By 100 Days of Real Food, on September 2nd, 2010
What a way to cap off our more than 3-month journey of eating real food and real food only! At the very last minute my husband’s boss said he would be in town and wanted to take the two of us out to dinner (our choice!). After scrambling to find a babysitter we decided that we’d love to be treated to a meal at one of our favorite local restaurants…Upstream. Since we hadn’t been there since well before starting our real food journey, I decided to call in advance to inquire about their menu (and to also spare my husband any embarrassment in front of his boss!).
Whenever we are out and armed with all of our food questions we seem to always end up speaking with someone from the kitchen (rightfully so). And things were no different with Upstream because they knew right away where to send me. I was lucky enough to speak to a chef named Charlie that totally made my day! Not only was he incredibly knowledgeable and eager to help me (which I so appreciate since we are a tad bit difficult these days), but once he saw the challenge in trying to avoid white flour and sugar he made a fabulous proposal. He suggested that my husband and I choose whatever we wanted off the menu and he would make it real food approved for us. What a treat!
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By 100 Days of Real Food, on August 30th, 2010
For the first time in 3 months I had a drink from Starbucks today! I must thank a friend who, during her 10-day pledge, learned Starbucks offers honey as an  alternate sweetener. Without knowing that I would have never stepped foot in there. The thing is, I am not a regular old coffee drinker. I (used to) like their highly sweetened white chocolate mocha, and I knew I couldn’t go anywhere near that during our pledge. So armed with this new information, I wanted to try to order a drink sweetened with honey that would hopefully still taste good. I ended up getting a latté (which is simply espresso and milk….a mocha is also made with espresso and milk, but has the sweet chocolaty syrups added too) and asked them to add two little packets of their honey. It was surprisingly delicious! I do wonder though if I would have liked it this much before our 100-day pledge? You see…over the last 90 something days, our palettes have changed!
I can honestly say that the change in our palettes has been one of my favorite outcomes of doing this pledge. Not only do I now think a little bit of honey in my mocha is just as satisfying as 2 to 3 times as much of the flavored sugary syrup I used to love, but my kids will actually eat PLAIN yogurt now too! Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on August 28th, 2010
Wow….only eight days left! I almost can’t believe it. Although we don’t plan to change the way we eat very much (especially at home) it will be nice to have a little less pressure on me to carry this out perfectly. This is on my mind after the second time in a week that a recipe I planned to make had to come to a screeching halt due to rule-breaking ingredients. I guess that’s what happens when I pull from my “pre-100 day” catalog of recipes. I have really been craving some flavors from New Orleans (my in-laws live in The Big Easy so we’ve been spoiled with their yummy cuisine on many occasions). So with a few substitutions in mind I thought I would be able to pull together my husband’s aunt’s gumbo recipe.
Originally I was thinking that I would just sub whole-wheat flour for white flour when I made the roux. And even though I love to have sausage in our gumbo I would just have to settle with leaving it out since we recently discovered our source for local sausage uses sugar. Then I went searching at Earthfare for a can of “stewed tomatoes” which as it turns out definitely has more than five ingredients. And Earthfare said they didn’t have any fresh crabmeat on hand, and they don’t carry crabmeat in a can because it doesn’t meet their requirements (and if an entire grocery store chain deems something is “bad” would I want to eat it anyway?). I’d already bought some of the other ingredients by this point so I thought maybe I could make my own stewed tomatoes. But, then what about the crab? And at what point do I stop jumping through hoops just to make one damn recipe?! Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on August 25th, 2010
See this beauty of a vegetable that we got in our Poplar Ridge Farm CSA box? I didn’t even know what the heck it was at first. Once I figured out that it was an eggplant, a little bit of excitement was lost because I don’t recall ever cooking (and probably barely ever eating) an eggplant in my life. So I settled on the idea of making some lasagna with it. It was the day after our fun dinner club evening, and I was still feeling a little out of it (okay, hungover) so I decided to wait until the very last minute to act on this plan. With our children’s hunger growing by the minute I finally moseyed on over to the grocery store at 5:45 P.M. to obtain mozzarella, parmesan, and ricotta cheeses for the dish. This is when things suddenly came to a halt because I learned that all brands of ricotta cheese (at our grocery store) contain at least SIX ingredients! Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on August 20th, 2010
It feels like we have been on a rotation of breakfast meals around here lately. We even had breakfast for dinner, which I think is one of the easiest meals to throw together at the end of the day. You have to admit it takes virtually no time at all (and not much skill either) to fry up some eggs.
