p: great scott.
p: ALL of my play wear is in the laundry.
p: that never happens.
p: that's okay, i have extra gray leggings.
p: guess i can wear orange camo sport bra from last night.
p: aw, derby lite t-shirt.
p: erk.
p: DON'T GO THERE
p: there's pink and orange together.
p: YOU LIKE PINK AND ORANGE
p: not with gray.
p: i think there's a black sports bra hanging in the bathroom!
p: YOU DON'T HAVE TO MATCH YOUR BRA TO YOUR SHIRT
p: STOPPP
p: see, better.
p: WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS
59. Oatmeal lattes, what. Via A Beautiful Mess.
60. Or cold oatmeal jars? Via The Yummy Life.
61. Crockpot oatmeal! Via Best Food Pins.
62. Muesli jars. Via Joy The Baker.
So I think there's a level of starch that I need to not fall below, I've been trying to cut starch out of dinner and scrimmaged a couple weeks ago on an apple and cold chicken and, ugh, that was one long idea blocker moment. So I'm looking at rice again, and also oatmeal. Look crockpot oatmeal, Sparty posted that to my wall! And hello, oatmeal jars. I still want to branch further out into savory oatmeals, but a thing about oatmeal is that it's portable and portable sort of means cold? And savory I think is better hot? I am thinking about these things.
Doesn't "stone fruit compote" make me sound like a fancy foodie? But in the world of frozen fruit that you can get at the Jewel, it just means peaches or mangos. Mangoes?
This is pretty much the same recipe as the berry compote, just that the stone fruits need a little bit more cooking time. And even though it's a pain, cut up peach slices into bite-size pieces before cooking for best results.
For the compote:
two 12 or 16 oz bags of frozen stone fruits
2 Tbsp honey
To serve:
greek yogurt
sliced almonds
Empty half of the fruit into a saucepan. Add the honey and cook covered over medium low heat until the fruit has started to break down, about 15 minutes. Add the other half of the fruit and cook for 15 more minutes. Cool and put in a container in the fridge.
Serve a few spoonfuls of compote over greek yogurt with sliced almonds.
You've seen this in bout day breakfasts plated with eggs or fried into cakes, and actually what this is really amazing in is oatmeal with poached eggs, but I don't have legumes or starchy vegetables for breakfast much anymore, so this has been serving as spacefood. Did I ever say what spacefood is? It's something really easy and digestible to eat for dinner before workouts, or whatever meal you eat before workouts. For dinner I usually eat a scoop of this with a fried egg, or a little bit of carne asada or carnitas.
two sweet potatoes
a can of black, red, or pinto beans
Whenever you're in the kitchen for something else, heat the oven to 400 and throw in a couple sweet potatoes and bake for about an hour until they're very tender.
Rinse and drain a can of beans and mash them with a potato masher, then mash the sweet potatoes into the beans.
p: omg i looove your whiteboards.
d: that's unusual.
d: the whiteboards are not the first thing most people notice here.
p: MUNT SERIOUSLY
p: DO NOT MEND THOSE AGAIN
p: of course not!
p: i don't love mending, you know.
p: i'm not going to mend them.
p: ...
p: YOU'RE TOTALLY JUST GOING TO KEEP WEARING THEM
p: AREN'T YOU
Siiiigh:
* 2 pairs of giant sweatpants
I filled up my old notebook, so I covered a new notebook and fixed the little problem with the inside pockets: tape the pocket to the uncovered cover, THEN cover the cover with the pretty paper. Duh.
You can see that I've started this new notebook, as I usually do, with a throw of the coins and the hexagram that results. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the I-Ching. I read the Wilhelm-Baynes edition and throw British twopenny coins. That in no way covers everything that I, let alone everybody else, has to say about the I-Ching, but—
old man: hello! hello!
young woman: hi?
old man: not you, i already said hello to you!
old man: her!
old man: the one with the big legs!
Chicken stew jars: cauliflower on the bottom, topped with chicken stew.
I keep wanting to be DONE ::kick kick kick:: with my food plan, so I can just follow the plan and think about something else besides food. But haha, I can't stop thinking about food. I keep having new ideas! So the plan keeps evolving, I'm really away from my earlier strategy of organizing my carbs around my workouts and now just mostly not eating starchy carbs. Mostly. Also I'm already transitioning to summer but still working that out, so below is what I was doing for most of spring.
The details of the plan are not really important. It's more the idea of a plan, and maybe even that isn't all that important to you. What I get out of a plan is repetitions, practice at getting good at something and then something to build on.
So this is how I do, first of all, there's setting up my lemon water before bed and starting the day with lemon water.
Monday morning is mainly when I cook. I used to cook Monday and Wednesday mornings, and then I switched to writing Wednesday morning. Because I thought I shouldn't burn my best self on housework on both days of the week that I get to play at home, where my best self is myself after breakfast. I have a second best self—I mean, not second best. I have two best selves per day, the second is after a little nap and dinner and that's when I practice or train. If there's any point to this blog, it is: energy husbandry. Heart containers, which you have a limited number of and which you have to choose how to spend. Two heart containers is too much for me to spend on making food, but no containers on food is a car wreck waiting to happen. One container is precious and not a lot, so I try to be efficient and get as much bang for my heart as I can. So Monday morning after breakfast, I start a recipe of egg bites: fit the parchment paper to the baking pan, microwave the frozen vegetables in a mixing bowl, add the green onions and bread crumbs and cheese, beat the eggs in my rocket blender and mix them in, and pour the eggy vegs into the baking pan and put them in the oven. Then I wash my hands and chop an onion and some celery and put them in a pot with the chicken thighs to simmer for an hour. Then I have some time to wait, so I do the dishes. The eggs and the chicken finish at about the same time; then I finish up the chicken stew, either roasting the vegetables in the egg pan or sauteeing them on the stove in the chicken pot. I also zap a bag of frozen cauliflower in the microwave to put in jars with the chicken stew. Then chop chop chop and gloop gloop gloop, egg bites and chicken stew go in jars and into the fridge. A morning's work and I have breakfasts and lunches for the week.
There's still dinner: I stopped with veganly beans a while back because it was one too much, played with baked oatmeal for a while, and eventually settled on just making sweet potato bean mash. Sweet potato bean mash you can make anytime, you just bake a couple sweet potatoes and then mash them with a can of beans—total spacefood, you eat a little bowl before your workout with a pat of butter or a fried egg or leftover meat. Meat is carne asada or carnitas, I make that in the slow cooker Fridays when I'm home. Fridays I work, I make butter trout or steak.
For half of spring for post-workout snack I was eating greek yogurt with peanut butter, which takes no preparation at all. But then I started making fruit compote, which takes just a little bit. This also you can do anytime.
Obviously this works for me because I have more than just the weekend at home. I'm not sure what I would do if I was in the office five days a week. Of course then I'd be free Saturdays, maybe I'd cook then. I'd have to find a day, because I don't think I'm ever going back to cooking dinner every night.
