five or fewer

I’ll do a more comprehensive recap in the next few days, but I want to quickly note what happened last night as it has been pretty typical at least once a week.

Having finally figured out the perfect Spanish [brown] rice recipe from scratch a few days ago, I threw together another batch and happily watched my rice cooker steam away while I made a cold sofrito and fresh guacamole.  I was on a role!  At my 3 year old’s demand suggestion, I broke out the masa harina and we even made our own tortillas.  Things were going well. 

First speed bump:  I went to put my pre-soaked beans into the pressure cooker.  But…there were no pre-soaked beans.  The only can of beans in my pantry was a can of baked beans from a cookout earlier this month.  (Left over because they went over the 5 or Fewer rule and I took something else.) I didn’t even bother to read the label and just decided that I would stick to rice, carne asada and guac in my tortilla. 

Second speed bump:  I didn’t have enough vwg to make seitan carne asada.  Having no beans was bad enough (no way I was putting baked beans anywhere near my now-legendary-in-my-own-mind rice) but I pretty much had based this entire meal around making my favorite mock meat.  I live in Saxapahaw, and vwg is not one of the few items ever stocked at the petrol station/general store.  Since I was already out of bounds with the baked beans, I just shrugged and reached for the box of emergency Vegan Grillers stashed at the back of the freezer.

After dinner I was rummaging around the freezer for a frozen banana and found a couple of bags of frozen, cooked beans.  Damn!  I had completely forgotten that the last time this happened - not having my own beans, that is - I spent a weekend cooking up three different kinds of beans and freezing them in 2 cup allotments.  Thawing out frozen cooked beans wouldn’t have taken any longer than pressure cooking pre-soaked beans. 

I would have thought that by now I’d be immune to mistakes, but nope. A couple weeks ago, I almost accepted a potato chip at happy hour when the bag was offered to me, but realized in time that I was doing experimonth. Somehow both of my actual mistakes took place with this realization fully in effect. Yesterday, I got an iced coffee when out at a work-related lunch, so that I could be good and stay on my 5 or fewer. Yet somehow I spaced and added Splenda instead of sugar (and I wasn’t tossing out a $3 coffee over the wrong sweetener). Then today, when I stopped home between meetings for a 5-minute lunch, I accidentally put the wrong mustard on my chicken-wrapped-in-lettuce (and didn’t have time/patience to wash everything off and re-do). Other than those two slips and my pre-planned brunch #1 (of 2), I’ve been faithful. It hasn’t been too difficult, and has made for some interesting conversations. Plus, I’ve found the best peanut butter ever, and for this month I have not felt guilty at all about eating peanut butter and honey straight from the containers, which I usually feel is a bit decadent (honey is expensive). With no cheap sugary alternative, I’ve relied on honey and pineapple for most of my sweet cravings, and they’ve done me right for the most part.

Although it feels great to get up early and cook eggs for breakfast, I don’t always have time for that. My very first thought when I woke up this morning was that I wished I had something I could take to work with me for breakfast so I could sleep a little longer. (Granted, a piece of fruit would work as a “five or fewer” grab-n-go breakfast, but I’m trying to cut back on sugars too.)

But the omelet I made for myself this morning was rather tasty and didn’t actually take that long. And at least I didn’t have to make lunch too — I’m planning on eating last night’s pork and squash leftovers for lunch today.

While I’d been doing pretty well at this when eating at home, I’ve found it’s a lot harder to adhere to these rules on the road.

I went to Tennessee this weekend to celebrate a friend’s graduation and wound up eating out at restaurants every meal. I know I could have done a better job of planning ahead by bringing some good snack foods with me just in case, but I didn’t. When the best option on the menu at the first restaurant was still sure to be loaded with lots of questionable ingredients, I granted myself a bye for the weekend. So instead of doing as good as possible under the circumstances for each meal, I just gave up and ended up eating pretty poorly. The first exception was a quesadilla, and then a hamburger, and before I knew it I was eating cake and sushi too. What’s worse is that not only did I fail at eating “five or fewer,” I failed at eating “primal.”

