Don't Eat Before Bed

A little while into my reading I decided to go European style and have my dessert first. I also figured this would be better for digestion to avoid having a sweet thing in my stomach last before going to sleep. This Plum Cobbler was so good I think I won't be able to make it unless for special occasions. It was that good! It just went to fast and I will have to reserve it as a treat from now on. Tough!

Dinner

About 50 pages down in my reading of Dracula I decided to make a quick dinner. I wasn't super hungry but I would rather eat a little something at 8:30 than wait and be ravenous before bedtime. Going to sleep directly after eating is terrible! Doing it once a week isn't the worst thing in the world, luckily our bodies have a Plan B. But habitually eating directly before going to sleep can lead to:

• constipation
• absorption problems
• heartburn
• damage to the immune system
• weight gain
• tiredness

Uh...no thank you! When you sleep, so do most of your bodily systems, including digestion. There is one, however that is more active when you are sleeping than when you are awake. Can you guess??

The immune system! When you go to sleep with a bunch of food in your stomach your body is forced to spend energy moving food out of the stomach and into the small intestines (where it will sit and wait until you wake up...a whole other set of issues). It spends energy that would otherwise have been used towards the immune system which fights off infection and heals existing offenses. Are you starting to see why making this a habit is a bad idea? I try to put at least three hours in between my last bite and my in-the-bed-about-to-go-to-sleep time. (I can't just say bed time!)

Anyways for dinner I had a mixed baby green salad with my homemade lemon vinaigrette dressing and an improvised potato hash. For the hash I used

• 1 small red potato, grated
• 3/4 of a 1/2 of a large white onion, grated
• salt, pepper, garlic powder, chicken (free) seasoning.
• drizzle olive oil

I mixed everything together in a small bowl and poured onto a hot pan at medium heat. I cooked them like hasbrowns, giving them time to brown throughly.

Well I still have quite a ways to go in Dracula but I must say I actually enjoy the classic. It's written completely in journal form and is supposed to be a compilation of journal entries from all the main characters. For instance, I'll read the retrospective account of the same day from three different characters' journals to get a complete, and yet still somehow lacking, picture of what is going on. It is making me really want to start keeping an accurate journal, you know, just in case I become vampirized anytime soon! At least I have this blog where I record a lot of the little details of daily life that would otherwise be totally left behind. Oh, bloggy!

Anyway, enough of that, back to reading. Good night and I wish you all a restful sleep. We could all use one!