Week Four in Review

Wow People.. 28 days ago I started something a little on the crazy side, and, despite my bad habit of abandoning projects, am still going strong. In fact, this week may just be the best yet…

Since the last week in review I have managed to eat something leafy and green every day. Win! This was mostly bok choy or spinach, either in stir-fry or salad form… kind of boring. I also managed to make a tiny batch of edible lefse. I got new milk and started something else a little crazy..

I used to really enjoy a kale-spinach-fruit smoothies in the mornings, as it was a super easy way to incorporate fresh (and raw) leafy greens into my daily diet. Lately though, there have been no smoothies. My schedule has fallen into a blissful Monday through Friday and either 6am-1pm or 8am-2pm kind of deal. Don’t get me wrong: I love it, and will very, very, greatly miss it when the theatre things rolls around again (in two short weeks: eep!). Problem is: I have roomies. Ones that, I’m sure, would not appreciate the blender running at 4:45am, or even at 7am. Easy solution: use the blender at work! This next week I will be making some smoothie packs to bring to work: all of the ingredients ready to go (chopped, mixed and frozen) so alls I have to do is chuck them in the blender and add a little water.

This week had a few yummy  meals. Chicken parmesan, chicken wings, stir fry, meatballs, and one lazy lazy day where no dinner was cooked (I have a semi-valid excuse for this one though…more later).

I also attempted to bake twice, and failed, saw a garden, got some milk, and did something that right now has me a little twitchy.

LEFSE:

Thursday night I attempted the Lefse, a Norwegian flatbread made with potato (basically it looks like a tortilla, but because the Norwegians are a brilliant people they found a way to add the yummy potato and make it even more yummy) which is spelled “l-e-f-s-e” not “”l-e-f-s-a” although it is pronounced “Lefsaaaaaaaaaa”, unless you have attempted to make it at home, with a recipe that wasn’t quite right, in which case you pronounce it “F%@!&@$@ Lefsa!” while tossing half of the recipe into the garbage.

If you haven’t gathered yet, this didn’t quite go well.

I got the lefse recipe from my Grandma, who makes it wonderfully and usually I get a pack or two a year. It went a little something like this:

-Make a medium sized pot of mashed potatoes

-Add some butter and salt

-Mix in flour until it turns into a dough

-Roll it out into circles on a floured surface

-Fry in an ungreased pan until brown spots appear

Please note the complete absence of measurements (I guess this is where I get it from..).

Also note the lack of cream (which my Mom found on a bunch of lefse recipes while talking me through my angry mixing of dough phase that came later on).

Last, but not least.. ohhhhhhh…. definitely not least, note the complete lack of the direction: cool your potatoes completely until stiff before adding the flour. DO NOT ADD THE FLOUR WHILE THE POTATOES ARE STILL WARM. EVER. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.

As this last missed direction was, well, missing, I started adding flour after mashing my potatoes. Then I added more flour, and another cup, and some more flour. I noticed that my mixture was not really turning into a nice workable dough, more like a chunky paste. I was on the phone with my poor Mom at the time, so she got to hear my colourful language at this point, as well as some interesting descriptions, and my complete joy at the fact the my Grandma had forgot to mention this one little step of cooling the potatoes. All in all my potatoes ate 6 cups of flour before my mom suggested I chuck out half my recipe and go from there. At this point it was looking and smelling like a really bad batch of home-made play dough. The halved recipe ate about another two cups during the rolling process.

The bottom is the abandoned half, the top was what I tried to save..

After I rolled out about 18 or so lefse I started the frying process. The little potato tortillas of death started doing something strange. When I put them on the hot pan they stared doing this weird thing where they would grow giant bubbly tumours, then the bubbles would move around and expand until they sprung a leak and a geyser of steam would rush out. I think it was due to the extreme amounts of flour that had been incorporated.. the mix had become almost elastic when raw. Whatever it was, it was weird, kind of creepy, and nothing that food should be doing.When taken off the pan though, they actually looked like lefse.

