices you make about yours are yours alone.  And if you go to the doctor and get similar test results as mine and your reaction is completely different, then that’s OK, too.

I am not an activist.  While weight has become an EXTREMELY political thing recently, there are plenty of other blogs and other bloggers out there FAR more eloquent than I am, who use their voice to discuss The Issues.  They do a much better job of fighting and arguing for your right to be whatever size you are than I ever could.  I can, and will,  only speak for me.

I will end with a gratuitous doggy picture.