A typical shopping list

I live 5 minutes away from a Whole Foods. I know not everyone shares my opinion, but I love Whole Foods. True, there are certain things they don't sell, like my low sugar ketchup, and they don't usually have specials like 10 avocados for $10 (found last night at Shaws-SCORE!). But I generally find the quality of their produce, including their frozen produce, to be higher and I can get grass fed beef and other organic meats for relatively reasonable prices. 

Now, I used to stop by WF every night on my way home. Why plan ahead when I could just grab whatever I was feeling like that night? But as it got colder, and I started working later, stopping by the grocery store every night became a hassle.

So lately I have been experimenting with actually *planning* a week's worth of meals and shopping for them on the weekend. Revolutionary, no :)? And I'm proud to say I've been pretty successful. So here's what the SO and I consume over the course of a week, more or less:

8oz smoked salmon

1 package organic smoked sliced turkey breast

1 package organic sliced ham

1 lb ground beef 

1.5 lb ground turkey 

1 package spicy italian chicken sausage

1 lb frozen salmon fillets

1.25 lbs chicken breast 

1 package Trader Joe's Chili Lime Chicken Burgers (SO GOOD)

1 package bacon

3/4 lb provolone

2 cartons eggs

1 bag of onions

1 package of mushrooms

1 bag frozen asparagus

1 bag frozen brussels sprouts

1 bag frozen spinach

1 bag frozen strawberries

1 bag frozen peach slices

1 spaghetti squash

1 cabbage

2 avocados

Breakfast is eggs and bacon most days, with the cold cuts and cheese  or the smoked salmon subbing in sometimes. Lunch is usually leftovers from dinner. I like to kick off the week by making a big pot of chili on Sunday nights, since it takes a long time but pays great dividends. I really despise frozen broccoli, peppers, onions, and mushrooms because I think the freezing process totally screws up the texture. But for some reason, the above listed veggies don't seem to suffer. 

Actually, looking at the list is interesting-I realize that I would like to incorporate more fatty fish (love those omega 3s), but otherwise I feel pretty good about it. I try to be flexible in order to take advantage of sales. For example, last week chicken breast was on sale, but this week I'd like to add in some pork for my B1. I also find that, particularly with the dearth of fresh produce where I live at this time of year, frozen veggies are the better bet, but I would buy more fresh seasonal veggies if it were warmer. And I find for my sweet tooth, snacking on frozen fruit is a great solution. It slows me down (hello brain freeze) and I really enjoy the texture of frozen fruit. 

We don't get through all of that in a week, necessarily, but it's a pretty good approximation. Sorry, this might be really boring, but I know when I first started eating the way I eat now, I had no idea what to buy for myself, and it's kind of neat to see how far I've come :)

Oy, one of those nights

Every good cook has his or her bad days. The kind of day that ends in smoke alarms blasting, words that consist of four letters in every form (adjective, verb, noun, adverb), and general feelings of frustration. 

To the poor chicken who sacrificed his or her breast to me, only to have me sear it into oblivion, I'm sorry. I did salvage most of your contribution to dinner, gently shaving off the parts that were blackened beyond edibility. Please do not take my carelessness as a sign you died in vain--the SO still gobbled up the rest of you and swears you tasted good. 

Of course, he'd eat almost anything if I stuffed it with cheese, but that's another story :)

I guess that makes me elitist

I went to see 'The Nanny Diaries' this summer. I love chick flicks, I love ScarJo, and I was in desperate need of air conditioning (oh how I long for those days now). And that movie made me mad.

For the most part the movie was cute, harmless fun. But there is one scene where the lovely Ms. Scarlett, in her role as an Upper East Side mother's nanny, decides to 'liberate' her charge from the horrible restrictions his mother puts on him.

What are these horrible restrictions? His mother wants him to *shudder* eat organic food all the time! No processed food! No sugar! It's practically child torture, no? Scarlett, angel and child advocate, decides to introduce her poor, suffering subject to the glories of, what else, peanut butter and jelly on white bread. Also known as sugar on sugar with some aflatoxins thrown in for good measure.

I realize what the movie was trying to do, which is address how we shouldn't treat children like little adults. How we should let them just be kids. Hey, I totally agree that dressing a child up in a suit on a daily basis is a little ridiculous :) My beef is with the idea that eating healthy organic food should be lumped together with all the other obviously unpleasant constraints the mother puts on her child.

I was thinking about this issue today because I was reading about Jamie Oliver, a British chef who has publically decried the crap available to British school children in their school lunches. He is frequently accused of being an elitist snob because he thinks children should be served fresh, unprocessed food. I doubt Nanny Diaries was going for deep social commentary, but I think that the scene mentioned is telling in indicating a more general American attitude towards food.

