Sunday Letters

Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

21 Day Challenge Reboot

heather

It’s January 2014, and you know what that means – resolutions!!  I won’t share all the nitty gritty details, but like most folks, my resolutions revolve around living a healthier, more fulfilling, happier life.  To start the year off on the right foot, I’m doing another 21 Day Challenge.  Why would I do this after being paleo for almost 2 years?  Well, the whole 80/20 thing is a slippery slope, for one thing.  It’s very difficult to be specific about what 80/20 means.  In theory it means eating a cookie maybe once a week, or having a beer here and there.  In practice, however, for me at least it means eating too many sweets, too much gluten, and drinking too many drinks, all under the guise of “20%.”

So I’m doing the 21 Day Challenge again for several reasons.  I want to reboot my system to reduce sugar cravings.  I want to eat clean for 21 days and see if my allergies (which still bother me a little) and skin improve.  Also, in winter I tend to eat just as much as I do in the summer, but my activity level is much, much less (due to days with only 11 hours of daylight and sub-zero temps).  Over the past couple of months I’ve seen the effects of this, not in any weight gain, but in body composition.

With those goals in mind, I’m starting the 21 Day Challenge tomorrow.  To help keep me on track, I will post my food diary and exercise log here on this blog.  To most people I know this will be boring, but for those wondering what a primal lifestyle looks like, it might be helpful.  Plus, selfishly, posting this information publicly will help keep me on the straight and narrow.

With that said, I better sign off, so I can get my solid 8 hours of sleep tonight!

Health & Fitness, Paleo

Vacation Woes

heather

Teem and I just returned from a monster road trip to Phoenix.  All of Tim’s family lives down there, and it was time for us to visit them again.  We looked at plane tickets, and when we added the cost of the tickets to the cost of renting a car, we were looking at an outlay of $1100.  We knew we could drive it for about $400 + 2 hotel rooms, halving the cost of the journey.  Plus, if we drove we could take our ancient chihuahua, Lucent, and our bicycles with us.  So drive we did.  Over the course of 8 days we drove 48 hours.  We drove for a full-time work week.

We drove down on Christmas day.   By the time we arrived at our stopover town of Amarillo, the only restuarants that were open were Denny’s and IHOP.  We strolled into Denny’s at 9PM, expecting to be able to sit down, relax, and recover from our road weariness.  Instead, we walked into a packed entry way, no hostess in site, and all the tables filled with patrons waiting for food.  WHY was everyone in Amarillo eating out at Denny’s at 9PM on Christmas??  We said, to quote my mom, “Nuts to that noise,” and drove over to IHOP.  The situation was only slightly better there.  The hostess was in effect, at least, but she informed us that there would be a 45 minute wait.  We turned around and headed back to the hotel.  In an attempt to not go wholly off the rails whilst on vacation, I had packed road trip snacks – nuts, dark chocolate chips, figs, grapefruit, hard boiled eggs, and oranges.  We had already plowed through a lot of the food, but we made a bastard supper of grapefruit, eggs, and free cookies from the front desk.  By this time of the evening, we were both tired, hungry, irritable, and full of a weird mish mash of food.  Fortunately, our moods were better in the morning, and we made short work of the remaining trip from Amarillo to Tempe.

Once we arrived, we welcomed the sun, the warmth, and the family.  We had a good time over the course of the next few days – biking, running, hiking, playing games, and shopping at all the stores we don’t have here (Whole Foods, Trader Joes, etc.).  We also ate A TON of food.  Since we were on vacation and since I’ve been more lax in my diet lately in general, I pretty much ate whatever I wanted.  The day after we arrived, I had low-gluten pancakes for breakfast and then for supper indulged in bites of fries, bites of home-made pop-tarts, 1/2 a cookie, 1.5 slices of pizza, a sweet digestif, wine, a manhattan, a paleo cookie, etc.  By the time we got on the light-rail train to head home, my stomach was feeling pretty off.  I was also feeling pretty hot.  I have a history of passing out, and I quickly recognized I was in danger.  I moved over to an empty seat, took off my coat and sweater and fought furiously to maintain consciousness.  Tim saw the sweat start to soak through my shirt and watched the blood leave my face and came over to fan me.  Eventually the tunnel vision cleared, and I was able to focus and hear again.  Ugh.  This is what happens when I don’t treat my body correctly.

