I think I'm going to try to make a semi-regular Monday morning gardening post. It's funny, I'll be all garden, all the time during the summer months and then slack off during the winter... even though we still have things growing!
This Monday however, I want to share with you my fail. My broccoli fail. Both my hubs and my son LOVE broccoli, so it was a natural to try and grow it. For the last two years I've started broccoli from seed and I get bupkus. The leaves come up, but no stalks, no flowers. I've tried a couple varieties of seeds, but still no dice. So this year I decided to just go out and buy a plant and see how well it does. You know, $1.50 for a start isn't too bad if you grow $5.00 worth of broccoli! And this is what I get... TWO MEASLY FLORETS!!! Really broccoli? Why do you do this to me? Do you hate me?
I think this is one thing that I'll stick to the farmer's market & supermarket. Especially when the frozen stuff goes on sale, because frankly, with broccoli, it all tastes the same.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Assemble & eat
I have two ultra quick "recipes" I want to share. No pictures because this stuff is super fast, throw-together, OMG-IT'S-MEALTIME??? type food. But both are pretty awesome.
Serves 1, double or triple as needed
1 can tuna (I use a no salt added variety)
1/2 a red bell pepper
2 small or 1 large cucumber
1 tbsp finely chopped onions of some sort (green onions or red onions are the best)
Any bits of random veggies you have sitting around in your fridge that are good raw (celery, cauliflower, etc), finely chopped (optional)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt & pepper to taste
1 tbsp olive oil
Cut red pepper and cucumber into chunks. Drain the tuna and dump over the veggies. Throw in the onion and any other veggies. Pour on the balsamic vinegar, and season with salt & pepper (I just use pepper). Toss. Do this before the olive oil so the vinegar gets evenly distributed. Pour on the olive oil & toss again. Chow down.
Serves 1
1 ripe banana
2 tbsp coconut milk
1/3 cup fresh berries
1-2 tsp unsweetened dried coconut (optional)
Break banana into chunks in a bowl. Mash with fork. Add coconut milk & mash some more. Throw in the berries and coconut, mix up and enjoy.
Tuna Salad
Serves 1, double or triple as needed
1 can tuna (I use a no salt added variety)
1/2 a red bell pepper
2 small or 1 large cucumber
1 tbsp finely chopped onions of some sort (green onions or red onions are the best)
Any bits of random veggies you have sitting around in your fridge that are good raw (celery, cauliflower, etc), finely chopped (optional)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt & pepper to taste
1 tbsp olive oil
Cut red pepper and cucumber into chunks. Drain the tuna and dump over the veggies. Throw in the onion and any other veggies. Pour on the balsamic vinegar, and season with salt & pepper (I just use pepper). Toss. Do this before the olive oil so the vinegar gets evenly distributed. Pour on the olive oil & toss again. Chow down.
Coconut Ambrosia
Serves 1
1 ripe banana
2 tbsp coconut milk
1/3 cup fresh berries
1-2 tsp unsweetened dried coconut (optional)
Break banana into chunks in a bowl. Mash with fork. Add coconut milk & mash some more. Throw in the berries and coconut, mix up and enjoy.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Update and some recipe reviews...
I'm on day 11 of the Whole30 and things are pretty much going smoothly. I don't feel super amazing, but I also haven't been struggling in the least. Aside from resisting the siren call of Diet Coke, it's actually been easy. My gut has been readjusting itself quite a bit and that's still a little uncomfortable, but the headaches and sluggishness are gone even with far less caffeine.
The biggest change though, is one I really wasn't expecting. For as long as I can remember I've had that thing where a few hours after a meal, I know I'm not actually hungry, but I still want to eat something. I can resist it, but it usually takes effort. Well, after a week on the Whole30, that feeling is gone. Sometimes I feel like "Hey, I could go for a snack right now", I ask myself if I'm hungry and I'm really not and the urge to eat goes away. That has never happened in my life, usually it's something I wrestle over. That alone is really super cool because it saves me a lot of mental stress!
OK, onto some recipe reviews...
