A food post

Rick and I had a really funny back-and-forth while brushing our teeth the other night and I can't remember what it was, but you probably wouldn't think it was that funny anyway. So.

Tonight I made myself dinner for the first time in... a while. With Rick at home more often than I, he usually cooks for both of us and I stuff my face and make appreciative noises in his direction. A few nights ago it was Southwest Quinoa Stuffed Peppers. Then homemade pizza, then burgers. I'm spoiled.

Tonight he didn't want to cook, though, and I had a cheeseburger (on a homemade bun!) for dinner last night and a hamburger (ditto) for lunch today and didn't feel like another burger (Rick cooks in large quantities) so I whipped out a chunk of salmon, salted it, pan-seared it and then used the pan to heat up some previously-blanched garden fresh green beans. Yet the plate didn't look good enough for instagram so I cast about for something else and realized I had three very sad beets in the bottom of the crisper drawer.

So I peeled and diced and sautéd them in a nice bit of olive oil and rosemary and THEN I thought about it a little bit and decided hell, I'm a grown-up (yeah, right!) and I can cook with wine and the last of the wine that's been languishing in the fridge for a week would be perfect reduced over the beets, too.

It turned out ok. The fish was perfectly crisp outside and moist and flaky inside and had some great chunks of salt-crust (oops). The beets could have done with less oil. I am not, in fact, a master chef. But I felt pretty good about it. Maybe it was the wine?

I didn't instagram it by the way, because I ate half the fish before the beets were done.

It's only Day 4?

How do people live like this?

Tonight I worked a closing shift, which is why I'm blogging at midnight. After work I went to the store to pick up some more veggies and found myself wandering the aisles, staring blankly at various gluten-free offerings and wondering about the meaning of it all. It's pretty clear that if you want any sort of processed gluten-free food (crackers, pasta, cookies, cereals, bread, snacks) you're going to pay: in some cases three or four times the price of the regular wheat-containing stuff. Who can afford to pay those prices? Not I.

On to the meals:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon and mulberries! I forgot we had them in the freezer until I went digging for something to throw in my oatmeal. They were frozen the day I picked them from our tree this summer, and I'm so glad I saved them. Tea with sugar as usual - today it was lemon ginger/hibiscus.

Lunch: Scrambled eggs with ham, cappicola and swiss cheese diced in, and some sliced homegrown tomato on the side. I motivated myself to cook, finally! It was good. More tea with lunch, black, and a chunk of chocolate. Hoping the caffeine would help the sinus headache that had been hovering since morning. It did not. This failure to control my headaches does not bode well for winter.

Dinner: Rick made chili this morning, so I packed it up for dinner at work and ate it over rice with a big slab of swiss cheese melted on top. Chili is always better with cheese, especially Rick's chili, which tends toward the spicy side. There were onions in it but fully-cooked onions don't seem to bother me nearly as much as raw onions, onion powder, or dried onions do. I wonder if there's a chemical change that takes place during cooking which might explain the difference in reaction. Also nibbled more chocolate. I'm on a kick lately with the chocolate bars...

And Rick made bagels, which he insisted that I taste. So much for a whole week of gluten-free. They are however really, really good. I think I might have one tomorrow for breakfast and see how it goes down. I know that a proper elimination diet should be at least three to four weeks (and much more restrictive, if you're really trying to suss out an allergy) so I'll probably spend the next few weeks doing more diet tracking and avoiding wheat where I can... but if the bagel doesn't cause any problems I'll feel a lot better. And if it does? I don't know.

Day 3.

3 days in! Nothing out of the ordinary so far. Today I was grumpy. Stayed up too late, mashed the alarm into silence and dozed with husband rubbing my tummy (which was a little upset, weirdly enough) until the very last minute. Ran out the door, got to work and walked right into a million customers who all needed help at once. So much for yesterday's quietude... There are certain times when my stress level peaks and I just can't get it back down again because I need everyone to go away for an hour and once that happens I tend to overreact to EVERYTHING. Today was one of those days and I was glad to be done with it.