After cooking a few I decided to try it.. I smothered one in butter and rolled it up (it was like a butter filled potato taquito from Norway): not too too bad. In fact, it even tasted like lefse!! The night was finally looking up!

(By the way: this is what I look like tired, after being really grumpy about things not working, in my PJs and stuffing my face with butter soaked lefse)

I got half way through frying my pre-rolled stack when something happened. I guess my dough could have used some more flour (greedy, greedy dough), because suddenly halfway through the stack I went to pick up my next little round, and they all were stuck together. They were stuck together to the point that no matter how carefully I tried, they were not un-stickable.

Imagine if you were to take a stack of potentially yummy pancakes. Now separate the stack and add super glue to the top and bottom of each pancake and reassemble your stack. Now, take a can of varnish, a large can of varnish (yes the whole thing), and pour it over your pancake stack, making sure to completely cover all of your pancake stack. Put the varnish-covered super-glued delicious looking pancake stack somewhere well ventilated and wait 12-24 hours. Then go back, and try to separate those pancakes. That’s where I was at with my lefse at ohhh… about 10:30 Thursday night. Please note that I had put the potatoes on to boil probably around 6:30pm, spent about 2 and a bit hours trying to make a dough out of the stuff, and spent what felt like forever rolling out this precious little stack.

The last face the lost lefse saw

“Then I did something that I almost never do when baking or cooking. I gave up. I threw the half stack of stuck into the garbage (along with the failed half of my original amount). I did learn a couple of things  however:

1) When making lefse, chill your f^(#ing potatoes until they’re stiff.

2) It never hurts to look at more than one recipe when trying something new.

 

GRANOLA BARS:

Friday I felt like I had to redeem myself a little, so I decided to make granola bars because really, how can that go wrong? I mixed up some oats with some melted butter, trail mix, holy crap cereal, coconut and whatever else granola bar additive yummy stuff I could find as well as some sweetened condensed milk.

I like my granola bars chewy, so baked them for about 20 minutes until the edges just started to brown. I pulled them out and turned the pan upside down onto the cooling rack where the whole tray crumbled and fell apart.

I tried to fix this by squashing it all back into the pan and baking it longer. Please note that this doesn’t work. They will kind of stick together, but will still be super crumbly and will fall apart when touched and not be chewy at all. Basically you will end up with slightly bar shaped logs of something that simply turns into crunchy granola when touched. Maybe this is what you’re looking for, in which case, leave a comment and I will tell you how to screw up granola bars.

THE GARDEN:

On a much happier note, I also took a peek at a garden yesterday!!

A while ago I had emailed a woman about taking on a plot in a community garden near my house. Last week she got back to me and explained that she had a wait list of 100 names, and had stopped adding names after that. She suggested I try again late in the spring. Community gardens are a great idea, they use space in unused lots, parks, boulevards for food, flowers or whatever else those people who are lucky enough to have them wish to grow. Usually though the plots are fairly small, very open, very close to the next persons plot and cost about $15.oo a year (which really isn’t a lot).

I was a little bit down about not getting this little patch of Earth, and was telling T about it. While I was being grumpy, he did something wonderful. He looked up a yaardshare program, found one near my house, and even made contact with the woman. Thank you thank you thank you!

As last week was a bit of a weather nightmare in the lower mainland, I waited until yesterday to walk by and take a peek at the space.

I am excited! The woman had mentioned that she doesn’t allow the use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers (Win!). There are a couple of girls who used the garden last year who might come back, but there is lots of space for everyone, and it also means that we can take turns watering, as well as share whatever we grow (Win!). There is an odd-looking, but neat pyramid structure for peas and climbing beans, and a small raspberry patch (Win!). She even has a kiwi plant growing! (exciting win!).

I didn’t take any photos yesterday, because, well, I had kind of snuck into the backyard (she did say to come by whenever), and it does need a little work. There is a lot of weeding, soil turning and things that have to happen before anything can be planted. Parsley has more or less taken over one large patch, and there is a fair bit of hay covering another patch. You may think this would deter me a little, but pretty much the opposite. I can’t wait to get in there and dig stuff up. If it weren’t so cold and wet out there I might even be doing that right now. In honesty, it will have to wait a few weeks, but it is something that I look forward to!

