Posted on March 7, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Dinner Fail

I haven’t wanted to think about food much this weekend–I have a sore in my mouth in what I deem to be the worst spot ever and pretty much any way I move my mouth it hurts. Friday it wasn’t so bad, but yesterday I actually avoided eating because it hurt so bad every time I had to chew. Today it’s a little better. I might have to make a run to the drugstore tomorrow to get something to make it stop hurting.

*lip wobble*

Ow.

Anyway. I stayed up late Friday night and ended up eating the rest of my pizza at midnight. I added some bacon crumbles. Mm.

Saturday morning I woke up and had some Liberte yogurt. Then I didn’t eat anything until dinner time, after a long nap. I had this sammich and grapes:

The sandwich was made with lettuce, tomatoes, havarti cheese, roast beef, and dijon mustard, on gluten-free brown rice bread. This was strange bread. It tasted fine, but it was sweetened with fruit juice and had the texture of very heavy fruit-based bread–there were squares of it breaking off and thudding onto the plate as I bit into the sandwich. It didn’t stay together very well. This is the only kind of gluten-free bread I saw at Trader Joe’s; if I decide to try gluten-free bread again, I’ll check to see what Whole Foods offers.

Of course, shortly after I ate this I was hungry again, because I’d hardly eaten all day. I had another yogurt and a Pure bar, because biting into the sandwich + acid from the tomatoes + dijon mustard = aggggh my mouth hurts.

Much later in the evening, I decided to put together a proper meal. I’d picked up some more Asian stir-fry veggies at Trader Joe’s, so I cooked them up with a few steak tips. So glad I got steak tips instead of stew beef like I did last time–these were tender instead of chewy, so they didn’t hurt my mouth and make me want to cry.

This morning I got up and had another yogurt for breakfast (dude, life is simpler when you eat the same thing for breakfast every day).

Then I took Heath on a walk around the neighborhood, and while we were out, I saw a hawk launch itself out of a tree with a dead squirrel in its talons. It was pretty awesome (well, not for the squirrel)–it was already a beautiful day outside and the local wildlife just added to it.

After our walk, I put together a mishmash of lunch items.

Three-layer hummus and tomatoes in one section…carrots in another…strawberries and cream dip in the third…

…and roast beef, havarti, and dijon mustard in the fourth.

This was good but painful to eat. Beh.

Sometime this afternoon I had my third nap of the weekend…I love napping in a puddle of sunshine next to my dog! I’m going to sell him to a gang of roving street musicians if he doesn’t stop his random barking at nothing, though…

Dinner was a big plate of EPIC FAIL. See, I thought that if I cut up my leftover chicken thigh and cooked it up with some mixed veggies, and then added a chunked up pieced of fresh mozzarella and some marinara sauce, everything would be okay.

And it turned out perfectly edible, but the cheese half-melted in the pot and then glued itself back into one big ball again, and the marina sauce pretty much disappeared when I added it in, so I had to dump the chicken and veggies and cheese out onto the plate, heat up more sauce, and then dump it over everything else.

I would make this again. But differently.

I spent about a half hour listening to The Mamas and the Papas (courtesy of YouTube) while cleaning my kitchen, then set about putting together my snack pack for tomorrow (it’s not a lunch bag anymore, it’s a SNACK PACK).

Here is my pretty hummus!

I decided to buy this because it had three of the four flavors that were in the four-flavor sampler that I bought last time at Trader Joe’s, but it was cheaper because there was less. Less is good,  because I didn’t quite finish all of the hummus last time.

Here is photographic proof that I packed food for tomorrow! 1125 calories’ worth!

…which doesn’t look like much, does it?

Posted on March 5, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Long Live Lazy Fridays!

I fell off the blogging wagon again…though in truth it was because I didn’t want to bore you with my meals, because I ate the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Yogurt and a Pure bar or Larabar, leftover soup, tacos. And lots of chocolate peanut butter cups. It was good times, but boring on the food front.

