Day 47: A Candy-Free Halloween

First, before anyone freaks out… we DID give out candy for Halloween.  Brian’s mom picked up tons of chocolates from the grocery store: Whoppers, Kit Kats, M&Ms, Reeses peanut butter cups of all sizes, Snickers bars of all kinds, Milk Duds, Reeses pieces, and possibly more.  We have about a million kids in this neighborhood and they all want candy… or else. So far, we’ve only had one super lame outfit (Me: “So what are you?” him: “I’m a basketball player.” Me: “Uh, yeah. Hmmm.”) The cutest one so far is the kid who dressed up as a chipmunk and said, “Meeeek!!!” when I answered the door. Awesome!

OK, back to me.  I DIDN’T eat any Halloween candy.  My personal favorite is Twix, which were not included in the mix tonight.  Perhaps if I dressed up and rang doorbells, I might get one, but I think I’ll be able to live without it.  One of the moms dressed up as a ghost with a sheet, so we made her come and get some candy.  She was terrific! I could go hang out with her,

The doorbell just rang and there was a shower there, along with the boy scout from Up. Cool. I’ve never seen anyone dressed like a shower before. 

So, you know that I didn’t eat any candy today, so what did I eat? Breakfast was cereal with sunflower seeds, dried strawberries and candied ginger with almond milk… as usual.  I got hungry a little later and had some banana bread (chocolate/chocolate chip). For lunch (after a 90 minute phone call with my brother), I had a peanut butter and muscadine jam sandwich.  What is muscadine jam, you ask?  Muscadine is a type of wild grape that grew in the yard of our house in Georgia.  Brian and mom and I worked together to pick them, clean them, cook them, and can them over the last few years.  This jar of jam is the last of its kind.  It tastes like a really strong flavored grape jam.  Oh so good with peanut butter. Now you know!

For dinner, Brian cleaned, chopped and roasted all sorts of root vegetables: beets, yellow potatoes, red potatoes, sweet potatoes, garlic, carrots, yellow onions, and red onions. He cooked them drizzled in olive oil at 450 degrees for over an hour, until everything was nice and tender. My, they were tasty.  The veggies were served with bolo rolls and water to drink.  If kings were vegetarians, we dined like kings.  Of course, most kings lorded their kingliness over everyone else by having lots and lots of meat, so we probably ate more like peasants, but you get the point.

Other than the muscadine jam, this was a day without added sugar.  So that is pretty cool.  And Chuck, I told you I could do it.  Seriously, I’m just not a fan of most Halloween candy, so there is no hardship for me. If it was high end dark chocolate folks were handing out – you couldn’t hold me back.  But see, being a chocolate snob has its advantages.  In this case, the advantage is that Halloween is the least challenging day of my challenge.

Got to go.  The doorbell is ringing again.  I’m not sure what manner of frightening creature awaits me.  I can only hope it is not a poorly costumed, pre-teen, I-don’t-really-care-just-give-me-the-candy-boy, because those are scarier than zombies in my book.

Be happy and healthy!

Day 46: A Very Lazy Food Day

The day started well.  It was super cold out, so I decided to postpone my morning walk with the dogs in favor of making pumpkin pecan bread.  I used a variation of my banana bread recipe and it turned out OK.  It needed some cloves to really bring out that pumpkin flavor.  The texture was good and the sweetness was fine (I added a banana and some applesauce to make it sweet). I may need to try again to get the flavor right, but first I'll need a trip to the spice store.

A word about spice.  It really does get old and lose its flavor, or worse... get rancid.  For some reason, cloves are the worst for me.  If they aren't used within 6-9 months, they taste really horrible (at least to me). I wish cloves were sold in much smaller quantities.  It is such a flavorful spice, a tiny pinch goes a really long way. I'm pretty sure that most folks use no more than two teaspoons in a year (that is being generous, since most recipes call for no more than 1/8 - 1/4 teaspoon).  Perhaps I'm missing some amazingly delicious clove dishes, but I've just not heard of them, even in Moroccan dishes.  Alright, I'm done with my spice rant.

So, for breakfast, I had a slightly underspiced slice of  pumpkin bread.  After breakfast, we took the dogs back over to Forest Park.  There is trail head just minutes from Marty's house, where we are currently living.  Strangely enough, about a third of a mile in, we crossed into the trail we've taken a couple of times when we've driven quite a bit further up the street to the Germantown Road trail head.  Cool.  This time we took the trail in the opposite direction and wandered over a few miles of the other side of that trail.  It was fun.  Buckley was the crazy pulling machine again and I spent most of my walk developing my upper body strength by trying to keep him somewhat in check. That was fun, too.

When we got home, we were absolutely starving and completely uninspired. My first thought was to make some vegan burgers, but we didn't have all the stuff to put on them (tomatoes, avocado, cucumbers, etc.). Since I was standing in front of the open freezer, I looked around to see what was there.  I noticed that we had one each of 3 different kinds of veggie burgers (freekeh, masala, and brown rice), some vegetarian potstickers, some zucchini fritters, and some fish "nuggets".  They all got pulled out and went into our lunch.  It was random and weird and probably not all that healthy (since everything was heavily processed), but it was our lunch and we ate it.

Our post lunch activity was a bit of plumbing work.  Marty's kitchen faucet was broken and needed to be replaced.  She and Brian went to Home Depot yesterday and bought a nice brushed metal faucet to replace the old white/cream one.  Now it matches her fridge and microwave.  Brian pulled the old one out (with some minor assistance from me).  He is so big (6'6") that he barely fit under the sink, especially since there was a garbage disposal in there already.  I volunteered to be the under the sink person (yes, I was humming the song from "The Little Mermaid", you know... "under the sink, under the sink, darlink it's better, down where it's wetter, take it from mink") since I was a better fit.  I had a blast.  So now, there is a beautifully installed new faucet in Marty's kitchen. We celebrated with some peanut butter pretzels and a cup of peppermint tea.

By dinnertime, we were even less food inspired than we were at lunch, if that is possible.  Brian found a can of Hormel's vegetarian chilli (I don't recommend it) in the cupboard and we ate that with some quinoa corn chips.  The chips were great (thanks, Trader Joe's!) and made an otherwise inedible soup slightly edible.  Did I mention that we were completely uninspired and didn't really care what we ate as long as we made our bellies stop rumbling?  It was sad, but true.

That is it.  I was so uninspired that I put writing my blog off until today. When I got up this morning to write it, Blogger was down, so I took the dogs out for a walk in the balmy 50 degree weather.  By the time I got home, it was up.  Now I'm done writing and think I may go find some chocolate banana bread.

Be happy and healthy!

Day 45: Another Day, Another Scallop

I love scallops.  They were on sale at Whole Foods today, so we had scallops for dinner.  I grated some fresh ginger (seriously fresh - it is locally grown and purchased on Saturday), added a bit of soy and some sesame oil, then sauteed them for about 3 minutes on each side. They were pretty darned good. I served them with a side of steamed broccoli with salt and pepper and some warm naan. Dessert was three dark chocolate covered almonds.  All good.

Backing up, I had a pretty entertaining afternoon.  I had another haircut today.  I'm still not sure how it turned out, I'll let y'all know tomorrow.  (Yes, I said y'all and I'll keep saying y'all.  I am from the South, you know.) I'll give Anita, the gal who cut my hair today, the benefit of the doubt since my last cut was really bad and she had to make up the difference on this cut.  I can never really tell what my hair will look like until I wash and dry it at home.  I'll do that in the morning.

After the haircut, I stopped at Whole Foods to get a cookie.  (Yes, I said "to get a cookie".  Get over it.)  I felt a bit guilty about getting a cookie (see, there is a reason for my defensiveness) or two (to be specific, but they were really, really small) so I decided to make my visit to Whole Foods more, well, wholesome, by buying some scallops.  That makes my cookie trip seem a little less completely off track of the challenge. (OK, it doesn't in any way, but that was my thinking at the time.)

On the way home from the grocery store I stopped to get my nails done... just to make it a grooming day all around. Mindy has done my nails for a couple of months now because she does a nice job shaping my nails, but more importantly, she gives an amazing leg and foot massage.  Since I don't use polish, she extends the massage by a few minutes each leg.  It is fantastic and oh so relaxing, even though it is a strip mall nail joint. For the $37 price, it can't be beat.

Going backwards again, I had the last of the butternut squash risotto for lunch and some cereal for breakfast.  Except for the cookie backsliding, today was an excellent food day.  Plus, we took the dogs out for a 3 mile walk this afternoon, so it was a good day all around.

Be happy and healthy! 

Day 44: Son of Rambow (Watch this movie!!!)

We just finished watching the movie, Son of Rambow, a British coming of age film about two misfit boys who decide to make a movie.  One of the boys is a member of the brethren, a very strict religious organization, and the other kid is essentially parent-less while his mom is cavorting around the continent with her old-folks-home-owning boyfriend.  They use a video camera to make a movie starring the religious kid as the son of Rambow.  I love this film!  We saw it when it was first in theaters back in 2007 and we loved it then.  It lost nothing in the six years since we last saw it.  Bloody brilliant, it was! I whole-heartedly recommend it.

OK, now that the movie review is out of the way, we can talk about the 8-week challenge. It was a very good food day today.  I started with a piece of chocolate banana bread and a glass of Fez tea. Both were quite tasty.  I ate them while reading my British spy novel.  (Spoiler alert: everyone dies happily ever after and all action taken was either pointless or poorly thought out. It was somewhat depressing, but of so exciting!) I read so long that I was hungry again, so I had a small bowl of cereal before taking the dogs over to Forest Park for a hike.

Hiking in Forest Park is always fun because my brother sometimes took me hiking there over the years when I visited him.  It has been lots of years since we went over there, but I've been visiting him in Portland for 26 years (once every few years, whether I needed to see him or not), so the trails are vaguely familiar.  As Brian and I walk along, I'll remember a conversation I had with my brother when we walked in the same area years before.  It is a cool deja-vu experience, and I have it every time Brian and I try a new portion of the trail.

