if it aint broke

You know what there is something to be said for? Routine.

Knowing what breakfast will make you full. Knowing what ingredients you can combine to make a delicious lunch that’s easy to transport. Having the dinner you can throw together in ten minutes flat when you arrive home from work totally hangry.

A few of mine:

This summer, I’ve actually been taking an oats break. I love oats, but right now what’s doing it for me in a major way is shredded wheat. My winning combo is shredded wheat, milk and/or yogurt (my favorite is six tablespoons yogurt plus two tablespoons milk. Oddly specific but awesome texture for soaking into the cereal but retaining some toothsomeness), nuts (either almonds or walnuts), and banana (chopped fine for maximum flavor dispersion- I cut the banana in half the long way, then those halves in half).

 

Flavors are nice, texture is fab, and it keeps me just as full as oats with the same unprocessed, whole grain goodness.

 

Back when I was taking classes (eesh, remember that? I wonder if I’ll ever do that again…) I made this for I want to say four meals in a row.

Cook up some mushrooms and garlic in oil, then add tomatoes and cook down. When they’re nice and soft, add some white beans.

Then cook in some couscous (you won’t need to add as much water cause the tomatoes yield a bunch). Trader Joe’s whole wheat couscous is to die for (and whole-grain-phobes would never know, it tastes exactly the same as the white stuff).

So good, so satisfying.

 

For lunch, you can have it with some yogurt ‘n fruit if you’d like!

Or just straight up. Spices are optional, too. You could tweak this quite a bit as you fancied. Cumin? Caramelized onions? Oregano? Harissa? Olives? Sun dried tomatoes?

  Another AWESOME superfoods lunch- sardine salad! I like mine mooshed up with finely minced celery and carrot plus some yogurt and chili powder. Or mustard. Or anything. Sardines are so good.

Then you can eat it with crackers or whole-wheat flatbread ripped up in a haphazard fashion and baked until crispy (lazy crackers!)

 

SO FUN TO EAT. I also suspect that it’s inherently healthier for me to eat stuff a little at a time, drawing out the experience, focusing on flavors and textures. More satisfying!

 

My be-all and end-all home-alone-for-dinner meal is greens with a poached egg on top.

Oil and vinegar. Salt and pepper. Yesterday, today and tomorrow.

a touch of fruit

I loooooooooooooove fruit.

I mean, actually, I love sugar. A lot. A lot a lot. But wanting to preserve my girlish figure and also to occasionally consume nutrients, I try to most frequently get it through fruit.

Also, I know a guy. Guys. There’re these two guys at the farmer’s market, not my usual year-round Saturday one but the summer Thursday one I occasionally patronize. One is elderly, one is middle aged.

I fancy that they find me charming. And that is why they sold me six peaches and two apples… for one dollar.

   

It was great.

Peaches make a pretty addition to any breakfast. This was so good!

 

Plain yogurt (on a TJ’s Organic European style kick) with slightly stale shredded wheat, chopped up peach, and (awesome) toasted almonds atop.

I usually like to eat like an invalid and have mushy oats for breakfast but this was more textural and very exciting for my mouth.

Also: new and exciting salsa!

I have this tendency this summer to just… end up with a lot of watermelon. And only two people live at my house right now! And one cat, who does not eat watermelon. So you eat a lot of watermelon… and there’s still a lot of watermelon. I’ve also been having kind of mediocre watermelon that isn’t that good eaten straight up.

Anyway, the solution to this is to come up with a variety of creative concoctions, as I already have with my sort-of watermelon agua fresca and my watermelon and wheatberry salad. But this, I think, is my best use-up-the-watermelon recipe to date, and also includes smashingly delicious local produce in the form of TOMATILLOS! Question: is it considered salsa verde when it isn’t actually green anymore? Er… yes!

Watermelon Salsa Verde

1 lb tomatillos
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 mildish green chili
1/4 cup onion, chopped
1/4 cup parsley (or cilantro, parsley is just what I had)
2 T lime juice
1 tsp. salt (or to taste)
1 cup cubed watermelon pieces

Peel husks off tomatoes. Fill a medium saucepan with water and bring to a boil. Add tomatillos, garlic, and chili. Boil 8-10 minutes or until tomatillos are tender. Remove from pan with a slotted spoon, and let cool. When they are cool, remove their stems, as well as the stem of the chili.