I think actually carne asada is not a thing that you make in a slow cooker, I think it's thinly sliced grilled steak? But anyway carne asada to me means beef and carnitas, which is coming up in a bit, means pork. I'm not saying that's right, just what's in my head. I developed my own recipe that I can use for both from these two that I pinned a couple egressions ago. I like using the slow cooker for something like this, but I personally don't think that any meat needs to be cooked for eight hours. The finish in the broiler is what really makes this, you can do the slow cooker part and just put the meat in a container in the fridge and then quick broil however much you're going to eat.
an onion
a red bell pepper
a jalapeno pepper
2 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 lb flank steak
Roughly chop the onion and peppers and mix together. Mix the spices together and rub them on the meat, and cut the meat roughly into two-inch squares. Layer the meat and aromatics in the slow cooker and cook on high for two hours. Then remove the meat and let the vegetables and juices cook for another hour.
When the vegetables are reduced and the meat is cooled, rip the meat into bite-sized pieces; rough pieces are better than neat squares, actually. I pureed the vegetables into a sauce with my stick blender, I think that was good. At this point I put the meat into a container, poured the sauce over, and put it in the fridge.
To finish the meat, put however much you want to eat in a singleish layer on a baking sheet. Broil for ten minutes if you like a dark char, then stir it up and serve. For a lighter char broil for five minutes, stir it up and broil for five more minutes. You can also do this in the toaster oven, it's the lightest char but the easiest cleanup.
You could serve this for dinner in lettuce wraps with avocado and tomato, or as a little breakfast meat with eggs and vegetables, or with half a sweet potato for your spacefood needs.
I came up with this because I saw this infographic about the top ten food combinations, superfoods that are superfriends! Which nutritionally I sort of take with a grain of salt, I figure I'm in the ballpark if they're vegetables so all I'm on the lookout for is flavor combinations. First on the list was avocado and tomato, I immediately started eating egg bites with avocado and tomato. Second was artichoke and peppers, I wanted to use frozen artichokes but apparently there is a citywide shortage of frozen artichokes. So I ended up using canned, maybe even marinated would work if they were rinsed a bit.
an onion
two stalks celery
4-5 chicken thighs
2 cups water
olive oil or butter
2 cans artichoke hearts
1/2 lb hungarian hot peppers
1 Tbsp flour
Peel and chop the onion, and trim and chop the celery including the leaves if they look nice. Put the onion, celery, chicken, and water in a saute pan and bring to a strong simmer over high heat. Then turn the heat to low and let simmer partially covered for an hour.
Rinse and drain the artichoke hearts. Trim, seed, and slice the peppers.
Remove the chicken to a cutting board. Puree the remaining broth and vegetables with an immersion blender until smooth, then pour the pureed broth into a prep bowl and set aside.
Heat olive oil or butter in the saute pan over high heat and fry the artichoke hearts for about five minutes until a little bit browned. Add the peppers and saute for ten more minutes until softened. Stir in the flour and cook for a couple minutes, then add the pureed broth back to the pot. Stir until the broth starts to thicken and simmer.
Separate the chicken meat from the skin and bone, and cut the meat into bite-size pieces.
Add the chicken meat back to the stew and simmer a few more minutes until heated through. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
A couple Sunday breakfasts ago, I stumbled on an easy way to make any kind of vegetable hash. The basic formula is avocado + whatever vegetable you think would roast nicely, which is pretty much every vegetable + I like to add pepper for kick or maybe sweetness. KICK! You roughly chop and roast the vegetable and the pepper with a little bit of olive oil and salt, and then you stir in some cut up avocado. It's so delicious! And it's kind of so much more interesting than potato hash.
Me and the sweetie man can put away half a head of cauliflower, obviously just double everything if you want to use the whole head. Oh yes, and alert the media, Munt is eating fresh and not frozen vegetables, because the texture is really better and fresh actually cooks faster for this.
half a head of cauliflower
a hungarian hot pepper
olive oil
salt
an avocado
Heat oven to 500 degrees.
Roughly dice the cauliflower, and seed and sliver the pepper. Toss them in a baking pan with a little olive oil and salt, and put them in the oven for fifteen minutes. Stir them up and put them back in the oven for ten more minutes.
Cut up the avocado into hash-size pieces and stir them into the roasted vegetables.
For the rest of this breakfast
When you put the cauliflower back in the oven, fry some eggs in a bit of olive oil or butter in a skillet over medium high heat. I crack my eggs in the oil, let them set a bit, then dribble in a little water from the kettle and cover the skillet for a couple minutes.
Plate the eggs with the hash.
53. This makes me insanely happy. Via Poppytalk.
54. OMG this bathing suit. Via Design Crush.
55. Also dang, I need this dress. Via Girls of a Certain Age.
56. My friend Izzy might make me something like this! Via Upcoming Legendary.
See here Izzy a.k.a. Bella of Magnus & Bella makes beautiful things.
Can I do this, picturewise? You know what greek yogurt looks like with fruit on, right? I mostly eat greek yogurt at night, so I don't have light. Sometimes I eat things out of order to photograph them, but I have three things going right now and am not bigger on the inside. Or more relevantly, I could get a light box.
For the past month I've been eating greek yogurt with peanut butter, just because it's easy and freaking delicious, but do you know what peanut butter I eat: Jif. Second ingredient on the label: sugar. So. And I put honey on, too.
Sooo spring was supposed to be greek yogurt and stewed fruit anyway, which I started last year with with greek yogurt with strawberries in rhubarb, which also has a lot of sugar, and the only reason I'm not sorrier about that is rhubarb is kind of a pain. You know what, anything that's freaking delicious only when you add a lot of sugar: you are a pain. Raspberries. Cranberries. Blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries are not a pain, I like you.
For the compote:
two 12 oz bags of frozen berries
2 Tbsp honey
To serve:
greek yogurt
sliced almonds
Empty half of the berries into a saucepan. Add the honey and cook over medium high heat, stirring occasionally, for until the berries have started to break down, about 10 minutes. Add the other half of the berries and cook for 10 more minutes. Cool and put in a container in the fridge.
Serve a few spoonfuls of compote over greek yogurt with sliced almonds.
YUMMMM.
If you were wondering how I'm toasting these nuts, I just put them on the little tray in the toaster oven and turn the toast dial to medium. If they're not dark enough after that, I stir them around a little bit and then turn the toast dial to light; but this is when you have to watch them like a hawk, because they go from dark to black in the blink of an eye. Which is why hawks don't blink. No, I made that up. I'm pretty sure hawks do blink. But they don't go update their facebook statuses when they have nuts in the toaster oven.
I think unsweetened coconut would be better for this, but Jewel only has sweetened and that's what I used and it wasn't too sweet.
