6 posts tagged “food”
This is cross posted from A Healthy Appetite. It will be a little redundant for some of you, sorry.
We moved back to Louisville a couple months ago. We were very lucky and landed exactly where we wanted to be. Our neighborhood is incredible, absolutely incredibly. It's terribly walking and biking friendly and we try to take advantage of that as much as we can. We walk or bike to the bread shop, the coffee shop, the grocery for small items, and of course the farmer's market every week. Ah, the farmer's market. At the same time my eating habits have changed for health reasons my eating habits have evolved because of food politics and philosophical issues. Those two things combined have given me some pretty strong guiding principles about what I eat, what I don't eat and where I get what I eat. In a nutshell my food philosophy is "eat as much local, seasonal produce as possible. Eat organic whenever possible. Eat more whole foods, less processed foods. Bake with really excellent ingredients. Support farmers and sustainable agriculture by buying direct from farmers whenever possible. Supporting farmers includes supporting meat and dairy farmers so buy humanely raised and slaughtered meat products and humanely cared for dairy and egg products."
So each Saturday morning we walk to the farmer's market and load up on whatever is good and fresh. Then we build our week's menus around those fresh items. Obviously we don't eat farmer's market produce at every meal but it does make up the bulk of our meals. It's glorious.
Being back home in Louisville gives the opportunity for more fresh, local produce than we can shake a stick at actually because we're now quite close to my family and the farm country I grew up on. In the past two weeks two different aunts have come to visit, each with bags full of fresh veggies from their farms. Between the two of them (I'll be seeing them both this weekend), the farmer's market, and our own backyard tomatoes we buy very little product from the grocery store and we eat glorious fresh vegetable based vegetarian dishes at almost every meal.
From this embarrassing wealth of fresh riches comes fabulous lunches and dinners including this Summer Vegetable Saute that I made last night for dinner. I didn't measure the vegetables exactly so I can't give you exact nutritionals but a good estimate is 90-100 calories per cup of veggies so 2WW points if that's your bag.
Summer Vegetable Saute
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small eggplant
1 small red onion
2 yellow squash
1 small zucchini
1 bell pepper
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained (I used diced tomatoes with peppers and onions)
Salt
Pepper
Oregano
Dice all vegetables into small but not tiny pieces.
Over medium heat saute minced garlic in oil. Add bell pepper and onion. Cook for about 3 minutes until onions start to soften. Add all of the remaining vegetables. Cook for 8 minutes. Add tomatoes, stir the tomatoes and vegetable mixture really well. Add your salt, pepper, and oregano. I can't even give you estimates on the amount because it's completely dependent upon taste. Just experiment until it tastes well season to you.
Cover pan and cook on low-medium heat for 5-10 minutes depending on how much firmness you want your vegetables to have and how cooked you want your tomatoes to be.
Serve over whole wheat pasta. 2oz dry pasta is 4 points so if you have 4 points in pasta, 2 in veggies you've got a really hearty, really delicious dinner for 6 points. Since there are only 2 of us we ended up with a good amount of leftover veggies.
In just a few minutes I'm going to take 1 fat free tortilla, 1/4 cup 2% Mexican shredded cheese, and 1 cup of these veggie leftovers to make a simple and tasty veggie quesadilla for lunch. Yum.
As crazy as it sounds sometimes my goals of being a smaller, healthier person and someone who eats a very natural, healthy, sustainable diet are at direct odds with each other. French Vanilla Splenda for Coffee is a prime example of this struggle. There's nothing natural about vanilla Splenda. Though it may be derived from sugar in some mysterious scientific way it's a chemical sweetener with chemical vanilla flavoring added. It doesn't seem like the kind of product that someone who just switched to organic ketchup because she's trying to cut the copious amounts of high fructose corn syrup we're being fed out of her diet would use does it? But use it and love it I do. I keep track of what's going into my body everyday and I know that every bit of food fuel counts both positively and negatively. Obviously using a natural sweetener for my coffee and tea would be desirable if my only goal was to eat a natural diet. But the extra calories that sugar and other natural sweeteners give me run counter to my goals of weighing less and becoming more fit. For the same calories a natural sweetener would give me in my coffee I can instead have a nice serving a fruit (a blood orange this morning in fact) or vegetables. Like the Splenda the natural sweetener would be giving me no nutritional value but it would be giving me calories. So in this case I choose the chemical alternative over the natural one.