1. Better Butter Chicken from Everyday Paleo. Since I started avoiding salt, Indian take-out has been off the menu, not because it's high sodium by definition, but because the restaurant doesn't have a way to adjust the sodium in each individual dish, so as a whole I know I'd be getting way too much. But man, I've missed Indian food BAD! This recipe really satisfied that craving. My husband typically hates coconut curries, but he didn't even notice the coconut milk in this one... he loved it. I replaced the butter in the recipe with ghee (which frankly gives a more authentic Indian flavor anyway). Big thumbs up. I think next time I'm going to try serving it over cauliflower roasted with curry powder.
2. Chocolate Chili from the preview of Well Fed. This was another big thumbs up from the husband, great dinner while watching his team win a NFL playoff game! I substituted in some ground feral swine (yes really, they have it frozen at my natural foods store) for the beef, and used real beef broth (with no added sodium) instead of the canned stuff. Even using no-salt-added canned tomatoes, this was still super yummy. I served it with a bunch of little small bowls of toppings (a la Chili My Soul, now defunct) including minced green onions, chopped avocados, pumpkin seeds and a bit of shredded cheese for the menfolk. My son whined that it was "too spicy" for 10 minutes before trying his first bite and then decided it was "good" and ate a bunch. Gotta love 3 year olds.
3. Grain free dolmas. This one takes a little bit of a rewind... back in June, I put up some grape leaves in the freezer and they've been sitting there ever since. I finally got up the nerve to put them to good use to pack in my lunch bentos this week. This dolma filling is actually awesome, I used GF beef instead of lamb because the 3 markets where I'd usually get ground lamb were all out, but it was just as good with the beef. I had about 1/4 of the filling left over and I cooked it up with some shredded cabbage for a breakfast hash this morning and that was also yummy. The biggest revelation though was the actual grape leaves. You ever have dolmas in a restaurant and they taste good, but the leaves itself are chewy and stringy? Well I can tell you that homegrown leaves preserved by freezing (instead of brining) are soft and tender. Yum, yum, YUM!
The biggest change though, is one I really wasn't expecting. For as long as I can remember I've had that thing where a few hours after a meal, I know I'm not actually hungry, but I still want to eat something. I can resist it, but it usually takes effort. Well, after a week on the Whole30, that feeling is gone. Sometimes I feel like "Hey, I could go for a snack right now", I ask myself if I'm hungry and I'm really not and the urge to eat goes away. That has never happened in my life, usually it's something I wrestle over. That alone is really super cool because it saves me a lot of mental stress!
OK, onto some recipe reviews...
1. Better Butter Chicken from Everyday Paleo. Since I started avoiding salt, Indian take-out has been off the menu, not because it's high sodium by definition, but because the restaurant doesn't have a way to adjust the sodium in each individual dish, so as a whole I know I'd be getting way too much. But man, I've missed Indian food BAD! This recipe really satisfied that craving. My husband typically hates coconut curries, but he didn't even notice the coconut milk in this one... he loved it. I replaced the butter in the recipe with ghee (which frankly gives a more authentic Indian flavor anyway). Big thumbs up. I think next time I'm going to try serving it over cauliflower roasted with curry powder.
2. Chocolate Chili from the preview of Well Fed. This was another big thumbs up from the husband, great dinner while watching his team win a NFL playoff game! I substituted in some ground feral swine (yes really, they have it frozen at my natural foods store) for the beef, and used real beef broth (with no added sodium) instead of the canned stuff. Even using no-salt-added canned tomatoes, this was still super yummy. I served it with a bunch of little small bowls of toppings (a la Chili My Soul, now defunct) including minced green onions, chopped avocados, pumpkin seeds and a bit of shredded cheese for the menfolk. My son whined that it was "too spicy" for 10 minutes before trying his first bite and then decided it was "good" and ate a bunch. Gotta love 3 year olds.
