Strawberries are in season and I'm loving it! I bought some at the farmer's market this past Saturday but they weren't sweet. The ones o bought today are much sweeter. Yum.
I'm watching The Amazing Spider-Man. I thought Peter's love interest was a redhead?
I was 119 pounds this past Thursday, today I'm 124 pounds. That's five pounds in six days. I'm hoping this is just that time of the month weight.
I shouldn't be gaining weight so quickly because I had a bout of food poisoning or something and have been running to the bathroom a lot since Sunday morning. Saturday was spring tea at my church and the menu was not primal at all.
That rice looking stuff is quinoa with raisins. It wasn't good. There was more bread that meat on the sandwich. The whole meal was cold. I prefer my meals to taste like it had once had a pulse.
I want to say it was incorporating the grains and gluten into my diet that got my tummy upset but I won't know anything until I get a chance to see the ladies tomorrow. If they had the same issues then I can say it was the food.
I went out to meet someone for karaoke. I like karaoke. I can't sing but that's why I like karaoke. You don't have to be a good singer, you just have to like singing.
I hope the food is good. I've never eaten at Primo's Cafe. I'll need to pray the food won't make me sick.
More car troubles. I had to put my truck in the shop. I have no choice but to get another car because I can't rely on the one I have anymore.
The good side, I got to eat at a deli (The Brooklyn Deli). I had been meaning to try for the longest. The food was great. I don't eat the bread of my corned beef sandwich but it was still good. The chips were awesome. Nice and crispy and made on site. And they gave me three pickles! Three! Most places only give you one but they were generous.
I went to Panera Bread tonight and realized I could not eat anything there. The only kind of food served there is bread, hence the bakery's name.
I love eating gluten free. My bloated belly is gone and I've stopped retaining water.
I did it. I made a bacon milkshake and it was good. I used real bacon, too.
The best art of using real bacon was that I had an awesome combination of cold creamy ice cream and tiny chunks of bacon to chew on. Oh, how good the bacon tasted.
Everyone kept telling me the bacon would make the milkshake greasy but it didn't. I baked the bacon until it was crispy and dabbed the grease off my bacon slice before adding it to the blender.
So good.
This has inspired me to try other bacon recipes. Bacon makes everything taste better.
I need to make a trip to Trader Joe's sometime this weekend. I'm out of coconut milk. I discovered how much I like coconut milk when thought I hated it.
I dislike Thai food because I thought I didn't like coconut milk. It turns out there is something else about Thai food I don't like since it definitely isn't the coconut milk. Could it be a spice in Thai food? I don't know but I do indeed like coconut milk, especially vanilla flavored.
I really don't have anything to write about. Can you tell?
I mentioned the sweet potato pie yesterday. Well here it is. It tastes just as good as it looks. I don't have the recipe for it at the moment, I can post that later.
If you've made sweet potato pie or pumpkin pie before, just use the same ingredients but use the Okinawan/Hawaiian purple sweet potato instead of pumpkin or orange sweet potato.
Here's a picture of my purple sweet potato cheesecake I made.
It turned out good. I only had one person say they didn't like it. I didn't care too much for the nut crust but considering I'm trying to go gluten free, it was better than the flour alternative. I think next time I will add some honey just to give the crust the sweetness folks said it needed. I should post the recipe but I must admit, I didn't come up with the recipe. I got it from Wellness Mama. All I did was substitute the pumpkin with the purple sweet potato.
I got seven mini cheesecakes from this recipe with enough batter left over to make an eighth mini pie but ran out of the nut crust. Had I use less crusts for the other pies, I would have had enough crust for the eighth pie.
I went to In N Out last night for dinner and had two double-doubles protein style (without the bun). I think the prices went up. I went there again today, after grocery shopping. I needed to buy the ingredients for the purple sweet potato cheesecake I plan on making with the last of the sweet potatoes. I really like In N Out burgers. They aren't the largest or fanciest burgers but they are fresh. I don't have to worry about mystery ingredients.