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup shredded coconut, toasted
1 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
however much you want of a 12 or 16 oz bag of frozen mango
2 cups milk
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 egg
2 Tbsp butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla
butter
greek yogurt
Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix together the oats, coconut, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Butter a skillet or 8x8 baking pan, then put the oats in the skillet or pan and put the mango on top of the oats. I think I might toss the frozen mango in the bowl that you mixed the oats in and thaw it for a few minutes in the microwave.
Whisk together the milk, agave, egg, butter, and vanilla. Pour the milk over the oats and let it soak in.
Bake until the oats are golden and set, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve giant puffy scoops of oatmeal immediately or let it set up for a few more minutes for perfect slices.
Serve with a pat of butter and a scoop of greek yogurt, and some fresh fruit is nice if you have that.
Leftover slices can be refrigerated and eaten cold with greek yogurt.
Here are my thirteen twelve sweaters more or less that I drew in 2011, the last time that I decided that it would be a good idea to photograph all my clothes and then gave up and drew picture of them because that's so much easier and less insane. Plus my four t-shirts and twelve tank tops, which means all the tops I wear for work for the whole year.
These are the best long sleeved t-shirts ever, they're Xhiliration sleep tees and they're really light and stretchy. I wear them under all of the above. Obviously a nice underlayer under a heavy sweater in winter, but they also pull together an outfit with a light sweater very nicely. My light sweaters, I should note, are all too short in the sleeve and the waist, long sleeved t-shirt underneath, cute layer effect, problem solved. I wear these under my t-shirts and tanks in spring and fall, too. I only don't wear them in summer, just tank tops and bare arms with a sweater that I keep at work.
I also keep thinking that I need to replenish these and then don't, and just keep working around the ones that have holes. Why am I so incorrigible. You know what would be good, if I could get two of each in black, gray, and blue to mix and match with my tights. Xhiliration doesn't always cooperate with the colors that I want, though.
There are still four skirts, and I just wear my jeans—that I spilled acetone on the last time I cleaned my bearings—for the every other Friday. I am totally happy to keep wearing the same four skirts year after year, the only reason you have seen me buy new skirts is because my butt kept getting bigger, and truthfully now that I've lost some weight, now these are too big. So I wear a belt.
These were the best buy ever, the day's outfit starts with whichever color tights I grab out of the bin and then whichever skirt I didn't wear last week. So like, ooh, blue legs and black skirt today, and then I pick a top that works with that. It's like haiku, really a surprising lot of results from a pretty restricted set of syllables.
So, the shopping list:
* 2 heavy cable-knit sweaters
* 2 each black, gray, navy long-sleeved t-shirts
Oh and, I sometimes borrow my play wear leggings as an extra layer over my tights in coldest coldest winter, and will probably borrow again for summer when I switch to open-toed shoes. I used to have separate work leggings, but I hated them and finally threw them out, and I just bought like twelve new pairs of plain black leggings that I wear to skate in, so it seems stupid to buy more.
Well you know, a) I have been working on this for some time, and b) it's really part of a larger habit that I will be reiterating for four months, viz., eat protein and vegetables for every meal pretty much. This is a good place to stick a big old YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. Because like I said, I've been working on this for years and believe me it's been baby steps all the way. Maybe this is the next baby step for you, or maybe a big step is fine by you, or maybe this isn't your next step. I don't write these as prescriptions. I would have to actually talk to you, ask you questions, and listen to your answers—very complicated stuff, I know—before I could begin to suggest something personally for you. In the meantime, I'm writing up these habits just as descriptions of what I'm doing over here. If that gives you ideas of your own, obviously that's great.
Anyway protein and vegetables for every meal is a great result, but as a target it's too broad. So I decided on what specific protein to shoot for every meal, and for breakfast it's eggs and then the tricky part is vegetables—though not as tricky as it used to be, now that I'm getting to know them. It's not that fruit isn't fine and good, but you don't want to fall into having fruit for every meal just because it's easy and sweet. I haven't officially limited my fruit consumption yet, I'm seeing first if I can proactively develop a taste for vegetables like how self-regulation is supposed to work.
The Cue
Easy enough, the cue is breakfast! Man, you don't have to ask me twice. See, this is what I'm saying about baby steps—you don't have to tell me not to skip breakfast. I would look at you like you had two heads if you did; but if your habit is to skip breakfast, I feel like eggs and vegetables might not be the easiest introduction? I know I started with eggs and fruit, eggs and fruit is good.
The Routine
The whole reason that I develop recipes the way I do is, it's time for breakfast and I can grab a jar of egg bites and heat them up in two minutes and eat them. Eggs, vegetables, boom. In summer, it'll be hardboiled eggs and fruit jars. In fall, I think I'm going back to egg bites. In winter, poached eggs and vegetable puree. All this is to say, I don't even have to think about it. Because I think about it, that's when the opera about the bagel starts up.
Level up, though! I'm actually at the point that I think eggs and vegetables when I think breakfast, like it finally got recoded in my brain. So now I can think more creatively about breakfasts, which in my opinion is what creativity is: freedom within limits. So like I have egg bites five or six days a week, and one or two days a week I'm on my own. And I'm aware of myself thinking, okay, I have eggs and what vegetable, oh here's a zucchini, well, I know what to do with a zucchini. Oh and here's a tomato, zucchini and tomato go good together. Et voila. Now that we're having Sunday breakfasts at home, I've been getting pretty fancy with this.
The Reward
I mean, the long term reward of this is supposed to be that you get the body fat percentage of your dreams and then rest of your life is summer. But that's not the kind of reward that keeps a habit going, you know what I mean? I mean, apart from the fact that I'm kidding. I personally am not that motivated by something that I'm chasing, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm a lot more motivated by all the birds in my hand than that stuck up bird in the bush.
Birds off the top of my head: 1) who knew, vegetables are yummy, 2) a lot of your life does go more easily if you can form the thought vegetables are yummy on a regular basis. I mean, it won't make you popular. Really don't brag about it too much, nobody who's jonesing for a Thin Mint wants to hear how much you're craving some celery sticks. I'm just saying, your food choices will be easier if you actually like things that are good for you. 3) I personally like being creative, in general, and with food in particular. There's just something a lot more artful about vegetables than toast to me. 4) Not gonna lie though, there is something to be said about feeling virtuous about your food, and even more virtuous because it tastes good, because you're that good of a person.
Status: ACTIVE
Fried eggs, avocado mushroom pepper hash, teeny bit of carne asada, orange juice, and water. already drank my coffee.
This is the zucchini hummus! Let me tell you, this is the most luscious thing I have eaten all year and I was not expecting it. This is a paleo version of hummus without chickpeas, though I'm not paleo and have nothing against chickpeas. Honestly when I asked Tay for her recipes, I was mainly interested in the sweet potato chips. I don't need dip for chips.
I'm always trying to get myself to eat more vegetables though, and sometimes veggies need dip. Actually mini peppers, pictured here, do not need dip. Where did mini peppers come from all of a sudden, they're so crunchy and sweet. Mini peppers don't need dip, but you know what you can do: you can top them and slice them lengthwise, and then you can use them as scoopers to get as much zucchini into your mouth as possible.