It is singularly amazing to me how little some people seem to care about what they consume. I am amazed because we are talking about items that one is literally putting in one's body. And then the media tells us if we care, we must be rich snobs with too much time on our hands? If we want to feed our kids healthy food we're somehow depriving them of a normal childhood?

I don't understand how that happened. When did it become so fundamentally uncool not to eat sugar? Or Cheetoes? Or any of the other processed crap major food companies make tons of money off of? This kind of manipulation makes me angry.

We get the majority of our information from biased sources: big food comapnies who have a vested interest in have us consume their products, and the FDA, a political institution that is subject to lobbying by said large food companies. I highly recommend the movie King Corn, which makes this point far more graphically and eloquently than I ever could.

Worse, the information is transmitted not just in the obvious ways, such as food commercials, but as the Nanny Diaries illustrates, in far more subtle ways as well. This is why I'm in favour of measures of accountability from these entities. Take, for example, making major restaurant chains post their calorie counts. To those who rail agains the nanny state--WAKE UP. The public needs more information about food from more sources. Doesn't it freak you out a little that these chains would be so resistant to doing so? Posting calories is a very small step towards accountability. I'm not advocating take fast food commercials off the air, or ending product placements in movies. It's a free, capitalist country. All I'm saying is, don't we all deserve a little truth with our food? Shouldn't we all start to care just a little bit more?

Why I don't like the word 'substitute'

When people begin a new way of eating, they often look to 'substitute' for foods they used to eat that may have been less than ideal. For example, a person might 'substitute' a bowl of oatmeal for the danish they used to eat in the morning. The 'substitute' is supposed to be an improvement on the usual item consumed.

Here's why I don't like the term 'substitute.' It somehow implies to me that what you're eating is merely standing in for what you WANT to eat. You are will to accept something other than what you really want for whatever reason (typically because the new food is in some way a better fit with your new style of eating) but by calling it a 'substitute' you are implicitly acknowledging that item's second class status in your mind.

I don't look at cauliflower puree as a 'substitute' for mashed potatoes. I look at it as a delicious, healthy side dish. It irks me a little to see people call them 'mock mashed potatoes' and then hear people bitch and whine about how cauliflower doesn't taste as good, doesn't have the right texture, etc. IT'S CAULIFLOWER. A yummy and highly nutritious vegetable in it's own right. One should accept it for what it is, rather than blaming it for what it can't be.

My theory is that the internal monologue you have about what you're eating influences your psychological satisfaction. If you are always saying to yourself "I want x, but I'll accept y" it is unlikely you will be able to appreciate y for all it's wonderful qualities. Instead, you'll be blaming y for not being x, and wishing you had x the whole time. What if you said 'I am going to try y this time.' No reference to x at all. Then you wouldn't define y in terms of x, but as a freestanding entity. Perhaps you might be better able to discern and appreciate all the wonderful qualities of y you wouldn't notice if you were focused on it's deficiencies vis-a-vis x.

Why does it matter? Because if you always treat your new food choices as lacking in some important way, like how they taste, you will never fully accept and integrate them. You may continue to make yourself eat them, but you will feel deprived and unhappy. But if you make the conscious decision to take the new foods as they come, and give them a fair shot in the taste department, you may in fact find that something you thought you wouldn't care for is actually pretty darn good.

I firmly believe that the way you frame a change in eating psychologically has a huge effect on whether you can make the change effectively. I don't use the word 'substitute' for any of the foods I eat. For example, I don't 'substitute' coconut milk for cow's milk. I use coconut milk instead of cow's milk because I know that coconut milk has significant benefits for me and it tastes really good. I don't 'substitute' spaghetti squash for pasta, I view pasta as a nutritionally deficient in comparison to spaghetti squash.

I know it may seem like a small point, but I think it's an important one. Little syntactical choices have been shown time and time again to reflect the overarching mentality of a person. At the very least, it is something to ponder.

A typical dinner recipe...

My SO has a few favourites among the things I cook that he frequently requests. Since, vain little creature that I am, I love them too, I have no problem complying.