3. Grain free dolmas. This one takes a little bit of a rewind... back in June, I put up some grape leaves in the freezer and they've been sitting there ever since. I finally got up the nerve to put them to good use to pack in my lunch bentos this week. This dolma filling is actually awesome, I used GF beef instead of lamb because the 3 markets where I'd usually get ground lamb were all out, but it was just as good with the beef. I had about 1/4 of the filling left over and I cooked it up with some shredded cabbage for a breakfast hash this morning and that was also yummy. The biggest revelation though was the actual grape leaves. You ever have dolmas in a restaurant and they taste good, but the leaves itself are chewy and stringy? Well I can tell you that homegrown leaves preserved by freezing (instead of brining) are soft and tender. Yum, yum, YUM!
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Ginger bombs
What's that? It looks awfully lot like a candy, doesn't it? Candy ain't anything near Whole30 compliant, now is it?
Basically, I need a ginger delivery system before some of my aerial classes. Not all classes, just the ones where we spin. You see... spinning sometimes makes me puke, and I've found the best thing to prevent that is gingersnap Larabars. Larabars are kind of a grey area on the Whole30, and to be frank... gingersnap is the least tasty Larabar flavor, it doesn't have enough bite for me. But they do a really good job of keeping me from puking. So I decided to try my hand at making something similar, but a little more tasty. Keep in mind that these are not for snacking on, I'm just going to grab a couple immediately pre-workout. So technically these are not candy. They're a very serious pre-workout supplement.
But really, they're pretty much candy and unless you have a damn good anti-puke reason for eating them, I'm pretty sure they're not Whole30 compliant.
A note about measuring:
I measured the ginger and dates on my kitchen scale in grams. Dates vary in size depending on variety and while I cook with raw ginger a lot and I've never been able to wrap my head around the quantities described in most recipes. So I weighed them. If you don't have a kitchen scale, the chunk of ginger I used was a little larger than my thumb.
makes 18
3 small carrots
10gm fresh ginger, peeled and grated
10 dates pitted and cut into chunks (about 95-100gm pitted)
1/8 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1.5 tbsp almond butter
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
Grate the carrots on the fine side of a box grater (they should be very fine shreds like this). Empty them out onto a clean kitchen towel, roll the towel up over the grated carrots and twist to wring out ALL the juice. They should be fairly dry when you're done.
Put the ginger and dates into a food processor fitted with the S blade and pulse until the dates are broken up into fairly fine chunks. Add the grated carrots and the pumpkin pie spice and pulse a few more times to combine. Make sure there aren't any large clumps of carrot. Then add the almond butter and pulse until it's thoroughly integrated and begins to come together into a lump. You can add a little more almond butter if it seems really stiff.
Put the coconut on a plate, use a melon baller to scoop out little balls of the ginger goo and smooth them into a tight ball between the palms of your (clean) hands. Roll the balls in the coconut and set aside.
Store these in the FREEZER if you're not serving them at a party immediately. They're damp enough that I don't think they're entirely safe being stored at room temperature or for very long in the fridge. Plus, if they're frozen it's a lot harder to pop down the whole batch.
Basically, I need a ginger delivery system before some of my aerial classes. Not all classes, just the ones where we spin. You see... spinning sometimes makes me puke, and I've found the best thing to prevent that is gingersnap Larabars. Larabars are kind of a grey area on the Whole30, and to be frank... gingersnap is the least tasty Larabar flavor, it doesn't have enough bite for me. But they do a really good job of keeping me from puking. So I decided to try my hand at making something similar, but a little more tasty. Keep in mind that these are not for snacking on, I'm just going to grab a couple immediately pre-workout. So technically these are not candy. They're a very serious pre-workout supplement.
But really, they're pretty much candy and unless you have a damn good anti-puke reason for eating them, I'm pretty sure they're not Whole30 compliant.
A note about measuring:
I measured the ginger and dates on my kitchen scale in grams. Dates vary in size depending on variety and while I cook with raw ginger a lot and I've never been able to wrap my head around the quantities described in most recipes. So I weighed them. If you don't have a kitchen scale, the chunk of ginger I used was a little larger than my thumb.