I’ll try harder the next time I travel and hopefully do better. At least I’m being honest…

I went to the Durham Farmer’s Market this weekend and it was a very unpleasant shopping experience, with the exception of running into a couple of friends. Way too crowded, impossible to do any real price/quality comparison, and full of extraneous non-farm craft stuff that got in the way. 

In contrast, a trip to the korean grocery store on 15-501 was a pleasant shopping experience as have been recent trips to Compare Foods on Avondale/Roxboro (I’m still amused that the salon in there always has at least one person getting their hair done). For the most part the stores seem less expensive too, and a friendly customer at the KoGro helped me figure out which kind of seaweed to buy to make a good soup stock. 

I’m going to try the farmer’s market again during their Wed afternoon hours and see if it’s a better experience, because I really like the concept and want to support them.  They all seem like good people and they even put recipes from local chefs focused on local farm ingredients on their website.  I just can’t stand the crowds.

When I went to the grocery store at the beginning of this week and spent about $80, I was a bit dismayed by the thought of how much this experimonth was going to cost me. But then I reminded myself that I had already planned out my meals and this food was going to feed me for all of my meals and snacks Monday-Thursday this week. At $6-7 a meal, that’s not such a bad deal, much less than what I normally spend out at restaurants. And now, 12 meals plus some snacks later, I’m finishing up the last of that $80 worth of food for breakfast before I depart on a 4 day weekend. So I guess there’s not much to complain about here, and planning ahead is the moral of the story.

i had this dream that i found an old fast food bag with a doublecheeseburger still in it.  i unwrapped it and it looked like it was still good, but i felt bad because of experimonth.  i gave in and decided to eat the burger but toss the bun.  i woke up feeling guilty.

it took at least 2 weeks of quitting smoking before i had this kind of dream.  and i didn’t have any (that i remember) when i quit fast food for january 2009 (experimonth in the raw solidarity).  

today = lots o coffee, oatmeal w/mango, pork loin leftover w/ fresh squash&zuch, beer tasting, peanuts, yogurt&honey&mango

so i guess i had fooled myself into thinking that plain yogurt would be like vanilla yogurt. forgot how nasty that stuff is without a bunch of sweetener. yowza.

First I had to remember how to post to a group tumblr effort. Then I had to get rolling on this experimonth effort. My plan was to start on the 3rd but only about 1/2 my food met the criteria. Today I did a good breakfast and supper but forgot I had a promised a coworker to try a new pizza place in town. So I guess I’m up to 2/3 compliance! I’m not going to sweat my violations of the plan but I will try to be honest/open about them.

Dinner tonight was black beans and rice with a sliced tomato and lettuce. I made the frijoles in a crock pot and they turned out well and good. I soaked the beans over night then cooked them  all day with a few cloves of garlic, celery salt, cumin, and chili powder. (I’ve decided I’m not counting non-nutritive spices as ingredients.) I have enough leftovers for two lunches which is nice.

I’m excited that the Durham farmer’s market is beginning Wednesday hours, I will need to pick up more produce to continue on this quest to eat fewer and better.

The reason why I’m so ready to tackle this experimonth is that I’ve already been eating a Primal diet for the most part since the beginning of April.

I’ve been loving cooking eggs for breakfast, making large delicious salads for lunch, and trying new recipes for dinner. And I’ve even found it surprisingly easy to eat a Primal meal out at a restaurant — for example, fajitas at a Mexican restaurant (minus the tortillas, beans, and rice, of course) work great.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been surprised by the amount of extra ingredients in seemingly simple foods. While shopping for some bacon at Whole Foods the other day, I found it challenging to find some without added sugars for example.