In a blender or food processor, combine tomatillos, garlic, and chili with remaining ingredients. Pulse together until combined. Adjust seasonings to taste, and enjoy!

May I recommend homemade tortilla chips as an excellent dipper? With whole wheat, flax-infused tortillas from Trader Joe’s. Just PACKING IN NUTRIENTS.

  

More fridge cleaning… I discovered a third of a sweet potato. (Well, it used to be a half a sweet potato but I get hungry for random things in the night). And that is great, obviously. And I was craving muffins, obviously. It was yet another gloomy day and sweet potato muffins sounded so Thanksgivingy and that was nice. So I found myself a recipe on which to roughly base what I was going to do but decided it’d be better with some FRUIT! And also had an alarming quantity of Craisins to use up. And also decided that the colors would be so so so beautiful together (which, indeed, they were).

    

Sweet Potato Cranberry Muffins

Modified from this recipe.

1 T ground flaxseed
3 T water
Half a small sweet potato, roasted until tender and mashed
2 T maple syrup
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 T vegetable oil
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 c. sweetened dried cranberries

Make your flax “egg”: combine ground flax and water and stir together. Let sit until frothy.
Combine wet ingredients (flax mixture, sweet potato, and syrup through oil).
In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients (flour through cloves).
Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients until just combined. Then fold in cranberries.
Pour into greased muffin tins (mine made 7). If any wells remain empty in your muffin tin, fill them with water to prevent scorching.

Bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes, or until done.   

Guyyyys these were so tender and sweet and delicious! I may make them for Thanksgiving.

breakfast: pancakes, cereal, TACOS!

Hadn’t posted my Sunday pancakes in awhile, but know that my best post-church brunches still always involve them.

The spread:

In my ceaseless search for stellar pancakes, I’m always trying new recipes. I found this one and was stoked to discover it called for powdered buttermilk! Which we had! Um… ish.

A bit petrified. A lot chunky. Stirring it into the batter was… a challenge. I tried to break the clumps up by hand and then had a spazz attack and ended up with pancake batter all over my shirt, which definitely looked like vomit.

Oh well, all’s well that ends well (and ends topped with maple and pecan, obviously! Maple-pecan twists are one of the bakery’s most popular items and I think I was subliminally channeling that).

I wanted apple slices on the side, but these were looking a little peaky, so I nuked ‘em with cinnamon, which was vair vair successful and delicious.

Annnnnnnd had my caffeine in yogurt form. Coffee yogurt is the bessssssst.

 

Monday breakfast was a new (well actually I think it’s ancient but new to me) cereal:

I had a Kashi coupon for $1 off but even with the discount the only cereal in my price range (I never ever spend more than $2.50 on cereal!) was Good Friends. I was impressed with the nutritional info, however.

So I poured myself a nice big bowl of hippie chow:

Poured on some milk, and made more nuked apple slices with cinnamon (plus pecans for extra protein and deliciousness) to accompany.

Good Friends tastes pretty much exactly how you’d think it would- crunchy and branny. I thought it was nicely sweetened, although become so accustomed to shredded wheat and plain oats that when I eat any presweetened cereal I notice the sweetness. The granola seemed like it was there just to appease people who don’t want to eat twigs and flakes and was unremarkable. Anyway, it did a nice job of keeping me full.

So you all remember that I inhaled awesome breakfast tacos in Austin. Multiple times. However, breakfast tacos are best enjoyed at like… 10:30 in the morning, after going honkeytonkin’ and drinkin’ the night before. My mornings here in thrilling Northern Virginia are not actually anything like that, so I stick to cereal.

However, why not breakfast tacos for dinner? I am, after all, having a love affair with farmer’s market eggs, and actually enjoy eggs for dinner more than I do for breakfast.

Me being me, I made mine healthier than those I enjoyed in Austin (trying to give myself a Dirty Sanchez just wouldn’t work HAHA RACHEL AND RICHARD- everyone else please ignore that) so I started by cooking up some red onion and some gooooooooooorgeous farmer’s market green pepper:

I plated those up on corn tortillas for my mama (wheat bran and her stomach have a difference of opinion) and I split the difference for myself and had one on a traditional corn tortilla and one on a whole wheat wrap half (which was actually really delicious- I liked the wheaty flavor with the fillings! And I’m trying to have a reasonable quantity of fiber with dinner to cut back on my late night snackage).