Ginger Bombs
makes 18
3 small carrots
10gm fresh ginger, peeled and grated
10 dates pitted and cut into chunks (about 95-100gm pitted)
1/8 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1.5 tbsp almond butter
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
Grate the carrots on the fine side of a box grater (they should be very fine shreds like this). Empty them out onto a clean kitchen towel, roll the towel up over the grated carrots and twist to wring out ALL the juice. They should be fairly dry when you're done.
Put the ginger and dates into a food processor fitted with the S blade and pulse until the dates are broken up into fairly fine chunks. Add the grated carrots and the pumpkin pie spice and pulse a few more times to combine. Make sure there aren't any large clumps of carrot. Then add the almond butter and pulse until it's thoroughly integrated and begins to come together into a lump. You can add a little more almond butter if it seems really stiff.
Put the coconut on a plate, use a melon baller to scoop out little balls of the ginger goo and smooth them into a tight ball between the palms of your (clean) hands. Roll the balls in the coconut and set aside.
Store these in the FREEZER if you're not serving them at a party immediately. They're damp enough that I don't think they're entirely safe being stored at room temperature or for very long in the fridge. Plus, if they're frozen it's a lot harder to pop down the whole batch.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Ironman vs. grassfed tri-tip.
I'm on Day 7 of my Whole30, and I can't say that I'm doing much more than hanging in right now. Yesterday was kind of rough, I didn't get enough coffee in the morning, which resulted in a headache that chased me around until this morning. Then in the evening, I had the beginnings of a vertigo attack. A low sodium diet controls about 95% of my Meniere's symptoms... but I still occasionally get attacks. Stress particularly can be a trigger, and the stress of listening to my 3 year old have a 1.5 hour INTENSE screaming tantrum over going to bed was just too much. A couple hours after he settled down the world around me started doing the shift-spin-stop thing, a sure sign that a full fledged attack was on it's way. I took my meclizine and went to sleep.
Fact of the matter is, I just never feel good the day after a vertigo attack. If I have a full fledged attack I'm just exhausted by it. If I have to take the meclizine and the zofran I'm a total zombie, I have to take the day off work. I really try to avoid the zofran if I possibly can. If I catch the attack early and only have to take the meclizine, things are better, but I still feel really blah and depressed the next day. This is why I'm so aggressive about the low sodium thing, I would rather sidestep the attacks completely. There's probably no eating plan or exercise regimen that's going to combat the fact that the meds make me feel crappy.
But I was really hoping that my energy level would start to kick back up today... I've got silks class in an hour and I know I'm going to be dragging through even having an extra iced (black) coffee with lunch.
In good news... Our favorite grassfed beef producer is back at the farmer's market! See the picture above of my little superhero pretending to chow down on a frozen tri-tip. We had to buy that package because he licked it while she was reaching in the freezer for more. :-/ I chatted with her a little bit, and she's really hopeful that they'll make it to the market more regularly in 2012... they had a lot of transportation & logistics problems last year. Comes with the territory of running a ranch. I also got my lovely duck eggs, some avocados, a big bag of AWESOME local tangerines, and some dates that I'm hoping will turn into a new recipe. Stay tuned...
Fact of the matter is, I just never feel good the day after a vertigo attack. If I have a full fledged attack I'm just exhausted by it. If I have to take the meclizine and the zofran I'm a total zombie, I have to take the day off work. I really try to avoid the zofran if I possibly can. If I catch the attack early and only have to take the meclizine, things are better, but I still feel really blah and depressed the next day. This is why I'm so aggressive about the low sodium thing, I would rather sidestep the attacks completely. There's probably no eating plan or exercise regimen that's going to combat the fact that the meds make me feel crappy.
But I was really hoping that my energy level would start to kick back up today... I've got silks class in an hour and I know I'm going to be dragging through even having an extra iced (black) coffee with lunch.
In good news... Our favorite grassfed beef producer is back at the farmer's market! See the picture above of my little superhero pretending to chow down on a frozen tri-tip. We had to buy that package because he licked it while she was reaching in the freezer for more. :-/ I chatted with her a little bit, and she's really hopeful that they'll make it to the market more regularly in 2012... they had a lot of transportation & logistics problems last year. Comes with the territory of running a ranch. I also got my lovely duck eggs, some avocados, a big bag of AWESOME local tangerines, and some dates that I'm hoping will turn into a new recipe. Stay tuned...