Seriously, forget about what this is a substitute for. It's great for you, it hits you in the face with how good it is and also has all kinds of subtle notes—sesame, cumin, heat—going on all in the background.
2 zucchini
1/3 cup tahini
2 Tbsp olive oil
juice from 2 lemons or 1/3 cup lemon juice from concentrate
2 garlic cloves
1-1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp group cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp sea salt
paprika to garnish
Peel and chop the zucchini, peel the garlic, and put everything except the paprika in a food processor. Process till smooth.
Put in a serving dish and garnish with paprika.
Poppy. What the hell. Is that.
Ha ha, welp! I was curious! About how much time I actually spend sitting versus standing and, ideally, moving around on a daily basis. Don't you get curious about things like that? Yeah, you don't. That's what you have me for, I counted this for about a month.
It was the simplest possible count, binary. Zero and one, zero for sitting and one for standing in fifteen minute increments from 8:00 AM to midnight. I got a zero if I sat for the entire fifteen minutes. If I stood up at all, I got a one for that increment; if I stood up and shook out my legs for a minute, that counted the same as being on my feet for fifteen minutes and, for that matter, the same as being on my skates sprinting for fifteen minutes. All I was counting was up or down.
It was demented but reasonably easy for me because 97% of the time that I'm sitting down, I have a laptop within arm's reach. So I set one as the default, and entered zeroes when I was sitting down.
Some fancy technical notes: I conditionally formatted the cells so that ones would be orange and zeroes would be gray and wrote a count formula to count them up and express them as baseball averages. Because that's fun.
I can't imagine that anybody is actually going to try this at home, so none of that is important.
So what did I get out of this.
I Don't Think Batting 1000 Is the Goal Here
First of all, I'm an active person, i.e., I do more than 30 minutes of more than low-intensity activity for more than three days a week. Roller derby, right? And two, I have a sedentary job except for about four hours per week training folks, and the other main thing I do is writing. Which I do sitting at a desk, or sitting on the couch. Okay so, for the four weeks I counted, ONE week got up to 500 or fifty percent standing to sitting, two weeks were in the forties, and one week was below forty.
So that makes me think that batting 1000 is not the goal here. Maybe I'm the only person who thought that, being such an A-student. But like in actual baseball batting 500 is phenomenal, right? Or if that's too sporty, let's go back to the idea of binary; the idea of binary isn't 1111111111, how binary works is 0101010101. Or let's go back to everything I've ever said about training and recovery, yin and yang and whatnot.
Let's Say That Batting 500 Is The Goal
I actually think that 500 is sorting balanced, and something to work up to. Maybe 350 is pretty good, and 250 is minimal? Or if you have a job where you work on your feet all day and your BAMF score is way over 500, you might think about coming at this from the other direction.
But just for example, let's solve this for me. Since that's who I have the data for. The point of this, really, is Know Thyself and take it from there.
Different Things That I Do Are More Or Less Active
I know, duh. Honestly though, I think I did think of myself as divided between working out (rock star) and not working out (potato). Which is the wrong binary: it counts high intensity activity as something, and moderate and low intensity activity and also no activity as nothing. You get that moderate and low intensity activity is more like something than like nothing, right?
I actually identified three—no four—levels or types of activity that I do:
So I don't think that I have to convert my sedentary activities to 50% active. I think 25% active would be sufficient—just stand up, shake out, maybe stretch my legs once an hour. That's pretty much what you'd minimally want to do to mitigate prolonged sitting's metabolic effects. I've talked about this before, right?
I think a decent general strategy could be:
Oh, why is this called BAMF! Actually well, I've been testing this get lean program and that one is called SNIKT! Because shredded, get it. And this one is called BAMF! to stay with the Marvel theme, because this is about getting up off your chair.
I'm on a roll now, this is my riff on imam bayildi and I'm naming it after Book. You can't take the sky from me! If you don't have preserved lemon, you can just use anchovies like in the puttanesca version.
I am definitely plating these stews with cauliflower, to stretch them so I don't have to cook as much. I know the thing to do now is make cauliflower into rice, but I'm okay with cauliflower as cauliflower. I guess if it's too confusing to have something named shepherd that isn't covered with a potatoey crust, you could bake this under mashed cauliflower. I bet that would be good.
This is so, so delicious, but you might want to keep in mind that eggplant soaks up olive oil like a magic chamois and that's why so delicious.
an onion
two stalks celery
4-5 chicken thighs
2 cups water
2 lb eggplant
olive oil
2 Tbsp or half a small can of tomato paste
1 piece preserved lemon
about 20 kalamata olives
1 Tbsp capers
Peel and chop the onion, and trim and chop the celery including the leaves if they look nice. Put the onion, celery, chicken, and water in a soup pot and bring to a strong simmer over high heat. Then turn the heat to low and let simmer partially covered for an hour.
Heat oven to 500 degrees. Trim and thickly slice the eggplant. Generously brush a baking sheet with olive oil and lay out the eggplant slices in one layer— no salt, there will be other salty things coming up. Roast for 15 minutes, flip the slices then roast for another 15 minutes.
When the chicken is done, remove it to a cutting board and set aside. Pour the remaining broth and vegetables through a strainer, set aside the broth and discard the vegetables. I usually go do something else for a while and let the chicken cool almost completely, so I can take it apart with my hands. When the eggplant is done, it can hang out on the pan until the chicken is cool enough to skin and take apart with your hands. Then cut the chicken into bite-size pieces.
Mince the preserved lemon. Pit the olives by smashing them open under the flat of your knife and roughly chop them.
Pour the broth back into the soup pot, stir in the tomato paste, preserved lemon, olives, and capers. Simmer over medium high heat until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.
Stir in the eggplant and chicken and simmer a few more minutes until heated through. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Okay so, I replaced half of the spinach with a leek! So this is more balanced between eggy and veggie. No green onion, because leek obviously.
1 lb frozen spinach
1 leek
1 cup bread crumbs
1 cup shredded parmesan cheese
12 eggs
Tear off a piece of parchment paper somewhat larger than the baking pan, fold the paper on the upside-down pan, making a rectangle about the size of the bottom of the pan. Fit the paper to the inside of the pan, folding in the corners.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
Put frozen spinach in a microwave-safe mixing bowl and cook according to package directions—e.g., cover the bowl with saran wrap, microwave it for four minutes, stir it up, and microwave it for another four minutes. Squeeze the spinach dry in handfuls, and pour out any liquid in the bowl.
Trim, halve, and thoroughly wash the leek, then shake it dry and slice thinly.
Add the bread crumbs, parmesan, and leek to the spinach and mix thoroughly with your hands.
Beat the eggs—I recommend using a rocket blender—and pour them in the mixing bowl, and mix thoroughly again with your hands.