I ate much better over the course of the next few days.  I still didn’t feel awesome just because when you are with a varied group of people, you want things to be easy as possible, so you make compromises.  Also, it’s hard to poop at other peoples’ houses.  Especially when you don’t get your coffee & coconut oil when you wake up.  🙂

But now we are home.  We are still in leftover vacation mode, but starting on Monday we are doing a clean up.  I’m looking forward to it!!  Our gym membership expired in December.  It’s super expensive to renew it, so we are going gym-less for January, and then we’ll sign up for Feb – May, so that we can train at the pool for the triathlon in June.  So we’ll really need to eat better since we won’t be able to work out like we want.

Today is going to be the nicest day for the next 4-5 days (30 degrees), so we are going to run today.  And then we are going to hibernate until at least next Tuesday.  Over the next few days it’s supposed to get to something like 40 below with the windchill.  UGH.  The only thing keeping me sane is my faux sun-light and the knowledge that every day, even if it’s insanely cold, is going to get longer and longer.  Eventually I will feel sun on my arms and legs again!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

The Perfection of Simplicity

heather

Today was a day for simple, tasty, home-cooked meals.  For breakfast I just scrounged around in the fridge and ended up sauteeing cauliflower, green onions, and garlic in olive oil.  I added some turmeric and salt and pepper.  Once that was done, I fried two over-easy eggs and added that to the top of the veggies.  DEEElicious.

For lunch we had another simple, yet delicious, meal.  My mom gave us a whole flat of homemade canned tomatoes.  When we were kids I remember dumping a jar of tomatoes into a sauce pan, and once they were hot, dousing them with pats of butter and tons of salt and pepper.  I followed that tried and true recipe today, with a few minor exceptions.  I added some basil and garlic powder to the tomatoes.  Tim fried up some grass-fed hamburgers, and when those were done, we chopped them up, poured the soup over them, topped the soup with some grass-fed butter, and wow.  Super tasty, super easy, super perfect Saturday afternoon lunch.  And cheap too!  Especially since the tomatoes were free (thanks, Mom :)).

For supper we hit up Granite City, intending to go to a movie afterwards.  Tim got a salad, and I got chicken wings. He got one drink, and I got two.  Forty bucks later, and we are both slower, poorer, and likely unhealthier.  But we did have fun together, which is definitely worth something.

In January we are going to try to follow a stricter budget.  We want to see if we can afford a slightly bigger house (with a bigger kitchen – yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!), and we also want to save for a trip to some tropical location with oceans and beaches and lots and lots of gorgeous, uplifting, make-me-happy sun.  As a result, we’ll need to watch our food budget much more closely. In my brains I know that eating at home is much healthier, and much cheaper, but in my vane little heart I like to go out, be around people, see and be seen and spend $40 eating sometimes tasty food.  I need to make up my mind where my priorities lie!!  Money, unfortunately, is pretty much a zero-sum game.

Cooking/Recipes, Paleo

Soup Season!

heather

It’s cold here in Iowa, and I just baked a turkey, which means I made bone broth, which means I had 6 cups of stock!  So we made soup!

I had a frustrating day on Tuesday.  You know, one of those days where you are unhappy for no discernable reason.  Life is all grey and bleak, and you can’t imagine ever finding joy in life ever again.  Well this was the day I slated to take off from work early and run all my errands left undone from 5 days of having company at our house.  My first errand was to ship a package back to my brothers.  Whenever they come home, they stock up on all the cheap Iowa stuffs and ship a box back to NYC.  More to the point, I ship the box back.  Well I took the box to UPS, and when they asked me what was in it, I honestly replied, “I’m not sure – clothes, shoes, maybe some whiskey?”  That was the wrong answer.  Evidently no one will ship alcohol for a consumer.  Which meant I had to take the package back home, untape it, remove the whiskey (drink it), tape it back up and ship it.  Not a huge deal but annoying nonetheless.

