Friday, April 23, 2010

Buy Local!

Random non-meal related post...I know I promised to go back to detailing my meals for you guys, and I will, starting tonight...I already packed my camera to take photos of my eats tonight! I have a lovely dinner scheduled at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, Mexico Lindo, right around the corner from my house!

So for now, no photos...but here is what I have eaten today. Breakfast was my usual oatmeal with almonds and pumpkin butter with a half a scoop of protein powder (YUM!) and I originally brought broccoli slaw with mandarin oranges to enjoy for my lunch with a bowl of organic applesauce with granola and cinnamon for dessert but decided that I wanted to hit up my local farmer's market for some produce today seeing as how I have not been shopping since Jay and I got back from DC and my fridge is looking EMPTY. Soooo...the market that I go to, Mann's Orchard in Methuen, always has a lunch menu going on so after checking out today's menu online and seeing a D-licious sounding roasted turkey sandwich with avocado and muenster cheese, the broccoli slaw took a back seat ;) I still ate the applesauce and granola as an appetizer though and damn was it yummy ;) I ate only half the sandwich because it was kind of big for me and was actually disappointed. The sandwich tasted really bland and just blah despite all of the wonderful sounding flavors. I was half expecting the bread to be toasted which it wasn't...the best part of the sandwich was actually the pickle on the side sadly. Typically I love their lunch offerings, but today was a definite miss. That being said, I scored a TON of produce for only $26!!! I got:

2 avocados
1 bunch of radishes
1 lb bag of spinach
2 lb bag of romaine
4 Cortland apples
3 oranges
3 kiwis
1 cucumber
1 lb strawberries
1 bunch of bananas

I briefly considered buying a mango and some pears as well but mango chopping is a little too much effort than I am willing to do today. I used to buy mangoes a lot and chop them when Jay and I lived in Braintree, but now I get them prechopped at Trader Joe's and they are delicious and cheap so that's how I roll with mangoes. I didn't get the pears because I had already bought so much other fruit that I didn't want anything going bad before I could eat it so I will save the pears for next week most likely because they did look pretty tasty!

So relating to my post title, I have to tell all of my readers that I think it's really important to buy local produce when you can. Produce in the supermarket comes from thousands of miles away and was picked when it wasn't ripe, therefore, most likely artificially ripened. It's also important to support our local farmer's so that they can stay in the business of offering us the freshest produce. There. That's my green-friendly lesson for the day.

Now it's off to the hospital to get a CT scan on my face. In case you didn't already know, I have been sick for a month now with severe congestion, sinus pain, headaches, etc. and have already gone through a round of antibiotics with no success. So my doctor thinks that it's possible I have a chronic fungal infection in my sinuses and thus ordered the CT scan for me today, so think good thoughts!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Revival!

I am back blog friends! For all three of you that read and actually care ;)

I decided to start this whole food blogging thing all over again. Not necessarily to make myself accountable for what I eat but just as an outlet to talk about food (which Jay says I talk about too much). So no pictures today since this decision just came upon me but breakfast was a green smoothie...in the mix:

1 giant spoonful of Fage 0% Greek Yogurt
1/2 scoop of Amazing Grass
1/2 scoop of strawberry protein powder
1 cup of frozen organic mango
1 whole banana
2 heaping handfuls of spinach
splash of water

Unfortunately I am not lucky enough like the other food bloggers I read every day to own a Vitamix (a girl can dream, there is one in my future, but it may be distant future) so it takes me a few minutes to make my smoothies but they are always worth the effort.

Between breakfast and lunch I had a bowl of oatmeal with almonds, 1/2 scoop of protein powder, and of course, my beloved pumpkin butter. After searching half the globe for this stuff, I finally found some at a local farm stand near my work. And I bought five jars. True story. You never know when they will run out and I cannot LIVE without pumpkin butter.

Lunch was a delicious chicken salad wrap from the same farm stand mentioned above that had fresh cranberries and walnuts. I actually had forgotten that I saved half of the wrap from lunch yesterday and brought a lunch from home, but that lunch is now actually going to be dinner.

Dinner will be leftover orange-glazed tofu and quinoa with a side of spiralized zucchini with a dressing of Trader Joe's awesome salsa. I love love love that salsa. I eat it straight out of the container when no one is looking...and sometimes even when they are...what do I care? It's healthy! And yes, I spiralized my zucchini! I was actually very excited about purchasing a spiralizer (since I can't afford any of the other high tech raw foodie gadgets) and was extremely pleased with how easy to use and clean it was. I will be spiralizing all of my veggies now! Well probably not ALL of them...but definetly the zucchini at least. I also think I have some leftover wheat chocolate cookies that I made last week that I can have for dessert :) Those cookies were one of my experiments that was not quite a fail, but definetly not a win. They taste delicious, but are very crumbly, so I will have to tweak the recipe a bit to make them bind together a little better. That same night I was playing food scientist with the cookies, I also gave black bean brownies a whirl. FAIL. Of epic proportions. I can eat just about anything, but I could not even eat these. The whole batch went in the garbage. Ick.

Anywhoo...Jay and I are off to beautiful DC for the weekend! For reference, this is what I'm bringing along for snacks/meals while we are away to ensure I stick to my 2/3 raw diet. Of course, my 1/3 cooked diet on Saturday is going to include lunch at ESPN zone in a lounge chair with a big plate of fries with a side of sour cream ;) You know you're jealous! Mind you all the food I'm listing here is not just for me, I am planning on sharing the granola bars and mixed fruit with Jay on the drive.

6 granola bars
4 containers of baby carrots
3 containers of mixed fruit (oranges and strawberries)
4 apples
4 bananas
1 container of hummus
1 big container of chopped veggies for my sandwiches
pitas
small container of mozzarella
3 bowls of oatmeal
1 Jar of pumpkin butter

I will probably not be blogging from the road unless Jay brings his computer, but I will take pictures of all my food for you guys while I am away, I promise!