After the hike, we came home and Brian made burritos. They were spectacular: pinto beans, guacamole, corn, red bell pepper, onion, tomato, lettuce and cous-cous.  They were perfectly spiced, both from the Penzy taco seasoning and the spicy guacamole he used.  Yum!  For dessert, we had apples and a square of dark chocolate with caramel and sea salt. Quite tasty, indeed.

Once I cleaned up the very messy kitchen, off we went to the Portland Japanese gardens.  Wow!  None of us had ever been there before and we were all impressed.  It is yet another park in the city of Portland (16% of the land in Portland city limits is park land or green space), yet unlike any other park in the city.  It is on the location of the old Portland zoo, and has been in existence for 50 years.  There are five different garden designs that make up the park, all of them traditional Japanese designs.  The first two garden areas have "human-sized" trees; not bonsai (which requires pots) but simply well pruned, very old trees.  The second area added pools and koi to the mix, along with a Japanese tea house.  The third garden was a "natural" garden, which means that the gardeners have to do a whole lot of work without anyone being able to recognize that work was done (very difficult!),  Those trees were much larger and more wild looking than their neighbors in the other gardens. The last two gardens had a Zen garden feel, with the large raked sandboxes with stones, moss gardens and trees.  Lovely Margaret, YES, we still want to go with you and your family - the day was just too beautiful not to take advantage of!

For supper, I sliced up the rest of the ciabatta bread and topped it with two kinds of pesto: a traditional, basil and Parmesan based pesto and an arugula and hazelnut pesto. Both were delicious.  I added grape tomatoes and a touch of mozzarella cheese to the mix, then roasted the whole thing for 10 minutes at 450 degrees in the oven. It was excellent.  For dessert (yes, I'm totally sugar snacky today) we had thin slices of banana bread topped with the rest of the strawberry compote I made a couple of weeks ago.  The only sugar in the dessert was from the handful of dark chocolate chips I put in the banana bread, which is not much. As we munched our chocolate/strawberry/banana dessert, we enjoyed Son of Rambow.  I believe this is where we started.

Be happy and healthy!

Day 43: Breakfast and Friendship

This has been a busy, fun filled weekend.  Today, we were thrilled to spend the day with Lovely Margaret, our amazingly wonderful friend who is doing the challenge with us.  Today is the first time we've seen her in seven weeks, and it was so nice to spend time with her again today. She has done a great job of cutting back on sugar and milk, while watching the amounts of meat and dairy she is consuming.  She says she has noticed a few changes in the way she feels... enough to encourage her to keep on going.  Lovely Margaret leads a very busy life, with several horses that she cares for and five grand-kids she works to see as often as possible.  We love her and her whole family!

We met up with Lovely Margaret this morning for breakfast.  We all (Lovely Margaret, her son John, her mom Jill, her grandson Silas, Brian and I) went to a place called Toast, over in southeast Portland.  Oh, but it was good.  I had a dish called Rain on Rain: mustard greens, brussel sprouts (of which I ate 1 and gave the other to Brian), cauliflower, broccoli, delicata squash, roasted potatoes and a poached egg. It was so fantastic.  I think each vegetable had been roasted separately, then briefly sauteed in with the greens for just a moment or two.  The very runny yolk of the poached egg mixed in with all the other vegetables and it was a bit of heaven with every bite.  It was super pretty to look at, too.  I have no idea what everyone else ordered because I was grooving on my breakfast so heavily. 

Young Silas wasn't feeling great today, so we skipped the plan of going to the Children's Museum and went shopping for some slippers for Jill instead.  Lovely Margaret, Brian and I drove over to Lloyd Center (a very old mall in east Portland) to see what we could find.  I'm not yet good at finding my way around from south to north, so we took a highly entertaining and circuitous route to get there.  Happily, no one was lost along the way.  Once we got to the mall, we even remembered to take note of where we were parked and where we came into the mall.  It would have been especially funny if we lost our car today, since that was a topic of discussion at breakfast. We managed to miss that bit of irony, luckily, and on we foraged for slippers.

I won't bore you with the details of our mall experience, except to say that we started to fade after about an hour and a half, so we stopped by Jamba Juice for some fortification.  (I know that smoothies are all sugar and limited fiber, so get off my back!) Lovely Margaret and I had one made from mangoes. peaches and strawberries (nothing else added).  Brian (after much encouragement) had one made from apples, bananas, green vegetable juice (?), spirulina, and strawberries. Brian thought it was OK. I tried it and it tasted "good for you".  In my book, I'd much rather it had just tasted good.

We moseyed back over to John's house after our mall trip, stopping only to look at a house for sale at the bottom of the Mount Tabor neighborhood.  This house was terrific!  It had 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bath, a 700 square foot basement and much more.  It was for sale at a mere $475K.  Only slightly over our current $200K price range.  I think we can get him to sell it to us for $199K, don't you?  Yeah.  Covering our disappointment about the house, we stayed and chatted with Lovely Margaret's family for awhile.  Finally, all of our activities from the day before (aided by my cat allergy) hit Brian and me like the proverbial brick wall, and we decided to go home to take a nap... or at least sit down and read for awhile, which we did.

About 5:30, I realized that we never had lunch and that we needed dinner now.  I heated up some frozen vegetable soup from a few weeks ago, and grilled some of the Ciabatta bread we bought at the market yesterday.  It was mighty fine.  Oh, I also made some banana bread (with Valrhona cocoa powder, pecans, ginger and chocolate chips) before dinner.  We haven't had any yet, but I wouldn't rule out having some for dessert before too long. 

Now, I'm going to sit back with a small dog on me and read the next exciting chapter of my British spy novel (The Running Target by Gerald Seymour).  Be happy and healthy!

Day 42: My Dogs Are Barking!

Today was a walking day.  Brian's awesome cousin Sally spent the night last night and this morning we went for a walk as soon as it started to get light.  It was terrific having another morning person to walk with.  We did about three miles and would happily have done more, but it was getting to be time to get to the farmers market, then on to Forest Park for our hike.  At one point of our walk, Katy big dog spotted a squirrel on top of a 7 foot fence next to the sidewalk.  She made a lunge for the squirrel, almost knocking Sally off her feet, jumping to within about 1/2 a foot of the squirrel, then landing painfully on her right hip on the sharp edge of the sidewalk.  We were very worried that she had hurt herself because she was holding her paw up high, but after a brief exploration of her leg and paw, and a short massage of her hip and leg muscles, she was fine.  The whole time we were checking on Katy, the squirrel was hurling obscenities at our heads from on high.  Katy and I questioned his parentage and on that slam, left with our dignity only slightly tattered. 

After the walk, we popped over to the Beaverton farmers market.  Sally was as amazed with it as we were just a few weeks earlier.  That place is spectacular! There are so many vegetable vendors and such a great variety of ripe, raw foods to try.  Almost all of the vendors are organic, yet the food is perfect looking.  (I read an article once that talked about some apple sellers who took the apples that were storm damaged and sold them as organic because they looked so bad people would think they must be organic.) We didn't buy as much this week, just some lettuce, kale, pecan butter, onion, romanesco, a duck (for later - thanks, Nicole Gustin - yes, I said "duck fat" to myself all day), bell peppers, fresh ginger, fresh tumeric, arugula hazelnut pesto, apple cider and some bread.  We spent so much time away from the house last week that we didn't eat at home much and we had plenty of food left over from last week. 

Oh, I forgot to mention.  Our PB&J sandwich vendor was there again today.  We were psyched!  Sally was so excited by all of the options, she couldn't choose.  Her top two choices were the same as mine, so we split both of them.  We had the same one I had from a couple of weeks ago, called "sunrise" (peanut butter, banana, apricot jam, honey and granola) and one called "the joy" (almond butter, coconut spread, chocolate ganache), grilled to a toasty, warm, melty perfection.  Some of the chocolate from "the joy" got on our peanut butter from "sunrise" (hey, that sounds like an ad) and made that sandwich even better.  Brian had one with walnut butter, caramelized onion, ham, brie, and pear jam.  I didn't try it but the report from both Brian and his awesome cousin Sally was a rave review. Brian's awesome cousin Sally was cracking up at how amazingly great the sandwiches were.  Who could possibly understand about a $7.00 PB&J sandwich without living through the experience of it??

After the market, we popped back home to drop off the food and pick up the dogs.  We were then on our way to Forest Park for a hike! It was just as beautiful as the week before.  Brian's awesome cousin Sally was blown away by the lush beauty of the northwest forests (she lives in the Lake Tahoe area and grew up in southern California).  She collected giant yellow maple leaves to take home to her awesome mom, Gay.  We passed a dad and his two little boys who were also collecting leaves to take home to their awesome mom.  It was pretty cute that Brian's awesome cousin Sally and the three year old were doing the exact same thing! The hike was loads of fun, except I had to pull Buckley up the long hill this time, instead of him pulling me.  I'm not sure what that was all about, but the others suggested that Buckley did all the work last time so it was only fair for me to pull him this time.  I'm still not buying it, but what can a girl do? 

Once we finished the hike, we went back home for showers, then it was time to take Brian's awesome cousin Sally back to the airport. That was sad.  We had a blast with her and wished she could stay longer. Perhaps next time.  We dropped her off around 4:00, then decided we were starving.  We went down to the Pearl District (Portand's ultra hip part of town) and had dinner at Rogue Brewery.  I had the best halibut fish and chips, and Brian had an American Kobe beef hotdog.  That is hilarious, if you know about Kobe beef and how exclusive/expensive it is.  I suppose all cow products have random bits of waste, so why not Kobe hotdogs? Still, it makes me snicker. Brian had tater tots with his dog, and they were mighty fine.  We broke down and ordered beer cheese soup, which was also mighty fine.  We shared a cup between the two of us, which cut down on the dairy consumption.  All in all, it was an excellent and entertaining meal.  Oh yeah, after the meal, the waitress told me that she'd been trying to figure out who I looked like.  She realized it was Annette Benning.  Me?  Cool!!!  I'll take that any day.  She got a good tip.

