“IT IS HEALTH THAT IS REAL WEALTH AND NOT PIECES OF GOLD AND SILVER.” MAHATMA GANDHI

A little music for you: Booker T & The MGS “Green Onions”

Day 2

Unbelievable! I slept so well last night. Could it be the celery juice? Mmmmmm. Or is it a mental thing that I think it will help me sleep 💤 so it does? Mmmmmm. I have no idea but I’m enjoying the benefits of a good night’s sleep.

Celery juice Day 2 and sad to say it doesn’t taste any better. I was so hoping I’d try it today and love it. Nope. I’ll keep trying.

So this month we’re making some nutritional changes (not that our diet was really bad before) to improve our health. But we haven’t forgotten exercise. We are still continuing with our regular exercise regime.

In April 2020 when PEI was in a severe lockdown and everything nonessential was closed, Richard came up with the brilliant idea to change the spare bedroom into an exercise room since we couldn’t go to gym or yoga. He is the idea man. So we moved the bedroom 🛌 furniture to the basement and bought a treadmill (a huge thanks to my son Jared for putting it together).To the room we added our 5, 10, & 15 lb. weights, yoga mats, bozu ball, medicine ball, resistance bands, and a fan. We also put up a TV that was previously stored in the basement (I can’t do treadmill without a TV). Perfect. It’s been great. When it’s right there you do it every day (or almost every day 😉).

Gyms have since opened and now Richard goes to his gym twice a week. My membership expired but I’m fine with using our exercise room.

We especially love that we can now go to our yoga 🧘🏼 classes. We feel very safe as all Covid 19 protocols are followed. This class is held once a week: Summerside Afternoon Yoga with Greg

https://www.facebook.com/Smooth-Yoga-with-Greg-907796292574920/

https://gregs.fitness/

And I also attend two hot yoga classes every week at Modo Yoga

https://modoyoga.com/

Thank goodness for the internet. I’ve been searching online for vegetarian recipes, using Pinterest a lot. https://www.pinterest.ca/ Often I find recipes and then modify them as I did with tonight’s supper. We had Black Bean, Corn, and Avocado Burritos with a raspberry/grapefruit side salad.

What are your favourite vegetarian meal recipes? I’d love you to share them with me. I know I’ll be needing them.

Stay safe and healthy.

As always, thanks for your interest and thank you for reading.

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May 1, 2021 and the beginning of a month long, maybe longer but hopefully not shorter, personal health journey.

Two clues to help you guess one thing we’ll be doing.

And since I’ll always think like an elementary school music teacher:

I’m sure you’ve got it.

Our first change is that first thing every morning we’re going to drink fresh celery juice. Why you ask? A friend and holistic practitioner recommended we try it to improve our complexions, digestion, sleep, and overall health. So we thought, why not.

Our second change this month will be Meatless May. Yes, you read correctly. This is new for us even though we usually have at least one vegetarian meal a week. I have no idea if we’ll make it through the whole month or if one of us will crack, but here goes nothing.

Richard saw a Meatless May challenge online and since he’s always interested in trying new things he thought we should go for it. A plus is they’ll share a new recipe everyday.

And away we go.

After hearing about the juice I did some online research. Celery juice contains vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, phosphorus, electrolytes, water and smaller amounts of other vitamins and minerals. Sounds healthy, right? But there are so many online articles regarding the benefits, or lack there of, regarding this juice that it boggles my mind. What’s true and what’s not? I figure it’s just celery so it can’t hurt. We’ll give it a try for a month and see what happens.

She recommended the Omega Horizontal Slow Juicer but as I already have a Vitamix we used it.

Day 1

To make the juice we used a full stalk of celery cut into pieces, a Swiss chard leaf, plus we added some water as I was worried about ruining the machine. We used the smoothie cycle and then strained it into a measuring cup to extract the juice. It made about 16 ounces. Richard really liked it. Me? Yuck, yuck, yuck. Even made my stomach queasy. I sure hope it gets better. And let’s just say it sure cleans you out, if you get my drift.

