When You'd Rather Watch than Read

This post is a quickie. My last post mentioned the books my Eat to Live book club has read, but I completely left out that we will be adding documentaries to our discussion topic repertoire. We haven't watched any as a group yet, but Dr. Garrett, our fearless leader, has recommended some that cousin Sara and I have watched together.

One is Food Inc. and the other is Forks Over Knives. Both were fantastic and eye opening, but oh my I just loved Forks Over Knives. It was seriously top-notch and totally covered the main health points we have been hitting in our book club lately. It talks about the dangers of dairy and genetically modified ingredients and the powerful impact not eating meat can have on a diet. I also loved the footage they filmed in Eastern countries before and after being exposed to a Western diet. It's really powerful stuff.

Here is the trailer to Forks Over Knives. It is available for instant streaming on Netflix and if you are a subscriber I highly suggest you check it out. Enjoy and I'll keep you posted when we start watching more films.

Reading about Eating (aka Sunday Afternoon Support Group)

'Tis Sunday. Generally I do not accomplish a whole lot this day of the week, what with the many intentions I have for the weekend and the very little follow through that actually occurs. However, since last spring there has been a smidgen more structure to my Sunday afternoons. I joined a book club that focuses on healthy eating. It is lead by a local natural medicine health concierge who selects the books we cover and leads the discussions that follow. He also answers our endless stream of questions as we discover together some pretty shocking information about lifestyle choices.

We read about everything from dangerous chemical ingredients in everyday processed food at the grocery store to myths and lies about nutritional value perpetrated by corporate industries and government administration. It's not all negative talk though, we also learn the truths about foods and ways to engage in healthy eating that contrasts the Western diet.

We meet just about every Sunday for an hour and it has been so much fun. I have really enjoyed the discussions and it is so helpful to have a doctor there to decipher the sometimes confusing texts. So far we have read The End of Overeating by Dr. David Kessler and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I highly recommend checking these out. Michael Pollan's book was more fun to read in my opinion, but both were fascinating insights to what's really happening to the food we eat before it reaches our plates. The nice part about Pollan's book is that it didn't just scare you with horrid facts, it also helped explain a better approach to eating. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" is the simple phrase he structures the book around, and it's so true!

There isn't a book club meeting today since we are taking a break between books, so I probably will end up watching a lot of Olympic coverage and not get much done.  But, I'm very much looking forward to our next book. The Great American Detox Diet is our next adventure and it is written by Alex Jamieson, wife to Morgan Spurlock who you might know from the movie Super Size Me. 

I LOVE Morgan Spurlock. Love his movies. Love him.

Anyways, I am excited to read what his wife has to say on nutritional eating. She is a holistic health counselor and has written other books on eating vegan. She also undid the damage Morgan did to his body when he filmed Super Size Me so clearly she has some useful food magic knowledge.

I could start reading it now and get ahead for our next book club meeting, but Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps are calling to me. Televised Olympics it is.

2am Waffle Madness

Cooking everything from actual food takes more than ninety seconds. Yeah, the yellow powder in macaroni boxes isn't actually cheese. Plus, since I'm not microwaving at all (17 days and going strong!) there really isn't a quick cook option for me. But that does not mean delicious, amazingly healthy meals can't be ready at a moment's notice! It just takes careful planning and forethought.

My cousin Sara and I are experimenting with various techniques for prepping meals in advance so that we don't have to spend an hour or two in the kitchen every night. I'll post more on our mason jar endeavors another day, but first I want to highlight the waffle marathon we completed late Tuesday night.

We started a little before 9pm and finished at 2:30am. The idea is that by devoting one evening to making a bunch of buckwheat waffles, we can have frozen waffles for breakfasts and dinners for weeks to come.

I think we mixed four batches of buckwheat batter. It was super simple, just some organic buckwheat pancake and waffle mix, almond milk, eggs (from local chickens), olive oil, and honey.

I whisked batter and Sara ran the waffle iron. The first few rounds turned out a bit interesting, but we experimented and the last half of the waffle results look awesome. We found that filling the iron quite full had the best results since the batter filled the squares better.

We cooked until we ran out of milk. Then we let the waffles cool, wrapped them in pairs in tin foil, and put them in the freezer. By using tin foil to wrap them, we will be able to pop the packets directly into the toaster oven and they'll crisp evenly. These waffles also fit in my normal toaster, so that's a speedy option as well.