Breakfast: In-a-hurry roll-ups! Provolone and 3 kinds of deli meat because they were the first grab-and-go gluten free things in the fridge. I may or may not have actually put them together and eaten them in the car. Not my finest breakfast plan ever, but it did keep me going - which was good because the half cup of chai tea I slammed before work was not enough and the cup I made in the break room went cold long before I got to drink it. Sigh.

If I had more time I would've gone for scrambled eggs with ham and cheese diced in, which would have at least pretended to be healthier and more breakfast-y.

Lunch: Trumped-up leftovers (do you see a pattern here?). Chicken, a baked potato with butter and chives, and canned peas. Scraped out the last of the zucchini pickles and had some trail mix for 'dessert'.* I finally finished my tea and refilled my travel mug with water, and didn't even get to finish that before I was pulled in four directions at once again. Apparently employee hydration is not important to customers. Who knew?

Got home, snacked on a piece of ham and a pinch of trail mix, chugged some Sierra Mist from the fridge..
 Dinner: More leftovers! I made chicken and rice soup with peas, spiced with some dried minced onion and black pepper. I think I over-ate, and about half an hour later... boom, bloating. Is it the onion? (Survey says: probably!). The rest of the soup is in tupperware for lunches. I'm going to try it again tomorrow and see.

I nabbed two flowers from the garden center on the way out. Started to dig a hole for one of them in the "flower bed" behind the neighbor's massive concrete-block garage wall and hit a lot of chunks of stone and concrete down there. Yaaaaay. Gonna have to dig it out deeper/wider and re-fill with better soil, but I spent the rest of the daylight helping hubby replace the drum brakes on the right rear wheel... it was a learning experience, to say the least.

I'm sleepy already. Today was not the best day, but I hope tomorrow will be better.


*We make our own "trail mix": craisins, honey roasted peanuts, dark chocolate chips, walnuts, and organic unsulphured dried apple rings. Most of the ingredients are bulk buys, which makes it super inexpensive, and it's awesome for lunches.

Wheat-free, Day 2.

It's hard not to just grab bread and make a sandwich. Or have cereal, for that matter. Even our "toasted oats" cereal has wheat in it! So, for that matter, does Campbell's Tomato Soup (flour as a thickener). So much for easy canned meals for work. This may be more difficult than I thought.

Breakfast today? Apple-Cinnamon Oatmeal. I love apples and I like oatmeal so this was a no-brainer and a great way to start the day. It kept me going well until my very late lunch, although I had a mostly quiet day at work (for once). When I'm more active I get hungry a lot earlier.

Lunch was leftovers - the rest of the egg salad wrapped in romaine leaves, more zucchini pickles, and the remainders of the apple from breakfast, sliced and packed with a sprinkle of lemon juice. During a break I caved and finished off the Hershey's milk chocolate bar that was floating around in the bottom of my lunch box. Not as good as dark chocolate, but it was a good little sugar boost. I wasn't as sleepy as I usually get right after lunch, which was a good thing because I was stuck at the garden register all afternoon in the rain. You can imagine how busy I was... (not!)

When I got home, Dinner was waiting in the oven - roast chicken, baked potatoes with sour cream and chives, and butter-soaked green beans. Mmmmmm. I have a love affair with butter and I am not afraid to admit it. Those beans were good. I'm trying to have a fruit or veggie serving with every meal. Not that it's unusual to eat vegetables around here, but I've been known to slap together a ham and cheese sandwich and completely ignore the lettuce and cucumber in the crisper drawer. Without bread carbs to fill me up, I'm paying more attention to finding other 'filler' foods (rice, potatoes, quinoa), which are bland and boring. So veggies not only make sense in terms of health but to spice up the presentation of my meals - nothing looks less interesting than a white or brown starch and a brown chunk of meat and no color on a plate!