I was completely wiped (again) by the time we got home.  I'm pretty sure I walked about 10 miles today. No lie.  I spent a few minutes snuggling with the dogs, then Brian and I shared a 3 oz. Theo's ultra dark chocolate bar (cherry/almond) and had a glass of peppermint team.  Once again, I think I'll make it to bed by 8:00.  I know that is sad on a Saturday night, but my day was really great and very active.  I need my beauty rest.  Tomorrow we're off to hang out with lovely Margaret and some of her family. 

Be happy and healthy!

Day 41: Another Fabulous Day!

What a fantastic day! I started the day with a nice long walk, taking a new route that is quite a bit longer than our usual walk. It took more than an hour and a half, which means it was probably about 5 miles. We only had one altercation with another dog, whose owner wanted to stop and process the situation and try to determine why his dog, who was usually so calm, got so angry with my dog. Seriously. My dogs are super annoyed with him and his dog, and this fellow wanted to figure out why. They are dogs! Why do you think?! Just get out of our way, fellow. But I digress.

After the walk, I grabbed a quick bowl of cereal and a shower, then we were off to look at houses. Ouch. Those cheap houses were not in good shape. They were all very small and in pretty bad condition. I fell in love with one house, but Brian hit his head at least once in every room of the house (the Realtor called it a fun house), so that one was out. The last one was in great shape, but it had already signed earlier that day, so that one was out. My favorite (deep, heavy sarcasm) one had two cats. The cats had piddled all over the place and one of them had thrown up. Really, how do they expect to sell that place? Oh right, it is Portland... It will go in a heart beat.

After looking at houses, we called over and found out that my brother and sister-in-law were available for lunch. It was Sharon's birthday (woo hoo, happy birthday, Sharon!) so we celebrated with burritos and a fabulous chocolate cake. Yes, I had cake...and it was spectacular! Man. It was dark, dense, moist and not too sweet. I had the biggest sugar high after eating that cake. It was only one layer, but my goodness, it was rich. Wow! Sharon got a kitten for her birthday, and we spent much of the day coming up with names for the cat. It came with the name of Ares, but we all felt that the god of war was not quite right for this animal. After much discussion, we came up with Mingus. I've called him Mingus Kahn for short. Like every other cat I've ever met, he tried to get his evil kitty fur and dander all over me and my stuff. Bad kitty! Cats all sense that I'm allergic to them and they all try to kill me. Young Mingus is no different.

We left their house after wishing Sharon a great birthday and went to pick up Brian's most favored status cousin Sally. We've been looking forward to her visit for weeks. The plan was to go visit a food cart for dinner, then walk around the city for awhile. Sadly, most of the carts are lunch only, so we decided to go home and make dinner, instead. We were so glad we did. Dinner was a pear salad with pizza. The pizza was topped with fresh corn, potatoes, kale, onion and red pepper. We sprinkled a little cheese on top, and a whole lot of cheese on Sally's part. Sally is crazy super fit and all sorts of fun. She was lording her cheese consumption over us, so I made her eat some of Sharon's birthday cake as punishment. She complained loudly over every bite.  Poor Sally!

Oh, it is so late and I need to go to bed. Tomorrow will be very busy and lots of fun. Be happy and healthy!

Day 40: Holy Cow, It Has Been 40 Days!!!!

Wow, 40 days of almost no meat, dairy or sugar.  What do you know about that?! I was thinking about it this afternoon and realized that we're closing in on six weeks of the eight week challenge gone.  Wow.  I guess I'll have to go all out for the last two weeks and really be extra good to help these habits I've been working on and make them stick.  (Except for the lasagne I'm planning on having for breakfast, lunch and dinner on day 1 after the challenge.... kidding!)

Today was sort of a zombie day.  For some reason for the past two nights, I've awakened at 1:30 am and haven't been able to sleep again until after 5:00.  Then I wake up at 7:00, feeling all grouchy and discombobulated.  That is no fun at all.  When I'm grouchy, I don't take the dogs for their walk, which probably makes me even grouchier, and it is all a vicious cycle.  As you read in yesterday's post (written mid-morning today), I had a PB&J with banana sandwich for breakfast, while writing my blog. I read for awhile, took out the garbage, took a shower and took the dogs for a very short 1/2 mile walk.  All of this took about 5 hours to do.  Normally, that is about 30 minutes worth of work. Oh yeah, I was also perusing the job postings during that time, but still, it took forever.

Finally, we were ready for lunch and we decided, unsurprisingly to go out. We ended up at Veggie Grill, since my good friend Tammi gave it a positive review in Seattle last night.  It was an interesting place.  It is completely vegan, but many of the foods were meat-like.  For example, the Santa Fe Chickin' sandwich, which we had.  Oh, there are so many things to talk about here.  First off: I get that this is fake chicken (made with soy, beans and peas) and the spelling has to be off... but why the apostrophe?  In the South, we often use an apostrophe to imply a missing letter g, as in, "I'm a goin' to the store." At times, we'll use the letter n to indicate a missing and, as in "chicken'n'biscuits", But at no time is there an n at the end of a word with a hanging apostrophe for no reason whatsoever.  Who came up with this ridiculousness? Secondly: I'm eating vegetables... why do they need to feel like meat? Do I even want them to chew in a meat-like fashion? (OK, poor grammar on my part.  I'm totally picturing carrots chewing their cud.) Thirdley: How about processing?  How much processing had to happen for those veggies to become chicken-like in texture?  Are there any nutrients left at this stage? Hmmmm. I wonder.  Lastly: it was actually pretty good.  We had a side of steamed kale with a miso-ginger dressing and some sweet potato fries.  The kale was fantastic, but I could have skipped on the sauce.  Even the iced tea was excellent.  I'm not sure if I'll go back, but just because the fake meat idea kind of turns me off - not because it was anything other than quite tasty.

After lunch, we drove a couple of miles out of our way to get gas at a very cheap $3.19 per gallon.  I did that because everywhere else was charging upwards of $3.67 per gallon.  The difference a couple of miles makes is huge - and since I'm getting just shy of 25 MPG in my car, 4 miles of extra driving is well worth the $7.00 I saved for the 14 gallon tank that was essentially empty.  (There is a math word problem just sitting here if anyone wants to do it.  Solve for how much it cost me to go 4 miles and you can win a prize! Just be the first to respond to my blog with the correct answer. And yes, I was doing that math problem in my head as we were driving back from the gas station.) As we were on our way home, I realized that my phone wasn't around, so we started playing the "where the heck is my phone" game.  Turned out that I left it at the Veggie Grill.  We, of course, found that out about 30 seconds after we got back to the house.

So, off we went to pick up my phone from the restaurant. It was in the same parking lot as Trader Joe's, so we stopped by to pick up a couple of things (you know, snack foods and a random candy bar made with 70% cocoa, which Brian and I scarfed right there in line), then went back home.  By that time, my brain was completely shot (zombie mode again) and the rest of the day was a blur.  I remember eating a piece of naan and four Thai vegetable gyoza, then drinking some peppermint tea, but that was about it.  So, at 7:20 pm, I'm pretty much throwing in the towel and planning to sleep through the night.  Wish me luck on that.

Be happy and healthy!

Day 39: A Mighty Fine Burger

As I was munching on my peanut butter, strawberry jelly and banana sandwich this morning, I realized that I forgot to post my blog yesterday.  OOPS!  So here goes yesterday!

It was another day of house hunting, this time on the south side of town.  I fortified myself for this effort with a giant glass of green tea along with the last slice of chocolate banana bread.  Since we were only looking at neighborhoods, not the insides of houses, we brought the dogs with us because we noticed so many parks the day before. 

The houses and neighborhoods of the three potentially acceptable houses we found were less walkable than the one we thought might be ok the day before, but the lots were generally bigger.  All require using a car to get anywhere, as there is limited transit available. If we decide to go with a less expensive house at first, walkability and transitability will be the first things to go.  Luckily, there are loads of parks within a 5 minute drive from any place we choose.  One of those was Woodstock park, where we took the dogs for their first park of the day.

We got hungry about half way through our search and we remembered a great burger place not too far from where we were looking, called The HUB.  Margaret, you'll remember this restaurant as where we decided to do our challenge!  Good memories.  Also, great black bean burger.  Best of all, they allowed dogs on their front patio, so the four of us went there to enjoy our lunch.

Sitting on the front patio meant ordering from the bar and being served on paper plates, which was kind of fun.  We still got our drinks in glass steins (they are also a brewery), with Brian having an "English session beer" (whatever that means) and I had an ice tea.  We both had black bean burgers with tomato and onion (which I picked off), lettuce, bell pepper slices and avocado.  Brian's had cheese as well. The cheese helped hold the sandwich together a bit, and for that reason only, I was half wishing that I had some on my sandwich, too. Still, even if it was a bit crumbly, it tasted great, so we were pretty happy.

After lunch we continued on our house journey with no luck at all, and a firm understanding of why Brian's mom suggested we not look much past 70th for houses.  As we started back for home, we noticed we were near my brother's neighborhood so we called to see if he was around.  He wasn't, but then we noticed we were near Mt. Tabor, an east side neighborhood volcano, so we decided to take the dogs over there.  That was super fun!  You can either take the copious stairs to the top of the hill/mountain/volcano, or take one of many foot trails, or on Wednesdays they close the streets to cars and you can walk those.  We did a bit of each.  On top of Mt. Tabor, there is a beautiful view, which we enjoyed until we got annoyed at the new age yoga girls' ceaseless chatter.

 This is a photo of the 2 guys taking pictures.  Assume a spectacular, snowy peak just above them.

As we walked away from the yoga girls, we were stopped by a spectacular view of Mt. Hood off in the distance. Mt. Hood is an enormous, snow covered volcano that hasn't blown yet, which makes its top peaked and pointy.  A couple of older men were taking pictures, so we stopped to chat with them about the view.  It turns out that they were from Annapolis, Maryland and that they were both retired.  One of them had his last day of work a mere three weeks before.  Both of their wives were still working, in fact, the wives were attending a conference in Portland, and the husbands were left with the difficult task of touring pubs and parks of Portland!  They even had brand new hats from Hair of the Dog, a microbrew pub they had tried for lunch.  We promised to give it a try soon, and we parted ways.

