Yesterday's Eats

All in all, yesterday was a good eats day. Today hasn't started off well but I'm going to take hold of that now and eat well the rest of the day.

Yesterday I had my usual breakfast:



But I added grits and a clementine. One of my friends, MamaPodkayne, had wondered about my earlier complaint about clementines not being as flavorful as oranges. She will be happy to know that the one in this photo was full of juicy sweetness and worth every single bite. It was delicious!

A note about eggs. I try to get organic eggs. Lately I've had some bad luck with a brand sold here called "Be Family". The quality has not been consistent and many times I have cracked one only to be overwhelmed by the smell of fish. As a result, I've stopped buying that brand and now buy my grocery store's Cage Free eggs. For years, I have HATED to eat the yolk and would only eat the white when I fried an egg but the Cage Free and organic egg yolks taste amazing. There's no bite to them as in a mass-produced egg. Also, check this out:


Look how high that yolk sits. A regular egg yolk is much flatter. These are a gorgeous color, too!

Ok, back to what I ate yesterday. For lunch I hit the rotisserie chicken again for what I think is the last meal I'm going to get out of it. After tearing some romaine leaves, I topped them with some chicken, grapes, green olives, and a few chopped pecan pieces. Add to that some bacon bits and a touch of ranch dressing and you have the salad I ate for lunch. With it I had some of those tiny toasts you can buy at the store spread with some herbed goat cheese. My god, that was so good. The cheese was mild and so incredibly creamy. It was a very sensory lunch!


Now, that lunch lasted for a while but by late afternoon I needed a little something so I fixed this:


Hot tea and a Le Petit Ecolier cookie. I think that means "schoolboy" in French. THey're really good. Crisp cookie, not too sweet, topped with milk, dark, or white chocolate. Yum!

By Dinnertime, I was tired and decided to heat up one of the frozen meals my mom had prepared for me, Beef Stroganoff.


I had to cook the noodles but the oven did all the work on the rest!

I splurged a bit and induglged a desire for something buttery and had a cherry turnover with a tiny bit of vanilla ice cream.

Truth be told, I shouldn't have eaten all of it. Half would have been more than enough. Next time, I'll split one with my hubby, but this is all about learning how to eat in proper portions. Now I know better for next time!

Today's going to be kind of crazy because we're having a play date during my normal lunchtime so I may have to eat something earlier than normal but check back tomorrow to see!

Yesterday's Eats

For those of you who are new, let me give a brief refresher on what I'm doing. I read a book called, The Fat Fallacy by Will Clower and it completely changed the way I look at the food I eat. GET THIS BOOK or get the updated version. You won't be sorry. It's all about looking at the French model of eating. Good quality ingredients, rich meals, in small portions. We eat too much and we eat poor quality food and it's really taking a toll on our health. So much of our food is filled with chemicals and we need to take control of what we eat and give our bodies as organic and as wholesome food as we possibly can. This is not easy by any means. With the economy in its current state, food prices have soared which makes organic food that much more expensive. Also, it can be difficult to find time to prepare things from scratch when one leads a busy life. But I say this to you, isn't it worth it to make the time in order to live a better quality life? Isn't it worth the extra expense to buy organic when you can? Start small and pick a few things to buy organic. Work your way into it gradually. Another book I'd like to recommend is To Buy or Not To Buy Organic by Cindy Burke. She has done a lot of research and has comprised a helpful list of the things that are important to buy in their organic form. It's a wonderful guide to organic shopping and I highly recommend you purchase it!

Okay!! Now that I've gotten that out of the way, on to what I ate yesterday! It was a much better day for me eatswise. Breakfast was very simple, a French roll and an egg, served alongside a glass of whole milk. Mmmmmm. Whole milk is the only way to go!



After breakfast, my sister and I dropped our kids off with our mom and went hunting for a cookie cutter in the shape of a beer mug. Bridget at Bake at 350 made some freaking adorable cookies for St. Patty's Day and I thought it would be fun to make them to take to my mother-in-law's party on Saturday. Well, Greensboro, NC is not a hotbed of baking fanatics apparently because I couldn't find one. We had rhinos but no beer mugs. Go figure. After all that walking I was tired and just wanted to fix an easy lunch. There was still some rotisserie chicken in the fridge so I cut off some breast meat and put it between two slices of whole wheat bread and mayonnaise. Easy Peasy.



Later in the afternoon, I did snack on some baked pita chips and roasted red pepper hummus. Yum!

