Posted on January 2, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Squash is Not Potatoes

I realized when I uploaded these photos that I tagged them as December 2…I’m sure that heralds a lot of 2009/2010 mistakes in my future.

For an afternoon snack, I made myself a plateful of veggies using the cool dish my mom let me have last time I was at my parents’ house.

Veggies with creamy Italian gorgonzola dip. The dip has huge chunks of cheese in it! It’s pretty good, though. I found it in the refrigerated dressing section of Whole Foods.

I checked the mail this afternoon and discovered something I’d been waiting on for a few days…

A tissue typing kit! I’m signing up to join the national bone marrow registry. It’s something that I thought about a lot about a year ago and then completely forgot about before I had a chance to sign up. I was reminded of the registry the other day and immediately signed up. Once I send these swabs with my cheek cells on them back, it’ll take 5-6 weeks for the tissue typing, and then (I hope!) I’ll get confirmation that I’m in the registry.

Tonight’s dinner was made in the food steamer!

Salmon with dill and lemon-garlic seasoned squash and asparagus. I added some of the gorgonzola dressing to dip the asparagus in and a dish of leftover blue cheese coleslaw. I didn’t quite finish all of the squash, but I tried…!

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A Season Without Potatoes!

A declaration: I love potatoes. A lot. While I’ve been doing better about not having them every night for dinner and not eating half a pound of them in one go, I’m still having them several nights a week (at least). There is nothing inherently wrong with eating potatoes in moderation, but I’ve noticed three things:

1. I can easily eat hundreds of calories’ worth of potatoes in one sitting.
2. Every time I have potatoes for dinner, I wake up starving the next morning, which makes me eat more throughout the day than I should.
3. Potatoes have become my go-to side dish, so that when I come home from work and don’t feel like making anything, I’ll make a pan of potatoes for dinner. This is happening at the expense of other vegetables, and this is lazy cooking.

As a result, I’ve decided to challenge myself to go without potatoes. For a while. A long while. One of my resolutions for this year is to eat a greater variety of vegetables and more fruit, and to aid in this, I will not eat any potatoes from January 1 to March 31. That’s three months of no potatoes.

Furthermore, to aid me in my quest to kick my potato habit, I pledge to donate $1 to Feeding America for every day between January 1 and March 31 that I do not eat any potatoes. If I make it all the way to the end of my challenge, that will be $90 donated to help combat hunger in the United States.

The first couple of days have been easy, but I know soon enough I’ll be jonesing for some potatoes, which are delicious and wonderful and yummy…