Roast chicken

Roast chicken is a fantastic choice for making multiple affordable meals that don't taste redundant. The same roast chicken can be Mexican style tacos one night and Italian inspired pasta the next.

This chicken came from YDFM. For dinner it was paired with curried cauliflower and half of a baked sweet potato. For lunch it was pulled apart and mixed with raisins, dried cherries, nuts and parsley (aka: chicken salad).


Overall it made four individual dinners and two individual lunches.  Not bad for something that only required one night of cooking. (Oliver kept the bones and carcus to use in a stock for gumbo later this fall.)

 

Everything in moderation - including moderation

If you're a beer enthusiast, or are friends with a beer enthusiast, then you already know: it's beer season. In Atlanta that means a month of non-stop beer events. Hoptoberfest, the Great Atlanta Beer Fest, Beer Week and Decatur Beer Fest have beer geeks city-wide Twittering their thumbs off with crazed anticipation (seriously, the threads about Founder's CBS were unstoppable).

A home brewing/craft beer drinking family that also adheres to a heart healthy lifestyle might seem like a contridiction in terms. But one of my most important life rules is: everything in moderation, including moderation. What better way to give moderation the occasional boot then an all you drink, seven hour, beer tasting?

Besides, we have met so many of our closest friends through the beer community. Without them our lives would be considerably less fun. A healthy heart is also a happy one. Rather then limit our attendance (or our consumption) we accept the fact that some weekends are going to be "bad weekends".

Do it, enjoy it, make up for it later. Don't let it become a habit.

Perhaps the key words there are "make up for it later". We plan ahead for how to offset all extra calories we consume at a beer fest. For the last two fests we biked to and from the festival and then spent an extra half hour at the gym the following day.  I upped the length and intensity of my cardio workout and didn't cut any corners when lifting weights. We were also conscious about drinking less in the days before the beer festivals.

Fall Planting - Round Two

Wow. So there is currently a lot going on in our little garden. I'll start in the back of the house with the fall salad greens.


The bok choy, romaine and bibb lettuce plants we purchased at the Grant Park farmers market are doing great. They're getting bigger by the day. When we returned to market two weeks later for more the vendor wasn't there (he was probably at the Field of Green's Festival). Instead of waiting another week for plants we decided to try a row of seeds. I'm very excited to report the seeds have sprouted! Yay! We may even need to thin them a few weeks down the road.


On the side of the house the peppers and tomatos are going nuts. If you read the "Fall Planting - Round One" post you might remember the fish emulsion fertilizer we used when planting the salad greens in the back. Well we used the left over fertilizer to water the tomatos and peppers. BOOM. Almost overnight we had triple the number of tomatos that we've over the last five months. There are at least two dozen tomatos on the plant right now. But of course, it can't possibly be that easy to have and keep such a profilic plant. Now the tomato plant has caterpillars.


Before you scroll down to the tomato photos (and the rest of the tomato/caterpillar story) I want to admit that our tomato plant is ugly, unkempt and out of control. New branches are resting on (and blocking) our stone pathway. It wasn't always like this... but we also weren't expecting it to go on into October.

 

 

We've had tomato caterpillar problems before. But it was a different sort of destruction (think locust-type annihilation). So when we began to notice green tomatos with small chunks missing I thought it must be squirrels. The damage seemed like just the right size for a rodent snack. Every few days we'd notice another tomato had been ruined. This morning I spotted what I think is probably caterpillar poo. (Ew, caterpillar poo!) I took a photo of the poo and the ruined tomato and came inside to upload them.


It wasn't until I had the tomato photo enlarged on my computer screen that I noticed the teeny tiny, camouflaged caterpillar. The little pest was eating my tomato while I watched and I didn't even see him! I ran back outside with a bottle of Ortho Max. Our tomato plant is no longer organic but hopefully we will eventually get to eat a few of these late season tomatos before the little caterpillars do!

Heart health for every age

"Studies have shown that if you can avoid the conditions that put you at risk for heart disease until you turn 50, chances are good that you may never develop heart disease. The payoff is well worth your investment." - Go Red for Women


The Go Red for Women campaign has a great website with helpful, easy to understand information directed specifically towards women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. Information is broken up into: Prevention, Eat Well, Be Active, Watching Your Weight and Visit Your Doctor. Seriously, check it out. It is worth five more minutes on the internet. Click here. 