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Whole 30 update
No fabulous new recipes today, I've been mostly trying to keep my head above water. Partly, the elimination of Diet Coke is really getting to me in the afternoons. I don't work tomorrow and you'd better bet I'm going to spend the afternoon taking a fat nap in the sun like a kitty. But also, I've been really overwhelmed at work, my boss/mentor is on a medical leave and I'm swamped with new responsibilities in her absence, plus pretty concerned about her well-being. So far, I've been rising to the challenge, but sometimes it's meant that I'm running late to pick my son up from preschool while texting my husband "Do we still have leftover tri-tip in the fridge for dinner????" I've stuck with it though... the only rule I've broken is the one about weighing myself, and frankly, it was reassuring. :-D
However, in lieu of an actual recipe, you want to know something that's majorly awesome while you're on the run... Balsamic tuna salad. Basically chop up 1 bell pepper & 1 cucumber, dump your best canned tuna over the top and toss with 1 tbsp each balsamic vinegar & olive oil. Quick, easy, low sodium (depending on the tuna) food is in tummy, it's time to go play circus! I should probably just keep cucumbers and bell peppers in my fridge at all times, since you can pretty much combine them with any leftover meat and any Whole30 friendly sauce and have a pretty fine meal or snack, with no additional fuss.
However, in lieu of an actual recipe, you want to know something that's majorly awesome while you're on the run... Balsamic tuna salad. Basically chop up 1 bell pepper & 1 cucumber, dump your best canned tuna over the top and toss with 1 tbsp each balsamic vinegar & olive oil. Quick, easy, low sodium (depending on the tuna) food is in tummy, it's time to go play circus! I should probably just keep cucumbers and bell peppers in my fridge at all times, since you can pretty much combine them with any leftover meat and any Whole30 friendly sauce and have a pretty fine meal or snack, with no additional fuss.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Paleo lunch bento
So just because I'm doing a strict Whole30 does not mean I don't intend to enjoy my food this month. Oh no. Today's lunch bento is a perfect example:
Thinly sliced applewood smoked tri-tip (with an olive oil, garlic & pepper rub)
Eggplant relish, to cut the overwheming smokiness of the beef
Lebanese lemony spinach & beet greens
Belly dance beet salad
Tangerine (not pictured)
Generally speaking, things have been going pretty smoothly. I haven't had any "carb flu" kind of thing going on because there's no fixed schedule of what to eat when or complicated food combinations, so if I feel a little queasy and it's a long way to a meal, I just eat an apple or a banana. It's nice to not be in service of any kind of dietary perfection, just focusing on eating real food when I'm hungry and letting all the other eating stress fall by the wayside. I've only had a couple potential pitfalls.
1. Cheese and diet coke. Midafternoon I'm used to having a chunk of cheese & a piece of fruit for a snack and then a diet coke at some point. It's totally mindless I've found myself wandering to the fridge, opening up the cheese drawer and reminding myself "Oh yeah, not eating cheese right now!" and redirecting myself to some fruit with either nuts or meat. The diet coke is a little harder because I get a bit of a headache if I skip it, but as long as I remember to make myself some green tea it doesn't bother me too much.
2. I want to weigh myself SO BADLY! I usually weigh myself every day, or at least a couple times a week. The last time I went a whole week without weighing myself I was camping in the desert. I weighed in at 137 pounds on 1/1/2012, and for the next 30 days the only measure I'm going to have of my weight every morning is my chin-ups. Right now my chin-up-o-meter says I haven't drastically dropped 10 pounds in two days or anything crazy. The chin-up-o-meter isn't more specific than that.
In other news, Saturday was such a rough workout (after 10 days off from playing circus) that I'm just barely NOW not sore anymore. But at least my hands didn't rip this time, so I'll be good to go on Thursday.
P.S. I got a new black bento box for myself for Christmas and man, the food looks WAY more appetizing in a black box than the previous sage green box I had. In pictures and in person!
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