My Food Revolution

Flashcards

2010-09-04T11:34:00.002-04:00

The contest is on: Biology flashcards vs. Chemistry flashcards.

Right now, the score is:

Biology: 18
Chemistry" 58

Yeah, Chemistry is totally winning.

Now, to clarify, 34 of those Chemistry flashcards are elements and their chemical symbols from the Periodic Table (the ones my book says we'll use the most), so without those, Chemistry would only be at 24 flashcards. But, I think it's totally fair to count those in the Chemistry set of flashcards because that's the subject I need to study those flashcards for anyway.

Of course, this is just from Chapter 1 of each textbook. Time will tell which subject ends up with more flashcards by the end of the semester...

It begins...

2010-09-03T15:05:00.003-04:00

I can successfully report that I made it through my first (short) week of grad school - in which all I took were undergrad Intro classes... hmm...

Grad school is going to be a TON of fun, I can already tell. I'm geeked out about the subject material in my classes and my professors are cool. Simmons is very dedicated to making the campus a nutritionally, mentally, and emotionally healthy and safe place. And I think this is awesome! :)

One small thing that I need to learn to deal with again: freshman girls. Simmons is an all-girl school for undergrads, so the freshmen are ALL female. Which is cool in some cases. And soooooo terribly annoying in most cases. I don't necessarily want to kill all of them yet, just some of them... [I kid...sorta. I mean, I'm totally kidding!] I think this is me realizing just how much older I am and thus coming to understand that I left that stage of my life a long time ago. I'm about 10-11 years older than them - gack! They're little 18-year-olds and they chatter incessantly and they draw mustaches on their fingers with Sharpie so they can hold mustaches to their faces and talk in horrible fake French accents and tell people they have cancer with said accents and finger mustaches. (You think I'm kidding, but who can make this stuff up? That last one about the finger mustaches happened at lunch yesterday when I got "befriended" by two freshmen who thought I "looked lonely and could use some new friends, omg!" I was surrounded. It was scary.)

But, aside from that...

School went very well this week. Got all of my books (save one that hasn't come in the mail yet, grar!). Done some preliminary reading already. I already have Chemistry homework (and we didn't even have a real lecture today, what?) - that I'm excited about because I'm a big geek. Woot! I'm a student again! Time to have some fun!

10-minute Pantry Meal - of Awesome!

2010-08-29T18:12:00.002-04:00

The things one can do with a fully stocked pantry of awesome.

Seriously guys, it's amazing!

I got back from a multi-hour errand trip with my roommate and was STARVING. I'd defrosted some ground beef to use, not really sure what it was going to turn into, but planning on something today anyway.

Since I was starving, it had to be fast. With my dietary restrictions, fast isn't always easy to make if I want it to taste amazing as well. I eat mostly whole foods, and a minimal amount of processed food when necessary. Usually that means cutting veggies and preparing stuff before cooking. That wasn't going to work today - I needed food NOW!!!

So, I put the beef on to brown. And then went in the pantry. [Note: best not to do this unless you're sure you can find something in the pantry pretty quickly. Otherwise you'll end up with burned meat and nothing to do with it!]

First: I saw pasta. Sweet! Pasta's fast! I put on a pot of water to boil.

Hmm, still need something to do with the browning meat...back to the pantry I go! Of course, my problem is that I can't use tomatoes or cheese - which are generally the two things you'd use to cook with beef and pasta, right? Hmmm...

Second: I spied my peach salsa (tomato-less! yes!). I wonder what cooked ground beef and peach salsa over pasta would taste like? My thoughts: delicious. And, even better, I don't have to worry about choosing spices because the salsa is fully spiced already! Score!

And thus, I came up with a simple yet delicious 10-minute pantry meal:

1 lb ground beef
3/4 qt of peach salsa (or whatever salsa you have around)
pasta, cooked (your choice)

Brown the beef, and when it's just about done, mix in the salsa and keep on the heat until the beef is done and the salsa's nice and warm. Pour over pasta. Eat.

Simple, easy, and my belly is one happy camper! Yay!

[Notes on filling a pantry:

Obviously not everyone has the enormous space for a pantry that I do. But some of the staples that I suggest having around for easy meals are:

1. Canned beans. Multiple varieties: black, kidney, great northern (or some other white bean), etc. I have a secret love affair with black beans, so I have more cans of those kind than any other.
2. Dry beans/grains. Multiple varieties: black, kidney, white, lentils. Brown rice, barley, groats, rolled oats, millet, quinoa, wild rice.
3. Canned veggies. We keep corn in our pantry.
4. Canned tuna or salmon. Always have a can on hand. You'd be amazed at how refreshing it can be to see the can of tuna and know your meal is minutes away!
5. Pasta. At least two varieties. One short (like bow-tie or penne) and one long (like fettuccini or angel hair - or spaghetti, but my personal preference bars spaghetti from my shelves).
6. Salsas and sauces. My roommate has a couple of jars of tomato sauce on hand all of the time. He also has a number of curry sauces. And we have plenty of tomato-less, dairy-less sauces for me.
7. Fruit sauce/syrup. It goes well on any meat. Blueberry syrup on meatloaf or meatballs. Peach preserves or apple sauce on pork chops. Cherry chutney on pork chops or ham. The list goes on and on!
8. Fresh garlic and onions. And potatoes. All of these make meals pretty quickly because they're easy to cook.
9. Then all of the normal staples: flour/sugar/baking supplies, condiments of whatever variety you prefer, spices, oils.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of what you should have in your pantry, but merely a small list of what I find especially helpful in my pantry. When I need a meal quick, I have but to grab from the shelf, and off I go!]

I'm going to school!!!

2010-05-13T23:15:00.002-04:00

That's right folks. I've decided to throw in the towel on my former career in data analysis and start grad school this fall in Nutrition. Gack! What am I doing?

If you've read anything on this blog, you'll realize that the past 2 years have been quite the experience for me. Ups and downs, more downs than ups certainly. I've learned a LOT about my own personal nutrition. I've also learned a lot about how much more there is for me to learn! And above all, I've discovered a passion that I can't ignore. I want to not only learn more about my own personal nutrition, I want to learn how to help others in their journey to better nutrition.

And so, with that in mind, I'll be starting school in the fall at Simmons College in Boston. My plan is to come out on the other side of this new venture with an MS in Nutrition Science and an RD (credentials as a Registered Dietitian). Ultimately, now, I would love to work with teens in some sort of Community Nutrition venture, but we'll see where things lead as I work my way through school.

Since I'll be pretty busy with school, I may not get to update this as often as I'd like to, but this will serve as a good place for updates on my journey into the field of Nutrition, so stay tuned for more! I can't promise anything specifically yet, but one of my ideas that I'd like to explore while in school is how to eat well on a student's budget (that is to say, very slim wallet). Can I get away with shopping at Whole Foods? Possibly not. Or perhaps I will? It will be an adventure to be sure, and I'll be tracking my progress toward this and other projects as I go through my education.

It's scary, it's exciting, it's new, it's crazy. And it'll be a lot of fun! Hope you enjoy the ride - I certainly intend to!

I'm back...

2009-07-15T20:50:00.003-04:00

It's been quite awhile, and a LOT has happened since April and my last post. I guess I could cite a lot of reasons for not posting for so long, but the real reason is that I got tired of everything having to do with being sick. Everything including this blog, unfortunately. I needed some time off. [Not that I can actually have that, given that not writing in a blog doesn't make the sick go away, but whatever, details.]

So, now that I'm back, what's been going on lately, you ask?

A solid question. Let me see if I can answer it for ya:

I've been seeing a new nutritionist regularly. At first once a month, but now twice a month. She's been working with me since March. And she is fixing me (her words during our first meeting). She believes, as I do, that with the right balance of foods and the right diet, I can be healthy again. I won't have to take the pharmacy that the docs put me on. And I can hold at bay the symptoms of all the disorders I was diagnosed with by the docs. This kind of hope is something my docs never gave me. Exhibition A why I like this nutritionist so much.

I've also been getting healthy again. No more pain (well, unless I eat something stupid - but at least then I know what it was that caused the pain). No more crazy symptoms. I have energy again. I have the strength to walk around the city as much as I please. I can go dancing regularly and I don't tire after a few dances. I can enjoy being around people again because I don't have all of these embarassing or uncomfortable symptoms to deal with. I've gained weight back - I'm a proud size 4 and staying steadily there. I got back my girl-curves. I have curves again!

And the kicker: I ate Thai food on Sunday night!!!

Yes, that's right. I can eat things again. Many things that I haven't eaten in a year or more are suddenly available for the choosing in my weekly diet. Oranges, yogurt (hopefully - that one's currently in the works), nuts and nut butters, legumes, broccoli on a limited scale, ginger ale. And over the next two months, I get to add cheese (hard cheese, like white cheddar), tomatoes, and mint. Cross your fingers that all goes well!

I will never be able to eat the way I used to, of course. There will always be some things off-limits to me. Hydrogenated oils have been axed, along with high fructose corn syrup as much as is possible. Sugar content has dropped a lot. Fat content is kept at low levels, with the exception of good-for-you natural fats (omega-3s and omega-6s). Fried food has lost its appeal for me. But, you know, I'm okay with these things. I eat a much more healthy and balanced diet. I am aware of what I'm putting in my body, aware of where my food comes from as much as I can be.

So, overall, things are good now. I take a look back at the past year and a half and I realize that, for all the pain and suffering I went through, for all the mistakes I've uncovered about my food and eating habits, for all the information and misinformation I've picked up along the way, I have emerged on the other side in a really great place. And life will never be the same again.

I cook for myself now - daily, no, but a couple times a week. I'm becoming more and more of a localvore. I enjoy the whole process of food - where it comes from, how I get it, how I prepare it, and how its eaten and digested. It's a beautiful cycle that I've taken for granted all of my life. No longer. I go twice a week to the farmers' market downtown near my office. I have a CSA with one of the farms there - and I've gotten to know the farmers from that stand VERY well. I'm starting my own potted herb garden on my back porch - fresh herbs are fabulous. I would love to someday have my own organic garden. I'm starting to get a feel for planning and strategizing for the winter months - how to use the bounty of fresh produce now, in the summertime, and how to save some for the winter months to come. I don't think I've got enough of a hang of it to feed myself all winter with the stuff I save throughout the summer, but I'll get better with each passing year. Wouldn't it be great not to have to buy any produce from the grocery store over the winter because all of the fresh fabulous produce from the summer that I saved is waiting in cans, jars, and the freezer for me to cook up and eat? That's my dream.

So, that's a rather rambly version of what's been going on in the 3 months of silence on this blog. I have a lot of recipes to add in the coming weeks - things I've saved and taken pictures of with the goal of eventually posting it up here. Be prepared for an onslaught of new posts as I get to those recipes.

One last thing before I sign off of this post:

I've found a new dream for the future of America - my new personal dream for all Americans. I hope that someday everyone sees food and nutrition and health the way I have grown to see it - or at least in a similar vein. It's a black box to our population right now, and I find this extremely sad. It's actually not all that difficult to learn, once you put your mind to it. My dream for America: that everyone of us will put our minds to it and learn. Our entire culture, and all of our future generations, will benefit from it. And we'll all look a little nicer, too.]

Check out the sidebar - I've started up my "food of the week" and "countdown to next food" again. Stay tuned for updates to the No-List - it will look so different the next time I post it!!!

A New Twist on an Old Favorite

2009-04-12T19:58:00.002-04:00

So, Easter to me has always meant Grandma's baked ham. Mmmmm. But, this year, Grandma's all the way out in Minnesota, and I'm nowhere near there. Thus, I'm on my own if I want Easter ham. Now, my kitchen has been bubbling and stewing and steaming all afternoon long: fruit sauces, pears to puree, a new bean soup (see future post, provided it turns into something delicious). And then I remembered I needed to make myself some ham for dinner. Right.

Got the ham steak? Check.

Baking dish? Check.

Recipe? ...oops, crap, how am I gonna cook this ham anyway?

Umm. To the cookbooks! I pulled out my trusty Joy of Cooking and Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks. They've never let me down. And sure enough, they had some pretty nice ideas - ideas that are very classic and therefore somehow boring today. I guess maybe since I was making my own Easter dinner today, I wanted something a little different. Or maybe I was just feeling adventurous in the kitchen with that new bean soup simmering on the stove.

Whatever the reason, I decided I needed to combine some ideas from both cookbooks and come up with my own glaze for baking my ham steak. The result? Success! A ridiculously simple, totally delicious little glaze.

Hope everyone (who celebrates) had a nice Easter dinner of their own! Mine was ham steak with delicious new glaze and some steamed green beans. And a fantastically tall glass of water.

Baked Ham Steak

1 ham steak (1-1 1/2 lbs)
1 Tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce
1 Tbsp honey (preferably pure honey, not the processed stuff)
~1 Tbsp water (or less if you want a thicker glaze)
1 tsp brown sugar
Pepper to taste
Spray olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Position rack in bottom 1/3 of your oven.

1. Lightly spray glass baking dish with olive oil - very thin coating is all that's necessary.
2. Mix together soy sauce, honey, brown sugar. Add water to desired consistency. (Using the full Tbsp will make the glaze a little thicker than the consistency of water).
3. Spread thin layer of glaze on one side of the ham steak (this will be the bottom, so don't apply too thickly). Put this side down in the baking dish.
4. Pour the rest of the glaze over the top of the ham steak in the baking dish. Try to make it evenly dispersed over the whole steak. Sprinkle pepper to taste over the glazed top of the steak (I used 3-4 shakes of my pepper shaker).
5. Bake for 20 min. Take out the dish and reapply the glaze from the bottom of the baking dish to the top of the ham steak. Bake for another 10 min.

Enjoy!

[You may have noticed that this recipe uses brown sugar, and if you've kept up with this blog at all, you'll know this is one of my new favorite recipes because it uses brown sugar!]

The Road to Recovery?

2009-03-30T18:45:00.000-04:00

I went to a nutritionist about 2 weeks ago, now. I was expecting a short (perhaps 30-45 minutes) session, just like the last nutritionist I was sent to. I was there for two hours. We covered pretty much everything that's happened over the past year. The lengthy list of foods I'm not allowed to eat, the diagnosis of my condition, the tests leading up to said diagnosis, all the meds/supplements I've had to take for various reasons, the weight loss, the emotional strain and stress that's come along with the wild nutritional ride of the last year... all of it. It was nice to have a new face to talk to about all of this AND someone who was actually interested enough to ask deeper questions in order to get a good picture of what's going on with my system (instead of just making basic assumptions and finding out later they were wrong because they hadn't asked me the right questions).

And in the end, she was rather appalled with the way my case has been handled. No real regulation of my nutrition (beyond what I think I know or may have picked up along the way - not all of which is correct). A haphazardly executed elimination diet that was not implemented properly and has spiraled way out of control. And too many people telling me to do things that end up contradicting what other people tell me to do.

Some of the specific highlights I found interesting:
1) Elimination diets are not supposed to last any longer than 4 weeks. Maybe 6 weeks in special or more difficult cases. But not 9 months (the current duration of my elimination diet).
2) The elimination diet I was put on was randomly thrown together, and didn't even take out half of the top food categories that are commonly taken out of the diet in food eliminations when dealing with GI problems.
3) This diet of mine hasn't even worked because my symptoms aren't fully gone. The whole point of an elimination diet is to get rid of all symptoms, and then challenge different foods back into the diet (over a 3-day period) to see what creates symptoms again.
4) Some of my ongoing symptoms could possibly be occurring simply because I've probably been lacking the proper balance of nutrition for the past 6-9 months. [Yeah, that one scored major sarcasm points from me. Way to go, docs. Make me sicker in an effort to make me better, what?]*
5) Some med schools don't require any nutrition instruction in their curriculum for their graduates. (Read: some doctors know just about as much as you do about proper nutrition.) A registered dietitian actually has to keep up with current nutrition studies and advances; doctors are not required to. [In the famous words of the Ghostbusters song: Who ya gonna call?]**

Because of my current condition, I can't just jump into eating all of this food on my No-List again. I have to wean myself onto those foods again, since it's been so long since I had them in my diet at all, and the body takes awhile to switch itself to optimally and efficiently digesting foods one adds to one's diet. A drastic switch for me would not be a good idea. But, before we even start that, my nutritionist and I agreed that getting rid of the symptoms completely is the top priority, since adding food back in now, while I still have symptoms, wouldn't necessarily tell me what foods are causing symptoms or aggravating things or whatever.

So. The plan we've agreed upon is this [you will note I said agreed upon]:
1) For the next 4 weeks I will be taking:
- enzymes with every meal to help the digestive process
- probiotics every morning to replenish the good bacteria that my nutritionist thinks has been stripped from my gut
- fish oil every evening with dinner to give a big boost of omega-3 fatty acids in my system (fats that are extremely good for the digestive system as well as a lot of other bodily functions) [Um, yeah, this one is gross - my fish oil is lemon-flavored, but doesn't at all hide the fact that it's fish oil]
2) After 4 weeks, I'll go back to see her and we'll assess how those things have worked (or not). If not, then I'll go on a full-elimination diet (read: crazier than the current diet) in order to figure out exactly what is causing my symptoms. This will last no longer than 3 weeks, hopefully only 2. After the 2-3 weeks of the full-elimination diet, we'll take another 2 weeks to challenge the major foods taken away in this full-elimination diet to figure out exactly what was causing the symptoms.
3) After #1 (and possibly #2 if #1 doesn't fully cut it), then we'll begin reintroducing foods on my No-List in a way that will allow me to figure out what else causes symptoms.

The ultimate goal is to get me on a diet that is highly nutritious and doesn't cause symptoms so that I can get off of the meds/supplements that the docs have me taking. She agrees with me that there has to be a more natural way for me to regulate my system than taking a bunch of prescriptions every day.

My favorite quote from the 2 hours I spent with her: "We'll fix you, don't worry."

Ah, it's amazing what 5 little words can do to elevate one's mood and bring hope to a seemingly endless road of troubles.

Here's to my road to recovery - it seems a lot more reachable these days!

Clarifications I feel are important to bring up:

* I don't mean to drag on what my doctors have done for me. They're good people, and they did do a lot to try and figure out what is actually wrong with me. Unfortunately, most of the frustration I feel toward this whole experience gets laid on my doctors since they're supposed to be the ones who can fix me. So, take my cynicism toward doctors with a grain of salt - I would be much worse off than I currently am had I not gone to see the docs.

** I'm in no way trying to imply that a med school degree is easy, nor that a doctor's job is smooth sailing. I know too many people in the medical field to think that. All I'm saying is that it's a bit appalling that, while we feel we should be able to trust our doctors anything going wrong in our bodies, that's not the case with nutrition - something that effects us all much more than anyone realizes. To be fair, though, I find it equally appalling that grade schools are not required to teach nutrition curriculum to U.S. children whose collective weight continues to increase year after year as children become more and more obese at younger and younger ages.

New Meatball Sauce of AWESOME!

2009-03-11T20:36:00.004-04:00

Chris was here last weekend, and for dinner on Monday night before he left, I made meatballs with rice and steamed green beans. Simple, easy, yum. Except that as the meatballs were baking (yes, I said baking, check this recipe), I was thinking about what I could put on the meatballs, since just meatballs and rice alone is a little dry.

And then I had an idea, the lightbulb above my (suddenly cartoonized?) head went on. I used to make this beef stir-fry with broccoli, celery, and carrots. [Ha, notice that this is a baaaaad meal for me these days: stir-fry, broccoli, celery, and carrots. Out of the 4 main parts of the description of that meal, only the non-bolded one is the one I can still eat. *sigh*]

But, back to the topic at hand: my awesome idea stemming from this stir-fry I used to make all the time. The sauce for the stir-fry is a thick brown sauce - really good for beef. And since my meatballs are made out of beef, I figured I'd just adjust the balance of ingredients a little and see what I came up with.

3 words: It was delicious! (Score!)

And so, today's post is short and sweet, but with a killer new meatball sauce! [Sorry kids, no pictures this time.]

Meatball Sauce
used in a meal of meatballs (half-size from linked recipe) & brown rice with steamed green beans and homemade honey-oat bread - mmm!

2.5 Tbsp reduced-sodium soy sauce
<1/2 cup water (but >1/3) [hooray for non-exact measurements!]
1.5 Tbsp brown sugar, packed
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp cornstarch

1. Mix together thoroughly.
2. When meatballs are about 2-3 minutes from being done, put the mixture on very low heat in a small saucepan.
3. Stir constantly until mixture thickens. [If you want it a little thicker, add a pinch more cornstarch perhaps, but a little goes a long way!]
4. Serve hot over top of the meatballs - it will be too thick to drizzle over the rice as well, but the heat and moisture of the rice softens the sauce up a bit.

Enjoy!

[Okay, let's be serious. The reason I like this sauce so much is because I've found a way to incorporate a small amount brown sugar into my cooking again. I have a rather large infatuation with brown sugar when it comes to cooking and baking. No joke!]

Mac 'n' Cheese reborn!

2009-02-23T19:56:00.006-05:00

WOW! Now that is definitely what I've been missing since I started this diet almost a year ago!

And what, you ask, elicits such a strong reaction from me? This evening I just found a way to make mac 'n' cheese in a way that almost perfectly emulates the mac 'n' cheese I grew up on as a kid. (For comparison, I've put the old and new recipes below.) If you want to talk about my favorite food from childhood, the ultimate comfort food when I feel homesick, or sad, or lonely, or just in need of some good Minnesotan flavor - this was always the recipe I turned to. And it is awful for you! Seriously. I've included the comparison of nutrition information for both recipes below as well - but picture this: velveeta+cream of chicken soup+milk (usually 1-2%)+elbow macaroni. Boom. So delicious and so terribly bad for you!

But I digress. The real point here is that I have found a way to reconnect with tastes I associate with childhood in a way that is both within the diet restrictions and is a LOT healthier than the stuff I actually used to eat. I call this a huge success! This has also been one of my original goals since I started this crazy diet of doom: to find a way to create my family's mac 'n' cheese using ingredients I could eat - because I absolutely refused to believe that I'd have to say goodbye to it forever. Yay for this new recipe then! I proved myself right - HA! [The fact that this recipe makes a mountain of mac 'n' cheese is also a rather wonderful thing - seriously, I could eat this twice a day for a week and a half easily!]

So, without further ado, I give you my new Mac 'n' Cheese recipe. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Pseudo-Vegan Mac 'n' Cheese with Chicken
[Really, I should just call it non-dairy mac 'n' cheese because it's obviously not vegan, but it's so much funnier to say it's pseudo-vegan. (It is now possible that the vegan gods will strike me down in a fit of rage...)]

