Time Capsule #2: Ten Ways To Feel Edgy, Irritable, and Just Plain Tired

Originally published last February. Just re-reading this makes me feel edgy.

1. Buy and consume large quantities of food with added sugar . Eat a lot of them, and then some. You know what I’m talking about – packaged cookies, snack cakes, candy bars, store-bought doughnuts, and ice cream. Don’t worry about the sugar – just eat until your heart’s content. And about those power naps you feel like taking in the afternoon, don’t worry, your body isn’t trying to tell you anything.  So take your nap, but be sure to have a super-jolt cola after you wake up to jump start your drive home.

2. Sit at the computer a lot and never move. Better yet, sit around all day at work and never move. Then come home from work, tired from sitting, plop down in front of the TV, or computer, and never move until you go to bed. The ecomony is bad, so the good news is you won’t wear your shoes out. Who needs to spend time outdoors, or likes fresh air, anyway. Ick.

3. Drink lots of soda- regular or diet – it doesn’t matter. Just load up on the soda. Be sure it has a lot of caffeine, and if at all possible, make it an energy drink.

4. While you’re at it drink lots of other beverages, too, except filtered tap water. Cafe mochas, frappubeanos, lagers, ales, wine, margaritas, juice, sweetened tea, bring it on. Always have a quart-sized drink with you when you’re in the car, walking from your car to the super center, or sitting beside your chair while you watch TV or play the X-box. You can’t be too thirsty.

5. Don’t plan your meals, just let them happen willy nilly. Always have your credit card, or some cash, on hand for times when those cravings hit you, or your family, while you’re in the car. Food is available all hours of the day and night so don’t worry. Anytime you want food, even if you don’t feel hungry, just pull up to the local fast food joint and they’ll fill your belly. It’s that easy. And if you don’t feel like driving just pick up the phone, or log onto the computer, and someone will deliver your food right to your couch.

6. Avoid grocery shopping. Yes, avoid, at all costs, going to the supermarket, or the produce market. It takes an hour so why waste your time? Avoid buying fresh fruits and vegetables while you’re at it. They’re so expensive. And they just go bad before they’re eaten. Plus, those darn berries, greens, and oranges are so darn colorful. They hurt my eyes. (And they make me say darn twice.)

7. Avoid the kitchen and cooking. Don’t be a control freak. Cooking is a thing of the past, and not for us real women (and men.) Buy food you can pop in the microwave and assemble with little thought, skills, or planning. And while you’re at it, don’t worry about the ingredient lists a mile long on your assembled food. So what if you can’t read the name of half the ingredients you’re putting in mouth? At least it tastes good.

8. Skip meals. Skip breakfast. Why even eat?

9. Eat most of your meals and food late at night. After the rest of the people you live with are fast asleep, pull out the ice cream, cookies, beer, and popcorn and have a party. It’s more fun when you’re alone and you don’t have to share the food with anyone.

10. And last, but not least, don’t forget to sit around and complain about how bad you feel, how tired you are. Act surprised when you haven’t been able to shed that 15 pounds you vowed to lose this new year. Now go searching for the lastest diet book or guru to tell you what to do and exactly what to eat. That’ll work.

Time Capsule #1 – Guacamole Recipe

Just in time for the day when the most avocados are sold (Go Saints!) I offer a time-capsule recipe (ie: recycled) for my favorite green dip (next to Green Goddess dressing). I’m grocery shopping this afternoon and a few avocados are sure to land in my cart. I hope some land in your cart too. (OK, now the recycled part starts. Originally posted February 2009.)

My counter-top vegetable basket typically houses garlic bulbs, onions, shallots, and one or two avocados in various states of ripening, or rotting, as the case may be. When one appears on its way out, rather than feed my compost bin, I make guacamole. For my plain and simple guacamole, I’ll be honest, I don’t chase authenticity; I prevent waste. Because I like to taste a bit of acid, heat, and garlic I focus on ingredients to satisfy those flavors, and then if I have the inclination, and ingredients, I dress it up: fresh cilantro, chopped tomato, or diced red onion are always winners. If I don’t have the inclination, or extra ingredients, it’s just fine plain and simple. This recipe is easily doubled, or tripled, or….   

No matter how you devour an avocado it remains full of MUFA’s (monounsaturated fatty acids). Research is proving MUFA’s to be good for your heart, your brain, and despite their high calorie/fat content, avocados don’t contribute to “belly” fat, or as I like to say a “muffin top” (if you know what I mean, ladies.) Why not make avocados a staple in your kitchen? When they start to turn soft it helps to remember a bowl of plain and simple guacamole is only a few mashes away. 

