Food Snob

Not only does following a diet plan require the ability to stand out from the crowd, it also requires the pride to rise above the crowd.  That is how peer pressure is defeated.  Now that I eat so differently from my peers at work, I find that I don't enjoy the free food that is offered any more.  The truth is, I haven't been enjoying it for some time, it just took a while for my actions to catch up to my beliefs.  Yesterday, I passed up free fresh pizza for a chicken salad.  I even refused the delicious smelling mini apple pies.  Usually when food is provided for me at work, I leave my homemade lunch for the next day.  However, I was really looking forward to eating my salad, and last week's pizza temptation showed me that pizza is really not worth the taste.  I was rewarded last night when I had a smooth jog around the neighborhood and rewarded again this morning when I woke with plenty of energy.

By snob, I mean that I'm not afraid to turn down free gifts of food.  I don't discourage other people at work from eating pizza and cookies.  I don't have to.  My enjoyment caused from eating healthy food speaks for itself.  If you are trying something different in your life, just remember: people who ridicule you are only jealous that they either don't have the willpower to change or that they didn't think of it first!  You can encourage them by showing that true enjoyment is worth a little extra work.

Pizza invasion

Much as I had a problem giving up ice cream, I am having some trouble giving up pizza.  Not only did I buy a frozen pizza on my last grocery trip, I also cooked it that day.  I ate half of it Sunday for lunch, and have been eating the remaining slices throughout the week.  Once it's cooked, it becomes a convenience food.  Convenience foods have a way of convincing me not to cook something more healthy.

I strive to give the Primal Blueprint a fair try, but I could be failing worse than eating high gluten pizza.  I rationalized the bread component by blaming my exercise.  I have been increasing my jogging time this week.  I can now run most of the path around my neighborhood without feeling like I'm on a death march.  I'm still walking on the really steep hills because slopes are tricky on my joints.  Each day I go out to jog, I find it easier to start up running again after a pause.  Last year, running was an all or nothing activity.  I would jog until I was worn out, then I would have to calm down significantly to be able to jog again.  Now I use a different approach.  I jog until I feel it crosses the line between leisurely stroll and chronic cardio.  At that point, I slow down to a walk.  This keeps my stress level down, and I find that by staying calm, I can actually run farther simply because I worry less about running out of fuel.

There is a good thing that came from my pizza detour: I find that pizza is no longer helpful compared to my meat and plant focused meals.  Bread digests very slowly.  I spent the first two weeks on my Primal Blueprint trial feeling hungry all the time.  When I filled up on pizza, I found that I couldn't eat dinner later because I was still full.  Essentially, I find bread to behave like Dexatrim: all filler, no fuel.  When I fill my plate with vegetables and meat, I am getting a lot of nutrients.  When I load up on bread, I feel like I'm eating empty calories.  It may keep me alive, but it's not helping me grow more healthy.

It's far easier to give something up after seeing the downside.  Pizza's downside is the enormous amount of bread it contains.  That doesn't mean I have to give up pizza forever.  When I went vegan for a week, I made a pizza from scratch that had whole wheat crust and soy cheese.  I found a recipe for pizza crust that uses ground cauliflower, eggs, and cheese.  I will have to try this sometime because I love pizza.  I love the idea of pizza.  It's a food that can contain everything you need in one dish and still tastes amazing.

Better than a protein shake

Hard boiled eggs are very easy to make, affordable, and very high in protein.  My mother used to cook them by boiling them until they were fully cooked--DON'T DO THIS!  Egg yolks turn green and taste like sulfur when they are overcooked, which they will if you boil them too long.

Cooking hard boiled eggs:

1. Put the eggs in a pan and cover with cold water.
2. Cook on high heat until water comes to rolling boil.
3. Remove pan from heat, and let the eggs sit in the hot water for 12 minutes.
4. Drain the water and rinse the eggs in cold water until they are cool enough to handle.
5. Remove the shells.
6. Enjoy tasty hard boiled eggs! Or put them in a container to enjoy them later.

How is this easier than a protein shake?  For starters, I don't need 12 other ingredients just to make the egg edible.  Hard boiled eggs taste good on their own or with a salad or just a bit of mustard, salt, and pepper. They also taste good plain.

I especially like eggs for a protein boost because I know the ingredients and how it was processed.  Protein powders are made from derived milk or plant proteins.  It's really just a supplement that is too big to hide in a tasteless capsule.  I prefer the natural approach: egg + heat = protein.

