The "anti-diet"

Day One --

A good friend told me about this cool book she started reading and I was instantly intrigued.  The idea is that the foods we eat react with our individual body chemistry and even some of the "healthy" foods can cause inflammation -- which in turn causes all sorts of disease.  Suffering from an auto-immune disease, inflammation is second nature to me, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I was so interested, I got the book on Kindle and then the next day went out and bought the actual hold in your hands copy :-)  I just can't seem to get the hang of finding what I want on the Kindle, no flipping through the pages.  Did a lot of reading, got some of the foods and yesterday actually started "the plan."  Did I say how awesome it is that Kevin agreed to do it with me!!!!

Here's the link if you're interested -- The Plan

So day one starts with weighing yourself (on a digital scale), drinking 16 oz of water and taking a liver detox supplement.  Then 45 minutes later, it's breakfast time!!  Flax granola (just flax, water, cinnamon, and vanilla) with blueberries and unsweetened coconut milk.  Lunch was pretty good - carrot ginger soup, steamed broccoli with orange oil, and mixed greens with a diced pear.  Snack -- finally something normal, just an apple.  Supper was steamed kale with a turmeric coconut sauce and shredded beet carrot salad with pumpkin seeds.

I honestly thought the beet/carrot salad was going to be the hardest thing to eat with the kale coming in a close second -- was I ever wrong.  Both were delicious!!! Breakfast was by far the hardest thing to get down.  Luckily, in a few days I can switch that up a bit.

Good news is that I didn't feel hungry, didn't have any cravings and am down 1.2 lbs. 

Chowder, Soup or Stew ???

Today was a delightful rainy day.  Perfect for cozying up with a skein of yarn and my favorite knitting needles, which is a good thing because I had a sample I needed to knit for the class I'm teaching!!  Yes, I did get the job and am now an official knitting instructor for JoAnn Fabrics and Crafts.  Tomorrow is my first class -- if they had enough sign up - won't find that out until tomorrow morning.

So back to the rainy day -- what to have for supper -- what else but SOUP!!  One of my go-to favorites that I never go to because my children don't like it.  Oh well, once in a while won't kill them. I've had enough beans and pasta lately, so decided to go with potatoes -- another one of my children's non-favorites. 

As a kid growing up, we had potato corn chowder all the time and I loved it -- add some cornbread and you're talking total comfort food.  Well, I knew that my girls wouldn't eat only potatoes, so I had to come up with something different to add to it -- chicken takes center stage.  I just happened to have some of these in my frig.

I'm not a real true recipe follower and this one especially for my mom's chowder was all in my head, so I forged ahead with my handy dandy helper H (hoping that if she helped, maybe she would be willing to at least try a bite)

I sliced half an onion, sauteed it in some oil till translucent, added about 1/3 of a large red pepper, diced as well, let that cook and soften a little, added the chicken strips, roughly chopped, stirred it all around and then added 4 cups of water and 3 medium sized potatoes, roughly chopped, with some salt.  I'm not consistent with my potatoes, in fact, I purposely leave some of the larger, so that by the time they are cooked through, the smaller pieces have turned mushy and helped thicken my soup. 

Let that all bubble away, probably 15 minutes or so, just until the potatoes were barely fork tender, then I added a can of creamed corn and some milk.  Gave it all a good stir and then started seasoning away. I started with some celery seed, a little white pepper, and some nutmeg.  Let it cook a little more and then because of the creamed corn it seemed sweet so I added a little paprika and some dry mustard.  All the while tasting --

When I got it to my liking, it really didn't take that long, I served it up alongside some crackers and of course added some cheese cubes for the girlies.

Here's a closer view --- the only thing I would change next time is to rinse the chicken, the seasoning on them was super peppery -- it almost overpowered the mildness of the potatoes and corn.

Menu Plan in Action

I finally have this up and running and thought I'd share!!  It turned out pretty good, although I don't think I'd print double ideas again.  It just makes too many magnets to find storage space for.  There are a couple that I would do twice, the ones that I know we eat often -- Hannah's cheesy rice being one!!  That child would eat cheesy rice everyday if I would let her :-)

After I came up with the list, I put it on a Word table and then printed it out on magnets sheets.  I have never done that before and when I went to get the magnet sheets, I got the thinner ones that say you can print pictures on them -- I think next time, I'll get the normal thicker sheets.  Anyway, learned a little bit, mainly, leave the paper on the bottom as you run it through the printer and help it along a little bit so it uses the whole sheet.  The first sheet I did I could only use part of it because it printed weird.  Oh well, lessons learned.

Once they were printed, I used highlighters and colored the categories I had decided on.  Then cut them out.  It took a little bit of time, but I was in a church board meeting, so had time to spare!!

Found some pretty paper tape at Target, it even matched my kitchen!!  Had to experiment a couple of times to get the dimensions right, but that wasn't too hard, just ended up cutting one of the tapes in half. 

All in all, this turned out to be a super easy and mostly inexpensive project.  I think it cost less then $15, and I have lots of tape left over and a bunch of highlighters!!

So here's the finished result!!

 

 



Grandma's Cooking

Happy Sabbath -- I don't know how people that don't honor some day survive.  This chic lives for sundown every Friday evening. It gives me a wonderful chance to stop - and most importantly NOT feel guilty about it -- EVER!!  So glad I have a wonderful heavenly Father who looks after me, especially since I tend to ignore myself until my body forces me to stop.

On another, totally unrelated note, I went to do my normal Friday afternoon grocery shopping and ended up taking a trip down nostalgia lane!!  I was by myself, the girls didn't want to go, so I took the time to peruse the shelves more than normal.  Sometimes you can find a new product or flavor, or just something you don't ordinarily use and since this week my focus has been on menu planning and wanting to add new food -- I took the extra time.

To my surprise I saw this wonderful can!!!

Now to most you this is gross or not such a big deal.  For me.....it brought tears to my eyes and a sudden smile.  You see when I was a kid, this was a treat that only came from Grandma's house, although back then, I think you could find it in just tomato sauce.  Anyway, immediately, in my head, I saw her little black saucepan with contents of this can clumped in the middle until it heated enough to not be so congealed.  And of course you couldn't have that saucepan without the wood stirrer -- it wasn't a spoon, I guess you could call it a spatula ...
It looked kind of like this, but a little fatter and not so "spoon" shaped.  I got lucky enough to inherit it when she died.
I don't know that the majority of my cousins would remember this "delicacy."  For them it was Grandma's noodles (mac & cheese) or an eggy (that's another story) and I have those memories as well, but this is one that is only tied to my Grandma.