MILK:

I got new milk this week, and haven’t died. Yay!

A GRUMPY NEW UNDERTAKING:

Something odd happened yesterday. I got back from the garden and doing a little grocery shopping, had just made some granola crumbly stuff and was outside on the fire escape smoking the last smoke out of my pack. I was thinking to myself “probably should have picked up another pack when I got the groceries. Too bad. I really don’t want to go out again”.

That thought morphed into “I don’t have to go out again. I wonder how long I could go without a smoke”.

A couple of miles down the track and the thought train was speeding along from “Well, I’m two hours in, I think I could do this” to “I must have at least one cigarette in this house somewhere” and back to “three hours.. three hours thirty seconds…”

I have looked up some cheesy videos made with the idea that they will help you appreciate the decision to not smoke. They are cheesy little attempted pats on the back that one minute feel like they are helping a little, and the next make me want to punch the guy who made them because there is no way that he can know what this feels like, then I feel guilty for wanting to punch him because he is, after all just trying to help, and probably made the videos because he himself had trouble quitting and really does know the weird half there state my brain is currently in. I have also downloaded this annoying counter thing that tells me how long it has been since my last smoke, how much money I have saved by not smoking, how many cigarettes I would have smoked in the time since I have quit (though this is flawed because it averages them out over the day, not the hours that I am awake), and how much time I have added to my lifespan since stopping. I love and hate this thing alternatively. I like knowing how much money I have saved, how much longer I am apparently going to live, and how many less cigarette buts there are in the world, but the clock is driving me nuts. It even counts seconds (though isn’t quite accurate because I found it two and a bit hours after stopping and guessed the exact time I took my last puff).

As I type this it has been 22hr., 3min, and 28 seconds (29, 30, 31….)

I have saved $5.85

I have not smoked 13 cigarettes (reminder: flawed because of the all day average thing)

I will live 1 hour,  5 minutes longer.

Also, Ihave about half the brain capacity that I had yesterday morning when I was still smoking. I have managed to misplace two of my bowls (probably containing some sort of life saving snack), I can’t stop wiggling my toes, have an attention span of about 7 minutes and I am sooo grateful that I can keep my fingers busy typing this blog entry (which currently sits at 2,411 words).

Thank you for putting up with this massive post, as well as the mood swings, which I am sure are apparent in this monster of a post. Thank you also for continuing to read (or scan, sorry guys, I know this is a long one), and for taking the time to think a little bit about what it is you are putting into your mouth (or not putting in your mouth, as the case may be).

Keep on reading, let me know what you think!

USEFUL LINKS:

Yardshare: http://www.sharingbackyards.com/browse/Vancouver,BC&welcome_box=3

Lefse: http://visualrecipes.com/recipe-details/recipe_id/113/Lefse/

Non Smoking Stuff: http://ffn.yuku.com/topic/12886/Video-guide-for-those-just-starting-their-quits#.TyRc7YEtvaF

(the counter thingies are called “quit meters”)

 

P.S. : something increduble: I have ZERO things to add to the cheat list this week: WIN!

Week Two In Review

I have to be honest here, and week 2 was a little rough. I stuck to my guns, but went through what I can only refer to as Junk Food Withdrawal.

Everywhere I looked were delicious delectables begging for me to just put them in my mouth.. whispering softly into my ear that nobody was around, nobody but me would know: dessert squares at the coffee shop where I work, cookies at other coffee shops, the mountain of chips and crackers at the front of the grocery store, chocolate bars at tills. Everything with soy lecithin, maltodextrin, and loads of other ingredients I cannot identify (or can identify, but am refusing to eat).

Saturday night I wanted something sweet, so I made brownies. Win for me! I knew all of the ingredients and my taste buds were satisfied.

Sunday also went really well. I got up early for a tubing adventure, had some breakfast at home (where thanks to the great purge all is edible) and had an amazing picnic on the mountain of fruit, Holy Crap cereal, veggies, cracker with avocado and tuna. This was also the first time that I ate tuna from a can. It was the flavoured stuff, with all happy ingredients and it was so yummy that I went out and bought a couple of cans for myself.

