What's for lunch? Mixed greens with cucumber & roasted red pepper

For lunch today I ran over to Alon's in Morningside to pick up a salad from their "create your own" bar.  While I've always enjoyed their prepared foods,  fresh baked breads, cheeses, desserts and salads - I was just recently turned on to having their salads "chopped". I LOVE IT! The truth is, long stems on spinach and other mixed greens often make me gag while chewing. Having everything "chopped" completely solves the problem! I wish I'd discovered this sooner.


My go-to salad at Alon's is currently mixed greens, cucumber, roasted red pepper, goat cheese and a side of balsamic vinaigrette. I ate half at lunch time and the rest before I left the office at 6:15pm (as fuel for the gym).

 

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Weight Loss Check-In

Day 3: 144.6lbs (.4lbs lost)

Meals: an update

I'm a bit behind on posting meals. The following four are taken from the last week. Tonight we had spicy shrimp sauce piquant (left). Last night we had chili over half a baked potato (second photo down). Last week we had roast chicken with toasted kale, left over acorn squash and mashed yucca (yucca yummmm). For lunch on Saturday I pulled together a plate of left overs: grit cake with Siracha and a side of mashed yucca. Yum!


Lunches have been beans or spinach salads. No cooking lesson on the books for this week but I am working on some new items for the etsy store (the sorely ignored etsy store...).


Cheers! - Cullen

Physical health: an update

In early November I went to a general practitioner for my first physical exam in ten years.  I was relieved to discover my cholesterol levels are fine (LDL:106, Good: 51, Bad: 98, Total: 177) but I was surprised to discover my blood pressure is stubbornly high (130/90). The doctor immediately put me on Lisinoril, a blood pressure medicine, with the hopes of lowering my diastolic reading. 


A month later I returned for a check up. We were both disappointed to discover that the medicine had not yet made a difference. At that point my doctor changed my birth control pill to a lower estrogen option (it was the first time I'd altered it in 15 years). Since then my diastolic reading has lowered between 5 and 8 points (depending on the reading). Honestly, I've been thrilled. I thought I had something to be excited about. But that ended this morning when I went in for my yearly gyno exam. This doctor was not pleased with my diastolic reading of 83. And to my disappointment she didn't even seem to acknowledge the progress I felt I'd made. Rather she reminded me that if I planned to conceive sometime this year that I needed to lower my blood pressure unless I wanted a high risk pregnancy. 


Ouch.


I go to the gym and work out HARD, three times a week. I've given up all processed and fake foods. I consciously eat a high fiber diet... and here I was being scolded by a doctor at 7:45 in the morning. 


So, what to do now?


Sigh, weight loss. It's taken me almost two decades to appreciate and accept my body the way it is. I accept that I'm 10 to 15 pounds overweight and I don't let it get me down. I'm naturally curvy. My Mom would call me voluptuous, "an hourglass", but in reality I'm a pear. I've accepted that I will never have the lean, sinewy body of a runner and I'm okay with being the heaviest girl in the design studio [at work]. I've been okay with it because I know I am healthy, I truly enjoy good food and drink and I have more to offer then my looks. I'm a talented professional and contributing member of society - I don't need to be an overt sexpot to have value. 


But now... Now I have a reason to finally lose the last 10 or 15 pounds. I want to live until 2075 when I'll be 97 years old. It's too soon to be worrying about a stroke or high-risk pregnancy. So here goes: my goal is to weigh 134lbs by my 34th birthday. That's 11lbs in 10 weeks.  I'll be sure to keep everyone updated along the way... And thanks in advance for your support. 


To learn more about blood pressure please visit the American Heart Association's website. They have an easy to understand page explaining everything. If you haven't had yours checked recently then I recommend taking a few minutes to do so the next time you're at a pharmacy (it's that fun cuff that expands up on your arm). Even though high blood pressure usually has no symptoms - it can have deadly consequences. 

Healthy, real food, snack ideas

One of Michael Pollan's food rules that I did not mention in my last post is about snacks. The rule is "limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods".  He explains that "the bulk of of the 500 calories Americans have added to their daily diet since 1980 (the start of the obesity epidemic) have come in the form of [processed] snacks foods laden with salt, fat and sugar".


While limiting my snacks to unprocessed plant foods does sound ideallic I had to open the options up a little wider in order to stick with it. The following is a list of my favorite healthy, real food snacks. Some are good for bringing to the office, others are better as quick post-workday/pre-workout energy boost and a few I only have time for on the weekends or when hosting a party.

• Raw, shelled almonds (Oliver almost always has a pocket-full)
• Fruit: apple slices, avocado slices, clementines, grapes, in-season tomato slices with salt and pepper, blueberries
• Toasted kale with a touch of olive oil and kosher salt (this is my FAVORITE because it offers the same salt and texture satisfaction as original Lays potato chips)
• Friendship brand California style cottage cheese
• Celery stalks with tzatziki dip
• Radish slices with hummus
• Broccoli with yogurt/cucumber/dill dip 
• Edamame (this is one of my Mom's favorites)
• Home-popped popcorn (Avoid pre-packaged microwave popcorn as the bags are lined with a chemical that breaks down into the popcorn when heated. Many recipes for homemade stovetop or microwaved popcorn can be found online.)
• Greek yogurt with walnuts and golden raisins

How about the rest of you? What are your favorite, real food snacks that other people might enjoy trying?