This recipe is modified from the original shown here. (I tried the original recipe first - and hated it. Maybe I'm just not a savory mac 'n' cheese person - but the garlic and the paprika overpowered and made it taste horrible!)

1 1/2 lbs whole wheat pasta, cooked (I prefer fusilli or rotini, gives it a nice texture)
1 1/2 cups plain soy milk
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 1/2 cups nutritional yeast*
1 Tbsp sea salt
3/4 block firm tofu
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp vegan margarine
3/4 Tbsp sugar or to taste (i.e. not quite the full Tbsp, but if you're a stickler for exact measurements, that's equivalent to 2 1/4 tsp, FYI)
1-1 1/2 tsp basil to taste
1 cup cooked, shredded chicken**

*Note: nutritional yeast does not equal yeast for bread dough and such. It's in the vitamins/nutritional supplements section, not the baking aisle.
**Instructions for making your own shredded chicken (during the process of making chicken soup) are here.

Preheat oven to 350 deg F.
1. Blend soy milk, chicken broth, and tofu together. Use a high setting - you want it thoroughly mixed. [I highly recommend cutting the tofu into smaller chunks before putting into the blender.]
2. Add nutritional yeast, salt, oil, margarine. Blend well.
3. Add sugar and basil, blend. Taste the sauce - add more sugar or basil until it tastes good. The sauce should be very runny - not to worry, it'll thicken in the oven.
[Note: the first time you use nutritional yeast, well, it takes a little getting used to, so the sauce may taste "off" to you. Don't add too much sugar or basil, though. If you're unsure what "tastes good," go with my amounts first, and then adjust the next time you make it.]
4. Pour pasta into a 13x9 baking dish - use something that will hold 5 quarts or more! [Mine's a 5-qt metal cake pan] Add chicken and stir around (careful that the pasta doesn't fly out of the pan!) until evenly distributed.
5. Pour sauce evenly over pasta & chicken. Make sure you don't miss the edges and corners of the pasta - you want the whole surface completely covered with sauce.
6. Bake for 15-25 minutes, until top pasta is a little crispy and the sauce has thickened. (Careful not to leave it in until the pasta gets crunchy - no one wants crunchy mac 'n' cheese!)
7. Pause to marvel at just how much mac 'n' cheese you just made - and then serve and eat!

Seriously! Look at the huge amount of mac 'n' cheese you will be faced with when it comes out of the oven!

Notes:
- I recommend serving with freshly steamed green beans. You could, of course, choose anything you like, but the green beans taste so good with the mac 'n' cheese!
- This saves well in Tupperware in the fridge for about 2 weeks - if you're like me and cook just for yourself. It also freezes well.
- When heating up in the microwave, I suggest putting it in a bowl with a few drops of water, and covering the bowl. I generally put it in for about 1.5-2 minutes. Then stir when it comes out - the water and cover will make sure the microwave doesn't try out the mac 'n' cheese during reheating.

[For comparison, here's my family's old recipe for mac 'n' cheese. Below are some the nutritional breakdowns for each recipe.]

Nina's Family's Mac 'n' Cheese

1 1/2 cups elbow macaroni
1/4 lb. Velveeta cheese, cubed (~1/2-in cubes)
1/4 cup milk, more if needed (we always used 1%)
1 can cream of chicken soup

1. Cook and drain pasta. Pour back into pan over low heat.
2. Add Velveeta a little at a time, stir until fully melted. [This is a good way to build arm muscles... no joke!]
3. Add milk and soup, stir until thoroughly mixed and heated through. If not creamy enough, add more milk.
4. Serve warm.

Nutrition Facts were calculated using the SparkPeople.com Recipe Calculator for my best attempt at approximating of how much each recipe makes - 25 servings of the Pseudo-Vegan recipe, and 8 servings of my family's recipe.

Nutrition Facts: Pseudo-Vegan Mac 'n' Cheese with Chicken
Based on 25 servings
Calories: 172.1
Total Fat: 3.9 g
Saturated Fat: 1.2 g
[This comes from the chicken mainly.]
Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.8 g
Monounsaturated Fat: 0.7 g
Cholesterol: 6.6 mg
[Again, from the chicken.]
Sodium: 309.7 mg
Potassium: 215.9 mg
Total Carbohydrate: 21.9 g
Dietary Fiber: 5.1 g
Sugars: 1.0 g
Protein: 12.8 g

Nutrition Facts: Nina's Family's Mac 'n' Cheese
Based on 8 servings
Calories: 229.4
Total Fat: 6.0 g
Saturated Fat: 2.4 g
[This comes from the Velveeta mainly.]
Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.4 g
Monounsaturated Fat: 0.8 g
Cholesterol: 13.4 mg
[Probably coming from both the soup and the Velveeta.]
Sodium: 458.1 mg
Potassium: 30.1 mg
Total Carbohydrate: 36.6 g
Dietary Fiber: 1.5 g
Sugars: 2.3 g
Protein: 9.0 g

[Yeah, I'll let that all speak for itself...]

A second look some favorite chicken recipes

2009-02-22T22:15:00.010-05:00

I've become quite the chicken lover now that I'm learning more and more about how to cook it and cook with it. [From reading my nutrition book from the class I'm taking, this likely means I should branch out and start learning to cook other meats as well, for the variety element of a healthy diet, but that's food for a different post.]

Two chicken recipes in particular have caught my fancy - and I generally cook them up about every 2-3 weeks. So, this post is really just my stories of two favorite recipes... enjoy!

Baked Chicken with Apples
Mmm, looks good enough to eat!

I love this recipe. In "IM terminology," you could say I definitely "heart" (<3) this recipe. [Heh, too bad this isn't gmail so that the keystrokes I put in parentheses would turn into a red heart...]

When I get a craving for chicken - this is often what I'll pull out of the recipe box. It's so easy, and so good! I made it most recently for dinner one of the nights when I was out visiting Chris over Valentine's Day weekend. (He was a big fan... when given the choice of leftovers between this and the other dinner I'd made - meatballs - he was all over keeping the chicken.) It was fun making it with someone else, actually; I guess I'd never realized how fun it is to cook with/for another person. We had a little trouble with the honey he had at his house when making the marinade: it was very crystallized. And I learned this dish is better baked in a glass dish than a metal pan - because the charred crust from the marinade+chicken juices mixed with the salt, pepper, and cinnamon I put on top of the chicken made for quite a difficult mess to wash later. But all-in-all, this is a hugely successful dish that has become a classic in my recipe box. Here's the recipe again, for your viewing pleasure:

1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 cups apple juice [go with the good foggy stuff, none of that transparent juice!]
1/4 cup honey [I used pure MN honey from our property neighbor in Southern MN - you will likely not have access to this stuff, but I do suggest pure honey over processed honey - tastes so much better]
2-3 chicken breasts, cut in half width-wise
~2 medium apples, peeled, sliced and soaked in cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves until saturated [these were the canned slices I mentioned above]
spray cooking oil

Preheat oven to 375.
1. Mix together apple juice, honey, and cinnamon until honey has dissolved completely in apple juice (this is not heated).
2. Place chicken breast halves in mixture and marinade for about 1-1.5 hours. Turn at least once during that time period.
3. Once chicken has marinated, place in glass baking dish that has been lightly sprayed with cooking oil. Spread apple slices atop the chicken pieces.
4. Bake for 45 minutes, and check. If the temperature of the chicken is at or above 165 deg F, it's done. If not, back in the oven for another 10-15. The original recipe calls for baking for about an hour, but that was just a tad bit to much for me. Also, the top-most apples should have a little bit of a singed look, so if they still look mushy, I'd put it back in for a little longer.
5. When chicken has 15 minutes left to bake, pour marinade into a saucepan over medium heat and reduce until it's about half the volume of what it originally was. Use this as a sauce to top the chicken and apples when ready to serve.

What a cute little pyramid of chicken, apple, and cinnamon-y goodness!

Chicken Noodle Soup
Can I just say: YUM!

So, the first time I made this, I was sick, and I needed sick-comfort-food. Nowadays, though, I just crave chicken noodle soup. It's so much better when made from scratch! And the whole apartment smells of chicken broth all day long (hours and hours after I've made it, seriously!) It's becoming quite the little tradition for me. Every month or so, I'll get the craving. So, I head off to Whole Foods, get a 4-4.5 lb chicken, have the wonderful Meat Counter Guys cut it up for me, then bring it home, de-skin it, and boil it for 1.5 hours. (And then, obviously, do the rest of the stuff necessary to make that into chicken noodle soup.) Such an enjoyable way to spend a lazy Saturday morning, or a cozy Sunday afternoon. Big shout out to Better Homes & Gardens' cookbook for giving me this recipe!

One thing I've found, as I make this recipe again and again, there is way too much shredded chicken in a 4-4.5 lb chicken for one batch of chicken noodle soup. WAY too much! So, this time I only used about 2/3-3/4 of the shredded chicken in my soup (basically until I felt like I had a good balance of chicken with the veggies and noodles already cooked in the chicken broth). The rest I'll be using in other recipes. (I put some warmed up shredded chicken atop a baked potato last Saturday, actually, with a nice helping of brown sugar on the potato as well. Yum!)

The crazy huge pile of shredded chicken from my 4.5-lb bird...the picture doesn't quite do it justice, though - it looks like a lot more in real life!

The last time I made this recipe, I'd run out of batteries for my camera, so this time around you get the picture (above) AND the recipe - all in one convenient location! [Wow, do I sound like a TV-ad right now...]

Enjoy!

1 3.5-4 lb chicken, cut up into pieces, with as much of the skin and fat pulled off of the pieces as possible
8 cups water
~1 Tbsp dried onion flakes
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 bay leaf
1 cup chopped carrot
1 cup frozen peas
1.5 cup dried egg noodles (I got the thin egg noodle nests - because they're fun! If you go this route, use 1.5-2 of them)
2 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley

1. In a 6- to 8-quart soup pot or Dutch oven, combine chicken, water, onion flakes, salt, pepper, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for about 1.5 hours, or until chicken is tender.
2. Remove chicken from broth. When cool enough to handle, remove meat from bones. Discard bones, and any left-over skin. Meat should be tender enough to pull apart with your hands - so break it up into bite-sized pieces and set aside. Discard bay leaf & skim fat off top of broth.
3. Bring broth to boiling. Stir in carrots and peas and simmer, covered, for about 5 minutes. Stir in noodles and simmer, covered, for another 5 minutes or until noodles are tender but still firm. Stir in 2/3-3/4 of the shredded chicken pieces and the parsley; heat through.

Notes:
- Skimming the fat off the top of the broth is easiest if you let the broth cool a bit first. That way, the fat will all gather itself together into a nice little film that's easy to skim off the top.
- The parsley is of course optional, but fresh parsley has a very strong smell, which was somehow even more soothing to my stuffy nose. That, and it brings out the flavors in the soup so well! I tried using dried parsley flakes one time because I'd neglected to get myself some fresh parsley. Yeah - big mistake. Use the fresh stuff!
- The original recipe called for 1/2 cup chopped onion - I used a small amount of onion flakes just to get the flavoring called for, but not enough to mess with my system. And the original recipe also calls for 1 cup chopped celery instead of frozen peas, but since I can't eat celery, I went for the peas. I think it was a solid choice - I recommend it.

Best Muffins Ever? Quite possibly...

2009-02-07T11:21:00.004-05:00

I have become a very big fan of vegan recipes - especially for baking. Vegans don't use milk at all, which is the biggest draw for me, obviously. But, they also don't use eggs, so I've learned a lot about egg alternatives - and hey, no eggs in the batter means I can lick the bowl worry-free!

Recently, I discovered a fabulous muffin recipe that I just can't seem to get enough of. By the name, you'd think that it wouldn't taste all that good (the word "Healthy" appears in the name of the recipe - which is usually a red flag that it'll taste like cardboard). But these muffins are tasty, moist, and delicious. [And that's not just me saying that - every time I bring them to work, my coworkers ooh and aah over them. And when I made them for breakfast a couple weeks ago, Chris chowed down AND stole most of them for his trip back home. Hah!]

So, I'm not really going to keep you in suspense any longer... they're so good, they really speak for themselves, so more words from me is just noise. Hope you enjoy them!

Healthy Apple Oat Wheat Muffins

[Note: I only made a slight change in the spice ratios from the original recipe; the rest is exactly the same. Check out the original recipe here.]

1 cup rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat flour [pastry flour is best, apparently, but I don't have any, and regular whole wheat flour has worked fine for me]
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 Tbsp cinnamon
1/4 Tbsp nutmeg [yeah, approximate this, I don't have a 1/4 Tbsp measuring spoon either]
1/4 tsp ginger
1/3 cup suger
1/2 banana, mashed [or use 1/2 an egg yolk+all of the egg white if you don't have a banana]
1/3 cup applesauce or apple puree
3/4 cup soy milk (plain)
1 large baking apple

Preheat oven to 350 deg F.

1. Peel and dice apple, set aside. [For this recipe, I've found I like to thinly slice the apple and then cut the slices into small chunks - so you basically get flatter versions of the cubes you'd get by dicing the apple.]
2. Thoroughly mix dry ingredients (oats, flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, sugar).
3. Mix banana, applesauce, soy milk.
3.5 - Before you add wet to dry, lightly grease a muffin tin or two (depending on how many muffins you want). I use spray canola oil with flour in it.
4. Add wet to dry, and mix just until batter is moist throughout. Toss in apples (quickly!) and stir just until evenly distributed.
[Note: at this point, the batter should already be starting to expand - no joke! It's freaking awesome! - so that's why I say not to over stir/mix and to add and stir in the apples quickly. Overworking the batter at this stage will deflate your muffins]
5. Batter should be rising, very fluffy, and wet. Scoop into greased muffin tin. [I generally make 12 - which means basically filling each muffin cup - but try not to keep adding little bits to each cup - it makes the muffins deflate a little each time you do.]
6. Bake for 15 minutes, or until toothpick to the center of the muffins comes out clean.
7. Cool a minute or two in the muffin cups, then pop muffins out to cool on a cooling rack.

Enjoy them!

Cookies! My first real experimental success

2009-02-06T06:53:00.012-05:00

So, my new thing lately has been experimenting with recipes and switching things up a little bit so that I make something a little different, a little new, and edible given my own dietary constraints. But this time, I went farther than that. I took a vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe, and using that as a base, changed things up to make an entirely new cookie with very different flavors and a lot less fat.

It's gone through many different iterations - taste comparisons, texture flops and successes, and many different sets of taste buds. (Chris was here a couple weekends ago and got subjected to 3 different versions of this experiment - I don't think he minded, though.)

Originally, I thought it'd be interesting to add a little pear puree to the recipe I'd found online - but that ended up making the cookie dough too runny because I didn't have the right balance of wet to dry ingredients. So, in the next batch, I decided to cut out the oil and replace it all with pear puree. [The original recipe calls for 1/2 a cup of oil for about 20-25 cookies - ack!] That batch was too thick, so they came out of the oven a little too hard, since they cooked faster. Okay. So the next batch I made, I figured I'd add a little more water...and added too much! So I cut that with a little extra flour to compensate, but by that point I'd stirred the batter way too much and so this batch came out of the oven way too doughy and cakey. Not my favorite cookie texture (though they're eggless and milkless, so it doesn't particularly matter if they're fully baked).

My next idea was to go half-and-half with oil and pear puree, cutting the fat in half instead of out altogether. Those turned out fantastically. I brought those to a dance - and they disappeared very quickly. (Chris liked those the best also, out of the last 3 iterations.)

Okay, cool. A success. But I really wanted to cut out all of the oil! So, last night, I made two batches, so I could compare head to head: 1 with the half-oil-half-pear-puree, and one with no oil. And I was mostly pleased with the results. The half-and-half one turned out beautifully again. The all pear puree ones are still a little to chewy/cakey for my liking, but still are delicious. I'll be working on ways to get the non-oil ones to a better consistency in future trials.

But for now, I'll leave you with the recipe and a few pictures for good measure. Enjoy!

Pear Cranberry Cookies

Really important: all ingredients must be at room temperature!

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup dried cranberries
1 cup turbinado (raw sugar - the smaller granules if you can find them)
1/4 cup pear puree (Asian pears are the best, but I think a mix of Asian and Bosc might be kinda tasty)
1/4 cup vegetable oil (if you want to work with the fat-free kind, cut this out and use 1/2 cup pear puree instead)
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup water

*Note: refer to an earlier post on fruit puree for a good tutorial video on how to make it

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. Place cookie tins atop the oven while you preheat to warm the sheets up before you use them.
2. Mix flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon together. Add cranberries and mix until cranberries are completely coated. Make a well in the center.
3. In a smaller bowl, combine sugar, pear puree, and oil. Mix well. Add vanilla, then water. Mix well.
4. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredient well. Mix well, but don't overwork it. Spoon smalls chunks of cookie dough onto prewarmed, ungreased cookie sheets. [I like mine small - you get more out of them, and they really don't spread out much while baking, so you're essentially deciding on the size when you spoon the dough onto the cookie sheets.] By my sizing, I generally get 25-30 cookies in a batch.
5. Bake 5 min. Rotate top cookie sheet 180 deg, and put on bottom shelf. Rotate bottom cookie sheet 180 deg, and put on top shelf. Bake another 4 min.
6. After this, check them. If they're a little softer than you want them, then they're done (they'll harden a little as they cool). If they're still too gooey, stick them back in the oven at 2-min intervals until they're fully baked to your liking.

[Note: You will notice there are no eggs in this recipe. Meaning you can chow down on this cookie dough as much as you like and the only thing you're in danger of is a tummy-ache from too much sugar (well, that and a huge sugar rush). Score!]

Nutrition Facts

I've put the 1/4 cup oil version first, then the non-fat version in parentheses afterward.
(for a 25-cookie recipe, this the breakdown for one cookie)

Calories: 97.3 (79.1)
Total Fat: 2.4 g (.2 g)
Saturated Fat: 1.6 g (0 g)
Polyunsaturated Fat: .1 g (.1 g)
Monounsaturated Fat: 0 g (0 g)
Cholesterol: 0 mg (0 mg)
Sodium: 89 mg (89.1 mg)
Potassium: 42.3 mg (44.1 mg)
Total Carbohydrate: 18.5 g (18.7 g)
Dietary Fiber: .6 g (.6 g)
Sugars: 2.4 g (2.6 g)
Protein: 1 g (1.1 g)

Back in the saddle again...

2009-01-22T22:30:00.002-05:00

Okay, I know, it's been awhile. For anyone who actually reads this regularly, apologies for my delinquency in the past few weeks. The main reason is that I spent the last couple of weeks sick - as in a flare up of old stomach pain, and also just sick of this whole thing. The diet of doom that seems like it will never go away. The strange stomach aches and twinges that go along with trying something new that I haven't eaten in almost a year. The constant feeling that I should be "better" now and thus be able to eat more of what I want to eat.

It's gotten difficult now that I don't have a doctor telling me exactly what to do all of the time. Though I rather resented having part of my life run by doctors for most of last year, it was easier - I didn't have to think as much about food and balancing nutrition and all of that. Now that they've left me to my own devices (well, almost completely), I have choice. And that messes with things. And makes me sick again.

My solution to all of this is that I need to go back in to chat with the doctor soon and then have a series of chats with my nutritionist so I can make a more solid and structured plan for the reintroduction of foods into my diet, but also a more structured meal plan in general, so that I don't relapse into the pain that I so very much hate.

The holidays are over. The post-holiday slump is over. And now it's time to get back into the saddle and continue getting healthy again!

Chicken Noodle Soup - still the best "cure" for a cold!

2009-01-05T23:35:00.003-05:00

So, I spent the week of Christmas at home in Minnesota. It was heavenly! So snowy everywhere, and so blissfully cold. Monday before Christmas hit -7 before windchill during the day! I love that weather - that's one part of Boston I'm not as happy about - we never get negative temperatures out here.

But, that's not the point of this post, so I will move on. My last day in MN, as I wandered to my gate in the airport, I realized that I had caught a cold. What? I was just at Mom's house for a week - why couldn't we have done this when I had a Mom around to take care of me? So, my return to Boston was highlighted by a nice little head cold. [My mom's cat had a cold that week, I'll just blame it on the cat (even though I'm pretty sure human's can't contract cat-colds).]

The first thing that happens when I get a cold is a huge craving for chicken noodle soup. That's what Mom fed us when I was a kid and ill. Chicken noodle soup, saltines, flat 7-Up, and white toast with a little butter on it. Food formula for feeling better. Well, these days, I can't eat the saltines, 7-Up, white toast, or butter. But I was sure in need of chicken noodle soup. I figured, hey, I make soup all the time now. I'll just make myself the one thing that will make me feel better while I deal with this cold.

And so, I went in search of a nice, simple chicken noodle soup recipe. The web failed me this time - I couldn't find anything simple. Why must people put so much stuff in chicken noodle soup these days? It's distracting! I ended up turning to my cookbooks, and Better Homes & Gardens won. Simplest chicken noodle soup recipe I'd seen! And so, off to Whole Foods with me to get ingredients. The recipe called for meaty chicken pieces or a whole chicken cut up. Now, I have some good knives, but they're not good enough to cut up a whole chicken. So I told the guy at the counter what I needed and what it was for, and he took pity on this poor sick girl and cut up a whole chicken for me. [I love the Whole Foods Meat Counters guys. For the record.]

I tell ya, chicken noodle soup always tasted so good when I was ill. But the smell of chicken broth simmering before the actual soup is made was heavenly - I could smell it even through the stuffed up nose I'd acquired. My new recipe for feeling better when I'm sick: get ingredients for chicken noodle soup, and spend my morning making myself soup! Mmm. I think a big reason why I enjoyed making my own chicken noodle soup from scratch was that it got me out of bed and up doing something productive. I hate being sick as a general rule because I get bored and annoyed that I don't have the energy to do normal everyday things. So, this cured my "being sick blues" in addition to making my cold feel better. Double score!

I didn't take any pictures of this soup - my camera unfortunately ran out of batteries and I need to get a new recharger for them. But, you all know what chicken noodle soup looks like, so it's not the end of the world. The important part of this soup is the aroma while cooking it anyway, and that's something no picture can ever illustrate.

So, without further ado, I give you my recipe for "curing" (or at least lessening) the common cold:

Chicken Noodle Soup
(adapted from the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook, 14th edition)

1 3.5-4 lb chicken, cut up into pieces, with as much of the skin and fat pulled off of the pieces as possible
8 cups water
~1 Tbsp dried onion flakes
2 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
1 cup chopped carrot
1 cup frozen peas
1.5 cup dried egg noodles (I got the thin egg noodle nests - because they're fun!)
2 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley

1. In a 6- to 8-quart soup pot or Dutch oven, combine chicken, water, onion flakes, salt, and bay leaf. Bring to a boil; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for about 1.5 hours, or until chicken is tender.
2. Remove chicken from broth. When cool enough to handle, remove meat from bones. Discard bones, and any left-over skin. Meat should be tender enough to pull apart with your hands - so break it up into bite-sized pieces and set aside. Discard bay leaf & skim fat off top of broth.
3. Bring broth to boiling. Stir in carrots and peas and simmer, covered, for about 5 minutes. Stir in noodles and simmer, covered, for another 5 minutes or until noodles are tender but still firm. Stir in chicken pieces and parsley; heat through.