Early in the week the cravings set in and I scoured the chip shelves at Whole Foods, reading just about every ingredient out there. I caved. I bought a bag of Ms. Palmer’s Panty Pita Chips, containing: pita bread (flour, water, yeast, salt, sugar), balsamic vinegar, white vinegar, butter, canola oil, sea salt, seasonings, spices. Doesn’t look that bad right? That’s what I thought in my initial “I’m hungry, and I want to eat it” rampage. Here are the problems (yes, more than one..). What kind of flour? What is in the balsamic vinegar? (I will admit that at first I thought this was an innocent ingredient, until Debra mentioned it and I remembered that just a week before I had to get rid of my own balsamic vinegar because of maltodextrin). Same goes for the white vinegar. Does the butter that they used say the words I have come to dread “may contain butter” on the wrapper? I don’t like the fact that canola oil was in there, but that’s another post. Which seasonings and spices did they use? They might as well have put those other dreaded words “natural flavours” on the list.

Tuesday night I made a chicken stir fry over volcano rice, using the stir fry sauce that I picked up at the Farmer’s Market (made with Saskatoon berries, salal berries, blueberries, huckleberries, onion, garlic, carrot, celery, sugar, lemon juice, salt, lime leaves and chili paste – double yum!).

Wednesday I made tacos. Yummy! I still think that I could have rolled my tortillas out a little bit thinner, but I am thrilled with what I got and will be repeating this again.

Thursday and Friday were leftover days and nights, with no fail.

Saturday I attended an event where food was provided. Though others have cooked for me this year (thanks!) this is the first time this year where I ate food that was prepared without first scanning the ingredients. Not to say that the options weren’t very healthy. In fact it all looked amazing and the smell of it made me drool. There were homemade chillies, ciabatta buns, rice, potatoes, salad, and pie for dessert. Unfortunately I had to assume that the beans in the chilli weren’t checked for EDTA and that the tomatoes in it were from cans, not jars, so chilli was out. The salad was predressed, so no go there and though the pie looked fantastic there was no way to tell if it was butter or margarine in the crust, and even if it was butter, if it was colour free. I still had an amazing lunch though of rice, potato, fresh chopped tomato, peas, and green onions. For a light dinner there was soup, buns and fruit salad. I skipped the soup and bun and went for the fruit salad. After wolfing down the first few bites I spotted the tell-tale cherry implying that the salad was the same kind that you get in your lunch when you’re a kid.Thinking that this was probably a cheat, I looked it up on the Dole website. To my happy amazement, the cherry mixed fruit is made with fruit, and packed in 100% juice! Turns out what I thought was a maybe cheat, actually wasn’t. There were also added bananas, grapes and kiwis. Yum!!

After the event we had a delicious veggie stir fry over rice and quinoa too. Considering that it was the first eating out experience of this whole thing, I am quite pleased. It was all healthy, ingredient happy, and now that I look back on it, it was also a vegetarian day (though I will never give up meat entirely, leaning towards more veg and less meat is something that I have been thinking a lot about lately).

That wraps up Week #2!

Two weeks, one cheat: not too bad!

This week I want to make some lefsa. I am sure that I spelled that wrong, but it’s one of my grandmas specialties. It’s actually a lot like a tortilla, but made with mashed potatoes, flour, butter and a pinch of salt, rolled thin and fried on a non-greased pan. What makes it better than a tortilla isn’t just the fact that it’s inspired by Grandma. It’s also incredibly yummy, and very versatile. I like rolling mine and dipping them in butter melted with sugar and cinnamon for something sweet, but they are also good just spread with butter, or when you drizzle lemon juice on them and sprinkle them with sugar.

I also want to try making a fully vegetarian meal, something new and inspired by a recipe off the Vegetarian Times site (which was forwarded to me by a lady at work – Thanks!).