We normally have granola cereal in the morning (and my husband and I both agree we love it so much that it’s hard to imagine ever getting tired of it). Not to mention that a big hearty bowl of oats, nuts, and seeds will hold me over beautifully until lunchtime. I pretty much don’t eat an ounce of food from breakfast until lunch and most of the time I am not even hungry until at least 1 or 2 o’clock. So you might understand why it was such a sad moment for me when two mornings this week we were completely out of granola. It’s all my own fault of course since I am the one who makes it, but that still didn’t prevent me from being disappointed (and feeling a little off my normal fullness schedule). Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on August 17th, 2010
There is no question that this has been an incredibly enlightening experience for us so far, but at the same time who wouldn’t be ready for it to end? The reality is that we will still eat very much the same as we do now, but on day 101 we will have the ability to make exceptions as we see fit. For example, just tonight, right after we ripped open a package of prosciutto from the farmer’s market I noticed the label said it was cured with brown sugar. I guess once I got the locally raised meat part checked off my list I forgot to double-check the ingredients…what a bummer! Now I have to find a lucky recipient for our $8.50 package of meat.
Lots of people have been asking us what we will do when this is over so I thought I would make a list of other exceptions that we plan to dive into after the 100 days… Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on August 14th, 2010
I absolutely love leftovers. I know some people are not fans and all I have to say about that is I do not understand! Why wouldn’t one want a delicious homemade meal that they don’t have to cook? Maybe the non-loving leftover person doesn’t do the cookin g in the first place? Well, I do an obscene amount of cooking around here and if having leftovers means I am off the hook then I am all over it.
Today was the perfect day to have leftovers. We were very busy with a playdate, errands, and an out-of-town guest. It would have sent me over the edge if I also had to prepare a delicious homemade meal for dinner. So I was in luck that I made a huge batch of chili and whole-grain cornbread last night. I agree it is a little random to eat chili when the heat index is approaching 100 degrees, but when I brought that point up to my husband he said, “Well, what do they do in Texas?” So we decided our cravings didn’t have to match the weather, and we chowed down on some (mostly bean with a little bit of ground pork) chili. My picky daughter (who probably likes 1 out of 10 new things I give her) Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on August 11th, 2010
What does one do when everyone is hungry for lunch and you are completely out of sandwich bread and tortillas/wraps? After being away with my girlfriends for the weekend I wasn’t surprised to find a somewhat empty fridge and pantry upon my return. So after putting a little thought into it …we came up with peanut butter and jelly on crackers! I have raved about Triscuits over and over again, but there is another box of crackers that we also love to buy: 100% Whole-Wheat Matzos (be careful because they sell Matzos made from white flour, too). They are in the International section of my regular (non-health food) grocery store and only contain two ingredients: unbleached whole-wheat flour and water. So as far as the health of the cracker goes, these are probably even one step above Triscuits since they don’t contain any oil or salt. I love to make a little breakfast dish for my girls with Matzos crackers too…more on that later though! Continue Reading »
By 100 Days of Real Food, on August 9th, 2010
We are normally only around rule-breaking foods for brief periods of time, and distracting my children from those foods usually serves as a pretty big distraction for me as well. This weekend was a totally different story though. For the first time in over a year I went away with my girlfriends for the weekend…no kids and no husbands. I felt that packing my food for the trip was fairly easy (compared to preparing something for my whole family), but roaming around the beach house with forbidden foods out for display all weekend proved to be a little harder than I thought.
Each and every time I walked through the kitchen I had to remind myself to not reach into one of the many bags of chips or pretzels,  not to sample one of the dips that were sitting out next to them, and especially not to dig into the little dish of chocolates (or tray of brownies for that matter). I also had to turn down the margaritas that my girlfriends were making. Wow, what a weekend to really test my own personal limits!
Luckily I brought some of my favorite foods to munch on (and to share) to help curb any unwanted cravings. Continue Reading »
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