We didn't really get the quantity of waffles that we were hoping. This is a photo of the waffles minus the ones we ate along the way. It's been decided that next time we will have two irons going at once and mix the batter in one large batch. That should have better results I think.

It was a lot of fun regardless. They taste amazing by the way.

Topeka Market Map

For you Topeka folks, here is the map to get to the downtown farmer's market that I mentioned earlier. They also have a handy website with lots of lovely info such as vendor lists, hours, and who to call if you loose something while you're there.

It's my full intent at this point to go on a bi-weekly basis. We'll see...


View Larger Map

Making Time for Zucchini

Work projects, school deadlines, and family what-not make up the hurricane of busyness that is my life right now. It seems like I'm always finishing up one thing just in time to run off somewhere else and work on another. Despite all this racing about, I did make time to pickle some zucchini over the weekend.

I had quite a few zucchini in the fridge that needed to be used soon before they got too squashy and weird. I've had this recipe for Spicy Zucchini Pickles pinned on my recipes board for a while now and it seemed like the perfect time to try it.

I don't actually like pickles. At all. They are gross. But I'm hoping that pickling zucchini will have different taste results. I also really like the spices that go in the jars.

Following the recipe, I began with about 2 pounds of zucchini.

I washed them and sliced them up into sticks.

Then I brought 2 1/4 cups white wine vinegar, 1 1/2 cups water, 2 Tablespoons salt, and 1/4 cup sugar to a boil. After it was boiling nicely I put in about a quarter of the squash sticks and boiled them for about 3 minutes. The recipe says "until it is khaki colored."

I had pint jars waiting and when the sticks were done I used tongs to pull them from the water and slip them into the first jar. I continued with this boiling for 3 minutes process until all the zucchini was boiled and in jars.

I added 1 teaspoon mustard seeds, 1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds, and 1/2 teaspoon dill seed to each jar. Then I poured the hot liquid from the pan into each jar so that the zucchini was covered. The lids were screwed on next and then the jars cooled for a while before I put them in the fridge. They need to refrigerate for at least a week before eating so I don't know if they turned out yet. I'll let you know!

Farmer's Market! or "ugh why am I up so early on a Saturday?"

Farmer's markets are awesome. It's local produce from local people, often grown organically. You also never know who you'll run into browsing the tents. The downside, for me anyways, is they are outside and therefore generally held in the mornings on the weekends. I'm not much for sleeping in, but I am not a morning person. It's pretty slow-going until I've had my cup of tea, bowl of oatmeal, and splashed some water on my face. My lack of morning motivation means I almost always miss the local market. Then I'm saddled with guilt the entire week as I buy unnaturally perfect looking grocery store produce.

But not today! Well, actually I nearly did skip but my mother convinced me that I could take my tea to-go and eat the oatmeal later. So onward we journeyed to the local farmer's market and I bought some much needed potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers along with a pie.  That's right, it's not just vegetables at the market, there is usually baked goods and sometimes food being cooked right there for you.

I'm living and working at home for the summer so I shopped the Harvey County Farmer's Market, but I'm looking forward to shopping the much larger Topeka Farmer's Market when I return to the capitol city in August. It's great to support local farmers and eat food that didn't travel 50,000 miles to get to my plate. Here's hoping I'll get out early on a Saturday once school starts.

Pinteresting

Finding cook books that accommodate an uber healthy/specialty diet is hard. Not that there aren't books out there, but definitely not as many for a whole foods gluten free vegan diet as there is for say grilling massive burgers or cooking pasta dishes. I like variety in my recipe options. Also, and more importantly, these books get expensive.

Lucky for me the world wide web exists and health conscious food enthusiasts are posting new recipes every day. Free recipes. Pinterest has been quite the handy tool for organizing the exciting recipes I come across. It's also been a really easy place to discover new dishes and find people to follow who share my culinary views.

If you haven't been trapped by the powers of Pinterest yet, I recommend checking it out. In the right hands it can be very helpful. One of my lovely cousins is also on this eat to live journey and we have created a joint pin board for recipes that meet both of our dietary needs.

You can check out the recipes we've pinned so far by following this link here.

Happy pinning!


What?! No microwave?

