Vlog: Ramblings about food, bread, and misconceptions

Managing Breakfast Tips

Do you eat breakfast?  I do. There were years and years where my breakfast consisted of a big glass of juice and coffee.  Breakfast can be one of the meals we have the least time to prepare and consume while getting ready for our day.  There is a lot that goes on in the morning.

One thing I learned about breakfast is to have several items at hand that are easy.  I started out with pre-packaged oatmeal but it is really hard to find one that is not super sweet or that does not include apple cinnamon which I am not a fan of.  The apple tastes fake and weird to me even with organic brands.  Smoothies never keep me full so I tend not to have those as a breakfast.

So how do you make breakfast fast and healthy?  Here are a few of my top tips.

1. Big batches of grain porridge: Irish (steel cut) oats, rolled oats, barley, quinoa, multi-grain hot cereals. I freeze them in bags, I like to put two cups in a bag that is two days of brekkie.

2. Yogurt, fruit, and granola.  Simple and easy just make sure your yogurt and granola are not sugar bombs. I like this granola paired with unsweetened yogurt.  You could also use nuts if you are off grains.

3. Egg bakes they reheat well. Kalyn's Kitchen has some great recipes for them.  I linked my favorite.

4. This is a more recent addition to my breakfast repertoire Chia seed pudding with fruit.  Make the night before to make it really easy.

5. Leftovers, soup, and other savoury foods.  Don’t limit yourself to what we think of as breakfast food.

Do you have other ways to make breakfast easy and fast?  Leave a comment if you do, I love new ideas!

Freeze it! What to do with leftovers

My uncle and aunt were  in town this past week so we had more food on hand than we normally do and also had two dinner parties.  Needless to say there was a lot of cooking that went on for that.  My strategy is to have what I can done beforehand which makes life so much easier. But you can’t do all of it ahead of time.  And what do you do with all the extras that you end up with?

There is some of the new food stash.

They were here for about five days and in the end we ended up with way too many leftovers for the three of us to eat after the fact. Most of the leftovers were unavoidable, the normal pan size for us of lasagne or macaroni and cheese is not enough for five people.  For the dinner parties I would rather have too much than not enough, running out of food is a bummer, too much I can deal with that.  Some items such as the pork shoulder I made extra for sandwich meat that would be lunch the next day.  Cook once and eat twice, love it. We had leftover over fruit and cucumbers too that needed to be dealt with after they left.  The two casualties we had were the spring mix (almost didn’t buy it and didn’t use it) and the strawberries which we did use but not fast enough ( tossed about half of them).

So what did I freeze?

• Sliced peaches in 2 cup packets
• Mac-n-cheese in single serving lunch packets
• Chard risotto in 2 cup packets for risotto cakes
• 2 packets of rice, 1 basmati the other regular
• One roasted Hutterite chicken 4 packets 2 of breast meat and 2 dark
• Blackberries
• Polenta
• Cucumbers for smoothies
• 3 large packets of pork shoulder
• Pomegranate/cilantro sauce for pork
• Lasagne in single serving lunch packets
• Summer Meatballs for a dinner
• Two 2 cup packets of roasted tomatoes
• Chicken carcass for stock
• Cavapcici and ajvar  Ignore the picture with the recipe as that is not cavapcici.

We are stocked up for a while now and that feels very good. Plus I do not have food languishing in my fridge going bad and that makes me feel awesome.  What do you freeze?

Cilantro and Olive Chicken

Chicken, Tomatoes, Olives, and Cilantro is a quick and easy recipe to whip up. The recipe is from Martha Stewart's Fresh Food Fast.  This is also a recipe I tend to forget about, not sure why we really like it and it’s easy.  Dinner menus have been hard to come up with recently and the only thing on the menu that day was ‘chix’.  No recipe, no idea or even veg.  Just ‘chix’

Than a light bulb went off in my head and I remembered Cilantro-Olive chicken as I refer to it. I like to serve this with rice but potatoes or bread would work too.  We are out of onions so you will see it in the recipe but none in my picture.  Sometimes onion powder can save you and if you do not like cilantro, parsley will work.

1 tablespoon olive oil

4  boneless chicken breast or a packet of tenders

1 onion sliced thinly

1 pint cherry tomatoes or 14 oz. canned tomatoes

1/3 cup green olives

juice from half a lime

1/4 cup cilantro.

Brown chicken on both sides about 5 minutes each side.  Saute onions until soft. Add tomatoes and olives.  If using fresh tomatoes cook until softened and juices release.  If using canned let juices reduce a bit.  Add lime juice and cilantro cook a minute or two.