Notes:
- Skimming the fat off the top of the broth is easiest if you let the broth cool a bit first. That way, the fat will all gather itself together into a nice little film that's easy to skim off the top.
- The parsley is of course optional, but fresh parsley has a very strong smell, which was somehow even more soothing to my stuffy nose. That, and it brings out the flavors in the soup so well!
- The original recipe called for 1/2 cup chopped onion - I used a small amount of onion flakes just to get the flavoring called for, but not enough to mess with my system. The original recipe also calls for 1/4 tsp black pepper, but I had to omit that. If you want pepper in your soup, add it with the salt in Step 1 above. And the original recipe also calls for 1 cup chopped celery instead of frozen peas, but since I can't eat celery, I went for the peas. I think it was a solid choice - I recommend it.

My favorite holiday tradition: Lefse

2008-12-23T10:25:00.007-05:00

My heritage on my mom's side is essentially German and Norwegian - my grandmother is 100% German, and my grandfather is a mix, but a good chunk of that is Norwegian. Around Christmastime, though, the Norwegian influence takes center field when my grandma and I get together to make lefse. [Yeah, I know I just said it was my grandfather who's the Norwegian, but it's my grandmother that makes the lefse for him!]

lefse (lěf'sə) n. A round flatbread of Norwegian origin, traditionally made of a potato-based dough and baked on a griddle. [Norwegian, from leiv, flat cake, from Old Norse hleifr.]
(Definition taken from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lefse)

That about sums up the food definition of what lefse is. But in my family it means a lot more. It's the symbol of a day spent happily between my grandma and I in the kitchen - mixing ingredients, forming dough, rolling out and baking the lefse - all the while laughing and talking and catching up with one another. It's also a favorite treat in our annual family smorgasbord on Christmas Eve night - something that would be tragic to miss from the food spread of the evening.

I think one thing I've always liked about making lefse is all of the special equipment it requires - there's something about taking all of that stuff out each year and creating our annual holiday treat. It's the same feeling that you get when you take out those special plates and glasses for a special occasion - a rare occurrence made all the better from the special stuff used. Below, in the recipe, I have, whenever possible, tried to describe and/or show all of these special tools. It all makes me smile, just thinking about it!

The one issue I foresaw for this year's lefse-making was the milk and the Crisco in our lefse recipe. Dairy is always bad for me - I'm still eating nothing that has dairy or the potential to have touched dairy. And Crisco is awful - fully hydrogenated oils, partially-hydrogenated oils... my stomach does a flip every time I hear the word Crisco. [Stomach: "flip"] But my grandma, being the fantastic woman that she is, figured we'd just make the lefse this year with ingredients I can eat, and that way I won't miss out on anything. Score! And so we used soy milk and vegan shortening in place of the milk and Crisco called for in the recipe. And no one noticed any difference - it's still as delicious as ever!

And so, without further ado, I give you our modified lefse recipe (original ingredients provided in italics & parentheses next to subbed ingredients), with a series of pictures to give you a glimpse into the world of lefse-making. Hope you enjoy!

Old-Fashioned Lefse

Note: this is a full day job - you can't make the batter one day and cook the next. It pretty much all has to be done in one day. The only thing you can do the night before is cook and rice the potatoes. So make sure you've cleared your calendar for lefse-making day!

4 cups diced potatoes - cook 5 lbs russet potatoes, then dice, and this should be about 4 cups
1/3 cup vegan shortening (Crisco)
1 Tbsp sugar
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup soymilk (1% or skim milk)
1 1/2 cup flour

1. Cook potatoes and dice. Put a small amount of potatoes into a ricer and rice potatoes to get rid of all the chunks.

2. Combine potatoes, shortening, sugar, salt, and soymilk, whip up lightly. Let cool thoroughly. Add flour and knead smooth. Cut batter into thirds and make into rolls, wrap in waxed paper

3. Divide batter into thirds. Place each third on a sheet of waxed paper, tightly roll the paper around the dough (making a log shape), and twist the ends - it should look like a giant tootsie roll. Place the 3 dough logs into the fridge to cool for about 1 hour. Note: do not leave overnight - the rolls will disintegrate to mush!

4. Once cooled, take out 1 roll at a time, unwrap, and cut into 1/2-inch thick slices.

5. Roll slice on floured pastry board (our rolling pin has a cloth sock on it; our pastry board is a round board with cloth over top), making it thin, as close to a circle as possible. Use plenty of flour, but don't go overboard with it - you want enough so the batter doesn't stick but not enough to "drown" the dough and make it tough.

6. Roll topside lightly with grooving roller. (Don't turn over and groove other side - since it's so thin, the underside gets a little groovy, too.) [Haha...groovy...]

7. Using lefse stick, lift lefse from center.

8. Set on hot griddle (ours is an electric, round, brushed metal griddle - set to 375-400), rolling the stick out from underneath.

9. Bake until golden brown on topside.

10. Use lefse stick to lift from middle and turn to bake other side, again rolling lefse stick out from underneath. Bake until brownish spots like those on top appear on the bottom side of the lefse. (Each side should take no more than a minute or two.)

11. Use lefse stick to lift lefse off of griddle. Place flat (same roll out from underneath technique with stick) on a clean towel and cover with a second towel. Place several sheets of lefse on top of each other to finish cooking them in their own steam. No more than 10-12 per stack.

12. Once lefse stacks have completely cooled, fold in 4ths and place in plastic bags - no more than 4 to a sandwich-sized bag. The best way to keep extras is to freeze them. Keep in fridge no longer than 4-5 days.

To serve (at least the way my family does it):
- plain (my favorite!)
- spread thinly with butter/margarine and sprinkle sugar on top, roll
- sprinkle cinnamon-sugar mix on top, then sprinkle a few drops of lemon juice on top, roll or fold

These may not all be the "Norwegian" way to eat lefse, but I never said we were 100% Norwegian! Hah!

The Onion verdict

2008-12-16T00:25:00.006-05:00

...not to be confused with The Onion newspaper - of awesome!

Onions were the food of the week last week. And I've discovered that I can eat them, but they have to be baked and not the feature ingredient. I can use them for flavor, so long as I'm not really ingesting large quantities of them at one time. So, I'll probably do a lot of diced onions mixed with things, or else use big chunks of onion and then remove them before serving.

Immediate Reaction
Nothing really.

2 Hours Afterward Reaction
Too much onion gives me heartburn. But very small quantity doesn't create any noticeable symptoms.

2 days Afterward Reaction
Too much onion ends up creating gas bubbles in my stomach, and also dries up my system a bit. Smaller quantity still dries up my system, but not nearly as bad, and also no gas bubbles in the stomach.

So the fun part of the story is that I can actually use onions again!

This week is an off-week, since I'll be flying to MN at the end of the week, and I want my digestive system in top condition before going up in the air. But my week in MN will be the week I try out pepper. So excited for this!

And so, without further ado, my onion reintroduction recipe:

Baked Chicken with Mushrooms & Onions

Served up with steamed green beans and a slice of pear-cinnamon bread? Delicious. There's no online link for this recipe - I got it from my hairstylist. This is apparently her kids' favorite dish - she says they ask for it all the time. I now understand why!

2 chicken breasts, boneless, skinless
1 package of brown mushrooms, cut into thick slices - I used a package of baby portobellos
1 small yellow onion, chopped into 1-inch chunks
Extra virgin olive oil
Fresh parsley, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 500 deg F.
1. Wash chicken breasts and place in roasting pan.
2. Add mushroom slices and onion chunks around the chicken, but not on top of the chicken.
3. Splash with a few small dabs of olive oil over everything - enough to make everything shiny without drowning anything in oil.
4. Bake at 500 for 20 minutes. Reduce oven temp to 400 deg F. Bake chicken for another 20-25 minutes, or until done. Use a meat thermometer to check chicken - it should be at or above 165 deg F.
5. Serve chicken with mushrooms and onions sprinkled on top.

My addendum here has to do with the onions. Instead of chopping them into 1-inch chunks, chop the onion into 4 chunks, and place one chunk in each corner of the roasting pan. Bake as directed. When chicken is done, remove onion.

Chicken, Apples, Cinnamon, Honey, Sweet Potatoes, Kale, Garlic, Sea Salt

2008-12-15T22:31:00.008-05:00

Okay, no, I did not make something that included all of those ingredients. That's a rather disconcerting thought, really. But I did make 2 somethings using those ingredients! I baked some chicken with apples, using a cinnamon-honey-apple juice marinade, and then I cooked up a hearty sweet potato & kale soup with a bit of garlic and sea salt.

Dinner has never been so good.
[Yeah, I know every time I post I say that the recipes I'm writing about are the best ever - well, it's not that they keep getting better necessarily, but more like I still get overly exciting by food that tastes like something after all of those months with the blandest food ever.]

So why these two things tonight?

Well, in the case of the chicken, my goal over the last week and this week was to learn how to bake whole chicken breasts without drying them out. And I have all of these canned apple slices in cinnamon-spiced water from last fall when I joined my cousin and her friends for a canning party featuring apple-y things. (We also made apple butter and apple sauce, yum!) So I figured I'd see if I could combine the two (chicken breasts go with apples, right?). This is my favorite part (well, second to actually eating the final product...): I googled "chicken apple slices bake" - figuring I'd hit a few recipes and I could pull from them and try out my chicken and apple experiment. Instead, I found this recipe, and the only tweaking necessary was leaving out mesquite spice. Score! Oh, the power of google...

My other goal for this week was to learn how to cook kale. Didn't matter how, I just really wanted to know A) what it tastes like, and B) how to make it look and taste edible. Random goal, you say? Not really - lately I've been reading a lot about kale being really good for you and being chock full of vitamins. And hey, I'm always down with something that will pump me full of vitamins from a natural source! Here's my favorite part about this soup: it's thick enough to be considered "hearty" (in that it doesn't have transparent broth), but still light enough so that it fills without making me feel stuffed. Big bonus points for that one!

And thus, we have a dinner of chicken & apples and sweet potato & kale soup. The last comment I have before I leave you with 2 delicious recipes:

Sea salt. I've always heard it's 1,000 times better than regular salt. Today I can honestly and whole-heartedly agree. Wow, what a difference!

Baked Chicken with Apples

This recipe comes from the Twin Cities Dining Guide online (yeah, funny coincidence that the perfect recipe for what I'd envisioned also comes from MN!). Check it out here - complete with link to make the mesquite seasoning I left out of my version.

1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 cups apple juice [go with the good foggy stuff, none of that transparent juice!]
1/4 cup honey [I used pure MN honey from our property neighbor in Southern MN - you will likely not have access to this stuff, but I do suggest pure honey over processed honey - tastes so much better]
2-3 chicken breasts, cut in half width-wise
~2 medium apples, peeled, sliced and soaked in cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves until saturated [these were the canned slices I mentioned above]
spray cooking oil

Preheat oven to 375.
1. Mix together apple juice, honey, and cinnamon until honey has dissolved completely in apple juice (this is not heated).
2. Place chicken breast halves in mixture and marinade for about 1-1.5 hours. Turn at least once during that time period.
3. Once chicken has marinated, place in glass baking dish that has been lightly sprayed with cooking oil. Spread apple slices atop the chicken pieces. [One thing I learned: I had too much liquid in the baking dish because I poured the excess water from my canned apple slices into the dish. Yeah, not a good idea. Minimal liquid - the chicken has enough having been soaked for over an hour!]
4. Bake for 45 minutes, and check. If the temperature of the chicken is at or above 165 deg F, it's done. If not, back in the oven for another 10-15. The original recipe calls for baking for about an hour, but that was just a tad bit to much for me. Also, the top-most apples should have a little bit of a singed look, so if they still look mushy, I'd put it back in for a little longer.
5. When chicken has 15 minutes left to bake, pour marinade into a saucepan over medium heat and reduce until it's about half the volume of what it originally was. Use this as a sauce to top the chicken and apples when ready to serve.

One note: even though I thoroughly enjoyed this dish, I felt like there was a little something missing. This could be a function of not including that mesquite seasoning from the original recipe, so I'll be tinkering with this recipe in the future to try and find something to round out the taste.

Another note: the sauce/marinade strikes me as a great combination that has potential for uses in many other places. This sauce could certainly turn up again in a future post...

Sweet Potato & Kale Soup

This is my new favorite soup - it even wins over butternut squash soup, and that's really saying something! Find the original recipe here. I didn't stray from it too much, actually. I omitted a couple of things, but otherwise it's pretty close.

1 quart chicken broth (can be veggie broth if you're vegetarian)
3 cups water
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 pound sweet potatoes or yams, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1/4 tsp garlic granules
1 large bunch kale, washed and chopped into 1-inch pieces
sea salt to taste

1. In a soup pot, over high heat, bring chicken stock, water, garlic granules, and sweet potato cubes to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to low heat and simmer for about 15-20 minutes, until sweet potatoes are "fork tender" (recipe's phrase - i.e. easily pierced with a fork).
2. Using a potato masher or a whisk, mash about half of the sweet potatoes. The more you mash, the thicker the texture of the soup. [Note: I have no idea how to figure out if I've gotten only half mashed and left the others whole. I used a whisk and just mashed and whisked the heck out of the broth until it was as thick as I wanted it.]
3. Add the kale and push down into hot soup until covered with liquid. Once all of the kale has wilted (meaning all of it has been thoroughly covered with liquid), simmer over low heat for about 15-20 minutes until kale is tender and tasty. The note from the recipe states that undercooked kale can have a bitter flavor - and after 15 minutes, I tasted my kale and it was a little bitter, so it's a good thing to remember.
4. Season with sea salt - not too much though or you'll out-salt the natural flavors of the sweet potatoes and kale!

Serve warm with a piece of fresh baked bread. Oh so good!

Soup from scratch - an adventure story

2008-12-14T18:49:00.000-05:00

In Mid-November, I went to an Intro to Zen Buddhism weekend retreat at Dai Bosatsu Zendo, a Zen Buddhist monastery up in the Catskills Mountains. This is less random than it may sound. A friend of mine was recently ordained as a Buddhist monk at DBZ, and has been a resident there off and on for the past couple of years (though obviously, right now, he's more of a permanent resident). I visited him once about 2 1/2 years ago, on a cold Sunday-Monday in late March [...when it was still very much snowing in the mountains and I was so cold I wore every article of clothing I'd brought along for my 25-hour-long visit!] I went back this past June for his ordination, and so the Intro Zen weekend marked my 3rd trek southwest of Boston into the middle of the Catskills to once again see their little piece of paradise.

And I don't say paradise lightly. Every time I go up there, drive up that last hill to see the lake stretching out before me, cross the little wooden bridge, park, and walk down the lane of pine trees that slowly reveals the monastery, hidden amongst the trees... the raw beauty of the place takes my breath away. I love the silence, the stillness, and yet the force of activity from the nature all around them. I like the big sky full of stars at night, I like the green everywhere in the summer and the gentle grace of falling snow in winter. It's a place where one can set one's mind completely free, set aside all pesky nuisances of life, and just be. You know how everyone has that place in their minds where they retreat to when they need to regain a sense of calm in the bustle of everyday life? For some, that place is purely imaginary. For me, that place is their mountain. It is the complete and total opposite of the city, and it's fun to return to every now and then.

But, I digress...
[So easy to do when thinking again of that mountain!]

While at the Intro Zen weekend, it was quite interesting to get a peek into the life my friend leads up there. And it is by no means easy. Sitting zazen (silent meditation) was difficult both in trying to quiet my mind and the physical pain it unleashes. We worked, we got up way before dawn, we moved through a very full day every day. Even meals (their formal versions of meals) were difficult because of the very exact set of rules surrounding how meals are to be performed and eaten. It's not just a matter of sustenance. It's a matter of grace, beauty, and mindfulness. [The residents were very kind in helping all of us Intro students to follow the rules in the correct order - lessening the stress of trying to remember it all!]

Ah, but the meals. Beyond the difficulty of remembering how to eat, when to eat, in what order, and then how to clean and put away all of my dishes (and it what order), the food was spectacular. Their chef - Seizan - is out of this world fantastic. Everything he made smelled fabulous and tasted even better. I looked forward to meals (even with the knowledge of the inevitable stress that went with figuring out the ritual of eating once again) just to get a chance to eat his food again. I got to help out in the kitchen on Sunday, and spent my time chopping, cutting, cooking, peeling - and watching him almost dance around his kitchen, working his magic as an entire meal for 30-some people unfolded before him. [I would not mind going back simply to work with him in that kitchen for awhile and pick up some ideas for things to do in my own kitchen!!!]

One dish, in particular, though caught so much of my attention, that a week after leaving the monastery, I still had an enormously strong craving for it! Don't ask me to name it officially, because I'm not sure what to call it really. My pet name for it has become "Seizan's Soup," which from my perspective refers to only one soup, but from the monastery residents' perspectives could mean any number of hundreds of soups that I'm sure he's crafted for them. Call it what you will, though, it is delicious.

And so, I emailed my friend, the monk (ha - one of my pet names for him), to ask if he'd get the "recipe" from Seizan. Now, I use quotes around "recipe" because I knew I would never get something that had been neatly printed up on a card. Seizan creates things from scratch - there are no recipe cards. But, with so little time between the making and the email I sent, I was hoping that Seizan would remember how he'd done it and be able to give me the general structure of the soup - and then I'd take it and work with it until I got it somewhat right. [It will certainly take me quite a few tries to get it to resemble something remotely as beautiful as what he made!] What luck, then, to receive an email from my friend, the monk, with pretty well detailed instructions on how to make the soup. Like I'd expected, there were very few quantity instructions, but the basic elements and the order in which to perform them were all there.

Suddenly, a challenge - to see if I could replicate and make something edible. A challenge and a delightful adventure in my kitchen!

I won't bring you through the whole process, and I won't be posting the recipe until I have a better sense of what to do and how to do it and how much of everything to use. However, I will give you the highlights of my adventure and some pictures of my final product:

The adventure actually started at Whole Foods, where I had to buy quite a few things I'd never even heard of before, or at least had no idea where to find them in a store. The ingredient list went something like this:
- kombu (a thick, dried Japanese seaweed)
- dried shiitake mushrooms
- peels of burdock root
- carrot peels
- celery leaves
- parsley stems
- onion
- bay leaves
- rosemary
- sage
- thyme
- corn oil
- scallions
- Brussels sprouts
- potatoes
- baby white mushrooms
- green beans

I managed to find everything without help - miraculously! Brought it home and realized that, in addition to the adventure of actually attempting to make this soup, the other adventure would be to find creative ways to use the celery, burdock root, carrots, and parsley that I'd have left once collecting peels, stems, and leaves for the soup. Heh. Roasted veggies with parsley & sage anyone? Mighty tasty - carrots, burdock root, and celery doused in a generous helping of chopped fresh parsley. Mmm.

The soup starts the night before: soak some of the kombu and some dried shiitake in the water for the soup overnight. Did you know that dried seaweed smells so sweet? I sure didn't!

And, when I eventually post the recipe, you will not believe the intricacy and complexity of this soup! It looks so simple at the end, when you go to eat it, but really, the layers of flavor and different ingredients are quite numerous! Awesome, I say. Truly awesome.

Cooking the soup took some doing. I messed up a few times along the way - but discovered that this soup base is mighty forgiving. [Always a good thing!] It ended up being an entire day project, but in the end I had a soup base to boil the veggies in for the final product that looked sort of like what Seizan had created and described for me... tasted pretty similar, too. I've got a really good base to start off of now - and now I can work on tweaking quantities to get a mixture that I like better.

Oh yeah, and whatever the obstacles and hiccups I met along the way, my kitchen smelled so fantastic all day today as I cooked this soup. I'm definitely looking forward to that aroma the next time I make this!!!

I leave you with a picture of the final product - complete with chopsticks, since that's the original way I ate this soup, and I felt really weird not eating it with chopsticks at home...

[The steam shows you that this is fresh out of the stock pot. Mmm, hot soup.]

A New No-List

2008-12-10T11:29:00.005-05:00

I've been a little lazy when it comes to updating this list. Though, to be honest, it hasn't changed all that much in the last month, so it's part laziness and part feeling little need to update something that changes very little.

However, I am adding a new section of the list - the approved items list. I guess this technically doesn't make sense under the header "the No-List," but it's easier for me to keep it all in one place. You can see the approved items list at the bottom of the No-List. It certainly won't be as extensive or detailed to begin with, but will become so as I work on introducing more foods back into my diet.

And now, without further ado (because, really, you know the drill here), the updated No-List:

Switching lists:
onions
They're not off the No-List, but they get to switch to the limited items list. Full removal from the No-List pending final approval from my stomach by the end of Sunday.

Keeping on the list:
apple peels
That was a bust. Oh well, it's not the end of the world... And I'm so used to peeling my apples now, anyway, that it's become a soothing part of fixing a meal or snack that includes an apple!

The Updated No-List

NO items
- tomatoes/tomato-based foods (includes ketchup, bbq sauce, salsa, etc.)
- citrus fruits
- peppermint/spearmint
- chocolate
- alcohol
- caffeinated beverages
---regular tea
---coffee
---colas
---energy drinks
---other caffeinated soft drinks
- decaffeinated coffee and decaffeinated regular tea (herbal tea w/o mint is okay)
- carbonated beverages
- pepper
- high-fat dairy products
---2% milk and whole milk
---cream
---high-fat cheeses
---high-fat yogurt
---chocolate milk
- other dairy (from previous lactose intolerance guidelines)
---cow's milk
---soft cheeses
---butter
---cheesecake
- foods containing any trace of lactose (this includes foods on which the label says "made/processed/packaged in same facility as milk products")
- cocoa
- fried meats
- bacon
- sausage
- pepperoni
- salami
- bologna
- frankfurters/hot dogs
- other fried foods:
---doughnuts
---french toast
---french fries
---deep-fried vegetables
---omelettes, scrambled eggs, and other fried eggs
- pastries and high-fat desserts (the directive on this item: say goodbye to bakeries)
- chips
- store bought cookies, candies, sugary snacks of any kind
- hydrogenated and partially-hydrogenated oils
- high fructose corn syrup
- high-sodium foods
- peanut butter, and other nut butters
- cheese
- vinegar
- bell peppers, and other members of the veggie pepper family
- broccoli
- cauliflower
- asparagus
- celery
onions --Yay!
- beans (green beans are currently allowed)
- apple peels (apple flesh is fine, cooked/baked apples are better)
- red grapes (green grapes okay in moderation)
- raspberries
- salad dressing (check the labels, every one of them has something on the No-List!)
- store-bought juices (check the labels, all of them add citric acid!)

