Mission: Health Nut

This weekend I spent about twice my normal grocery budget.  For what?  For you, dear reader!

I AM GOING TO LIVE FOREVER!!!

And I was able to avoid Safeway.  This is all from Trader Joe's and the Milk Pail.  Oh, except for the beans and two of the chocolate bars - they are from Wal-mart.  I know, I know.  I was in there anyway for sandpaper.  I KNOW!

But this isn't going to make me younger by sitting in the fridge, so Sunday we started working our way in. 

Sunday

• Up early to make caramel almond twists.  (Leave TJ's ready-made whole wheat pizza dough* out the night before.  Make a topping of 1/4 c brown sugar, 1/2 tsp of salt, and sliced raw almonds.  Cut the dough into 12 or more pieces, roll into ropes.  You get better ropes if you do it in two stages - roll once, let them rest, then roll further - they get nice and long if you swing them around like you're about to rope a steer.  Paint them with melted butter, roll in the topping, twist or pretzel them and bake at 400ish for 10 or so minutes.)  We ate the entire batch.  Slept till noon.
• Brunch: Chicken maple breakfast sausages; mandarin oranges; roasted yellow peppers; bowl of fresh strawberries and blackberries; three squares of crazy dark chocolate.
• After bike ride, we had hard boiled eggs, leftover pesto pasta (not whole wheat, sorry) and salmon from the night before.
• For dinner, we both had salt-and-pepper pan-fried tofu, stir fried eggplant, sauteed bok choy, and fried rice containing carrots, onions, soybeans and an egg.

9 out of 15!  Exhausted at 10 pm. 

Monday

• Breakfast: I made a dip with raw almond butter, roasted yellow peppers, chickpeas (I'm counting them towards my "black bean" requirement), plain yogurt and herbs from the garden.  It tasted a little bland so I added water to a small portion and turned it into a thick soup instead.  Piece of chocolate. 
• Lunch: banana, peach, steamed broccoli, yogurt with honey (thanks for that Eurotrash tip, VU!  Delish!), strawberries, a hard boiled egg, leftover salmon, and mandarin oranges. 
• Dinner: Dill pickle flavored potato chips.  Mmmm - like your regular salt and vinegar chips, but with an unexpected dill aroma.   Salad of mixed baby greens.  I highly recommend Annie's Goddess dressing - it's a little tahini flavored, yum!  Then, I curried up some chicken breasts I'd marinated in yogurt and tomatoes in attempt to make a lowfat version of butter chicken. (I went to an Indian cooking class once with my mom where the lady made butter chicken, and she wasn't kidding.  She literally used, like, a stick of butter.)  Along with onions, I also sneaked in some red lentils (counting those towards beanery) to up the fiber.  It was pretty good, but sadly it was no butter chicken.  His nibs had leftover brown rice and I had whole wheat cinnamon apple bread alongside.

11/15.  Wiped out at about 10:30.

A couple of observations.

1. Two days of healthful eating, two days of being really tired in the evening.  Correlation?  Maybe it's how those people who pitch juice fasts and raw diets justify their low energy: we're detoxing.  But honestly, it's not vastly different from how we ate before.  And I know we're getting enough calories.  (I may have neglected to mention the Butterfinger and Baby Ruth minis, the entire bag of gummy worms, the mocha and the two doughnuts I had at work.  And you-know-who dug into one of those tri-colore tins of popcorn after dinner; who knows what all he ate during the day.)  Well, we'll hang in for another week and see if things pick up.

2.  Having said that (what's up, Melati!), this campaign puts me at real risk of violating pretty much the only guideline anybody ever gave me when I mentioned I was starting a blog.  "Just remember," said Aston, "Nobody cares what you had for lunch."

So I'll quit with the blow-by-blow, and just check in every now and then.   

Having said that (yoo hoo, Tequila Stakes Croquet!), Kashi (aka in our household as "Colon Blow") is on deck for tomorrow a.m.

Skin report: looking good, foundation is minimal.  I'm a fan these days of Maybelline's Pure foundation and Physician's Formula Skinsitive face powder.   

* (Pizza dough is wicked easy and fun to make, but the kneading is time consuming if, like me, you don't have a countertop blender with a dough hook.  $1 to save 15 minutes is a reasonable tradeoff.  On the other hand, I refuse to pay for anything but whole chickens, and taking those apart takes me a good 15 minutes.  It is my prerogative to be inconsistent.) 

