SUNDAY DINNER

When I was little Sunday dinner (or lunch) was a thing in our house. Mom would cook a big fancy meal and we'd all sit down at the dining room table set with the good china, cloth napkins and fancy tablecloth. The fancy tablecloths and fine china didn't really stick, but the idea of cooking a nice meal kind of did. I think it's because Sundays have become my nothing day. Chores are complete except for the laundry hanging on the line. I even sleep in on Sundays to almost eight o'clock (yes... I know). Sundays are the days where I let myself be. So, every Sunday, I fix a nice meal. I usually use this time to try out something new, a recipe that may seem too labor intensive for a weekday. I have made this recipe from Bon Appetempt for sweet corn polenta before, but I cheated. A lot. I used a frozen bag of fire-roasted corn from Trader Joe's and topped it with a bag of frozen eggplant/tomato mix (also from TJ's). It was delicious and I didn't feel bad for taking the easy route. But fresh corn is in season right now and I can get six ears of it for $2.50 from the farmer's market. No excuse for cheating and really the fresh corn wasn't that much more work.

I roasted okra and baby eggplants with onions (from my own garden), garlic and tomatoes and served it on top of my polenta with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese. This is the most delicious meal. Ever. I thought my cheating frozen bag version was really good, but the fresh? The fresh is so much better. I think this has become my new favorite Sunday meal.

Try it. I bet you'll like it.

WESPORT FOOD TRUCK FESTIVAL

Remember a few weeks ago when I told this really cool woman gave us tickets to the Westport Food Truck Festival? Yeah. That totally happened today. And it was great. The first person we ran into was Carman, the woman who gave us the tickets. Can I just say, this girl is totally awesome? Yes. Yes I can. She was running around making sure all the trucks were ready to go, but she still took a moment to say hello. And she actually remembered us. She was really happy to see us out there. She's awesome. Wait, I've said that already.

I don't know what I'm doing in this picture. I look like I'm about to swallow Carman whole. I managed to restrain myself and save the stomach space for the tamales. There was so much goodness to be had and so many pictures, I thought it best just to slide show them all for you. Enjoy! We sure did.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

At one point we were sitting there eating and I looked up to see a sea plane flying over. I said to Chris "Is that a sea plane?". He replied "Yes. I do believe it is". Then I said "We live in Portland". And we kind of do in a way. At least, we do today.

HOW TO BAKE BROWNIES

First, assemble your ingredients.

Then, squish the brownie mix for no other reason than it's just fun. Squish. Squish. It's so squishy!

OK. Stop squishing. Tear open Ready-to-Bake Brownie Mix from Trader Joe's.

Pour into a pan.

Next, add extra stuff like dried cherries, walnuts and a few chocolate peanut butter wafer cookies (also TJ's).

Bake at 350 for about 22 minutes.

Enjoy!

FEAR OF HUNGER AND DAY 10

I know I've mentioned here just how attached I am to schedules. It should come as no surprise that I am the same way about food. Around 7:30 AM, I eat breakfast, noon is lunch and 5:30ish means dinner (or supper). At any point in the day where it seems like this may be disrupted, like lunch doesn't come until 12:30, I start to panic. I am afraid of being hungry. I have no idea where this comes from. My family had it's fair share of bean dinners, but we always had plenty of food on the table. There was a big theme of "waste not" in our home and it's possible my hunger fear comes from that. But who knows? When Chris suggested the juice cleanse, I immediately started worrying about going hungry. What if I ran out of juice at work? How would I parcel out my juice during the day to ensure I'd have enough to get me through? But this is what I learned: it's OK to be hungry. I'm not talking about starving to the point of wonky. There's a difference between hungry and being HUNGRY. These last few days, when I've felt hungry, I'd drink some water and wait. If I still felt hungry twenty minutes or so later, I'd make a cup of miso soup or drink some of my "snack" juice. And for the most part this worked out. I realized that I was hungry when I was supposed to be hungry.