I plan on sharing some of the new recipes I try throughout the month. To get started, here’s a picture of what I made for dinner last night (and have since eaten for dinner tonight and probably for lunch tomorrow too). This Mark Bittman-inspired “Braised Vegetables with Bacon” included bacon, onions, olive oil, celery, carrots, parsnips, beets, brussel sprouts, kale, oregano, salt & pepper, and vegetable broth. While I could have made my own vegetable stock, I chose to go store-bought. The vegetable broth I used contained 11 ingredients — all of which were whole, identifiable, pronounceable, readily-available things, so I let it slide this time (filtered water, organic carrots, organic tomatoes, organic celery, organic onions, organic garlic, organic leeks, sea salt, organic bay leaves, organic parsley, organic thyme).  

Good luck to all of my fellow experimonthers in our quest for “five or fewer”!

Alright, so I’m joining this one a few days in but I’m glad I saw a reminder that it was in progress because it was probably my favorite challenge in the full list of possible experimonths for 2010. Hooray for healthy eating!  And more importantly, Hooray that beer makes the cut!

Why was it my favorite?  Because 1) I think it will be relatively doable, and 2) the food culture in this country is pretty scary and I’m interested to see where all of my presumably good habits actually put me on the unprocessed/whole foods spectrum.

Things I have going for me:  I’m a whole foods vegan foodie blah blah blah with a very impressionable toddler and biochemically hyper sensitive partner, so by default there is very little processed food in my house.  I think.  I make almost everything from scratch, thankfully by choice and not just out of necessity.  I’m also in the thick of recipe testing, so even if I didn’t want to make most things from scratch right now, timing dictates that I don’t have much choice.

Things that can/will mess me up:  I am not about to learn how to make tofu, non-dairy yogurt or non-dairy milks from raw ingredients.  I’m still on the fence about making my own crackers - I think the tipping point will be the cost of uber-hippie low processed crackers from WSM vs. the time it will take to make them from scratch with a 3.25 year old and four cats in the kitchen.  Also, I work at UNC and I am totally addicted to these grilled pineapple/veg/bean/rice burritos…(pineapple + beans + rice + tortilla + “mixed veggies” = 5, so I might make it!) and oh yeah, I’m a full-time working mum and studying for the LSAT and sometimes I’m just downright lazy and will probably get take-out. 

Okie dokie artichokies, I guess it’s time to start keeping track of what I’m putting into my and my family’s mouths…let’s hope that Jamie Oliver doesn’t come knocking at my door to do an intervention.

i sliced up a clove of garlic and inserted the cloves in thin slits, then rubbed the whole thing with mustard powder, sea salt, pepper, organic soysauce and evoo and let it marinate/sit for 20 min or so before putting it in the oven (450 for 15 min then 325 for 1.5 hours) and pouring white wine over it every 15 minutes. basically a combination of my pork tenderloin experience and bittman’s how to cook everything app. 

skipping bfast and lunch was bad, and of course i cursed my inability to stop in and grab some fast food when i was out. but let’s be real - i skip breakfast and lunch in favor of coffee at least once a week on a normal week anyway. but dinner and second dinner and first snack were all good, though i’m going through an awful lot of unsalted peanuts in a short amount of time.

So right now I’m feeling mildly deprived and grumpy on evening two, after a stellar day one.

Saturday I had late brunch plans, so i had a small bowl of actual oatmeal, rather than my usual instant flavored oatmeal with a little bit of the actual sprinkled in to make a bigger portion size.  I had some mango in it (they’ve been really cheap lately, especially at the Compare Foods) and it was pretty delicious.  I also had some flavored coffee which may be against the spirit of this thing but really is it going to make a difference? I’m definitely not giving up coffee.  I had skim milk in it rather than flavored creamer - did you know there are 3 ingredients in skim damn milk? 

