(un)Natural Selection

The first week of decreased sugar (I'm going cold-turkey for the next three weeks) went satisfactory, though it will be a long road ahead.

This is a conversation that happened the first day:

Daniel: "You are grumpy!"

Laura: "I am not grumpy, I am suffering from sugar withdrawal."

Daniel: "Eat some ice cream, I do not want to deal with your grumpiness for the next month."

That pretty much sums it up.

This weekend was a mix of sunshine and rain, but I was determined to get some serious gardening done. First job on the docket: transplanting my tomato starts. I used my trusty power drill to make holes in the bottom of used yogurt containers which are unrecycable in our city (I am such a handy woman) .

When I was my seeds I put a few in each starter section, thinking that not all the seeds would germinate. However, in a weeks all the sprouts were at least two inches tall. I realized that tough decisions needed to be made. Having 20+ tomato plants did not seem like a good idea, unless I wanted to set up a farmer's market stand (wait a minute...that doesn't sound too bad...). So I had to sacrifice baby tomatoes for the good of the garden. I felt very bad condemning them to death (Note: Atticus sniffing the fallen soldiers).

The good news was that I have 14 healthy tomato, 3 cantaloup, and 6 pepper plants left, that now have to room to develop healthy root systems. To celebrate making it through the selection process, I took my seedlings on a field trip to the sunshine in the side yard.

In other news, as reported before, the RWAs (robins with attitudes) ate half of my pea plants. The picture below demonstrates the devestation that occured. I am planning on planting additional rows next weekend. Anyone have any suggestions what I can do to scare away the birds? Moses is a useless guard cat!

The rest of the gardening chores accomplished were: aerating and thatching the front yard (if you don't know what this is, be thankful), Daniel "moding" his sprinklers (he likes to take parts off the new sprinklers and modify them into Frankenstein sprinklers), and cutting back the rose bushes further than the WA state legislature can cut back teacher's LID days (just kidding, they already cut back all of our LID days. I just thought of that joke when I was pruning and chuckled to myself). All in all, I felt like I had accomplished a good deal this weekend.

Cheers to week one of no/less sugar and sunny spring weather!

My Sugar-Free Week In Review

As of last night I made it one week sans sugar. And it was... not too bad? Not as bad as I thought it was going to be at least. Here are some notes I made during the week.

Sunday: Not too bad. Was almost thrown off course at the start of the morning when I went to add honey to my tea as if on autopilot. The second waver came when Erik waved strawberry cheesecake jelly beans under my nose. I stayed strong. Also if I am going to eat leftover easter candy it is obviously going to be Reese's peanut butter cup eggs. Duh.

Monday: Yawn, yawn, yawn - all day long. Had a very filling, healthy dinner. I am hungry less than an hour later and want a piece of cake! Or a sliver of pie. Or even just a crumble of cookie.

I always believed that hummus was one of those things you just had to buy - but no more. It is hard to get hummus smooth and creamy when you are using beans from a can. I find the secret is to cook dry beans and then puree that.
My "recipe"
Combine cooked beans/lentils/split peas, a squeeze of lemon juice, spices (pepper, penzeys seasoning, hot sauce, whatever.), saltiness (e.g. sea salt, miso, bouillon, soy sauce). Blend it up until very smooth. Add a small amount of liquid if too thick.

The majestic peaks of Mt. Hummus

Tuesday: Had peanut butter for breakfast that after observing the label has a ton of sugar in it. Also you can't trust ketchup!

Spring is finally defying the winter overlords.

Wednesday/Thursday: Didn't note any specific troubles. Perhaps I am past the worst? My study group passed around starburst and I didn't even consider them!

In the blender: Frozen cherries, beets, strawberries, spinach, frozen banana

Friday: Brushed my teeth after dinner and didn't even think about having a sweet snack!

I have never liked cottage cheese that much (except when my mom made pear bunnies with cottage cheese tails!) but I bought some this week to try as an alternative to greek yogurt. I made a "dip" with it that was actually pretty good with tortilla chips. I just mixed plain, non fat cottage cheese with Penzeys Chip and Dip Seasoning.

Yummy but still can't completely get over the texture.

Saturday: Almost broke this morning. We went for a long walk since it was nice out, and stopped by our neighborhood diner for frozen lemonades. I knew this would be breaking my rules, but I wanted one because they are AMAZING, not because I was craving sugar. But alas, I was protected from myself. The diner's frozen lemonade machine was broken, and thus I was kept from slushy lemonadey goodness. The walk was still nice however, we did about five miles and walked by the ocean.

