Sunday Supper

(Somewhere between picture and uploading it went hazy. Le sigh. One day I'll have a rockin' camera....)

Quron Cranberry and Goat Cheese Chik'n Cutlet (see here) with a salad (baby spinach, spring greens, and another leaf with cucumbers, avocado, tomatos, and cheese) topped with a cherry balsalmic with rosemary. The dressing is SUPER tasty. A new brand we picked up at the store yesterday (New Seasons if you are curious).

Even though I had planned on a soup things but my house was incredibly uncooperative so I went for quick and easy. Surprisingly wonderful in flavor and filling. We love Quorn brand. Only downfall of the chik'n cutlets is the shape on one side. There is a hump on it which, in my mind, makes cooking uneven. Irritating but I imagine only for the perfectionist. :)

So far....

well I'd like to say so good but I'll be honest. I have not been doing as well as I had hoped. Baby steps though right? While I haven't stopped the outside sugar I have reduced it a ton and that's big.

We are currently in Oregon and it's making me hungry. Sounds goofy I know but there is something about sunlight that makes food appealing. :) One of the employees we have is apparently fond of one of my soups. Fond may not be a strong enough term actually. On a recent trip I sent the spouse with 6.5 QUARTS of said soup. Please take the time and reread that sentence. 6.5 QUARTS. Said employee actually called on behalf of herself and some other employees to request I send some. How's that for an ego boost? The spouse? He got maybe 2 or 3 of them. The said employee? She inhaled the rest. By herself. Generally in one sitting. I met her just recently as her and the spouse needed to go do bank stuff. She asked him to ask me (because as she said, she was too embarassed to ask me herself) if I would personally make her a personal batch. We aren't sure if she is sharing with her boyfriend as the way she talks about it makes it sound like she isn't.

I'm making a fresh batch tonight (though not due to her...it was meal planned in (: ) so I will get pictures and the recipe written down and share it. It started with a google search one day and has just been tailored to fit our likes. Nothing special (or so I thought).

What's your poison?

Mine is apparently sugar. I had mentioned to a friend the other day that I really needed to cut back on my sugar intake (junk versions such as drinks and "treats"). She asked what I thought I consumed a day so I did a quickie count on just the couple drinks I had had that day. I LOVE teas (two in particular) so I figured it would be high. It was. Or so I thought. For some reason I didn't think to look at the serving size on the bottle label. One bottle/package is NOT one serving for most things. A label caught my eye as I was making dinner tonight that made me realize my counting error. Turns out what I thought I was consuming wasn't even the tip of the iceburg. Far from it. In fact the measly amount I originally counted up would be the equivalent of the part of the iceburg you find floating beneath the surface (no, I won't tell you the real amount). To say I'm disgusted with it all would be an understatement. What kills me is I've watched all the food documentaries and read the studies and books that SHOW how bad excessive sugar consumption is for you. My body is walking proof of it right now. While I'm by no means in bad shape outwardly I know this is not my normal nor healthy.

According to one study I found tonight, the average American consumes 7% of their daily calories in soft drinks alone. That's 140 calories on average a day (about 3 tablespoons). In liquid sugar. Makes my teeth hurt thinking about it and yet I'm not even batting an eye as I drink tea after tea and soda after soda. There for a bit I was doing so good! I used to drink Pepsi by the truck load and had managed to stop and was drinking only water (something I've never been good at). My skin was looking awesome (and I was attributing that to something else), I had normal sleep patterns, I had energy etc. Can I attribute all the issues I've been having to something else? I'm sure I could BUT (there's always a but) the times I've been low/no sugar everything has not been there. Coincidence? I think not.

I'm going back to no sugar. I'm not going to go militant and nix it from foods (especially since I bake our bread which requires sugar to feed/activate my yeast) but I am going to stop the "outside" amounts...no more soda or teas or quickie treats. I'd like to say I could do it cold turkey but I can't. You see, I've had headaches for over a decade (oh lord I'm old enough to say that) now that can be exacerbated and/or lessened by what I eat. Caffeine is a lessener. I'm going to wean myself so that when March rolls around I'm sugar free. I'll start my sugar free count beginning March first. That means I have 10 days to get my act together. I know it'll be hard if I think about it (don't think, just do) but in the end I'll be much happier. I suppose I should start being active again as well. ;)

Happy Valentine's Day

Fresh from the oven! Just waiting on them to cool down so they can be frosted. I wanted cinnamon rolls AND something festive for the kiddos so I shaped these into hearts. Oh so clever huh? ;)

Recipe here.

