Curry times two.

I rarely make enough portions of a meal to have substantial leftovers. I cut recipes in half or thirds or whatever, just to avoid having food that’s going to sit in the refrigerator. I usually make enough of whatever we have for dinner so that Matt can have another serving for lunch the next day, but it’s my personal philosophy that leftovers are gross and can kill you.

What? That’s totally logical. BACTERIA, PEOPLE. It grows. Plus, our fridge stinks. So there you go.

But last night,  I made a gigantic pot of Zucchini/Chickpea/Tomato Curry from Eat, Drink, and be Vegan. It has a real name but all of those components are in it, so if you have EDBV, you should be able to use your deductive skills to find it.

Which I would recommend. Because it’s major.

It’s got pretty much everything I would ever want from a curry: chickpeas, red potatoes (I subbed these in for sweet potatoes), zucchini, spices, a nice tomato base. Matt was also pretty into it, so even though I was worried at first about what we’d do with all the leftovers, we ended up polishing the whole batch (”4-6 servings” according to Dreena Burton) in two nights. Not bad. We had it with Brown Basmati rice, which is really good. I think the company is RiceSelect, and I’ve heard they make a whole wheat orzo, as well. And I’m all over that, so hopefully it’s not just a rumor.

Also - I went to the gym and I did not ride the bike. I hit the Arc Trainer and managed to stick with it for 40 minutes, when my toe got kind of numb and I had to quit to walk the indoor track for a while and then lift in the weight room, aka, the dude section. I hate the way guys at the campus gym lift weights. They go way too fast, they’re always yelling at each other (COME ON, MAN, YOU CAN DO TWO MORE REPS), sharing stores about getting food poisoning from eating raw eggs, and at least once during every trip to the gym, I am convinced that one of them is in labor because of the way he’s grunting. Honestly. Nothing should hurt like that.

There was only one other woman in the area, and she was doing bicep curls with 40 pound weights. Is that normal? Because I don’t think I can do that.

Anyway, the point is.

With all of that activity and weight room anxiety, plus the fact that I spent five hours cleaning and organizing this morning, I was starving for dinner, so the leftovers actually worked out nicely. We also just took a walk because it’s unseasonably nice outside, and now I’m hungry again. LUCKILY, I happened to buy some delicious soy ice cream today with a gift certificate to People’s (thanks, Tara!). And now I’m going to eat it.

I hate exercise bikes

I just do. Sometimes I’ll hit a bike for 15 minutes as part of my cardio if I have a really good book to read, but usually I avoid them at all costs. So, I was in a pretty bad mood after having to bike for 35 minutes, even if I did follow it up with walking, something I actually enjoy. But my poor little blue toe can’t handle anything else. So I’m going to have to soldier through, I guess. It did make me insanely tired, so I guess that’s… something.

I got home after 7:00, hungry and wanting chickpeas. I don’t know why these things happen to me, but I was so happy that I wasn’t craving cake that I went with it. I have ingredients for a chickpea curry, but that seemed like it would take too long, so I went with Heidi Swanson’s Lemon-scented Quinoa Salad again. Still good. This time, I had it with a spinach and carrot salad, with some Italian dressing I found in the refrigerator that was only one day past its expiration date! SCORE!

So far, I’ve resisted having dessert. I’m quite proud. It doesn’t matter that I’m just too lazy to get up and get any. It still counts. Now my dilemma is: get up and clean things or fall asleep on the living room floor and remain there pathetically until Matt comes home and makes me go to bed for real.

I agree.

Sorry, Matt.

I am very healthy.

I started today assuming that it was going to be horrible, which, if you’re wondering, is not the best strategy for getting through. For once, though, I was completely wrong and my day was very affirming. This happens sometimes.

I did cardio this morning and was pretty hungry for most of the day, and then I went to yoga after work (my crane pose is up to .000006 seconds off the floor!) and that killed my appetite but I knew I needed something in me, so I thought “What can I force myself to eat?” And then, “How can I work in some cheese?” I was planning a bean salad so I mixed that up and then hit upon my best idea of the day: nachos. So I layered my bean salad (chickpeas, pinto, black, and kidney beans, corn, a diced tomato, cumin, lime juice, S + P, and cilantro) with some cheese and those blue corn flaxseed Target chips I love, and microwaved it. Here they are with some avocado and sour cream for garnish.

