Use it or lose it

I started 2010 off with the best intentions, just as I start every year. But you know what they say about the pavement on the road to hell, etc. I was going to start eating fruits and vegetables again! And use what we have instead of going out and spending money! And drinking lots of water!

Well, I guess there were vegetables on my pizza Monday night. And the sandwich I got last night when we went out AGAIN had sweet potato chips on the side.

Before that, though, I was doing a really solid job.

Exhibit A

day 2 stew

You like that rhyming, right? This is what we made with our New Year’s leftovers. There was quinoa and then the braised beans and collards, plus some broth, some fresh collards, and more black-eyed peas. I feel like we should get extra prosperity points for making the ingredients for our lucky New Year’s dinner stretch over two days.

Exhibit B

black-eyed pea hummus wraps

I had black-eyed pea hummus sometime last year at The Dish and it was  really good. Like regular hummus but… I don’t know, Southern? With mounds of black-eyed peas left, even after the stew, I decided to give it a shot. And it was awesome.

Black-eyed pea hummus (makes ~4 servings)

You need:

• 1 cup cooked black-eyed peas
• a few T lemon juice
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1T olive oil
• salt + pepper
• crushed red pepper

To do:

1. Combine all ingredients in a food processor or blender, or by hand.

So easy. I’d like to experiment with other flavors in the future, but this time I kept it simple to get a solid foundation.

Also: we ate at home tonight! And there were vegetables in it!

rigatoni with white bean and kale marinara

It has been at least almost nearly a week since we had some other version of this exact meal, so it was obviously time for a new variation.

Recipes for weird kinds of food

Now that I know people have gotten here by searching for “recipes for weird kinds of food: for lun” and “foods that put people in a bad mood,” I feel like my work here is done.

I honestly don't know that I have anything more to give.

Moving on.

Because of some grand cosmic joke, I’ve been blessed not only with Rheumatoid Arthritis, Raynaud’s disease, unexplained lung muscle weakness, asthma, bursitis, and low white blood cell counts; I also get to have totally ridiculous seasonal allergies. And by “seasonal,” I mean, “whenever the entire outside world isn’t frozen.” Today was particularly bad, and I spent half of it leaking from the head, and half of it feeling like the whole thing was going to blow. So, proactive person that I am, I did some research on how I could cure myself, and apparently people who live in Crete never have outdoor allergies. The study I read attributed this to their eating habits, and suggested that eating a Mediterranean diet might be one remedy for severe allergies.

So, I made tabbouli for dinner.

tabbouli with celery and red peppers

I saw a tabbouli recipe the other day that intrigued me by calling for red peppers and celery instead of tomatoes and cucumbers. And balsamic vinegar in addition to the traditional lemon and olive oil dressing. Basically, brilliant.

I threw mine on a tortilla with a few scoops of hummus and called it dinner.

it was so full of goodness that it kind of collapsed

Unfortunately, I’m already hungry again.  Oh well, at least I’m going to wake up in the morning completely cured of my allergies.

Right?

Wrap it up

Wrapping up the weekend, I feel more tired than I did on Friday when I left work, and I didn’t get most of the things done that I needed to do. I did, however, see some pretty awesome high school basketball, including games featuring a few future K-Staters like Latavius Williams and Wally Judge. These kids are huge, these AAU players. They are twice my height and weight and they are all under 18 years old. It made me want to eat a lot, like I had some kind of irrational idea that I would still be able to grow to their size.

That’s my way of saying I had a lot of snacks.

Yesterday, I was still having a lot of problems health-wise, so I wasn’t really up for making dinner when I got home after 10 hours of basketball. And I’d hit the concession stand, so I wasn’t that hungry, and all I wanted was some fruit and a salad. So I mashed them both together and here they are:

Mixed greens with strawberries, pineapple, mandarin oranges, goat cheese, walnuts, and balsamic vinaigrette. I also had some cottage cheese. Because it’s going bad soon, I can feel it.

Today, I limited myself to one concession stand trip, and I also went to the gym before the games, and did some tough grocery shopping afterward, so I was actually hungry for dinner. We had another Ellie Krieger recipe: Hummus and Grilled Vegetable wraps. Can you buy stock in a person? Because I’d buy it in her.

Pre-wrapping:

Hummus, grilled zucchini, pine nuts, roasted red pepper, red onions, and spinach. Here it is with a mixed greens, cucumber, and tomato salad with lemon vinaigrette:

We need new plates. I’m really bored with taking pictures of these.

Taco casa

There’s a chain of convenience stores/gas stations here called Dara’s Fast Lane, and connected to a few of them are fast food Mexican restaurants named “Taco Casa.” They put up very clever marquee messages like “Got Tacos?” and cryptic ones like “Ta os.”

We did not have dinner there. Last night, Matt took me out because I had a weird day and my skirt was wrinkly and too big and my pedometer wasn’t working properly, so all my walking effort felt WASTED and I said “um” a lot more than usual during my presentation. I had a “chicken tortilla salad” which is my favorite thing to get at a restaurant, because, really, who doesn’t like glorified nachos with some lettuce thrown in? And, on the way back, we passed a Taco Casa and it solidified my plan to have black bean tacos for dinner tonight.

I worked from home for part of this afternoon, so I mixed up up the filling (which is also salsa; basically – black beans, diced tomato, some cilantro, garlic, cayenne pepper, balsamic vinegar and olive oil with lime juice squeezed all over it) and put it in the refrigerator to, I don’t know, infuse itself with… itself. That meant that dinner was COLD as Matt kept pointing out, and, combined with the sort of dreary gross day we’re having, I guess he had a problem with that.

Anyway, it’s a good thing I mixed this up earlier because I had some kind of physical break with reality at about 5 and since then I’ve basically been sleeping sitting up. I will probably go to bed soon, when I can get the energy to walk from here to the bedroom. It’s about 14 steps, but it feels really daunting.

Here’s round one of my dinner – one taco w/ some appetizers.

Okay, the picture sucks. I’m going to try to do better with that. But, on the bright side, I finally found some corn tortillas that don’t break when you try to do anything other than sit them flat on a plate. Apparently the trick is to buy them from somewhere other than Aldi. I wanted to have a salad with this, or at least something green, but I only have a brand new box of mixed greens and I couldn’t be bothered to get out scissors and open the package, so I just threw some peppers and carrots on the plate with some hummus and called it an appetizer. I also ate another taco and some chips, and I’m strongly considering another one and maybe some yogurt. If I ever get up. I guess this means no Kickbox Kombat tonight (hey – I didn’t make it up), which is a shame. But not such a shame that it’s going to keep me from enjoying a 6:30pm bedtime.