Mmmm kefir!

Looks tasty huh? Those are my purtty little kefir grains (milk...you can get water ones too). A friend sent them to me recently. We had been talking about supplements (she's for them, I'm generally not) and she mentioned she had some she could send me. I said okie dokie since I know kefir is supposed to be good for you and I know the girls will drink it. I've done two batches so far. The first one was small and was half milk and half heavy cream. Holy cow was that some sweet smelling fermentation! The second batch was larger and just milk. The girls didn't like that one as much (go figure). I ended up using most of it in a loaf of banana bread. These things are pretty cool and as soon as they grow a bit I'm sending some to the older sister. My neice is on the Feingold diet right now and kefir is something she can tolerate. It's not cheap though! I'm hoping they grow here soon. For the curious here are some links:

Kefir and some quickie info
Recipes using kefir (I used the banana bread recipe found there...not sure I like it but hey, it's a free cookbook!)
More good info...lots of interesting facts on this one!

Sometimes I eat on Saturday...

*bonus points if you name the movie ;)*

I sure do know how to dissapear huh? I'm not even going to pretend that I 1. remember everything I've wanted to blog about foodwise or 2. that I'll do it. It's been too long and honestly, I lost my steam there for a bit. I'm getting back on track now though so I figure I should be posting again. :)

I've been in a baking food lately. I wish I had gotten pictures but last week I did cornbread and banana bread. The banana bread stayed moist and springy for over a week despite being kept on the counter and obviously cut into. I'm guessing my bananas were perfect for it at the time. Knowing I wanted to try my hand at bread again (it's a love hate thing) I got everything needed for a basic white bread.

I started some tonight using this recipe and so far so good. My dough rose so much when I deflated it it hissed at me. This is a good thing! It also rose so much that instead of 2 loaves worth I have 4. I am waiting for the 2 to finish their final rising so I can bake them and I stuck the rest of the dough in the freezer. I'm hoping we like the flavor because I rather like the recipe. It seems fiddly and it is to an extent but so far the dough it makes is awesome so I'm willing to deal with fiddly.

I got a book from the library today that is making me want to cook so bad right now. It's The Joy of Cooking: All About Vegetarian Cooking. It has some history/"traditional" facts and some practical advice (like a food pyramid for vegetarians). I'm not a cookbook fan. I don't like the clutter and the amount of space they take up etc. and I want to buy this. The recipes look fantastic and I honestly can't say there isn't one I don't plan on trying. It has a variety of recipes from soup stock to pasta and salads. It uses real stuff too...there are a couple recipes for tofu but it's only a few and even then it doesn't list a bunch of ingridients a first timer would need to google. I cannot wait to get cracking on it! Too bad the store is closed. I seriously considered going and getting some stuff already. :)

Playing catchup....

I lost steam on the carrot stuff and haven't wanted to post pics/recipes. I do however have some super tasty stuff that I do want to post so we're playing catchup today. I'll post a pic, short summary, and recipe. Short and sweet. That way tomorrow I can start with the good stuff.

From top to bottom and left to right: CarrotApple bread, Carrot Bars, Carrot cupcakes, more carrot bars.

The bread was awesome. What you see here is recipes doubled. My friend and I split everything. We each took 1.5 loaves of the bread. It was gone within a day or two. The carrot bars were good though we expected something more crunchy/bar like. These were soft. Definitely cookie like. The cupcakes...not sure what happened to those. We varied the recipe a bit since we didn't have orange marmelade. We juiced an orange and used the juice and pulp as our sub. They were super moist and tasty. We had so much batter left over we used it for a bundt cake.

We did make our own icing. I don't have the recipe link anymore but it's your basic cream cheese one....cream cheese, vanilla, powdered sugar, and butter. I actually had to make a second batch due to the bundt cake.

(Blogger suddenly isn't wanting to cooperate with me on hyperlinks. From here on out I'll just post the full link.)

This recipe ROCKS! http://www.recipezaar.com/KFC-Coleslaw-33489 It's for KFC coleslaw. I used red cabbage and instead of buttermilk (I had none) I made some (milk and vinegar). It tasted exactly like the stuff from KFC! It was devoured. We had it when we had some people over for lunch. It didn't last long.

This is just a standard go to at our house. Noodles with some veggies. I sauteed carrots, radishes, and asparagus in some EVOO. Add salt, pepper, and oregano and put some on top of your noodles. Super tasty but super simple and fast. Great way to use up random tidbits.