Dinner was delicious. I was finally feeling really good yesterday and I was able to get in the kitchen and cook an entire meal. We had some pork chops that had to be cooked or frozen yesterday and it had been so long since we'd had pork that I decided to cook them. They were loin chops, thick cut, on the bone. I seasoned them with a touch of Lawry's seasoned salt and some fresh ground pepper on both sides and then placed them in a skillet with about 1 Tbs of olive oil. While these were cooking, I boiled some yukon gold potatoes that I had earlier chopped and placed in a boiler with some salted water. When the pork chops were done, I placed them on a plate and covered them with a tent of aluminum foil to keep them warm while I prepared a sauce to go with them. First, I poured about a 1/2 cup of chicken broth into the pan to deglaze it. White wine would be another good choice for that but I didn't have any. Once all the brown bits had been released from the bottom of the pan, I added a tsp of butter, some salt and pepper, a 1/4 cup of cream, and 1 or 2 Tbs of capers. I let this come together over Low heat while I mashed the potatoes. With the pork and potatoes I also served some romaine lettuce topped with a vinaigrette. It was DEEE-lish!



One thing I'm going to have to concentrate on is small portion sizes and eating slowly. I got out of the habit while I was recovering and now it's a challenge. But! I did it once and I know I can again.

Thanks for reading!

Today's Eats

Whew, I had to dust those words off before putting them in the title bar, it's been so long since I posted that here! Well, today was my fresh start, my clean slate and it seemed like I had gotten off on the right foot. Until I ate those Doritos. And that microwave butter popcorn for lunch. BUt I rallied late in the day and saved myself by having a healthy dinner of rotisserie chicken and my favorite brussel sprouts with bacon and cranberries. Not a stellar first day out but I'm not going to punish myself over it. I've spent the last several weeks eating a bunch of junk and it's so hard to stop it cold turkey.

Here is breakfast:


Sean bought some clementines at the grocery store and, while they are blissfully easy to peel, these don't have much flavor. I really prefer the strong, pungent orange.

Lunch was, as I stated above, doritos and microwave butter popcorn. I don't have a photo of that because, as you can imagine, my fingers were covered in Dorito dust and grease from the popcorn butter and I wasn't about to touch my camera with those!

Here is my photo of dinner:



It was simple, easy, healthful, and delicious. I think tomorrow I'm going to make some chicken salad out of what's left of the rotisserie chicken. Also, tomorrow, I'm going to throw away the snacky foods so I'm not tempted to eat them!

Haven't cooked in WEEKS!

God, can you believe how long it's been since I prepared a decent meal for myself? I sure can't and this week, that's all going to change. My recovery hasn't been as quick as I would like but it feels like I'm finally in a place where I can cook something other than the frozen dinners my mom cooked for me weeks ago. They've all been delicious but Sean and I are ready for something different. Today is going to be spent looking through some cookbooks and planning out a tentative menu for the week. I'm still under a "no lifting over 10lbs" restriction so grocery shopping is a challenge but I'm determined to get back to normal this week!

My meals lately have been:

(B) one or two eggs, fried in butter
one slice of all natural, nitrate-free bacon
a cup of tea

(L) sandwich and chips

(D) frozen meal like baked spaghetti, swedish meatballs, greek chicken
rice or potatoes (not with spaghetti!)
salad, green beans, brussel sprouts, or broccoli

Have you tried any dressings by Brianna? I'm totally addicted to Brianna's New American Dressing. If you can find it, try it. It's absolutely delicious.

My weight right now is hovering around 197 and I'd like to see a nice drop in that by the Fourth of July. Since my surgery, my waist size went up two inches and I need to ask my Doc if that's swelling or actual weight gain. Keep your fingers crossed that it's swelling! LOL

Please check back tomorrow night or Tuesday morning for the latest and greatest update. Two more weeks until I get the all-clear from my doctor! Yay!!!

Making Plans

Since I've been laid up recovering, I've taken the opportunity to look through some cookbooks. Some old, some new. Here are the three that I've been really into for the past few days:



It's been nice to have the luxury of lying around looking through cookbooks and as a result I've found many things that I'd like to make as soon as I'm feeling up to it.

The American Classics cookbook is full of recipes that are considered typical American fare but have been tested in a gazillion different variations in order to find the "best". From this cookbook, I'm going to try their recipe for Green Bean Casserole because out of all the non-chichi dishes in the world that one is my all time fave.

Baking is a book authored by Dorie Greenspan and was recommended on a website that I stalk called Culinary Concoctions b Peabody. So many scrumptious things get posted on Peabody's site so when she recommended this cookbook, I knew I had to have it. It arrived yesterday and I devoured every word I could. There are tons of recipes I want to try but most notably one titled, "Snickery Squares". Good grief, it just looks delicious!