Coming down from the peak, we of course got lost, but at least we found the restrooms.  That made finding ourselves much more comfortable. We weren't lost for long, and once we found our car, we made our way home.  By the time we got home, I was completely wiped out again.  Luckily, we had some left over risotto from a couple of days ago, so we had that with the rest of the romanesco (the fractal veggies from a couple of posts ago).  I decided to have some chocolate sorbet and an oatmeal cookie for dessert.  I should have had a pear, which I keep meaning to eat and keep forgetting about.  I'll do that today, I guess.

That is about it for yesterday.  Be happy and healthy!

Day 38: Proper Eats

Today we started looking at cheap houses in Portland. It was a bit disheartening because so many of them are on corner lots, busy streets, within spitting distance of the interstate, or in creepy neighborhoods. On the plus side, we found one little house within spitting distance of a fantastic city park and walking distance from several cool restaurants. One of those restaurants was "Proper Eats", a cool and funky vegan/vegetarian restaurant. We really liked it.

Their menu had many interesting options... almost all vegan, although some of the meals could be made vegetarian with the addition of cheese, which made me laugh a bit. I had nachos! Blue corn chips, brown rice, black beans, tomato salsa, corn salsa, tempeh, guacamole and cashew cheese. Cashew cheese tastes nothing like cheese, but it looks nothing like cheese either, so that is OK. It looks like runny peanut butter and tastes like cashews. Go figure.  Brian has sesame noodles with peanut sauce with tofu slices. Both meals sound less than exciting in writing, but it was all seriously tasty! So, if we decide to move into that neighborhood, we know there is a good vegan place to eat.

The rest of the afternoon was spent not liking any of the houses we looked at (except for the one near the vegan place). We fully understand that we will not like bunches of these houses, because we're looking at cheap houses now, but we want to see what is out there. The nice thing is that we're finding lots of new places in our chosen home town.

On our way home, we stopped by REI to find some new walking shoes for me. I've walked out two pair of shoes living here. My daily walk is at least 2 1/2 miles, and most days I'm doing a second walk , which brings my total up to 6+ miles on most days. Go me! My shoes were both purchased over a year ago, so it is now time for a new pair, since my soles are all worn out.  It turns out that one pair I've worn for the last year was supposed to be minimalist. That might explain why they were so light.  Who knew!

By the time we got home, I was completely exhausted, and I wasn't even driving.  By the time I remembered to eat, I wasn't up to making anything more demanding than pb&j, so that is what I did. This is it for me today.

Be happy and healthy!

Day 37: Food, Glorious Food!!!!

Today was an excellent food day.  Oh my, was it good.  Breakfast was a giant cup of Fez green tea (green tea, spearmint and lemon grass) along with a slice of chocolate banana bread. I enjoyed that while reading a book and waiting for the sun to rise. That is a close to perfect morning for me.  After breakfast, I took the pups out for a three mile walk, then came home to shower.

The rest of the morning was an exercise in extreme bureaucratic frustration as I attempted to get school transcripts and three years of driving records (from three different states). The state of Georgia DMV took three calls, with an average of 12.23 minutes of hold time per call. Grrr.  For some reason, my Masters transcript was free and very easy to access, while my high school transcript cost slightly less than $10 and required me to send a copy of a photo ID as part of the request.  Seriously??!! Happily, after 4 hours, most of that was completed.

By that time I was starving.  I had the soup from last night (that we didn't eat) just sitting in the fridge, but it didn't seem like quite enough food for the three of us.  There was a container of cherry tomatoes hanging out on the counter, I had just purchased some pesto yesterday, and there was kale in the crisper... so pizza it was!  I wish I had taken a picture of that meal.  It was so beautiful.  The pizza had a gorgeous green base, little red polka dots, and green frills.  I tossed a tiny bit of cheese on top (no more than 2 tablespoons for the whole pizza).  The soup was a colorful mix of orange, green and white.  Put it all together and lunch was spectacular!  It tasted just as great as it looked.

After lunch, we took the dogs for another walk.  I was still quite irritated after the morning's interaction with poorly designed websites and even worse phone representatives, so we wandered around the neighborhood and ended up at the new dog park.  There was only one other dog there, a full sized rat terrier named Lenny.  He was a mere seven months old and was quite intimidated by Katy big dog.  Also, whenever Katy went to run at Lenny, Buckley ran barking madly after both of them. That caused stress for poor Lenny. It was very entertaining to Lenny's owner.  Happily, everyone was able to get along and no one got too badly frightened.

After the walk, it was time for dinner. I had big plans for dinner: butternut squash risotto, roasted garlic mixed with a little salt, pepper and black truffle oil - spread on bolo rolls, and finally, some roasted romanesco. What is romanesco, you ask? It is a mixture of broccoli and fractals.  Oh, so beautiful! I've added a picture for your viewing pleasure.


This is a brand new vegetable for me.  It was mild and sweet, and tasted even better than broccoli. It did not taste at all like its lesser cousin, cauliflower, for which I was grateful. Dinner was spectacular - oh so tasty!  And for dessert, baked Mutsu apples... so sweet and delicious.

What a fabulous food day!  I wish you could have all been there to share it with us.  YUM!!!

Be happy and healthy. 

Day 36: Flying Through Forest Park

Do you ever have one of those days where you just don't want to get out of bed?  When you finally get out of bed, you wonder why you ever thought getting up was a good idea. Part of this ennui had to do with the bright shining moon streaming through my window and poking me in the eyeball at 4:30 this morning.  Even with the eye mask, I had a hard time going back to sleep.  Plus, my brain kept telling me that I should take advantage of the brilliant moon to take an early walk with the dogs. Um... 4:30 am is a little early, even for me.  I told my brain to shut up.  So there.

When I dragged myself downstairs, I decided to have a bowl of cereal.  Yeah.  The container was almost empty and I had to get a new box.  The new box was so full that I overfilled my bowl.  Then, when I tried to scoop some of the extra cereal back into the container, it spilled everywhere.  So I called the dogs in to eat the cereal, but they missed a flake, and I stepped on it with my new bedroom slippers... you can imagine the rest.  There is a line of Uncle Willie's from The Philadelphia Story which says, "Awww... this is one of those days that the pages of history teach us are best spent lying in bed." I think that is appropriate, don't you?

At some point, I mentioned to Brian that we ought to go for a walk in Forest Park, an amazing city part in Portland.  (Yes, this is yet another reason we decided to move to this city - and after 2 1/2 months, we still had not gone!) What was I thinking?  I went back to bed and pulled the covers over my eyes.  Brian came up with the dogs and they used brute force (dog kisses) to make me get up.  Cruel! Fine.  I got up, got dressed, got my hiking boots out of the closet where they had sat unused for months, and came downstairs. Whew.  I was already tired.

We got over to the park without mishap and started walking on Leif Ericson trail.  This "trail" was a road built back in the early 1900's when the city planners mistakenly thought they could build houses on that very steep part of the world.  After a couple of slides, they turned the road into a trail, and eventually it became part of one of the greatest city parks on earth.  It was very easy walking, even though the trail was super soggy (strange, since it hadn't rained in over a week) and very busy. I wanted an easy walk, since merely getting out of bed was so hard today, and this trail fit the bill. 

We somehow missed the turn off to make the 2-3 mile hike, and when we got to the next trail crossing, we could either take the loop or turn around.  I took one look at the steep upwards trail for the loop and turned around.  After about 10 steps, I groaned and turned back around to take the hill. Brian was confused, as, obviously, was I.  See, it is just that I've wanted to go hiking in Forest Park since we got here and I hadn't been yet.  I knew the uphill path was prettier and more interesting than the Leif Garret (oops, Ericson) path, so we really needed to take it.  The whole day had been like that - making the right decision, even though I had no desire to do so.  It WAS the right decision, though, because the hike got to be really fun after that. 

About half way up the hill, I had to stop and take off my fleece because I was so hot.  We switched dogs at that point.  I had Katy up until that time (sweet and good dog), and Brian had Buckley (crazy, pulling like mad dog).  Once I had the over-drive pup, the sun came out, the birds sang, and I started to fly up that hill. Seriously, that 28 pound dog has some mad pulling skills. The next 2 miles went by in about 20 minutes.  Even with all the hills (both up and down), switchbacks, people and other dogs, nothing phased the pulling machine.  Eventually, the trail got pretty darned steep going downhill and I had to take Katy back so I didn't fall on my face.  We ended up back in the parking lot feeling pretty darned great about our hike and loving life.

After the hike, we went home for a quick shower, then out to find some good fish and chips.  I know... but I haven't had any since that awful experience a couple of weeks ago and it was time.  We went to a brew pub and found some mighty good fish, the chips were merely so-so.  I got a beautiful side salad instead of the coleslaw and was pretty happy.  Then, I decided to break convention and get some dessert.  We ordered a chocolate chip brownie, a la mode.  Serendipity was looking out for me today.  When the dessert came, the brownie was the color of German chocolate cake, with the same texture and cloying sweetness.  Bleh! I like German chocolate, but I wanted a brownie.  If I was going to break my no-ordering-dessert-streak, I was NOT going to do it on some less-than, wanna-be dessert.  So, go me, I didn't eat it.

For dinner, I made some beautiful navy bean, kale, butternut squash soup. I used a cup of chicken broth and some carrots, onion and spices to give it depth.  It really needed Italian sausage, but that was out.  When I got ready to serve it, I realized that I was in no way hungry.  When I checked in with Brian, I found out that he was still full from lunch as well.  Marty enjoyed her soup by herself.  Sorry!  Now I'm typing up my blog, wondering if I will ever be hungry again. (Picture me pulling a turnip out of the ground as I say this in my best Scarlott O'Hara voice). At this point, the verdict is out.  However, if I do get hungry, I have some awesome soup to enjoy. 

Well, that is my day.  Be happy and healthy!

Day 35: Football Saturday

Let's just say that my food day mirrored the game play by the UGA team and the UCLA team.  Poor, poor, poor.