I also gave her some of the farmer’s market garlic bologna on hers (I just am someone who never feels like eating red meat two days in a row).

And then I slooooooooooooowly scrambled my eggs and put them on the veggie filling. Along with shredded pepper jack cheese and diced avocado for added deliciousness.

feeling nourished and thoughts thereon

So I’d had a headache for four days. I can never sleep before starting a new job, and various stressors/fireworks kept me from having great nights of sleep Saturday or Sunday either. And I just felt draaaaaaaaaained. Embarrassingly so.

Buttttttttt I woke up this morning and felt BRIGHT EYED and BUSHY TAILED and I need to document it in writing, and put it out into the universe, how ludicrously grateful I am for my generally excellent health. We need to remember to appreciate our bodies for everything that they do!

So today I fed my body with a rockin’ workout (which conveniently doubles, at least for me, as what sure feels like a whoppin’ dose of Prozac) and I fed it quality eats. I have to think of my own meals the way I think about the things I cook for others- as nourishment.

Sometimes I forget how much I love yogurt bowls and then I make one and go “OH MY GOD I LOVE THESE”. 

This is the classic: plain yogurt (bonus points for me- LOCAL!), banana, square-ish cereal (either Shredded Wheat, which is healthier and more natural, or Life, which is crack to me), chopped or slivered almonds, and a drizzling of Trader Joe’s cranapple butter *shiver with delight*.

Another great love of mine, which takes me back to my college days of eating lunch in a rush:

Hummus and avocado. Match made in heaven. In a wrap, on toast, on crackers, on an English muffin… doesn’t matter. It’s amaze.

This yogurt was on sale so I wanted to see how it compared to my beloved Yoplait apple pie, and it wasn’t bad! A little waterier, but also applier.   

And a buncha fruit (just assume, with everything I’ve been posting lately, that any given meal is preceded by and followed with a massive serving of fruit). Including but not limited to:

Jumbo huge Bing cherries! So delish.

As this is a briefer post, I thought I’d wrap it up with some thoughts on In Defense of Food, which has been out for ages but for the first time since publication was not on hold by someone at my public library.

While I loved what Pollan had to say about edible food-like products, anyone who reads my blog knows it’s rare that I’ll purchase fiber and protein fortified probiotic partially hydrogenated soybean corn bars.

More interestingly for me and the blogettes out there, I think the “nutritionism” Pollan mentions manifests itself in a fascinating way where Michael Pollan, as a middle aged man, reasonably enough probably doesn’t travel all that often. I’m thinking of publications like Health and Self: womens magazines that know that they have to frame themselves as about self-esteem, fitness, and good eating habits. In the end, though, don’t they, too, mostly speak in a vocabulary of calories instead of nourishment? I think about articles on “navigating a holiday party” or “use protein to feel full” and I think, good grief, this magazine should be called “Tips for Eating as Little as Possible”.

I think, too, that while men certainly face pressures to look good, a woman can never really be considered a success, no matter her professional and personal accomplishments, if she is seen as not in control of her body. David Sedaris, one of my favorite authors, reflects on this very accurately (and hilariously):

“My father has always placed a great deal of importance on his daughters' physical beauty. It is, to him, their greatest asset, and he monitors their appearance with an almost freakish intensity. Because it was always assumed that we would go to college, my brother and I were free to grow as plump and ugly as we liked. Men didn't need to improve themselves through marriage. They had other options. Our bodies were viewed as vehicles--pasty, potbellied machines operated by what science has revealed to be the tiniest of raisin-sized brains. I could wander freely through the house, drinking pancake batter from a plastic bucket, but the moment one of my sisters overspilled her bikini, my father was right there to mix his metaphors. ‘Jesus, Flossie, what are we running here, a dairy farm? Look at you; you're the size of a tank. Two more pounds and you won't be able to cross state lines without a trucking license.’"

This blog will never be terribly confessional (that’s what my real journal is for!) but I will say that, like probably most women in the developed world, I have not been immune to the barrage of skinny-obsessiveness and “health” pseudo-science from the media and people around me. I want to be an accomplished person, ergo I want to be thin.