Thursdays have become my weigh-in day, and I was a little uncertain about how things would pan out, because I ate more than I had planned this week. But I feel like if I’m hungry, I should eat, so I did. And my weight came in at 151.0 lbs–only a 0.2 lb drop from last week, but given how little I exercised and how much extra I ate here and there, I’ll take that. I’m very excited about the prospect of seeing the 140s again!

I work 9-hour days so that I can take every other Friday off, and today was one of those lazy Fridays. I did set my alarm for 9AM or so, but I got up a little while before that and set to work making a grocery list. Then it was off to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, where I spent more money than I meant to, but a lot of it was on things that will last for a while. I need to go back to Whole Foods sometime soon, though–I didn’t realize that the Liberte yogurts were on sale for $1 each (usually they’re $1.25 or so) and since they’re something that I eat almost every day, I’d like to go ahead and buy some more. I only bought $12 today–the store was so crowded that I just  grabbed them and ran to hide in the wine section to regroup without looking at the prices.

(By the way, I don’t drink alcohol, but I’ve found that if you need a quiet place to hide for a few moments in a store so that you can check your grocery list without being trampled or having to move, you should go to the wine section. Trader Joe’s is the only place I’ve found so far where this is not a good strategy, because the stores are so small to begin with.)

I decided to continue my wheat-free experiment by picking up some wheat-free version of common foods. And I personally would like to thank Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods for clearly labeling their gluten-free items!

I bought a bag of pecan cookies, a loaf of brown rice bread (it is hard–I feel this may not be an enjoyable dining experience…!), a four-pack of lemon poppyseed muffins, a bag of brown rice pasta, and a gluten-free pizza. I almost didn’t buy the pizza because it was $12, and then I realized that was silly–I’ll pay $16+ to have a Papa John’s pizza delivered, a pizza loaded with crap and bad calories, but I won’t pay $12 for a nice, healthful pizza? I discovered when I was reading the package that the company that makes the pizza (Bella Monica) is based here in Raleigh and they have an Italian restaurant with a gluten-free menu! Isn’t that cool?

Since the pizza had already defrosted sufficiently by the time I drove home, I threw it in the oven and let it cook while I was unpacking groceries.

Another slightly pricey buy was this 3.5 lbs of boneless skinless chicken thighs…

…but they came from Amish Country! And check out the awesome packaging!

I pulled off one of the packs and threw it in the fridge, then put the other two in the freezer. That’s handy right there!

Soon enough the pizza was done…

I had the three slices shown below, then went back for another one, since I’d had no breakfast apart from a couple of chocolate-covered almonds.

Now, this did not by any stretch of the imagination taste like the pizza you get from Papa John’s or Pizza Hut. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It tasted, as I described to my mom, like “fru-fru pizza.” It was the mushroom and herb kind, with Asiago cheese, and it filled my house with the smell of Italian herbs. Mmm. And if you hadn’t told me that it was wheat-free, I’d've had no idea. Even if I go back to eating wheat after my little experiment is done, I might still buy this brand of pizza ’cause it tastes so good.

After lunch and some quick straightening up of the living room and dining room, I took a nice long nap. So when I got up, it was time to eat again. Sometimes I feel like all I do is eat.

I threw two chicken thighs on the George Foreman grill (one for dinner and one for lunch or something tomorrow) and covered them with Galena Street rub, started the brown rice pasta on the stove, and then cut  up some cherry tomatoes, onion, and pepper. When the pasta and the chicken were done, I cut up the chicken and then threw everything together into a pasta salad, with some mayo, salt, and pepper.

I’m no great fan of pasta to begin with–I usually have a bag or box of it in the pantry for that time every month or two when I decide I want to eat it–so taste-wise, I didn’t notice a difference. Texture-wise, I noticed a few bites felt a little chewy, in the way that brown rice is chewier than white rice. I didn’t notice this with every  bite, so it could be that I didn’t cook the pasta long enough (though I thought I cooked it longer than it said on the package, because I hate al dente pasta). But it was a good dinner just the same and satisfied my desire for something like macaroni salad.

Sometime after dinner, I decided to break into the lemon poppyseed muffins. I defrosted one in the microwave until it was a little bit warm…

Again, if you hadn’t told me this was a wheat-free muffin, I wouldn’t have noticed the difference. It tasted goooood.