In My French Kitchen my obsession with all things French is fed with tantalizing recipes galore. I think the one I'm going to try first from here is a side dish called, "Cabbage Galette". It's looks golden and delectable and I can't wait until I feel well enough to try this recipe.

On a different note, yesterday my husband walked in the door after work with SEVEN boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Seriously! Look!

You can see that we've already busted into two boxes...Oh! We also ordered cookies from a girl up the street so then we'll be swimming in cookies! Gluttony is an ugly thing. LOL

A recent discovery here has been prunes. They were recommended to me as a way to keep things moving post-surgery and as luck would have it, I discovered that they are actually very tasty. Healthy and tasty? Excellent!



Well, I'm hoping that by this weekend, I will be back to normal with cooking at least, even if I'm not allowed to load the dishwasher. Sean will just have to do that part. For now, I'm going to settle back on the sofa with my books and one of these:

Hey, a girl has to take advantage of the circumstances!

Slowly but surely making my way back

A week ago yesterday, I had a hysterectomy. The first few days were pretty rough but I'm starting to feel so much better and am feeling a little antsy about getting back to normal. For the last several days, my mother has been staying here and taking care of me and she's a phenomenal cook so we've been talking about food A LOT! :) It's really helped me get in the mindset of preparing meals and enjoying it at the same time. So while I continue to recover, I'm reading cookbooks and gearing up for the day when I can actually stand on my feet long enough to cook a meal. It can't happen soon enough for me.

Bon Appetit's March issue has some delicious looking things that I want to try, like brining my own Corned Beef. My husband's family are all Irish-American so Corned Beef is something I'd like to be able to cook well. My MIL's is delicious and, even though I cook one every year, mine are never as good as hers.

I've been tagged for a meme by Bridget at Bake at 350 and since meme's are fun and I don't have any food posts for you, here are my answers to the quiz. Well, first here are the rules:


1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

I'm going to break rules number 3 and 4 because at the moment, my fuzzy brain cannot think of five people to tag. However, if you read this post and would like to participate, PLEASE do and leave a note and link to your blog so we can come read all about you!!

Five Facts About ME

1. I'm a silly-minded person. My mental development lurched to a halt somewhere around 16 yrs old and so I still find silly things very funny. Just yesterday, my mom and I were sitting here and I was reading a cookbook for boys and girls from 1957. In it there is a description of the difference between wieners and frankfurters:

Wieners are -
short and skinny

Frankfurters are -
long and plump

Well, sue me! My mind went to it's dirty place and we laughed for several minutes about it. Needless to say I was sore afterwards but it was hilarious!!

2. On that note, I will confess that one of my dreams is to take a US Hot Dog tour. Hot dogs are my absolute favorite thing to eat. Foodies, calm down. I know it's not chichi or classy but they are damn good and it's one of my goals to one day explore the regional versions of my all-time fave.

3. My sister and I are married to brothers. Yes, it's a little weird but we're all such good friends that it's wonderful at the same time. My husband had to go out of town and leave me recovery from surgery on Sunday. My mom stayed with me until yesterday. Well, my Brother-in-law was sweet and offered to pickup a pizza for me and the boys since I'm not yet allowed to drive. When he got there with the pizza, I opened the door to let him in and he was standing there with the pizza AND a red rose for me. It was SO Sweet!!!!! I completely adore him. He felt sad because my hubby and I were spending Valentine's Day apart. Isn't that just nice??

4. I'm not a great cook. I think I do all right but I'm not going to be one of these people who create a bunch of fabulous recipes and end up with their own show on FoodTV . Although I do think I have a great personality for TV. Hey! FoodTV! You listening out there? Need anyone with a great personality but little training and talent for cooking? I'm your girl! Contact me at unschoolingwhimsigal@gmail.com for booking arrangements. LOL

5. I have tons of celebrity crushes, which actually brings us full circle to #1. The 16 year old in me is still boy crazy about stars. However, I don't go for the typical gorgeous guy. No, no, no. Funny is what gets me going. Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, just to name a few! I love funny guys!

Thanks Bridget for choosing me! I LOVE your blog!!!


Well, that's about all I can manage for today. Thanks for sticking with me and I hope to be posting some good eats AND trying to lose weight very very soon!

Love,

Evie

I had surgery but I will be back

I am recuperating from major surgery but plan to be back posting as soon as I can.



Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Evie