I used to eat loaded nachos every single week during grad school. And when I say loaded, I mean, literally cups of cheese. With a side of jumbo margarita. And I still lost weight during that period of time. HOW DID I DO THAT?

Last night, I was really efficient, and I had much lunch packed, the coffee pot timer set, and my gym bag ready before I went to bed. This is likely directly related to my day going well.

Tonight, I’ll probably eat some ice cream and look at the dishes and say stuff to myself like, “We should really make room in the refrigerator for the cake” and then fall asleep on my book before I do anything about any of it.

Wait, I’m trying to be positive.

I will eat ice cream! The end.

Cheap and easy

I think tonight’s dinner cost me approximately -2 cents. Nice, right?

Here’s my version of Heidi Swanson’s Lemon-Scented Quinoa. I just had quinoa on Saturday but I can’t help that I crave grains that are not really grains.

I was going to make something more complicated but I had a bad day and I decided I could have WHATEVER I WANTED as a reward for making it through. And instead of pizza or brownies or something, I had quinoa. And chickpeas. Served with a delicious tahini-based dressing, some roasted broccoli, and brussels sprouts.

I hope my kids are more normal than this.

I’m not going to bother uploading the brussels sprouts picture because a) you’ve seen it before and b) WordPress is ON MY LIST of annoyances because it won’t upload my images.

Here’s what we had last night, which I didn’t post because I hate Sunday nights and I also got really involved in The Tudors again.

Spinach/apple/cheese paninis with homemade potato chips (more potato-y than chippy, sadly), and some fruit. I actually ate two of these sandwiches because I was hungry and they were amazingly good.

That reminds me that I want some cherries. I used all of the money that I saved on my cheap dinner to buy ridiculously overpriced cherries, which will be my financial downfall this summer. At least I know in advance.

My feet hurt so I’m going to stop typing with them.

No. Not really. But I wish.

Double dinner

Okay, not really. Not that I haven’t been known to indulge in a fourthmeal every now and again. Although, for me, it’s really more like eighthmeal. I eat a lot of meals.

Anyway, Matt and I have been wanting to try out our new grill pans (Thanks Mom and Dad and new Mom and Dad!), so Matt made portobello panini while I was on my way home from work. I wasn’t that hungry, because I’m on this new medicine that’s been making me feel sickly, so I just had this one and decided to wait until later for the rest of my meal.

Gorgonzola and sun dried tomatoes pressed between portobello halves. So, yeah. Delicious.

Then I ran to Target with Donna and suddenly it was 8 when I got home and I only had an hour before the Top Chef FINALE. We had a bunch of leftover portobello pieces, so I decided to marinate and roast those. I also needed some veggies, protein, and calories to round out my eating for the day, so I roasted some tomatoes (grape tomatoes - they’re safe), broccoli, and chickpeas along with the mushrooms. Then I really wanted couscous but the salad greens aren’t going to last much longer, so I compromised and had both. Look at this bounty:

Up close:

Roasted chickpeas are great. I think I’ll have some more in a few minutes. Oh, I also added some goat cheese. Because. It’s goat cheese.

Top Chef is on.

Boo, Lisa.

Mmmmmeaty

If you haven’t caught on yet, we typically don’t eat a huge amount of meat. Cows and pigs gross me out as a rule, so no beef or pork, and sometimes I get tired of heartlessly hunting the chickens, plucking them, etc. It’s a hard knock life.

We’ve had a lot of poultry lately, because every time I asked my mom what she wanted to eat while she was here, she said “No bulgur. Chicken.” So, I stockpiled chicken and turkey and we’ve eaten a lot of that recently, and there’s more in our future before it goes bad.

I lost my way again.

Oh, right. Okay, so, to take a break in the middle of all that poultry, I decided I wanted to experiment with a new protein source, so I tried Veganomicon’s chickpea cutlets.

The cutlets were okay. I think they tasted almost too meaty, though. I made six, instead of the four that the recipe called four, so they were a little smaller. They’re kind of plain on their own, so I decided to mimic the gyros I used to get at Mediterranean Deli when we lived in Chapel Hill and Matt worked right next door to it. Oh, to live in a town with a Mediterranean restaurant…

Anyway, so, I broke one of the cutlets into two pieces, whipped up a tahini-yogurt sauce with Donna’s consultation, and shoved it all in a whole wheat pita.

That’s the rest of the tahini sauce. Is that gross? Sorry, I have no food filter.