Limited Items
- maximum of 40-50g of fat per day
- oils (olive, vegetable, etc.) - 1 Tbsp has 14g of fat
- nuts - 1/4 cup or 2 Tbsp, nut butter has 17g of fat **nut butters currently prohibited entirely
- processed sugar
- onions

Approved Items
- whole grains
- lean meats (non-spiced)
- fish / canned tunafish (low-sodium)
- vegetables
--low-acid tomato-sauce (good for pasta sauce or salsa): limited to once every 3 days
--carrots
--green beans
--potatoes
--sweet potatoes
--lettuce
--squash
--mushrooms
--peas
--corn (no more than 1 serving every few days)
--brussels sprouts (boiled or baked, not raw or undercooked)
--pumpkin
- fruits
--apples (no peels)
--pears
--grapes (no more than 1 serving per day)
--berries (no strawberries or raspberries, unless cooked into something)
--bananas
--dried fruits (1-2 servings a day maximum)
- soy milk
- corn/rice cakes
- spices (all in limited quantities) - not all-inclusive, there are some I've never had before, and therefore don't know how they react in my system
--cinnamon
--nutmeg
--salt
--ginger
--oregano
--basil
--parsley
--thyme
--rosemary
--sage

The Time Has Come (subtitle: Pizza Take 2)

2008-12-04T20:58:00.005-05:00

My whole life, I have resisted mushrooms. Ew, said I, They're so slimy, and they smell funny, and they're fungus. Ewwww! -So goes the musings of a small child's mind set on not liking something. The only way you'd get mushrooms down my throat was if they were cut up and mixed in something so I couldn't really taste them or so I wouldn't know if I weren't paying attention. [I'm convinced my grandmother got me to eat more mushrooms than she'll ever let on...]

About a month ago, however, I realized 2 pretty big things concerning mushrooms.
1. They don't taste so bad, if cooked well. And in fact, I can go so far as to say they taste good. [gasp!]
2. My stomach/system loves them. Seriously, I can feel my stomach smiling. -And that is HUGE!

So, I've broken down and started looking at how to cook with mushrooms. I made soup with whole mushrooms just boiled in it. (Don't worry, I'll be blogging about that soon enough...) And tonight, I made pizza again - this time with cut up mushrooms on top! (There's some fresh parsley on there as well - yum!)

And so now I'm thinking about mushrooms - I'm rather interested to see what I can do with them! I feel like Joy of Cooking and I will be having a good heart-to-heart before too long about mushrooms. The search is now on for mushroom-featured recipes that I can actually eat! Future posts will reveal what I've found! [You know what's funny - I just went to check my Gmail, and the ad header above my inbox was featuring a Mushroom Casserole recipe from 101 Cookbooks... what a crazy coincidence!]

But for now, I leave you with pictures and recipe for the pizza I had for dinner tonight. [Mmm, that's the sound of my stomach smiling...]

Cheeseless Mushroom Pizza with Fresh Parsley

1 pizza crust
3 medium-sized potatoes
~3/4 cup chopped baby white mushrooms
~1 handful of chopped fresh parsley (um, seriously, I have no idea how to measure how much I put on...)

Use pizza recipe through Step 3.

This time, I sprinkled on a generous helping of chopped mushrooms, and then sprinkled on parsley until I felt like it looked green enough without drowning out the other colors. [Because really, food is more an art than a science.]

I baked this one for about 21 minutes, and got a crispier crust and got some nice golden brown edges on the potatoes - you can see them in the picture!

[The funny story to go along with this recipe is that when I went to cut my pizza, my pizza cutter broke, and the blade (thankfully) whipped past me and rolled across the kitchen floor. Blinking with a slight about of shock from almost getting gutted by a pizza cutter, I went to pick it up, and checked the blade (because, really, the crust wasn't that crispy...). Wow - dullest pizza cutter ever! I've only used that thing once!!! And so, this pizza was cut with a nice sharp steak knife - serrated edges are good for crispy things. Never a dull moment in my kitchen - unless you're my former pizza cutter...]

A glimpse into my daily food life...

2008-12-02T19:44:00.011-05:00

So, I generally post about new creations or exciting meals or new food ideas/combinations when I do a recipe post here. But I realized recently that this leaves out a lot of the yummy stuff I eat on a fairly regular basis. The stuff that sort of creates my base from which I start from when experimenting, or reintroducing food, or whatever. The silent heroes of my food world.

And so, I dedicate this post to them - the little guys of my daily menus. Hope you enjoy!

Crispy Brown Rice Cereal with Bananas

...aka the breakfast of champions. I love this breakfast. It's just satisfying enough to get me through the morning without filling me up and making me sluggish (I've already got enough of that going on from the mere act of getting out of bed in the morning).

1 cup rice crisp cereal (Not Rice Krispies. Kiss those guys goodbye - they're horrible for you! I use Erewhon's Wheat-Free Crispy Brown Rice Cereal. No particular reason for the wheat free other than that they don't make it with wheat. There's a gluten-free version as well, if you need that.)
1 medium-sized banana
1/2-2/3 cup vanilla soymilk

I keep a 1-cup measuring cup with my cereal box in the cupboard. No joke. Measure the cereal out. Slice the banana into really thin slices on top (because I think it's more fun to have thinner slices than thicker slices). Pour soy milk on top. Fold bananas underneath the cereal, and enjoy! Sometimes I'll have some applesauce/puree with breakfast, but most mornings this cereal-banana combination is all I have.

Tunafish & Peas Open-Face Sandwich

[Note the slight black tinge to some of those peas - that's no shadow! See below for more...]

It's one of my all time favorites for lunch. I pair it with some thinly sliced apple pieces (sans peel, of course) and a glass of water, and I'm good to go for a good 2-3 hours until my next mealtime! The idea comes from one of the old hotdishes Mom used to make when I was little. We called it Creme Tuna on Rice (purposely spelled wrong for some reason...) - it had tunafish and peas mixed into a can of cream of mushroom soup - and then all of that got put on a pile of rice. Delicious!

But, since I can't go for the cream of the mushroom soup, or any of the other bad stuff in the Campbell's can, I thought I'd use a few elements and lighten it up for my enjoyment. I always make it using a whole can of tuna (because really, what am I gonna do with leftover tunafish from a can?) and it generally lasts me the work week. Perfect!

1 can tunafish - in water, no salt or low salt (we're talking under 80 mg of sodium in the can here)
~2-3 servings frozen peas (honestly, I really have never measured this - it's usually "enough to make the colors of tuna (pale pink) and peas (green) balance out" - however much that is...)
~2-3 Tbsp low-fat, vegan mayo (okay, you can use any mayo you like, I found this stuff at Whole Foods without any high fructose, hydrogenated awfulness)

1. Put peas in small pan with a very small amount of water - like not quite enough to cover the base of the pan. Cover and simmer on very low heat for about 6-8 minutes. [You may want less time to cook the peas, actually - I like my peas just a tad charred on the bottom, so I generally leave them over the heat until there's not an ounce of water left and they start to sizzle - right before they start to turn black on the bottom. I think it gives the mixture a nice, slightly smoky taste. But to each their own.]
2. While the peas are cooking, open tuna can and use the cover to squeeze out as much moisture as you possibly can from the tuna. Once done, empty the tuna into a small bowl, breaking up any large chunks.
3. Mix in about 1.5 Tbsp mayo - or just enough to get the tuna moist and mixed together nicely.
4. When the peas are done, let them cool for a minute or two (not completely cool, but enough so you wouldn't burn yourself if you ate one), then dump them into the tuna mix.
5. Gently fold the peas into the tuna, adding a 1/2 Tbsp of mayo at a time until you get it just moist enough to all hold together.
6. Spread on plain bread or toast and enjoy! [This is where apple-cinnamon or pear-cinnamon bread is fantastic! Toast up a slice and spread this tuna mixture on top and you have a sandwich swirling with flavor - especially if you took my advice after all and charred those peas a little bit!]

Steamed Fresh Green Beans

[These ain't no store-bought "fresh" green beans shipped from who knows where - these are genuine Massachusetts-grown beans from the local Farmers' Market! Mmm...]

I will often steam a bunch of these for dinner one evening, and then use the rest for snacks throughout the week. Refrigerate them, and they're good to go for about a week. 1 serving is 1/2 cup of green beans. Now, seeing as you can't really shove these in a measuring cup all that nicely, I've found that about 10-12 beans (uncut) are roughly 1 serving - perfect for a midday snack!

Ingredient list? Just green beans from the Farmers' Market, and um, some water...

1. Steam the green beans. This can be done in any number of ways. I have a large stock pot with a fitted steamer to put the beans in. You can buy one of those insertable fold-out steamer things, too. The point is to have the water not touch the beans directly.

2. Eat 'em, put 'em in stuff, refrigerator and munch on 'em later. However you dish them up, they are beyond delicious!

Mashed Potatoes with Brown Sugar

[Simple, yummy, easy to make, and it's have brown sugar - is there any possible way that this isn't the perfect dish?]

I've come to enjoy playing with side dishes just as much as I enjoy playing with the main course of my meals. And I've found that side dishes are only as boring as you make them. You can spruce up anything and make it suddenly taste infinitely better - even things you know you already like! This is my new favorite for mashed potatoes...

A couple of potatoes - I used some Yukon Golds from the Farmer's Market
Regular soy milk
Brown sugar

1. Wash and peel the potatoes. Cut into 1-inch cubes and boil until very soft.
2. Drain the water, then put the potatoes back in the pot over extremely low heat. Mash the potatoes most of the way, then pour in a little soy milk and mix. Continue until you get them as creamy as you like them.
3. Put them in a teacup and sprinkle some brown sugar on the top. Voila! Spruced up mashed potatoes that look adorable with any meal! This also does very well as a mid-evening snack if I'm going to be up late and need something else after dinner to keep my energy up.

[Ha, that's right, folks. I said teacup. Think about it - usually those poor just sit in a formless blob on your plate, looking rather colorless as well. Kinda drab. Put 'em in a teacup, and they're suddenly way more fun to eat! Also, this is a sneaky way to get yourself to eat only one serving of potatoes. Because filling up the teacup will make you think you're eating way too much, but filling 1/2 to 2/3 full is about 1 serving of potatoes. Wha ha ha - portion control is all about tricking the brain into thinking it's eating enough food!]

Apple Peels - early verdict

2008-11-26T22:44:00.000-05:00

Yeah, no. These are not getting added back into my world of food - unless they're cooked into something, and in small quantities. Unfortunate, but true. My system just doesn't like them anymore - doesn't process them well. And they make a fairly painful trip through my digestive tract. Not pleasant at all.

So, I'm ending this food experiment early. Pain is a deal-breaker in this reintroduction process.

[The good news is that since I've been eating apples pretty much every day for the past 8 months, I've gotten really good at peeling them quickly, and it's actually become a rather soothing part of the process of putting together my lunch every day. So, to me, I'm not actually missing much anymore. --Perspective. It's all about perspective.]

The world of creative snacking

2008-11-26T14:49:00.007-05:00

Healthy snacking. A common phrase in today's world. But what does it mean, really, to the average person? Not that I've surveyed thousands of people to obtain these observations or anything, but my take on what people view as "healthy snacking" is so called "bird food" or "rabbit food" or else the stuff that the grocery store tells everyone is "healthy." In the first category? Carrot/celery sticks. Water. Small salad. Piece of fruit or some grapes. Crackers and cheese. Rice cakes. Whole grain anything. In the second? Low-fat granola bars. 100-calorie cookies. Anything with "Smart" or "Lean" or "Healthy" on the label. Low-carb, sugar-free, 38%-less-fat-than-leading-brand.

You get the idea. A world of food that few have been brought up to actually enjoy and fewer still have managed to condition themselves into liking. Who wants to eat boring, tasteless carrot sticks when Dunkies has gingerbread donuts and pumpkin muffins? What's a 100-calorie, cardboard-tasting cookie compared to the bakery down the street that has those out-of-this-world chocolate cookies? Why eat a plain-old banana when Petsi Pies is miraculously open when you pass by?

Enter stomach issues, weight issues, digestion problems. Now you have to eat healthy - your doctor and your body say you no longer have a choice. Your heart sinks at the thought of carrot sticks and salads replacing those oh-so-scrumptious bakery runs, potentially for the rest of your life.

Healthy snacking isn't as bad as it's painted to be. Carrot sticks, if you buy organic carrots and chop them yourself (as opposed to the prechopped mini carrots in bags at the store), can actually taste good - carrots have a really strong, solid flavor, actually. Salads are fun to play around with. I've done a lot with them over the past 8 months.

But, even those can get old after awhile. Carrot sticks lose their appeal after 2 weeks of eating them every day. Salad mixes become rather repetitious and drab after using the same ones over and over again. And, as this happens, it feels like there's this empty pit in your soul whenever you reach for that healthy snack because the doc says no more trips to the bakery.

My answer to this dilemma (having lived it for quite some time now and getting *really* bored with the same old same old!):
Get creative.

It sounds like a simple enough directive. Instead of celery sticks, put some peanut butter on there sometimes. Or add some apple slices atop the crackers and cheese. The problem there is that those are the stock "creative ways" to spice up your healthy snacking. [Just read the back of any Ritz Cracker box or any number of healthy eating websites...] And really, those stock "creative" snack alternatives get old and boring, too. You're back where you started again: Boring-snack-ville, population: YOU. [Yeah, I've totally been there as well. In some ways it's worse than eating plain boring snacks because there's this strange sense of failure at not being able to make healthy snacking a little more enjoyable.]

Getting creative means getting creative. Test the limits of your taste buds. Put two foods together that any "normal human being" would never combine. [For the record: any "normal human being" knows bubkiss about it - and really, "they" don't exist anyway, so no worries about "them."] Open your cupboard, pull out two or three things you like, and give yourself the puzzle of figuring out how you can make them into a edible and enjoyable snack for later in the day. The point is to start having fun, to let go of the fear that you won't like everything you try (you won't, so why worry about it?), and to get yourself more actively involved with the food you eat. It's a game! Have fun! Go crazy! But most importantly, don't let the game end. Once you find something you like, use if for a couple of weeks, and then let it evolve into something else, or retire it for a month or two, or else you run the risk of getting stuck in that boring-snack-ville rut again.

I understand that starting this game can be a little daunting. It's hard to let your mind wander, food-wise. So, let me help you get started. Everyone's tastes are different, obviously, but I offer up here some of my recent favorites. Try 'em, scrunch your nose at them and go a completely different route, laugh at them... Whatever your reaction, perhaps this will help you in your quest for ever more interesting ways to snack healthily!

Corn Thins with Mashed Potatoes & Raisins
This was literally a 'today' creation. I've put warmed mashed potatoes on my corn thins in the past, but I've never added raisins on top. What a world of difference!

2 corn thins (like rice cakes, only made with corn - I got them at Whole Foods)
~1/4-1/3 cup of creamy mashed potatoes (I use lots of soy milk in mine to make them spreadable) - basically enough to get a thickness of a pinky fingernail atop the corn thin - don't skimp!
A handful or two of raisins

Warm up the mashed potatoes - 45 seconds in the microwave is plenty - and spread on the corn thins. Top with raisins. Make funny faces or crazy intricate designs if desired, let yourself be a kid about it.

Applesauce with Almonds & Honey
I used this one early on in my diet - before they took nuts completely away from me later down the road. It became quite a favorite of mine!

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
small handful of raw almonds
a couple dollops of honey (preferably fresh pure honey that comes straight from the bees (and has no preservatives!!!) - it tastes so much better!

Put applesauce in a bowl. Add almonds and stir until almonds are completely coated in applesauce. Dribble honey over top of applesauce and almonds, a little at a time. Stir and taste, and add more honey if desired until you get the right amount of sweetness.

[Did you know: Honey doesn't ever "go bad" - it will outlive you if you keep it for long enough (I'm not advising this, just emphasizing a point here...). The reason conventionally packaged honey at the regular grocery store has preservatives in it is to A) preserve a certain color that marketers have deemed "honey color" and B) to make sure the honey doesn't crystallize. Pure honey, straight from the bees, will crystallize if left to sit for awhile. But, it's not "rotten" - all you need to do is boil some water, remove the water from heat, then put the container of honey in the hot water - I usually put a towel over the top to give it a little steam bath. Repeat this until the honey is fully decrystallized.]

Dried Berries & Rice Crisp Cereal

~1/4 cup of two of your favorite dried berries - change 'em up every now and then! I prefer cherries and blueberries, but have been known to sub in cranberries every now and then...
~1/4 cup Rice Crisp cereal - you will notice I distinctly do not say "Rice Krispies" - read the label some time, they're awful for you! - my preferred choice is brown rice crisp cereal made by Erewhon.

Mix and enjoy. Finger food and so easy to put together for a quick snack!

Your turn! Go create, explore, and enjoy!

Tomatoes: the verdict

2008-11-23T12:34:00.006-05:00

My two week Introduction to Tomatoes (FOOD 108, Nina's kitchen, Mondays and Thursdays, see syllabus for required readings...?) ends with a cheeseless pizza with fresh tomato pieces on top. [See recipe at the end for details, I don't want to spoil the surprise...]

Overall, the tomato experiment went well, I'd say. No major pain (whew!), and only mild reactions to the acidity - but that's really only if I have tomatoes on nights too close together. I've found I need about 3 days between tomato-sauce based meals. And fresh tomatoes are a no go. The more they're cooked, the better (which is generally a good rule of thumb with acidic foods, by the way - cooking them over heat tends to take away some of the acidity ). Exciting to know, however, that I don't have to completely avoid tomatoes for the rest of my life!

As for the tomato pieces atop my pizza of the evening - though I don't have all of the info back from my reaction log, I think that this won't end up getting added back into my diet (unless I've taken some serious antacid pills beforehand). Unfortunate, but hey, the digestive system has spoken pretty clearly.

Thus ends my inaugural food reintroduction. Tomorrow, we start with apple peels! [You may think this is rather anti-climactic, but I need to give my stomach a break from as big a thing as tomatoes!]

But for now, back to that pizza. Did I mention how fantastic pizza tastes? I haven't had it in almost a year. And it tasted soooo good! The very distinct tastes of the different ingredients, all melding inside my mouth with each bite. The texture is fantastic, too - the crisp of a good crust, the different textures of different ingredients, the smoothness of the pizza base. Oh mans - YUM! Here's the recipe... Enjoy!

Cheeseless Pizza with Ham & Tomatoes

1 pizza crust (I cheated and used premade crust - I found one that didn't have any lactose traces in it!)
1/3 cup ham chunks (smallish)
1/2 cup tomato chunks (smallish)
4 small baking potatoes
soy milk
olive oil

1. Boil potatoes and mash them, using the soy milk to make them really smooth and spreadable.
2. Brush the pizza dough lightly with some olive oil. You don't need to cake it on, just a light coating is enough.
3. Spread mashed potatoes on pizza dough, trying to make an even thickness across the dough. [I have no idea how thick to tell you to make it. I basically spread them on until I couldn't see the dough through the potatoes anymore.]
4. Sprinkle ham chunks and tomato chunks on top of the potato base; try to make them as evenly distributed as you can.
5. Bake at 400 degrees for about 16-20 minutes. [This is where I really estimated. I started with 10 minutes, then added a few more, then a few more. Kept checking to see if the potatoes had crisped a bit on the top. Turns out it's a little hard to tell when pizza is done when there's no melting cheese to tip you off, but I discovered "done" in this recipe's case is when you can smell the aromas of the ham and tomatoes very clearly wafting out of the closed oven. Oh, and the dough was really crispy.]

Reactions
- Initial
Hmm, the reaction is a little acidy, unfortunately. Could be that I had one too many slices. (I had 3 - it was so good!) But I think what's more likely is that fresh tomatoes are not such a good idea. I'll have to revisit in a few weeks and figure that out.

- 2 hours later
pending...

- 2 days later
pending...

How to Make Fruit Puree

2008-11-23T11:12:00.004-05:00

So, this seems like a rather easy task, right? But, if you're like me, and had never done it before, you might think to google it or check in a cookbook or something... Yeah, bad idea. Every "how-to" on fruit purees I found assumed some knowledge of making fruit puree or cooking fruit for said puree or didn't give me adequate amounts of # of fruit to use, how to cut it up, how much water to use, etc. - which is frustrating when you have never done this and need to know the whole process, not just one piece of the process! [Isn't that what a How-to is for? To show you how to do something from start to finish? Just sayin'...]

After about an hour online (that's not a joke nor an exaggeration), I hit upon this video for making a fruit puree that very nicely breaks down the whole process. I highly suggest watching it in addition to reading any "how-to" (mine or someone else's) for making your own fruit puree.

I agree with this dude in the video: I like the simplest recipes for fruit puree - the ones that keep the natural flavors of whatever fruit you're pureeing. So, I offer up my process for fruit purees, with the caveat that after you've done it once, you will find it's very easy to do and you should start playing around with combinations and textures to make your own favorites!

Fruit Puree
(thus far I've only done apples and pears, so the process below is best suited for fruits similar in texture/hardness to those fruits)

1. Get 4 medium to large sized pieces of fruit. Peel and core them.
2. Chop into pieces - about 1 to 1.5-in size. Throw these in a large pot.
3. Cover with water that just barely covers the top of the fruit. I often don't quite cover the top pieces, since the fruit floats. So, push the fruit pieces down, and if the water covers them, then you've got enough.
4. Bring water to a boil, then cook over medium heat until done (about 45-50 minutes). "Done" means the fruit is soft enough to mush up with a spoon or masher or whatever (no need to actually mash). The water will also have reduced quite a bit. You want to have some water left over, so don't reduce it all the way, but leave about a 1/4-in of water at the bottom of the pan (this is a rough estimate).
5. Let fruit cool - I generally do this with a lid on the pan so that the water doesn't evaporate!
6. Once it's around room-temperature or a little above, put fruit into food processor. The first time you do this, I suggest not putting all the water in yet - you can always add more, but you can't really take it away... If the fruit isn't liquidy enough, add some of the water until you get the desired consistency.
7. Let cool all the way before transferring to a container and refrigerating/freezing. I've found that puree lasts for about a week in the fridge, if you don't eat it all first!

Boiling apples:

Pureed!

Some tips for choosing fruit for purees:

They taste richer if you use a mixture of types, but if you don't want to buy different kinds, I recommend going with a strong-tasting variety of apple or pear.