In other news, there's a sale on the last surviving perennials in the garden center, and they've already set up the holiday merchandise inside. Uh-oh.

Wheat-Free, Day 1.

So I've been showing signs of a potential wheat intolerance for a while (since college, I think, back when half my meals were ramen and the other half were pasta dishes from the food court). It's been really inconsistent though, and I passed it off as gas, or (sorry, guys) period bloating. Then I thought I had it pegged on white-flour elbow macaroni because a bowl of mac and cheese felt like it was killing me. Then it turned out I didn't know after all because mac and cheese doesn't always have that effect if it's homemade and not box-mix, sometimes other pasta does, and Monday I had two slices of toast off a loaf of homemade bread with locally-made jam, and a stomach ache all day.

So for a while (we'll see how long it lasts) I'm going to be avoiding wheat products and trying to remember to record both what I ate and how I'm feeling. If that doesn't work, I guess I start eliminating other foods. And of course I'm blogging it because I want to record everything (and be accountable).

Yesterday (Tuesday) was supposed to be my first day of wheat-free eating. I had a nice filling bowl of brown-sugared oatmeal for breakfast with earl grey tea, and packed a lunch with chicken and rice.  And then I ruined it by working later than planned and demolishing an entire pack of cheese sandwich crackers around 4:30. Didn't realize it until bedtime, either. Coincidentally, I'm writing this in bed. Good night!

(11:45am)
So today is my official first day eating gluten free and it's off to a bad start because my husband made pizza last night and left it in the fridge. It's very tempting and I admit to nibbling a tiny chunk of crust left on the baking stone. I'm going to pretend I didn't - sshhh! I slept in really late because I was up so late after a 12-hour work day. Bad decision, I know. At least I have today off. Woke up with the mother of all sinus headaches (again). I swear any time I sleep in, I wake up with a headache. The good news is that it typically goes away once I'm up and active. The bad news is that my chronic sinus infection is resisting every attempt to kill it off and working in a big dusty warehouse is probably not helping.

Anyway, food! Breakfast is a sliced Gala apple with peanut butter, a cup of Lemon Zinger tea and strawberry Greek yogurt. Yum! Yogurt is supposed to be good for you, what with all those active bacterial cultures.

Lunch featured egg salad (egg, leftover chicken, shredded lettuce, salt, pepper, and a sprinkle of garlic powder) wrapped in romaine leaves, with mom's zucchini pickles on the side and apple cider to drink. Felt good, did some work around the house, snacked on a chocolate bar.

Dinner made my stomach unhappy. Hmm. A small piece of breaded pork chop (leftovers), rice and a fresh tomato with salt, pepper and olive oil. Peppermint tea with honey.

Since this is the first day of trying to avoid wheat, it's too early to draw any conclusions - other than that I miss pizza already.

Beet it! (+Forward-thinking Friday #3)

After three weeks of looking at my schedule and deciding that a 6am farm stint wasn't what I really needed, I got today off and managed to hike up to the urban farm for a few much-needed (on all sides) volunteer hours. I spent 3 blissful hours weeding peas and harvesting stuff that Tim, the coordinator for the day, insisted that I take. I came home with enough lettuce to have huge salads every day all week (and I have more in my garden!), a small bag of fresh snap peas (I munched a few while picking, I admit it!) and two bags of beets and beet greens. I haven't ever tried to work with beet greens, and I'll probably default to wilting them with spinach, and making them into salads unless someone has a better idea.

The beets I'm going to try to pickle! I think I got enough for a small jar, and that's all I want to try (as impractical as might seem to not do a whole bunch, my kitchen is not equipped for bulk preserving right now). I figure if I can do a simple pickled beet, I can do pickles this summer with the cucumbers I'm hoping to get, and maybe even attempt to can some tomatoes!

What are you preserving this summer?