Other highlights of the week include procuring a new top secret thing (I was supposed to procure said top secret thing yesterday, but there was snow and the delivery was cancelled) that will eliminate certain vitamin A palmitate and Vitamin D3 in my everyday life. Don’t worry, I will still be getting vitamin A, though not attached to palm oil derivatives, and my vitamin D will be coming from eggs instead of sheep’s wool. I am also in the works of securing some garden space for the spring, and after a 75$ Whole Foods shopping trip will be looking for a cheaper way to make this food thing work.

Stay tuned folks, and thank for reading!

Week One Review

Well Folks, the first week is through and I am happy to report that I am still kicking!

There were a few temptations along the way. On Monday I was offered the same chocolate three times, by three different people and it was tough, but I said no every time (It was a salted caramel too…). Tuesday I was wrapping cookies at work and they smelled soooo yummy, but again, I didn’t go with it. There were double-butter croissants and Napoleons on Granville Island, Florentines at Whole Foods, and chocolate pretty much everywhere I looked. I have become good at saying no. It also gives me a chance to talk peoples ears off about the whole “Eat” thing when they give me a funny look after I say no. It might not be a completely good-hearted thing to do, but I have to admit that I get a little bit of a sense of revenge when someone offers me something I can’t eat, and I can tell them what kind of weird stuff they just ate.. especially if it looks particularly yummy. Ha People! – you will learn, whether you want to or not, what is in the food you are eating…muah hah hah.

After the big purge I had to restock a few things, and did so at Whole Foods. It was a little on the pricey side. I picked up spinach, two apples, two pomegranates, bananas, dried beans, soy sauce, roasted red pepper pasta sauce, rice pasta, jarred tomatoes, three avocados, sugar, jam, and grape seed oil. It was $57.00. I also had to go back later in the week for some bread, rice, lettuce and green beans. The sugar, soy sauce, pasta, pasta sauce, oil and jam will carry me through more than a week though. It’s just good stuff to have around.

I cooked dried beans for the first time! I didn’t know what to do with them, so stuck them into a pasta sauce. I will need to find something more creative to do with them next time around, and probably cook them a little bit longer (they were a little on the tough side). Suggestions are most definitely welcome!

I realized towards the beginning of the week (I have been keeping a food journal out of curiosity) that I wasn’t eating very much, so have made a habit of snacking. Once upon a time, not all that long ago, I would have picked up some cheap granola bars (complete with chocolate chips), potato chips, crackers and that kind of thing, but this week was a biggie for extra fruit and vegetables.  I feel like I have a lot more energy because of it too.

Now that I look back on  it, I ate a pretty decent variety of animals this week as well.. chicken (and their unfertilized offspring), venison, bison and salmon. Yum! Both the bison and bambi were free range (bought at Oyama), and the salmon was wild sockeye caught in Northern B.C. and bought at the farmers market.

Basically this week I ate a whole lot of vegetables, quite a bit of fruit, switched my grain intake to whole grains (and ate less because of it), ate a bunch of different animals, and cut out probably about 75% of my sugar. The sugar thing didn’t happen on purpose, but it’s tough when you can’t eat the cookies, pastries, processed foods that have most of it. The sugar that I did have this week was only in my coffee, fancy pants hot chocolate (from Debra for Christmas) and the homemade marshmallows that went with it. I guess the honey that the salmon was marinated with counts too…

It was  pretty easy (knock on wood). I had already resigned myself to the fact that the only way I would get through this would be to home-cook the meals that I could, and pack lunches for the ones where I would be at work (or take enough snacky stuff to get me through). If I had gone into this thinking that I would just be able to pick stuff up on the way, I feel like I would be having a much harder time.

I also made a challenge with my Mom. The deal is that once a week she has to cook a healthy and nutritious meal for herself, and I will do the same and we will compare. When I spoke with her today she said that she hadn’t yet, but was trying to think one up. I’m counting Wednesday night’s dinner of salmon (marinated in ingredient-happy soy sauce, honey, the juice from half an orange, ginger and garlic), volcano rice (whole grain organic brown and red rice grown in volcanic soil), carrots, broccoli and corn. Pressure’s on Momma!!