Makes one bowl of guacamole, depending on the size of your avocado     

1 Hass avocado (not a large Florida avocado. Most supermarkets sell the Hass variety)
1 teaspoon fresh lime or lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder, or 1 small clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large dashes Tabasco Sauce 

With a sharp knife cut the avocado in half by running the knife around the entire avocado from north pole to south pole and back up to north pole, not around the equator. (I hope you were paying attention in geography class.)  Twist the avocado and it should come apart in two pieces. One piece will house the pit, and the other piece pit-free. Using a spoon, or the tip of the knife, CAREFULLY remove the pit. (This can be tricky, but if your avocado is ripe, or just beyond, removing the pit is easy. Unripe avocados squeeze their pits, for various reasons I’ll can’t explain, making them quite difficult to remove.)  Holding one half of the avocado in a cupped hand, use a large spoon and scoop the avocado flesh out of the skin. Place the flesh in a bowl. Repeat with the other half. This technique I find so much easier than trying to peel an avocado and all the while chasing the slippery beast around on the cutting board.  Using the back of a large fork mash the avocado to your favorite consistency – chunky or smooth – it’s a free country. It’s your choice. Add lemon or lime juice, garlic, salt, and Tabasco. Mash again until all ingredients are well blended. Enjoy with chips, or as a topping on burritos, black beans, tacos, pork tortilla soup, …..the list is almost endless.  

Follow me @GreenApron on Twitter. Thank you for your support.

Follow Me @GreenApron

I’ve officially entered the world twitter for better or for worse. For those of you who subscribe to my blog via RSS, and who tweet, you can follow me @GreenApron. One thing I’ve realized very quickly with Twitter is if I’m tweeting I’m not writing and just because a little bit is good doesn’t mean a lot is better. Kind of like taking vitamin supplements I plan to use Twitter to supplement what I write here (and in my cookbook manuscript) but not as a total diet chat room. We’ll see how it goes. Hope to see you on Twitter soon!

Olive Nut Spread

I’m in the midst of writing my cookbook. 14 chapters. Some done, some not. Over 125 recipes. Some tested, some developed, some not. Personal stories and stories about other Kentucky cooks and farmers. Some written. Some not. And then I have a blog, this blog, the one many of you faithfully visit for previously posted recipes and for the recipe for ever-popular Chex Mix recipe.

This past October and November I spent most of my waking hours developing recipes for another author’s cookbook. It was a wonderful project and as always full of learning opportunities. None the less,  I struggled to talk to you about what I was cooking and eating because so much of what I was cooking stemmed from the work I was doing at the time. Plus I couldn’t pass the recipes off as my own. It was also a book about reversing heart disease and I felt guilty about baking chocolate chip cookies, bread pudding, or anything that remotely promoted heart disease. As a general rule I cook pretty healthfully around here but reversing heart disease pushed the limits of what I normally cook.

Now I’m in the same boat, but for a different reason: I struggle to talk about what I’m eating and cooking because much of what I’m cooking and eating, 90 days from my deadline,  is going to get published in my book. I’m making an effort to not base my book on this blog, nor base my blog on the book. Instead I want to keep the conversation going about what’s going on here in my kitchen, while I write my book in the background. Perhaps easier said than done. Thus my longer periods of silence and general lack-of-blogging.

So, yesterday, my daughter and I were goofing around in the kitchen. She was bored and rather than send her packing to entertain herself I said, let’s do some cooking. Since I’m trying to use up some ingredients in my pantry, and because I fell for the pre-Thanksgiving pumpkin-shortage scare, we made a pumpkin pie. Not very seasonal for February, but with canned pumpkin many marvelous things can happen – like pies, muffins, pancakes, and bread. In the midst of the pie baking I realized it was lunch time. Again in an effort to use some ingredients in the pantry I mixed up a batch of an old family favorite – Olive-Nut Spread.

From the stories I’ve heard over the years my grandmother made alot of Olive-Nut Spread. It was economical and meatless, making it a perfect filling for a sandwich especially on the meatless Friday’s of Lent. No self-respecting Catholic grade school student in the 1940’s would have ever considered waltzing into school with a bologna sandwich on a Friday of Lent. And no self-respecting mother of a Catholic grade-school child would have packed a bologna sandwich either. I was reminded about the simplicity of Olive-Nut Spread a few weeks ago when my Aunt Mary died. A family friend brought Olive-Nut finger sandwiches to the funeral home for us to munch on between hugs, stories, and memories. Boy they were good. So yesterday that’s what we had for lunch anyway, Olive-Nut Spread sandwiches and tangerines. And no, Olive-Nut Spread isn’t going to be in my cookbook, although it could be because it’s so “Kentucky”.

Olive-Nut Spread

Makes about 2 cups

Also good with wheat crackers, celery sticks, or thick slices of cucumber.

One 8-ounce package neufchatel or cream cheees

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1 cup pimento-stuffed olives

Dash of hot red pepper sauce

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the cream cheese, mayonnaise, pecans, olives, and hot pepper sauce. Mix until well combined. Store refrigerated.

Distractions

With the devastation in Haiti I feel distracted from the “work” I’m supposed to be doing. Quite frankly, my start to 2010 has been full of distractions. Since December 27th I’ve been doing just about everything except working. We had a few unexpected snow days, and school delays, just after the end of Christmas break. I spent most of my time drying wet clothes, stirring hot cocoa, and praying everyone stayed safe while they bumped down neighborhood hills on a speeding sleds. In the midst of the cold snap I spent several days sitting with my sisters and my mother at the bedside of my dying Aunt Mary. As a result I attended two family funerals before January 10th – my aunt’s and my sister’s mother-in-law who died unexpectedly after she developed a blood clot in her leg. Now, I find myself riveted to the TV in disbelief when I see images from Haiti. I wait for the phone to ring or my e-mail to deliver word of evacuation at a Haitian orphanage where close friends are adopting two children.