If the French Vanilla Splenda didn't taste so good in my coffee this might be a harder decision for me but it's really, really good. If you've no qualms about chemical sweeteners and like a hint of vanilla in your coffee then I can't recommend the French Vanilla Splenda highly enough.
From A Healthy Appetite
The base for this recipe comes from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking. We loved the basic concept but decided it needed a little something. So we've played around with it a few times and finally a couple nights ago came up with the definitive version.
I pound extra-firm tofu
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 chopped onion
1 teaspoon curry powder
10oz fresh spinach
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 can diced tomatoes with green peppers partially drained
- Drain and press tofu, crumble into small pieces. We typically put the tofu in the fridge to press the night before we plan to make this dish
- Heat oil in skillet over medium heat, add garlic and onion. Cook for
a few minutes until onion is soft and the garlic smell starts
permeating the kitchen
- Add curry powder, stir well, add tofu
- Cover and cook for 3 minutes until tofu is mostly heated through
- Add spinach, stir to combine it well with the other ingredients
- When spinach has wilted add salt, pepper and tomatoes
- Stir well and cook 2-3 minutes
Notes:
- Add as much or as little liquid from tomatoes depending on how thick
or thin you want this dish to be. I don't put very much liquid because
I don't want it to be soupy
- You can add more or less curry powder based on your preferences. I
find 1 teaspoon to be ample for both flavor and heat because of the
peppers added with the tomatoes
Makes 4-6 servings
Serve with a big salad
Nutritional information varies depending on the specific tofu you use but a rough estimate is 4-6 Weight Watchers points per serving. We use a light tofu but that is really wonderful but I can't remember the brand name right now. I'll add it to this recipe later. Update: The tofu we use is Nasoya brand.
Title: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Author: Michael Pollan
Genre: Non-Fiction
From my journal
I had been thinking on issues of food, farming, agribusiness, animal concerns and the social, economic, environmental, and culture impact of all three for a while and this book helped define some of my thoughts and beliefs and gave me a whole batch of new things to think about and seeds of belief that need to be defined. Clearly this book has given me many gifts.
Had I not already been thinking seriously about the food in my life (where it comes from, how it was produced, how it makes me feel physically and emotionally, how I feel about it, etc) I believe this book would have been truly life changing for me. Truthfully I think it will still be life changing because of things it brought into my field of vision, knowledge it taught me and things that it introduced me to that need more personal research on my part. However it didn't set me on this path, I was already there, but it has moved me significantly further down it. What is this path? For me it's the path to conscious eating. The path to knowing about my food as much as possible. Also though it's about support a certain kind of life, the life of the small American farmer, that I find worthy of supporting.
Some loose thoughts from my journal from several months ago
- It is important to me to support farming (small farms, family farms) as a viable way of life in American society. If paying more for my food would allow farmers to make a more comfortable and sucessful living I definitely would pay more for food.
- Though I do wish I could be vegetarian it is not a reasonable option for me. I don't like vegetables enough to give up meat completely without simply swapping fake meats as replacements. This would be harmful to my diet. I currently eat very little meat balanced with grainds, fruits and vegetables. Eating a healthy diet, one low in processed and fake foods is very important to me.
- The reason I wish I could be vegetarian is because I feel great compassion for animals and feel guilty that they must die to become my food. Not overly guilty though because, as objectively as I can, I believe that humans are at the top of the natural evolutionary food chain. Though I have no scientific evidence to support or dispute my feelings I do think that being part of this food chain is important. All things are connected and humans play their part. So while I don't feel extreme guilt over being part of a food chain that turns some animals into food I do feel extreme guilt, displeasure and anger over completely unnecessary suffering inflicted on the animals that eventually become food. An argument can be made of course that killing an animal for food is an unnecessary cause of suffering. I'll agree with the suffering but not the unnecessary part of that argument.