Next week I would like to try making tortillas/wraps from scratch, finding something better to do with my beans, and making sure I drink more water. We’ll see how it goes!!

 

MMmmmmmmm..Marshmallows

     I have an addiction. Not a terrible one, but one that is destined to get me into hot water when I start this whole thing next month.

     I love hot chocolate. Like, really love it. If it was taller than me, had arms, legs and a heartbeat I would date it, marry it and live happily ever after.

     Luckily for me, the really good stuff is also the stuff that is made without all of the extra added ingredients.

Example:

No Name brand Hot Chocolate Mix: Sugar, modified milk ingredients, cocoa, coconut oil, corn syrup solids, salt, dipotassium phosphate, mono-and-diglycerides, silicon dioxide, natural and artificial flavours.

Cocoa Camino Drinking Chocolate: Chocolate (cocoa mass, golden cane sugar, cocoa powder), cocoa powder, golden cane sugar

The really good home-made stuff: Milk, cream, chocolate, maybe some honey if you feel like it

     I like the real stuff anyways, so that won’t be much of an adjustment.  I have been greatly inspired by a hot chocolate tasting at Cocoa Nymph and by Eileen, who writes a terrific blog called The Chocolate Apprentice (check it out – it’s delicious!)

     The issue at hand is that hot chocolate and I are really more part of a threesome than a couple. Every once in a while we like to invite the marshmallow to join us. What is hot chocolate without marshmallows anywho? (I know that some of you are whip-creamers, and all the power to you. While I’ll give it a whirl, the marshmallow is really more my type).

Let’s do that ingredients list thing again.. that was fun:

No Name brand Marshmallow: Corn syrup, sugar, modified corn starch, dextrose, water, gelatin, natural and artificial flavour, tetrasodium pyrophosphate.

The Home-Made Recipe I mooched off of The Frugal Kiwi: Sugar, water, powdered sugar, corn starch, gelatin, honey, vanilla, cocoa powder, salt

      Hmm.. choices made easy, because who want’s to eat anything with the word “pyro” in it. Not to mention “natural flavour”. This one makes me angry. People aren’t stupid. If things were actually naturally say, raspberry flavoured, raspberries would be in the ingredients list.

    At this point, I want to give a thank you and a shout out to the girl that writes The Frugal Kiwi. It’s a good blog, check it out. The recipe is good too (though I made a double batch, was unsatisfied, so made another quadruple batch)

         I assembled my ingredients. Because I can’t follow a recipe to save my life, my first thought was to make a batch of plain vanilla ones (made by omitting the cocoa powder). I also added an extra amount of vanilla. I don’t actually ever measure vanilla – EVER (one of my childhood memories if of making cookies with my mom and just pouring some in. I think I remember her saying that you don’t need to measure it. She very well might not have said this, but I took it and have run with it ever since). I also doubled Frugal Kiwi’s recipe because I love marshmallows, and because my Momma raised me right and intend to share.

     This is my first gelatin experience, so I am excited. It will also be my first experience at boiling candy until it reaches firm ball stage (or any stage for that matter).

     Before my room mate left for the day I not-so-casually brought up the phrase ‘I just need to get it to firm ball stage which is of course…?” and she told me that it meant putting some of the candy into a cool glass of water and it should make a firm ball. Thanks Debra! This turned out to be a lot of fun. I repeatedly poured hot sticky spoonfulls of syrupy looking stuff (that kind of smelled like warm rootbeer) into water just to see what it would do. I learned that if the water just goes milky, it’s definately not ready. If the syrup drips on the floor your feet will definitely get sticky. If the syrup turns into a squichy mess in the water it is at soft ball stage and you are almost there. If the candy comes out still pliable but holds it’s shape you got it right.

     The next step was to put the hot bubbling boiling sugar stuff into the gelatin that was sitting in water, in the mixer. Hmmmm….

       This turned out to be not quite as messy as I thought, but still pretty sticky. I got it all (well, most of it) in there while the mixer was on low, and cranked t up until the stuff was fluffy and luke warm.