At times like these all I can do, other than pray, is remain present to those I love by using my time and talent to cook. I guess when you break it down, cooking is my therapy. Since the beginning of the year I’ve made several yellow buttermilk sheet cakes, a few batches of pimento cheese, and several bowls of fresh dill dip to serve with sliced carrots or wavy potato chips. Over the weekend I took advantage of Saturday morning at home to make a large batch of lentil soup and bake some soft chocolate chip cookies to deliver to our friends. I can’t pretend food solves our problems or takes away the distractions. It doesn’t. But, I’m pretty sure a pot of soup, or a homemade cake, can become a balm for wounds that gape open when someone we care about dies or when we can’t stop thinking about those who can’t defend themselves in a massive natural disaster.

C.S. Lewis once said, “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own,” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s “real life” is a phantom of one’s own imagination.”

At the end of the day, my ability and resources to cook remind me to be grateful. For today, my family and I live in a safe place where clean water and food is readily available. For today, I can stand to chop and stir. For today, I am given the opportunity to pause and create a space in my day where I can send prayers to those affected by the circumstances of their lives. For today, feeding others reflects our larger responsibility to take care of each other as we walk together through the day by day distractions of our lives.

Merry Christmas

Lest you think I’ve disappeared, I haven’t.

Lest you think I’ve quit cooking, I didn’t.

Lest you think I’ll never be back, I will.

Yes, my recipe testing/development job is over. About 23 days over. I learned much and loved the work.  For now I’m knee deep in Christmas baking, kids out of school, gift wrapping, and generally tidying up the place for our Christmas celebration. Life is good. 2009 was even better. I’m humbled by the year I’ve had personally and professionally. For now I wish you a very Merry Christmas. Be good to those around you and give lots of hugs to that person lurking at the edge of the buffet line. I’ll be back in 2010 with more food, recipes, and inspiration for cooking your way to better health.

What We Ate Last Week – November 10, 2009

Disclaimer: I’m bearing down on a recipe testing deadline and we are eating leftovers from the recipe testing among other things. These menus are not reflective of good menu planning, nor seasonal eating. I also realized in the midst of this deadline I missed What We Ate Last Week last week and have neglected to post since 11/4. So if anyone were to ask me what is the biggest challenge of blogging I’d say it’s writing regular posts in the midst of all the other stuff life throws our way.

Monday- Smoky Black Beans, Brown Rice, Spinach Salad, Portobello Mushroom Pizzas

Tuesday- Italian Sausage Subs with Peppers and Onions, Arugula Salad with Figs and Walnuts 

Wednesday – Leftover Chili Con Carne, Spinach with Pinenuts and Raisins, Tuna and Cannellini Bean Salad

Thursday – Turkey Meatballs, Spicy Tomato Basil Sauce, Broccoli

Friday – out to dinner and a movie with my children

Saturday – Seabass with Lemon Oregano Sauce, Roasted Red Potatoes, Pea Pods

Sunday – Red Lentil Curry, Cornbread

Looking Forward to November

Here’s to another good month and a quick one at that. I’m knee deep in recipe testing/development work and love every minute of it. I thank you for another impressive month. Here’s a quick summary of how October went:

Top Tip Tuesday Post:

Tips for Clear Iced Tea (and a bottled beverage rant)

Top List Post:

10 Money-Saving Menu Ideas

Top Recipes:

Oven-baked Chex Mix

Kentucky Burgoo Recipe

Kentucky-style Slow-cooker Pork Barbecue

Favorite Posts of All Time:

10 Ways to Feel Edgy, Irritable, and Just Plain Tired

25 Random Acts of (mostly food) Kindness

What We Ate Last Week – October 26, 2009

Concord Grape Tartlets with Pecan Streusel Topping

Monday – Spaghetti with Spicy Tomato Basil Sauce

Tuesday – Spicy Chili Con Carne, Silver Dollar Corncakes

Wednesday – Mussels Marinara, Whole-grain baguette

Thursday – Red Beans and Brown Rice, Broccoli with Lemon

Friday – out to eat pizza

Saturday – TRICK OR TREAT

Sunday - Pork Saute with Apples, Spicy Sauteed Kale

What We Ate Last Week – October 19, 2009

Monday – Chicken Pot Pie, Spinach Salad

Tuesday – Tuna Romesco, Salmon with Braised Lentils, Barley Pilaf, Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Wednesday – Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Fresh Veggie Sauce, Spinach and Apple Salad

Thursday – Oven-barbecued chicken thighs, Chile Cheddar Cornbread, Green Beans

Friday – out to dinner while my two older children went to a 13th birthday party. Give me strength.

Saturday – out of town for the night.

Sunday – dinner at a football banquet.