As I have formulated these opinions and stances it's become exceptionally clear that to be true to my values and beliefs then I must acknowledge that factory farming is something I am deeply opposed to. I think whenever possible I should choose food that was grown locally. Whenever I can I should choose meat that was raised and slaughtered humanely. This sounds easy enough but it is not so easy at all. But I feel it's worth the work.
Some quotes from The Omnivore's Dilemma that resonated with me deeply:
"It takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to produce a
calorie of food; before the advent of chemical fertilizer the Naylor
farm produced more than two calories of food energy for every calorie
of energy invested."
- Michael Pollan
"Just because we can ship organic lettuce from the Salinas Valley or organic cut flowers from Peru doesn't mean we should do it, not if we're really serious about energy and seasonality and bioregionalism."
"Part of the problem is, you've got a lot of D students left on the farm today."
"The guidance counselors encouraged all of the A students to leave home and go to college. There's been a tremendous brain drain in Rural America. Of course that suits Wall Street just fine; Wall Street is always trying to extract brain power and capital from the countryside. First they take the brightest bulbs off the farm and put them to work in Dilbert's cubicle, and then they go after the capital of the dimmer ones who stayed behind by selling them a bunch of gee-whiz solutions to their problems."
"It's a foolish culture that entrusts its food supply to simpletons."
"Frankly, any city person who doesn't think I deserve a white-collar
salary as a farmer doesn't deserve my special food. Let them eat E.
Coli."
- Joel Salatin
Polyface Farm
I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
I've lost 67 pounds since August. I've still got a lot I need and want to lose but 67 pounds is a pretty sizable number & it's made a pretty significant difference in the way I look and feel. When people who haven't seen me in a while start to comment on my weight loss I really try to change the subject. I'm not sure why, but I'm really not comfortable discussing it in person. I think perhaps because this is primarily about health for me and not appearance whereas I think most of the people commenting have the opposite focus. It's all about how I look and not about how I feel. One exception to this is my mother who frequently says "I know you just feel great don't you?" and I answer truthfully that yes, yes I do feel great.
If I can't change the subject the conversation usually takes a well-worn path. First it's the "how have you lost so much weight route?" to which I respond I eat well, exercise regularly and try have a healthy lifestyle. That doesn't satisfy many people. It's all I've got though so eventually they give up. Until it's time to eat. Then comments come out about how oh they bet I don't eat this or that and how they could never give up such and such and how food x is their absolute weakness. Again, I don't have any real response to this so I just eat whatever it is I want to eat and move on.
I've been thinking about these conversations a lot though. I've also thought about two pieces of writing that were very helpful and inspiring to me when I was making the decision to actively start losing weight and transitioning to a more healthy lifestyle. These pieces are Lance Arthur's Fat Headed and Ariel Starling's Fat is a Feminist Issue. I've decided (partially based on emails I've received) that perhaps some more detailed and personal answer from me about what I'm doing will be helpful to someone else at some point. So I gave it some thought and here is what I came up with.
So I've been on The Plan since July, actively weighing myself weekly since August and exercising very regularly since August as well and I've lost 53 pounds. Since my starting point was so high I've still got a long way to go but this is good progress and I'm pleased with how far I've come. I still don't find The Plan restrictive or hard and whether I like to exercise or not I still hit the gym 3 times a week and still walk at least 2 miles a day in addition to that (ask me about the dog stroller I know own).
A conversation today with George helped me firmly decide that yes I'm going to SXSWi. I'm nervous and excited. I hope I can keep up my progress with The Plan so that a) I'll be more comfortable on the plane (skinny seats and all) and b) that I'll feel a little bit better about myself. I'm not shy but I'm not terribly good in social situations either. I used to be but then somehow I lost a whole big chunk of my self-confidence.
