pasta!

Here was a fun meal from last week.  This was the first time I've had pasta in about 4 years.  If you think I'm crazy, you are probably right.  But aren't the crazy people the most interesting ones in your life?   Be grateful for us!  

Here's the pasta I used--it's a brown rice penne, and I didn't notice that it tasted any different from the usual but then it has been 4-5 years since I ate pasta...

I just cooked up summer veggies from the fridge:  patty pan squash, sweet red frying pepper (like a red bell pepper), onion, mushrooms, and fresh basil.   I enjoyed it!

my favorite breakfast now

This breakfast is comfort food to me.  I have southern roots and I used to love grits and cream of wheat.  This is reminiscent of both.  Ahead of time, I mix equal parts of buckwheat (medium cut), corn grits, and oat bran into a bowl and mix that up and store it in the fridge.

Then each morning I take out 1/4-1/3 cup depending on how hungry I am, add 1/4 cup soy or almond milk (unsweetened) and twice the amount of water as the cereal.  I also add 1 tsp of chia seeds and, occasionally, 1 tsp of maple syrup.  It's delicious without them also.   Note:  I just bought some almond milk and will probably start using that instead of soy milk since I use soy milk in my soy yogurt and want some variety.

 I stir everything up in my bowl, microwave for 2 minutes, stir again, and then go do something else for 10 or more minutes.  I usually make house-mate's smoothie and go get the paper and nibble on spinach since I use that in the smoothie.  Then I probably will add a little more water, microwave for another minute, add a little fruit if you want (1/2 banana, or 1/4 cup blueberries); let cool some, and then enjoy eating it.

Today I tried an experiment by trying to make waffles out of this.  It was a pretty hilarious disaster because I don't know how to use a waffle iron, but I think there is hope for this.  I will keep experimenting and report when I get something good.  I also tried adding a tsp of cocoa powder to this and it was very good too!

Hi there

It's been two weeks since my last post.   I've been meaning to post and have taken lots of pictures of food.  I went on a long weekend vacation last week.  It gave me the opportunity to test-drive some new vacation food prep ideas, such as Jeff Novick's fast food meals--I think he calls them SNAP.  I just googled that and found a link:  A Simple and Nutritious Plan (SNAP).  He gives lots of examples in his Fast Food video.  I'm going to watch that again this week to prepare for my upcoming longer vacation in September.  Anyway, I tried this out on vacation and it was indeed a snap.  That plus microwaving potatoes plus having my favorite cereal for breakfast took care of me easily.  Here's an example of one:

The ingredients were a can of chickpeas, a can of tomatoes, some frozen corn, frozen peas and carrots and a couple of containers of already-made brown rice.  This is the ideal meal when traveling.  The grocery store I went to did not have a great produce section, but you can always from frozen veggies in a grocery store.   I tried some different seasoning mixes--Mexican was good.  Next time I will bring several more and experiment more with them.

Here they are mixed into two bowls

 then I put them in 4 smaller containers for lunch and dinner for a couple of days, along with a potato.  The potato was more of a floater to hold me over if a meal was late or if I wanted some energy before mountain biking--it's a great easy to eat snack food.  I love plain potatoes.  Sometimes I cut it up and add some parsley, other seasoning (mexican etc) and soy yogurt, other times just eat it plain.

Fall is in the air and my food choices are in transition too.  I've just started eating butternut squash and boy is it good!   We're getting local apples and cabbage.  Fresh sweet corn will be leaving us.  Here's an example of my transition meal from lunch today:

that's cabbage an apple and cinnamon at top left, boiled in a little water.  Top right is 1/2 baked butternut squash mashed up with 1/3 cup almond milk and cinnamon.  and of course sweet corn.  It was  delicious.