Pour the spinach-egg mixture into the parchment-lined pan. Put the pan in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, turn the pan around, and bake for another 20 minutes. The eggs should be pretty well set when they come out of the oven.
Grab the edges of the parchment, lift the baked eggs out of the pan, and pull the parchment away from the sides. Let it cool for a bit. This time I cut the bake into thirds lengthwise and sixths crosswise, so that three pieces makes a serving—ah math, now I'm just screwing around. Cut it however you want.
Let the bites cool completely if you're putting them in jars, so condensation doesn't make them soggy.
To serve, reheat in the microwave for two minutes.
49. Instead of butterflies, little doors that open. Via Crafts Unleashed.
50. From the innards of my pomodoro that blew up. Via Craft.
Sigh, so, I had like two weeks with actual Saturdays when I could get my workout in and then be totally free to do whatever pastime, not that I'm complaining because I do actually love training folks and of course I like playing derby a lot, and I'm delighted I get to do both. I'm eyeing this every other Friday, maybe? To make beautiful objets? But idk, I work and I train and I play derby and I blog and I have a boyyyfriend, and also friends, I think I might have enough birds in my hands and maybe can leave a few in the bush. Can I organize these birds to fit one more bird in.
Where was I. Forging your idea of a tree from an actual tree.
So first the idea was, get your certification and then quit your job and get a job folding towels at a gym. Then it was, okay, forget the gym, keep your job, get some clients and then quit derby after this season and put more clients there. But then I adjusted my work schedule, I'm embarrassed to say that three days a week was too much. So now I work three days every other week, which I can deal with. And and, I have a new client. I'm never quite sure how to count my clients. I have a two long term partner clients who work together, a long term personal client, a short term group class of six, a short term coaching client who could be long term, and now this new hopefully long term personal client. Where the game is to collect long term clients, I suppose. In any case, my group class and my new client are on Saturday; that officially makes Saturday a work day for me, and makes me less embarrassed about not being able to deal with all the Fridays.
SO NOW, the idea is keep your job, keep your clients, load up Saturday as much as I can with clients and classes, and keep playing derby for another season. That's kind of what I want to talk about, the idea of having to quit derby. Which is about what. Like it's about thinking, I've only gotten this good in four years and it's time to throw it in. I only have this much time to build a business, which should look like this. And see, that's making a tree from your idea of a tree. Whereas the actual tree is like, one, they say it takes ten years or ten thousand hours to develop mastery of a sport. So what gave you the idea that you had to get roller derby in three years or out? Because roller derby is easier than the other sports? Right, having wheels on and playing defense and offense at the same time. Which I am just now starting to get, and by just now I seriously mean like in the last three weeks. Two, did you start your own business because you want to write your own ticket or not; so write it how you want. I didn't really love my job when it was forty hours a week, that's why I started studying for my certification. Whereas two days a week, perfectly amusing, and actually I know where it tips over, three days a week, here I am thrillingly balanced on the tipping point, three days every other week. Which also pays just enough extra that if I get just one more client—not ten more clients, not forty hours a week of clients, which sounds both impossible and exhausting—I will be in the black for the first time in two years.
Which is about what, doing exactly what I want to do at the moment, sustainably.
Yeah, I know about the other foot. I know about a sunny day waiting for your rollerskates to be delivered and your brother-in-law calls in tears about your sister's cancer being back. Lord, have I ever told you that story?
Peek and Shriek
a story from when there was MySpace
also when you had to return DVDs to the video store
This week I was going to do even less than last week because I have just enough patience to run out the clock before Wednesday, when I go to New York, where "just enough patience" actually means I'm absolutely out of patience. I'm not going to get anything done, and I'm not even going to try. This isn't the most positive thinking --but you know, Know Thyself.
My to-do list for the week is:
Sunday night I check UPS online and my skates are on the truck for delivery. I go to bed happy and excited.
Monday morning I wake up at nine, skip tidying the kitchen --"tidy kitchen," which I do every morning, is different from "clean kitchen," which I do every month-- and get into the shower. I think after I get my skates, I'll go to the video store. I can't think about doing anything that's probably or definitely optional. Around three I check my gmail for any livejournal or myspace notifications, and instead I have an exception from UPS that says THE RECEIVER WAS UNAVAILABLE TO SIGN ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT, all caps like I'm being yelled at. I fling open my front door, and there's the brown and yellow post-it stuck to the door during the twenty minutes I was in the shower.
There's a funny interlude here where I fly into a rage and fail to get absolutely anything else done that afternoon, and call Deric to help me decide if I should go out and see my friend's band. And Deric being an introvert tends to think the best thing for a bad mood is to stay in, as do I, which is why I called him. And I let him talk me into staying in, and I get off the phone fired up DAMN RIGHT I'M STAYING IN all the while storming around the apartment fixing my hair and putting on lip gloss and getting on my bike. Oh and, I went to the video store.
Tuesday the 12th I check online, and my skates are scheduled for redelivery on the 13th. Which is Wednesday, when I am fucking going to be on a plane to New York. Insert second interlude of raging and failing to get anything done. Around 11:30 I make myself call Com Ed, just to confirm that their meter reading matches mine and it does. So at least I know how to read the meter. They still say that I owe them $400; and maybe I do, but I have an appointment with a technician when I get back and will cross that bridge then. And just as I'm crossing call Com Ed off my laughable to-do list, I see Brown pull up and fling open my front door and scare Brown half to death. So I have my skates. And a minute later I hear the mail drop through the slot, and there's a little package from the U.K., and it's The Last Vampire, which I hadn't realized I was ordering from the U.K., which explains why the shipping was so much.
Hooray, I think. All my pigeons are home to roost. It's nice to have everything in order before you go on vacation. And now I don't have to worry about my skates getting delivered when I'm at my hair appointment with Ludwig this afternoon.
Then oddly, my cell phone rings. It's my brother-in-law telling me that my sister's cancer is back.
Scott breaks down at the end of our conversation and asks me to call Grace for him. You know that I'm being honest when I tell you that my first thought is, Fuck no, followed by a big sigh and which part of his wife has cancer do you not understand?
I call Grace and, er, leave a message that our sister has cancer on her answering machine, which is hilariously callous and so me. But see, I figure that Grace pretty much knows that I wouldn't call her unless I'd died. To leave a message that just says "Call me" would actually be cruel. I mean, I didn't just say "Ruth's cancer is back," click.
I've been thinking about Richard lately, and quashing thoughts like Should I call him about the new Harry Potter book? because half of the Harry Potter books he has are his and the other half are mine, and who should get the seventh book, to which Meg says, concisely, "Library." So I think, Should I call him about Ruth's cancer coming back? and I think that the answer isn't obvious --my life isn't his life anymore-- and decide to ask Meg when she comes over for craft that night.
I walk to the salon debating whether or not to tell Ludwig.