Breakfast was a banana and two peanut butter pretzel bites from Trader Joe's.  Brian and I planned on grabbing some breakfast at the Beaverton farmers market, but there really wasn't anything there we were interested in.  We stopped by a bakery to pick up some bolo rolls, and that is where the bad plays really started.  They had these beautiful croissants, just sitting there, next to the bolo rolls.  We bought two.  Brian and I shared one on the way out of the market.

More poor plays happened after that - kind of like #5 (Swann) allowing the ball to get intercepted right near the 25 yard line (on a punt return!). We decided to stop by the store to get some tea, and ended up buying tea, guacamole, chocolate sorbet, a bag of frozen pierogi and some pesto.  That wasn't so bad, but we then decided to go to Trader Joe's to get some "game day snack food".  That was kind of like Murray's not taking any risks in the last 2 minutes of the game when they were only down 6 points.  BAD IDEA. 

Trader Joe's is like the snack crack store.  You can find all sorts of veggie and vegan snack foods.  Just because something is vegan, it doesn't mean it is good for you.  Things like: veggie burritos, veggie gyoza, sweet potato tots, veggie pakora, vegetable bird nests, fish bites, and spicy shrimp bao... all of these things are better than corn dogs, nacho cheese dip and pizza, but they are not better than real food. And, because all of the foods are snack size, it is really, really, really easy to overeat. 

The rest of the food day was pretty much like the UCLA plays against Standford.  Nothing worked.  Brian popped almost all of the snack foods into the oven and we had bao, pierogi, tater tots, fish bites, pakora, and birds nests.  Later, we had a scoop of chocolate sorbet with an oatmeal cookie, each.  Then a boy scout came by selling bags of crazy sweet popcorn, and we each had some of that.  UGH.  Seriously, nothing UCLA tried worked against Standford.  And nothing made this food day any better.  We DID take the dogs out for a 3 mile walk after the game was over, so that helped. 

Except, that once we got home, we were a little snacky (while watching Mission Impossible 3), so we had the other croissant and a small slice of cheese. It was sort of like watching the post game reviews - over and over... watching those poor plays happening again and again.  Now I'm sitting here hoping that we're done with the day of poor food choices. We made a poor movie choice, but I can handle that.  No more food!!!!!

See you tomorrow.  Be happy and healthy!

Day 34: Dreaming in Italian

I don't speak Italian as a language, but I sure do speak Italian food.  Imagine Italian food without cheese, cream, sausage, and other tasty meat and dairy foods, and you'll get an idea of where I am today.  There are lots of great recipes out there that don't include those things, but....  However, we've been working our hardest to have some delicious Italian meals without either the meat or dairy.  Yesterday's roasted veggie sandwich was an excellent example of one. 

Lunch today was a pizza made from yesterday's leftovers, including an entire head of roasted garlic.  I caved and added a bit of cheese to the pizza, but no more than 1/3 of a cup for the entire pizza.  It made a very positive difference in the flavor and texture of the pizza. We used a whole wheat pizza crust and added a handful of cherry tomatoes to the toppings.  I'm telling you - this was the best pizza I've had in months. 

Brian's mom and I spent the afternoon doing a deep cleaning and purge of her closet and by dinner time, we were exhausted. I was in no mood to cook, clean or have anything to do with food, other than eat it.  There is a small establishment a couple of miles up the road called Pasta Pronto. There, we had cheap and delicious pasta.  Brian had mushroom ravioli, Marty had Italian shells with green beans, and I had a a pasta primavera with shrimp.  Yum.  I was pretty darned happy with my selection. 

Breakfast today was chocolate/chocolate chip banana bread and a glass of hot tea. It gave me the get up and go needed to take the dogs out for a three mile walk this morning.  I ran out of steam while at Petco, getting the dogs' nails trimmed. Our next stop was Trader Joe's, where we picked up some pizza dough and an agave sweetened protein bar.  Brian crashed as we were in TJ's, so we split the protein bar and were much better.  Oh, and we got some humus and chips to have while the pizza was cooking.

Once again, it was a pretty good food day. Be happy and healthy! 

Day 33: A Very Interesting Day

I woke up to a foggy, 37 degree morning.  The world was gray and cold; I was not ready to go into it. Instead, I made blueberry pancakes with strawberry sauce. They were warm and colorful; a much better way to start the day than the cold, gray fog.

Even after a fabulous breakfast, I still wasn’t quite connecting with the day.  My eye-drops were really burning my eyeballs, so I went back to bed for awhile to give them a break.  A couple of hours later, I woke up from dreams of construction. Perhaps, it was a bit of foreshadowing, or perhaps it was simply the many construction projects that were going on around the neighborhood, with the sounds coming through the open windows. Either way, it was almost noon and I needed to get up and get going. 

Brian made lunch while I showered, and when I came downstairs, there was a plate of leftover yakisoba noodles sitting on the table, ready for me to eat. Brian had a vegetable wrap with tomatoes, onions, peppers, humus, lettuce, cucumber and brussel sprouts.  I was fine with the distribution of leftovers. I’m not a fan of raw tomatoes and onions, humus that has been open for more than 2-3 days, and I hate brussel sprouts.  A lettuce, cucumber and red pepper wrap just didn’t sound very good.

After lunch, I drove over to North Portland to attend an informational meeting about women in trades.  In this case, trades meaning construction work.  It was very interesting.  The group that held the seminar is called Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc.  They are dedicated to helping improve the representation of women in the trades industries.  Nationally, only 3% of the construction workforce is made up of women.  In Portland, they’ve doubled that.  One of the ways they have gotten women involved is by hosting a 7 week pre-apprenticeship program that teaches basic tool use, strength and gives women lots of opportunities to see different roles (electrician, heavy machinery, plumbing, carpentry, etc.) at work.  It was really cool and very interesting. I’m not sure it is for me, but if I don’t get the corporate job I was looking for, this is a very real possibility for a career change. 

When I got home, Brian was making dinner. Dinner was gorgeous!!! It was a roasted vegetable sandwich with marinara sauce.  The veggies were: eggplant, onion, zucchini, and garlic. YUM! He served them on bolo rolls, which sadly fell apart while we were eating… but we didn’t care.  I jumped up and got some forks and we kept on going. 

After dinner, we finally went for the day’s walk. It was dusk when we left, but the evening was so gorgeous, we decided to go for a three mile walk, instead of the usual one mile after dinner.  Sadly, we were both wearing dark colors, and as it got darker, we were more invisible.  We stayed alert when crossing side-streets and intersections. The last half of our walk was in the green space, but we still had to keep an eye out for the bikers who weren’t wearing visible lights either. I couldn’t complain, since I was not prepared either.  It was such a gorgeous night; we simply had to stay outside.

So, all in all… it was a very interesting day.

Day 32: Lettuce at Long Last

After days of talking about it, I finally remembered to eat some green leafy vegetables. Go me!

Breakfast was cereal with sunflower seeds and the last of the fresh strawberries. Lunch was a salad with carrots, cucumber and apple, served with a side of rice noodles with broccoli and bok choy. Dinner was yakisoba noodles with carrots, broccoli and cabbage, with 1/2 a side of tempura vegetables. All in all, a little heavy on the noodles, but not too bad.

That is all I have today. I am sadly feeling uninspired. Tune in tomorrow for a much more entertaining blog.

Day 31: Costco Run

I haven't been to a Costco for years.  It is a big deal in the Northwest, but in the Midwest there are so many other places with better prices, we let our membership expire.  In the South, we didn't have the storage space for Costco runs, so we never picked it back up.  But here, Marty has a membership so Brian and I went with her today to rediscover the magic of the giant box store.

First off, Costco has so much food.  Some of it is great and some of it is a bit questionable.  Sometimes you buy something that looks great, but ends up being questionable.  A fine example of that was zucchini cakes (think crab cake, only made with zucchini).  They looked great on the box photo, but in real life, they were small and flabby with a weird texture.  After they were cooked, they got a little better, but they still looked unappetizing. The taste was OK, but I don't think I'll ever buy them again. Secondly, Costco has a whole bunch of dairy foods. It was particularly difficult seeing a giant block of Beecher's Flagship cheddar cheese for slightly more than 1/2 price of the grocery store. It was torture walking through the aisles and seeing the pot stickers, hotdogs, cheese dips, rotisserie chicken, chicken salad, ice cream, and more... all just staring at me.  "Eat me, Linda!" they seemed to be calling.   The absolute worst was passing the chocolate/chocolate chip muffins.  Those things are crazy good and (not) good for you - each one having something like a thousand calories.  Oh yeah, baby! Thirdly, Costco has buckets of cakes, candy, cookies and sugary drinks - pretty much anything sweet that you can possibly want.  You'll be happy to know that I have a will of iron and I managed to not buy anything sweet - not even a small tub of Jelly Bellies. 

We did end up buying some stuffed salmon to have with the zucchini cakes.  It was pretty good, but the serving size was monstrous. Normally, I am good about not overeating, but there were too many hours between breakfast and lunch today. By the time I actually sat down to eat, my blood sugar had completely crashed and I scarfed my meal down.  Too much food eaten too quickly makes Linda a sleepy girl, so two hours later, I emerged from my nap and took the dogs for a very late walk.  (It was 37 degrees and very dark this morning when I woke up, so I made chocolate/peanut butter banana bread instead of going for a walk first thing, like I usually do.) After the walk, Brian and I rushed over to the movie theater to see Machete Kills.  It was great fun! We shared a small popcorn.

So that it is for the food day.  Breakfast was a bowl of cereal with strawberries and a slice of piping hot banana bread.  Lunch was an appetizer of tomato basil humus served with black bean/quinoa/corn chips, then stuffed salmon (the stuffing was made with bread crumbs, tiny shrimp and crab) served with zucchini cakes and sweet potatoes.  Dinner was half a small bag of popcorn at the movie theater. Where are the green leafy vegetables I promised myself today?  Better luck with that tomorrow, I guess.  It is too late to eat now.  I'm going to bed.  Be healthy and happy!

Day 30: Its A Girl Thing

Sorry boys, this post discusses girl things. Reader, be warned!