Next I went to a clothing store to return a gift that we bought for my dad that didn’t fit – another disappointing errand.  Then I got a text from my brother with a picture of the Nesco roaster oven we bought for him.  Amazon shipped the “stadium” version to him (which is a green & yellow monstrosity), instead of the enameled red version I ordered.  Again, annoying.  Then I headed up to Plato’s Closet to try to sell a beautiful Fossil handbag that I never use any more and to try to find some jeans that fit correctly.  I tried on 6 pairs of jeans in the stifling, tiny dressing room (with no 3-way mirrors!!  How can you buy jeans without seeing what your butt looks like??).  None of them worked, of course, and Plato’s declined to buy my bag.

The afternoon started to turn around when I went to Target and discovered that they are restocked with Himalyan Salted Dark Chocolate covered almonds.  They are sinfully delicious.

Finally, I came home.  I opened the back door to reveal a spic and span kitchen and Tim working on making Cauliflower and Roaster Garlic Soup.  Immediately my dark spirits started to lift.  Tim kindly listened to me rant about the little annoyances of the day and assured me that I was justified in my feelings.  And suddenly, I was Happy Heather again.  The soup turned out SUPER tasty.  We cut up leftover brats from the night before and added that to the soup.  We ate it ALL.  That is my only complaint.  This soup is rather a lot of work (and dirties a lot of dishes) for only 1 meal.  Next time we make this, we are going to double the recipe.

That recipe used up 2 cups of stock, so I decided to make more soup last night to use the rest.  I made this recipe for Autumn Soup.  As is my custom, I often don’t fully read a recipe before I start cooking it.  As I started making this one, I realized that not only did I get a green pepper instead of a serrano pepper, but the recipe called for an assortment of sweet spices.  I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for a soup with nutmeg and cinnamon in it.  So I decided to go off the rails and experiment!  Instead of using a serrano pepper, I used 2 green peppers.  I ignored all the spices except for salt and pepper and added 1/2-1 teaspoon each of basil, oregano, and thyme instead.  I also just scooped the cooked squash right into the soup instead of chopping it up.  It mixed into the stock and made it thicker.  Finally, instead of using bacon, I browned some sausage and added that to the soup at the very end.  And guess what – it was delicious!!  Oh!  And I didn’t puree the soup.  We don’t have an immersion blender, and transferring batches of hot soup to the blender is tedious and dangerous.  Plus when we eat pureed soup it seems to take A LOT of it to fill us up.  We are chunky soup people.

So there you go.  Now I better sign off to go prep my beef roast for the slow cooker today. I’m trying Primal Beef Enchiladas again today.  Hopefully I won’t burn it this time.  Wish me luck.  🙂

Cooking/Recipes

Cauliflower and Eggs – Yes, it’s tasty!

heather

I ran across this recipe on Chris Kresser’s blog:  Lebanese Cauliflower Omelet.  I was intrigued by the use of cauliflower with eggs and with cinnamon as a spice.  I made it up for breakfast on Saturday, and it turned out quite tasty!  However, I don’t know if it’s because I added ham or if it’s because I misread the directions and cooked the green onions and parsley IN the omelet, but I had to bake mine for 50 minutes instead of the 15-20 minutes specified in the recipe.

I liked the ingredient combo so much that I did a spin-off this morning.  I mixed up 3 eggs, added cauliflower, coconut milk, cinnamon, and some diced onions and added the whole slew to a hot skillet teaming with olive oil.  I scrambled it until cooked.  It was pretty good; however, the cauliflower got cooked better in the omelet, so we both liked that variation better.

It was a busy weekend, cooking wise.  We are trying a new recipe for turkey this Thanksgiving.  Since our dry-brined roasted chicken is so delicious, we decided to take the same tack with turkey.  We’re following this recipe.  Hopefully it will turn out good!

Hope you had a great weekend!

