Crash and burn!

Okay, I declare failure in my challenge to make healthy treats for house-mate UR (see this post for background).  Fortunately I have free will and can choose to abandon this challenge before the crash continues.  Why is this a failure?  1)  I have no discipline.  Holy cow.  I can't stop eating the treats.  2) I don't like baking, never have, have always been bad at it.  3) I don't have time for all this extra baking. Holy cow, I have a lot of work to catch up on now. 4) The treats aren't really that great.  I mean, they are okay, but not great.  --Except for the Chocolate Bean bars which I will make again and I don't feel as bla-ey when I eat them.   5) I don't feel so good when I eat too many baked goods.  even though it's just oats and dates and bananas and nuts and chocolate chips, I still feel heavy in my tummy.  well, that's because I'm eating too much!  6) In eating this stuff, I am not eating the high-nutrient foods.  7)  Dammit, I could have been making pesto today instead of all these dumb oat chocolate chip treats that I'm sick of.  I have two giant basil plants that need harvesting.  And I have to work tomorrow.  I hope I can fit in pesto somehow.

So today, for breakfast I had a smoothie, that's good.  Then I had to leave this morning to meet someone for coffee and go to yoga and go grocery shopping, and I knew I'd miss lunch so I ate a Chocolate bean bar and two little Yummy Banana Oat Bars before I left.  Then when I went grocery shopping I got lots of great produce, and a vegan chocolate chip cookie!  What's up with that?  Then I came home and decided the experiment was over because the chocolate chip ingestion was getting way out of hand, and I would just bake one more goodie for UR, this was Banana Oat cookies (recipe on Fuhrman's member center site), to which I added the rest of the chocolate chips, which by the way, are high fat and don't count as a part of a high-nutrient diet unless you eat them in small quantities, which I have demonstrated I am not capable of doing.  The batter was pretty good but they didn't cook up all that great, since they are healthy and don't have flour and baking soda or baking powder or whatever it is that makes cookies bake up nicely.  But that didn't stop me from eating, about 5 of them (update:  6).  They aren't that big.  I think my calorie intake wasn't over the top today but I didn't eat any of the good stuff, like salads and greens and fruits and vegetables.  And the treats really aren't that great.  The salads and fruits and vegetables are better.  I'd rather have curried mustard greens!  But now I'm too full and too tired---I'm still jet-lagged which isn't helping my behavior I'm sure.  

So my solution to the House-mate situation is, on the web, I found these Health Valley granola bars and graham crackers that don't look too unhealthy, and I think my Co-op carries them, so I'll buy some and we'll find out if UR finds them satisfactory enough to consider treats.  They don't look appealing to me so no temptations there.  And maybe we can permit one or two Divine Fair Trade milk chocolate bars per week for UR to increase the treat factor (fair trade is an excellent way to get your money directed to the actual producers of your chocolate, the farmers, rather than an exploitive corporation, which is normally the case for chocolate) (UR really likes milk chocolate).  We can still make chocolate smoothies which are quite healthy with the berries in them---I think I'll modify the recipe to not include soy milk.  That's the other thing, I used a lot of soy milk this week since I was making the chocolate shakes for UR and I'm not a big fan of it.  I'd rather ingest something more delicious (and nutritious), like cherries.  So we're out of soy milk and I'm just as happy about it.  Plus it's a pain to transport on the bike.

So tomorrow is a new day and I think I can get back to healthy eating.  I am tired and trying to stay awake until an almost normal bedtime...

Update:  my neighbor, a vegan baker, brought over some baguettes this evening.  So I tried one out.  I made a spread from a half an avocado (leftover), one cherry tomato from the garden (that's all that's ripe), some basil and chives from the garden, and what's left of a lime I used for tea.  The spread was great.  The baguette was good (of course, it has almost no nutritional value).  I toasted it in the oven .  I could taste the salt in it.  It's amazing how sensitive you get to salt when you don't add it to your food.  Was it worth it?  Maybe, if I hadn't of eaten all that other shit today.   I preferred the baguette to the oat bars and cookies.  I've always preferred food to treats.  Treats make me feel full and tired.  Food makes me feel more satisfied even if it makes me feel full too.  I remember when I was a kid and we would get pancakes with syrup for a rare treat and I loved it but an hour later I felt real tired.  It's like that with the treats.  Well, this was a good lesson and reminder of what's good for me!   Now tomorrow, my neighbor might bring over some beer.  I wonder what I should offer up.  I doubt I'll be in the mood for nuts after all this rich food.  Another baguette, sliced into toasted "chips", with pesto on it?   More empty calories?  hmmm.  Fruit doesn't go with beer.  Mushrooms?  She won't go for that.  huh, interesting challenge.  What is healthy that goes with beer?  I don't count salted peanuts as healthy.  The baguette sounds least destructive so far.  We'll see...