Comments

[boots]

The fact that your list included herbs from your garden is a strong indicator of why I will never be able to copy this project. So much prep work sounds exhausting.

I did feel righteous about all of your salmon references. I indulged in a bag of vacuum packed wild salmon at the REI sale this weekend. I had been biking before, and then spent way, way too many hours shopping and desperately needed a snack. I skipped the ooey, gooey bar section and grabbed the bag of salmon. And proceeded to eat it with my hands as soon as I left the store. Very grizzly bear like, or at least it was in my head. Problem is, my paws STILL smell a little like salmon 3 days later. I wonder what bears use to get all of that healthy fish smell out of their fur.

And, dude, how do you get all of that healthy sounding food from your fridge to your office for lunch consumption? It seems like a large volume, some requires refrigeration no?, and what about possible yogurt-y type spillages? I have enough questionable office habits. I don't think I should add a work bag that smells like it belongs to a grizzly bear...

[Vaguely Urban]

Inspired by a Real Girl post from 2005 (and here I lament the recent infrequency of her fine posts), I have become a disciple of the Superfoods, which is very similar to your list. Though I get broccoli.

Here's the post that started (and explains) it all:
http://realgirlbeauty.blogspot.com/search?q=superfoods

I agree, it's exhausting and expensive to work them in every day. But one payoff I can tout is the Excellent Poops that result from the regimen. I got your colon blow right here, baby.
Eff you, colorectal cancer!

[TasterSpoon]

An astute observation, Boots. I carry friggin huge lunches. All the fruits and veggies are usually in their own skins: I rinse them in the kitchen sink at work. Broccoli (or artichokes, etc.) travels in the clear plastic bag I bought it in, and gets steamed in the microwave in the same bag. If I don't have a bag, I put it in the microwave nekkid and invert a big bowl over it.

I keep a peeler, a knife and a can opener at work.

I used to carry dishy items in those disposable plastic containers. The sturdier ones are totally reusable, plus there's the reassurance of knowing that if I lose them in the common dishwasher or food goes bad and I want to just chuck the whole thing, it's only a 20 cent loss. But, downside, they do deform over time and dishwasherings, and the lids lose seal. Yogurty spillages. Also, I feel bad about adding to landfill.

So I've converted to the containers where it's a Pyrex dish on the bottom and a rubber cover - not the cheapest, but they're really airtight, should last a long time, and I feel classier eating out of a real dish. And because they're Pyrex, you can freeze and even bake with them - individual apple crumbles for desserts all week long! Anchor Hocking makes the ones I use. Downside is, they are heavy. And of course breakable.

But because the seal is good, you can shove them in a backpack for easy carrying.

Check out this website:
http://www.wastefreelunches.org/

I totally went to Trader Joe's after spinning last week, and bought and consumed a whole package of smoked salmon in one go. I believe the bears sprinkle their fur with lemon juice.

[TasterSpoon]

VU - So THAT's where the Spirutein comes from! Great link, thanks. I kind of like her list better than mine. It makes a little more sense.

My list looks like something the magazine put together for people who want to have their pasta and eat it too, and who don't have access to a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables - kind of a "make the best of it" list. I think they could do better, and give people more credit.

I thought I had linked to this website in my previous post, but apparently didn't.

http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php

Check it out. It purports to list the world's 130 healthiest foods - they are weighted for nutritional density, but also for things like accessibility. (Apples! Water!)

Also very nice is you click on the foods and it gives a good rundown of WHY they're so great, but also prep and serving ideas.

This list might expand our pantries dramatically.

Huh huh huh, "expand our pantries."

[boots]

Your post combined with my, um, expanding pantries have inspired me to do one thing I've always meant to do -- keep a food diary -- and something I thought I'd never do -- count calories in said food diary. I used to think calorie counting was for the anemic and unhealthy. If I want to lose weight, just work out more, right? Turns out that I think I make up for crazy calorie burning with even crazier calorie re-filling. However, since I've never counted calories, this is currently just a hypothesis. Only time with the diary will tell. I will also attempt to focus on the inclusion of more healthy foods by being horrified at the number of times "cheetos" appears in my diary. Thanks for all of the links and suggestions!!

[Angela]

Okay, well, this may make me sound utterly boring, but I kind of like the food diary--maybe not quite so in detail, but at least a listing of the items you ate? Well done anyway--I've got to go find some of that nut butter now...