Recipe: Red Quinoa & Asparagus Salad with Toasted Cumin Vinaigrette

The new year always makes people take a closer look at their health in general, whether it’s regarding weight loss, quitting smoking, or just exercising more for better health.  I fall into the latter category, especially because my health & overall klutziness have been so bad that I’ve fallen out of my former groove.  You regular readers know that except for the occasional evil dessert, I eat rather decently both nutrition and portion-wise.  After all, what I post here is what I’m currently eating at home.  But I have to admit that the constant stress of unemployment and being threatened with eviction caused me to feel depressed and entirely too terrified to worry about exercise.  I seem to be the poster child for how the stress hormone, cortisol, can affect a person: get me in a negative stress situation like near-homelessness and I grow a gut; remove me from that situation and I drop inches & pounds just by blinking.

The proof?  I honestly haven’t done anything different recently, aside from having a real, full-time job, and already I’ve dropped six pounds in two weeks!  Though we all know I can eat well, I just haven’t been motivated to move well until now, so this is pretty awesome.  But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to lapse into some crazy brie en croute eating frenzy.  I may enjoy my guilty pleasures, but overall I prefer eating healthfully in spite of my financial woes.  And because I know many of you have come to view my site as a guide for how to do just that (thank you!!!), I refuse to start off the year with something baked, sweet, or otherwise “evil”.