About Food

The house is quiet and I'm still in my pjs with a sleeping dachshund on my lap. My parents are out shopping and the kid is still asleep. It's about 11:30am. I really have to go to the bathroom but don't want to disturb the dog and remind him that he is currently a "stay dog".

I had a busy day yesterday - not busy relative to what most people do on a daily basis and definitely not busy in relation to what I USED to DO on a normal work day but busy for me at this stage in life.

• I went to the grocery store.
• I made stuffed peppers in the crockpot for dinner.
• I cooked wheatberries in a separate crockpot and assembled a wheatberry salad. 
• I did a load of laundry.
• I worked on my family tree for about two hours. 
• I watched five episodes of Grey's Anatomy. 
• I read a couple more chapters in Patricia Cornwell's book about Ruth Bell Graham. 

See? Not much in comparison to your day, I bet but it was pleasantly productive for me. I'm battling some dizzy spells, probably due to two new medications that I'm taking for blood pressure and high cholesterol. And I've had a headache that is threatening to get ugly but I've been fighting it with advil. So if you factor in - sitting perfectly still and trying to stop the world from spinning - between each of those things, the day goes by like a speeding bullet.

My stuffed peppers turned out a bit spicy but really good. I should have taken pictures but didn't think about it at the time. I bought the leanest ground beef I could find... mixed it with dry rice, cumin, garlic powder and salt and stuffed some really pretty yellow and red peppers. I also mixed in one can of mexican rotel - its a combo of tomatoes and peppers with cilantro and lime with the beef mixture for all but one pepper. My mom doesn't like cilantro so I made her pepper before I mixed the rotel into the meat mixture and put the "hat" (the stem) back on the pepper in the crockpot. Once the peppers were in the crockpot I added two more cans of rotel and two cans of crushed tomatoes. I think I probably should have stuck to just one more can of rotel because it did end up a bit spicier than I prefer. I put a big bunch of cilantro on top of it all - instead of chopping so that those who don't like cilantro can easily avoid it. I'm a cilantro addict PLUS it's a really good filter for toxins in your system so you should eat a lot of it!

We also did baked corn on the cob. I saw this on Pinterest and thought, "yeah, whatever..."... you put the whole ear of corn on a baking sheet and bake it for thirty minutes at 350. You don't take off the husks and silks before baking. After thirty minutes the corn is perfectly steamed and the husks and silks slip right off. The corn is super juicy and the flavor hasn't leached out by being boiled in water (my usual cooking method). It was seriously the most perfect corn on the cob I've ever had and the EASIEST!

My wheatberry salad includes cranberries, figs and cranberry flavored goat cheese. I sugared the cranberries to make them a little less sour and just mixed it all together with some balsamic vinegar.

Later today I'm doing a cucumber/radish salad. I had the recipe in my mind when I was at the store yesterday morning although I've never done it ... I thought it would be a good combo and then I saw it on Barefoot Contessa yesterday afternoon which gave me a few tips. It's a mixture of sliced cucumbers, radishes and a little red onion mixed with sour cream, plain greek yogurt and fresh dill. The steps that I would not have thought to do were slicing and salting the cucumbers and setting them in a colander to drain for several hours before mixing into the salad. She also put her yogurt in a paper towel (or a cheesecloth, I guess) and let it drain. I think it would also help to drain the sour cream. This keeps the salad from getting soggy. It's sort of a tzatziki flavor plus radishes and I think it would go nicely on a bed of greens.

I'm all about having little healthy salads ready to go. I actually FEEL like prepping meals about once a week and it doesn't take long for me to wear myself out. After grocery shopping and putting the peppers in the crockpot yesterday I had to rest for a few hours before I could do anything else. By that time every step was agony. Fortunately Pop and Austin both like to cook and we usually have a lot of leftover stuff that can be easily heated for meals so I don't HAVE to cook often.

Most everything I bought yesterday was fresh produce because we have a lot of meat in the freezer but didn't have a lot of healthy sides. I bought some roma tomatoes because we loved broiled tomatoes with parmesan. And broccoli... which I think may end up stir fried with garlic for a side dish. We have a great non-stick pan that requires hardly any oil that is great for that sort of thing. I bought a big container of salad greens and several options from the salad bar so we can have a big salad with hardly any prep.

The garden is also beginning to feed us. There is some russian kale that is ready to be picked... cabbage just about ready to go... spinach that we're already enjoying along with lots of green onion. We have a ton of rosemary and parsley.

I haven't had a Little Debbie in over a week... I can't remember how many days now... and I really, truly haven't missed them. It had become something I did out of routine... at a certain time of night I would have a package of Little Debbies. Now, when I get the munchies I refill my ice water and if I'm feeling snacky I have an ice cream bar or popcorn. It's been a week of good eating - eating more than I normally would at meals - because of my birthday - so I doubt I'm losing any weight but I feel better about my choices. Over the long run, making better choices will result in a better outcome, I'm convinced. I can't do a lot to change my situation but I can control what I eat and drink.

Anyways... this is a long blog post and I don't have any photos to share so I think I'm going to hit "publish" and go get dressed and start slicing some cucumbers. Hope your Friday is lovely! Love and hugs, y'all!