Cooking food in the microwave isn't good. Shocking I know. Neither is zapping leftovers for a quick meal on the go. As it turns out, microwaving kills the nutritional content in foods and leaves you with a mushy meal devoid of all the good stuff it had going for it on the first place.

I've been attending an Eat to Live book club since March. It is hosted by a concierge physician specializing in functional natural medicine, clinical nutrition and food therapy. This microwave business was one of the latest bits of knowledge he's dropped on us. It makes complete sense, but not microwaving anything is hard. Practically impossible. I mean, it's sitting right there on the counter, how can I not use it heat up that bowl of soup or the remnants of last night's supper?

Since I have repeatedly fallen off the "no microwaving" wagon in the past few weeks, I was excited by the prospects of living a week in house without one of those wretched temptresses. I'm house-sitting for a family this week while they're on vacation and they don't have a microwave. They told me I was welcome to bring my own if I wanted to use one during my stay, but I decided this was the perfect opportunity to see what a life of microwave-less cooking practices is like.

Turns out it's quite easy. My lunches are consisting of a lot of sandwiches and salads, but that's just fine with me. My suppers are baked or boiled on the stove.  I simply adjusted my meals to fit the appliances I have and voila, no unhealthy speed cooking. When this seven day microwave detox is over, I have very high hopes that I won't feel the need to microwave again.  Or at least not surrender to it.

Here's a snapshot of today's lunch. That's a sandwich with baby greens, alfalfa sprouts, and a chickpea spread on toasted 100% whole wheat bread next to potatoes roasted with olive oil, Herbs de Provence, and a dash of sea salt.  Mmmm...

Jammin'

Since I've been reading up on eating whole foods, I am trying to cook just about everything from scratch. I get the peace of mind of knowing exactly what went into my food and it's healthier than the processed mystery ingredients in most things on the supermarket shelves.

So...
While everyone else was grilling and lighting fireworks last week, my cousin and I decided to make jam. Lots of jam. Enough jam for many months of toast and scones and PB&J's. We ended up with six flavors with about two batches of each.

First we prepped the fruit we bought the day before (except for the cherries which I picked and froze earlier in the summer).  Everything was washed, hulled, and then approximated into 2 cup increments.

Then we mashed it all up. The berries were pretty easy to get with a spoon, but the peaches and apricots required some serious hand squishing action.

After that, the fruit went into a pan and was mixed with 1 Tbs pectin per cup of fruit. We put the pan over medium heat and cooked it until there was a rolling boil.

Yeah, we had t-shirts made for the day long event. Because we're that awesome.

So once the fruit was boiling we took it off the burner and let it cool a bit before stirring in sugar. We experimented with different increments of sugar from 1/4 cup to 1 1/3 cup. The hope was to use as little sugar as possible, but some of the fruit was quite tart so we adjusted by taste.

After the sugar was nice and combined, the pan went back on the burner and brought to a rolling boil again. Since we were making freezer jam, the hot jam could go directly into our clean glass jars once it was cooked, leaving room at the top for expansion in the freezer. Then the lids were screwed on and the jars set out until room temperature. After they cooled, we put the jams in the freezer, where they stay until ready to use. They are good for about 3 weeks in the fridge after opening.

Strawberry, bueberry-raspberry, peach, apricot, blackberry, and cherry. Not too shabby for five hours of work!

Food Blog Obsessor Turned Blogger

Greetings fellow food blog fanatics!

I have a great love obsession excitement for all things food on the Internet.  Seriously, I'll get online over my lunch break to check my email and before I know it I have stumbled across two new blogs and am drooling over what I want to make for dinner.  My favorites are those that focus on specialty diets and I am always thrilled to find someone who shares a similar lifestyle choice as myself.

A bit about me:

I have been a vegetarian for seven years, albeit not always a healthy one but a vegetarian nonetheless.  Recently I have developed a few health concerns that forced me to further alter my diet.  Rather than see my ailments as restrictions, I'm choosing to better educate myself on the ways different types of food affect the body.  The hope is that I learn ways to eat and cook foods that are both delectable and improve my overall health.  It has been a fun journey so far and I can't wait to share my new and existing food knowledge.

**DISCLAIMER**

I am NOT a health expert, I'm just sharing how I'm learning to live in good health and the resources I find helpful.