Cooking/Recipes

The Sleepy Choo

heather

My brothers are coming home over Thanksgiving, so just for fun I made up a menu for them of all my favorite things.  It was actually a really fun little project – one of those things you do where you lose track of time and all of the sudden it’s 8:30 and time to go bed!  Here it is, for your perusal.  Sleepy_Choo_Menu_Nov_2013  If any of you win a bazillion dollars and want to kickstart The Sleepy Choo, hit me up in the comments. 😉

I tried another new recipe tonight:  Lamb Sliders with Ginger Cilantro Aioli.  This recipe had a lot of steps.  You have to make the sliders, slice the sweet potatoes whilst trying not to slice off your fingertips with the mandoline, season them, bake them, and then make homemade mayo.  AND then! chop up  jalapeno, grate ginger, chop cilantro and then add it all to the mayo.

Then when everything is done, you have to stack it all up and eat it up yum.  Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it was a pretty delicious meal.  My only complaint is I now have 3/4th cup of aioli that I have to use up within 3 days.  It IS delicious stuff.   We’re just going to have to put aioli on everything for the next 3 days – eggs, salmon, oatmeal, ham, everything.

If you want some aioli, stop on over!

Cooking/Recipes

Cookin’ and home shoppin’

heather

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything – sorry about that.  I was in NYC with my bros weekend before last, and then after that I got obsessed with finding a new home and couldn’t really focus on anything productive.  Our current home is a cute little number, almost perfect for Tim, Lucent, and me.  It has tons of character, nice bones, and beautiful hard-wood floors.  However, as you know if you read this blog, I kind of like to cook.  And I rather like having people over to eat my cooking.  Our 791 sq foot house is not very conducive to this, however.  We have a galley kitchen that is a tight fit for Tim and me, much less any company.  We only have 2 bedrooms and one bathroom, which works out fine except for the fact that ALL of our relatives live elsewhere – anywhere from Monticello 1.5 hours away to New York City to Phoenix, AZ.  As a result of our dispersed family, we have visitors staying with us at least 4-6 times per year.  Within about 2 days, it gets to be quite cozy (aka overwhelming).

I added up all these thoughts, tossed in my life-long desire to build my dream home, and decided to meet with a local builder who builds quality, well-built houses.  I’m still not sure if it was a good idea to meet with him or not.  We discovered that we can, in fact, build exactly what we want.  However, it will cost us at least $50,000 more than we really want to spend, and we will have to sacrifice our excellent location in central Davenport (close to the bike path and within walking distance of the grocery store, parks, and restaurants).  So now I’m even more confused about what to do.  Options are my bane.

To further complicate the issue, Tim and I looked at existing houses for sale over the weekend.  In the neighborhoods we like (central or east D, close to the River Drive bike path or Duck Creek bike path), the houses are all either super expensive ($190K for a house from the 1950s that needs new windows, siding, etc.), or smelly (cat pee, anyone??), or oddly put together.

So we are back to square one – spend $50K more than we want (but can technically afford) or stay in our little house that is perfect for us pretty much 80% of the time.  My www.mrmoneymustache.com-reading self says this is a no brainer.  Stay here, pay off this house in 7-10 years and enjoy decades of NO HOUSE PAYMENTS.  My recent philosophical readings of The Power of Now and A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy both dictate that instead of focusing on how nice it would be to have a bigger, better, more functional house, I focus on how much I love our current house, how cute it is, what a great location it is, how comfy it is.  I recognize this with my brain, but my stupid heart still wants its 3 bedroom, 2 bath, open floor plan house painted in lovely shades of chocolate and grey with cedar shake siding.  It would be all kinds of adorable and awesome.  So, which Heather will win??  I’m thinking the brainy one, because Tim is more on her side.  Maybe some day a long-lost relative will leave me a bazillion dollars, and then I can have my perfect little house.  If there’s one thing Stoicism has taught me, it’s if you just get the one, last perfect thing that you really, really want, you will be happy. 😉

In between looking at janky expensive houses and trying to figure out how frugal I could really be if it meant Hlo getting a new house, I tried a couple of new recipes.