Whatcha eating? Crock pot chuck roast!

When Oliver biked to YDFM last Friday he picked up a two and half pound chuck roast. On Sunday he dropped into our crockpot and let it roast for eight hours. We've been enjoying it ever since.

When slow cooking a chuck roast keep the left over juice; it's the key to making the most of the roast in subsequent meals. Here's how: after braising strain the remaining juice into a clean container and chill to separate the fat. Once the fat has hardened scrape it off and throw it away. Cover the remaining gelatin and store in the fridge. When you're ready to eat add a spoonful or two of the gelatin to the meat and reheat in a skillet.

This week's roast was eaten on rice with leeks, in a ciabatta roll with pickled vegetables, mixed into homemade fried rice and as a main course with sides of new potato and kale.

 

Emergency heart health

I've been thinking about other ways I can increase my heart health awareness - and emergency training continues to be one of the first things that comes to mind. I want to take a CPR/AED/Heart Attack response class. The one I've found is around $100 which means I need to wait until after the holiday season to sign up. But for anyone who has the money and wants to do it now - please do! If anyone else wants to join me when I sign up in January let me know. We can do it together.

Atlanta's Red Cross course catalog: click here

It's a great day to be a Foodie

Happy Sunday morning everyone! I just opened my New York Times newspaper and was super excited to see that this week's magazine is all about food! After enjoying the paper and a cup of coffee Oliver and I are going to walk down to the Grant Park Farmers' Market and pick up some more greens to add to the garden.

Another reason today is great day to be a foodie? The Field of Greens Festival at Whippoorwill Hollow Farm! It's today from 11am to 5pm. Live music and tastings from many of Atlanta's best restaurants all happening on a 74 acre working organic farm just 45 minutes outside of Atlanta. If you need a reason to get out and enjoy the sunshine today - this is it. More info on their website: www.fieldofgreensfestival.com

Side note: After I finishing reading the NYT magazine I'll post links to my favorite articles. Check back for it.
Ok, I'm back!
Michael Pollan answers your food questions: click here
Food Curiosities (be sure to look at the 67 types of Pringles illustration) click here
How can food change your life? And how can food change the world? Allow Mark Bittman to tell you

The food is gone (also titled: Every single thing I ate on Friday)

It happens to everyone: you wake up one morning to realize all the food is gone. The milk, the cereal, the lunch options - eaten up and gone. Friday that was my day.

The alarm clock rang and I instantly realized I'd forgotten to buy breakfast foods on my way home the day before. No  breakfast, no reason to get out of bed. I rolled over and pulled the covers up. But Oliver siezed the opportunity and insisted this was the time for me to try his delicious oatmeal concoction. (Need I point out he is a morning person?) I said no, I'd skip breakfast and sleep a little more. Fifteen minutes later when I finally rolled out of bed there was a piping hot bowl of oatmeal topped with half and half, golden raisins, walnuts and maple syrup waiting for me on the kitchen table. 

It was amazing. I thought I hated oatmeal. I realize now, I hate those creepy factory flavored packets of instant Quaker Oats. The real stuff with real toppings is WOW.

At the office work kept pushing my lunchtime later and later. By 1:15 I was very hungry. I drove past the Moes, Panera and Wendys to reach Alon's (one of Atlanta's local bakery cafes). I picked up a $3.50 container of their tuna salad, a $.69 fresh baked multigrain roll and a $1.30 Orangina. I sat on the worn wooden bench in the front and enjoyed my traveler's style meal while catching up on Sunday's New York Times. (I admit, preserved tuna and mayo is not the healthiest - but it is better then Wendy's.)

 

Oliver commutes on his bike. Friday he decided it was a nice enough day that he didn't mind riding all the way from Georgia Tech to YDFM for a few of the groceries we were in such need of. Round trip it was just shy of twenty five miles. The last minute dinner he whipped up was a beef bourgogne made with Omaha steak tips from a gift basket I'd recieved earlier in the year. (Thank goodness for meat in the freezer!) He combined the thawed steak tips with mushrooms and a bottle of cheap red wine. Walla! Romantic dinner for two!

For a day without a meal plan I feel ok with how we managed. Granted, we didn't eat anything green; but we also didn't eat anything fake. Sometimes it's all about those last minute choices!

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