For a bedtime snack, I munched on a few of the gluten-free pecan cookies.

These weren’t anything exciting. They were a bit too squishy for my taste, but otherwise they were fine.

[I will point out, in the interest of full disclosure, that the muffins and the cookies both contained potato flour and/or potato starch. However, I do not consider this to be a violation of my potato-free-for-three-months vow, because the potato flour/starch is just one of several flour-based components in each item and the items are not potato-based in terms of flavor--the intent is to not make them taste like potatoes. This is actually something I considered before I started this little potato challenge and I decided I'd cross each bridge as I came to it based on the situation. Potato bread? Definitely out. Gluten-free lemon muffin that contains potato flour as one of several flour components? That seems okay in my book. It's my challenge; I make the rules. Bwhaha.]

Posted on March 1, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

In Like a Lion

I can’t believe that today was a beautiful day, in the mid-50s, and tomorrow it’s going to snow again! North Carolina has some of the craziest weather…

Last night I pedaled away on my recumbent bike for a half an hour while eating a homemade peanut butter cup and reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I was a bad child and never read the Chronicles of Narnia, although I’ve enjoyed the first two movies. I got about a third of the way through it before I went to bed at 10PM. Then, for some reason, I woke up at around 4:15AM, with my alarm not set to go off for another hour. After about fifteen minutes I realized I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I jumped out of bed and set about doing stuff…including unloading my dishwasher and putting away my clothes drying rack. It was so so so so nice to  come home to a clean apartment on a Monday afternoon…

…so anyway, I decided to go to work early, ’cause I was up. I got there at 6AM and ate my breakfast while reading e-mail and doing the sorts of things one can do while eating a Pure bar, a Chobani peach Greek yogurt, and three-quarters of a cup of Leapin’ Lemurs cereal.

Why so much for breakfast, you ask? I didn’t go to Whole Foods for my beloved Liberte yogurt over the weekend, so I grabbed some Chobani to eat for breakfast. But Chobani has about 100 calories less than Liberte. So I ate some delicious gluten-free peanut butter and chocolate cereal to add some more calories.

Speaking of peanut butter and chocolate…I started getting hungry around 10AM, since I’d eaten breakfast early. Look what was hiding in my bag…

Protein! In the form of a chocolate peanut butter cup! Yum.

I went for a lunchtime walk on a crazy convoluted path through campus because of some construction that’s being done on the trail. Afterward, I had some sausage, lentil, and spinach soup.

It doesn’t take the light too well, does it? Still good, though. I will add this to my potato-free soup file.

A little while before I left work, I started feeling hungry, so I got two little mini Snickers out of a coworker’s candy bowl. I checked the ingredients list to make sure they didn’t have wheat in them, and then double-checked online–hey, they’re gluten-free! So are M&Ms…mmm…

It somehow came about that I haven’t had wheat since last Tuesday, when I ate those four Girl Scout Cookies, and while I’m not necessarily trying  to embark on my I-Will-Eat-No-Wheat-For-Two-Weeks experiment…well, if it’s already been almost a week, why ruin it with some candy? I’ve noticed that my eczema doesn’t look as bad as it did, but I have no objective way of measuring that unless it clears up completely.

Also, one day I’m going to eat the rest of the Girl Scout Cookies.

After I got home from work I changed into my running clothes, threw my chef’s jacket on over top, set the kitchen timer for 15 minutes, and set about putting away the dishes I’d washed last night and washing the ones that were in my sink. Then I ran away! For 32 minutes! That was One Hour Runner Week 5, Day 2, if you’re counting.

My legs were tiiiiired after that. Still are. But I found the strength to make tacos…

…and I will confess here and now that I usually put a picture of three tacos up, but I generally eat five at a time (half the box). However, tonight I ate only the three you see here, and they were scrumptious. I was in taco heaven. Perfect tacos!

I also had a side of grapes.

And now, because I don’t have to clean my kitchen or my living room or my bathroom, I am going to take this glass of Crystal Light and this peanut butter cup and go sit on my exercise bike in the living room, with my lilies in bloom, and ride my bike while reading my book. Because I can.