Grilled Salade Nicoise

Tonight for supper we enjoyed the most beautiful salad I have ever seen, the lovely Salade Nicoise.

Borscht...nothing rhymes with Borscht.

Borscht is a Ukranian soup made of beets, cabbage, tomatoes, honey and vinegar. I know what you are all thinking that sounds AMAZING. I started off by peeling and grating 7 beets. When I was done, a good portion of my kitchen and myself were stained a lovely shade of purplish red. Soon the aroma was wafting through my house. The soup is probably the least appealing looking concoction one could come up with, but I must say it did not taste as bad as it looked. I wouldn't go as far as to say I would eat an entire bowl or that I will be making it any time in the future, but it was interesting to try. Carrie on the other hand liked it very much...as long as she didn't look at it.

And one more...

Okay I know I have a lot of updates in 1 day, that means I either have many thoughts or too much free time. I am thinking today about how glad I am we are doing this. I am making and trying so many foods that I would never have even considered before. It is intimidating to go through the store looking for foods I have never heard of to make dish combinations I couldn't comprehend putting together, but it has been very rewarding. They aren't nearly as scary when you start doing them, taking them one step at a time. We have been lucky and haven't had any big flops yet, but tomorrow may take care of that. I am trying my hand at Borcht and for those that do not know, it is a beet soup. I have mixed feelings about beets. I have never craved a beet. A bite is fine, but I am not sure about an entire soup of them. Carrie is having fantasies that we will fall in love with it and the soup will be warmly remembered by our children and the recipe handed down for generations to come. I am bit more skeptical.

Temptation cooking

On day 5 I have officially lost 8 pounds. I am happy to see a bit of a loss, especially considering all the great food I have gotten to eat. I didn't get any exercise in today due to all the rain, I will pretend to be sad for Carries sake. I had a big temptation this evening. I baked my very favorite chocolate chip and m&m cookies to send with my husband because he is going to work on a cabin. I made it through the entire baking process without licking my fingers or the bowl. I baked them all and then when they were all finished I sat down. Then they started to call to me from the counter. I fell to temptation and took 1 bite of a cookie. It was good, but I decided not worth it to eat the whole thing. It tasted very sweet to me and it is my hope that this is my taste buds changing and not due to a flaw in the assembly of them.

The above picture is my dear little jelly bean eating her squash. She loved it and ate 4 helpings. Sadly the asparagus sat uneaten. We will keep on trying or she may just decide to live on fruit, squash and sweet potatoes.

This amazing meal was Tandoori Chicken, Moo Shoo Spring Rolls and Indian Brown Rice. It was very delicious! A couple of the kids were thrown off my the texture of the spring roll wrappers, but I really liked them. They were filled with chicken, red and napa cabage, onions and were dipped in avacado wasabi dip.

Strange Happenings

As many of my friends may know, I have a serious aversion to all foods healthy. I always choose the most unhealthy, high fat option available to me. I have some ideas as to why this happens, but I am not positive. That has always hindered me in making real changes. Something very strange happened to me today. I was eating a chicken soup that was very good and I started thinking about how excited I was for soup again tomorrow! Don't get me wrong, I like soup, but have never in my life craved a broth soup. I like creamy soups, likely because they are worse for me. Maybe I am rounding the corner where I will start to crave healthier food. I pray that is the case. Still the most difficult part is turning out to be portion control. It is an area I need to overcome if I want to continue being successful in my new way of eating.

Living with Carrie and her family has been great. She is very tolerant of all of my complaining. She forces me to walk with her and doesn't even throw me into the lake after I complained the entire way. She is also the gourmet of the two of us. She spends hours putting together the most amazing meals, while mine are all under an hour in prep so I can return to my sedentary lifestyle as quickly as possible.

Day two in paradise

Today has been much better than yesterday. I seem to be adjusting to the lack of soda, sweets and white flower as well as could be expected. That is more than my poor family. My husband left work early to come home and sleep. My poor daughter has embarked on a hunger strike that does not appear to be ending any time soon. She wanders the house crying out for "cookies...cookies...cookies" in her most pathetic voice. My son eats two bites of every meal and tells me he is ready for dessert. I keep telling myself that we will all adjust eventually. Tomorrow should be much better. On top of all this healthy eating, Carrie forced me to go for a walk this evening. I wheezed for a good 20 minutes when we got back. She tells me we have to go again tomorrow...

We had some delicious meals today. One of the side dishes is pictured above, Mediteranean Veggies. I also made a Feta Tomato Spinach stuffed Chicken and a carrot salad for supper. Carrie made an amazing Minestrone for lunch.

Thankfully the first day is coming to an end. To say it has been difficult is an understatement. The lunch was good, but that is also about the time I started to feel miserable. I am exhausted and have a headache. After lunch we headed off to Church at Mike and Jodi's followed by my nephews birthday party. I sat through church smelling all the great food cooking. I passed up all of it for my Gorgonzola Salad, which was good but my will power was fading. Then right about my breaking point, Jodi emerged with 3 kinds of cake and some cookies from Grandma. I left for a walk.

Day One

Today is the start of my new eating life style. Last night, armed with a grocery list 4 pages long, Carrie and I went to do our shopping for the week. Once in the store, we spent a solid 2 hours in only the fresh produce. My cart was brimming with foods promising health and happiness. We zipped through the other sections of the store taking hardly anything else. After shelling out more for a week of groceries than many people in the world make in an entire year, we went off to have our final fast food indulgence.

After Carrie arrived with her family, we plotted out our next days meals. We decided on Steel Cut Oats for breakfast, Chickpea Burgers for lunch and Pear Gorgonzola Salad for supper. Just to test our diligence we have a child's birthday party tonight where we will have to say no to an array of delicious desserts.

Breakfast was my first experience with steel cut oats. We soaked them overnight and Carrie added Cinnamon and Ginger this morning. They were a bit plain, but I did like them...which is good since they are on our breakfast menu several times a week from this day forward. Now I am off to assist with the assembly of the "burgers".

Bread?

I decided to get a jump start and buy some of the bread that will be the new staple in our house starting Sunday, a whole grain sprouted bread. If it were not in a bag labeled "Bread", I may not have been able to tell that it was in the same family as my favorite soft white bread. In fact after smelling it, I am quite sure that it is not related in any way to white bread. I didn't want to overwhelm myself all at once so fed it to my children to see how they reacted to the bread. After they finished sucking all the jelly off and driving their toy cars over the top of it, they ate it without complaint. Tomorrow I may even give it a try myself.

Required Reading

As a first step to purging my system of sugar, I decided to start by purging my wallet of all that pesky cash weighing me down. All the books are very helpful, especially In Defense of Food.

In The Beginning

What started as a late night conversation between Carrie (my aunt/cousin) and I about why we can't seem to make real changes in our diet, now seems to be taking shape into something more concrete. I have been reading about our culture and its relationship to food for quite some time now. The basic idea that we eat too much processed and not enough real food, has taken hold in my mind. The problem is the cravings for blue cheese burgers and french fries with ranch have a stronghold in my heart.

We will soon embark on a great experiment. Carrie and her family will be living with us for 8 days to attempt to make a real change in our diets. We are currently working our way through a stack of whole food cookbooks in preparation of the big day, which will begin in 2 weeks. I have heard if you eat this way, you actually change your tastes and cravings. I must admit that while I sip my ice cold coke and stare at a recipe for Luscious Beet Salad with Toasted Pumpkin seeds, I feel a twinge of doubt.