Retrying Food Video

Finding My Healthy Part 3: The Rules

After starting to get healthy here are a few of the food rules that I used at various times.  None of them worked out or were sustainable habits for me in the long run. My only real goal at this time was to be healthy and feel better about myself. Some of them still make me laugh and shake my head.  I’ll write more about what worked but for today, we will stick with the unworkable and here they are.....

Monster Chocolate Cake does not look or taste like fruit.

 1. Eating only one serving of something. 4 oz. of cooked pasta will not fill you up. Thank the gods I decided if I was still hungry in half an hour I could eat another serving of something.  Of course I ate every 30 minutes as I was never full.

2. The grilled cheese sandwich moratorium.

3. Fruit as dessert and we are not talking about pie, just fruit.  This one made me stabbity.

4. Clean eating.  I know this phrase is everywhere but it seems restrictive to me and demonizes food.  Is some form of junky chip good for me? No, it is not, but I refuse to put it the into a food caste system that lumps pork shoulder into the same caste due to fat content.  I know what a pork shoulder looks like originally, a pig and the other I am not so sure what it looked like in its pre-processed state. They should not be in the same caste. I no longer adhere to clean eating or call my food clean or unclean unless it involves dirt.

5. Trying to understand USDA guidelines and use the pyramid of food (I know they use a plate now.)  I am still not sure why milk gets its own category as I am not undernourished and I don’t drink it or eat three serving of dairy on a daily basis. Also why are veggies and fruit not emphasized as much as grains. My attempt to get healthy with than food pyramid failed miserably.

What have you tried that didn’t work for you?

Big Batch Cooking Video

Food Trends I Don't Get

I do not understand the trend to turn bananas into “ice cream” and cauliflower into

“pizza crust” or “mashed potatoes.” I think the last time I ate cauliflower was in my 20’s and in a cauliflower and cheese soup which tasted mostly like cheese and you got a bread bowl and soup for cheap at the Student Union. It was okay but not my first choice.

Bananas and cauliflower are a couple of my least favorite fruit and veg.  Cauliflower smells a bit like vomit to me and tastes bitter.  I don’t like it and refuse to be convinced it tastes remotely like a potato or can morph into a pizza crust.  Bananas are good in bread and that is how I eat most of them.  In smoothies they tend to take over and became the dominant flavour.  

One trend I do like Chia seed pudding.

 You are not going to find me making  fake ice cream out of bananas or pretending cauliflower is something that it is not.  For me those two trends just don’t work.  But there are lots of other trends out there for me to try and I will go for those.  

The Lunch Strategy

Today is one of those days where you stare out the window and watch the aspens fluttering in the breeze and wonder what the frell am I going to blog about.  I am having a distinct lack of blogspiration today. Part of me is just begging to skip blogging and go work out.

Today's lunch turkey pot pie leftover from Father's Day and some sticks.

Lunch for me is a difficult meal, it is in the middle of my day, I’m busy doing stuff and it just is a pain. If I could I would skip it I would.  But it usually comes after my workout and I am hungry, so I don’t.  A couple of years ago I started a lunch strategy after getting sick of getting to the fridge and everyone else had ate all the edible leftovers.  One should not have to cook at lunch time, reheating I can deal with, making a side of sauteed greens is sometimes doable.  Lunch and cooking forget that.

The Lunch Strategy

1. Make a big salad enough for two or three lunches.  I do the veg and add in what I am feeling that day.  Pine nuts are my current in thing.

2. Soup in the freezer.  2 cup packets they defrost easily and make a nice lunch.

3. Cook extra steak or chicken and freeze it.  This one has saved me so many times.  I freeze in portion sizes of about 3 to 4 ounces. It gets cut up and tossed into salads and soups.

4. Leftovers from last night’s dinner.  I’ve been known to stake my claim and write my name on tape and attach it to containers.

5. Sticks! Carrots and celery sticks make for a quick veg to pair with the protein lurking in the fridge.

What are your lunch strategies?

A Day in Food: Wednesday the 5th of June

First thing in the morning water and mango juice

Breakfast: 3 eggs scrambled with bacon, spinach, and cheese, English muffin followed up by a no bake energy bites

Post weights: homemade sports drink it was lemon that week and a strawberry coconut protein shake using this watermelon coconut shake but with strawberries, both versions are really yummy.

Lunch: a big salad with romaine, carrots, pine nuts, chicken, feta, croutons, and homemade balsamic vinaigrette ( 2 T. extra virgin olive oil and 1 T. balsamic vinegar.) This was the last of the veg in crisper.

Stuffed pork chops and corn.  Found some leftover stuffing in the freezer and it was cool out that day.  Corn is not my first choice for a "veg" but we had nothing left in the crisper and had just had every frozen veg already. 