     Then came the fun of pouring it into the pan (which I had greased and coated with the corn starch and powdered sugar). Doubling the recipe was not enough. I filled the small pan maybe 1/3 to half way and that was that.

     So, I did it all again. This time I quadrupled the recipe, and before pouring it into the larger pan I took half of it out and added cocoa powder to the other half of it. Then, by holding the vanilla in one hand and the chocolate in the other I did my best to swirl them together. I ended up using a knife later on to make it pretty.

     After that it was all about cleaning up (I am a messy, messy cook/baker).

    …Then licking the beaters.

     Then waiting… and waiting.. and waiting. The recipe says that you should let it sit over night, or at least 3-4 hours. Boo. I entertained myself while waiting by writing most of this and watching my trays of marshmallow goo slowly firm up.

   Eventually it got there. I took some to a friends house for craft and hot chocolate night, and they were good. I didn’t have a camera though, so had to make myself a cup of hot chocolate this morning to try and get a picture.

  I mixed milk, a bit of cream and some honey and cinnamon in a pot and brought it to a simmer before adding (maybe too much..maybe) chopped white chocolate and some marshmallows.

 

Breakfast of champions!

 

 

The Countdown

Well Folks,

   I am one month to the day away from embarking on this adventure, and while I am excited and maybe a little bit nervous, I am also impatient.

  When I get an idea into my head I want to jump in with both feet curled up under me and cannon ball myself into whatever might lie ahead. It’s not my fault really.. I’m an Aries.

  One month to go means 31 days to slowly purge my pantry, freezer, fridge and candy stash of everything containing ingredients which I cannot name. This means the Kraft Dinner I have stowed away for those white-trash moments, crackers, miscellaneous sauces, and the frozen pre-prepared chicken kiev that I have stashed away in the freezer.

   Here is where I meet my dilemma. I don’t want to waste these foods. I also don’t want to eat KD for 30 days straight, get myself hooked on things like “tartazine” (I just looked at the KD box and it isn’t actually all that bad.. not like my soy sauce which is “blended from soya based hydrolyzed plant protein”) and then have to jump cold turkey into my “be able to name it all” diet.  I propose a compromise. I will eat some of these foods, as part of a more balanced meal, and not all that often, for the next month. If I concentrate on the frozen/open and refrigerated stuff, I can then give the other dried and preserved stuff to the food bank. In other words, chicken kiev for me and KD, Taco seasoning, unopened butter chicken sauce, and crackers for the food bank. Hazaa!

   I am also already scheming on my “cheats”. There are a few things, that even though I cannot name the ingredients in, I refuse to give away. So far this includes mostly baking supplies (meringue powder, food colourings, baking soda and powder, and cream of tartar – which doesn’t have an ingredients list).  This is because I love to bake, because these things (the meringue powder and the Wilton gel food colourings especially) were pricey, and because I’m sure that my great grandma knew what baking powder was and that it wouldn’t kill her or mutate her great grandchildren.

   Some of you that know me may be thinking “Ha! What about the cigarettes you hypocrite”.  Now those of you that don’t know me, or at least didn’t know I smoke are standing up behind those other people and saying “Yeah!! WTF, You can’t name all the stuff in your smokes. Smoking will kill you.”

 To you people I say “All in good time people, all in good time”, and to those two other smokers sitting sheepishly in the far back corner muttering to themselves that “technically cigarettes are not food and you don’t actually eat them” I say thank you for your support, but the giant mob has it right.

   I do need to quit (and you should too… when you’re ready), but am not adding that to the January first start line. Why? Because usually my New Years resolutions don’t last very long, and when I quit I want it to stick. That sounds petty, even to me, but it’s true. Plus with this whole eating shift, I’m going to have enough new stuff on my plate (pun intended – thank you).

 I have started to slow it all down, and will continue to do so until I am ready. I have decided that to be included in the “Eat” part of my adventure, I need to stop by March 31st. There you go, you have a date, now go back inside and let me smoke in peace.

 So I guess that’s where it’s at. Happy pantry raiding to any of those who are on the same journey.