I'm going to try a nut crust for this cheesecake. I hope it turns out okay.
If it doesn't taste good, I won't be making it again. The batter was good though. I can't wait to dig into one of my little purple cheesecakes.
I finally got my purple sweet potatoes in the mail. I already tried making mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes are not my favorite and the beautiful purple color of these potatoes haven't changed my opinion. I still don't like mashed potatoes.
I didn't like the way the potatoes were packed. And some of the potatoes were broken a bit but that's what I get for $22 for 12 pounds. I would have preferred them to be packed in a sturdier box.
The potatoes are a lot smaller than I expected. When I did additional research online, I found that the purple sweet potato ranges in size from fingerling to about 1 pound. Anything larger than 1 pound will be very fibrous. I'm not fond of stringy potatoes.
I'm still absolutely adoring the color and can't wait yo make a cheesecake or sweet potato pie with these little darling purple spuds. I'm really enjoying cooking.
Just playing around with some of the iPhone apps I bought today. I'm liking how inexpensive the apps are. I need to get used to some of the features.
I used some pictures I took while I was in Detroit. I did not get a picture of the actual burger but the burger was so small, it wasn't worth it. It only took two bites before I was done with the burger. You can buy these burgers in the frozen food section. I must warn you, they will make you fart.
I purchased some red and white Swiss chard this past weekend and I needed to cook it up before it went bad. I also had som spicy Italian sausage and pastrami I needed to eat before the meat went bad. So, I decided to combine it all. It was delicious.
1 bunch of red Swiss chard
1 bunch of white Swiss chard
1/2 yellow onion
4 slices of bacon
2 spicy Italian sausage links
Sea salt
Black pepper
Red pepper flakes
Any other seasoning you happen to like
1. While the bacon is cooking, clean your Swiss chard and cut as much of the stem off as you can. You can soak them in cold water for however long it takes to remove the dirt.
I cooked the bacon until crispy and set the bacon aside.
2. Put aside some of the bacon grease and sautéed the onions in the same pan you cooked the bacon.
3. In a separate pan, cook the sausage. Cook the Italian sausage and when done cut into half moons and set aside. (I cooked the sausage in a separate pan because I didn't want to cook the chard in the grease from the sausage.
4. And the meat to the sautéed onions. Add the Swiss chard. As you add the chard, tear leaves into small pieces.
5. Add seasonings and mix everything together and cook until the Swiss chard is tender.
My recipe isn't that clear. I'm typing it on my iPhone and my thumb is getting tired. Any questions about this recipe, leave a comment on my other blog shavonnne.org.
This really good stuff.
Now for some really good news.
I finally found a place that sells the Okinawan purple sweet potato. When I was doing my search on the Internet, I was using Okinawan sweet potato as my search words and that's why I was coming up with nothing. When I changed my search terms to Hawaiian purple yam, I was led to Hawaiian Veggie Farm and they sell these purple spuds for $2 a pound and they ship right to your home for free! Can't beat that. I've already lined up several recipes to try with these potatoes. I must patiently wait until they arrive. I will have a lot if cooking to do as I ordered 12 pounds.
I'm sitting in Panera Bread starving but I don't want to order any of the food because everything has gluten. Now that I'm back home I want to stick with my diet.
I'm also sitting here listening to twenty-somethings complain about relationships. Awesome. Just had to sit next to me. There's someone who has peaked my interest on Match. He actually wants more than three children. I've got to give him a wink when I get home. I just hope he doesn't expect me to run marathons with him. I'm much more into my Trikke. I'll save the running like a gazelle for when I need flight response away from a serial killer (I do date white guys).
I really should blog about Dream Night but I don't want to get into the topic of one of the guest speakers. Let's just say it was awesome but eye opening.
Now, I need to get to working on my Bible study so I can get home and cook me some dinner.