I'll tell you what's not OK and that's walking into a Whole Foods when you're hungry. Because hungry quickly turns into HUNGRY. You know what they have at Whole Foods? Free samples. Free samples of cheese. Free samples of fruits. Free samples of Pirate's Booty. These free samples are open and begging for you to take, take, take. And while I've been able to handle being hungry, I have grown weary of the monotony of juice for every. single. meal. I want food I can chew. Sunday, we started talking about what we were going to eat on Thursday. Oddly enough the list didn't include chocolate cake and potato chips, but more like big salads and peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Today is our final day of the 10 Day Juice Cleanse. It's also known as a re-boot. This makes sense because I'm back down to the weight I was before the move. I am happy with that. I'm also happy that I put a big dent into that fear of being hungry.

THANKFUL FRIDAY AND JUICING UPDATE

I can't believe it's already Friday! That means Chris and I are five days into our 10 day juice cleanse. And you know what? I feel just fine. I'm not starving, like I thought I would be, and I don't feel like I need to eat a hamburger. I have to admit to cheating on one meal. Wednesday, my lab went to lunch and then to a tour of the Harely Davidson Factory. I did my best to cheat reasonably, meaning I had a very simple Southwest salad and a huge glass of water. I was a little excited with the idea of eating un-juiced food. OK. I admit it. I was really excited. But as I chewed on that first bite, I was like "meh". It wasn't all that thrilling. I've done cleansing diets before and with all of them I've had what I like to call the third day woozies. I always have a crash day. That hasn't happened on the juice cleanse and it's one of the things I'm thankful for today. Yes, I still have hunger pangs, but they happen when they are supposed to and I never feel so hungry that I feel like I'm going to eat my own arm. So I'm thankful Chris talked me into the whole juicing thing. Plus I love putting things in the juicer. Who knew you could juice a sweet potato!?

I am thankful for the promise of naps this weekend and the time to organize a few things. I am thankful for the cooler weather and the garden possibilities. I am thankful for the 5lbs I've lost this week. I am thankful for our juicer.

Happy weekend and Thankful Friday!

JUICE CLEANSE DAY 1 OR JETLAG

Some of you may have read over at Chris's blog about our 10 day juice cleanse. For some reason I let him talk me into starting it the day after getting back from BlogHer. This has it's ups and down sides. First of all, I'm exhausted from my weekend and my head is full (I promise, tomorrow will be something about my trip). Also, something the internets probably doesn't need to know, I start my period tomorrow. So, of course, I'm thinking that this has something to do with the 168 lbs reading on the scale this evening (I had been hanging out at around 163). This morning, I had a lovely juice of apples, lemon, kale, celery, carrots and something else I can't remember. Oh, wait. Watermelon. Any way, it was good and filling and then Chris and I made a bunch of green juice for me to take with me to work. All went really well until I ran out of juice some where around 3:30. Then, I was hungry. I kept thinking of this book I'm reading where a reluctant nun starves herself in order to see visions. At one point while riding in the elevator, I thought "now, this is the time of day I start my own vision quest". I had visions of crackers. Profound visions of crackers.

But really, for the most part I'm fine. Dinner tonight was a juice of onion, parsley, Romaine hearts, celery, tomatoes, broccoli, and garlic blended with avocado, Cayenne and black pepper. And it was tasty and I'm full. I think I'll have dessert juice later of pineapple and cantaloupe. Day one and not so bad. Only nine days left!

YOU SAY TOMATO!

Chris and I stumbled across yet another new place to eat. I found it by accident online and it's a good thing I did, because we would have never found this place on our own just driving around. You Say Tomato is tucked back into a neighborhood, where it used to be the corner grocery store. It still has lots of the old fixtures and part of it is still a little grocery, selling locally-grown veggies and other locally-produced goods. You can buy sticks of butter and pounds of sugar. Or you can just order a yummy meal.

