Halfway done!

Can you believe we're already halfway through the first month of the new year?  It's insane how time keeps on speeding up the older I get.  Which, by the way, with be exactly 25 years old in about 38 hours and 35 minutes.  Yes, I was born exactly at midnight.  Ask my dad, he was watching the clock!  I'd say ask my mom but she was otherwise occupied.

So we're halfway through the month, and I'm also halfway through my first Whole30 bout.  I didn't make a big deal about it when I started, as usually when I have some kind of food or life revelation and get all gung-ho about a particular method enough to blog about how I'm going to omgztotallyRAWKit, I end up failing within the first week or so.  But...I haven't failed this one yet.  And I don't foresee a scenario where I'd have to completely abandon it, and after this much effort, even the iffy, possible scenarios (forgot to pack lunch for work, don't have the cash to buy it) don't outweigh the desire to finish this goal.

hope i'm not jinxing myself with this picture!

The Whole9 style of eating isn't all that far off from what I was doing before - no grains, no added sugars, no processed foods - with the addition of no alcohol and no dairy, which is the toughest area for me, as I am normally a milk fiend.  The biggest difference is that it allows absolutely no room for cheating - no beer or wine with dinner once in a while, no half-ounce of chocolate chips after a 10-hour shift, not even a drop of cream in coffee (I use coconut cream, so I don't miss that TOO much).  I never really realised how much I do take those little tiny sidesteps off the path of real, clean eating.  I firmly believe that it's okay to enjoy sweets and treats and things you wouldn't have every day...as long as you don't have them every day.  And I wasn't having them every day, but it was a lot closer than I'd like.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll tell you that I did "cheat" once, just a few days after I started the whole deal.  The Man's holiday box of goodies finally arrived in the mail, containing all kinds of sugary deliciousness that tempted me sorely, all of which he spent a long time picking exactly which gift would be perfect for each member of the family, or which would mean something extra to me.  One of the things included was a little block of eggnog fudge from White House Chocolates in Middlefield, Ohio (if you're ever in that area, you MUST stop there. period).  They make it once a year and, it being super-good quality without many preservatives, it would have gone all stale by the time February rolled around.  So I cut a little chunk off the corner, just enough to taste, and then called up The Man to tell him merci muy mucho and yo te iubesc, and then put the rest of the goodies out of sight and mind until Feb.

But anyways.  It's been really interesting, at the very least, to try out a deal that's both very stringent and at the same time feels can feel ridiculously decadent, based on what you can have.  I've also realised that left to my own devices I will eat any coconut product - dried flakes, coconut cream, coconut butter, coconut oil, any of the last three dipped in the first... - out of the jar with a spoon.  Which is not always a good thing.  But for the most part, my meals look something like this:

This was breakfast yesterday.  Roasted brussel sprouts, a couple orange and grapefruit pieces, macadamia nuts, a palm-sized hunk of cow and coffee with coconut cream.  Note that I don't have coffee with every meal, although I wish I could.  But yeah - there's so much awesomeness here that I barely miss things like sugar and dairy (although I'm daydreaming about the raw milk I'm going to get when I finish this up...but that's another story :D)

Lurkers: did you change your diet (by which I mean all the stuff that you eat, not an action you undergo) for the new year?  What's your take on food/diet "challenges?"  Are you a coconut fiend as much as I am?  What do you think I should eat on February 1st?

-Nelly

Magic soup (recipe!)

So thus far in my Epic Meat Quest, I've tried a number of different ways to cook the stuff: broiling, semi-roasting (for only 15 minutes but not right under the heat source), pan-frying, and making a burger.  That's kind of a lot for just over a week after going almost 12 years without the stuff (at least I think so), but in flipping through my copy of How To Cook Everything, it became clear that there's a WHOLE lot more ways to do the deed - namely, stewing/braising, or cooking it in varying amounts of water or other liquid.  It being a totally gross and cold day filled with gray skies and slush, I figured it was the perfect time to try my hand at a nice warming beef stew.

I bought about a week's worth of meat yesterday at the local Whole Paycheck, and so far I've chosen stuff by price ($4.50/lb?  that one, please), which means that most of the stuff I end up getting is...not spoken very highly of by the various cookbook authors I consult.  I used a chunk of rump round, cut into smallish pieces, which Mark Bittman says is only good for stewing, with "good" being relative to the fact that it's "bad" for anything else.  Meh.  Tastes ok to me!  But on to the procedure:

Almost all the recipes I saw said that the way to start a really nice stew is to brown the meat first.  The recipe I started from suggested heating a crushed garlic clove in olive oil for a minute or so, then removing the garlic and adding the meat to brown slightly on all sides.  That's about how far I followed the recipe, because I was impatient and hungry.  Once the meat was...well, brown, if not perfectly browned, I went ahead and added the veggies I'd chopped (half an onion and a handful of carrot coins) along with the water and sea salt.  Left it to simmer for about 15 minutes before my sense of "I wonder how that would taste in here!" took over.