I wanted to put some lettuce and cheese in there to complete my at-home Med Deli creation, but they wouldn’t fit, so I just had a salad on the side with mixed greens, goat cheese, and an agave-lemon dressing.

Since I know you were all concerned about this, I did go to the energy efficiency thing last night. And, good thing I did, because they had three door prizes (compact fluorescent bulbs, natch), and three of us showed up. So I scored a free light bulb.

Tomorrow I have to fast before my CT scan and echo cardiogram. For FOUR HOURS. This may not seem like all that long, but it’s from 10-2, a timeframe during which I typically eat AT LEAST twice, if not three times. What? I’m a snacker.

I’m also going to a nutritionist tomorrow, which means that I have three medical appointments in one day - a new record! At least one of them is food-related and, therefore, fun.

Catching up

I didn’t post last night’s dinner because I was in a bad mood. Here it is:

I’ll call it sweet shrimp stir fry. Here’s how to make it:

Cook shrimp over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes in a little olive oil. Add 1 cup beans (I used great northern b/c that’s what I had on hand - I think I’d use black beans if I did this again, though). Cook for another 3 or so minutes. Remove shrimp and set aside. Turn heat down to medium. Add sliced peppers (I used the pretty little multi-colored peppers that I always put in salads, but a red bell would also work). Cook for 2 minutes. Add mango chunks and crushed red pepper. Also toss shrimp back in. Add some lemon juice and cook for 2-3 more minutes. Serve with quinoa. Or whatever. But quinoa was particularly good with this. I think I might have put some sliced almonds or something in mine because I remember it being crunchy. But my bad mood has kind of deleted the whole day from my memory.

Today was better. I went to the gym, where I overcome foot pain and ran longer than usual on the indoor track. I’m a really slow “runner” because I have arthritis and am also a wuss. I also have asthma, so I can only “run” for a certain period of time before I feel like I’m going to pass out (3 laps). I know what you’re thinking and, yes, I was very popular as a teenager. The combination of a traditional geek disease like asthma with a chronic condition typically associated with the elderly really gave me that extra something I needed to be both loved and understood by my sensitive classmates.

Anyway, back to “running.” Today I passed someone in the runners’ lanes on the track for the first time! He was really old and had a knee brace on but I don’t care. So, that set a more upbeat tone for my day. I then did other things that are, I’m sure, equally interesting to you, like: recycling, taking a walk to the public library to try to remind myself that reading is fun even though I stopped doing it a few months ago, getting coffee on the way back home, having lunch and a snack, watching basketball, making dinner, cleaning in a frenzied state and grocery shopping.

For dinner, I made protein-packed baked pasta. Yes, I just made that up on the fly.

Matt loves baked pasta dishes, and apparently I do not make them enough for his liking, so he seemed to be more excited about this meal than he has been about anything I’ve cooked in the last four years. Here’s how it all came together:

I cooked 2 cups of dry pasta (we like a mix, so we had 1 cup of medium shells and 1 cup of whole wheat penne). Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, I mixed 1 can of diced tomatoes, about 3/4 cup of crushed tomatoes, 1 tbsp of tomato paste, 1/2 cup chickpeas, 1/3 cup of cottage cheese, garlic and crushed red pepper. I sprayed a baking dish with non-stick cooking spray, and I drained the pasta and tossed it in the dish. I then added the sauce and stirred it all up. I put about 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella on top, sprayed some aluminum foil w/ cooking spray and baked at 350 for 20 minutes covered, and 10 minutes uncovered.

Then I made a salad. It just felt right.

The chickpeas and cottage cheese add protein, which makes this a nice meatless meal. Also, the cottage cheese made it creamier.

After I went on my crazy cleaning spree and took a trip to the grocery store (where a woman tried to take my cart and then followed me around apologizing, with her four kids in tow, and where I also could not find any asparagus), I had a Fage with honey. I get to eat another one tomorrow, in honor of Easter. And because it expires then. I also had a little bit of Edy’s coffee ice cream that I bought on a whim at the grocery store. I’ve been a really big fan of coffee ice cream ever since I went to a Haagen-Dazs stand at the mall in Raleigh and asked for a small coffee (the drink) and got a small coffee (the ice cream).

Okay, I think it’s Reading Time. I checked out a few magazines in case real books don’t work out. I’ve also got a few issues of Tiny Titans and a Batgirl Showcase to fall back on.