What to eat

I'm struggling with posts this week. I've wanted to write something that would convince everyone to give up "food like" substances as well as recipes based on "cream of this or that" - but I've found I'm not that good of a writer. So instead, I'm turning to my old faithful, Micheal Pollan, for his help. 


The following food tips come from his book Food Rules - an eater's manual. These are my ten favorites (in no particular order):
1. Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature.
2. Eat animals that have themselves eaten well. (I like to add "lived well" too).
3. Eat well grown food from healthy soil.
4. Favor oils and grains that have tradtionally been stone ground.
5. Avoid food products that contain more then five ingredients.
6. Treat treats as treats ("...special occasion foods offer some of the great pleasures of life, so we shouldn't deprive ourselves of them, but the sense of occasion needs to be restored...")
7. Pay more, eat less. ("...you get what you pay for. There is also a trade-off between quality and quantity...")
8. If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don't.
9. It's not food if it's called by the same name in every language. Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or Pringles.
10. Plant a vegetable garden if you have the space, a window box if you don't.

Learning to cook: white beans

I've realized that if I'm ever to survive a week on my own without Oliver then I need to master a few of his many bean recipes. After we posted the black/pinto bean recipe I said I wanted to follow it and try for myself. But Oliver insisted that we do not eat the same beans two weeks in a row and I was going to have to try another. So white beans it is!


Unlike the black beans, the white beans are not vegetarian. Ham hocks are used for flavor. Like the black beans, I soaked them all day before cooking them. Oliver also had me toss in a bit of tasso he'd picked up in Louisiana. I think two meats are redundant and make the meal less healthy - but he is the chef so I didn't argue.  

After the beans soaked for 8 hours I drained the water and placed them in our big pot along with some ham hocks from YDFM. I then covered the beans with several inches of boiling water and set the burner on high. After a few minutes of boil I reduced the heat and left the pot to simmer while I prepared the "holy trinity" of celery, green pepper and onion. They were diced*, browned in our cast iron and added to the pot. Another hour of simmering (to reduce the liquid and break up the beans) and I was done! 

I had planned to eat the beans solo - but according to Oliver white beans are always eaten with rice. (Apparently I have even more to learn then I suspected). So for lunch the beans were served over rice, with a sprinkle of parsley and a bit of homemade hot pepper vinegar. 

Successful completion of my 3rd cooking lesson! Hooray! Anyone have requests or suggestions for the next one? I'm not sure where to go from here.


*So far, using the giant knife for chopping is my only cooking complaint (read: paralyzing fear). I'm terrified of chopping off a knuckle. But I'm keeping at it with faith because of the old "practice makes perfect" adage. 

Family time down on the dude ranch

Oliver and I had a wonderful, yet exhausting weekend. Friday I left work early so we could attend a friend's wedding. It was a late, but very fun night. Saturday we got up fairly early and headed an hour south of Atlanta to meet my Dad, his wife, my brother and his fiance at the Southern Cross dude ranch in Madison. It was our first visit to the ranch and no one knew what to expect. We were all relieved when we discovered that the place really is a great little getaway. I highly recommend a visit. 


All this time away from home means I haven't eaten a home cooked (read: Oliver cooked) meal since my chicken salad lunch on Friday. Even so, I made a conscious decision to choose healthy foods almost every time we ordered from a menu. My exception was sausage gravy on biscuits for breakfast at the ranch - and it was worth it. Now, Sunday night, all my smart ordering feels good because I know I don't need to do any EXTRA hard work at the gym this week to redeem my overeating.  Instead I can stick to my usual hard routine... Anyhow, photos from our time at the dude ranch are below.

 

 

Bean Recipe

Beans are a staple of our food habits. Oliver usually makes one big pot, once a week, and we'll eat it as lunch or a dinner side everyday. It's cheap, it's very healthy, it's delicious and it's filling. A big bowl of beans never leaves me hungry. The following is Oliver's "recipe" for black or pinto beans. The measurements are more "guesstimates". You can top them with Greek yogurt, siracha, cheese or whatever fits your mood.

What you'll need:

2 onions, chopped fine
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 Tbsp cumin, toasted and ground
1 Tbsp coriander, toasted and ground
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 large can or 2 small cans of stewed tomatoes, undrained
4 cups stock
1 lime or some vinegar (cider or pepper)
salt/pepper/cayenne/Worcestershire/ hot sauce
1 pound of beans (give or take)
Some fat, generally olive oil

Soak the beans for 8 to 12 hours to cut some time off of the cooking.  After soaking, some people say to drain the water for the sake of flatulence. Some say not to drain for the sake of vitamins. I drain for the sake of flavor.  Why cook in water when you can cook in stock?

What to do: In a large pot, saute the onions until translucent. Add the garlic, cumin, coriander and chili powder and heat until aromatic.  Add the stewed tomatoes and cook down to a mush.  Add the beans and stock and enough water to cover everything by an inch or so. Add some salt*, pepper, and cayenne to taste and bring to a boil for ten minutes. Cut the heat to a simmer**, cover and cook for an hour or two stirring regularly and adding more water and adjusting seasonings as needed.  Beans are done when they tell you, not when a timer beeps. Add lime juice or vinegar, Worcestershire and hot sauce in the last few minutes.  Coll them and eat them three days later, that’s when they are best.

*Salting makes beans tough is a myth.  Acid however does slow things down.  That’s why they go in at the end.
**The more vigorous the cooking the more the beans will break up.  If you prefer your beans to be less like beans and more of a mush you can crank up the boil.