Oh, and a Forward-Thinking Friday, since I've fallen off that wagon...
Since last time I've gotten my garden planned and put in, started some seeds and killed most of them (for all my supposed gardening experience I am a terrible gardener), tried to keep the house cleaner, etc. We managed to get new light fixtures cheap at one of the big box stores and replaced the old icky brass-and-wood chandelier-bulb fixtures in the kitchen and entry. The end result is much nicer!

So this week I will:
1. Finish patching the hole in the kitchen ceiling that was hidden by the big old light fixture.
2. Finally finally FINALLY pick a paint color for the entry!
3. Pickle some beets.
4. Finish my shelf/grow-light setup (ha!) and post some pictures.

More food talk.

I've been talking about food a lot lately. Not that there's much else to talk about. Work at the new job is relatively steady and sane (this makes me paranoid because when I hit a nice steady sane rut, it usually means something huge and terrifying is going to happen soon).

The garden has been as lazily tended as ever. I bought a tomato plant a few weeks ago, and a cucumber plant yesterday. Nothing interesting happening there, though. No blossoms yet. The grass keeps growing and we keep ignoring it. Well, Rick keeps ignoring it. I keep thinking "What if I dig all this up and put a new raised bed in over there?", but I haven't gotten to it yet. Because I'm lazy efficient like that.

 Oh, and we got a new car after our old one was "totaled" (but the old car was a 2000 Saab convertible and was totaled not because it was insanely damaged but because the 16-year-old who backed into the front headlight damaged just enough stuff, and since Saab went under the parts are more expensive and the total replacement cost for headlight/bumper/etc was ridiculous). The new (used) car is a Subaru Forester, by the way. It's very nice. It's a manual transmission! I guess that's news.

But really, there's not much going on. So I share what I'm eating. Today for example, I had a lovely snack! It was a banana-berry smoothie with some yummy slices of swiss cheese and salami on the side.

I love smoothies. You can make them with almost anything. Basically a smoothie is the best way to get a million servings of fruit (and maybe some veggies) all at once in a tall cold glass. 'cause smoothies, for proper texture and flavor, have to include some ice. Or frozen fruit. I use frozen fruit because then even if the smoothie gets warm and liquidy and juice-y, it doesn't get watered down. Also because buying real fresh berries is expensive and we don't grow our own (yet) but we can get bulk frozen berry mix (with blackberries, raspberries and blueberries!) at our local big-box members-only store. We buy frozen pre-sliced strawberries, too. They're pretty good.

Anyway, smoothies are awesome. I almost always use banana in mine. Bananas blend really well and make the smoothie nice and creamy so you don't have to add a lot of milk or ice cream (if you add ice cream it's a milkshake anyway) or powdered thickening agents or 'smoothie mix' (ew). They also sweeten up any potentially tangy berries. Applesauce is good for that, too. And you haven't lived until you've tried a Peanut-butter Banana smoothie. One of these days I'm gonna try Nutella in there. Have I said I love smoothies yet?

The best part about smoothies (making them, anyway) is this: The Ninja Warrior! We have an older version, which we got on a "deals" site *coughwoot.comcough* for a really good price. We figured, why not? It sounds like one of those things you see on an infomercial at 2am. "It slices! It dices! It MAKES YOU SANDWICHES!" (Not really.) But it's actually a really solid tool and out of all the kitchen-y gadgets we've collected it's the only one that gets taken off the top of the fridge for regular use. Yeah. I swear it's magic. I'm pretty sure I've pimped it before, too. Forgive my unpaid pimping of this product. It's just that I actually think I love it. I've never loved a kitchen implement before! Don't judge me too harshly.

Here's how to make a smoothie with an immersion blender: You just put your ingredients in the included (but not pictured) beaker (or your desired cup, if it's wide enough for the blender head). Pile it in any way you please. Don't cut up the softer stuff too much because this thing can handle big chunks. Then you stick the floppy silicone blending guard on top, insert the wand and push the really convenient button on the handle. And it goes whirr whirrrrr whirwhirwhir whirrrrrr and you wiggle it up and down and around a little bit and your smoothie is done. And you'll never go to a smoothie place again. Think of the savings! Think of your waistline! (Smoothies are healthy!)

