What's for breakfast? Omelets

Omelets with pickled tomatoes*, pickled peppers*, green onion*, thyme, goat cheese, ham and paprika. Toast with avocado, red pepper flakes and lemon. A dollop of greek yogurt on the side. Happy Saturday to you! We're off to ride bikes.


*from our garden

What's for dinner? Slow cooked chuck roast and vegetables

The chuck roast went into the crock pot first thing Wednesday morning (Oliver was simultaneously grinding coffee beans and chopping onions ). By the time I got home from work (12 hours later) the house smelled UNREAL. On the stove were mushrooms a jus and fennel braising in a bit of butter and chicken stock. I could hardly wait for him to finish up so we could eat. Truly a delicious meal. Thursday we (happily) ate the same dinner. This time on the front porch (it was 70 degrees at 7pm) and with some roasted kale.

 

What's for lunch? Arugula with lemon and parmesan

It's that time of year again: arugula is in season! Tuesday I picked up a pretty big bag of organic arugula from YDFM for only $2.50. There's enough to make three lunches the size shown here. As usual, I dressed mine with the juice of one lemon, a slosh of olive oil and topped it with shredded Parmesan. It's a great lunch to bring to the office because it can be packed the night before.


This is how I do it: before bed fill a resealable container full of arugula, shred the desired amount of Parmesan over it, close and put in the fridge. In the morning take one lemon, a slice of bread, the aforementioned container and put them all in a lunch bag. (NOTE! I keep a small bottle of olive oil in my drawer at the office. If you don't, then be sure to bring that with you too.) At lunch time slice the lemon and squeeze the juice into the resealable container over the arugula. Add a dash of olive oil. Reseal the container and SHAKE! SHAKE! SHAKE! Then dump all contents into your bowl and eat. Easy! Filling too!

Breaking the habit: sweets

Sugar, sweets and artificial sweeteners have recently been the topic of conversation among both my friends and the media. One friend asked how I handled my craving for sweets while another friend expressed concern about her daily Diet Coke. A blog I follow just did a post about Stevia (a sugar substitute). Food Matters is promoting their new documentary by highlighting the fact that Americans eat 22 teaspoons of sugar every day and both the Huffington Post and MSNBC ran articles in February about the possibility that diet sodas increase the chance of stroke.

My response to all of the above is bound to unpopular: it's time to retrain your taste buds to only enjoy naturally occurring levels of sugar (think: strawberry at season's peak). Once your palate has changed artificial sweeteners and sugar/corn syrup based foods will not taste good, instead they will almost burn. Have that happen in your mouth a handful of times and you will no longer crave those foods. 

Don't believe me? What if I told you that in college, when my roommate and I ran out of tea bags, I would happily drink hot water and Sweet'N Low? In the ten years following college I drank at least one Diet Coke can everyday and couldn't recognize the taste of corn syrup. And until two years ago I was a major fan of sugary breakfast cereal. Today, I neither crave nor like any those foods.

It started in 2009 when I began the slow and steady work of phasing all artificial sweeteners out of my diet. I started with breakfast cereal (it was hard giving up my Honey Bunches of Oats) and worked my way through Quaker Oats granola bars, Vitamin Water, M&Ms and flavored yogurts (think Yoplait). Only one habit remained: my daily Splenda** packet served with my morning cup of coffee. In January I decided it was time to give it up too. 

The first six weeks of coffee without sweetener were bad. One of the best parts of my sleepy eyed, slow moving, morning ritual had suddenly become one of the worst parts. I tweeted about it to my close friends and I grumped about it to Oliver*** whenever he would listen. I declared I'd quit drinking coffee altogether. "Who needs it?!" But still, I brought my travel mug into the office with me everyday and day by day I drank a little more and a little more. Until now, now I think I ALMOST like coffee without sweetener (just don't ask me to give up the half and half). 

