Health Month: Week 2 and 3

For two weeks in a row, I've managed to actually beat my goal of 61 glasses of water a week. It feels good to have goals and to make them, even if they are just small goals.

I've already picked out my rules for next month. I have three different ones. I am thinking that I'm might actually sign up for a paid account and add the vitamin rule and the water rule from this month to next month's.

During the past two weeks, I have had a terrible cold which has made it hard to breath and smell. This has definitely made it easier to complete part of the challenge because I made a huge pot of chili that had spinach in it. Since I can't taste, I've had no desire to vary what I've been eating. I've had chili two meals a day everyday for the past four days.

Now that I've got my sense of taste back, though, I'm thinking I'm going to make my own butternut squash pasta sauce. I have this really simple recipe that I am looking forward to trying. I'm going to put it on some spinach ravioli that they sell in the health food section of the grocery store.

I do have one concern about the rules, though. I am a little concerned, with rules like "eat greens every day" that I may not be getting enough variety in my diet because I'm eating the same things over and over again. (This week in particular.) That being said, if I'm going to be stuck in a rut eating something, it might as well be spinach.

Let's play a little game...

It's called "Guess How Much My Grocery Bill Was Today." I haven't been to the store in almost two months for a trip that didn't involve buying alcohol, soda, and frozen pizza only (that sounded bad, I'm not an alckie, I promise). Do you want to know what today's combined total is from two grocery stores (the Co-op and Hy-Vee)?

$319.54

And that's US dollars.

GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

What can I say - I was seduced by the fruit (problem #1), by having absolutely NO staples in the kitchen except soy sauce and packaged tuna (problem #2), and by having to purchase things like flour and canola oil to bake with because what I had on hand was 3+ years old and skunky (problem #3).

I must rectify this overspending in the future.

Problem #1: Next time I do not need 3 pints of strawberries, I don't bake with them (omg, they look so good *drools*). Fruit is good for me so I will need to buy plenty of fruit in future but perhaps in not so much quantity.

Problem #2: The grocery bills of >$300 would be more spread out over multiple trips to the store if I actually went more than 6 times per year (current average). I would be better able to manage usage of staples that way, too.

Problem #3: If I cook more then I won't have skunky flour. Ergo, ...

On a side note - I AM BAKING!!! Hahahahahaha!!

I'm not sure what got into me but there are raspberry pecan muffins in the oven RIGHT NOW! Yummy (the recipe is from the EarthBound Organic Farm Cookbook, Food to Live By)!!

Long Days

So, all that progress I made over the summer when I had all that time to freak myself out about weight and other things has been partially undone in the last few weeks. The semester started. Tuesday starts week 5 (we don't have class tomorrow because of Yom Kippur). I'm taking four classes, I'm the president of my department's graduate student organization and I have a part time job. Needless to say, I'm a little busy.


And, my eating habits has gone to hell. To absolute hell. At least once a week in the past three weeks I've had a meal that consisted solely of dry toast (and at least once this has happened twice in one day). And, each time this came about by me opening the fridge, looking at the raw ingredients, considering the effort to make a quick stir-fry, closing the fridge and making toast. I've also eaten a lot of meat and cheese sandwiches. This is ridiculous because I have all these great fruits and vegetables in my fridge from my CSA share. Also, fruit and veg don't keep indefinitely, so I have to do something about them! So, today I am (despite the fact that in addition to my normal amount of work for this week, I just realized that the article I'm supposed to read for a lab meeting on Friday is seventy-one pages long.). I have a potato leek soup in my crock pot (made with whole milk instead of cream and with swiss chard added.) I have beets roasting in my oven, which will then by whipped into a soup as well. I have also pickled onions today and made zucchini bread. Most of these things will be going to straight into my freezer (or the cupboard), so that later in the semester when my CSA share is done for the season, I'm working on papers and I'm completely unhinged with stress all I have to remember how to do is thaw and microwave. At some point today, I'm heading out to a liquor store in order to purchase brandy. I'm then going to brandy some stone fruits I have. I've never done this before, and even though I've looked at recipes I'm going to wing it. My brandied fruit will probably only be good over ice cream or in brandied fruit smoothies, but whatever. The point is I'm not wasting the fruit and maybe this winter I won't be paying (completely) through the nose for vitamins. Maybe.

But, does it have to be so chewy?

I was struck yesterday by a sudden desire for baked goods and chocolate. (Really, what I wanted was an oreo. Except, when was the last time you had a single oreo?) So, I did some digging and I found a recipe through ediets for brownies made with splenda (I don't know if that link will work if you're not a registered member). Of course, I monkeyed around with the recipe because I can't leave well enough alone.


The recipe is meant to make twenty-four 200 calorie brownies and it suggests that you immediately freeze half of them. I think this plan has merit. Or, would do if these were anything I'd want to have to parcel out and enjoy for an extended period of time. Let's take a look at some of the changes I made and why they may have been a bad idea.

The recipe called for egg substitute. Now, I love eggs and don't particularly see the need for fake eggs. Also, I have real eggs in my house because I find an egg mixed with onions and some frozen spinach to be a great breakfast. I don't think any of my problems stemmed from the egg substitution. Then, it called for canola-based trans-fat free margarine. I only have the spray margarine and shortening and the real deal in my house, so I had to come up with something else (or use shortening.) I had an open jar of apple sauce that I'm trying to finish before it goes all furry and gross. I used that. This could have been my undoing. I didn't have baking chips in my house, so I left them out. (This is not entirely true. I do have white chocolate chips from well-played cupcake experiment. But, I didn't feel white chocolate fit in with the overall recipe.) The last thing that was different from the recipe was that my cocoa powder is the Hershey's Special Dark powder. Its cocoa powder, and therefore not a substitute, so I didn't think a thing about it.

The recipe itself was super easy. You mix the chocolate and the fat and then you fold in the splenda, eggs and flour. Piece of cake. Into the bowl, into the pan, and into the oven it went.

I had a moment of...cognitive dissonance when the brownies came out of the oven. My flat smelled like tasty, tasty brownies. But, the brownies looked like they had burnt to a crisp. It would seem that the Special Dark cocoa powder is not lying to you when it says its Special and Dark. It is hard to tell from this photo I took with my mobile, but you can see a contrast between the matte black brownies and my china.






Despite being In-Space-No-one-Can-Hear-You-Scream dark, they weren't overly chocolaty. In fact, they were only so-so chocolaty. This was a disappointment. In addition, they had the trying-too-hard chemical aftertaste common to items sweetened with a compound not found in nature. I know it would change the calorie count, but I think next time I may have to blend the splenda with some actual sugar.

The last complaint I have about this food experiment is absolutely my own fault for mucking about with the recipe. They were too chewy and I'm pretty sure this is due to the apple-sauce-for-fat substitution. I like replacing apple sauce for the fat in baked goods, usually. You get the moisture. You are, ostensibly, getting another fruit in. And, by and large, I usually don't notice a difference. You do get a small amount of textural difference in that shortening creates a moist yet, crumbling feeling in a baked good, but I find that the moisture is really what is key and you get that in spades. But these brownies just turned out...chewy. They look like brownies (albeit, burnt ones), they smell like brownies, they are chocolaty like brownies, but they're just not right. Close, yet so far away. Recently, on the Film Noir Experience I talked about when one thing reminds you of something else, but its not quite right. These brownies are like that, only they don't remind you of something, they are something. And, that something was poorly executed. In short, they were disappointing. But, as last minute, made from stuff I had in my home, under 200 calorie treats, they did the trick.