I can't speak for other women, but once a month, I get to hankering for high fat, high salt, high sugar food... (I know, for those of you who have followed this post for the last four weeks, you're going to be much too polite to mention that I seem to get those cravings once an hour.)  In the past, it has manifested itself in a Taco Bell run (nachos supreme and a combo burrito), or maybe in really, really bad times, an Arby's run (beef and cheddar sandwich with cheesy curly fries, with extra cheese.)  Regardless of what horrible food provider I selected, the menu item almost always required beef. It is my personal, self-destructive form of PMS, even though Arby's came off the menu several years ago. I'm sure it is better than many of the psychotic alternatives that others may have to deal with, but even in good food times, the week before my period is filled with poor food choices. So why am I discussing such a personal topic today? I'll leave that to your imagination.

I was just thinking about how our brains and bodies conspire against us when we try to be healthy. I don't know if men have a similar physical compulsion regularly, if so, they have my condolences. Our brains remember how delicious all that bad stuff is (and seriously, after eating real food, the beef and cheddar sandwich - which for a long time held the prize for the single highest calorie count menu item in fast food - tastes like plastic.  What are our brains thinking?!) and our bodies (which are still designed for cave man times, even though we can easily get fat, sugar and salt without slaying a saber tooth tiger) crave the foods which will get them through the long winter nights. Then, when the female body is dealing with its monthly shot at pregnancy, all that stuff goes into overdrive. UGH! Its like my rational brain goes into hibernation for a few days and I'm controlled by the reptile brain way down deep in the brain stem. Sort of the flight or eat response. And since my rational brain is asleep, it can't chose to run away. Hmmm. I may be on to something here.

Today was a four meal day. I started with a bowl of cereal for breakfast. I had some of the crunchy, sweet fresh strawberries from Saturday's market on top. That took me to 11:30, when we were early for a noon appointment that was to be followed by a 1:00 pm appointment, so Brian and I stopped at Einstein Bro's bagels and I had a PB&J sandwich on a chocolate chip bagel. By 2:45 we were starving again. We were walking in downtown Portland after stopping at Powell's books and we passed a food truck pod. We found one with a vegan friendly vegetable yakisoba with tofu and we shared an order. It was excellent. Around 6:30, my half order of noodles was quite gone, so we had leftovers from last night's vegetable roast for dinner. Brian and Marty added chicken and brussell sprouts to theirs. For dessert, we had strawberry sauce (see recipe below) on a tiny scoop of coconut milk ice cream.  All in all, an OK food day. I'm feeling the need for green leafy vegetables, so I'll be sure to have those tomorrow.

I talked to my friend, (Brian's cousin's husband... Does that make us cousins-in-law squared?) Chris today. He is the one who inspired us to start an 8-week challenge in the first place. He was going to work on a very restrictive program with an awesome community of support, but he found that the program was getting in the way of his progress. So, just like us, he modified the challenge to fit his life and personal goals, and now he is rocking out on his bike and getting in top shape! It was exciting to hear about his progress at the same time as we're progressing through our challenge. Way to go, Chris!

Recipe for strawberry sauce:
4 pints of strawberries: washed, hulled and sliced
1/4 cup of water
1 tablespoon of honey

Cook the strawberries in water on a medium heat burner, uncovered until soft and slightly thickened (30-45 minutes, stirring often). Stir in the honey, use more or less to taste. Use a potato masher to smash the strawberries if you like. Turn off the heat and let sit, uncovered until cool. Use immediately or refrigerate for up to 2 weeks or freeze up to 6 months. You can make this with frozen strawberries, too, so it is a year-round treat.

See you tomorrow. In the meanwhile, be healthy and happy!

Day 29: It Is All Downhill From Here

The second half of the challenge starts today. Woo hoo! We worked hard to prepare for this week so that the cravings don't get the better of me.  Today is a good example.  I've been craving meat for a few days, so rather than break down and eat a burger or something like that, I baked a whole chicken in a dutch oven, surrounded with root vegetables. I didn't eat any chicken, but the vegetables had that amazing roasted chicken flavor going on.  I'm pretty sure that elusive flavor is called chicken fat, but hey, those veggies were tasty!

For those folks wondering what the veggies were, you could look at my last few weeks' posts about farmers market days, or, you can simply read the list here: sweet potatoes, red potatoes, russet potatoes, beets, yellow onions, white onions, carrots, red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers and garlic. That is ten different vegetables! That also means leftovers, which makes me very happy. Brian and Marty ate some of the chicken, but they did a great job of staying mostly with the vegetables and limiting the meat. We took the garlic and spread it on some crusty Italian bread. Yummm! For dessert we each had a homemade chocolate chip, oatmeal, pecan cookie.

Breakfast today was uninspiring, but at least it wasn't eggs. We took our quilting friend to breakfast, then the airport. We ate at the hotel cafe, which was fine, but the service was an interesting grade of horrible. It was like our waiter had 15 busy tables so he had a hard time getting to us... Except that he didn't. He had three tables, each arriving at different times so he should have been much more responsive. For example: when our food was served, he set it in the table very quickly, then ran back to the kitchen. I figured that he either still had something to bring to us or he had forgotten something. Nope. He just hung out back by the kitchen. He didn't check to see if our orders were right (they were) or if we might need anything else (we did).  He never noticed when I was out of water, nor when Brian was out because I drank his, too. When he ran by one time, I had to raise my voice so that he'd hear me and stop running for a second. It was crazy. It is rare to see someone make such a fuss about their effort with so little in the way of results. Oh, by the way, I had banana pancakes.

Changing topics: I've been thinking about a way to get an Italian food fix without meat or dairy.  When I was a kid, my mom would make a macaroni dish (kind of like hamburger helper, but all homemade) that had tomato paste, herbs, and vegetables. Sometimes she'd add cheese and sometimes not, but it was always good. If I kick up the oregano a bit, that should work great. I'm looking forward to making some. I'll be sure to make enough for leftovers. We're also planning to have roasted vegetable sandwiches later in the week, with eggplant, zucchini, onions and peppers. I can toss a little marinara sauce on the side of that, too. Yum! I think it will be a week of good eating. Wish me luck. Be healthy!

Day 28: Half Way Point! Plus Interesting Information About Quilting

Huzzah!  We're 1/2 way through the 8 weeks.  At this point, keeping a blog is really helping me keep the challenge.  As you could probably tell from yesterday's blog, the cravings are coming fast and furious, so knowing that I have to report truthfully at the end of the day helps keep me from going to far astray. 

Today is Saturday, which is farmers market day.  We got loads of stuff today, including... wait for it... strawberries!  It turns out that the rain didn't completely drown them and the last few days of warmer weather allowed some to ripen.  Sweet!  (Which they are!) So now I have strawberries for the next few days. Sadly, there are no more nectarines.  No one had them today, nor will anyone have more until late July 2014.  Ugh, that sounds so far away.  I also got end of the season plums and some cherry tomatoes.  On the plus side, Mutsu apples are finally in and pear season is in full swing.  We also got butternut squash, onions, sage and basil, broccoli, as well as some bolo rolls from Grand Central Baking Company for our vegetarian sandwiches later in the week. Oh yeah! 

It was an interesting food day, as well.  Breakfast was the last of the ginger banana bread and a cup of green tea. Second breakfast was a root vegetable hand pie (although it was made with cheddar cheese). Brian had a tiny pie with egg, sun dried tomatoes, basil and feta. It was OK but mine was really good. After the farmers market, we took Max downtown and met my brother for lunch at Milo's City Cafe.  I was looking forward to one of their pasta concoctions, but they have a very limited menu on the weekends - brunch only. Instead, I had a vegetarian hash with two eggs.  It has been an egg filled week (I had a couple earlier on the waffle, two today, and most likely, I may have some for breakfast tomorrow) and I need to back off on them a bit.  I've found that going out for breakfast makes it hard to not have eggs.

After a hilarious lunch with my brother, Brian and I went to the convention center to meet our family friend at the quit show.  It was amazing.  (There was no food there, so nothing to worry about on that front.)  I learned so much about quilting today.  Not in a "how to" way, but more of an art appreciation sort of thing. 

Firstly, most of the stitching on quilts today is machine worked.  It can be free hand or computer generated, depending on the quilt artist/technician. If it is done by hand, you need a super responsive machine that is light weight and easy to control.  I tried my hand at the top model and was able to cursive spell my name on some fabric with just the lightest touch of guidance.  That machine cost 16 thousand dollars! Not $1,600. $16,000.00!!!  Holy sewing machine, Batman! The computer system to guide the machine is an extra 10 thousand. You have to be truly dedicated to this profession to make that kind of investment. 

Secondly, it is oh so much more than taking someone's finished piecing (the fabric design of a quilt) and putting a decorative stitch to it.  Even with the computer, you have to essentially rebuild the design in the computer, then create your stitching design on top of it.  Just recreating the quilt design (that you or someone else created) can take hours and hours.  Then designing the stitching on top of that takes even longer.  It is a huge bunch of time.  And folks who don't do the stitching do not place value on the work and expect a queen sized quilt to be stitched for $60.00.  Some quilts take over 60 hours to stitch! It is really part technical skill mixed with talent and amazing amounts of patience.

Thirdly, there are endless combinations one can play with when creating a quilt.  We saw one that was pieced together to form a forest with a stream and trees.  The piecing must have taken forever to do, but that was the least of the quilt. There was stitching, embroidery, applique, and the use of tulle for depth.  I was so glad our friend was there with us to give us a tour of each individual quilt, let alone the whole show.  It was a mind blowing experience which I am super glad I had.

Lastly, did you know that once you start stitching a quilt, the fabric changes shape and size? So each section of the quilt has to be basted (sort of temporarily stitched down) to ensure it won't pull out of shape.  Even with that, the quilter has to be really careful. This stuff was shockingly fascinating.  If you haven't attended a quilt show with a quilter before, I would highly recommend it.  Learning new things is good for your brain and keeps dementia at bay.  And this stuff is cool and beautiful!