Buffalo chicken egg muffins:  These little bastards were all sorts of delicious and easy.  Make them post haste.  This recipe will definitely stay in my repertoire.  My only note on this recipe – I added 2 full chicken breasts, and I ended up with 10 muffins instead of 6.  So be prepared.

Everyday Paleo Chile Verde:  I made this yesterday, and Tim was a huge fan!  He really liked the flavor.  It was very limey.  I thought it was good, but it didn’t blow me away.  It seemed to be a lot of work too!  The kitchen (the small, galley kitchen with very little work space, remember??) was a disaster, and I literally got a blister on my finger from cutting up the pork. I think I need sharper knives.  It also gave us verde poop.  All in all, though, I would make this again.  I’ll just make Tim cut up the pork next time.

And that’s been our past week or two.  Exciting stuff, eh??  Well, I better sign off so I can start doing some internet research about how to start making money on the internet in my spare time.  🙂

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

Fall Cookin’

heather

It’s Fall.  That means:

1.  I want to bake all the time.  I made these pumpkin muffins again on Saturday, and by Sunday evening they were goners.  I found this article with 33 recipes that all sound fantastic.  I think I’m going to have to make this one tonight.  I’m in love with pumpkin.

2. It’s dark.  Like all the time.  I packed up my backpack last night with every intention of hitting the pool this morning before work. But, I woke up, and it’s cold and dark outside, and I decided that shopping for boots was a better use of my time.  I saved $80 by shopping this morning!  Amazon is offering 25% off boot purchases over $100, so I ordered these. If they end up working out, they will be my 4th pair of Fryes.  I have their Carson Oxfords, their Carson Ballet Flats, and the Campus Boot.  Yes, they are expensive, but I have yet to actually wear out a pair of their footwear!!  We’ll see how these boots work out.  I’m going to NYC on Thursday to visit my bros, and I NEED some awesome boots with which to impress them.

3.  I want to eat all the stuffs.  Our office is rife with leftover Halloween candy.  It’s horrible.  Fortunately this insatiable desire to eat has motivated me to try some new recipes.  I made this Primal Ham Bone Soup on Sunday.  My mom got us some beautiful, unique squash (squashes??), so I chopped some of those up and put them into the soup.  I also added some smoked ham hocks.  I put the works in the Nesco at about 7AM Sunday morning, and by 2PM, we had delicious soup.  The squash completely disappeared!  I think it melded with the broth.

I wanted to make buns to go with the soup because there isn’t anything better than buttered buns and ham soup.  This Paleo Dinner Rolls recipe sounded delicious, and the picture of the rolls made my mouth water.  Well, I broke our 1 cup Pyrex measuring cup, so I had to use our 2 cup measuring cup.  The measurement indicators are, to say the least, confusing.  I think I ended up adding twice as much water & oil as required.  The dough was not doughy AT ALL.  It was barely the consistency of go-gurt.  I tried to salvage the concoction by pouring the batter into a loaf pan and baking it. I baked it for 60 minutes.  The top and bottom paper-thin layers were salty & delicious, and the middle was just straight up gelatinous.  Gross.  I will have to try these again with the proper measurements next time.

Hopefully we’ll have an easy winter this year, so that we can still get outside and exercise and see the sun.  I’m already getting depressed, and it’s only November 4.  I’m doubling up on my Vitamin D supplements to see if that helps.  I think a contributing factor to my downsies is the fact that I just finished a huge project at work and am feeling rather listless.  It was nice, albeit stressful, to have something all consuming in your life for awhile.  It relieved me of the need to think about and plan out how to spend my time.  Now I have no excuses!  Maybe I’ll take my new-found mental freedom and watch seasons 2 and 3 of Downtown Abbey.  I do have an afgan that needs crocheted!

And that’s it for the evening.  I’m taking my boot-shopping, TV-watching, dessert-baking self to bed.  Adios!