Time is what you make it

Jogging proves to me that the Primal Blueprint is working.  I actually have the energy to jog for long distances without completely wearing myself out.  This energy is self-perpetuating.  I spend time cooking, and in return, I have enough energy to do what I need to do quickly when I need to.  The only sacrifice I have made so far is spend a little more money on food lately.  I justify the extra expense by labeling this blueprint trial as my current project.  Compared to what I was buying before this trial, it's really not much more since I had been getting very tired all the time and going out to eat more often.  Taking the time to jog, cook, and perform hard labor on lawn care no longer feels like a sacrifice.  Now it feels more like the parts of my day that make life more vibrant.

This extra energy has an effect on my work, too.  I can concentrate much better than I used to.  I can make faster decisions that don't feel like they are panic driven.  I am happy to go to work now.  I feel good when I am there because I know that I have good food to eat, and all my needs are met when I get there.  I don't feel tired from working out too hard, nor do I feel agitated from not exercising at all.

Last year, at this time I was stressed out about finding a job.  When I started working, I was tired all the time from learning a new job and getting used to the 9 to 5 schedule.  Now I consider myself adjusted to the time requirements, and I have enough energy to do what I didn't have time to do last year: grow food at home.  Today I will start my gardening project without the excuse of no time and no energy.  Managing my nutrition has given me time, energy, and the will to use them wisely.

Cooking fat of choice

I used to be obsessed with olive oil. It did not occur to me that it breaks down at high temperatures, making it just as bad as trans fat. It's perfectly healthy for salad dressing. Using olive oil to sauté everything is not the most healthy way to cook.

The primal blueprint suggests using lard as the healthiest cooking fat. However, the blueprint also states that only grain fed organic animals are okay to eat. Butter is one of the borderline okay foods (as are all dairy products). My current take on the primal blueprint is the stick to the main laws and iron out the details later. I can adjust my palette to eating the right foods now, and when I am ready for a new challenge, I will work on improving the sources of my food.

For now, butter -- real butter, not margarine -- is my choice cooking fat. One thing that I didn't understand at first is the portioning. Olive oil is liquid, and I'm accustomed to using about a half tablespoon for a single serving omlet. Butter is solid, so I didn't gauge the serving size right the first few times I tried it. Today I doubled what I had been using, and the food cooked much better. It certainly tasted better than olive oil.

Cooking is a hurdle

Cooking has to be the hardest part of transitioning to a new diet plan. Not because it's difficult to do, but because it is so time consuming. It takes real talent to fit cooking time into a busy schedule when you are trying to cook all your meals from scratch. This is true regardless of whether you are changing to any whole foods diet whether it is primal, vegetarian, vegan, or standard. I could go out to eat for every meal, but that is far more expensive than fixing everything at home and doesn't always save time. I could by prepackaged meals, but that would only increase my intake of preservatives which are abundant in any preprocessed food.

I love the food I cook. The effort I put into cooking makes every bite taste sublime. Occasionally, my appetite gets ahead of my food prep and I go hungry for a few hours while I find and prepare more food. I've heard that if you want to loose weight, you should buy groceries only when you are full. Weight is not my issue. I do better when I shop on an empty stomach sometimes. As I browse fresh produce and meat, new meal ideas start spinning in my head. I try to get a variety of fruit and vegetables throughout the week so I don't get bored of one flavor. I have chicken or eggs as the default meat option for most meals, but when I shop hungry, I can almost taste other meat options just by looking at it. I am often tempted to just buy a pizza for dinner, but I'm honestly trying to give the Primal Blueprint a fair test. I can delay pizza until I feel it would be nutritionally advantageous (i.e. indefinitely). The temporary nature of this primal trial is really helping me to stay focused on the changes I am trying to make.

I don't have much time for cooking in the morning when I make both my breakfast and lunch. This morning I did that and loaded the dishwasher, something I have been putting off for most of the week. I feel like one of those chefs on Chopped or Iron Chef when I start running around the kitchen throwing food in pans, washing dishes, chopping more food, steaming, sautéing, and generally playing with food. Today I figured out I have to really pack lettuce into a container to have enough to satisfy my appetite.

I don't make everything from scratch. I like prepackaged salad greens because it saves me time on food prep and it's prewashed. I also like salad dressing because making condiments from scratch is a level of cooking I have not reached yet. If I want my olives or mushrooms to be sliced, I buy them presliced just to save a few minutes of work. Sure I could save a bit by slicing them myself, but my willpower is more focused on diet changes right now than extreme frugality.