That's what we did. Chris had the biscuits and gravy, while I had the baked French toast. The French toast was made from slices of their homemade cinnamon rolls. And to top it all off, we split an ice cream sandwich. It was brilliant, a big slab of homemade vanilla ice cream wedged between two slices of gingerbread. I'm getting a bit teary just thinking about it. We ate there on Saturday and loved it so much we went back on Sunday for brunch.

It wasn't just the food that drew us in to You Say Tomato. The atmosphere is calm and easy. It's the type of place where you can sit and linger over that second (or third) cup of coffee. Sunday was busy, but that just meant that we had to sit outside under the awning. We didn't mind. The day was cool with the occasional sprinkle. We even had a little sparrow that kept hopping up to our feet to beg for food. It's our new favorite place and it and will be really hard to convince ourselves to try other places. Yet another very Portland-like place.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

Memorial Day weekend, Chris and I realized that we did not have an air conditioner. I don't mean the air conditioner doesn't work. I mean it doesn't even exist. There's no air conditioning unit. At all. No big deal. We've gone with out before. We survived two summers in Oklahoma heat without it at one crap hole we lived in. As long as we can open some windows and turn on some fans we're doing OK. Except we soon realized that only half of our windows had screens. That's OK too because we have a fan that pulls the cool air up from the basement. Who am I kidding. It was hot and humid and the dog was starting to hate us just a bit I think. The heat made us not want to turn on the stove so we headed to the market for some cheap produce. I've had to get over the organic vs non-organic thing for a while. We are on a budget and the way I see it, fresh produce is better than no produce. So we headed out into the heat and crowd of the market and this is what we got for $20.

Not a bad haul. That's fourteen Roma tomatoes, four bell peppers, five nectarines, five peaches, one mango, five grapefruit, seven limes, bunch of mint, carton of strawberries, two onions, two small watermelons and a cucumber all for twenty bucks. I made gazpacho for the first time ever (remember that gazpacho we ate outside that cathedral Chrome? It was that good). I made this super easy hummus recipe sent to me by the lovely Fluid Pudding. Tonight we ate taco salad with lettuce and green onions from the garden. My lunch today looked like I was back on some wacky cleansing diet. Except I'm not. I want to eat this way. Weird.

Last night our landlord took pity on us and brought us a window unit (we're his favorite tenants, dur). The dog slept on the floor in front of the unit last night. I think he loves us again. We could totally do with air conditioning just to prove how tough we are. I'm just sayin'. We aren't wimps. BUT THANK GOD WE HAVE AIR CONDITIONING!

AMENDMENT

So... the cleansing diet. That was supposed to last a week, but with our emergency trip to Tulsa, it got tossed out with the bath water. That's OK though because those three days of the diet were good. Well, except for that one part on Tuesday. Sometime around 3 in the afternoon, I started getting the worst headache. And by the time I made it home, I was in pain and a bit woozy. Chris decided it was because I'd had all carbs and no protein. I disagree. Quinoa has protein and I ate a lot of quinoa. A lot. I came home that day and collapsed on the bed and instantly fell asleep. While Chris made dinner, I dreamed that there was an elephant standing on my bed waving her trunk over my head. I dragged myself out of bed and ate a HUGE salad with beans and mushrooms and felt normal again. Wednesday was good, and I probably should not divulge this next bit, but I don't care. Wednesday I pooped five times. FIVE TIMES! Good healthy poops and three of those times happened at work. At work! I don't poop at work. It just isn't done.

So, Chris and I declared the cleanse a success. I had my own little vision quest and cleaned out my system. Maybe next time I'll have all the knowledge I need to avoid the day two crash.

GARDEN DIARIES

Does any one know what possums eat? Do they eat gardens? Do I need to worry about this? Are they rabid? Hooper and I saw one of the possums last night slinking around the house. I'm hoping this doesn't become a problem, but they do kind of freak me the fuck out just a bit. What with their beady little eyes and rat tails. It doesn't look like they've been gnawing on anything out there, but maybe their waiting for when things get ripe. Possums. Blerg.