Besides the salt, I thought a little pepper would go nicely.  Then a splash of red wine vinegar, and a little balsamic as well, because I'd heard it might help soften up the meat (which was fairly tough by now).  Let it cook a little more, which did indeed help the meat soften and let off this maddening smell.  So I started tasting the broth, and it was...good, but not great.  Kinda watery.  It might have been better if I just let it keep cooking away, but patience is not for the Nelly!  Let's see if I can add anything else to the mix...

Guess what I added.

You'll never guess.

COCOA POWDER

That's right.  Just about a tablespoon, whisked in as quickly as I could manage so it didn't clump.  I know you all think I'm crazy but holy gods it was the most amazing thing ever.  It thickened the soup just enough so it wasn't gravy-like but definitely not watery any more, and gave it this incredible, tangy, almost-bitter undernote that played perfectly off the other flavors.  It.  Was.  MAGICAL.

And then I ate it all in like five minutes.  The end.

-Nelly

Money Monday 10/1

Happy Monday, you guys!  The house in the picture is an absolutely breathtaking hand-built creation of Simon Dale and Jasmine Saville, detailed in this site right here.  I want it.  Ok, maybe with an indoor toilet and a few more delineated rooms inside.  But still.  There is serious home-envy going on.

This week's questions (original post here):

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on groceries.  Meat is expensive!  But it also takes less to satisfy me, and I think I'm getting closer to the perfect steak with which to show The Man how much I lurve him.  I know he likes it medium-rare.  I'm not exactly sure what that is but I know it's somewhere between bloody and rubber.  Also, I hardly ever cook it to the rubber stage anymore, go me!
2. Today I feel just okay towards money.  I'm still waiting to get my last paycheck from the old restaurant owner (yes, that's fron November).  I call every few days and leave a message but no dice yet.  One of my employees actually had to get her father to call him and threaten legal action to get her money, and it was a lot less than what I'm trying to squeeze out of him.  Arg, I say.  Also, I researched IRAs and it turns out that the one I'd like best to get requires a minimum balance of $10,000, which I can definitely not spare right now.  Meh.  I think I'll decide to just get the highest-interest savings account I can right now, and keep on building it up.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was get told by both my sisters that I was "wise" and gave good advice.  I win at sisterhood! :D
4. I will consider this week a success if I plan ahead far enough in advance that I don't have to run over to the grocery store to buy lunch for work days.
5. I have pictures of myself as an adorable toddler eating snow directly off the ground.

The best way to start the day

...would actually be waking up next to that 6'2" better-than-an-electric-blanket heat mass I call The Man, but this'll have to do.

Coconut-crusted tomatoes, a few slices of Honeycrisp apple, and MEAT.  I've decided that trial and error (mixed with some book larnin' for when I just have NO idea what to do) is the way to go when it comes to figuring out how best to char the previously-living flesh.  That said, this bout was kind of error. 

I bought London broil (what the hell does that mean?) from WF, sliced it thinnish and then pan-fried it with coconut oil til it was brown on the outsides and still pinkish in the middle.  Unfortunately, I figured out that this particular cut is pretty damn tough when it's sliced with the grain (as the piece above is).  Lots of gnawing ensued.  But it still tasted fine!  Coconut oil is the BEST.  Maybe next time I'll slice it against the grain and even possibly broil it, as the name suggests.  I don't think I've ever broiled anything, except possibly by accident.  Thankfully, I have Irma Rombauer on my side.  I will prevail!

The tomatoes were actually pretty awesome, although the recipe definitely needs some tweaking to be really perfect.  All I did was slice them thick (index-finger-width), dry them off a bit, dip them in dried, unsulphured, unsweetened coconut (swish them around to make sure all the crevices get filled) and fry them for a few minutes each side (in coconut oil.  don't you know me by now?).  I also added a little sea salt to one side as they were cooking. 

I think I was subconsciously craving fried green tomatoes when I made this.  Compared to that, it's meh, but in its own right, it's not too bad.  I think I want more weight to the "breading" next time, and a little more savor - maybe mix it with a little almond flour, with herbs and salt added right in instead of as an afterthought?  Maybe bake them, so the crust doesn't all fall off in the pan (which it actually didn't nearly as much as I thought it would)?  And if I can find real green tomatoes (not for a while yet) it would pretty much be heaven.

Lurkers: Coconut and tomatoes is a really strange food combination that causes people to look at me askance.  What's a combo you like that's not necessarily "normal?"