So, I got off track a tiny bit.  Sorry.  By the time we got home, Brian and I were exhausted so we had PB&J with bananas for dinner.  It sounds sort of anticlimactic, but after the day we had, it was perfect.  Sleep well and be healthy!

Day 27: I Guess That's Why They Call It A Challenge

I am SO DONE with this thing.  I want pizza, cheese, milk, sugar, nachos with beef and cheese, cookies, cakes, pies, candy, cheeseburger with bacon and egg (the red eye burger at Spitfire Restaurant), carbonara, alfredo sauce, lasagna, ice cream, chocolate brownies, chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream and strawberries, ham, scones, pastries, chocolate croissants, fried chicken, chicken teriyaki, lamb, BBQ anything, birthday cake with ice cream, milkshakes, bacon, sausage, cornbread with honey and butter, bread and butter, butter cookies, meat lover's pizza with extra cheese, french toast, and hot chocolate: all in one sitting.

Now that all of that is out of my system, you may have some sympathy with me for breaking down and having almond milk ice cream and cookies with my dinner today.  I am a day away from the end of week four and am feeling the next four weeks looming in front of me.  I kept thinking about Eragon (the kid who discovers the dragon egg and eventually turns into a vegan... well there is more to the plot than that, but it is the part I'm about to talk about), who learns to commune with nature and even though he is a die-hard meat eater, ends up being a vegan because he can feel the pain of the animals he eats... or something like that.  Yeah, that is not me.  I'm not a big meat eater, but I do enjoy it.  Currently, I'm missing meat and cheese something fierce. 

OK, so here is today's food list.  Breakfast was a nectarine, a bowl of cereal, and later a pear.  Lunch was Chinese food: mushroom soup (spicy and very tasty), an onion pancake, and vegetable fried rice noodles. The noodle dish was a bit bland.  I brought home the leftovers and will probably add ginger and garlic to them to serve next time. Around 5:30 I was snacky for something sweet, so I had a scoop of the almond milk ice cream.  It did not hit the spot and later I was sorry I had it.  Dinner was (finally) samosas!!!  We also had some naan and pakoras, but the star of the show was the samosa.  They were crispy on the outside and creamy mashed potato and green pea goodness on the inside, with a lovely spicy flavor.  Oh, it was good.

We had to go pick up dinner, as I do not yet know how to make samosas and pakoras, and we had a few minutes to kill before it was ready, so we popped into the grocery store to pick up a few things.  There was a cookie display right up front.  I skipped the big boxes of cookies, but I did grab a chocolate crinkle cookie and a chocolate chip cookie.  I split these with Brian (although, for full disclosure, I had 3/4 of the chocolate cookie and about 1/2 of the chocolate chip cookie).  They were really good, too. 

So, tomorrow ends week 4 and there are 4 weeks left to go.  I will not give up, even though I really want to.  Challenges are supposed to be, well... challenging.  Otherwise, they'd call them easies. And what is the point of that? Be healthy!

Day 26: Udon!!!!!

Brian and I lived in Seattle for 20 years.  During that time, we had access to a wide variety of foods from all over the world.  One of our favorites was Japanese food, especially the many types of noodles. When we moved to the Midwest, all of those foods were no longer easy to access.  When we moved to Bethlehem, Georgia, those foods were completely unavailable. So, imagine our joy to find an excellent Japanese restaurant only a mile and a half from our house. I know, I mentioned all of these things before, specifically on Day 11, but it is worth repeating.  We missed the culinary diversity of the Pacific Northwest so much.  It was one of the main drivers of our move to Portland. 

Today's Japanese food choice was udon noodles. Brian had Nabeyaki Udon, a thin broth soup chock full of udon noodles (sort of like spaghetti noodles, only very thick - like a pencil, chewy and delicious), chopped vegetables, chopped chicken, an egg, a slice of fish cake, tempura bits, and seaweed bits.  Mine was very similar, only vegetarian. The broth is fish based and salty; a savory, watery concoction. When you put all of those things together in one steaming hot bowl of soup... well, it can only be described as delicious.

Dinner was a noisy affair.  We slurped and moaned our way through the bowls of soup.  Every now and then, I'd apologize for all of the mmmm-ing and aaahhh-ing, yum-ing and "wow this is great"-ing that I was doing.  Brian remarked that he'd eaten with our friend Ben for years, so he was used to an appreciative eater.  (So true!  I love eating with Ben because he truly enjoys food and doesn't mind letting folks know it.  I think folks are too reserved about food most of the time.  Thanks, Ben, for sharing your food joy!) And appreciative I was, too.  That was some mighty fine soup. After a six and a half year period without the food we love, to have such a great specimen the first time out was overwhelmingly wonderful.

The rest of the day was good, too. After yesterday's fall from the 8 week challenge wagon, today was a good reminder to shake it off and jump right back up there.  I started with a juicy nectarine before my quick 3 mile walk with the fuzzy buddies, then had a bowl of cereal with dried strawberries, sunflower seeds and ginger. We had some sesame sticks from Trader Joe's as a snack, then wraps filled with eggplant hummus, lettuce, cucumber, avocado and bell pepper for lunch, along with last week's kale chips.  With the soup for dinner, the menu was tasty and well balanced.

Today we also started a serious look at houses.  We have meetings with realtors on Monday to get the ball rolling.  We're both pretty excited to move forward on the housing plan, so wish us well. Be healthy and happy!!

Day 25: Aaaaaaaaaaahhhh WIPE OUT!

As you may imagine from the title, this was not the best food day I've ever had.  On the plus side, it was not as bad a food day as the day of the Puyallup Fair, but it is by far the worst food day I had in the last two weeks.  Here goes the ugly blow-by-blow accounting for the day.

Breakfast: We went out to eat at Biscuits, the local breakfast cafe. A waffle with strawberries (thawed) and a side of 2 eggs, over easy.  Not terrible, but far from great.  Eggs are on the food to avoid list and waffles have egg, milk and sugar in them, in small amounts.  As it was, I walked away from the table hungry today.  Go figure.

Lunch: Brian was about to cook brussel sprouts, which drove me running from the house.  The smell!  The taste!  BLEH!!! Instead of staying around for the grossness, I went to go get my nails done. Next door to the nail place was a Chinese Teriyaki place: Teriyaki Woo - I can't make this kind of thing up. Their menu was not vegetarian friendly, so I had the vegetable fried rice and two egg rolls.  I'm still not sure if I was eating pork or mushroom in the egg rolls.  No big deal.  At this point, the food day was still salvageable.

My next stop was the mall, where I avoided such temptations as Sees Candies, Godiva Chocolates, Auntie somebody's Pretzels and the food court.  Yay, me! I was very proud of myself for such a grand display of self control, especially when there was no one around to say whether or not I cheated. But that would have been cheating, so I held strong. I held strong, all the way until dinner, when I completely choked!

Dinner: Pepperoni pizza with sausage, ricotta, mozzarella...WIPE OUT! Man, the only thing that would have made it worse is a scoop of ice-cream. Which I came SO CLOSE to getting on a giant chocolate chip cookie cooked in an iron skillet.  The good news in all of this is that we shared a 12 inch pizza, so there wasn't too much carnage.

That is all I have to share today.  It was an ugly day, foodwise. The rest of the day was very good, so we'll call it a wash and move on to tomorrow.  Until then, be healthy!

Day 24: Fish and Friend

This was a very good day!  It was super misty when I took the dogs out this morning and I had to stop to clear my glasses a couple of times, but that is perfect Portland weather for you.  After walk came the real exercise: drying the dogs.  Buckley is no problem, he is small and has short hair.  Katy takes a full-sized bath towel on a misty day with her big dog self and metric ton of hair.  (That may be a small exaggeration, but she is a hairy beast.) After all that work, I was ready for breakfast.

Breakfast was the standard Trader Joe's organic corn flakes with sunflower seeds, dried strawberries and ginger chips with almond milk. As you can tell from reading this blog for the last few weeks, I have four breakfast favorites: cereal, PB&J with banana sandwiches, banana bread and the occasional waffle. All good things.

Lunch was pizza, take two.  Brian used the same crust and sauce from last week (frozen), but this time added a bit of salt to each.  That really helped.  The toppings were kale, onion, pepper and tomato, with a tiny bit of fresh grated Parmesan to hold things together and add a little flavor.  It was really good.  I think we can do just a touch more salt next time.  It is funny, salt has never been a problem for us.  We rarely use it and never add it at the table.  But without the salt that comes from meats that are normally in a dish, we're finding we need more of it in our vegan dishes.

Even with a good breakfast and a really good lunch, dinner was the main course today.  Brian and I went to the airport to pick up a family friend (essentially Brian's god-mother) from way, way back.  She is a SWEETHEART and we love her!  She would only let us pick her up and take her to her hotel if she could take us to dinner somewhere nice.  Hmmmm.... tough choice. Of course we picked her up!

Urban Spoon is one of my favorite sites for finding good food in a city I don't know very well, and it suggested a place near her hotel called The Farm Cafe. Their webpage touted the local farm to table concept of super fresh food, simply cooked.  That sounded good to everyone, so we tried it.  Strangely enough, it turned out that Brian and I had been there 10 years before with his mother and my brother.  Even funnier, we had been thinking of that restaurant, but misremembered the location.  All we remembered was how quaint the place was (a remodeled Victorian house) and how fantastic the food was.  This night was no different.

We started with broccoli fritters. Any southerners reading this blog cam immediately think of hush puppies with chopped broccoli. Because... that is exactly what they were.  It was not what I expected, but they were quite good. As we ate our fritters and sipped our beverages, we enjoyed the company of our long time friend.  She is so charming and delightful; so animated and positive.  Have I mentioned how much we love her?

Eventually, we made our main course decisions.  She and I both had trout (with all the bones removed!) on a bed of quinoa, mixed with vegetables, covered with greens.  Oh my, it was delicious.  The fish was rubbed with salt and stuffed with herbs and was amazing by itself.  When tasted with the greens and grain, it was a flavor sensation not to be missed.  It was fantastic.  Brian had risotto cakes, crusted with quinoa, served on a root vegetable puree, with a side of brussel sprouts. The risotto was excellent, but the rest didn't thrill me.  Of course, I'm not a fan of sprouts. (Understatement of the year.)