Also cleanup is literally as easy as wiping it out with a soapy cloth and rinsing (the wand is stainless steel for easy clean-up and the handle with the motor detaches for still easier clean-up). It's terrific and I, the girl who never washes her dishes after she cooks, will wash this out after I use it every time because it's SO EASY. I think everyone should have one!

Or at least, everyone should have a smoothie. Come over. I'll make whatever you like!

Slow (Food) Progress

I've been reading the archives in the 100 Days of Real Food blog, and I really find the posts informative. There is a lot of information here, from links to the Environmental Watch Group's "Dirty Dozen" to notes on fast food ingredients and how hard it is to find a birthday cake without preservatives. It's a neat read. And while I've been reading this blog and thinking about all these whole foods/locavore/vegetarian/vegan/juicing movements springing up, I'm also comparing our little household to the big food bloggers to see what we're doing "right", what we're not doing, and what we can potentially change.

For background: I've always considered myself a "healthy" eater but until recently I didn't pay much attention to where my food was sourced. My parents didn't take us kids to fast-food restaurants and candy wasn't kept at home except for the major holidays (Easter, Halloween, and Christmas). We didn't buy or drink a lot of pop. Both mom and dad gardened, cooked, and preserved some of our food and encouraged us to eat our veggies. Dad was always into organic/local food so some of that rubbed off on me and I've been researching food since college when my vegan friends introduced me to the delights (not) of factory farming! Rick's family wasn't as into health choices but his grandmother still did a lot of home cooking, so he learned to cook too - although his meal of choice when we were in college and he was working full-time was minute rice and fried chicken! He gained a lot of weight in high school and college and is trying to drop it, which is a motivator for eating better.

So when we got serious and got a house and I started thinking about feeding us, and he started thinking about losing weight (again), we decided to make some changes. We picked up some cookbooks for new recipe ideas... and promptly allowed them to gather dust (oh well). He dropped his Mountain Dew habit and cut back (little by little) on coffee. I quit buying pop for us and started a tea habit. Last year I got serious about making whole wheat bread and rolls; last winter he started making pizza crusts. And I've always tried to garden, with varying degrees of success. Little by little we're moving away from packaged foods and toward real healthy foods.

So here's to progress, and to still having more (a lot more) to do. "Right" here means good for our health and (usually) our budgets... not perfect, but moving in a good direction.

Things we are doing right:

Not eating out, although I occasionally buy lunches at work instead of bringing.

Buying whole wheat sandwich bread (ever since that Girl Scout project in third grade where they had us make 'clay' beads out of white bread, glue, and food coloring, I've greatly preferred wheat)

Buying in bulk when we can (bulk organic baby spinach, anyone?)

Gardening! This is of course an ongoing project.

Looking for healthier snack options: veggie straws instead of chips, whole-wheat pretzels, fresh or frozen fruit instead of ice cream.

Eating slightly less meat. We'll always eat meat, but I've cut my usual serving size and am filling the space with veggies.

Starting these changes while we're still in our 20's, childless and not in a food rut. I see a lot of bloggers talking about making changes when they've already started a family and are relatively settled in their ways of preparing and eating meals. There's always time to improve and I applaud anyone trying, regardless of age, eating habits or family status, but I think doing it younger and without having children does make it easier!


Things we could improve:

Cut out white bread (still do a lot of white rolls for hot dogs and burgers)

Make most/all of our bread at home, learn to do pasta too!

Find local eggs

Buy more organic and local produce

Figure out if purchasing a whole, grass-fed locally-raised cow is an option! We can't afford to buy the "good" meat from the store and often default to the cheapest chicken breasts and pork roasts we find. I don't particularly love the idea of eating factory-farmed meat, but protein is protein and I'm not giving up bacon. I'm hoping that as our incomes rise, so will the percentage of healthier meat in our diets.