First toes in the sand of the year.

Erik even busted out his boat shoes.

With iced coffee and not frozen lemonade :(

I ran around in a field of dandelions doing impressive leaps and cartwheels, but the photographer was unable to capture the magic. Ahem.

Not a good action shot.

Since Laura tells me it can take three weeks for sugar to leave your system and this week didn't kill me I am going to try to keep it up. I have finals this week so I'm not making any guarantees. You have to confront the EVIL tricks the finals monkey throws at you with whatever defenses you have - sometime that means ice cream sandwiches.

I hope everyone had just the best week. And happy mother's day to my awesome mom who made pear bunnies with cottage cheese tails for me when I was a kid :)

"tacos"

I made these the other night and was quite tickled with myself. They taste fresh like summer :)

Ingredients

• Red leaf lettuce (1 leaf makes 1 wrap)
• 1 cup Shredded carrots
• 1 ripe mango
• Bean sprouts
• Fresh basil leaves
• 1/4 pound shrimp, cooked & deveined with tails removed (I cooked mine in a little butter and sweet curry powder from Penzey Spices)
• For dipping sauce mix to your liking: soy sauce (I use Bragg's liquid aminos), lemon juice, a little sugar or honey. Wisk well.
  

Directions

One lettuce leaf = 1 "taco." On lettuce place:
2 basil leaves
A few pinches of shredded carrots
A few pinches of sprouts
2 slices of mango
2 pieces of shrimp
A spoonful of the dipping sauce
Wrap up and enjoy

Hello. My name is Ellen, and I am a sugar addict.

This is somewhat embarrassing to admit. I consider myself a pretty healthy person. I bake with whole wheat flour. My top ten favorite food list includes brussels sprouts. I have a t-shirt that says "Eat More Kale" for crap's sake. But over the years, slowly but surely I have come to see cookies as an always food. It is the unfortunate combination of having only a modicum of self control and surrounding myself with tasty confections. My mom was a baker extraordinaire when I was a kid. There was always a homemade tasty cookie, cake, pie, or bread around the house. Which rules when you are a kid and have someone there to tell you not to have pie for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner.  

As an "adult" I have failed at policing myself. Somewhere I went from enjoying a treat for dessert to eating cupcakes for breakfast and calling them muffins because I didn't frost them.

Laura and I have discussed our mutual love for our cristalline friend and we are ready to break the cycle. Care to join us Chardracers? For the next week we are committing to eliminating/decreasing our sugar intake. Let's really stick it to that snotty sugar.

Ugh, look how haughty sucrose looks.

Hopefully putting this in writing will help me hold myself accountable. So I say here, on Lord of the Chard, the most sacred of all blogs, that I will abstain from superfluous sugar from May 1st though May 7th. May the world have mercy on me. And you if you choose to join me.

It is 11:28 pm on April 30th as I write this, so I better go get one last squeeze of the chompo bar in. Please leave any messages of support, sugar avoidance tips, or smack talk about how stupid sucrose looks in the comment.

...cause I can tell that we're going to be friends...

Everyone has posted such delicious meals these last few days! I have been trying to find something new for breakfast. Usually I have my cup of coffee and a box of Multi-Grain Os (that's right, I am too cheap to buy the name brand) that I keep in my car. As I drive to work in the morning I throw handfuls of MGOs into my mouth this ritual results in my car appearing as if I drive a toddler carpool. Anyhoo, I love me a banana bread but my Betty Crocker recipe has a LOT of sugar in it. Seeing as I just downed 3 peeps, you might assume that sugar reduction is not a concern for me but, as Elle and I have recently discussed, we will be shortly announcing the first LOTC (Lord of the Chard) challenge to reduce sugar in our diet (details to follow).

So I tried making a healthy version of the nanner classic. (Elle could you provide the citation?) (This recipe is from The King Arthur Flour Cookbook which I wholly recommend - E)

Banana Crunch Bread

1 c. oat flour

1 c. whole wheat flour

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. butter

1/2 c. brown sugar

2 eggs

3 medium mashed nanners

6 oz. cup plain yogurt (I used greek for extra protein)

1 t. vanilla

1 t. pumpkin pie spice (I used Penzey's Apple Pie spice)

Topping:

1/2 c. oats

1/3 c. brown sugar (I used less)

1/2 t. cinnamon

2 T. butter

1/4 c. nuts

Preheat oven to 350 and grease an 8x8 pan. Whisk the first three ingredients together in a bowl. In a separate large bowl cream butter and brown sugar and then beat in the eggs one at a time. Mix in dry mixture and bananas, alternating until both are integrated. Add yogurt, vanilla and spices. Pour into pan. Mix all of the topping ingredients together and spread over the top of prepared pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes (our oven in on the fritz so it took 50ish minutes).