Cooking really is an art

I was cooking eggs the other morning, and some of the egg whites spilled out to form a dolphin shape (at the top).  At least that's what it looks like to me.  The eye is an air bubble.  I was so shocked that I knew I had to take a picture.  This was totally accidental; I did not purposefully engineer this design in any way, nor is it photoshopped (except to orient the picture correctly since my camera took it sideways).

Yes, I ate a dolphin - one made of eggs.  It was delicious.

Beets - The Candy Vegetable

Beets are fantabulous (fantastic + fabulous).  Prior to this year I would never have eaten them on purpose.  My only experience eating beets was many years ago eating them at a farmer's house.  I did not like them, but it was not until recently that I considered they were pickled.  I don't enjoy pickled anything.  The vinegar and salt overwhelm the flavor of the vegetable, mutating it into something it shouldn't taste like.  What made me decide to try beets again was a recipe from Spark People, a diet plan website that I subscribe to occasionally that creates meal plans based on healthy food and recipes.  I was challenged with the recipe of a beet salad.  It was actually the recipe that broke my resolve to stay on the plan.  It called for fresh beets, but I could not find those in the grocery store.  Reluctantly, I bought canned beets even though I thought they would be pickled.  I kept finding substitution recipes to eat instead of the beet salad.  Eventually I gave up on the salad idea, and the beets became just a can taking up space in my pantry.  Several times, I considered just donating the can to various food drives, but I always forgot to get around to it.

Finally, I decided that I was going to throw out the can, but before tossing it out, I would try one.  Beets have a very unique flavor.  The first thing I noticed was that these beets were not pickled, so I kept eating them.  They were very sweet, but they still tasted weird to me.  The odd flavor was too interesting for me to stop trying it.  I have since bought several cans of beets.

The other day however, I found some fresh beets in the organic section of produce.  I decided to bake them as opposed to boiling.  The outside was very rough so I scrubbed it with a veggie brush until it turned red all over.  I cut off the leafy top and the root end.  I found this recipe for baking instructions online and baked them at 400F for an hour.  I stuck them in the fridge to cool.  Once they cooled down, I rubbed off the outer layer of skin to finish them.  They taste so awesome!  They taste (not surprisingly) even better than the canned beets.  The fresh baked beets taste good enough to eat hot or cold, and they are so much sweeter.  I already knew that I would be growing beets in my garden this Spring, but now it's double guaranteed.  Beets are more like dessert than just a vegetable.  I look forward to trying them in more recipes.

The Awesome that is Slow Cooking

Imagine if all it took to have a delicious, savory dinner was to put meat in a pot, add some spices, push a button, and let the meal cook itself.  This is all completely possible with a slow cooker, also known as a crock pot.  I have tried this myself on whole chickens and pairs of Cornish hens with great success each time.  The meat is far more moist than if it were roasted in the oven.  It comes out so tender that the meat is falling off the bone.  Instead of carving the meat off with a knife, I can use a spoon.  My favorite method is to use two wooden spatulas to pry the meat from the bone.

Once you have acquired a slow cooker big enough for a whole chicken, there are 3 things you need to make amazing food.  The first step is to chop up some vegetables.  One onion is sufficient, but you could go further and add some chopped carrots and celery.  I cooked a turkey breast yesterday and had no onions, so instead I used chopped leeks.  It was still very delicious.  The chopped vegetables are the first thing to go into the slow cooker, enough to mostly cover the bottom.

The second step is the seasoning.  Mix it up before getting your hands dirty with the meat.  Paprika is a good start to the herb mixture because it adds a lot of color to the mix.  Garlic powder and onion powder add lots of concentrated flavor to the mix.  Cayenne pepper is good both for color and flavor.  Also add a bit of black pepper and salt just to round out the flavor.  Beyond that any herb would be a great addition.  I enjoy thyme, rosemary, sage, and ginger, usually only one or two per mix, but sometimes I go crazy and add everything.  You could even add cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin, or chili powder.  Whatever floats your boat.  If you enjoy slow cooked meat, you'll likely be doing this a lot since it is so easy.  Try out different combinations each time you cook and see what you like.

The last ingredient is, of course, the meat.  My rule of thumb is to use a whole chicken or something else of equivalent size.  That way I don't have to fiddle with changing the cook time or amount of other ingredients, and I also know how much food to expect.  Clean it, rub it down with the herb mixture, and put it in the slow cooker.  Add the lid, and set the cooker to high power for four hours.  Bon appétit!