I will also say that, as maybe some of you who’ve read my blog from the very beginning know, I am… smaller than I once was. In part due to hormones, in part due to no longer having to eat dining hall food thank GOD, and in part due to, honestly, a long period of my life when I accustomed myself to being far more obsessive and far hungrier than I care to be.

So along with In Defense of Food’s now-classic “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”, I’d like to add a complementary statement: “View food as nourishment.”

the heart wants what it wants

And yesterday mine wanted carbs. Carbs with a side of carbs. I went with it.

I had the same breakfast three days in a row because it’s just… so… perfect.

Shredded wheat with milk and half a banana and half a grapefruit. It’s just really wonderful and delicious. The milk and the banana and the shredded wheat turn into this wonderful thick filling slightly sweet mush and the grapefruit is, as all grapefruit, perfect.

It’s quite low in protein and fat, particularly compared to my usual breakfast, yet it keeps me completely satisfied til lunch.

Since I believe that the body craves what it needs, I’m going to go with it. It may be that next week I’ll be all carnivore, and I’ll be cool with that, too.

For lunch all my heart wanted was sweet potato fries, so I obliged.

One sweet potato, cut into fry shapes, baked at 375 for 40 minutes on a cooking spray’d tray, flipping halfway through.

Regular readers will know that OBVIOUSLY that is not ketchup, but Sriracha. And yes, I went back for more.

In a lackluster attempt to get in some more food groups, I made a yogurt bowl with plain yogurt, puffs, roasted almonds, and cinnamon.

It was a totally spot-hitting lunch, but didn’t actually leave me all that full for all that long, surprise surprise, so I then ate a gazillion cashews, which I had bought in preparation for dinner which was…

a recipe from THAI COOKING SCHOOL. On Wednesday some lovely people treated me to a surprisingly uplifting post-funeral lunch at Crystal Thai.

There I ate something I ate seriously almost every day in Thailand- green papaya salad. It was delicious and I learned how to make it at my super awesome cooking lesson. I got the necessary ingredients in a jiffy at HMart ($.99 a pound seems totally reasonable for green papaya, but I kind of have no basis for comparison?).

So crazy- in a green papaya, the seeds are white!

      

And yes, that is my killer mandoline in the background. We’re back on speaking terms. The nice thing about papaya is that it’s big enough to use the HAND GUARD! It’s just those damn carrots, they are the wrong shape!

I figure it’s okay to share my cooking school recipe, because I adapted it. I actually un-vegetarianized it, hah! The cooking school was vegetarian but it was important to incorporate my *secret ingredient*

Green Papaya Salad

Combine:

2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 c diced tomato (the first I bought this season. Unsurprisingly, it was unimpressive, but it was necessary for the recipe. In general, though, I avoid tomato-heavy dishes til August. Not worth it!)
1 tsp. minced chilis (HMart actually had Thai chilis! And whoo were they hot!)

Give ‘em a good smashing.

In Thailand, we used a mortar and pestle to make the dressing. Lacking that, I made do.

Then add:

1/4 cup sugar water (I added like 2 tsp of sugar to 1/4 cup water- could’ve been sweeter, so maybe add more like a tablespoon or two?)
2 T soy sauce
2 T fish sauce (back when this recipe was vegetarian, we used just a mix of dark and light soy sauce)
Juice of 2 limes
1/4 cup roasted cashews or peanuts

Smash s’more

My secret ingredient!

I have no idea WHY we had dried shrimp, but it is the ingredient that gives green papaya salad its traditional salty oomph!

I added

1/4 c. dried shrimp
1 green papaya, shredded
1/2 a carrot, shredded (could’ve added more, we’re running low)
10 green beans, in one-inch segments

A note on those proportions: the cooking school recipe was designed to serve one and called for a “handful of grated vegetables”. I doubled the dressing, so I guess I was supposed to add “two handfuls”, whatever that means. I used a small papaya, and it made a tonnnn. There was enough liquid for the dressing, but I’d recommend adding more cashews and shrimp for flavor if you’re planning on using as much papaya as I did.

The final product (total fakeout- I got it in the natural light this morning cause I couldn’t get a good one last night!)