Cooking/Recipes, Paleo

It’s 6:10 AM, and I’ve destroyed the kitchen already

heather

Teeeemsy Tee and I had a bit of excitement yesterday.  We has a super gorgeous snowstorm hit yesterday, complete with huge flakes of sopping wet snow.  Well, all the trees here in Iowa still have their leaves, and the trees are already stressed from a very dry summer. The branches of our neighbor’s soft maple could no longer sustain the weight of the snow, and down they came on top of our breakfast nook, ripping out our power on their way down.  Fortunately, the branches didn’t break any windows, and we don’t think they damaged the roof (still need to check that out today).  And our neighbor, who felt SUPER bad about the whole thing, stayed outside all night in the cold, wet snow and chopped down the branches that had fallen against our house.  We think we’ll just need to pay to get a gutter fixed.  It could have been much, much worse.

However, this all went down yesterday around lunch time, and I was planning on putting this in the Nesco roaster for supper:  Primal Beef Enchiladas.  I had all the ingredients chopped, the meat was already seasoned, my tastebuds were already watering.  But – no dice!  No power, no Nesco.  This particular roast was a 4 pounder I picked up at the Farmers Market for $25.  All afternoon at work I was worried about the state of the food in our fridge and freezer – we are primarily invested in the stock market and meat.  If it looked as if the power was going to be off for an extended period, I was prepared to co-opt the fridge at work to save my food.

Fortunately, when I got home at 5 the utility company was already working on our line. We went out for supper, and by the time we got home at 7, the power was back on.  The fridge seemed…coldish, so we deemed its contents safe.  The only disturbing thing we noticed was that the whole fridge smelled like the baggie of garlic & onions that I had chopped up the night before. Nothing some baking soda can’t rectify.

Well, work is insane this week, so I figured I better seize opportunity where I can, so I cooked up the enchilada sauce and seared the meat this morning and then tossed the works in the Nesco (which you can set at exactly 325).  Tim is going to check it around 10AM today.  Hopefully it turns out tasty.  Hopefully it won’t kill us with some weird warm-fridge food-born bacteria.  Wish us luck!

And if you feel like being annoyed at humanity, read the comments posted on the recipe I linked to above.  Mark provided this super tasty-sounding recipe, but many of the commentors choose to ignore that piece of kindness and focus on the fact that these are not true “enchiladas.”  Who cares???  Jesus, people!  Show some appreciation.  I, for one, don’t care what the recipe is called.  I just care that it’s delicious.  🙂

BTW, can you tell Tim and I have been re-watching Firefly?

UPDATE:

So.  I burned the roast.  By the time Tim got home, the roast was already burnt all along the edges.  🙁  Super big bummer.  Fortunately he was able to salvage quite a bit of the meat.  But the sauce was a goner.  We had some of the meat for supper, and the flavor was great.  I think that this recipe is worth making again, but I will have to cook it in the oven next time.  Lesson learned. 🙂

Cooking/Recipes

My first rib foray

heather

We got some country-style ribs with the hog that we had slaughtered, so I figured I better try my hand at cooking them up.  My friend makes ribs in the crockpot and says they are the bees knees, so I melded his advice with a paleo recipe:  Oven -Baked Paleo Pork Ribs.  I used the recipe as a guide for the rub, but instead of baking the ribs, I put them in the Nesco Roaster and let them slow cook all day at about 200 degrees.  When I got home around 5, the house smelled amazing, and the ribs were super tender.  I foolishly poured out all the liquid that had cooked out of them. That pork fat mixed with the spice rub would have tasted delicious poured over the ribs or added to some stir-fried rice!

While the ribs rested I set to work on the Paleo BBQ sauce.  It turned out horrible.  The recipe didn’t call for ANY sugar (or any paleoish subs like honey or maple syrup), which seemed odd for a BBQ sauce, so I added some coconut sugar.  I don’t know what I did wrong (did the sugar spoil it??), but the sauce was super tangy and bitter.  Bleh!

So, to get to the point.  The rub was fabulous, and I’ll definitely make it again.  The sauce was horrible, and I hope to never see it’s face again.