When my sister had cancer before, I didn't tell anybody. It's like... you exist as a character in everybody's mind who knows you. I guess this is another part of othermind, and you are the sum of undermind and mind and overmind and othermind. So when people say what do you care what other people think about you, I think this is a little bravado on their part. On my part. What people think of you is part of who you are. This is why I don't love talking about my problems until they're solved. I don't want my unsolved problems to exist in othermind; I think that it magnifies them. Then again if you don't tell people, it becomes this huge lump in your chest of something that you haven't said. The thing to remember is that people are mostly concerned with their own drama, and not so much yours. I mean this as a good thing. You spit out this lump in your chest, and then it sort of gets dissolved in other people's drama. So it doesn't get magnified. How lucky am I that I get to try it both ways.
When Ludwig sees me, he says "That's funny, I'm seeing Richard at 4:30 this afternoon." Ludwig is friends with both of us. I used to cut Richard's hair; now Ludwig does, and it looks much better.
Ludwig wants to know, "Is he still being mean to you?"
"He's not being mean to me," I sigh. "You know Richard. He's being cold."
"No," Ludwig says, "he told me that he's being mean to you."
"He's aware that he's being mean to me?" I struggle. I struggle. I lose. "What did he say?"
Ludwig either genuinely can't remember exactly how Richard said this, or has decided that he's said too much. He changes the subject. "Are you on MySpace?"
"Yeah," I say.
"Well, add me!"
"Okay," I say, thinking where my myspace says In A Relationship. "You can see my new boyfriend."
Ludwig mentally drops his shears, but doesn't actually. "Pauline, I hate you for being able to keep a secret!"
"It's not a secret," I say, deciding to keep my mouth shut about my sister. "It's still new."
"How new? Since the pageant?"
"Uh yeah, since the pageant."
"Tell me about him!"
I pause.
"Oh my god, is he a criminal that you can't think of anything to say about him??"
"Quiet. Gorgeous. He lives in New Jersey," which is apparently what's top of mind to say about MJ. I'm about to say that he skydives, but Ludwig interrupts to ask me how often I get to have sex with him, which is the other thing that's top of mind that I wasn't going to say.
I don't know why he then asks, "Is your boyfriend a boy or a girl?"
"Uh, my boyfriend is a boy. Though I'm okay with girls."
"Do you think Richard would be okay with boys?"
Lord have mercy. Though I'm okay with boy on boy! I mean, he knits? "Boys are okay with Richard, I know that."
I get home and write this story up to this point; and oddly again, the phone rings. It's a male voice that isn't Scott or MJ --it's Richard.
Susan says at craft, "Ludwig told him that you have a boyfriend."
"No," Meg says, "Richard already knew about MJ."
"Maybe it isn't so weird that he called me," I say. It's just weird that I didn't have to call him, after all. I'm telling them about my conversation with Richard --the upshot being that after I sign over the mortgage and get the rest of my stuff and give his car key back, he doesn't want to talk to me again. "I feel like I want to write him sort of a valedictory letter, you know, I just want to say..." like I'm sorry that I can't seem to have a conversation with him without fighting like a two-year old, and that I truly wish him the best, and godspeed, something like that.
Meg says, "That he's being a dick?"
Susan says, "That he should pay you for half the car?"
"You guys," I say severely. "That is not what valedictory means."
"You know, I never knew what that word meant," Meg says. "It doesn't mean like victory?"
I was going to make my next baked oatmeal with raspberries and almonds, and actually I did, and you know what? I think I don't like raspberries. So I made it again with peaches. Actually you know what else I kind of don't like, slivered almonds. They hurt my teeth, almonds are better sliced or ground like in macarons or those almond crescent cookies. I'm trying to use up these slivered almonds that I used to use in sun-dried tomato pesto—see, ground. I feel like I just learned something about almonds. I ground and toasted them in this recipe and they weren't terribly present? If you want a more present almond flavor, maybe you could swap in almond extract for the vanilla. Or maybe pecans would be better.
Also as pretty as this peach spiral is, thirty minutes is barely long enough to bake peaches especially from frozen; they were just crisp, and I feel like you want tender peaches slightly melting with the oatmeal. So I'm going to say roughly chop the frozen peaches so they cook faster, and besides then you can get more peaches on.
2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup slivered almonds, coarsely ground and toasted
1 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
however much you want of a 12 or 16 oz bag of frozen peaches, roughly chopped
2 cups milk
1/4 cup honey
1 egg
2 Tbsp butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla
butter
greek yogurt
Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix together the oats, almonds, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Butter a skillet or 8x8 baking pan, then put the oats in the skillet or pan and put the frozen peaches on top of the oats.
Whisk together the milk, honey, egg, butter, and vanilla. Pour the milk over the oats and let it soak in.
Bake until the oats are golden and set, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve giant puffy scoops of oatmeal immediately or let it set up for a few more minutes for perfect slices.
Serve with a pat of butter and a scoop of greek yogurt, and some fresh fruit is nice if you have that.
Leftover slices can be refrigerated and eaten cold with greek yogurt.
So I made hunter chicken stew and thought hunter is cacciatore, I should make puttanesca! But puttanesca is whore, I can't have a recipe called whore stew. And I can't call it puttanesca because then it doesn't match hunter. What. A stew with meat and vegetable is pretty fancy for puttanesca, anyway. So I am calling this companion stew, because companions are fancy. You get this if you watched Firefly.
If your eyes are sharp, you may see a few cauliflower hiding in the stew above. That's because I'm thinking about plating this with cauliflower, so I can stretch this recipe from four to maybe six servings and be covered for a whole week of lunches.
Oh and, this is incredibly good.
an onion
two stalks celery
4-5 chicken thighs
2 cups water
2 lb zucchini
olive oil
2 Tbsp or half a small can of tomato paste
2-3 anchovy filets
about 20 kalamata olives
1 Tbsp capers
Peel and chop the onion, and trim and chop the celery including the leaves if they look nice. Put the onion, celery, chicken, and water in a soup pot and bring to a strong simmer over high heat. Then turn the heat to low and let simmer partially covered for an hour.
Heat oven to 500 degrees. Trim and dice the zucchini, toss with olive oil but no salt—there will be other salty things coming up. Roast for 30 minutes, you might like to give it a stir halfway through roasting.
When the chicken is done, remove it to a cutting board and set aside. Pour the remaining broth and vegetables through a strainer, set aside the broth and discard the vegetables. I usually go do something else for a while and let the chicken cool almost completely, so I can take it apart with my hands. When the zucchini's done, it can hang out in the pan until the chicken is cool enough to skin and take apart with your hands. Then cut the chicken into bite-size pieces.
Mince the anchovies. Pit the olives by smashing them open under the flat of your knife and roughly chop them.
Pour the broth back into the soup pot, stir in the tomato paste, anchovies, olives, and capers. Simmer over medium high heat until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.
Stir in the zucchini and chicken and simmer a few more minutes until heated through. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Spinach is more dense than broccoli and cauliflower, so these are more hearty and vegetal bites. They're good, though I might try to lighten up the texture in another version.