-Nelly

Money Monday 3/1 (now with awesomeness!)

...which is super, SUPER belated this week.  But I'm a sucker for alliteration, so the tag stays.

This past week has been pretty fantastic.  We started the new year off with a bang and a good deed: my friends and I went to Raleigh (our capital city) to dance our patooties off and had loads of fun, then on the way back to the car (amidst a whole lot of craziness) saw a girl sitting barefoot on the side of the sidewalk, sobbing.  Turned out that she and her boyfriend, both slightly sloshed, had a tiff which ended in him storming off into the wilds of downtown, which neither of them knew very well, and leaving her sans keys (with which she simply would have taken a cab home).  My wonderful friend Martha, who can be incredibly intimidating in the friendliest way ever, got on the phone with the girl's boy and persuaded him to come on back, giving him directions on how to do so, while I provided a sweater and hugs until he finally did, which took a good half-hour or so.  But they ended up safely together, and we got the warm fuzzies, and all was good.

I also had a couple fitness/weight related successes this week.  First, I measured my waist for the first time in years.  In high school, I was about 29-30 inches; in college, that jumped to 32 or so before I didn't want to see it keep growing anymore.  A week ago (before starting Whole30) I measured at 28 inches.  YES, Tony, WITHOUT "sucking it in!" :P  I also managed, just yesterday, to do TWO completely unaided pull-ups (still kipping, though).  I AM SUPERGIRL!

This week's questions (original post here whoops, looks like Miss MPP took a day off!  Good on her.  I'll just make up my own last question then):

1.  The most I’ve spent this last week was on the Whole30 Success Guide, $39.  It was a total impulse splurge, and while it's got a lot of good information on the little finicky parts of implementing Whole9 (detailed shopping lists, for one), I probably would not have paid that much for it if I'd gotten to flip through it first.  Maybe $15 or $20, keeping in mind that I'm normally pretty cheap.  But it's still quite useful.
2. Today I feel FREAKING AWESOME towards money.  Why is that, you ask?  Because I got a major, totally unexpected windfall in the form of a LOT of savings bonds that my grandparents got for me over the years and my mom just told me about.  How much is a lot?  Well, with all of those plus my latest paycheck and some Christmas money, I just about doubled my net worth.  It'll be into 5 figures by April, and that's thinking conservatively and taking into account my tax refund.  I've decided to use most of this to open an IRA (Roth, natch), drop a nice chunk on my student loan and then go shopping with my sister, who's promised to give me comprehensive wardrobe help.  Yay!
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was TWO UNAIDED PULL-UPS IN A ROW!!!  That kept me grinning...well, I'm still grinning now :D.
4. I will consider this week a success if I do THREE unaided pull-ups in a row. 
5. One of my goals for the year ahead is to do 20 unaided dead-hang pull-ups in a row (no kipping!).

 Lurkers: Tell me something awesome.  Anything at all.  My definition of "awesome" is pretty broad.

-Nelly 

Oh hey look at that interesting headline right there!

 Maybe I'm not so crazy after all...

Breakfast FTW!

• coffee with coconut cream (intense!!)
• a bunch of pretty boring lettuce
• 1/4 avocado
• 2 eggs (nom)
• homemade salad dressing over everything

 I've started to rediscover my intense passion for avocado paired with something sour (in this case, vinegar in the dressing) and pepper.  Alone it's just kinda meh.  But these other two tastes mixed with it just makes it explode!  Try it, you guys!

We're doing Fran tonight at Crossfit.  I haven't done this workout before, and it's one of the worldwide benchmark ones that everybody and their mother do.  Kinda nervous...

-Nelly

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I ATE MEAT

omgzzz!

Yes.  That's right.  For the first time in well over a decade.  It was grass-fed local ground beef that I (at Amam's advice) mixed with egg and made into a hamburger-kinda-thing.  I think I overcooked it like yeah whoa but it was still pretty tasty (the coconut oil I used to cook it probably helped.  stuff smells aMAZing).  With it: avocado with paprika and leftover spinach, fried up in the same pan as the burger.

It's...strange.  I'd thought it through over and over and convinced myself that I was ethically and morally ok with it (which I really am), but it's just...almost a little bit of a letdown.  Maybe that's just my cooking, though.  

 It's ok, though, because I have this book to help me out!  Joanne et al, I promise to try out all your delicious flesh-filled recipes as soon as I master the hamburger.  It might take a while.  I've got a lot of lost time to make up for.  But I've promised The Man a homemade steak dinner the next time he visits NC, and it needs to be PERFECT.  So naturally I will have to practice a LOT.



Lurkers: any tips, tricks, hints or recipes to give me?  I need a lot of help here so give me whatever you got! :)

-Nelly