For apples: I generally use two varieties of apples in my apple purees: one pungently-flavored apple good for eating, and one less pungent, but still pretty strong flavored apple that's touted as a good baking apple. My favorite combination is Jonagold+Mutzi apples (from the Farmers' Market!), but in the off-season, Fuji+Cortland or Fuji+Golden Delicious are good alternatives. Play around with combinations.

For pears: I prefer Asian pears to Bartlett or Bosc pears. I've been using a mixture of two types of Asian pears that I get from my local Farmer's Market lately, so I don't have any good ideas yet for off-season pear purees. The ones I use are just a regular Asian pear+this variety of Asian pear that tastes like it has honey in it! Mmm...

[The most important part to remember - hot boiled apples or pears are even more delicious than their plain chopped counterparts. Just make sure you blow on them to cool a bit - they burn tongues fast! ...might be speaking from personal experience here...]

Making my own bread - a delicious weekly task!

2008-11-20T19:52:00.009-05:00

One of my favorite parts of having to make all of my own food in these past months is making bread. I got a breadmaker for my birthday about 2-some years ago, and it was quite possibly one of the most useful gifts I've ever received! I've actually been making my own bread for longer than this diet started - I figured, hey, I have this thing, I might as well use it, and it's got to be cheaper in the long run to be making my own instead of buying the store stuff. [I haven't actually done any price analysis or comparison on that, but I'll make a good bet it works out in favor of my checkbook.]

At first, of course, making bread with a bread maker is a very exact process - use exactly what they tell you to, to make sure that the right balance of wet and dry ingredients get added in the right combinations to give you a very delicious loaf of bread. But, after using it for over a year, I've started to get bored with the exact recipes. So I've been tinkering a little to see what else I can do. And it's so much fun! This will definitely mean I'll be tinkering with other loaves and finding my favorite bread recipes, instead of just what they've given me!

One of my favorite loaves in my recipe book, the one I've been tinkering with of late, is Apple Walnut Bread. It's a sweet bread, but tastes really good with some lunchmeat or leftover chicken or some tuna with peas on top. I leave out the walnuts, of course, since they don't agree with me, but it doesn't need them in my opinion. And this bread is quite possibly the most delicious bread to toast up EVER!!!

A couple of months ago, I realized my diet was really apple heavy. Since it's something I know I can eat, I was going a little overboard. So, in the interest of infusing my diet with something other than apples, I bought some Asian pears from the Farmers' Market one Friday on a whim. And when the weekend came, I realized I didn't have any applesauce to make my bread with, nor did I have apples to puree either. I did have those pears. So I thought, "what the hey?" And I cooked 'em up, pureed them, and used the pear puree as a substitute for applesauce that the recipe calls for.

Oh mans - that was the best idea EVER!
[Don't you just love it when accidental circumstances produce amazing results?]

Not only do the pears smell heavenly when boiling on my stove, the whole apartment smells amazing when that bread bakes! And it comes out with a nice firm crust and fluffy, scrumptious bread inside! Yum! Who knew that pears+cinnamon=even-taster-than-apples+cinnamon???

I offer below this bread machine recipe, as well as any modifications I've tried out thus far. I'm sure I will post again about modified bread machine recipes as I venture farther and farther into that territory! Also, I have included some of my favorite ways to use this bread - taste combinations that I particularly enjoy using this bread recipe, but obviously the sky's the limit when it comes to bread, right?

Apple Walnut Bread
(in its original form, taken from the recipe book for the Oster 2lb. EXPRESSBAKE Breadmaker)

[Note: every bread machine is different. This particular recipe is designed for a 2lb loaf of bread. If your bread machine is smaller, you'll have to reduce the amounts to make sure that you don't overflow the baking pan!]

[Equivalency note: 1/8 cup = 2 Tbsp - for those that don't have 1/8-cup measuring cups. Alternately, you can do what I did and pick up a sliding measuring cup at Crate and Barrel (for around $7.50, I think?) that has equivalencies for metric and American measurements, and includes 1/8-cup increments and fluid ounces - very useful if, like me, you make bread all the time and need to measure in 1/8-cup increments!]

3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
3/8 cup apple juice
3 Tbsp butter or margarine (I use non-dairy versions and it doesn't mess with the chemistry at all)
1 large egg
1 tsp salt
4 cups bread flour (important! don't use all-purpose flour, your bread won't turn out right!)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp active dry yeast (not instant or fast-acting!)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1. Measure and add liquid ingredients to the bread pan (in order of listing above).
2. Measure and add dry ingredients (except yeast) to the bread pan (again, in order of listing above).
3. Use your finger to form a well/hole in the flour where you will pour the yeast. Yeast must NEVER come into contact with a liquid when you are adding ingredients. Measure the yeast and carefully pour it into the well.
4. Snap the baking pan into the breadmaker and close the lid.
5. Choose "Sweet bread" setting on your breadmaker (if you have that option - if not, my machine takes 2hrs, 50 minutes for the cycle, which includes the mixing, kneading, rising, and baking).
6. Select a medium or dark crust color, don't use the lightest crust setting for this one.
7. Press "Start/Stop" button.

My alternatives
1. Lose the walnuts. I can't eat them, so I just don't add them. The only difference this will have is to make the bread smoother, which I rather enjoy!
2. Use apple puree instead of applesauce - but make sure your apple puree has enough water to match the water content of the unsweetened applesauce you can buy at the store. I find that if I cook/puree 4 apples at a time, it ends up with about the right amount of water-to-apples ratio.
3. Use pear puree instead of applesauce. Again, I use 4 pears at a time to create this puree, so I get the right amount of water. [This is by far my favorite modification because it changes the texture of the bread slightly - you can feel a slight hint graininess of the pear in the bread, which in my humble opinion, greatly adds to the composition of this loaf of bread!]
***See here for instructions on making your own fruit purees, complete with video! (Not of me...)
4. When using pear puree, sub in pear juice for apple juice. [If you're like me, and don't want to buy actual pear juice at the store (because, um, what else am I actually gonna use it for?), you can use pear puree+more water in a basic 50/50 ratio of pear puree and water - swirl it around a little to mix the puree and the water and voila! Pear juice!]

My favorite uses
- Toast it. The smell alone as it toasts is worth it! On that toast, put some pear or apple butter/jam or another subtle-flavored jam (so you don't overpower the taste of the bread). I also slather some of my Apple-Grape-Date Compote on it - YUM!
- It's so sweet and delicious, that sometimes I just eat it plain. No need to even dress it up if all you really want is some bread!
- Tunafish or tunafish with peas on a toasted slice as an open-faced sandwich. Mmm...

A second date with tomato sauce...

2008-11-14T00:37:00.004-05:00

So, I had another go at eating my tomato sauce 2 days after the first try. Not the best idea I've ever had, as it turns out - I got pretty refluxy. Thinking about it a little bit this evening, I've come to realize that there are a couple of factors might account for this:
1. I think I ate to quickly.
2. I think I need to eat less tomato sauce in one serving.
3. I think it was too close to the last try - I need to wait at least 3 days between times.

Thus, tomato sauce remains the Food of the Week for next week. Everything else will get pushed back while I figure out this whole tomato thing...

Baby steps. Baby steps.

The Inaugural "Reintroduction" Post: Tomatoes

2008-11-11T23:01:00.009-05:00

...or, well, tomato sauce. It's cooked, so they're not exactly fresh off the vine or anything. And acidic foods lose some of their acidity when cooked.

So, before I get to the topic at hand, let me give you a little background about the rules for reintroducing foods into my diet. If this diet and food lifestyle shift has been anything, it's been rule-driven. Rules about when, how, what, where to eat... you know the drill if you've read any of this blog.

My doctor and I chatted about the best and safest way for me to start reintroducing food back into my diet. The rule is one food a week, trying it twice within that week - spaced out by a few days. So, if I try something on Monday, I have to wait 'til at least Thursday before trying it again. I have to try it twice during the week. And if, by the end of the week, I haven't been able to adequately discern how that food affects my system, it gets another week. At most one new food a week, and as pure/plain as I can make it (obviously with onions, I'm not just going to eat an onion, but will create something highlights the onion and only uses other ingredients that I'm sure work well in my system. The key words here are slow and isolated. Slow to reintroduce, and only introduce one thing at a time, as isolated as possible.

Once I've tried a new food off of my No-List, the next part of the process is paying attention to the reaction in my system. This is 3-fold, really. The instant initial reaction (if any), the 2-hours later reaction (after digestion has started), and the two days later reaction (after the food has pretty much moved through my whole system). These 3 reactions (or lack thereof) will help me ascertain how much of the food I can handle, in what ways, and help me figure out how to ultimately modify my diet in regards to the food in question.

There are two main reasons for such a slow, and seemingly painstaking process of reintroduction. 1) Just what I've said above - to figure out how my system will react without a lot of interference from other foods; and 2) most of these foods are things I have not eaten in over 7 months. Meaning my stomach/digestive system doesn't have even a vague recollection of how to deal with these foods. (It's actually quite surprising how quick your system can forget!) So I'm also being careful to ease myself lightly back into a more normal diet. I won't be able to handle it all at once. So, again, slow and isolated.

Phew, what a mouthful!

So, now onto the actual subject here: I just had tomato sauce for the first time since March! Excitement!!! I found a recipe online for Low-Acid Tomato Sauce (from one of my favorite online recipe sources, Dr. Gourmet). My version is modified a bit, of course (like always), to account for my stricter dietary guidelines. He calls for onion and garlic - I quite literally just used tomatoes and water. Takes kind of a long time to make this tomato sauce, but I'm hoping the end result is something that makes my system happy (or, at least, not unhappy - I'll settle for that).

Low Acid Tomato Sauce
[My modified version]

I put this sauce over whole wheat rotini, and used the meatballs I made at the end of last week (recipe here).
...I need to pause for a moment and express just how fabulous it was to look at a basic pasta meal with actual tomato sauce!!!

2 28-oz cans peeled tomatoes, chopped [either buy cans of whole peeled and chop yourself or get pre-chopped peeled]
3 cups water
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp olive oil (optional)

1. Put water and tomatoes in a large stock pot with the olive oil added in, if desired. Simmer over low heat until tomatoes are soft and easily squashed (this will take a good 90 minutes).
2. Once tomatoes are done, remove pot from heat and cool the sauce completely (this will take a good 40-45 minutes).
3. Once cooled, add baking soda. This causes the sauce to fizz or bubble. Stir every five minutes until the sauce is no longer bubbling.
4. You can now either store this until ready to use it, or else reheat and use for your meal.

Reactions
- Initial
Besides the butterflies in my stomach from being a little anxious about trying formerly forbidden food, my stomach was fine. It went down well, and no immediate pain. Pass

- 2 hours later
The tummy is still happy. A little reflux - but I think that's because I ate it rather late (bad Nina). Next time, will try it earlier in the evening...

- 2 days later
Tummy's still happy!

How do you define "comfort food?"

2008-11-05T23:36:00.006-05:00

I sometimes wonder what exactly makes a dish worthy of the label "comfort food." While I realize that it's a very personal classification, I have to wonder what exactly makes a person call something "comfort food?"

I feel like it has a lot to do with family and family traditions. And what Mom fed you when you were ill. (Campbell's Chicken Noodle and cinnamon-sugar toast - yum!) Foods that bring with them pleasant memories from days gone by, or from what our brains have labeled as "simpler times."

But, that's the obvious classification tool for comfort food. What about other types? New dishes you've had since childhood days? Different tastes you've developed over the years? Just how does one decide something is one of their "comfort foods?"

I would like to put out an hypothesis - which is pretty much entirely based on my own perspective and experience.
Comfort food is food that can brighten a bad day, that is easy to make, and that carries with it a pleasant memory - be it of family, friends, just spending time alone...

Think about it - you've had a bad day and now you're hungry. You just want something fast but satisfying that will make things feel not so bad, and you have very little energy to give up to creating said 'something.' You go for what's always on the brain - that recipe for your own comfort food. And even the preparation of it makes you start to feel better, cozy, safe, comfortable (or insert your own adjective here). The smell of it brings back nice memories, brings a smile to your face as you play back the memory in your mind. And then you sit down and eat it, and the taste is beyond amazing! Perhaps another person would not agree, but to you it's the best taste in the world!

That's, I guess, how I personally classify comfort food. Some favorites that come to mind from my own childhood are my mother's mac-n-cheese (not from the box), Angel Cookies (family recipe), meatballs in BBQ sauce + grape jelly (yummy), and my grandmother's lefse (I am so Norwegian, what can I say?). --Alas, most of these are off-limits now on this new diet. And that was the stuff that was hardest to give up - all that comfort food that I'm used to eating when I feel bad or sick or whatever. I've been spending the past few months learning to create new comfort foods that remind me of my old comfort foods, but are made of things I can eat. [For the record, lefse is currently not allowed, but my food-introduction plan will be shaped such that, by Christmas, I will once again be able to eat it. It's that good!]

This is all, obviously, leading to a new type of comfort food that I've hit upon in the past month. Partly discovered through friends, partly discovered by my continuing internet search for recipes I can tweak to work into my diet. It's easy, it's simple, and makes fabulous leftovers for the rest of the week. Scrumptious.

Meatballs with Fruit Compote
Ha - see? It even has a simple name!

Meatballs
...they're adorable as only little meatballs can be - and they smell fabulous as they cook!

1 lb. 93% lean ground beef (thawed)
2 oz (1/4 cup) whole wheat bread crumbs [Note: so many brands of bread crumbs are made with hydrogenated oils - it's ridiculous. Panko is the only brand I've found that doesn't - I recommend them.]
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp salt
spray cooking oil

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Please a large non-stick skillet in the oven.
2. Knead bread crumbs, oregano, basil, and salt into ground beef until well blended.
3. Roll beef mixture into a large ball and cut in half. Roll each half into a ball and cut in half. Continue until you have 32 meatballs (they'll be about an inch in diameter). [Note: I think this is the most fun I've ever had making meatballs - maybe because they come out so symmetrically?]
4. Spray hot skillet lightly with olive oil. (Take skillet out of oven first!) Place meatballs on skillet and return to oven.
5. Cook for 12-15 minutes, until meatballs are firm to the touch.

Fruit Compote
...of AWESOME! No, really, this stuff is out of this world.

[Note: this recipe is far from exactifiable (that's totally a word) - it's more an art of putting stuff in the pot and eyeing the balance of amounts of the different fruits. Yeah. Have fun!]

1 large apple
[I recommend a full-flavored apple that you'd eat, not a baking apple. It makes the compote's blend of flavors a lot richer.]
a couple handfuls of green grapes
["couple" meaning 2-4?]
approx. 4-5 oz of organic pitted dates
[measured based on using half of the 9 oz. container I buy at Whole Foods]
organic 100% apple juice
[spend the extra money and get the foggy stuff - the clear stuff is weak and less flavorful]

1. Core and peel the apple. Cut into large chunks (roughly 1-inch cubes - as much as you can "cube" a spherical fruit). Put apple pieces in a medium pot.
2. Add grapes until it looks like there's a good balance of color between the apple pieces and the grapes. Halve them if they're really large grapes.
3. Cut dates in half width-wise. Add to pot. Toss fruits in pan a bit to mix them all together.
4. Add enough apple juice to barely reach the top of the fruit - but don't drown the fruit in juice, some should be sticking up above the juice.
5. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then turn to low heat and simmer until apple juice has almost completely reduced.

Mine is always a brick red color - but doesn't turn so until about 5 minutes before it's done. Not sure why, but it's a nice indicator that I discovered while making it.

[As mentioned above - this is totally an art. It generally takes about 45 minutes for mine to cook - probably could take less time if I turned up the heat, but I like savoring the aroma in my kitchen. If you want a soupier compote, don't reduce apple juice as much. If you feel that the fruits don't saturate and soften enough, add more apple juice and cook until reduced again. And once you taste it, if one flavor over-powers, add some more fruit and juice and cook some more - or remember to not add as much of that fruit next time around. The important part is to make sure you lick the spoon you use to mix it - and lick out the pot once it cools and you've transferred the compote to a container. No really, it's important - because it tastes so good!!!]

A couple of meal notes:
1. I generally pair this meatball & sauce concoction with half of a Sweet Dumpling Squash, some steamed green beans, and a slice of my homemade bread - for lapping up the excess sauce from the plate/bowl after eating all of the meatballs. Talk about the best meal ever! The squash is filling enough to satisfy any hunger, the meatballs and compote steal the show, the green beans give me my green veggie fix, and the bread and leftover compote are sweet enough to be like dessert! Mmm.
2. Store the meatballs and compote in separate containers in the fridge. To reheat, put some meatballs and compote in a dish, cover, and microwave. I use about 1.5 minutes for 4-5 meatballs and a couple spoonfuls of compote.
3. The compote makes fabulous "jam" for sandwiches. Or yummy sauce for mashed potatoes. Or over roasted chunks of squash. Or mixed with some of my favorite grain recipe. Or just licked off your finger!

Shout out to my friends N & F, who had me over for dinner about a month ago and introduced me to this compote. I am forever grateful for this new comfort food. Thanks guys!

The Countdown is Over! (subtitle: Now What?)

2008-11-03T16:08:00.007-05:00

You may notice that the countdown on the sidebar is at 0 - or rather, it was at 0, and has since been restarted for another purpose. The old counter reached the 0 mark at precisely 7:55 am this morning, right about the time that I was sitting in my doctor's office talking about my symptoms, improvements since last visit, any odd changes, etc. The result of this visit was my doctor giving me the go-ahead to start adding food back into my diet - slowly, one food per week, so I can assess its effects on my system and adjust my No-List as necessary (meaning, leave the food on, take it off, or put lesser restrictions on it).

So, this should be joyous and overly-exciting, right? I've been waiting for this moment since mid-March when this whole thing began... and yet...

Exactly: And yet...

Here's the thing. I've gotten so used to these restrictions that, for all I've talked about getting back to a "normal food life," my definition of "normal food life" has changed. To me, now, this restricted diet is more normal (albeit crazy restricted) than what I used to eat. [Granted, I used to eat crap, so part of the adjustment in definition is a good thing, but that's not exactly the point here...]

Really, what it comes down to is that I'm so used to not eating all of this food, that I'm afraid of what will happen now that I can start trying to eat them again. My mind equates these foods with pain. That's a powerful feeling, and a powerful source from which fear can arise.

For most of the day today, I've been thinking about what food I want to try out first. And, it wasn't much of a contest: tomatoes have been at the top of my wish list for a long time (read: ever since they were taken away from me). But, just as I geared up for the excitement of trying this out, I realized that I'm actually quite afraid of the reaction my system will have. Will I suddenly revisit the pain of so many months ago? Or will a new pain arise due to the fact that I haven't eaten tomatoes or tomato-based anything since April? Who knows? Perhaps it'll be perfectly fine, and I'll be able to eat all the tomatoes I like.

Another thing: this is all rather overwhelming. I've been given a completely green light, no instructions about what order to use when adding food back in. Think about it, this is the best scenario - I don't have to wait for a doctor to tell me what's best for me and what to do next. But, well, have you looked at my No-List? I mean, really, how do I decide? It's like being in my freshman year of college all over again and sitting with the course catalog in front of me: How do I know what I want first? What order to put them in? Does it even matter? Yeah, same feeling, except sub food in for courses.

What all of this tells me is that I need a bit more of a strategy for adding foods back into my diet. A plan that will make this a little simpler, and thus stave off some of this fear. Because there's that risk that something will make me ill again, I need to do a little reworking of my week to allow for "sick evenings" (a.k.a. evenings in which dinner with the 'new' food was not such a good idea). And I need to think about what's being added each week - perhaps trade off acidic-food one week and non-acidic-food the next. Think about how exactly to implement the trying out of the 'new' food - what form in which to cook it, how much to try, what else to cook it with...

Wow - who knew this was going to become so complicated?

The current plan (subject to change, of course) is to take this week to plan this out a little more and then start introducing foods back into my diet next Monday. And I'm updating the sidebar a bit to make this all a little more interactive. Hence the new count down. It's counting down to dinnertime (7:00 pm) on Mondays, and I'll reset it each week and update the "Food on Deck" item below the counter. The "Food of the Week" is the item I'll be working on for the week. I think this'll be a good way to look forward to things, keep my mind on what's happening now, and also a good way for me to remember what's coming up.

In the spirit of how I've come to view this "crazy restricted diet of doom" (as I once called it), I've decided to look at this as an adventure. An adventure on the road to a healthy, less-restricted world of food. It'll be an exciting, potentially bumpy, perhaps a little windy road - but the destination will be so worth it!

Ready, set, go!

Pumpkin Cookies No More...

2008-10-28T23:51:00.005-04:00

In this, my third post about pumpkin recipes, I give you my new pumpkin cake recipe. It is oddly familiar, perhaps, to anyone who has read previous pumpkin-related posts. Familiar indeed - more like exactly the same as the pumpkin cookie recipe of my first pumpkin post.

I mentioned in that post that I'm not all that big a fan of cake cookies. And so, I thought, why not make that recipe into a cake? (I did.) Cool, but I needed a frosting of some sort. And there's no way I'd ever be able to eat any of the normal "cake frosting" recipes - way too much fat! [Sad but true - once upon a time I was such a huge fan of cake frosting from the grocery store...]

And I found myself an answer - in a vanilla glaze included in a pumpkin bread recipe I found that doesn't quite fit my diet at the moment.

In the spirit of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown - Happiness is pumpkin cake with icing! [True, these aren't actually lyrics from the song, but really, they should be. We could take out change out Snoopy's "pizza with sausage" in favor of Linus singing "pumpkin cake with icing" and put Snoopy on the third line instead with something like "every meal time" - it'd be fabulous! And yes, since you ask, I was in this musical, I played Linus - and hence the reason I know the lyrics and the order of them still...]

Anyway, back to:

Pumpkin Cake

1 cup pumpkin puree (fresh)
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup applesauce
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. Mix together pumpkin, sugar & applesauce.
2. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
3. Spread into cake pan (I used a 9x12 pan, so my cake's pretty thin - if you use a smaller pan and make thicker cake, adjust baking times accordingly).
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out of center clean.

While cooling the cake, make the icing!

Vanilla Icing
(For my cake, I needed this amount - but it's double the recipe I found online, so if your cake is smaller, I'd half my version.)

1 1/3 cups powdered sugar
2 Tbsp warm water
1/2 tsp vanilla

Thoroughly mix ingredients in a small mixing bowl. [Yay for whisks, and getting to lick the extra icing off that whisk after mixing, that's all I gotta say...]

Once the cake is completely cooled, spread icing over the cake. Cover and refrigerate until it's time to eat it!