Other then that the garden is puttering along nicely. Things are growing taller. I've added some more onions (since a gazillion come in the starter bundle). I added a few more mixed salad greens. And now we wait. The weed pulling has begun. The problem is, some of the weeds are still young and they seem to be popping up in the same areas as where I planted seeds. The weeds get to stay until I figure out if they're edible.

Next weekend we fill in the fourth quadrant of our circle with tomatoes and peppers and maybe start mixing in some herbs here and there.

SPRING CLEAN

I decided that I needed to step it up a notch this week and do a cleansing diet. We've had major pig-out weekends ever since we moved up here. It seems that I just can't get enough pizza, pasta...food. Last week I was feeling sluggish, couldn't get out of bed, and my yoga practice suffered. So, with the pantry low and in dire need of a re-stock, I thought now would be a good time for a cleansing diet. I stuck with one that I had done before, one that requires no gimmicks or starvation. You just follow five easy rules:

no animal products no caffeine no sugar no alcohol no gluten

Sounds a bit daunting, and I admit, the first time around with this diet all I saw were the things I can't eat. Not exactly the best attitude to have. There was no wonder that by day three, I was a snarly, cranky, prickly pear of a person. Looking at the diet now, I see all the things I can eat.

Really, I've only had to make a few changes. I tend to eat this way (usually) any way. The biggest adjustment has been to breakfast. I've been eating two Morning Star Soysauge patties with breakfast every morning for some needed protein (shut it Chris), but unfortunately these things contain gluten. Also, I have a nice little routine of stopping by the (free) espresso machine at work every morning. But these are easy fixes. Instead of soysauge, I make Chris get up and make me a protein shake. Instead of coffee, I stop by and get some herbal tea (also free).

I am a bit drowsy today, but that probably has more to do with all the sitting and reading I've done today. I could have taken a nap when I got home, but I didn't. I fixed a lovely skillet dinner of mushrooms, tomatoes, bok choy, and quinoa. I scrubbed the bathroom and I wrote this entry. We'll see how the rest of the week goes, but so far, I don't feel like I'm on a "diet". I feel like I'm just eating clean.

FOOD

Chris and I haven't made a bad food choice since we've been here. Well, that's not entirely true. The amount of food is probably a bad choice, but at least we save the splurging for the weekends. It's taken us two weeks to find really good vegetarian places, something that took us a year to do in OKC. And we've only scratched the surface. Here's a few of our favorites. Eden Alley This place is all vegetarian, vegan and gluten free option, place. We chose the daily special appetizer of spinach and white bean dip which I'm sure that if slathered onto the soul of a shoe, would make that shoe taste delicious. Chris had the ultimate garlic grilled cheese and it was so good, I wish I were eating it right now. I picked the the spinach and mushroom loaf and it kicked Mom's meatloaf to the curb. And the dessert? It's almost impossible to choose from all that they offer, but we went with the Mexican Mandarin, a vegan cake of chocolate, cinnamon and Mandarin oranges. This place is probably my favorite place.

BRGR This place is a burger and bar joint, but their portabella mushroom sandwich will make you cry sweet tears of joy. But that's not what brings us back to the place. They have awesome milkshakes. My favorite is the PB Marshmallow made with Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. The Moo Mocha ain't to shabby either, but our absolute favorite thing there is the Truffle Fries. They sprinkle them with crac and LSD and other goodness.

The Blue Nile Cafe We thought we had eaten good Ethiopian food before, but this place really made us wonder what we've been eating before this. For those of you who have never experienced Ethiopian food, you may not know that this is a silverware free zone. Instead you use pieces of injera to scoop up the lovely saucy dishes. The injera is like a sour dough pancake, but thinner. The stuff we had before was always cool and clammy to the touch. In fact we nicknamed it "puppy bellies". I know it doesn't seem appetizing, but you don't even notice it with the other stuff on it. The injera at the Blue Nile was different. First of all it was warm and it was thicker and fluffier. We can no longer call it puppy bellies.