Finally, there was much discussion about dessert.  The options were: huckleberry bread pudding, apple crisp a la mode, molten chocolate pudding cake and some kind of cheese cake.  We decided on the apple crisp with the ice cream on the side.  That way, Brian and our friend could enjoy all the dessert they wanted, while I could eat a few bites of the apples without getting too much sugar and no dairy.  It was utter cinnamon-y, nutty, apple-y goodness. YUM!! 

Have you ever had a situation where everything was great: company, location and food, but the combination made everything even better?  This was one of those times.  We had such a great time chatting, eating, catching up, eating, enjoying each other, enjoying the food.... It was truly a great day!

Day 23: I Love Leftovers

Nothing is easier than making lunch out of leftovers.  Nothing cleans out the fridge faster, either.  We usually have lots of leftovers on Mondays, so each person selects the food they are interested in eating, and off we go!

My food of choice today was the leftover tostada ingredients. I scooped off some of the too heavily spiced Tofurkey, then tossed the rest of the stuff into a wrap.  After a couple of minutes in the microwave, I was good to go.  Brian had the rest of the squash and kamut, mixed with his leftover bariyani rice dish.  Once again, a quick zap and a quick wrap and he was all set.  Marty finished off her Mexican casserole dish (with sour cream and chicken, which is definitely not on the challenge list), along with some of Brian's rice.  She had to eat with a fork, but that is the glory of leftover day.  Everyone gets something different.  Fun for the whole family!

Breakfast was yet another peanut butter and banana sandwich.  I simply love them, especially with a little fruit juice sweetened apricot jam. Mmmmm.  I've heard that Europeans can not fathom our fascination with peanut butter.  But really, what's not to love? Especially with crunchy peanut butter: the flavor, the texture, the consistency.... I'm totally daydreaming about peanut butter right now.  Perhaps I'll go have some with a apple.  Or a pear.  Or just on a spoon. OK!  Snap out of it!

On to another topic: banana bread.  I made some yesterday that tastes like gingerbread. I used the same basic recipe as always, but this time poured in a little black strap molasses (1/4 cup), some chopped candied ginger, a teaspoon of powdered ginger, 1/2 a teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1/4 cup of cocoa powder (to give it depth).  It came out great, if a touch sticky. The flavor is rich and gingery, with low notes of chocolate way down deep in the background.  Marty cracks up every time I make a new flavor, because so far I haven't made the same loaf twice.

I have no idea what we'll have for dinner.  I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.  Right now, I'm going to grab an apple and some peanut butter and go to town.  Just thinking about it earlier made my stomach growl in anticipation.  Be healthy!

Day 22: Starting on Week Four!

It has been three weeks already!  Funny, every day I vacillate between feeling excited about how well the challenge is going overall and wondering why in the name of everything that is good I thought eight weeks was the right time period for a challenge.  Seriously, isn't two weeks plenty?  Of course it isn't, not if I want to make lasting changes.  Still, at this point, I am crystal clear about which changes I want to keep and which foods I plan on bringing back in limited quantities. But, onward I shall march, continuing this challenging 8-week challenge, because I can and because I know it will be good for me.

After the poor eating out experiences of the last two nights, we knew it was critical that we go to the farmers market today. We missed the big one yesterday, so it was more important than ever that we go now.  Which we did. We got so much stuff!  Nectarines are going away after this week, so I got six of those.  I plan on eating one every day for the next four days.  Someone else will probably eat the other two.  After four days, they tend to start to rot, so it is important to go through them quickly. We also got pears, carrots, lettuce, kale, peppers (also the last week - we're supposed to get a frost this week), a tomato, corn, onion, eggplant and some hummus.  We shall dine in style all week!

After the market, we came home to unload the groceries, then load up the dogs and go to the beach.  It was a gorgeous day in Portland today, with 70 degree weather, a light breeze and not a cloud to be seen.  Perfect!  When we got to the coast two and a half hours later, it was 63 degrees, foggy, a 30+ mile per hour wind, and big, dark clouds covering the sky.  Brrrr!!!!  It was cold.  After all of that time in the car, we required a walk (as did the dogs), so we went on out to the beach and started walking into the wind. 

You should have seen the dogs.  They looked like they were in heaven.  Katy has long hair which blew in the breeze (non-stop gusts).  Buckley's long ears did the same.  They kept jumping and nipping at each other with excitement. After a half a mile or so, I got too cold and we turned around.  They didn't like that as much.  Katy's long hair kept parting and she couldn't get her butt covered up to her liking.  I've never seen such a look of dismay on her fuzzy face.  Eventually she figured out how to hold her tail, but it took awhile.  Buckley just seemed confused and kept turning around so that he could face the wind.  Very funny! 

I think we probably walked for a mile and a half today, but it felt like much more because of the effort it took to walk into the wind.  When we were done, we loaded up and went back home. As soon as we left the beach, the sky cleared and the sun came out.  It was a lovely drive home.

When we got home, we were starving.  We had eaten banana bread for breakfast and veggie burritos for lunch.  For dinner, Brian made the broccoli/ginger/black bean pasta dish that I tried to make the other day.  His came closer to the recipe we were aiming for, but still was a bit off.  Ah well, we'll try again. Brian's dish was quite good and I'd gladly eat it again; it simply wasn't quite what we were striving for.  There is always next time.

I'm glad this weekend is over.  Please wish us well for our fourth week on the challenge.  Hopefully we'll have no further food mishaps this week and all will go well.  Be happy and healthy!

Day 21: Who Would Eat That??!

We had two very bad dining out experiences in a row.  The first was Friday night (post the writing of my Day 20 blog), after the football game.  We left in the middle of the third quarter because the game was getting boring.  The home team could not even begin to compete with the #3 team in the area and the points kept increasing...against the home team on Homecoming night.  Oh, the agony.  We decided to leave and go grab a bite to eat on the way home. Bad idea.

We stopped at a hole in the wall pizza place about a mile from our home. I know that pizza is not on the challenge, but it was late, we were hungry, and it was open. When we sat down, we weren't thrilled with the look of the place, but thought we'd try bread sticks with marinara sauce. That sort of fits within the challenge, plus it gave us time to review the menu, while still getting some food quickly.  Bad idea, again.  Fifteen minutes later, the waitress came back to our table for our order, without the bread sticks. I have NO IDEA why we placed an order at this point, but we did.  There was fish and chips on the menu, so I decided to skip the pizza and try that instead. Yet another bad idea.

We settled in to watch the football game that was playing on the TV, while waiting for our food. A couple of minutes later, this fellow came in and started talking to us about the game.  We chatted for a few minutes, then he left and went to the kitchen.  Turns out that he was the cook.  No wonder we didn't get our food yet... he had been on break since before we got there! About seven minutes later, out came the bread sticks, without marinara. The cook came out to say our food was ready then, and did we want him to hold on to it for a few minutes while we ate our appetizer. We said yes, please.  He then noticed we didn't have any sauce and asked if we wanted some.  We said yes, please, once again.  He left and a minute later, the waitress came out with some horrible marinara and our food. (Insert heavy sigh here.)

Brian ordered shrimp and chips and they were fine.  My fries were good, but the fish was burnt black.  Seriously. I (what was I thinking?) ate a bite and it was bone dry and very burnt.  Our waitress was nowhere to be seen, so I got up and went back to the kitchen to let them know I couldn't eat it.  The cook came out to see why I said it wasn't edible, and I showed him the seriously, black pieces of fish.  He asked if I wanted him to make more for me.  (Here is where my judgement becomes completely questionable...) I said yes, please. About 4 minutes later, here come two more pieces of black fish, only these two were swimming... in grease.  Ugh!

The cook came and sat down next to me when I got the fish, to see how I liked it.  I told him that it was still burnt.  He asked if I had kids.  I, of course, said no.  After evidencing much surprise, he told me that it was too bad that I didn't have kids because they LOVE fish cooked the way he made it.  Seriously, WHY didn't I throw in the towel at this point?  All I can say in my defense is that it was past my bedtime.  INSTEAD, I agreed to let him try to cook one more piece of fish for me.  The bad ideas just seemed to keep coming.

He came back in 2 minutes, this time with a raw piece of greasy, slightly burnt fish.  When I tried to cut into it, the fish was so far underdone the knife wouldn't cut it. The cook told me that the grease was old, so that was why he was having such a hard time. (Why would you ever tell a customer that?????) I suggested that it was too hot, which is why it was getting burnt on the outside, while not done on the inside.  He took it back again and returned in just a minute with the underdone piece, now recooked.  To stop the madness, I said it was OK and ate most of it, with him watching. BAD IDEA! It was both burnt and tasted of rancid oil.  Where was my brain?  Where was my personality?  I would never have settled for this kind of grossness normally.  I claim a momentary madness.  That is all I can say for myself. Bottom line, we left that place as soon as possible.  We shall NEVER return.

The second food experience was Saturday night (which was how long it took for my stomach to settle from the burnt, rancid oil fish).  We went to McMinniman's pub after watching a marching band competition.  After the bad night before, I thought a wood fired pizza would be just the thing.  When we got there, they had a special of sea scallops, one of my favorite things.  So, we decided to order the scallops instead of pizza.  Excellent choice.  Except... we got there at  9:40 pm and by that time they were out of scallops.  Bummer!  So, back to the original idea of a pizza.

The pizza menu was quite limited.  We decided to go with the simplest which was likely to have the least cheese: the Margherita pizza. We had it with a side of hummus (excellent choice).  When the pizza came, it looked great, except the tomatoes were less red than I prefer.  We bit into the pizza and the tomato was mealy and flavorless.  The crust was prefect and the small amounts of mozzarella were to die for.  But to tomatoes... bleh.  At that point, I simply picked them off and ate the pizza without anything else.  I figured there was some horrible karma against me for food this weekend, and the best thing I could do was stop eating out.

The one question that keeps going through my mind: what are these restaurants thinking?  Seriously, who would eat that???