The Savory Side of My Pumpkin

2008-10-28T21:33:00.007-04:00

(continued from previous pumpkin post - alliteration totally intentional)

So, after making all sorts of baked goods with that pumpkin, I still had a bunch of pumpkin left! [Note to self: buy smaller pumpkin next time...]

Feeling that I'd done a pretty good job of venturing into the world of baked goods pumpkin-style, I thought I'd peruse the internet for pumpkin meal recipes (low fat, healthy, non-spicy recipes of course - making the internet recipe search quite an adventure as always). I found this lovely recipe for pumpkin-sage pasta sauce.

The little voice in my head instantly started screaming:
Pumpkin pasta sauce? Wow - you mean, I could actually eat pasta with sauce again? No way! I gotta try this!

Unfortunately, the recipe wasn't quite something I could eat, so I wrote down the main parts of the recipe and the amounts, and then made some notes about how to manipulate the ingredients so that I could eat it. And I thought I'd try adding some apple puree to it... because, hey, pumpkin and apple taste good together, right?

[You may get the sudden impression that there's a little sarcasm behind my words...and that perhaps this idea went a little awry? If that was your sense, you were right! Gold star.]

Here are the ingredients from my first attempt at "amazing pumpkin pasta sauce":

1 cup veggie broth
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
2 apples - pureed
1/2 cup soy milk (plain)
1 1/4 tsp dried sage
1/2 tsp dried onion flakes
1/2 tsp garlic granules
salt to taste

I tried making it on a Thursday evening. All I can really say about this endeavor: EPIC FAIL. I cooked it all together - the sauce was rather thick, so I added a bit of water, a few more drops of veggie broth, a little olive oil (something that was in the original recipe). The flavor was all off - so I tried adding a bit more onion flakes, some more of the garlic granules, some more pumpkin. But no, it really didn't work at all. It was horrible! It had turned this sickening green color... I realized that the real problem was that I'd put too much apple in it, which overpowered the subtler flavor of pumpkin, and for every one's future reference: apple + sage = ew. And once there was too much apple, trying to cover it with more of the other flavors was a recipe for only one thing: DISASTER.

Right. Dumped that out. Ate something else that night. Ew.

I waited 'til the weekend to try again - needed a few days to nurse the wound of creating something that hideous on my beautiful stove.

This time, I decided to follow the recipe a little closer - and under no circumstances would I be adding any apple to it this time.

The updated recipe ingredient list:

1/2 cup veggie broth
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 cup plain soy milk
1 1/4 tsp dried sage
1 tsp onion flakes
1 tsp garlic granules
salt to taste

This time, it worked. Tasted pretty nice on the stove. So I cooked up some pasta, and poured some sauce atop the pasta with some meatballs I'd also made that day (see future post for meatball recipe). And it tasted... bad. [What? This is supposed to be pasta sauce!!!]

The problem this time: the meatballs were herbed up with some oregano and basil - and totally powered out the sage and pumpkin. *sigh*

And now we come to the second part of this adventure: what this sauce actually tastes good with?

Obviously the meatballs were a no-go. So the next night I tried the sauce on just pasta - whole wheat rotini. Yeah, no. This time, it was missing something!

I also tried it over my grain mixture (Grandma's Grains). And that ended up working as a really nice chip dip. But chip dip is not a meal.

My next thought was to pair the sauce with a very simple baked white-meat fish. So, I bought some tilapia fillets, and broke out the Joy of Cooking - the real hero of this story. I found a very simple way of baking the fish, and then topped it with my warmed up pumpkin-sage sauce. SUCCESS!!! It was so delicious, I made it two nights in a row. And my stomach loved me for it!

And so, to wrap up, I offer the recipe for this pumpkin-sage sauce, and the uses I found worthwhile. The bottom-line: it's a subtle blend of flavor, so it must be paired with things that will enhance but not over-power it.

Pumpkin Sage Sauce

1/2 cup veggie broth
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 cup plain soy milk
1 1/4 tsp dried sage
1 tsp onion flakes
1 tsp garlic granules
salt to taste

1. In a medium-sized pan, simmer first 6 ingredients (all but the salt) over low heat until well-combined. (About 8-10 minutes, perhaps 12 - depends on your stove. Taste it, you'll know when it's "well-combined.")
2. Add salt to taste.

My favorite ways to use this:

Chip Dip
Mix about 3/4 cup grains with a little more than 3/4 cup sauce (I didn't measure these exactly). Basically, add sauce to the grains until the consistency is similar guacamole. Microwave until warm (1.5-2 minutes?). Dip baked tortilla chips in it for a nice low-fat snack or appetizer.

As Sauce over Baked Fish
To bake fish (single-serving):

1 fish fillet - white fish like tilapia, cod, halibut, about 1-inch thick or less
1/2 tsp of olive oil
salt to taste
butter

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.

1. Grease bottom of glass baking dish with butter (I use non-dairy butter).
2. Rinse fillet and pat dry. Place in baking dish.
3. Brush top of fillet with olive oil. Sprinkle salt to taste on top. (I realize that "salt to taste" on raw fish doesn't really make sense. I used a salt shaker and sprinkled lightly back and forth twice over the fillet.)
4. Bake 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness, until fish fillet is opaque in the center. (Check Joy of Cooking for doneness factor of different types of fish. This time span and check for doneness comes straight from my copy for white fish fillets.)

Place fish on plate, and spoon warmed up pumpkin-sage sauce over top of fillets. I paired this with a serving of grains sprinkled with raw sugar, and a serving of steamed green beans with a few drops of my "fake" butter.

Mmm!

[PS - For the actual pasta sauce recipe, go here. Maybe you'll have better luck with is as an actual pasta sauce?]

The Revolution: turning over a new leaf

2008-10-25T22:21:00.000-04:00

So far, I've talked a lot about the pain and the struggle involved with this diet, and the ongoing stomach problems that brought on the diet in the first place. And, while that's certainly where I come from, that's not where I'm at today.

The revolution has come. I have reached the point at which I no longer feel forced to adhere to the rules of this diet. Instead, I have embraced the new way of food life that this diet has created in my world. And from this position, I've been able to start enjoying what food I have, instead of lamenting what food I've lost. [Not to say I don't crave the occasional piece of chocolate every now and then, but the cravings have left the building, as it were.]

Another way to say this: I no longer survive each day, but I do live each day and enjoy what I have. Food does still take up an enormous about of my thoughts each day, but I'm beginning to feel that this is more a choice now, and less an obligation.

This viewpoint is really helping me embrace the new lifestyle that this experience has created for me. My entire view of food and how to go about eating it has completely shifted. Junk food is gone, in favor of healthy treats that give me a more worthwhile sugar fix. Gone also is the 3-meals-a-day system, in favor of 6-7 smaller meals each day, spread out so I eat about every 2-3 hours. Whenever possible, I eat locally grown food and/or organically grown food - I shifted my whole budget, actually, to allow for the added expense of eating this way.

I like to think of it as an adventure now. An adventure into this new world of food that I've discovered. It's sometimes a bit of a puzzle to figure out how to pull out flavors from the foods that I am still allowed to consume - and paired with the puzzle of balancing meals so I don't eat a bunch of fat in one and none in another, so I get enough fruits and vegetables, so I vary my intake of types of fruits, veggies, meats - this can become a bit of a brain-twist. It's my daily game - named so because, hey, games are fun!

Pumpkin: Journey from Market to My Plate

2008-10-23T21:09:00.000-04:00

When I think Autumn, a few basic things come to mind. Scarves, colored leaves, brisk cool windy days, Halloween, and (of course!) pumpkins. Big huge jack-o-lanterns, little bitty ones on window sills, pureed into pies and bread and muffins and donuts... [that would be thanks to Dunkin - which I can't eat anymore, but that doesn't mean I can't still smell them!]

And so, in the spirit of my continued interest in learning how to make things from scratch, I decided that this year, I'd find me some pumpkin recipes that call for pureed/canned pumpkin, and use my own pureed fresh pumpkin instead! A couple of weeks ago, I walked myself down to my biweekly visit to the Copley Square Farmers' Market, set on buying me a nice sized pumpkin for my journey to delicious pumpkin-y goodness in my kitchen.

Now, I'm a child of the suburbs. Sure, I know that corn has to be knee-high by the 4th of July in order for it to be a good crop, since I grew up in Minnesota (we all somehow know that, maybe we're born with the information...?). Whatever - the point is, I don't know the first thing about buying a pumpkin that I'm going to cut up, roast, puree, and bake/cook into food for consumption. Is there a certain size that's best? A way to pick the ones that will taste the best? No idea. So, I asked the farmer at one of my favorite booths. It turns out, there are so many different kinds of pumpkin than those orange ones that everyone draws with the orange Crayola when asked what a pumpkin looks like.

"The orange ones aren't the best for baking," said he. "You want the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin."

"...The...what now?" I said back, rather perplexed and quite sure I'd heard him wrong.

"The Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. It...doesn't actually have cheese in it," he said, laughing a little. [Well, good, thought I] "It's called that because it looks like a big cheese wheel."

[Right, of course. What was I thinking? - such are the thoughts of the suburban girl stepping into the unknown world of pumpkins...]

And with that, off we trotted to the bins full of what I thought were just butternut squash. But no, intermixed were these largish cheese-wheel shaped pumpkins with tan rinds - about the color of a butternut squash. "Choose one that's really tan - the tanner the rind, the riper the pumpkin" is what the farmer told me. Right. So I picked me out a nice tan pumpkin.

[See? Totally the color of a butternut squash!]

I'll admit, I was a little wary of this process. Afraid I'd completely flub it up or something. I'm more urban than suburban these days. What do I know about cutting up and pureeing a pumpkin? It took me about a week to kick myself into gear. On a Saturday, I opened up the link I'd found about readying a pumpkin for baking/cooking. [Wow, apparently you have to roast it before you scoop it out of the rind to puree it. Good to know.]

Things I discovered during the process:
- There are a lot of seeds inside of a pumpkin.
- A pumpkin roasting in the oven smells AMAZING. No really. A-maz-ing.
- Pureeing pumpkin in my food processor was quite possibly one of the best parts of the whole process. [Okay, that's probably just a function of my crazy kiddish excitement about pressing the on button on the food processor...]
- A medium-sized pumpkin makes way more pumpkin puree than I know what to do with.

With all of the pumpkin puree I was suddenly left with, I now had to find a lot more things to do with it than I'd originally planned! And so, I present some of the recipes I tried out. Some worked the way they were intended (the baked goodies), and one of them took me awhile to really get a handle on. You'll get the stories on all of them over the next few days - of course with pictures to go with!

My suggestion for this Autumn: get yourself a pumpkin and puree it. Do it with a friend - it's fun! And then make yummy pumpkin stuff!!!

The Baked Goods
I'm a fan of these 2 recipes because there's no dairy in them - score! Oh yeah, and they taste good, too!

Low Fat Pumpkin Bread

[I suggest clicking on this image to see it in a bigger size - you don't get the full view of how moist the crust is with this little picture...]

This is a recipe I modified slightly from this page.

2 cups sugar
2 cups pumpkin puree (fresh)
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 eggs
3 1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg or allspice (I use nutmeg, but the recipe creator uses allspice)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. Combine sugar, pumpkin, applesauce & egg; mix well.
2. Mix together flour, cinnamon, soda, powder, salt & nutmeg (or allspice); add slowly to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
3. Pour into 2 cooking spray coated bread pans (8"x4"x2")
4. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Makes 28 servings, according to the recipe online. The online version also included nutrition info. I guess I wasn't interested in most of it (go to the site linked above if you want the full list), but I'm always interested in the fat content: .55g of fat per slice. Nice!

Vegan Pumpkin Cake Cookies

[Again, click for a bigger size...]

I got this recipe here, but the next time I use this recipe, I'm going to see how it fares as a cake recipe - I'm not the biggest fan of cake cookies...

1 cup pumpkin puree (fresh)
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup applesauce
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1. Mix together pumpkin, sugar & applesauce.
2. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
3. Drop by spoonfuls onto baking sheets - I suggest making them small. They bake more thoroughly instead of being overly gooey.
4. Bake 13-15 minutes (according to the recipe). I say more like 18-20, but start with 13-15 and go from there. I don't know your oven.

And, of course, these are vegan, so you noticed no eggs on the ingredient list. This means: you can lick the spoon/bowl with no worries about ingesting raw egg or salmonella or anything bad like that! That is one delicious mixture to eat unbaked!!!

One Sweet Little Squash

2008-10-19T20:56:00.010-04:00

I had dinner with friends about a week ago, and among the food served was this fantastic little squash called a "Sweet Dumpling Squash." We all tackled our halves of squash first - and it didn't take us long to make every ounce of squash flesh completely disappear. We were scraping the peels for any left-over squash just to get that taste one last time. Mmm!

Sweet Dumpling Squash. You know, I've definitely never really thought about just how many different types of squash there are. I mean, I grew up knowing about pumpkin and acorn squash. I also had heard of hazelnut squash and butternut squash. But really, there are tons of varieties of squash! (Not to mention all of the varieties that fit into the pumpkin category!)

Curious, I did a little research online. Apparently, there are 4 main species of squash, a plant belonging to the Cucurbita genus in the Cucurbitaceae family (for all you bio-peeps out there): C.maxima (buttercup squash, hubbard squash), C.minima (cushaw squash), C.moschata (butternut squash), and C.pepo (most pumpkins, acorn squash, summer squash, zucchini). [This is all straight from Wikipedia's page on Squash, by the way, in case you're interested.]

Wikipedia lists 5 main varieties of summer squash and 22 main varieties of winter squash. But I also found one site online that lists 150 varieties of squash displayed at "The Great Pumpkin Patch" in Arthur, IL! Go here to see names and pictures. [...um 150 varieties of squash!?!]

Apparently, winter squash is simply a pet name for the thicker-rinded variety of squash that keeps for long periods of time (usually about a month, according to a couple of different food glossaries that I googled). Specifically, winter squash refers to those squashes that could last into December in the cellar, or wherever you choose to store them. Summer squash are vegetables harvested before maturity, and don't keep well for more than a few days. So, they don't actually refer to the time of year that these types of squashes grow.

One other nugget about squashes that I found: "the squash fruit is classified as a pepo by botanists, which is a special type of berry with a thick outer wall or rind..." (Wikipedia, Squash page) [Um, cool - squash is like a berry... I love this stuff!]

Alright, now that you've had your botany lesson for the day, I'll let you know that you can expect a few subsequent posts featuring different varieties of squash I've had a run-in with. I've already posted on Butternut Squash, of course, but there are so many more to try!!!

And so we get back to Sweet Dumpling Squash. And, may I remind you as you get your thoughts back to this little gem of nature, that it's delicious!!! Here's the other thing about this squash: preparation is a snap. Because it's so sweet all on its own, you don't really need to do much to it. Just cook and serve. And I'm all about easy stuff (for all that I say about all of the complex from-scratch recipes I've been dabbling in).

It makes a good side for just about any meal. I teamed it up with some meatballs I made yesterday over a bed of Grandma's Grains drizzled with pureed apples and a side of green beans. So tasty!

Sweet Dumpling Squash

Yum!!! Doesn't that look good enough to eat? (Hint: IT WAS!)

You need enough squash to serve half to each person at your table.

1. Cut each squash in half - I suggest pulling the stem off first, makes it easier to cut through.
2. Scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff from the middle.
3. Place flesh-side down on a plate with enough water to just cover the bottom of the plate.
4. Microwave 8-10 minutes (I did 8 minutes for 1 half, my friend did 10 for 4 halves).
5. Put a dab of butter and a small amount of brown sugar in the hollowed out center of each squash half, if desired. [But I'm really not kidding when I say you don't even need it...]

Enjoy!

Dropping sizes...

2008-10-15T23:44:00.004-04:00

I posted a little while ago about the experience of losing all of the weight, and the personal identity readjustment that has come with that. I guess you could call this an addendum to that post? You could also probably call it random musings from the mind of the ever-more-surprised-by-this-experience author. [You pick, though - as a general rule I don't choose sides unless I have to.]

A quick recap for focus:

Since March, I've dropped from a size 8 to a size 2, size M to size XL, size 6 shoe to size 5 1/2 shoe.

Okay, so, I went bowling with my coworkers this evening. And discovered that I also went down in bowling ball size! It's funny how so many things just don't occur to me as needing a change due to my smaller size. I've generally bowled with the "size 10" (10 lb) ball. Hah. Found out this evening that I've dropped down to a "size 8" (8 lb) ball.

It just seems like such an odd thing to drop sizes in, but I guess that makes sense. Probably also means I'll have to readjust my comfortable level in free weights should I ever get a hankering to go lift at the gym. Makes me wonder, also, what other wacky things I could have dropped sizes in...?

I guess I'll leave that to ponder on future days. For now, I guess I can just say that I have an ever-growing list of things I've dropped sizes in:

Pants, shirt, dress, shoe, and bowling ball. [chuckle]

Update to the No-List

2008-10-09T21:05:00.009-04:00

I got something back!!!
...and I have to add something to the list, too...

The world is still in balance, I guess.

So, the whole idea behind all of my No-List posts is to give myself an updated list of foods I can eat and that I have to limit my intake of. I've said before that it's all in my head, but as things change, I'll forget what used to be on there and not. As I near the point where I'll get to start adding foods back in my diet, it'll be really nice to have those lists to look back on - in case I'm experiencing symptoms that I can't explain.

So, for the folks at home, here's how this will work:
[Okay, the only reason I just called you all "the folks at home" is because I've always wanted to say that... haha!]
There will always be a full and current list in every No-List post, but to highlight the changes, I'll always put the changed items in this little intro, and then bold them on the full No-List at the bottom of the post. For items coming off of the list, there will be a loud cheer from me and I'll put them in parentheses and grey them out. [Is that the British or American spelling of "grey?" I can never remember which is which. I just know I that I prefer the "grey" spelling to the "gray" spelling.]

So, without further ado [about nothing?]

Crossing off the list:
dried fruits
I saw the doc on Monday and she gave them back to me!!! Needless to say, I'm a little excited...

Adding to the list:
omelettes
Remember the omelette of Tuesday's post? Yeah, I lied. It didn't end up making my stomach happy at all. And, thinking about it, this makes sense - and omelette is fried. Even with no-fat butter substitute for frying instead of real butter, fried food is still bad for me. And so, if I want eggs, I'll have to try baking them - perhaps there will be a quiche in a future post?

The Updated No-List

NO items
- tomatoes/tomato-based foods (includes pasta sauce, ketchup, bbq sauce, salsa, etc.)
- citrus fruits
- peppermint/spearmint
- chocolate
- alcohol
- caffeinated beverages
---regular tea
---coffee
---colas
---energy drinks
---other caffeinated soft drinks
- decaffeinated coffee and decaffeinated regular tea (herbal tea w/o mint is okay)
- carbonated beverages
- pepper
- high-fat dairy products
---2% milk and whole milk
---cream
---high-fat cheeses
---high-fat yogurt
---chocolate milk
- other dairy (from previous lactose intolerance guidelines)
---cow's milk
---soft cheeses
---butter
---cheesecake
- cocoa
- fried meats
- bacon
- sausage
- pepperoni
- salami
- bologna
- frankfurters/hot dogs
- other fried foods:
---doughnuts
---french toast
---french fries
---deep-fried vegetables
---omelettes, scrambled eggs, and other fried eggs
- pastries and high-fat desserts (the directive on this item: say goodbye to bakeries)
- chips
- store bought cookies, candies, sugary snacks of any kind
- hydrogenated and partially-hydrogenated oils
- high fructose corn syrup
- high-sodium foods
- peanut butter, and other nut butters
- cheese
(dried fruits) --Yay!
- vinegar
- bell peppers, and other members of the veggie pepper family
- broccoli
- cauliflower
- asparagus
- celery
- onions
- beans (green beans are currently allowed)
- apple peels (apple flesh is fine, cooked/baked apples are better)
- red grapes (green grapes okay in moderation)
- raspberries
- salad dressing (check the labels, every one of them has something on the No-List!)
- store-bought juices (check the labels, all of them add citric acid!)

**for the next 2 weeks: 0 foods containing any trace of lactose (this includes foods on which the label says "made/processed/packaged in same facility as milk products")

Limited Items
- maximum of 40-50g of fat per day
- oils (olive, vegetable, etc.) - 1 Tbsp has 14g of fat
- nuts - 1/4 cup or 2 Tbsp nut butter has 17g of fat **nut butters currently prohibited entirely
- cheese - 1 oz has 10g of fat **cheese currently prohibited entirely
- processed sugar
- dairy foods not listed on "no items" section at a minimum; must take Lactaid with any foods containing lactose **currently prohibited, as per note above on No items

I made an omelette! (subtitle: Fun with Salads!)

2008-10-07T21:27:00.005-04:00

Okay, so maybe this isn't all that exciting for you. But I've never made one before - I've always been rather a large dunce when it comes to cooking eggs. My first try at scrambling them was an 11 on the 10-pt disaster scale. Yes, scrambling - that's quite possibly the simplest way to cook eggs ever, right? Yeah, now you see why I'm so excited...

Eggs have never been my specialty. I never liked them as a child. If there was egg in some dish that Mom or Grandma or whoever made, they'd better have made sure that I didn't know about it. So, I guess I never really had the need to learn how to cook them on my own until I reached my early twenties and apparently decided that eggs were cool. [...which brings us to the scrambled eggs disaster of 2006...]

Tonight I decided to go through the process of making butternut squash soup - something I usually do on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. And, it's quite a little undertaking, so that certainly was not going to be dinner tonight. As I looked through my fridge, wondering how exactly I was going to get my second serving of meat today (chicken was in the freezer, doh!), my eyes landed on the eggs I'd gotten at the farmer's market this past Friday. And hey - eggs are all kinds of protein, right? Sweet - fast dinner between steps of making soup!

Off to the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook with me!
...how to cook...eggs...
The powers that be opened the page very decidedly to making a basic omelette. [Don't ask silly questions like how I know that the 'powers that be' did that decidedly. You're totally missing the point of this story...]

Who am I to argue with the powers that be? It turns out I hadn't really had a lot of fat in my food today, and thus I was well under the 40-50 g daily limit, so those eggs would most certainly bring up my fat intake! [In case you wondered, this is a good thing. I'm small enough as it is - no need to eat less than I'm supposed to!)]

And so, dinner tonight was a plain omelette (mmm, eggs are really tasty!). I warmed up the rest of my roasted tri-color carrots and red potatoes as a side, and made a pear & blueberry salad with mixed greens and almonds on top. Oh, and toasted some apple-cinnamon bread and topped it with the last of my blueberry jam from my cousin. Yummy - my stomach is happy. And hey, that's all I need to rate a meal as a success!