There are other places, but these are just a few of our favorites (so far). Chris hasn't even made it to any of the BBQ places yet. And the Italian restaurants are crazy. You can through a rock and hit pizza/pasta house here. The pizza we've eaten has been some of the best. We're still hunting our favorite, along with a really good Mexican place. But trust me; the hunt is on.

WEEK THREE OR SOMETHING

OK, I realize that today should be an update on the Yoga Body Diet. Things are going well. I eat whole lot of food at lunch and I'm not ready to eat my fingers off by the time I get home in the evenings. This is actually the most important thing. Usually, I am starving, as in Chris Farley starving, by the end of my work day (after teaching class and what not). I'm usually so hungry that I don't want to cook; I just want to eat and consume it in two point six minutes. It also leads to me eating way too much food right before my bedtime. The new plan is working out a bit better. I'm not as hungry by the time I get home and cooking supper is easier. Plus I make enough to put away for lunch the next day. I still feel like I'm eating way too much food at lunch time, but I don't feel like I need to eat something between lunch and supper any more. I plan on sticking to this way of eating even when the four weeks is up.

So week three....Yeah, through the chaos of putting together a surprise birthday party for my mom, I never managed to read up on what is expected of us in week three. I think this the part where they expect us to do lots of yoga and do poses that benefit your dosha. I think this is the part of the diet where we start to slide a bit. I already do lots of yoga and I know that my personal practice is just savasana. I also know that I need to be squeezing in this practice more than twice a week. If only we could add an hour to the day.

WEEK TWO

Chris and I begin week two of the Yoga Body Diet today. To prepare for week two, we had to take a quiz to determine our dosha. As I mentioned before, there are three types of doshas and they reflect your mind/body type. The quiz is pretty straight forward. If you want, you can take one here. Describing the different doshas could be an entry all by itself, so I'll spare you the details and just say that after taking the quiz Chris turned out to be very much Vata with a little bit Kapha and a tiny bit Pitta. I was another story. I ended up scoring 18 points for Pitta, 17 for Pitta and 16 for Kapha. Pretty balanced. I have read about doshas before and have always thought I was Kapha. In fact, if you read the Kapha description, it sounds like me. But, when I read through the Pitta section, Chris and I both went "Oh". Yeah, I'm Pitta. The next step is to design meal plans based on your dosha type. The book contains a list of foods that are best suited to your dosha. The book also stresses the importance of eating three meals a day, no snacking in between meals. Breakfast looks like this: fruit, hot cereal, toast, and herbal tea. Lunch is meant to be your biggest meal of the day with soup or salad, vegetables, meat or tofu, dessert and herbal tea. Supper is the lightest with soup or salad, a sandwich, dessert and herbal tea.

As we started figuring out the grocery list, I started to freak out a little bit trying to figure out how to plan meals for the two of us with out breaking the bank. The Pitta in me wanted to be strict and really stick to the food list, but it seemed so daunting that the Kapha in me wanted to just chuck it all and forget it. I compromised with myself and decided to not get so hung up on the list. Super is just a lighter version of lunch. I designed meals that I could make extras of to bleed over into my lunch like quasadillas, tacos, grilled sandwiches. Things that we could put different fillings in and wouldn't be a big deal to make up separately.

One of the things that I really like about the book is how much it emphasizes how important it is to not stress. I had to remind myself that the no stress applies to the diet as well. We're keeping things simple. We've decided that making lunch the biggest meal of the day with a lighter super is more important than sticking to the list. The biggest problem will be getting Chris to not graze through the day. Vattas are known grazers.

Bring it on week two!