While I had planned to eat whatever the hostess offered so that my experimonth not tarnish others’ plans and efforts, i was offered a meal almost entirely made from scratch - my only transgression being a couple of sausages patties. I had the best pancakes I’ve ever tasted - scratch-made buttermilk pancakes with toppings of butter, pure maple syrup, fresh strawberries and blueberries. Also some very fluffy scrambled eggs with some salt and pepper and some more coffee and some water. 

The water reminds me that I’m lucky that I kicked the soda habit a year or two ago.  

So, excellent brunch and then a trip to the store to get a bunch of groceries.  I got some MBA chicken tenderloins but paused to consider whether the logo constituted cartoon packaging.  But since the drawing is fairly realistic and descriptive of the product - and since it was on sale and is a healthier grade of meat (and I believe the company is more ethical/responsible than others, though I need to look that up) - I went ahead and got a couple of packages thinking that they’d make good quick snacks (instead of a sandwich or quesadilla, have some chicken tenders and broccoli).  Also lots of fruit and vegetables. And a pork loin that was on sale and was from somewhere named Niman Ranch gave the impression of being a happy place run by hippies. These sorts of things are stuff that i can cook and then eat over several days.  I also got lots of eggs an egg whites.  I bought some special soy sauce because my usual brand is written in another language and therefore definitely unpronounceable.  I spent a little over $50 yesterday and then went back for another $15 today.

so breakfasts won’t be a big deal - oatmeal with fresh fruit will take a tiny bit more time but taste as good as most of the prepackaged flavors. lunch will be good given that it can usually be dinner leftovers.  but i’ll be doing an awful lot of cooking, it seems.

Then there’s the snacking. I’ve eaten two apples already, probably will have a third tonight.  They are a poor substitute for chocolate. Pure honey is the only thing that’s really satisfying my sweet tooth so far, in the department of dessert-type snacks. And I’m having daydreams of the kimchi bulkogi hot dog I got from the korean taco truck on Friday night - a perfect last meal, and maybe the first thing I’ll eat on June 1st.

So I’m the one who initially suggested this.  I’m not sure where I read it - I think it was in one of my alumni magazines - but it was suggested as a simple, no-nonsense way to eat healthy.  I do like having simple guidelines for eating healthy, but given the cultural and market forces in play I doubt that we’ll come to any consensus on what we should eat in the next few centuries.  From a little googling to try to find the source of this advice, it seems to be linked to stuff that Michael Pollan and others are saying.

This was the second most popular experimonth in terms of votes. In the midst of the suggestions and early voting, my friend Adam commented that “everyone wants to tell you what to eat” and then clarified that he wasn’t talking about my experimonth specifically but society in general.  I do tend to eat a lot of crap.  Fast food from the dollar menu 1-4x per week, usually in unhealthy quantities. Lots of stuff that’s easy to make, from heatups (think hotpockets) though usually enhanced with extra protein and taste enhancers (think Pasta Roni with added salmon from a pouch, red onions and capers). 

I took a walk through the grocery store last week and freaked out finding that some of the simplest things like bread have more than 5 ingredients. Most of my staple foods/meals are now off limits. And snacks, other than peanuts, are a total rethink. Thankfully, co-experimonther Larry assures me that most beers should be fine, according to the spirit of the month. 

The rules and exceptions: I do have two meals (a brunch that happened yesterday and a brunch to come later this month) that were previously planned, where I will not stick to this.  Otherwise, I plan to stick to this for the remainder of the month, which I think means that i won’t be eating out much at all. I’m also not eating stuff in my pantry/fridge bought previously that wouldn’t fit the rules.

The hypotheses: I’m guessing that my food budget may go up a little from buying so many more fresh fruits, meats and vegetables, even taking away my restaurant expenses. I’m also guessing that I’ll have a little bit more energy from eating healthier, and a little bit less time to screw around with the internet because of the extra time spent cooking. I’m guessing that the month leads me to do more cooking in the future, but that I’ll still go back to the convenience and thrift of fast and prepackaged foods when the month is over.