For those who don’t know, Halloumi or haloumi (/həˈluːmi/) (Greek: Χαλλούμι Turkish: hellim) is a semi-hard, unripened cheese made from a mixture of goat’s and sheep’s milk, and sometimes also cow’s milk. It has a high melting point and so can easily be fried or grilled. This property makes it a popular meat substitute. Wikipedia.

Well we made it through Day 1 and for me, it was all good except for the celery juice. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

“One day or day one. You decide.” Unknown

As always, thanks for your interest and thank you for reading.

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What a difference a year makes, 8760 little hours. Well, really it’s been over a year and I wouldn’t say the hours have actually felt “little”.

It’s been over a year since my last post. It was when we returned to PEI from Gulf Shores, Alabama . March 17^th to be exact. What a year! Nothing you nor I could ever have imagined.

This pandemic has affected everyone, not all in the same way, but it has affected us. I remind myself everyday that I am very lucky. I am able to look at the water everyday, walk on the beach, attend yoga classes, eat out! Have hair cuts, etc. I am thankful that here on our small island we feel relatively safe. But as our PEI Chief Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison said, “We are only one bad decision away from a serious outbreak”. Scary times.

This blog began in 2018 as a documentation of my trips and adventures after having retired from 37 years of teaching elementary school music. It was a way to share with friends and family what we were doing, especially during winter our trips south. 

I struggled with choosing a name for it before deciding on “Debi’s Junket Journal”. 

Merriam Webster ‘s definition for  ‘junket’:

1a: TRIP, JOURNEY: such as

(1): a trip made by an official at public expense

(2): a promotional trip made at another’s expense a film’s press junket

b: a festive social affair

Well, our trips certainly aren’t paid by anyone other than ourselves but I enjoyed the alliteration for the title so I went with it. 

This past year I’ve had zero trips. I have not been off the island and just couldn’t get myself back into blogging. 

But no more. 

I’m sure there will be some small, local journeys for me to share but more importantly there will be personal journeys. 

And that’s where I’m starting. 

May 1, 2021 will be the beginning of these personal journeys. 

What you ask?  

Well now, you’ll just have to stay tuned to find out.

Enjoy this Dinah Washington version of “What a Difference a Day Makes”

As always, thanks for your interest and thank you for reading.

I invite you to click follow to receive timely updates, select like to show your love and support, share this post on your social media site, and /or comment. 

This is how we started the morning. On the way home we took a slight detour to Old Orchard Beach. Beautiful sunrise.

Feels good to be back on PEI.

Two weeks self isolation – I can do that. I’ll make lists tomorrow of things to get done and then start tackling them.

I’ll post more of today’s adventure tomorrow. Too tired now. Just wanted to let you know we made it back.

Sleep well everyone.

Unbelievable!

I know.

10 states in 1day – well really in 12 hours

Virginia,

West Virginia

Pennsylvania

New Maryland

New Jersey

New York

Connecticut

Massachusetts

New Hampshire

Maine

Hmmmm. How many provinces could you drive in during 12 hours?

What a day.

Left a bit later this morning. 6:00 am. Light rain 🌧 for a while but it cleared. Traffic was heavier today. But at least no traffic jams. Smooth that way.

Something we’ve noticed these last two days is that for all the TV, radio, and newspaper reports on COVID-19 the drive has not seemed very different from last year. A few differences: gas stations’ shelves are toilet paper free (guess there’s a run on it here too), Starbucks won’t fill refillable mugs anymore, and we saw one person putting on latex gloves to open the door of a Service Centre.

I wonder if people are taking it seriously. I, on the other hand, had my Clorox wipes with me at each rest stop and the hotels.

Off the road just before 7:00 pm. We made it to Saco, Maine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saco,_Maine

Staying at the Ramada Inn.

https://www.wyndhamhotels.com/ramada/saco-maine/ramada-saco-old-orchard-beach-area/overview?CID=LC:RA::GGL:RIO:National:36788&iata=00093796

Happy to be in for the night and sit and relax with a cup of green tea 🍵

Nite y’all

As always, thanks for your interest and thank you for reading.