I love this salad. I’m so stoked I now know how to make it at home. I know the dried shrimp sounds like a weird ingredient but it’s salty and chewy and the perfect pairing for the other flavors and textures!

But I just wasn’t quite sure I’d had enough carbohydrates for the day (saaaaarcasm) so I opened up a new product to review:

The appearance (almost exactly like a fig newton, no real surprise. They don’t seem real concerned about copyright infringement).

Like all Newman’s cookies, good! Nice fig ratio (I hate sandwich cookies where you can’t taste the filling). A bit bland, but that’s kind of the whole point of this style of cookie, right? Comforting!

please mr. postman…

… keep bringing me free breakfasts! More freebies I found on slickdeals.net:

  

Not just Kashi GoLean Crunch, Kashi GoLean Crunch Honey Almond Flax. Which is sort of a mouthful for first thing in the morning. Kudos to Kashi for a proper sized sample- it’s a full serving!

It looks like:

 

I ate it with: 

Thoughts? It tasted almost exactly like Kashi GoLean Crunch. The last time I had a full box of which I ate in… 3 days? Meaning… it is good.

It was slightly drier than I remember… I may just chalk this up to the fact that it was a sample box and had been through the mail and so on.

Also for free, a big old bran pack.

I can only assume “feel lighter and more energetic” is a hilarious euphemism for intestinal action.

The contents:

Am now feeling pressure to plant the marigolds.

In the meantime, I decided to take these cereal samples in a different direction. Eating a bowl of cereal with milk every day is for normal boring people.

Besides, I hadn’t baked since Saturday in ages.

Thus,

Do You Want Some Muffins With That Fiber? Muffins (adapted from this recipe)

Grains:
1 sample-sized box of All Bran Complete (1 cup, I think? By weight it’s 1.13 ounces)
1/2 cup oats

Whirr together in food processor or blender until the consistency of coarse flour (I have to thank Cooks Illustrated for this- their bran muffins use ground up bran flakes!)

Combine with the rest of the dry ingredients:

1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 T brown sugar

Then add wet ingredients:

3/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg
2 T molasses
2 T apple juice concentrate

While my food processor was out, I thought I’d give the grater attachment a spin (get it? Get it? Spin?!). I threw in

1/2 a carrot
1/2 an apple (Jonagolds from Costco are SO delicious!)

Fold those into batter until just combined. Its appearance only a mother could love:

Pour into greased tin (mine made 10 pretty big muffins).

Top with 2 T (1/2 oz.) pecans, chopped not too small

Bake at 375 18-20 minutes. Let cool in pan 10 minutes (important!), then let finish drying on a cooling rack. I’m keeping mine in the fridge- there are so many liquid ingredients, and I don’t want any of these guys lost to mold!

 

Anyway, tastewise, yummy yummy! Not mega sweet, but moist and loverly! The moisture level and hint of veggie wholesomeness is reminiscent of, dare I say it, carrot cake! Particularly with the pecans on top, which got all toasty and awesome, as pecans are wont to do.

And I mean… I already eat a lot of fiber so I’m not expecting anything TOO dramatic to happen in my system, but I would guess that this recipe is good for keeping your system peppy!

I included the last of the samples in today’s lunch, along with something I’ve been meaning to try forevvvvvvvvver and was finally (vaguely) on sale.

  

Those became:

 

So. Good.

The Chobani is awesome- perfect tangy/sweet balance (in my opinion, some of the other flavors are too sugar-fied, but this has the nice tartness from the pomegranate!)

And the bran buds are the PERFECT topper. Yes, they look like hamster food, but their branny wholesomeness and welcome crunch were perfect with the yogurt. I can’t do yogurt and granola- too sweet. This was perfect. Plus, um, in that teeny tiny combo? 10 grams of fiber and 14 grams of protein. Ridic.

I could seriously eat that for lunch every day for the rest of my life. With soup in the winter, with salad in the summer. Like:

Not only colorful and pretty; yummy! Mixed greens, pickled baby eggplants, and lupini bean hummus. This combo is seriously PERFECT- the hummus on its own can be annoyingly bitter, the eggpants on their own can be annoyingly sweet and sour. Together, they are unstoppable. SUCH a tasty lunch! Got all my flavors in :D