Since the rest of you all know how to make omelettes, and roasting carrots and potatoes is also an easy thing to figure out, I'll skip the recipes for them and instead focus on my salad. Certainly, salad 'recipes' are pretty simple, but I thought I'd add a few tips I've picked up for making flavorful salads ever since the day I was ordered to stop using salad dressing.

Pear & Blueberry Salad with Almonds

2 handfuls mixed greens
2 handfuls diced pears and blueberries from a mixed fruit bowl
1/2 handful almonds

It's simple, it's pretty, it's delicious.

The hardest part of keeping salads in my diet was figuring out how to eat them without salad dressing. It'd be uber-dry, right? Naw, it's still possible to have a lot of moisture on your salad. You just have to get a little creative!

First thing: I always have fruit on my salads - they have a lot of natural moisture. I've found that mixing a really juicy fruit with a less juicy, more flavor-intensive one creates a nice mixture of flavor for my salads. Some of my favorite combos are:
- diced pears and blueberries
- strawberries and diced apples
- strawberries and halved green grapes
- diced apples, halved grapes and dried cranberries

Another thing that I worried about when concocting non-salad-dressing salads: lettuce tastes funny without another flavor to offset it. Think about it, or try just chewing on a bed of greens sometime. Less than pleasing to eat. You can do it, but it's a little, well, blah (for lack of a better term). Hence the use of fruit - they provide strong flavors. I also generally use a mixture of greens instead of just one kind. (You can find bags of mixed greens next to those bags o' baby spinach and romaine lettuce at the store.) It varies the flavor a little bit, and makes the salad look a little more fun with the different colors and shapes.

Something I've learned after trying a lot of different things with salads: go for different textures. Eating is about more than just the simple taste of the food. I feel like eating also needs to include savoring. Part of making meals is certainly the art of putting together flavors that mesh well, but the texture of the food is also a huge deal. On a salad, the lettuce certainly gives a crunch to the dish. Mixed greens, with the different shapes, with make each bite feel a little bit different in your mouth. Fruit gives a nice soft, slightly mushy texture (mushrooms will do this, too, but I'm not a fan, so you'll never see them on my salads). Adding meat, if you're a carnivore like me, also adds to the mix of textures - something for your teeth to work through. And putting a few nuts or crackers or croutons on top creates a nice dry crunch to offset the wetter leafy crunch of the bed of greens. Makes for a nice little party in your mouth with every bite of salad!

A last note:
When you're in a hurry, of course you don't really want to have to think about prepping all of this stuff to go on a salad, right? You just want to pull something out and put it in a bowl and go. And I'm all about that on weekdays - there are days when I need my leftovers and need a quick salad to go with them, before I'm off to a dance or practice or whatever. My solution: prep it all beforehand. On "cooking day," while whatever entree I'm cooking for the week is in the oven, or simmering on the stove, I chop stuff for salads for the week. [Yes, this generally means I have the same salad for 5 or 6 days, but hey, at least they're quick!]

Dice pears or apples, wash strawberries or blueberries or grapes, and then put them all in the same container. If you want dried fruit on your salad, put that in the same container as well. All of the juices will mix together and you can pour a little juice on your salad each day - instant "dressing" without all the fat and crazy junk they put in store-bought salad dressings! Cut up some chicken and George Foreman it, or sear it in a frying pan with a little oil and some rosemary. Or dice a thick slice of ham. It takes me perhaps 15 minutes to cut up my salad stuff for the week - and I can't express enough how nice it is to open the fridge on a Tuesday evening and see little containers of food waiting for me to open and dole out on some greens. 1-minute salad - done!

"So wait, what can you eat?"

2008-10-04T22:06:00.007-04:00

So goes most people's reactions when they get the brief or unabridged version of my No-List. If you've been reading this blog, odds are very good that you've asked that question as well. I certainly have to remind myself of what I can eat whenever I start thinking about what I can't. Ha!

And though I've lost a lot of weight since I started this whole thing in March, I eat all the time. Not kidding. I eat every two hours at work. And then usually have two more meals at home in the evening. Sometimes another snack gets stuck in there, depending on what I'm doing with my evening.

What is it that I eat? Here's a list of common foods. Unlike the No-List, this is far from comprehensive, but hopefully it gives you an idea of what makes it into my system on a pretty regular basis.

- Meat: most meat is fine, but has to be really lean.
(2 servings every day) - since I can't get protein/iron from most other normal sources
---White meat chicken or turkey
---Ground beef or steak
---Low-sodium canned tuna fish
---Fresh fish (no seafood, though, because I don't really like it)
---Lunch meat, but in small quantities. I've found in the last two weeks that every day is not a good idea.

- Veggies: cooked are better than raw - my stomach just handles them better if cooked first.
(4 or more servings a day)
---carrots (especially tri-color from the farmers' market!)
---corn
---squashes (yellow, zucchini, acorn, butternut, pumpkin are the ones I'm familiar with and have cooked before, but I'm starting to expand my range)
---cucumbers
---potatoes: red potatoes work the best (don't ask me why)
---yams/sweet potatoes
---green beans
---peas
---leafy greens, as long as they're not naturally spicy (I'm all about salads with mixed greens or spinach leaves)

- Fruits:
(3 servings a day
---apples (sans peels)
---applesauce (unsweetened, organic)
---strawberries (small quantities - I'm a big fan of slicing a few on a salad)
---blueberries
---cranberries (in very small amounts)
---green grapes (not red, no clue why my stomach's into one and not the other)
---bananas
*I'm hoping to get dried fruits on this list again soon!

- Grains: whole grains, whole grains, whole grains.
(6+ servings a day)
---whole wheat bread or apple cinnamon bread (baked from scratch in my bread maker)
---whole wheat pasta (I'm a big fan of rotini lately)
---Grandma's Grains
---brown rice cakes - lightly salted or with wild rice mixed in
---brown rice cereal (like Rice Krispies, but without all the additives and crap)
---Kashi Crispy Granola Bars - my favorites are the Almond Crunch and Pumpkin Flax Seed flavors
---oatmeal
---cornbread (mmm!)

- Spices: they all need to be used in extreme moderation - too high an amount sets my stomach into a temper tantrum that rivals any toddler
---cinnamon
---ginger
---nutmeg
---garlic (very small quantities - I use garlic powder, not fresh)
---brown sugar (okay, this isn't a spice, but I use it to flavor a lot of dishes, so I list it as a spice in my head)
---most herbs are cool: parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, basil, oregano (small amounts) are the ones I use (mint = bad though)

- Sauces:
---berry sauce with a little bit of sugar - like my cousin's blueberry sauce! - but nothing with raspberries in it [my stomach and raspberries are having a fight, middleschool drama style]
---basil and extra virgin olive oil, blended - light on the oil, but works well

- Sweet stuff: I've had to give a lot of this up, but there are a few things I can bake, and I'm finding more!
---low fat muffin recipes
---low fat fruit/veggie breads (banana, pumpkin, etc.)
---baked fruit/veggie mixtures (the latest was butternut squash, apples, cranberries with a bit of brown sugar and butter substitute on the top

- Other:
---eggs
---small amounts of light mayo for sandwiches
---berry jams

- Beverages:
---water
---water
---more water
(Every thing else has something added, or is just too expensive when I can just as easily drink water.)
---soy milk (which I only use on cereal, I don't actually sit down with a glass of it)

One thing I've found is that when I find a food that causes little to no symptoms, I latch onto it fast. I have a fair amount of foods up there on those lists, but I often have meals that look rather similar over the course of my day, since I've learned what combinations work well for me and I have to pay attention to the amount of fruits, veggies, and meat that I take in each day. My food creativity window happens with dinner. I'm always on the lookout for new recipes that I can make for myself using the list of ingredients I know I can eat. [It's also a good way to discover new foods to add to the "Yes I can" list of foods.]

Something else I've found as my lifestyle regarding food has changed over the past 6 months: I often have food on the mind, but not necessarily because I'm hungry. Often, I'm thinking a few hours ahead to what's going down for dinner that night. Or else I'm thinking through the next few days to plan on when I can grab a chunk of time to commune with my kitchen, make a huge mess with lots of dishes, and come out on the other side with a delicious something to save for eating over the course of the week. It's become rather fun, actually!

The key to my eating success has been scheduling time into my regular weekly schedule to bake, prepare, cook at least twice a week, if not more. Sundays are generally cooking days for the leftovers I'll eat all week. Bread is baked on Saturday or Sunday usually. I often will bake some sort of sweet thing on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday evening, depending on what's going on in my week. I do the grocery thing on Sunday mornings, to keep myself getting up around the same time every day. I visit the farmers' market in Copley twice a week - Tuesdays and Fridays. It's all becoming a fun part of my personal culture. [And, turns out, it's a really good way to not over-eat, since none of the things I eat are easy to reach in a grab. Everything requires warming up or cutting or some sort of prep.]

I finally embrace the ocean state I live in...

2008-10-03T19:23:00.008-04:00

I've never been the biggest fan of seafood. Growing up in MN, you can't get it fresh, because no matter what ocean it comes from, it'll have to be shipped to our landlocked state. And when it comes off the ice from the packaging, it gets that gross fishy smell. That's what I've always associated with seafood. "Gross fishy smell." It's as ingrained in my head as "knee high by the 4th of July" for a good corn crop. Just something that's always been true in my world. [And no, I never lived on a farm, I grew up in the suburbs... but that little rhyme is something every MN child grows up knowing. Go figure.]

So, when I moved to Boston 4+ years ago, that idea of seafood still resided in my brain. I couldn't do the seafood thing. Even when it's fresh, to me it still smells fishy because of that lifelong association. Funny, that I should denounce an entire world of regional food here just because of something I never liked as a child - food associations are strong and run deep.

Once I went on this diet, however, meat suddenly had to be really lean. And [newsflash Nina!], fish is a very lean meat. And full of nutritional value. And every site I hit upon on the internet that touts low fat recipes and lean meals always has a bunch of fish recipes.

About a week and a half ago, I finally decided to embrace the seafood side of Boston's cuisine. (Well, at least, the fish part. I'm still not all that keen on other seafood...) I found a recipe for baked white fish with a sauce I can actually eat, and bought myself a cod fillet at Whole Foods - fresh (the frozen stuff is too close to the stuff I'm not too keen on).

And I baked it. [Haha, using a frying pan in the oven - I think I giggled every time I opened the oven - it just looked so odd!]

And it was delicious!!! Satisfying, filling but not stuffing, tasted good. Yum! Apparently I've been missing quite a bit by not partaking in this whole fresh fish part of my wonderful Boston...

The fish recipe (with sauce) came from Dr. Gourmet's website, which is a great resource for recipes that work well for low fat diets and GERD (acid reflux) diets (as well as a bunch of other diets that I miraculously am not on). It calls for halibut, but Whole Foods didn't have any fresh, so I just used another white fish instead.

Fish:
2 4 oz fillets of cod (or 1 7-8 oz fillet, cut in half - you can save the other one for a different night!)
1/4 tsp salt
spray olive oil

Preheat oven to 425 deg. Place a medium-sized skillet in the oven. [snicker]

While oven heats, rinse fillets in cold water and pat dry with a paper towel. Place on cutting board skin side up. Cut shallow slits in skin, approx 1/4 inch apart. Sprinkle salt over top.

When oven is hot, spray pan lightly with oil. Place fish in the pan skin side down. Return to oven and cook for about 10-12 minutes.

Serve skin side up with 1.5 teaspoons of basil oil sauce.

Sauce:
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves

Place olive oil and basil leaves in a food processor (or blender) and process until smooth.

I also roasted up some tri-color carrots and butternut squash that I got at the Copley Farmer's Market in some olive oil and seasoned it all with a touch of salt and thyme, and also used some of my ever-present stash of "Grandma's Grains" with a bit of sugar to round out the meal. Delicious.

Lost: a physical self-identity

2008-09-30T19:14:00.001-04:00

"Exhibit 1: I dropped 20 lbs in 2.5 months"

That's quoted from an earlier post, and believe me, you don't want to try it. One of the things that has been really hard about this whole experience is the extremely fast weight loss. It was a huge struggle mentally and emotionally, and did very little to help me get better physically, since stress sets off my symptoms. And people, let me tell you, losing weight this quickly is not fun - it's stressful. All my life, I've heard those silly commercials for "lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks" or something ridiculous like that. My tip for the day: don't do it.

When I started this diet, I started slimming down a bit after a couple of weeks. And this totally made sense to me - I wasn't eating all of those sweets from the bakery or the candy aisle at the store. I cut down my fat intake, and almost eliminated my sugar intake. I ate more fresh foods - veggies and fruit - and more whole grains. You know, all of that good stuff. Naturally I should slim down a bit. I was actually looking forward to that part of the diet. There was always that 10 lbs I kept strategically hidden that I really wanted to lose... It was exciting - to see the real-time effects of this diet. Look at a new me forming in the mirror each morning.

Sometime in June, I dropped down to a size 4 in jeans. And I was thrilled! A size 4??? I've never been a size 4 in my life! Exciting? Yes. Fun to look at this new profile in the mirror? Totally. I felt like I was emitting this new energy that made me feel like I was glowing. I went to my 5-year college reunion in June feeling amazing about myself and the way I looked. I went to dance events feeling terrific and energized. It was a fantastic feeling!

And then, it didn't stop. I kept dropping pounds. A week would go by and I'd see less of me in the mirror than I did the week before. I felt like an ice sculpture in the middle of August. It's really hard to explain how this feels if you've never been through it. I felt confused, afraid, anxious - but mixed with that was a bit of joy, and a huge desire to like the smaller version of me.

But most of all...
Panic. I was so afraid I'd keep losing weight. I'd already lost so much already. Every visit to the doctor I'd brace myself for the new reading on the scale...and wince. I kept telling myself that it was the diet, that I'd have to bottom out at some point, that I wouldn't keep losing weight forever. But I'm a data analyst, and so the way my brain works is to trust the data in front of me: and all data collected said it was gonna keep going. What would happen if I didn't stop losing weight? I couldn't get that thin... I ate all the time!

I actually started getting annoyed when people told me I looked fabulous. The silent reaction in my head usually was something like: "What do they know?" or "They obviously don't know that I'm afraid I'm gonna disappear..." or "What, really, did I look all that bad before?" Unfair reactions - which is why I tried hard to just give a simple thank you to those compliments, as they were meant. But all of those reactions were functions of that panic.

I mentioned I think like a data analyst; go from what I see in the data in front of me. Here are some data points for you:

April 2008: 145 lbs
[A little too much for my taste, but I didn't think I looked bad.]
end of June 2008: 125 lbs
[What?????]

Shopping was a chore - I didn't have anything to wear from my closet, but buying more clothing meant acknowledging this new body I was trapped inside. It might have been easier had I chosen to lose this much weight - but it wasn't me, it was me following doctor's orders. I even took a trip to Victoria Secret for a refitting. [Yep, they shrank, too.] One thing I can promise you is 100% truth: losing weight is expensive. And no one ever tells you that part. You get caught up in the actual weight loss, and later realize that, um, you don't have anything to wear anymore. Argh.

The panic ended on June 30, 2008 when I went to the doctor's for another check-in. And the scale reading said I'd gained 7 lbs. Wait, what???

Let me say it again - since it was the most exhilarating news I'd had in weeks: I gained 7 lbs! Hooray! I wasn't going to disappear after all! This isn't to say I was suddenly happy with all of the weight loss, but at least I wasn't constantly afraid that I was never going to reach the end of it all.

The unfortunate thing is that this is not the end of the story. After that weight gain, I went and lost that 7 lbs, perhaps even as much as 10 lbs before gaining something back again. This was a slow time for doctor's appointments for me, and I refuse to own a scale at home, so the losses are guestimates, but let me tell you the story of how I knew I'd once again lost a significant amount of weight:

**********
One day this past July, I went to Express to buy a couple more pair of size 4s, since up to that point I'd only bought 2 pair of pants and I really needed a few more pair to vary my wardrobe just a bit. I grabbed about 4-5 different styles, and made my way into a fitting room. It didn't even occur to me that I might need something smaller. And every pair I tried on fell funny - like they were all too big or something. But, that couldn't be. I was a size 4 now, right? I needed the 3-way - check the butt fit. That's always the best way to tell whether a pair of pants is working on you or not.

As I stood in front of the 3-way mirror, a fitting room attendant came up and asked if I needed help at all. I told her, in a very confused and perplexed voice, that I wasn't sure these fit me, but that I'd bought a size 4 here only a few weeks ago. She took a look at the size and said, "Oh honey, no. You need a size 2." And she checked the other styles I had in my fitting room, then ran off and collected a size 2 in everything. I trudged back to my dressing room, in a state of utter bewilderment, reciting her words over and over in my head. "You need a size 2." What?! But I was a size 4 less than a month ago! I'm not a size 2. I'm not, I'm not, I'm NOT!

The girl came back with those size 2s. And I tried them on, almost out of obedience, because I certainly was no longer excited to be shopping for more size 4s. It honestly took me a couple of minutes to walk out to the 3-way mirror in those size 2s. Okay Nina, deep breath. Here we go... I looked at every angle, I did the butt check. It all fit so well - no, it fit too well. Repeat with all of the other styles. I couldn't believe it. And so, with a feeling somewhere in between surprise and defeat, I bought 2 pair and left the store.
**********

What did all of this feel like? I talked about the fear, the panic, the exhilaration. But in the aftermath, what was life like for me?

A struggle to redefine my physical self-identity.

I had to retrain myself with a whole new set of identity labels. And it made me so mad - I didn't ask to, I didn't choose to. But I was left with a fraction of my physical self and only time to try and process it all - the weight loss, the image now facing me in the mirror.

Now, you may say it's not exactly healthy to live under a set of identity labels. And you're probably right. But, personal self-image is all about self-labels. How do you view yourself? How do you think you look from another's perspective? How do you want people to see you? If you sat down and thought about it, you've got your own set of labels that you apply to yourself in your mind's eye. And looking in the mirror affirms those labels. But that all falls apart when the mirror shows you something different that what you expect to see.

The other thing I kept feeling was guilt. I know what you're thinking: What? Guilt? About what??? But really, there was a lot of guilt. I felt guilty talking about this with a lot of people because they'd look at me like I was crazy. That "stop complaining, look at how thin you are now, I wish I was that thin" look. Or that "how can you complain about being thin, I'd kill to lose that much weight" look. I've always been a very vocal person when trying to muddle through an experience before I've fully processed it. But it felt like I couldn't talk about it with hardly anyone. I felt guilty that I wasn't happy about losing all of this weight. [Crazy? Perhaps, but the mind is a complicated entity...]

I feel like it's common knowledge that gaining weight is a mental stressor, because you see more of yourself in the mirror and you feel helpless to stop it. Guess what? The same thing applies to the opposite end. Losing weight without meaning to took the control out of my hands. I felt completely helpless to stop it. I looked in the mirror and mentally pleaded with it to pop up a "just kidding" sign and show me the "real me" - i.e. the one I expected to see. Not a good way to start each day - a make-believe fight with my mirror every morning, trying to make it give me a bigger image of myself to satisfy what my brain told me I should see.

It took me a good month to really start to appreciate what I saw in that mirror. To step through the process of figuring out what this new image meant to me in my own head and in my interaction with the world around me.

Today, for what it's worth, I'm happy to report that I'm still at a stable weight, and that I smile at myself in the mirror again each morning. I finally realized that the best way to deal with all of these changes was to accept them and see where that takes me. Start smiling at myself in the mirror - and eventually I'll believe it's a good thing. It's amazing how little tricks like that can affect the way I think and feel.

This experience has taught me a lot about myself, a lot of which I'm still not able to voice in words. But I can say that the thing I'm most proud of throughout this experience: I learned that I'm not a quitter. I realized that the one choice I always did have was to quit the diet and make the weight loss all stop. Unhealthy as that choice may be, it was mine to make if I wanted to. But that's just it. I found out that deep down inside, this is what I wanted. It was my body's way of screaming at me what I didn't realize on my own: I want to have a healthier lifestyle. This new physical identity is part of that, the diet is another part. Sometimes I'm amazed at how smart my body is compared with the rather idiotic brain that tells me what I think about that body.

Muffins - finally I can eat a baked goodie!

2008-09-28T14:54:00.005-04:00

One of the hardest things for me when adopting this diet was to give up baked goods. Cookies, muffins, brownies, pastries - they all got thrown out of the proverbial window. Suddenly, walking past a bakery was torture, and I couldn't bake anything at home either. That second part was even harder, since I've always loved baking - it's something my grandmother and I bonded over when I was young, and still do together whenever we see each other.

Recently, I participated in a Pringle Can Swap with some girls from my Stitch 'n' Bitch group. (Basically, you get assigned a person, and have to make stuff for them - all of which are stuffed into a Pringle Can. The "stuff" can be knit, crocheted, sewed, woodworked, baked, etc.) My Pringle Can recipient cuts out a lot of the fattening stuff in normal baked goods - and though not vegan herself, she's well-known for finding delicious vegan baking recipes that satisfy the sweet tooth and don't fatten you up all that much. And so, I went on a search for an appropriate muffin recipe for her - because how cool is it to open up a Pringle Can stuffed with, among other things, a stack of mini-muffins?

And, through my search, I opened up a whole door of baked goods that I can make, and more importantly, eat! Who knew there were so many delicious, fat-free baked goods recipes? Baking at home was suddenly possible again! Woot!

The muffin recipe below is the one I used for my friend's Pringle Can. They're fat-free, vegan, and fantastically moist and fluffy. And beware, they're also incredibly addicting! I love eating them plain, but I also found that the blueberry sauce my cousin gave me goes extremely well with these little guys.

I got this recipe from about.com - in their vegetarian section. I made a few minor adjustments to work better with my diet, but I'm sure the original recipe would be yummy as well! http://vegetarian.about.com/od/breakfastrecipe1/r/applebanmuffins.htm

2 cups unbleached flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups organic apple juice (the foggy stuff, not the clear stuff)
1 large baking apple, diced
2 ripe med-size bananas, mashed

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease muffin pan (I use Earth Balance butter substitute. You can use what you like; or use muffin cups.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar. (It's a good idea to break up the brown sugar after packing into the measuring cup before adding to flour/baking powder/cinnamon.)
3. Add apple juice, apple, and bananas. Mix well.
4. Pour batter into muffin pan, filling each cup approx. 2/3 full.
5. Bake 35-45 minutes, or until muffins have raised and are golden brown on the top.

Enjoy!

Note: I suppose you could use raw sugar in place of the brown sugar, but why? Brown sugar is so good!