2 lb frozen spinach
1 cup bread crumbs
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 cup chopped green onions or one bunch
12 eggs
Tear off a piece of parchment paper somewhat larger than the baking pan, fold the paper on the upside-down pan, making a rectangle about the size of the bottom of the pan. Fit the paper to the inside of the pan, folding in the corners. Brush the bottom and sides of the parchment with olive oil.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
Put the two pounds of frozen spinach in a microwave-safe mixing bowl and cook according to package directions—e.g., cover the bowl with saran wrap, microwave it for four minutes, stir it up, and microwave it for another four minutes. Squeeze the spinach dry in handfuls, and pour out any liquid in the bowl.
Add the bread crumbs, feta, and green onions to the spinach and mix thoroughly with your hands.
Beat the eggs—I recommend using a rocket blender—and pour them in the mixing bowl, and mix thoroughly again with your hands.
Pour the spinach-egg mixture into the parchment-lined pan. Put the pan in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, turn the pan around, and bake for another 20 minutes. The eggs should be pretty well set when they come out of the oven.
Grab the edges of the parchment, lift the baked eggs out of the pan, and pull the parchment away from the sides. Let it cool for a bit. I figured out that you can also cut the bake into fourths lengthwise and sixths crosswise, so that four pieces makes a serving.
Let the bites cool completely if you're putting them in jars, so condensation doesn't make them soggy.
To serve, reheat in the microwave for two minutes.
p: i look goooood.
m: you do.
p: i mean.
p: i am held in with high tensile strength elastic.
m: even so.
p: still.
Baked eggs in red pepper rings with a teeny bit of turnip parsnip mash underneath, red pepper avocado hash, kielbasa, orange juice, coffee, water.
45. Carne asada. Via What 2 Cook.
46. Carnitas. Via My Kitchen Escapades.
47. Korean ground beef. Via The Girl Who Ate Everything.
48. Chinese ground pork. Via Yi Reservation.
Like I've been saying I've started making actual Friday dinners, and Sunday breakfasts, and now sometimes my own tacos for taco Tuesday. My main proteins are eggs, chicken, and greek yogurt, so for these one-off meals I've been throwing in fish, and beef and pork.
I've made the carne asada and carnitas, both sooooo good for breakfast and taco night. Gonna to tweak the recipes alla Poppy style. Heyyy sexy lady.
I'm going to try the ground beef and pork for Friday or even preworkout dinners, oh you know what else I should have included: The Food in My Beard's ground tofu. My preworkout proteins are currently quinoa and beans, but I'm processing them more and more like starch and they don't last. Ground meat or tofu has that sort of spacefood quality that I want for fuel.
Or actually you know what would be great, if I could cook up a big pot of meat Friday night and have it for Friday dinner, a little bit for Sunday breakfast, and enough left over for tacos? Not that the carne asada or carnitas lasted past the first night, though I think I scaled the recipes down. Maybe scale them back up.
So you know I've been hiding out on Pinterest and it's a different world than where I come from, and it was freaking me out a little bit. I know I shouldn't take Pinterest as the state of the union, but it's so fractured! If that's how it is, it needs to be fixed! So many conflicting images and ideas! Who even knew so many things could be made with oreos and cool whip, and are those woman's abs real? Why are there so many workouts for melting this or that, I thought everyone knew by now that you can't spot reduce fat and my heart hurts for these people bragging that they lost six pounds in nine days like it's not just water weight.
I mean, can we forget about losing weight for a second? Maybe you need to lose weight, I'm not saying that's not a thing. Though not only is it not the only thing, it's not anything I'd organize myself around. I don't even mean that how fit or how strong you are is so much more important than how much you weigh, though I do think that. I do think that being fit and strong is way more important. I'm just saying even if what you want is six pack abs or just to look good in some jeans, it's your body composition that's relevant and how much you weigh not so much.
And I'm also saying that getting lean is a thing, but it's not the only thing. Because guess what, you can be perfectly happy without a six pack. Let me get even more radical and say that you can be perfectly healthy without a six pack. Because I feel like a lot of sensible people look at all these thinspiration pics and think very sensibly, nah I don't need a body like a hood ornament. But then I worry that people think that's all that fitness has to offer, this one luxury item that you could be perfectly happy without. When there's stuff that you actually need, that you can't be healthy without. That is, you need to be active. Maybe sensible people already know this; they are sensible, after all.
So let's talk about this.
I dunno, am I sedentary?
There's an actual definition for sedentary—i.e., less than three months doing less than 30 minutes of moderate activity 3x/week. If you don't have that under your belt, I sincerely hope that you make it your goal. And remember that you don't start at your goal, you start short of your goal and your goal is where you want to get to—that's why it's a goal, right? Start where you are with what you can do; if that's 10 minutes of low intensity activity, get started with that.
But do you know what, don't assume that you're sedentary. Count! So you don't "work out." Find where you're active in your daily life, and figure out how much it counts. Do you know what I used to do, I used to count skating as fitness and biking to work five days a week as transportation. Aagh, what?! Like it wasn't a perfect hill workout, it started with a flat stretch and then a longish slight incline and then a short steep incline that was murder and then it flattened out for the home stretch. Don't be crazy, count what counts. If you don't bike to work, do you walk to the train? Are there stairs up to a platform? Are there stairs up to the street? Is there a bit more of a walk to your office? Or hey oh, do you work on your feet all day? Geez, that counts. I was on my feet for five hours one day when we moved offices, and that wiped me ouuut.
Here's how you figure out how much it counts, take note of:
So for example, let's look at my commute to and from work:
Getting in the game
Clearly I'm making a point here, so why don't I get to it, i.e., activity is not something separate from your life. It's a part of your life, probably already at least to some degree. And the point, in my opinion, is to increase if necessary and improve the activity throughout your life. And by the way, this is no less true if you're an athlete who works out five times a week; but it might not be true in the way that you think, but I will get to you later.
Anyway I can't cover everybody's possible situations with this one post or with this whole blog, like what if you drive to work. Or what if you take the bus to the train. If I was your trainer, I would talk to you in person about what we could do with your normal daily activity—it doesn't work for everybody's situation, but commuting is a great opportunity to look into. But if that doesn't work, then something else that gets you up to that 30 minutes of moderate intensity activity 3x/per week.
What is it good for?
I started out by saying slightly out of order that if you don't have this under your belt, I sincerely hope that you make this your goal. And it's not because I think everybody should be strong and good looking, you want to hear something crazy for a trainer to say? I don't. Chances are I do think you're good looking, but who cares. I'm sure I've said this before, I believe that everybody is an instance of life and the game isn't for everybody to be the same instance. I mean, that's the opposite of the game. So you can't deadlift your body weight, you could very well be doing something more important with your instance that uplifts us all. Thirty minutes of moderate intensity activity 3x/week isn't going to get you a six-pack—but is getting a six-pack going to get you what you think, we can talk about that later. It's just that your instance of life is carried in an electrochemical machine that needs at least thirty minutes of moderate activity 3x/week, at least according to conventional wisdom, so that we can get instances of music, or photography, or cultural theory, or unswaying friendship, or really hilarious facebook statuses.