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Yesterday I planned on today’s post title being “ Lasts”. Like last sunrise 🌅 walk on the beach, last 🍳 breakfast, last visit to the library 📚 and the post office, last yoga 🧘‍♀️ class, last sun tanning on the deck, last dinner 🍽 out, last sunset walk, and last sleep 😴.

What a difference a day makes.

😷My children and my best friend contacted me this morning to break the news to me about the PEI quarantine.

https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/alert/advisory-coronavirus-infection#utm_source=redirect&utm_medium=url&utm_campaign=coronavirus

Although we’re healthy and as of today there’s only one case 🤒 in Montgomery, Alabama, I totally understand their position. It will be challenging but it could certainly be much worse. We will survive it.

And I’ve already had family and friends (I am so blessed) offer to get us groceries as we completely cleaned out the fridge and freezer before we left. Not a thing in them. Absolutely nada. Even unplugged them before I left. Hopefully there’s still food in the grocery stores. I hear it’s worse than any Christmas 🎄 shopping day. And what’s with this mad rush to buy all the 🧻 toilet paper? Sometimes people can go a bit overboard, don’t you think? But scary times, right?

Anyway we’re mostly all packed. We’d thought about packing up and taking off this afternoon and trying to be home by Sunday but that would mean driving at night both days which is difficult on unknown roads. So we opted to leave very early tomorrow morning. Praying 🙏 that you know who doesn’t all of a sudden decide to close the US / Canadian border. That would be a nightmare.

And just thinking about the stock market makes me sick to my stomach. But nothing I can do about that except keep losing money 💵. But again, it could be worse. At least we are healthy.

So now it’s one last sleep 💤 and then hope to be on the road by 4:00 am tomorrow morning.

Keeps us in your thoughts 💭.

Nite y’all

As always, thanks for your interest and thank you for reading.

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Yes. You read that correctly. Today we went to a church service held at the Flora Bama in Perdido Key, Florida. (The property straddles the Alabama and Florida state lines, meaning it’s one of the few bars in the country where you can have a drink in two states at once.) This is where they hold their weekly church services. And to answer your question – yes, you can get an alcoholic drink 🍹 at the church service. We didn’t. But we might have if we’d known at the time. It certainly would have been unique.

Their motto is “It’s Okay To Not Be Okay.”

The following online article wasn’t written about our service today but it is about the church services held here. It does a wonderful job of describing this church. One thing I did notice that was different today was the congregation didn’t have hymnals. The words to the four songs were printed in the bulletin.

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/flora-bama-bar-church-pensacola-florida

We came to a service a couple of weeks ago but arriving at 8:30 for the 9:00 service left us too late to get a seat in the main section. We could have watched it on a big screen tv in the bar but we opted to come back another Sunday. As we were leaving, the man at the door recommended we come at 8:00 next time if we wanted a good seat.

Today we arrived at 8:05 and the place was practically empty. Of course it was. I guess most of the snowbirds have gone plus there’s the Coronavirus fear, so there wasn’t such a rush for seats. It was full though by 9:00.

On the stage there’s a five piece band with a lead singer and three backup singers. They were good. Really into the message. This as their warmup prior to the service.

The minister spoke several times, including his sermon. He was a very enthusiastic speaker but spoke in a very down to earth, relaxed manner. He even brought up Coronavirus and suggested people fist bump, elbow bump, or hip bump (lol) if they wanted during the service’s meet and greet. Our service began at 9:00 and was an hour long which was totally understandable as they also had an 11:00 service. As we were leaving there were people already arriving for the next service. Busy place.

We had planned on having 🍳 breakfast at Ruby Slipper but not a spot in their parking lot. Decided to go to Sunliner Diner as it was close to home even though we weren’t pleased with it the last time. I’m glad we did. It was much better today. Food was hot. That’s always a plus.

Another beautiful afternoon of 📖 reading on the deck and walking on the 🏖 beach. Sigh. Love it.

Nite y’all

As always, thanks for your interest and thank you for reading.

I invite you to click follow to receive timely updates, select like to show your love and support, share this post on your social media site, and /or comment in the box below.