Start making our own 'processed' foods - things like applesauce, which is almost impossible to find without HFCS, and pretzels, which are a takeoff on the bread recipes I'm learning.

Things that are at a stalemate (Either he or I don't want to give them up):

White-flour pasta. It's not going anywhere, although we've looked into making our own. The wheat pastas, aside from being more expensive, are also less appealing to Rick and harder for me to cook well (longer cooking times throw me off). We're probably going to stick to the convenience and speed of regular bulk pasta for a while.

Condiments (lots of yucky ingredients in the generic brands, but making them all at home is daunting and we tend to buy in bulk so they are very cheap!) If buying cheap condiments means we can afford better veggies or cuts of meat...

Cleaning and hygiene products. There are a lot of make-it-yourself recipes out there and we don't have much excuse not to switch (well, except for the recipes that encourage you to make your own soap... I'm not prepared to make my own soap yet), but I think I'd feel guiltier than I already do if I made my own cleaning products and still didn't clean the house!

I think we're doing ok but there's a long way to go before I consider our diet really healthy. In the meantime, I'll be working on the garden and trying to remember how to preserve fruit.

Any suggestions for things we could improve, or easy changes we could do this summer? I've considered doing a "real food" challenge - do you think it would teach us something new? What are your best healthy eating ideas?

Ten-day Stretch

Happy Valentine's Day. I hope it was good for everyone! For me, it was just another terrible Tuesday! Or at least, it felt like it. I stayed up too late making a loaf of whole wheat herb and garlic bread and nearly 2 dozen small rolls (with my own home-grown dried oregano from last summer's garden, no less!), and the cat decided that 8am was breakfast time, an hour and a half before my alarm went off for my first day on a ten-day stretch at work. Needless to say, I'm exhausted right now and there's still laundry and dishes to finish. Ugh.

Work was sloooooow today (I would much rather have stayed home and finished the laundry!), but I managed to read an entire book at lunch ("The Kid Who Ran for President", an old kids' book my husband found when we were reworking the library on Saturday). It's the first day of the library's Read-a-Thon, and they're aiming for 20,012 pages read (in honor of the year). I'm well on my way, and tomorrow am going to start Catcher in the Rye. I figure that should get me through most of my loooooooooong work week, right?

One of the girls at work, J, said that she had a really weird experience today in the mall. Some lady ("The most normal looking person ever", J said) walked up to her while she was playing with her phone, and said cheerily: "Jesus loves you! Have a nice day!" I guess she felt like J needed a valentine from Jesus. I suppose it's better than having some creepy-looking guy come up and sniff you and go "You smell good..." (this has happened to someone here)!

Tomorrow is day 2 of 10. Here's hoping it's busy... even if it's just valentine gift returns! Next Friday, I am going to sit on my butt and play games and try at all costs to do nothing of importance... except maybe blog. I haven't done a Forward-Thinking Friday in a while, have I?

Bread and Circuses!

...or at least bread.

I've been making Rosemary Flatbread again! Rick can't get enough of it, although he's been bothering me to make some nice whole wheat rolls too... we'll see, but chances are he'll have his rolls this week. I rather enjoy puttering around in front of a hot oven on a cold winter day, don't you?

Tomorrow starts a ten-day stretch of work, which is likely to be terribly slow and boring and tiring in that kind of soul-weary way that standing around waiting for something to happen is tiring. I'd rather work myself to the bone for ten days straight! I've been putting in a few job applications but I'm torn between thinking "I'm perfect for the position, how could they turn me down?" and "With all the applicants they're getting and my lack of social graces, how can I even have a chance?". I'm trying to stay positive, because I could really use a better job. Tomorrow I need to get some follow-up calls going.

This week I'm still working on the house and keeping up with the chores. Nothing complicated, just the basics. I'm hoping to get some better habits going with regard to keeping things tidy! If so, maybe I can even start supplementing this blog with pictures!