RESOLUTION TO NOT RESOLUTE

I never make resolutions. I might go as far as to say "I'll try", but really, I make no promises (something that is also prone to get broken). I do have some tentative plans for the New Year, like crossing a couple of things off the Life List. Speaking of which, I need to go in and make some edits on that thing. I'm pretty sure I can find something else to replace "run a marathon". I just don't like running. There. I've said it. One thing for sure that's happening in the New Year is getting back on track with the food. Chris and I have gotten a little out of control (particularly around the Holidays). We're still sticking to 90% organic, it's just that we're eating so much of it. Like gobs and gobs of food in one sitting, inhaled in minutes. Not good. So I've talked Chris into doing 4 weeks of the Yoga Body Diet. Actually, it turned out to not be much of a hard sell. He usually says no to my cleansing diet schemes.

Today starts week one, which turns out to be pretty simple. You start with mindful eating, devoting at least 20 min three times a day to your meal. No multitasking while eating. No reading, no TV, no internet and no sound. Next step is drinking water. If you feel hungry between meals, drink two cups of warm water. The ideas in the book are based on an ayurvedic diet. Warm water is supposed to help flush out the system where as cold water causes blood vessels to constrict restricting things like digestion. The next thing on the list for week one is mindful breathing. I teach it to my students as three part yoga breathing, filling the belly, the ribs, the chest and then emptying belly, ribs, chest. Again, this is simple because I do it everyday. I just need to start applying to times when I'm not teaching or doing my own practice.

I thought it would bother me this morning to not have the TV on, or the iPad at my side while eating breakfast and lunch. But it wasn't that bad. I was conscious of every bite and at lunch I even had leftover crackers to snack on before teaching my evening class. I can't say that we'll be following the four weeks exactly. I've looked ahead to week four where they expect 3 hours of yoga a day from you. Sure, if I didn't have a day job and taught yoga one to two times a day already. And I will have to have that 3 or 4 o'clock snack if I'm going to make it through my classes. Snacking will just have to happen, but I promise that it will be smart snacking.

Next week has us eating to benefit our Doshas. The topic of Dosha is a blog entry for a later day. Also, I promise that I have an entry planned about my 365 day project. It's in pieces in my brain and I need a bit more time to put it all together. But the most important thing is that I finished it and I don't have to take a picture of myself today.

EASY AS APPLE PIE

Someone had apples at the farmer's market today and I thought "hmmmm....apple pie". So I bought some apples and when we got into the car The Splendid Table was the radio and Melissa Clark was talking about her 20 ingredient pie recipe. I was inspired. OK, I wasn't too keen on the idea of putting 20 different ingredients into my apple pie. I am a purist at heart. But it did make me wonder why I never thought of adding anything like nuts or dried cranberries. My apple pie has always been every one's favorite (remember my gift for crust?). I've used the same recipe from my Mamaw's old Betty Crocker cookbook since I learned to bake. It's a simple recipe of apples, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. But today I added walnuts, dried cranberries and cardamom. It was the best idea. Perfect for a crisp day like today and all that was missing was the vanilla ice cream.

The idea of adding something to an old tried and true recipe got me thinking about other things, about how it's so easy to stay inside our little boxes. This seems to be my year for thinking outside the box. It's as simple as adding sauteed veggies to Mac-n-cheese or cranberries to the apple pie.

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN OUR KITCHEN

One of Chris's favorite meals is chicken pot pie. We used to make it with canned chicken, a can of veg-all, a can of cream of something soup and store bought pie crust. Well, we don't eat that way any more so the recipe had to be revised. Even after a bit of revision, I was still using bought pie crust and cream of mushroom soup. The bought pie crust is just silly. If there's one thing I know how to make, it's pie crust. Crust is my super power. Since moving in with Chris's mom, I haven't been all to keen on the idea of baking. I don't have enough counter space (even in the "new" kitchen, I say "new" because it's the exact same, just with new cabinets). My rolling pin is in storage so I have to end up using the giant pestle that goes to his mom's mortar set. These are lame excuses to say that I'm lazy. So on Sunday, I decided to make us a proper pot pie. I chopped up some veggies.

I made pie crust.

I mixed up an organic packet of mushroom sauce to coat all the veggies.

Put the top crust on and baked for about 45 min.

And it was delicious.

The end.