Self Made Existence

This morning I enjoyed French toast made from bread that I baked myself.  I made that bread when I was experimenting with polyphasic sleep which gave me the time to bake it.  Essentially, I gave up sleep so that I could enjoy delicious homemade French toast.

Next year, I plan to grow a garden.  Gardening takes a commitment of time that I previously have not expended.  What activity will I have to give up to accommodate that change?  I could give up sleep, but really there's not much point since my work schedule requires me to burn daylight.  I'm not going to garden at night because it's hard to see.  I could give up television.  That is something I've given up for periods of time in the past.  It is completely possible to do it again.  I could also take a good look at everything I do and every distraction and question whether it is important enough to keep me from investing time in homegrown food.

Opportunity cost is a part of every decision.  If I focus on what is truly important to me (growing wholesome food while keeping a day job), then I can start to tune in to opportunities to encourage that goal.  The goal is a statement: I will do this.  Focus is the belief that the goal is important.  In order to focus on my goal, I have to keep two realities in my mind: the reality that results from my completion of the goal, and the reality that results from my failure to do what is necessary to complete my goal. By comparing these two realities, I can make decisions with clarity instead of doubt.  I can overcome fatigue and boredom to reach the success that is waiting on the other side of perseverance.

I can.  I will.  I want to.  That is all it takes to lead a life that I choose instead of the life I am handed.

Night Bread

Now that I'm operating on a polyphasic sleep schedule, I am following my instincts on what to do in the late hours formerly filled by sleep.  I find the easiest thing to do is clean and organize.  My attention is more focused on what is at hand as opposed to what I'll be doing tomorrow.  I notice things around me and things that need attention much more than I used to when I only slept once a day.  While cleaning out the pantry the other day, I found a yeast packet with a bread recipe.  The recipe was very simple, and I already had all the ingredients.  Last night I made bread from scratch.  Cooking is very easy to do in a clutter free kitchen.  My problem before was I never had time to both clean up the clutter and prevent new clutter from immediately taking its place.  Now that I have lots of time and the patience to deal with clutter, I could clean up my kitchen and have space for baking.  Baking the bread gave me something to concentrate on so that I would not get bored and then tired.

I used the extra activity to try to push past midnight and reduce my core sleep.  I stayed up an extra two hours from what I've been doing, but then I slept an hour later than I planned.  The problem with waking up during time which I previously only used for sleep is that my mind does not recognize any pressing need to stay awake.

When I did awake from core sleep, I tried the bread, and it was delicious.  I know that eating bread (especially wheat bread) is not part of the Primal Blueprint plan to eat mostly meat and non-grain plants, but the fact that I made it myself is enough reason to enjoy it.  This bread was much thicker than bread from the store.  It is something I can eat over a long period of time instead of within two or three days as meat and vegetable dishes require.

Even though I overslept a bit (no Pilates this morning), I still feel like I made progress toward the Uberman sleep schedule since I found something to do in between midnight and 2am.  The challenge I face with the sleep reduction is not fatigue, it is finding a use for the time.  I started this plan to see if I could manifest more time for pursuing my interests.  Bread baking is certainly something I would do more often to increase my homemade food supply.

Oatmeal Pancakes from Scratch

I love cooking from scratch.  When I really want to satisfy a particular craving, I can make it even if I don't have the exact ingredients required.  I searched online for oatmeal pancakes, but all the recipes called for buttermilk.  So I looked up how to substitute for buttermilk.  The solution was 3/4 cup of yogurt and 1/4 cup of milk.  I followed the Oatmeal Pancake recipe on allrecipes.com and substituted the buttermilk for a 6 ounce serving of strawberry yogurt and a quarter cup of milk.  I also substituted whole wheat flour for all-purpose.  The batter was thicker than regular pancakes because of the oats so when I put it in the pan, I spread it out evenly flat.  I cooked it at a lower temperature than non-oat pancakes because it took longer for the bubbles to rise through the pancake.  When there were several bubbles, I flipped the pancake and then put a lid on the pan.  Since the pancakes turned out so thick, I used the steam to ensure the inside was cooked.

The result was fruity flavored, delicious, and filling.  I prefer this recipe to a store bought pancake mix.  As an added bonus, I made these pancakes with a local chicken egg.  My husband received some eggs from a coworker who raises her own chickens.