I got off the plane in Chicago when I was supposed to stay on. Luckily I realized my mistake and went back to the gate a reboarded my plane. Times like those are the reason why I don't like to sleep in the plane.
When I arrived in Kansas City, I ate at a Mexican restaurant. The food was amazing. I need to recreate the recipe at home because the Rosted Poblano Peppers were very Primal/Paleo/Type O diet approved.
About a year ago, I was very low on energy, had skin rashes, and was having asthma attacks left and right and the blood tests my primary physician had done hadn’t revealed what was causing my ailments. I’m grateful for the Internet because I came across several blogs written by people who had the same symptoms I was having. They all had allergy tests done and it turned out they had food allergies and it was the food they were eating that triggered their asthma.
I was miserable and thought it wouldn’t hurt to see if I was allergic to the foods I was eating and had an allergy test done. It turns out, it was my environment but also the foods I was eating that contributed to my misery for the first half of the 2010.
I highly allergic to many of the plants that grow in the Mojave desert. But the biggest contributors to my symptoms were the foods I was eating. Here’s a typical rundown of the foods I’d eat throughout the day:
MORNING
A bowl of corn flakes or whole grain Cheerios with almond or soy milk
Snack- raw almonds
LUNCH
Wonton soup or frozen dinner
Snack-raw almonds (I love almonds)
DINNER
Frozen dinner or anything that could easily be microwaved
Snack-chocolate covered almonds
Here are the foods I’m allergic to:
Peanuts
Corn
Walnut
Almonds
Oranges
Soy bean
Green pea
Cantaloupe
peaches
As you can tell by my snacking, I love almonds. They just don’t love me. The frozen meals I consumed didn’t add to my health as a lot of frozen meals use corn or soy products as a preservative. So I was literally poisoning myself with the foods I was eating. My diet overall wasn’t healthy. It’s still not healthy. I may have cut my allergens from my diet and stopped eating frozen meals, but I still don’t get fresh fruits and vegetables in the quantities I should be eating daily.
I need to learn how to cook.
Now that I’ve got my asthma under control and my skin has cleared, I’m still tired all the time. And bloated! So, I’ve turned to the Internet for research on what could be causing my bloat.
The bloating seems to only happen when I eat breads. I get bubbly gut when I eat rice. Since returning from Korea, I don’t eat much bread unless it’s naan or tortillas and lately I’ve been eating more whole wheat products and brown rice to go along with whatever meat I’ve cooked for dinner. Vegetables are still rare in my meals but I’m working on it. A friend of mine (a Paleo dieter) once mentioned how grains can contribute to bloating because human digestive system hasn’t evolved to help us properly digest grains. I can see the logic in that. Grains are relatively new compared to how long modern man has been around and early man lived just fine without grains. Just because we can eat something doesn’t mean we should. But I do love rice, especially white sticky rice, however, if the rice one of the culprits for my bloat and bubbly gut, then I can live without it.
In my search for a diet to follow and cookbooks to compliment the diet, I’ve come across three different types of diets: Blood type, Paleo, and Primal. I found the blood type diet interesting. I’m type O which is the oldest blood type. It pretty much says to avoid grains and diary and eat lots of meat. Apparently four of the foods I’m allergic to are on the avoid list for my blood type.
The Paleo and Primal diets are similar. The diets say to avoid legumes, diary, grains, refined sugar and processed oils . The Primal diet is much more forgiving when it comes to grains like rice and the consumption of some dairy products. I’m thinking of trying a diet that is a combination of the three. The foods on the avoid list for the blood type diet are foods I’m either allergic to or don’t like eating anyway. It turns out the Paleo/Primal diets advocate avoiding the foods the blood type diet says I shouldn’t eat.
Makes me wonder if there is any truth to the claims made by the different diets. I’ll be trying out a couple of recipes from one of the Primal cookbooks I purchased last weekend. I’m thinking of doing a cook my way through the primal cookbook and blog about my experience like that movie Julie and Julia. Should be fun.