Chocolate ice cream was sounding like the best food ever so for my treat of the day that is what I had.  Since I can't eat it very often I tend to have a good sized portion.  A milk allergy makes me snotty and my inner ears get swollen if I eat too much milk.  Fermented dairy products do not bother me as much as straight up milk. Other beverages not shown are coffee and Japanese allergy tea.


That is what I ate June 5th 2013.

No Bake Energy Bites

I am always looking for new ideas for food and when an Expat Canadian friend who lives Japan made Energy Bites with kinako it got me  thinking about them and how good they sounded.  Kinako is made of roasted soybeans that are ground.  It has a vaguely peanut butter like taste.  Since both are legumes it makes sense.  If you have kinako kicking around the house give this version a try otherwise stick with the ground flax seed.

The recipe base I use for this recipe comes from gimmesomeoven.  The nice thing about these is they are easy to modify if you are missing ingredients. I think barley flakes would be good in this.

No Bake Energy Bites.

1 cup old fashioned oats

2/3 cup of coconut flakes

1/2 cup peanut butter or nut butter of choice

1/2 cup kinako or ground flax seed

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup chocolate chips.

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon chia seeds

Dump it in a bowl and mix it up.  Form into balls.  If too soft chill for about an hour. I got about 25 energy bites.  They will keep for a week in the refrigerator tightly covered or you can freeze them.

Full and Still not Satisfied

Today was one of those where I never felt satisfied with what I ate.  I felt full.  Why wasn’t I sated? It is a weird combo to have, not hungry but not satisfied.  It makes me want to keep eating until I do feel satisfied and who knows when or what will sate. One hears eat until almost full and then stop and it sounds so simple, so easy.  But sometimes it isn’t.  Today’s dissatisfaction started with a salad that originally sounded good, but had been shoved in back of the fridge and some of it had froze.  The pork and bread stick were fine, but what was the bulk of my lunch was meh.

No longer forbidden.

Dissatisfaction and being full rarely happens for me anymore. I make a point of listening to what my body is telling me to eat.  Doing this has helped me create a healthy relationship with food.  There were times when I had the dos and don’ts list of foods that I should or shouldn’t eat. This would end in full on binges or I’d end up full and not satisfied which lead to overeating.  In the long run if I should have just ate the grilled cheese sandwich or the cake, I would have ate less.

Eat food that you love and eat it because you love it not because you should or it is healthy.  You do not build a manner of eating that you can live with if that is your mindset. Find your healthy, try new things, retry old things and most of all enjoy what you eat.

Let's Talk About Food

Youtube uploaded today. Wahoo! It didn't want to last Friday.  Ever feel confused about what to eat, you are not alone.

Chia Seed Pudding recipe

 

Chia seed pudding

Chia seed pudding is one of my favorite summer breakfasts.  You put it in a jar, shake, and put it in the fridge.  Tada! it is done and will be ready for you in the morning.  I find myself singing the commercial jingle every time I make it and yes it is the same thing.

Breakfast

 Salvia hispanica or chia seeds is a member of the mint family and was was cultivated by the Aztecs. They have a good dose of omega-3s, calcium, and fiber.  It also has a tapioca pudding like texture.  Here is the chia seed recipe I use.  

Chia Seed Pudding

1 cup soy milk, almond milk, or milk

1/3 cup chia seeds

1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

cinnamon

Put it all a jar and shake it up well. Put in refrigerator.  It is ready in about ten minutes but I like to make it the night before for an easy breakfast the next morning.  I find the chia seeds tend to settle on the bottom after your first shaking so I like to shake it about 5 minutes after.

Finding My Healthy: Part 1

There was a time in my life when my disordered eating habits finally caught up with me.  I would avoid eating until two in the afternoon and then as little food as I could manage. I worked nights so waking up mid-morning was normal. It was coffee, diet coke, and water to keep me full. It didn’t feel like disorder.  I basked in the complements of how thin and skinny I was.  

Me 6 years ago, before I started lifting. Not at my heaviest but close to it.

Fast forward a few years later.  I couldn't keep up with the not eating and starving myself.  I started eating and I didn’t really know how anymore. There were binges, being so full and miserable, and the attempts to restrict that failed more and more often at this point.  So I took to skipping real food, these were the nights when I would eat half a bag of candy for dinner.  We are talking family sized not small bags.

Few more years later and in the midst of a bad break up.  I just ate and ate and ate.  How do you cope with emotions.  I eat.  I am an emo eater, always will be.  There was weight gain, there were freakouts about the weight gain, and there were some big choices that needed to be made. It was time to put an end to the disorder and create something new.  The something new has taken years but it has been worth it.