The collards in my garden are very healthy and the fear of winter is making me want to eat a bunch of collard wraps this week (eat them fresh that is, rather than frozen from my freezer in winter).  So I made up some Jeff Novick burgers today (the curry one) and will make some white bean red pepper hummus tomorrow, and I have some cooked brown rice on hand, and I'm making a batch of soy yogurt, and  I'll have some other fresh veggies to add to make some nice collard wraps all week long!   and I'll make some potatoes and butternut squash and my favorite cereal for breakfast.  I'll post about that next...

weekend food prep

Housemate has canned about 48 pints of tomatoes so far.  This week two of them didn't seal so I had some tomatoes to use up.  I decided to make a chili.  You can find the recipe at this link, scroll down to the third recipe.  I like it.  Here is the pot cooked up:



I cooked up a batch of brown and forbidden rice and combined the chili and rice into bowls to freeze for later.  I also wanted to try it with polenta.  So I cooked up some polenta (corn grits):  1/4 cup dry + about 2/3 cups water.  I heated that in the microwave for 2 minutes then let it sit for about 10 minutes.  it got nice and thick.  I divided it into 2 servings with the chili.  

I harvested a bunch of collards and kale from the garden.  Here are four large bags ready to freeze.

I cooked up some greens, onion and tomato for a daily serving in my breakfast (or elsewhere) next week.   and froze those in individual servings.

Last week's food

It was more of the same but I haven't got tired of it yet.

Monday lunch was a leftover "burger" from our cookout, corn on the cob, green beans and carrots, and sliced tomato.  The burger is topped with salt-free mustard, cucumber and tomato.  My drink is water that the carrots and beans were cooked in.  I admit, that's going a little far but it tastes pretty good.

The weather turned cooler and I started panicking about summer and the corn season ending, so I started eating 2 ears of corn!  I don't get it every day so it probably evens out.  Here it is served with some broccoli, and a small baked potato topped with parsley and home-made soy yogurt.

This time the corn was served with beans, sliced tomatoes and baked kohlrabi (sliced).

Today I cooked up some okra (from the farmer's market, a rare treat here), tomato (from the garden), and a cut up potato (baked last night), and a little parsley and basil.  very good.

Breakfast had a new twist this week.  I combined oat bran, buckwheat and corn grits in equal amounts, cooked that up (1/4 cup dry), and added in the greens I made the previous weekend (kale, eggplant, tomato).  I like this.

My weekend breakfasts were treats from the farmer's market.   Saturday it was melon (like a cantaloupe), blueberries and soy yogurt:

Sunday it was a peach, blueberries, and soy yogurt:

Dinners were usually beans and rice (from last weekend's food prep), a salad, maybe a small potato.

On the bad behavior side, I overate blueberries and carrots this weekend.   You might think that would be hard to do, but I succeeded.  The carrots were from the farmer's market and were very sweet.   Having eaten them all, the temptation is gone now.  sigh.

breakfast!

I have very simple tastes I think.  So this may not appeal to others as much as me but this was just what I like:  corn grits, buckwheat and fruit:

I used 1/8 cup corn grits, 1/8 cup buckwheat, added 3/4 cup water, cooked in the microwave for 2 minutes; stirred, let cool while I heated up my frozen fruit (fresh Wisconsin fruit from the farmer's market).   Cooked the cereal for another minute.  added the fruit; let stand for another 10 minutes or so to cool and cook a little more.    This is my favorite breakfast so far.   I ordered some oat bran and when that arrives I might try a mixture of all three, but it's hard to imagine I will like it more than this.  I've always loved grits.

practice makes flow

A friend pointed out this article to me from Mark Hyman:

http://drhyman.com/blog/2012/07/31/why-falling-off-the-wagon-can-benefit-you/?utm_source=WhatCounts+Publicaster+Edition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=drhyman+newsletter+issue+%2385&utm_content=Get+the+story

I really like this article.  He suggests a 90:10 rule to keep you from falling into the trap of perfectionism, which can lead to trouble when you fall of the wagon for whatever reason.  He talks about Hungarian psychologist Csikszentmihaly's concept of flow, in regards to your general life as well as your eating style.  I read Csikszentmihaly's book with the same title and thought it was very good. Also, Hyman reminds us that our ultimate goal is to be happy.  Nice article.