So, I do. Think. That everybody should be active. I say that with hesitation because of still believing that the game is to generate as many instances as possible, and some of those will be inactive instances. So this is in the context of, I'm not involved in every instance. I mean, obviously—there's seven billion instances in the world, and right now I'm involved with, like, ten. That's my instance, see.
I can't figure out how to wrap this up, and I've gone on long enough on the bowl of egg bites that I scarfed four hours ago. After I've eaten I will either come up with a few more ideas for getting active, or continue on my merry way down this skeleton...
Oh man, I have gotten on the butter a.k.a. bulletproof coffee bandwagon. Though I don't know if this is the seventy six trombones with a hundred and ten cornets kind of bandwagon or just a couple of cranks with combs and wax paper, I'm sensitive lately that—speaking of butter, did you ever read Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder? The part where the butter salesman samples Mrs. Wilder's butter with a thin tube that he sticks down into the tub of butter? That's what I'm talking about, that I'm only sampling a thin tube out of the whole tub of the world. Where the world is more variant than Mrs. Wilder's butter, which was uniform and good all the way through. I'm pretty sure that my tube of butter isn't the same butter all around, but it's easy to take it for that. And by tube of butter, I mean the blogs that I follow on my feedly (which is what I am replacing my google reader with). Anyway the blogs I follow are tending more toward paleo these days, and through my tube it looks like everybody is drinking bulletproof coffee and, finally, here's a concrete answer for my dad about whether if everybody jumped into Lake Michigan, would I jump into Lake Michigan: uh, yes? I'd want to know what that was all about. Actually, I'm going to let Joel Runyon explain what it's all about for you:
Because really, I am not an authority about such things. I can't tell you that drinking butter is going to help you burn fat or get lean or geez not have a heart attack, I don't know about that. I'm not a dietitian. It's something that I'm trying for myself, and that's all I can tell you about. It's all in the context of, shall we say, an undulating reduction of the amount of starch in my diet, which has been ongoing for the last couple of years. I do feel better the less starch that I eat, and I do eat more protein—which is to say, meat—than I used to. I like to think, though, that I've mostly replaced starches with vegetables and fruit. I have, right? I pretty fervently believe that whether you're vegan or paleo, half of your plate should be vegetables and we can meet on this common ground.
Of course, butter coffee is not a vegetable.
Here's what's going on with butter coffee for me. So there was a little opera about the bagel this winter and then the fat lady sang, and that was the end of that opera. And now I'm testing a get lean program, and getting lean means getting strict with your diet—yeah, it does—and this is about the strictest my diet has ever been: alcohol, sugar, and/or processed starch (pasta, bread) once a week, and starchy protein (grains, legumes) or starchy vegetable (potato, sweet potato) once a day. And man, once a week is not a lot. And once a day is not a lot. You actually have to choose whether you're going to have baked oatmeal now, because that's it for the day then. Or do you want to eat this ice cream in bed tonight, or do you want to have a jack and ginger on Saturday night when you're out with your friends. I'm not saying that it's bad to choose the ice cream! Just that choosing something means not something else. And coming off the opera about the bagel, there were more than a few things regularly appearing in my mouth that I wouldn't choose now over baked oatmeal. Like the cup of tea and two three four biscoff cookies that I was sitting down to write with, there's the rub. You write with your brain, and your brain runs on sugar. And honestly if it came down to giving up writing or giving up sugar, I wouldn't give up writing. I mean this quite seriously and not in the sense that writing is that important. I really think that it's all about deciding what's important to you and choosing, and then accepting what you've chosen. Or hey, adjusting what you've chosen. I will say more about that later; as it is, this is the world's longest recipe for butter coffee. Pssh though, who reads me because I'm succinct.
As it happens, I didn't have to choose between writing and sugar. Enter butter coffee. So far it's working that a hot, luxurious, and incidentally caffeinated beverage gives me just the right pause and kick to sit down and write. At some point I will also have something to say about how sit down always seems to go with write.
And that is basically what I have to say about butter coffee. It's hot. It's luxurious. Oh and it's filling, there's that too. And here's how I make mine, I get Kerrygold unsalted butter at Trader Joe's:
8 oz coffee
1 Tbsp grassfed unsalted butter
1 tsp coconut oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
Pour the coffee in a rocket blender cup. Add the butter, coconut oil, and vanilla.
Blend it all together until creamy, about thirty seconds.
Jeebus, it took three tries to get this right. Pureeing the onion and celery into the broth on the first try like I did for the classic and brunswick stews didn't work, unless you don't mind your stew looking like Campbell's tomato soup. Nevermind the second try, I was rushed and didn't have mushrooms and doubled the green beans instead—nnnnn. So I strained the broth for the third try and contemplated what self-respecting hunter would throw out perfectly nutritious onions and celery, but I knew from veganly beans that broth plus tomato paste would be gorgeously red. And I really couldn't bear to ruin the picture out of overreaching ambition and have to make this again, because I have lots more ideas for chicken stews! But probably you could add them back in, I will say though that the way it's written it has a nice oniony celery-y flavor and otherwise it's all about the mushrooms. Oh and, the whole head of garlic.
an onion
two stalks celery
4-5 chicken thighs
2 cups water
1 lb mushrooms
1/2 lb frozen green beans
1 head garlic
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp or half a small can of tomato paste
Peel and chop the onion, and trim and chop the celery including the leaves if they look nice. Put the onion, celery, chicken, and water in a soup pot and bring to a strong simmer over high heat. Then turn the heat to low and let simmer partially covered for an hour.
Heat oven to 500 degrees. Wipe and quarter the mushrooms, and separate the head of garlic into cloves and peel them by smashing them open under the flat of your knife. Toss the mushrooms, green beans, and garlic with olive oil and a little bit of salt. Roast for 30 minutes. Mushrooms and also frozen green beans give off a lot of water, so after 15 minutes you might like to drain and save the excess liquid in a small bowl, give the veggies a check and a stir, and put them back in the oven for another fifteen.
When the chicken is done, remove it to a cutting board and set aside. Pour the remaining broth and vegetables through a strainer, set aside the broth and discard the vegetables. When the mushrooms and green beans are done, they can hang out in their pan until the chicken is cool enough to skin and take apart with your hands. It's kinda gross, but you can feel quicker with your hands what's meat and what's a glob of fat or gristle; hands are good tools. But then I use a knife to finish cutting the chicken into bite-size pieces.
Pour the broth back into the soup pot. If you have reserved mushroom liquid, you can throw that in too. Stir in the tomato paste and simmer over medium high heat until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.
Stir in the mushrooms, green beans, and chicken. Simmer a few more minutes until heated through. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