My heart healthy perspective on sweets is simple: abide by the same "real food" rules used for other foods. Eat foods made from ingredients you can picture growing in nature. If it came from a plant eat it - if it was made in a plant don't. Treat treats as treats. Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Abide by those rules for long enough and I think most sweet tooths will naturally sort themselves out. And you might even be surprised by what unexpected* real foods start to taste like real treats!

* Now that I dislike foods like flavored yogurts and chocolate chip granola bars I've been surprised to discover to how much I love juicy in-season watermelon, carrot juice with ginger, and strawberries with cream. 

**There is currently a television commercial that shows a woman sprinkling a packet of Splenda over a bowl of strawberries. I find this commercial ABSURD. If strawberries are not sweet enough then they are either terribly out of season or it's time to reevaluate your palate. 

*** Oliver, we met three years ago today. You inspire me. I love you more then ever. Thanks for everything you do. 

Daffodils in the onion patch and other random things

In the backyard we have two kale plants (troopers planted last fall) and a few rows of onions. There was a moment last month when we got very excited because it looked like one of the onion plants had had  a major growth spurt. Then we realized - it was a daffodil planted in the "onion patch" a year or two earlier. Looks like we forgot where we planted our perennials. Opps...

The plants in the front yard are making progress - some for better, some for worse. The cabbage and bibb lettuce look great but two of the arugulas have already bloomed. That is not so good. According to everything I've found on the web, flowering arugula signals "that the season is ending and it's time to replace it with a warm weather crop"...

 

Last week's meals didn't get a lot of attention. That was due to a stressful work week not a lack of homemade goodness. Dinners were cabbage soup (shown here with potato pancakes and greek yogurt). Lunches were pinto beans. Breakfasts were oatmeal with coconut and banana. The work stress did crumble my no-weekday-booze goal (Tuesday I went straight from the office to our local watering hole) but it did not effect my ability to make it to the gym three times. (Yay! I have officially crossed into the 130s.)

Photo from Sunday's brewday. A month from now we'll be enjoying Oliver's double IPA on tap from our dinning room! Not shown here: the sudden cold temperatures and strong winds.

Topher on Sunday morning. 

Geaux LSU Tigers!

Stuffed Poblanos for dinner

Sunday night's dinner: poblano peppers stuffed with chorizo and rice, topped with greek yogurt (that's NOT sour cream) and avocado slides. Side of pinto beans (left overs from last week's lunches). And a shot of 100% agave tequila with a fresh squeezed lime. Made enough to feed us for two dinners.

 

Sunday Brunch

Sometimes I wonder if Oliver is trying to sabotage my weight loss goals - but when sabotage is this fresh and homemade what kind of person would dare complain? This morning he baked English muffins to serve with the fresh, local eggs  we picked up yesterday. He then whipped up some creamed spinach to eat on the side. Heart healthy? Not so much. Real food? Completely. 


Now he is in the backyard brewing a double IPA. I plan to spend the day working on some new items for Etsy and getting ahead on a blog post or two. Dinner will be stuffed poblano peppers!

 

Farm fresh eggs in the center of the city

Three years ago this week a conversation about urban backyard chickens changed my life forever. I was at a friend's birthday party and a cute guy I didn't know was talking about wanting to keep chickens. I burst into the conversation enthusiastically - ME TOO! Of course, that "cute guy" is Oliver. And the shared interest in backyard livestock is one of the reasons we had chickens present during our backyard wedding last May. Those chickens (seen in our profile photo) were brought by our wonderful EAV (East Atlanta Village) friends Guillermo and Robert.

Now, to our luck, it's egg laying season and Guillermo and Robert have more eggs then they know what to do with! As soon as they posted to Facebook that they had fresh eggs for sale Oliver and I responded - we want some! There is even a rumor that they'll be selling their eggs at a few of the local farmers markets this spring and summer. I think I speak for all of Grant Park when I say "PLEASE come to our market"! But for now, I'm very excited about the dozen we picked up today. Thanks you guys!

The chicken shown here is a Cinnamon Queen. She is new to their very diverse flock. The darkest speckled eggs are from a Copper Maran; supposedly they are the tastiest. I'm looking forward to finding out.