The Diet

2008-09-27T08:04:00.000-04:00

...of doom? That's definitely what some people say. And I've certainly been known to refer to it as such. Usually a sarcastic jab at the docs who put me on this diet. I think my favorite name for it is the "Crazy-Ass Diet of Doom." [You can tell we're close, this diet and I, huh?]

But seriously, folks. If you've read the No-List, you've got a basic sense of how this diet works for me. But there's more to it than a list of food I can't eat or have to limit in my diet. It is, like the No-List, rather strict. And it also is more of a lifestyle change than the typical way our society thinks of diets. It doesn't just apply to food, though food is the main focus. Take a look at the list below for more explanation.

1. Follow the food restrictions on the No-List. No acceptions.
2. Portion control. Pay attention and follow the serving sizes for the foods I eat.
3. Eat smaller meals, and eat more of them per day.
4. Eat sitting down, do not eat and run. Make sure the environment for meals is calm and relaxing.
5. Take small bites, chew thoroughly, take my time to finish a meal.
6. Keep belly fat to a minimum. Keep general weight at an optimum level for my height/age.
7. Do not eat 2-3 hours before lying down to sleep/rest.
8. Raise the head of the bed about 6-9 inches (either with foam wedge under the mattress or with props under the legs).
9. Exercise 3-4 times a week.
10. Wear loose-fitting clothing.
11. Keep a food journal.
12. No smoking.
13. Drink a lot of water every day.
14. Take prescription antacid & OTC probiotic daily, 30 minutes before breakfast.
15. Take 1 Tbsp fiber supplement daily with dinner.

I'm not gonna lie - I do so much dislike the pills/supplement part of my current diet. I've never been good at swallowing pills, and the supplements have to be taken at a certain time every day, making it hard to have a spontaneous evening. But, I've gotten used to it - and the fiber supplements aren't all that bad, actually. (It's not in pill form, so I'm more inclined to like this directive from my doctor.) The stuff my doctor told me to take is called Benefiber, available at any CVS or other drugstore near you at a pretty good price. I mix it in with my water for dinner. It's great - it's tasteless, odorless, and dissolves very quickly in water - it's like it's not even there. [Hmm, suddenly this stuff reminds me of Iocane powder from the Princess Bride...]

I eat about 5-6 meals a day: generally breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, and optional snack if I'm up late (read: at a dance or blues/house party). Main meals take about 30-45 minutes (breakfast and lunch are closer to 30, dinner closer to 45) and snacks generally take 10-15 minutes. All meals include a full glass of water.

Portion-control has been something that I've had to work hard at making into a habit. It was never something I thought that much about in the past. Now, I keep a measuring cup in my cereal box, I've begun to gain the ability to eyeball serving sizes of different fruits and vegetables, and I own a Tupperware lunch set that has portion-sized containers - making it much easier for me to pack lunch and snacks quickly in the morning.

Because I don't eat an over-abundant amount of calories anymore, I've found that I have to eat every 2-3 hours throughout the day in order to sustain my energy level. If I don't, I can fade in minutes from my regular bouncy self to feeling faint, not able to walk straight, and completely exhausted. It's a weird feeling... it's like watching myself wilt.

As I've mentioned a couple of times now, this diet has quite the rigorous schedule, and I've had to learn to stick to pretty rigidly. I can't say I'm good at staying on the schedule 100% of the time, but I can say that I feel better when I do follow the schedule. A typical day-in-the-life-of-Nina-on-this-diet:

5:30 - take antacid, probiotic pills
6:00 - breakfast
9:00 or 9:30 - snack
12:00 or 12:30 - lunch
3:00 or 3:30 - snack
6:00 or 7:00 - dinner, take fiber with water
10:00ish (only if I'm at a dance that evening): snack
[This is quite obviously a weekday, given the early rise hour, but on weekends that hour changes very little - I probably get up at 7:00-7:30 instead of 5:30-6:00.]

And what do I actually eat for those meals, you ask? Yeah, that's food for another post. [Hah, pun totally intended! You roll your eyes and pretend to scoff at me, but you know you love it!]

My suggestions if you're starting a diet, or trying to follow one:
- Food journal. I did it for the first 6 weeks I was on this diet. It really helped me control what I ate, when I ate it, and how much I ate of it. It also reminded me to drink copious amounts of water, and helped me figure out a way to plan out a day's meals in my head such that I get the right balance of foods that I need. I'm not a very good food journaler anymore, but I do still write out meal plans for the week - to see how I can use ingredients in more than one dinner dish so I keep my grocery bill down, stuff like that.
- Measuring cups - use 'em. Portion control is key.
- Smaller meals and more of them.
- A diet is more than food restrictions; it's a lifestyle change. You can't lose weight if you're not committed to actually changing the way food interacts with your life. ['Nuff said, really. No soapbox here - just my own observation - for what it's worth.]

If I had to take a guess at what's going through your head right now, I'd say something along the lines of either A) "wow, I could never do something quite that drastic" or B) "wow, that's strict!" [Am I right, huh? Huh?] Yeah, to those I say: A) you can do more than you think you can, you just have to be willing to do it - there's no half-assing allowed; and B) strict, sure, but they say a habit is formed after 21 consecutive days of action and I've been doing this for 6 months - so it's become normal to me.

[It certainly does amaze me at how much the mind plays a role in your food-habits and overall nutritional health. It can deceive you into thinking one more cookie will be fine. It can also convince you that you never really wanted the cookie after all - that really, you wanted some blueberries. Go get some, they taste good!]

Dessert!

2008-09-21T23:14:00.004-04:00

A friend of mine recently reminded me that "desserts" is "stressed" spelled backward. I love that little adage - because it's so true!

One of the things I've lamented during the past 6 months is how much I miss dessert. Sure, most meals I can fill myself up enough to not need a dessert as a finisher, but dessert is such a fun part of a meal! And, according to the No List, all of my classically held ideas of what "dessert" entails is off-limits to me.

The time had come to get a little creative. So, after dinner yesterday evening, I sat down to ponder just what my stomach was craving. I came up with "sweet and crunchy." Taking stock of what I had in my pantry, I created myself a wonderfully low-fat dessert that I think I can also dub 'healthy' (if you can stand to think of dessert as healthy). It was thoroughly delicious, and just what I needed to finish off my dinner.

I've called it "Honey Banana Crunch" - simple way to bring out what makes up this very simple dessert. And I think my favorite part about it (besides the obvious - that I can eat it!) is the way the banana and honey mix together to unstick-ify the honey and instead create this sweet banana-honey syrup in the bottom of the bowl. The granola then soaks up this syrup to meld everything together in a naturally sweet, banana-infused party in my mouth!

Honey Banana Crunch
[I use natural honey and organic bananas and granola - the honey comes from southern Minnesota, from neighbors to my family's hunting property who keep bees and give us a yearly allowance of honey. Mmm, there's nothing better!]

1 medium-sized banana
Low-fat, whole grain granola
2-3 Tbsp natural honey

Slice banana in thin disks in a bowl. Pour honey over banana disks. Sprinkle 1-2 handfuls of granola on top. Best eaten with a spoon.

A New Spin on Minnesotan Soul-Food

2008-09-21T21:52:00.006-04:00

My profile says that I'm a proud Minnesotan by birth. And, except for a brief 6-year stint of living in New England between the ages of 2-8, I grew up there as well. I lived in the same town until I went to college...which was 1 town away and still definitely in Minnesota. (Purely coincidence that the college was so close to home, though.) Suffice it to say that Minnesota runs through my veins. And I grew up on hot dish. That's pretty much what dinner was about 6 nights out of the week. Hot dish is my soul food. That comfy meal that I have on a blue day to cheer me up. Some of my favorites from childhood include Cream Tuna on Rice, my family's Macaroni & Cheese recipe, Tater Tot Hot Dish, and Hamburger Hot Dish (of which there are multiple versions).

You're now asking me (unless you're actually Minnesotan yourself), Um, what is "hot dish?" The official translation for "hot dish" from Minnesotan English to Other-49-States-English is "casserole."

The definition that you'll find in any Minnesotan English Dictionary (if one actually existed...) is:
Hot Dish n. A meal comprised of 4 elements: a meat, a vegetable, a grain, and a sauce. Some hot dishes also include an optional 5th element: a starch.

I would add to that definition (5th element: a ton of fat. Perhaps you see where this is going... Yeah, since I started this diet, I've been unable to eat any of the hot dishes I grew up on. Nor could I use any of the new ones I've discovered in my Minnesotan cookbooks over the years. (Yes, I own more than one - 3 to be exact.) The classic sauce for a hot dish is cream of mushroom soup. Cream of chicken soup comes in a close second. Ketchup or BBQ sauce an easy third. Check the No List - none of those are allowed. Cream soups are dairy based, and have you seen the amount of fat in one can of it? It was a sad day when I had to acknowledge the fact that hot dishes seemed off-limits while I was on this diet...

And then, one day, I discovered that butternut squash soup has the consistency one needs for the sauce element of a hot dish! My world suddenly became so much brighter! And I set about concocting my own version of a hot dish. And it makes me so happy - sticks to my bones the way a real hot dish should, and makes use of left-overs just as hot dishes were made to do! As the Guinness guys would say, "Brilliant!"

I made this last Thursday, after a few days of eating my butternut squash/carrot/leek soup. The pictured version is the result of the recipe I've posted below, but I've added some alternatives to the recipe at the end - since the whole idea of a hot dish is, of course, to be versatile and to use up food that will go bad. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Chicken & Butternut Soup Hot Dish
[Note that this recipe might actually take longer to make than the average Minnesotan would expect a hot dish to take, but it's worth it, believe me!]

Sauce: About half of the Butternut Squash Soup recipe found here (about 4-5 cups?) - or really, use whatever butternut squash soup you want to use (Whole Foods has a great boxed version that doesn't use pepper in the creation)
Meat: 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into small chunks
Veggie: 3/4 cup corn, give or take depending on how much corn you like (I use frozen, but you could use fresh off the cob just as easily)
Starch: 2 medium-sized red potatoes, cubed
Grain: About 1.5-2 cups grains from "Grandma's Grains" recipe (not my grandma, though)
Approx. 1/2 cup water
Ground cinnamon, to taste (probably about 1/2 tsp)
Ground nutmeg, to taste (probably about 1/4 tsp)
Ground ginger, to taste (probably less than 1/4 tsp)
Pinch of salt

1. In a medium pan, bring enough water to boil to cover potatoes. Once boiling, add potatoes and lower to medium heat. Cook until potatoes are soft enough to stick a fork through, but not mushy. Remove from heat, drain water and set aside.

2. Put corn in a small pan and add enough water to slightly cover bottom of pan (not enough to cover corn). Cover and simmer over very low heat until corn has steamed and water has evaporated. Usually about 6-7 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

2. Put butternut squash soup in large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in water to desired consistency. (Honestly, the amount above is pure guesswork - this depends more on the consistency of the soup you're using and how runny you want your sauce to be). Add cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. (Again, the amounts listed above are guesses, which is why I say "to taste.") Heat until soup begins to foam on top and is hot to the touch (the old "pinky finger test"), but not boiling.

3. While soup is cooking, sear chicken pieces on a skillet over medium-high heat, stirring and flipping continuously. Cook until middle of thickest chunks are no longer pink. Remove from heat and set aside.

4. Once soup is hot, add a pinch of salt. Taste soup, and add more spices if needed. Stir in grain mixture (should be precooked, don't add the grains uncooked!) and heat for about 2-3 minutes. Add potatoes, corn, and chicken. Reduce to low heat, cover, and simmer for about 10 minutes, allowing flavors to meld together and all elements to heat equally.

To round out the meal, serve with whole grain bread and steamed green beans and a side of Waldorf Chicken Salad found here, minus the chicken chunks.

---
An alternative to this recipe: instead of using the grain mixture, use about 1-1.5 cups of whole grain rotini. Cook to not quite done (pre-al dente?), since simmering in the soup will cook the pasta the rest of the way through.

I've also considering trying peas instead of corn, to give some different colors to this hot dish.

I think, for a vegetarian, one could certainly use tofu here, or just skip the meat part (although a little part of me cringes to say that, because that essentially undoes the whole idea of a hot dish...)

My Date with a Butternut Squash

2008-09-21T17:21:00.015-04:00

Right around mid-August, I discovered the wonder of butternut squash soup. Butternut squash does nothing bad to my stomach (always a major plus for a food in my book!) and the soup doesn't include a lot of spices - just a few comfy ones that bring out the flavor of the soup. I started cooking with it using one of those boxed soups you can find at Whole Foods or in the Natural Foods section of Shaws. And I'd add some stuff to it, simmer it all together, and have a meal for the week that's pretty symptom-free. [I currently am incapable of claiming ANYTHING is 100% symptom-free because I've yet to eat anything since this diet began that doesn't set off some sort of symptom in my system...]

Last weekend, in deciding what to have for Sunday's dinner and subsequently left-overs for weekday dinners, I thought to myself, "You know, I could just make my own butternut squash soup - and then add stuff or not depending on how I feel. I figured it wouldn't be all that hard. And why not give it a try? The worst thing that could happen? - eh, ultimate failure.

So, I stopped by the Farmer's Market in Copley Square (across the street from my office!) and picked up a butternut squash, some fresh carrots, and a leek. And I tried it - and it was so much fun! Granted, I certainly didn't realize how hard it is to peel a butternut squash, but I came out on the other side with a peeled squash and all 8 fingers/2 thumbs still in tact. I consider this success. Also, let's be serious, the pureeing part of making butternut squash soup is alone enough to make me do it again. I literally got that stuff everywhere!!! Sure, a little bit of clean-up was necessary after this foray into uncharted butternut squash soup territory, but hey, that's half the fun of cooking or baking anyway!

With my soup that night, I also had my modified version of a Waldorf Chicken Salad. It occurs to me that perhaps it shouldn't even be called that, since it includes different ingredients, but whatever. In my head, I call it Modified Waldorf Chicken Salad, so that's what I'll call it here. [If you take serious issue with my misnaming of this salad, um, okay...]

All in all, it was a delicious and satisfying dinner - something that doesn't always happen due to my lack of ability to use regular spices in my cooking. So, I was very excited about it! Below are the recipes I used to make my dinner that night.

Butternut Squash, Carrot, Leek Soup
[I got this recipe off of King County, WA government site. Thanks to Google for pointing me there, too, because it's delicious and fat free!!! The recipe below is reprinted with my modifications. Here's the original recipe.]

1/2 Tbsp non-dairy butter substitute (I use Earth Balance sticks)
3 cups peeled and diced butternut squash
2 cups carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 large leek, white and tender green parts only, thinly sliced
1 32-oz box organic low-sodium chicken stock
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4-1/2 cup water
Salt to taste

1. Heat large, non-stick saucepan to medium-high heat. Melt butter substitute in bottom of pan (just enough to coat the bottom). Add squash, carrots and leeks and cook, uncovered for 7-8 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Add broth, nutmeg, and a little salt then bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered for 30 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

3. Place a third of the soup mixture in a food processor, cover and process until smooth. Repeat with remaining soup and then return to saucepan. Bring to boiling, reduce heat then stir in water to desired consistency. Add salt to taste. [Note: be careful at this stage - if the soup is too thick, the boiling will create bubbles that pop butternut squash puree all over the ceiling...]

4. Serve soup with a bit of cinnamon and ginger swirled in for extra flavor.

Modified Waldorf Chicken Salad
[This is my low-to-no fat version, minus foods I can't eat, and plus stuff I can. I don't use salad dressing, but find that the use of fruit gives enough moisture to any salad to get rid of the need for salad dressing. If you want original Waldorf-Chicken Salad, try here or just Google "waldorf chicken salad" - you'll get hundreds of recipes along the same theme.]

Handful salad greens of your choice (I like baby mixed greens from my local farmer's market)
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut in small chunks
Pinch of dried rosemary
4-5 strawberries
10-12 green seedless grapes
4 wheat-free brown rice crackers

1. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat and sear chicken chunks until the middle of the thickest chunks is no longer pink. I do it stir-fry style - moving the chicken around constantly so they don't burn. Once fully cooked through, sprinkle some dried rosemary leaves over the top for flavor.

2. Put salad greens in a low, flat bowl (like a classic soup bowl). Slice strawberries into 4-5 slivers each and divide evenly over greens. Cut grapes in half and add to top of salad. Add about 6-7 pieces of chicken (depending on how large you made them and how much chicken you want in the salad; the rest can go in the fridge for future use).

3. Finish off by fanning rice crackers on side of salad bowl.

The No-List

2008-09-21T09:17:00.012-04:00

I did I lot of talking about the "No-List" in my backstory. So, I offer up the contents of the No-List. The two most common responses I get to this List:
1. Wow, I'd never be able to give up (insert item from No-List).
2. So, what exactly CAN you eat?

Once upon a time those responses used to bother me. Now I just sort of shrug them off - hey, if roles were reversed, I'd likely have one of those reactions as well!

The No-List comes in two parts. The "no items" that I absolutely have to avoid, and the "limited items" that I can have but only in very small, measured out quantities.

A side-note before I begin the List: I'm also lactose-intolerant, which only serves to lengthen the No-List and add further restrictions to the diet because of past dietary requirements surrounding my intake of lactose.

The No-List

NO items
- tomatoes/tomato-based foods (includes pasta sauce, ketchup, bbq sauce, salsa, etc.)
- citrus fruits
- peppermint/spearmint
- chocolate
- alcohol
- caffeinated beverages
---regular tea
---coffee
---colas
---energy drinks
---other caffeinated soft drinks)
- decaffeinated coffee and decaffeinated regular tea (herbal tea w/o mint is okay)
- carbonated beverages
- pepper
- high-fat dairy products
---2% milk and whole milk
---cream
---high-fat cheeses
---high-fat yogurt
---chocolate milk
- other dairy (from previous lactose intolerance guidelines)
---cow's milk
---soft cheeses
---butter
---cheesecake
- cocoa
- fried meats
- bacon
- sausage
- pepperoni
- salami
- bologna
- frankfurters/hot dogs
- other fried foods:
---doughnuts
---french toast
---french fries
---deep-fried vegetables
- pastries and high-fat desserts (the directive on this item: say goodbye to bakeries)
- chips
- store bought cookies, candies, sugary snacks of any kind
- hydrogenated and partially-hydrogenated oils
- high fructose corn syrup
- high-sodium foods
- peanut butter, and other nut butters
- cheese
- dried fruits
- vinegar
- bell peppers, and other members of the veggie pepper family
- broccoli
- cauliflower
- asparagus
- celery
- onions
- beans (green beans are currently allowed)
- apple peels (apple flesh is fine, cooked/baked apples are better)
- red grapes (green grapes okay in moderation)
- raspberries
- salad dressing (check the labels, every one of them has something on the No-List!)
- store-bought juices (check the labels, all of them add citric acid!)

**for the next 2 weeks: 0 foods containing any trace of lactose (this includes foods on which the label says "made/processed/packaged in same facility as milk products")

Limited Items
- maximum of 40-50g of fat per day
- oils (olive, vegetable, etc.) - 1 Tbsp has 14g of fat
- nuts - 1/4 cup or 2 Tbsp nut butter has 17g of fat **nut butters currently prohibited entirely
- cheese - 1 oz has 10g of fat **cheese currently prohibited entirely
- processed sugar
- dairy foods not listed on "no items" section at a minimum; must take Lactaid with any foods containing lactose **currently prohibited, as per note above on No items

Whew! So, this is what I currently run under, or rather run around, when choosing foods and planning meals for the week. (There's certainly more to my meal-planning rules that are contained in the rules of the diet, but I'll leave that outline to another post.)

As the No-List is an ever-changing entity, this list will shuffle items on and off or between the two categories quite a bit. As that happens, I will be posting a newer, updated version of my No-List so that I have it actually written down somewhere, instead of always just floating around somewhere in my head!

My Food Revolution: the back story

2008-09-20T18:07:00.009-04:00

Though this blog was hardly created to list medical woes and symptoms and such, I figure a bit of a back story is necessary to explain the significance of this "food revolution" concept in my life. And why I feel the need to start a blog about it.

In March of 2008, I went to the doctor with complaints of stomach and digestion problems. Skipping the minutia of this, the result was a lot of tests and a new diet - with referrals to a nutritionist and a gastroenterologist. The result of my visit to the nutritionist: a few strategies for my new diet and the No-List, a list of all of the foods I was not allowed to touch and the foods I had to limit in my daily food intake. Results from the visit to the gastroenterologist: a whole new line-up of tests (in which you never want to partake) and more foods to add to the No-List.

Thus began the drastic shift in my personal food culture. The diet is most succinctly described as a "low-fat, no-acid" diet, but with strict ties to the No-List. The No-List became (and still is currently) a central theme in every day life, starting relatively small, but building in length with every doctor visit or new odd symptom. A 6-month period of time has resulted in the No-List firmly planted in my brain, and an almost comical length of restrictions. [Seriously, sometimes, when I sit back and think about it, it makes me chuckle.]

The past 6 months have also seen some big changes in my life, all related to the mysterious digestive issue and my ever-present No-List.

Exhibit 1: I dropped 20 lbs in 2.5 months - which translates to dropping from a size 6/8 to a size 2 pant-size, a medium to an extra-small shirt/dress-size, and a size 6 to a size 5 1/2 shoe-size. [Yes, even feet shrink when you're weight is disappearing like ice cream on a hot summer day!]

Exhibit 2: My refrigerator/freezer/pantry now contain very little processed or pre-packaged foods; exchanged instead for natural, fresh foods and lots of home-cooked leftovers (my new idea of "pre-made meals").

Exhibit 2.5: I have gained a much greater awareness about my personal food-landscape and bodily nutrition and I've developed a new interest in general nutrition, healthy-eating, and the effects of different foods on a person's digestive system (whether healthy or whacked out like mine).

Exhibit 3: I'm eagerly planning my first meal when the restrictions slowly begin to lift. [See the countdown on the sidebar!!!]

As of this writing, I feel like I'm finally taking things into my own hands with regard to this diet and the restrictions it has imposed on my food world. The No-List has become less of a defining force in my life and more of a daily challenge - a game, a battle of wits if you will. I have to constantly get creative to avoid the No-List, to skirt around its strict rules and limitations. And it's become quite fun, actually! I no longer feel so much imprisoned by the restrictions; instead I'm creating a whole new world of food - food that works for me and my stomach. Food that isn't just bland nothingness thrown together in a pot, but actually allows me to appreciate things like taste and flavor combinations a little bit.

And this is what I mean to share on this blog. The creations I've made in my kitchen, thoughts and stories surrounding this diet and the restrictions I live with, and ways this diet has changed the way I approach, think about, and cook food. It is as much for me as a reminder of what I've been through and how far I've come as it is a breakdown of my experience for anyone else who cares to read this blog.

This is my food revolution. I hope you enjoy the ride.