Here is what I made for dinner last night:
CR/Paleo Chili
5g bacon grease
150g (1/3 lb) carrots, chopped in large dice
150g onion (1/3lb), chopped in large dice
150g celery (1/3lb), chopped in large dice
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 lb (454g) 90/10 ground beef (grass fed if you can get it)
2 28oz (1500 g) cans Fire Roasted Muir Glen tomatoes, or any other brand you favour
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp red chili flakes
1 tsp green jalapeno chili flakes
1 tsp ground pasilla peppers
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a large stewpot with high sides, over medium heat, saute carrots, celery, and onion in bacon grease until onion is translucent and carrots and celery are softened, 5-7 minutes.
2. Add garlic and saute for one more minute.
3. Lower the heat to low and add beef. Saute until brown, stirring to ensure all the meat is browned evenly.
4. Add in the two cans of tomato and the bay leaves. Turn up the heat to medium, give all the ingredients a good stir, and watch the pot until the mixture boils.
5. Lower the heat to medium/low and cook for two hours. For the first 3/4 of an hour, do not stir the pot. Let the tomato mixture burn on the bottom, it adds a delicious flavour to the chili. After the first 3/4 of a hour, stir occasionally, scrapping the bottom of the pan to incorporate those nice charred bits into the chili. When the mixture seems to be getting dry, add a cup of hot water and keep cooking.
6. After two hours, add the chili powder, cumin, chili flakes, jalapeno flakes, pasilla, and salt and pepper. Give the pot a good stir, and let cook for one more hour, until the mixture is a deep red brown.
7. Serve with any garnish you like. This recipe feeds the SO and I for a couple of days, lunch and dinner. I had it with a side of braised cabbage.

One of my favourite kitchen tools

I am sure this will be the theme of many posts. I collect kitchen gadgets the way rich, poorly endowed men collect loud, gas guzzling phallic substitutes. I am incredibly easy to buy presents for, given that my kitchen preferences are, shall we say, well publicized ;).

One tool I turn to again and again is my meat mallet. I do have a heavy work schedule, and I refuse to compromise on cooking for myself every night, so a practical girl learns a few short cuts. Pounding pieces of protein flat and popping them under a broiler or slapping them in a hot frying pan is a great way to expedite a meal.

Now, everyone knows you can pound out a chicken breast. But one of my favourite tricks is butterflying a whole pork tenderloin, pounding it into a nice wide slab, rubbing the sucker down with seasonings and oil, and giving in a nice quick sear.

Throw a little guacamole on top (because in my world, guacamole goes with everything) and steamed veggies (steam 'em in the microwave while you're cooking the pork, and douse with parmesan) and you have a lovely dinner you can throw together in 15 minutes PLUS leftovers for breakfast/lunch the next day. And it all starts with that nice little mallet.

Squash Fiend

Oh yes, I am a squash fiend. Summer and winter. I am equal opportunity in my consumption. In the winter, I particularly adore spaghetti, butternut, and delicata squash. Now I know they're a bit carb heavy, but they are definitely worth it. They are deliciously sweet and gorgeously coloured, and I don't know about you, but I love having cheery, brightly coloured food during the loooooong grey Northeast winters. 

Winter squash have several appealing features, such as keeping for a LONG time, and being packed with good vitamins. Let's take my personal favourite, butternut: it has A, all the Bs, C, E and K. Now tell me that's not good bang for your caloric buck! Not to mention they make very pretty display pieces--I had a nice fat butternut squash on my coffee table up until it was sacrificed to my stomach last night and this morning.

There are many ways to use the butternut. I will admit off the bat they're a hassle and a half to cut up-they have an awkward shape and they're VERY hard. If you're unfamiliar with the shape of a butternut, it has a long neck culminating in a bulbous end. You can approach the challenge in several ways. 1) Avoidance-just poke a few holes in it and roast it whole in the oven until soft. 2) Full frontal attack-stand that sucker on it's end or lay it on it's side and slice it straight down in half (if you choose this approach, for the love of Pete BE CAREFUL).  3) Divide and conquer-this is my method of choice, where you slice the butternut in two and separate the neck and the bulbous end, each of which you can then deal with separately. 

Once you have defeated the beast, you can prepare it in whichever way you choose. If I'm lazy, I will nuke it in the microwave and then puree it into soup. If I'm feeling slightly more industrious, I'll make butternut squash 'fries,' lopping it up into fry shapes and roasting them in the oven until nice and crispy (425F for 45 min, flipping halfway through). If I'm feeling fancy, I'll cube it in small cubes and saute it in coconut oil and thyme. You can also oven roast the cubes and then toss them with a little butter you have browned in the microwave. As a side note, once I discovered I could brown butter in the micro, it was like a new WORLD had opened to me, but then, I really, really like butter. Anyways, you can also roast the halves until tender, brushed with a little butter and maple syrup (hey, I'm Canadian, I do like my maple on occasion), you can stuff the hollow with whatever you like. 

Now, this may bother some people, but I am lazy when I prepare my winter squash, so I usually eat the skin. I do wash it thoroughly beforehand. You can always peel the squash if you want. I just can't be bothered. In any case, as you can see, the butternut is pretty, versatile, and to my mind, generally worthy of praise :)