A shout out to my guinea pigs, and friends of the blog: Tammy and Eric (Daniel's parents) who have very discerning palette. Here are their comments!

Tammy-"I love it, full of banana flavor and really moist cake. I like the topping and don't think it is too dry. Filling breakfast."

Eric-"Somewhat dry...but good flavor. Recommend eating it over the sink. Like raspberry chocolate torte better."

These comments pretty much sum up how I felt: I too felt that the topping was a bit too dry (in the above recipe I cut down the oats by 1/4 c. I think this will do the trick next time). But it did have a really good flavor and, of course, I felt good about eating it (unlike the chocolate torte)!

Coffee is a perfect friend to this bread!

A Mediterranean Feast

On Friday I had some friends over for a very merry Passover Seder. I decided to put a little skew on the traditional feast of matzo ball soup, roasted eggs, and roast beast by looking to our friends in the Mediterranean. Amanda worked as my loyal sous chef and here is what we whipped up:

Watermelon Feta kebabs with mint
Baked chickpea fritters served with sliced pickles, cucumbers, carrots, and greek yogurt
Collard green dolmas stuffed with a quinoa salad
Roasted eggplant dip
Israeli pickles
Lebanese carrot salad (which I completely forgot to serve...)
Honey cake

Alex and Sarah were all star guests and provided charoset (I finished the leftovers today for breakfast), and some of the best homemade macaroons I have ever had.

Sadly when I remembered to take some pictures my camera only took one photo before informing me that the battery was dead!

Alex does not look impressed here

Saturday night I had some leftovers and was able to take a shot of the dolmas I so painstakingly rolled. Dolma just means "stuffed" or "filled" in its original Turkish, which inspired me to roll these up in collard greens instead of the usual grape leaves. Also I did not have grape leaves... They took forever and were really fussy, but a fun food for a dinner party.

Collard dolmas, steamed collards, and quinoa salad with feta

I also wanted to use up my leftover collards so I steamed them according to this method from Healthy Tipping Point. I had never made collards before and honestly they were sort of "eh." A little too slimy for me. Maybe I cooked them too long? I'm really hoping to learn to enjoy them since they are basically nutrition bombs and wildly inexpensive.

Collards steaming - you can see how little they cooked down to in the photo above

After noshing on all of those healthy greens I finished off the meal with the remainder of the honey cake. My grandmother sent me the special passover mix specifically for our seder. I was a little nervous it was going to taste super dry (it uses potato starch instead of the forbidden flour), but it was actually very moist and everyone seemed to enjoy it. It tasted just like a spicy pumpkin cake.

It was the last piece - I ate it straight from the pan

Today the sun is actually out in Boston and it is a beautiful day. I am going to go stroll around the harborwalk and get some vitamin D on my fur!

Pepperoni Roll-Ups

My mother in law is one amazing cook. I had a lot to live up to when I married Matt. Luckily, she is not stingy with her recipes, and has given me quite the arsenal of "Matt's favorites" so I can cook them myself. She makes this thing called "pepperoni bread" that's basically a pizza, all rolled up like a cinnamon roll. YUM. I used her idea, but my own bread recipe and filling ideas.


Dough:
3 cups AP flour
1/2 t salt
1 1/2 t dry active yeast
1 cup water
2 T olive oil
Place all ingredients in your bread machine and use "dough" setting. When finished, roll it out to a large rectangle (like you're going to make cinnamon rolls). Top it with the following:

Filling:
Mix the following:
Lots of yummy cheese (mozzarella, provolone, and/or colby jack)
Lots of yummy meats (pepperoni and/or salami)
Mushrooms
Optional: bell pepper, tomatoes, tomato sauce, artichokes, olives









Spread filling mixture on the dough rectangle. Roll it up, fold over the ends, and place it on a cookie sheet or baking stone. Cut a few slits in the top. Brush with egg wash (just break up an egg with a fork) and dried basil or oregano. Bake @ 400 for 45 minutes or until the crust is nice and golden brown.

Of course I had to turn it into a dessert too:
Use the same dough recipe.
Filling:
In a saute pan, mix the following until the sauce becomes bubbly and the apples soft.
1 1/2 cups apples, chopped
2 Tablespoons butter
1/4 cup brown sugar

Follow the same directions as above for a yummy dessert!